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Nov. 19, 2021 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:31:02

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #267

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	Good afternoon and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters episode 267.
	I am Thomas, your host for today, and I'm delighted to be joined by Harry.
	Hello there.
	So today we're going to be discussing why Azeem Rafiq is part of a problem that he is a victim of himself.
	JK Rowling's de-platforming by her own franchise, and Meghan Markle's encounter with the commoners.
	However, first we have some announcements to share with you, the first of which is the most important.
	It's International Wednesday today.
	And to celebrate, we've got a premium interview with Philip Tanza on men's issues, which is being released at 2.30pm today.
	He's a very interesting guy.
	We've met him twice, haven't we?
	Yeah, when he's come into the office, he's seemed like a very interesting, very nice man.
	He had some interesting discussions with Carl, and that will be going live on the website as soon as this podcast is done.
	So once you're done listening to us, then you can go straight over and check that out if you've got your Bronze or Above membership.
	Yes, absolutely.
	So please do check that out.
	And next, we have got Beau's article, which is Mary Beard's absurd cherry-picking.
	And for those who know of Mary Beard, she is an historian with a particular interest in ancient history, but she's also a rather obnoxious feminist as well.
	Well, I mean, that's just a feminist, surely, yes.
	Fair point.
	Beau goes into some quite exoriating detail about why it is that Mary Beard should not really be considered a legitimate historian in any authentic manner.
	She's guilty of cherry-picking to the absolute nth degree to try and make some very contemporary points, which were kind of anachronistic...
	You could say with the history that she's discussing.
	I've seen her books on bookshelves, looked at the blurb, and never been interested in going any further than that.
	Yeah, well, it's a free article.
	You have literally nothing to lose from checking it out.
	And if we move on to the next one, we have the Premium Book Club episode 17, which is Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, featuring Carl and Bo.
	And, of course, Machiavelli is an extremely important figure.
	I mean, he almost defines, you could say, the political climates that we now have.
	So I'm definitely going to tune into that at some point.
	I haven't done yet.
	I gave this a read a very long time ago, but Beau's a very, very good historian.
	I'd really recommend you tune into that.
	It's premium, so you will have to get a bronze membership to receive this.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	And last of all...
	It is.
	We are now on Getter.
	I'm also on Getter.
	Harry's on Getter.
	I've got as many as one followers at the moment.
	But the most important thing is you follow the main page at motuseaters underscore dot com.
	So please check us out on that.
	This is very much where it is at at the moment.
	And yes, so that's very much it for the announcements.
	We may as well get started.
	So yes, Azeem Rafiq.
	I don't follow cricket.
	So before now, I had quite literally no idea who Azeem Rafiq was.
	But I've taken an interest in this story because of the scale of the claims that are being made.
	So if we get the first clip up here.
	He's an ex-cricketer who spent most of his career playing for Yorkshire Crickets Club.
	And he's been recently standing before the Digital Culture Media and Sports Select Committee to argue not only that the club are institutionally racist, but that institutional racism pervades throughout all of English cricket.
	And he's been quoted to have said that modern cricket does not represent modern Britain.
	And as I've already said, this is all extremely new to me.
	But let's roll back to see how this all started.
	And the context of this is rather sad to start with.
	Just as a disclaimer as well, before today, I had also not heard of Azeem Rafiq.
	Just to ask a question, in the process of doing your research for this, did you find any indicators to Azeem's quality as a cricket player?
	Because I always find it's the ones who maybe are...
	Not the best players who always try to make a stink about things and call up the institutionally racist card just to try and boost their own profile.
	And do what they can to perhaps, I don't know, sell an idea to Netflix that may actually be quite profitable.
	So yes, it does seem to be the rather average sports personalities or sports people, I should say, who do seem to be going down this path.
	But it does seem that Rafiq has some reason to be disgruntled by his treatment, as I was going to explain.
	Him and his wife went through a stillbirth in 2018.
	I feel bad now.
	No, no, no.
	His suspicions of institutional racism were first raised in that year, when Rafiq accused the club of treasoning him badly following the stillbirth.
	In September 2020, this is sometime after, Yorkshire Cricket Club announced that they'd be carrying out a formal investigation into the claims.
	Yes, it's here.
	And that the chairman, Roger Hutton, would be leading it.
	Rafiq participated in the internal inquiry, offering verbal and written statements.
	And through these statements, he expanded on his initial allegations about racist language being used, giving specific examples as well.
	This applied to both employees of Yorkshire Cricket Club and its supporters, whom Rafiq claimed sustained a hostile culture which isolated Muslim players at the club and offered insufficient support for the development of younger Asian players.
	It's a bit weird that the younger Asian players has been added at the end because this same claim has been made about the FA and it almost seems too systematic a response, that part of it.
	Well, yeah, it seems like something you just keep in your back pocket.
	Oh, it's also affecting the young people, by the way, don't you know?
	It does feel like this is being framed as a systemic issue already.
	But anyway, being unsatisfied with the club's response, Rafiq began an employment tribunal claim against them in the hope that the claim would lead to them bringing about meaningful change of ink cricket.
	This took place in June 2021, and it failed to reach a resolution.
	Now, it's reported that Rafiq was offered a six-figure sum, dependent on him signing a non-disclosure agreement, but he rejected the offer.
	And some sort of inquiry has since been called, and after further reflecting on his experience at the club, he's now providing the select committee with evidence that the club is institutionally racist, as with, well, English cricket in its entirety.
	Okay, well, I'm interested as to where he's going, because once again, not being much of a cricket fan, I'm not particularly familiar with the internal politics and the people within that industry, so I'm interested to see where this is going, although whenever I hear claims of institutional or systemic racism, it does put me a little bit on the back foot in terms of I'm sort of...
	Prone to not believe somebody without some pretty significant evidence.
	It does, you or me both.
	Whenever you have a lone case that someone is trying to present as an expression of a totalistic systemic problem, I'm immediately going to be slightly suspicious, and that's for good reason.
	If you're presenting a big problem, then you're going to need strong evidence to support it, as far as I'm concerned.
	And also, if he did go through any bad treatment from his colleagues and fellow players within the club as a result of him going through a stillbirth, of course that is terrible, that is awful, but that's not necessarily evidence of a wider systemic problem.
	No, it's not.
	And from what we've seen at least so far, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're being horrible to you because of your race immediately.
	Yeah, he could just maybe not like you.
	As bad as that could be for someone on an individual level, it might not just be your race, it might just be they just don't like you.
	Yeah, at the moment it sounds like a suspicion and one that may have led to him making a too broad a conclusion of it.
	We saw this, we've seen this with football many, many times.
	Sol Campbell, well funny enough, Sol Campbell is actually a Conservative, but he's made a lot of noise about the lack of black managers in English football and immediately rendered, or maybe not rendered isn't the best word, diagnosed this as a systemic problem.
	In order to surely know if it's a systemic problem, you need to have a look at the process which is leading to less black managers.
	You need to look at the system, and if there's nothing inherent in the system that says that we're only hiring white coaches or something, you're going to need to find some pretty strong evidence.
	You can't make a systemic accusation of actually looking at the process of that system.
	This is what we have to argue constantly with leftists, because they just want to look at the disproportionate outcome and call oppressions.
	I believe the classic term is the racism of the gaps.
	It's an extension of the God of the gaps.
	Well, it's adjacent to the God of the gaps argument that was made by religious people back in the day, which is you see a gap that you cannot fill logically, or at least maybe haven't looked into to find something that would logically fill that gap, and you fill it with God.
	These people, they find any disparity.
	They don't look into it any further than a racial disparity and go, it must be racism.
	Yeah, and it's just myopic, isn't it?
	Oh, yes.
	It's a very, very cynical worldview to be operating from.
	Well, let's move on to Asimov's particular case.
	So if we can get the next one up, please, John.
	So to give a summary of his own testimony, which can be seen if you scroll a little bit further down...
	He summarised it as follows, that the culture of institutional racism prevented him from realising his dream of playing for England.
	He claimed that racist language, including terms aimed at his other, him and his Pakistani heritage, were used constantly, never stamped out during his time at Yorkshire.
	He was outraged by the report's conclusion that the terms were used in a banterous context when, in his view, it was explicitly racist.
	having engaged in bands Yes.
	If you're going to be hanging around in large groups of men, dodgy as that opening statement says, you're going to have to get used to taking a joke.
	You've got to understand that you'll have to take it on the chin.
	And if it's amongst friends, or at least people who consider you a friend, that opens up the goalposts for...
	Harsher and harsher jokes that will go into more and more taboo territory purely on the basis of you and I are friends, we trust one another, there is a rapport that we have built there, therefore I trust you to be able to take this and understand that this is not personal.
	Yeah, and the words, the meaning of the word effectively changes in that context, quite literally.
	It's basically male bonding.
	It is.
	That's what we do.
	We just make fun of each other in the horrible ways.
	But what happens if you go to another locker room and act in exactly the same way as if it's universally accepted?
	Or if it's people you don't know.
	Or if it's people you don't know.
	It can be taken very, very differently.
	You need to build that rapport with somebody before you can engage in such a way.
	You do.
	But anyway, Rafiq felt isolated and humiliated when these comments were made by others in front of him.
	And the coat...
	The coaching staff made them as well and apparently no one stepped forward to challenge the people saying this.
	I have no idea whether he maybe stuck up for himself at some point and perhaps just asked for someone else to weigh in or whether he kept silent completely.
	We're of course speculating on this.
	Obviously this is all going on behind closed doors and private.
	Yeah, but he basically said that language such as this has become the norm and people at the club just didn't seem to think that it was wrong.
	And that he was in denial about the scale of the problem during most of his first spell at Yorkshire up to about 2014.
	He returned to the club in 2016, believing things had ultimately changed.
	See, I could take a joke back in 2014, but now, now...
	Intersectionalism has taught me to become very sensitive about everything.
	This part of it, I'm suspending judgement.
	Let's get into it.
	Only on the banter point.
	For the simple reason that doing banter badly doesn't...
	I don't accept that using banter badly is immediately racist.
	Oh, yeah.
	It's got to correspond to the intention.
	You could have just misjudged a joke.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, you could...
	Yeah.
	I mean, this part, however, is genuinely really bad, which I'm going to go into now.
	In Rafiq's view, the atmosphere became toxic after Gary Barnes took over as captain later that year.
	This is 2016.
	Shortly after the former batter, Andrew Gay, replaced Jason Gillespie as head coach when Rafiq returned in the belief that the culture had changed.
	He actually said that at age 16, when he was practicing Muslim, I imagine he still is, he was pinned down by a senior player at his local crickets club, and red wine was shoved into his mouth.
	Okay.
	I mean, regardless if you're Muslim, doing that to a 15-year-old is disgusting, isn't it?
	Yeah, that's really cruel and very unnecessary.
	Yeah.
	But he said he didn't drink alcohol again until around 2012, which he did just to fit in with the club.
	And he said that the report that was conducted into the allegations that he reported was extremely shoddy.
	The panel failed to speak to any clear witnesses.
	And, well, he proceeds from here to explain his treatment by the club after the death of his son, which is in the video which we're going to get up now.
	And, well, it makes for pretty uncomfortable...
	End of 2017 we had a really difficult pregnancy and through that time the treatment that I received from some of the club officials were inhuman.
	They weren't really bothered about the fact that I was at training one day and I get a phone call to say there's no heartbeat.
	I raised that complaint about Tim Bresnan and Tim, former England cricketer, also related to the coach.
	I knew there was potentially going to be real trouble, but I thought, I mean, everyone complained, so it would be the same for everyone, but on the flip side of it, the board minutes say, I'm a problem, a troublemaker, and an issue that needs to be resolved.
	And I feel that that then...
	Blinded them into how they treated me through the pregnancy and the loss of my son.
	My first day back after losing my son, Martin Mockson literally got me in a room and ripped the shreds off me.
	I've never seen him speak to anyone like that through my time at the club.
	Now, Moxon is not someone that only Rafiq complained about.
	He was complained about by several of the players.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, that adds some weight to what he's discussing there.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And about six or seven players apparently...
	No, Bresnan.
	Sorry, Bresnan, not Moxon.
	Bresnan was the one who was complained about.
	And six or seven players complained about him.
	And the only person who actually received repercussions for that...
	Was Azeen Rafiq, according to his testimony.
	Okay.
	You can see where he's joining the dots here and thinking that...
	Yeah, I can understand.
	But when he's talking about rips to shreds and all those sorts of...
	that kind of language, it's very vague without definitive claims or statements of what was said or obviously without footage.
	It's very, very difficult for me to be able to...
	Make a judgement on this purely because of the fact that obviously what happened to him and his wife was horrible.
	You'd be in a heightened state of emotions after something like that has happened.
	You might be in a position where you may take things more sensitively, but if he did say some awful things to him at the same time, that's not very kind to do to somebody who's supposed to be a teammate.
	So once again, the vagueness of the fact that I don't know what was said makes it difficult.
	The one thing that we can tell, even if we take racism out of this, is that there is something of a hostile, weird culture at this cricket club.
	Yeah, it doesn't sound great.
	If there are multiple complaints being made about the same people, people are accusing each other of tearing each other to shreds.
	I mean, if you're talking about a sports team, this does not sound conducive to a sports team that are going to work well together.
	Yeah, well, regrettably, as I'm going to show now, Azeem Rafiq has actually turned out to be something more of a part of this very...
	The problem that he's criticising.
	So if we get this article up here, he was actually founded in 2011 when he kind of claimed that this all started.
	He basically was found to have been sending anti-Semitic messages, not to Jewish people, but amongst his cohort, amongst his friends.
	And if we scroll down a little bit, we can actually see the messaging.
	Which isn't, it's a little bit further down, but this is the apology that he said, yes, this one here.
	I'm not going to read it out, because it's pretty, I think, just self-explanatory, really.
	I mean, I'm just going to say that I'm not surprised given his background.
	Yeah, you could bring that up, and it's not illegitimate to do so.
	But this language, to me, is just as bad as everything he's been criticising.
	I mean, he's not directed as an actual Jewish person, but it's...
	And reasonably speaking, he was making vague claims about what other people were saying about him.
	He's making slightly more direct claims in these, so...
	Yeah.
	So, I'm afraid...
	Of course, I don't know whether he completely forgot about this or not, because it was a long time ago.
	I forget about some things I have done and said 10 years ago.
	But if he knew that he had said this, it seems a little bit egregious that he's been, of course, going along with the narrative of vixenhood this whole time, whilst knowing that he's been a part of this institutional problem.
	Well, yeah, I mean, if you wanted to make the claim that something is institutionally so-and-so or so-and-so, I would say that you need to look at the behaviour of the people within that to determine whether the system or institution leans one way or the other.
	And if the system's made up of people making lots of funny remarks about Jewish people, then you could make those sorts of claims.
	but once again I mean this just this seems a little bit like a case of digging up somebody's tweet or by the looks of it here Facebook comment history and dragging them over the coals it does a bit dragging them over the coals for it which is not something I'm excuse me typically in support of no I don't want to bash him too much because he's genuinely been through a lot
	but if what he's saying about the club's reaction or the lack of a reaction to the stillbirth is true you know that they basically just told him to get on with it and suck it up.
	That's absolutely heartless.
	I mean, if that's what happened, he should have been given time off, because I do believe that.
	I mean, just from the sake of a performance perspective, that's not going to leave you in the position where you can perform very well.
	Yeah.
	Well, I guess the big question really is, I mean, is there a political motivation behind this?
	I mean, we're not, of course, saying that these things didn't happen because he seems sincere enough in his testimony for us to believe that, of course, he's being sincere.
	But do you not think that there may be political forces at play here?
	And I say this because he's using his personal experience to make a broader case that cricket is racist in its entirety, rather than limiting his description appropriately to where he experienced it at Yorkshire Cricket Club.
	And as mentioned earlier, he's brought the concept of demographic representation into this as well, through the statements, modern cricket does not represent modern Britain.
	Well, yeah.
	And that is if he means represent in that way, but I imagine the language might have been carefully used.
	If you're going to make these systemic claims, these institutional-wide claims, but you've only got the evidence of one particular club behaving in that way, then you can't make the claim that is institutional because you do not have the evidence to back that up.
	Yeah.
	I mean, there isn't enough evidence to suggest that cricket in its entirety, for me, from what we've seen, is institutionally racist.
	I mean, what he experienced probably does sound racist to me, if I'm honest.
	And I know that the English cricket board's failure to sufficiently address this is bad, but that in itself is not enough to suggest that English cricket in its entirety is institutionally racist.
	Well, I mean...
	I'm just going to say that if it's banter between friends, if you are good enough friends, racist jokes should not be off the table, because they can be hilarious.
	No, they should not.
	Maybe I was wrong in saying that then, because maybe it's just a matter of...
	Obviously there's a time and a place, maybe don't throw them out immediately after the man and his wife have suffered through a stillbirth, but if he's making these incredibly wide claims, but he can only point to certain examples from a very specific period of time where he was in a heightened emotional state, while at the same time it seems that he might get some publicity off of the back of it, which is something that we've seen with a number of other sports stars, it makes me very inherently sceptical.
	Yeah.
	Not to diminish what he and his wife obviously went through.
	We can't ignore the fact that there have been many attempts, and there will continue to be coercive attempts, to find institutional racism everywhere, even in areas where it is not.
	For that reason, I think it seems plausible that there is a problem with Yorkshire Cricket Club of some sort.
	But it's a little bit egregious to make that claim to English cricket in its entirety.
	And with that, that's all I have to say on Azeem Rafiq.
	Very interesting.
	Well, let's talk about J.K. Rowling being deplatformed by her own franchise.
	So, many of you may be aware that this year, 2021, is the 20th anniversary of the release of the very first Harry Potter film, which is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, or for all of you Yanks out there, I believe it's called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, over across in the Western continent.
	So there is a big celebration going on.
	HBO Max is going to be throwing a celebration, a retrospective, to mark the anniversary, which is going to be called Harry Potter 20th Anniversary Return to Hogwarts Special.
	I don't know if it's going to be an hour long, two hours long.
	Who knows if it's a documentary or one of those rubbish panel shows, basically like they had with The Inbetweeners, if you watched that a few years ago.
	Yes.
	They didn't even get a...
	I think that was terrible.
	But moving on.
	So, J.K. Rowling, it has been announced, will not be featured on the Harry Potter 20th anniversary special after her controversial tweets about transgender people.
	Because, of course, this is the franchise she came up with.
	She wrote the books these films are based on.
	She made...
	Everybody involved, rich, absolute stacks of cast.
	Do you think that if he wasn't involved in Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe and his, I will just say it, mediocre acting ability would have him be the star that he is now, or at least anywhere near as present in the public eye as he is now?
	I think it's fair to say she had a lot in making every single one of them.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Rupert Grint's an alright actor, but do you think Emma Watson would be a star without something like this?
	I mean, she's wooden as a plank.
	I mean, good God.
	So it says here, J.K. Rowling will not be joining them on this HBO Max special.
	Sources close to the project said it will focus on the creation of the first film 20 years ago and the central cast and crew.
	Not the person who came up with the franchise that the series is based on, that the film series is based on.
	Just the central cast and crew.
	Rowling...
	Ah, she just basically had nothing to do with it.
	We'll just put her over here to the side, because she will be shown in archival footage, but will not make any new appearances in the special.
	And I've got to say, this feels a little bit like the depersoning that happened back in the Soviet Union.
	There's those images of Stalin with all of his friends and lackeys, and over the years, one by one, they all start to vanish until eventually it's just Stalin by himself.
	And I feel like that's kind of what they're doing with Rowling.
	They want to minimize the influence that she had on the series that, once again, just to reiterate, she created, she wrote, she came up with all of these characters, this big, expansive world that made everybody billions.
	But they want her to be as far away from the mainstream eye when it comes to this franchise now as possible.
	Eventually, given that everybody, as we've just seen, has said something problematic in the past, I'm expecting it will end up being Emma Watson, pure-hearted feminist on her own, being held as the creator of the franchise somewhere down the line when they just removed One of those feminists.
	Yes, yes.
	We'll get into that a little bit.
	So, Rowling has been embroiled in controversy over the past few years after she tweeted about biological sex.
	Ooh!
	Biological sex!
	Scary stuff.
	Men and women are different.
	Ooh!
	How terrifying!
	The author also faced controversy after it was revealed that the main villain in one of her mystery novels was a man in a dress!
	Oh!
	Oh no.
	Shock horror, am I right?
	And talk about making a mountain out of a molehill right here.
	The primary antagonist of one of them was a trans...
	I think you would probably refer to it nowadays as a transvestite, a man who does not identify as a woman, who just enjoys wearing women's clothing.
	And you could say that there was, let's be honest here, probably a political bent to it, given what Rowling was going through at the time.
	It's a bit unrelenting.
	But, don't you find it funny?
	That it's very explicitly a man in a dress.
	The same sort of thing applies to Psycho, which is a film that leftists are trying to cancel recently as well, because the villain is once again a man in a dress.
	Ooh, terrifying.
	I didn't know that.
	I thought they would have liked it.
	Did you not know?
	Oh, well, yeah, I've seen people try and cancel that as well.
	But don't you find it funny that leftists see a man in a dress and go, you can't make fun of that, that's transphobic?
	Do you not realise there's a difference between men in dresses and transgender women leftists?
	Hmm.
	Sounds a little bit transphobic to me, wouldn't you agree?
	Let's carry on.
	The release said it would feature stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, who are all absolute traitors.
	Once again, Rowling has made them very, very rich and very, very famous.
	And one by one, after all this controversy came about, they all threw her under the bus.
	They piggybacked off the success of her work and then just threw...
	I could understand this if Rowling was a murderer.
	If the creator of the franchise had done something truly, truly awful, like abused people or killed people, but she threw her opinion out into the public.
	When previously, Rowling, it must be noted as well, was a darling in the eyes of the mainstream left opinion.
	She used to throw out all those things that we all made so many fun memes about where she would tweet out saying, oh, Dobby's a big gay boy now, or something along those...
	Did you know that Dumbledore had a relationship with what was his name?
	Oh, Grindelwald, yes.
	Oh, dear God, yeah.
	Oh, why do I have this information offhand?
	Why do you have to sexualise What was it?
	Dumbledore?
	Yeah, why'd you have to sexualize an old man, please?
	No, stop it.
	But yeah, she was very well known for trying to virtue signal and retroactively adjust her character's sexuality and race, because she tried to make out, oh, I never specified Hermione's race.
	There's a race in the books, even though she very specifically does, and you can find the passages from the books in which she does so, but she was a darling within the media's eye for a long time doing this, but the second she speaks out against the orthodoxy, remember she's a radical feminist, but as soon as she speaks her radical feminist talking points against what is the new pet project of the mainstream, that being trans rights, she is excommunicated.
	From the club.
	This carries on.
	But the release does not mention the person responsible for the creation of the characters, author J.K. Rowling, who's been criticised for her views on transgender people.
	In June 2020, she took to Twitter to criticise an opinion piece that used the term people who menstruate instead of women.
	She responded with, I'm sure there used to be a word for these people.
	Someone help me out.
	Womben?
	Wimpund?
	Womund?
	Wham-in.
	Yeah, wham-in.
	I'd say that's a fair point, to be perfectly honest.
	I do find these phrases that people are now using, such as people who menstruate, people who give birth, to be condescending to the nth degree in terms of how much they...
	I mean, I don't want to sound like a radical feminist here, but there is something innate about being a woman, and one of those things is being able to give birth.
	One of those things is being able to menstruate.
	These are the essential categories.
	I mean, since the beginning of our existence as, I suppose, a self-conscious species, the division of labour is probably the earliest way we have actually understood the differences between men and women.
	Those who carry children and those who, well, what word am I using for, allow for the opportunity for that to be received.
	Yes.
	Let's carry on.
	She continued the thread discussing biological sex.
	Oh, terrifying.
	If sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction, she claimed.
	If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women is globally erased.
	There you see that radical feminist viewpoint spilling out into what she's talking about.
	I know and love many trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives.
	And while I may disagree with her on a lot of her radical feminist talking points in terms of patriarchy...
	And other such things.
	I do agree that sex is a big, essential characteristic that defines people's lives to a certain extent, in that if you are a woman and you don't want to die haggard and alone, you should probably have children.
	And if you want to have children, you need to be a woman.
	You should probably do it before you're 35.
	Carl's talking points, basically, in regards And it would probably be desirable to have the same partners that you have a long-lasting rapport with the person you had your children with.
	There is something essential to sex, and you can't just remove that by redefining gender as something that's kind of fluid and indefinable in the first place.
	Fundamentally arbitrary.
	And also make note of here that she says, I know and love trans people.
	She is not tweeting against trans people.
	She seems more to be in the camp of people who disagree with this gender abolitionist mindset that some people have where you're making it all fluid and vague so that anybody can be anything they state to be without having to come up with anything.
	Evidence to prove so, or anything that anybody can point to to define what it is that he is.
	And also, there's the other point that she makes here about sex isn't real.
	She doesn't mention it here, but there's also the question, okay, if sex isn't real, then what are you trying to become when you transition?
	So the logic, as you would expect with leftists, is inherently contradictory.
	Well, Andrew Doyle actually makes an incredibly valuable point on this, doesn't he, by saying that actually, where the trans lobby are taking this, I suppose...
	This gender fluid ideology is actually transphobic itself, because the concept of trans, in order to be upheld as a concept, depends on a reference to biological sex, so that you can actually be something other than what you identify as.
	I would agree.
	And Carl has pointed this out, and I will point this out.
	Now, this is where the TERFs and the trans activists find themselves butting heads ideologically.
	These two ideologies cannot coexist with one another.
	and it's when you see something like this where the creator of the franchise is being depersoned from her own franchise being marginalized to the uh well put in the margins of her own uh her own franchise that where people will start to squint and take a look at it and go hold up there is something wrong here you know because i think most people can see that there's something not right about her not even being included in the 20th anniversary yes
	so let's move on to the next page that i've got open here which is if you want to know about jk rowling's feelings on trans people you can read them yourself She put up a very interesting essay on her own website that gives all of her perspectives and honestly, she doesn't hate trans people.
	She's just worried about the vulnerability of young girls in particular to be sucked into this ideology and from there make a large life-changing decision which they will not be able to revert back to.
	You can de-transition but if you've already had the surgeries Detransitioning will only do so much.
	So let's take a look at some of the things that she says.
	I've got some of the more important statements from here.
	So she says, I'm an ex-teacher and the founder of a children's charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding.
	Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effects the trans rights movement is having on both.
	And this is true because the trans rights movement has moved beyond just the ability to have sex reassignment surgery.
	These terms, they get so mixed up nowadays, it's difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends, sadly.
	But yeah, she's concerned about the fact that it's no longer just a case of I want to get the surgery and then I don't want people to, you know, make a big deal of it.
	Just let me live my life.
	Which is a reasonable sort of response to this.
	It's turning into, oh, if you're a tomboy, if you have these feelings because we're starting to deconstruct the essential characteristics of what somebody's sex is, then you must be trans.
	Let's get you into a therapist who can confirm this for us because children are very easily manipulated and misled by those who are older because they immediately defer authority, whether they like it or not, whether they realize it or not, to somebody who is older than them.
	And that's still the case with young teenagers around the age of 11, 12, 13.
	And she also says that she's a mother, as you can see here, which means that unlike many of these trans activists, she has a kid, and therefore is very familiar with what I was talking about, with how easily misled and naive and vulnerable children are to being manipulated and exploited.
	She carries on.
	So she seems to be recognising that a lot of the behaviour that trans men are exhibiting Also correlates very closely to the behaviour of lots of young, insecure, vulnerable women.
	And I think we can all agree that there is a reason for that.
	When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth.
	I remember Colette's description of herself as a mental hermaphrodite.
	In Simone de Beauvoir's words, it is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant and the limitations posed upon her by her sex.
	The real question is not why she should reject them, The problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.
	So that's all pretty radical feminist talking points, as you'd expect.
	But you've got to understand as well that she's got a point, which is if these young girls are being raised to be radical feminists along the Emma Watson lines, and they're being told that there is an oppressive patriarchy keeping them down in all elements of society, why would they not see this opportunity to transition to what should be the dominant sex, as far as they're concerned, So that they can use it as a means of gaining power within that society that they live in.
	They continue...
	So she has her own reason to feel vulnerable.
	She's got her own reasons to have issues with what she could see as an abuse of these people.
	And then she finishes off further on.
	So even within this, which people are using as an example of her doubling down on her transphobia, she's still accepting the trans talking points, which I believe...
	Are not backed up very well by very strong evidence whatsoever.
	I believe it's very cherry-picked evidence in regards to, oh, killed by sexual partners.
	She's using terms like trans women of colour and stuff.
	So she's still approaching this from a very, very left-wing, radical left-wing perspective.
	It's the fact that she is deviating just ever so slightly is what's got her to the point where she is able to be removed from her own franchise.
	And we can carry on if we go over to the next article.
	Metro has it here.
	This isn't the only way that she is being depersoned and deplatformed.
	A school has recently removed both Churchill and J.K. Rowling's names from their houses, the buildings that they use, in a diversity push.
	Oh, my goodness.
	And Nurse Mary Seacole.
	Now, from what I'm aware, Mary Seacole, she was a nurse within the Crimean Wars and actually helped a lot of British people, so I believe that if that's true what I've heard, she deserves recognition.
	But you do not have to recognise her by destroying the legacy, as small as it may be in this case.
	You do not have to remove other people's legacy and influence to celebrate the deeds of other people from the past, who also may deserve recognition.
	Rashford, I mean, from what I'm aware of him, he lost us the cup earlier this year, so I don't necessarily know how much recognition he needs, but it all falls on Black History Month, of course, and the school which caters for young children aged 3 to 11 Announced a change in a newsletter to parents during Black History Month.
	So this all seems to be a big publicity move or virtue signal.
	And it is said that the children had been keen to rename the houses and the changes were made after a school vote.
	And I'm just going to be honest here.
	You're teaching kids from age 3 to 11.
	They do not care.
	About race, or anything like that, at that sort of age.
	Kids go in, they learn, they probably get very bored doing so, and they want to go home so that they can, I don't know what kids do nowadays, to maybe play video games, see their friends go outside, play.
	You know, all of that sort of stuff.
	So, yeah, it carries on.
	So, if this was a big move purely for Black History Month...
	Why not change them as well?
	Why not change them as well?
	A couple of points for me, Romy.
	The first is, how has J.K. Rowling ever stood against diversity?
	Hasn't she been one of the most...
	She's been one of the champions of it over years.
	I mean, she's still using terms, even after the radical left-wing have cancelled her, like trans women of colour and other such inclusive terms.
	So I agree with you completely there, that she is very much in that diversity, equity and inclusion group, you know?
	And the second thing is, why do you think they would have picked Marcus Rashford as someone...
	There is obviously a very obvious political reason why, but let's just get into the minds of children here.
	Why would they have picked Marcus Rashford as someone suitable to replace J.K. Rowling?
	Because he's a footballer.
	Because he's a footballer.
	And they spent the entire summer probably idolising him.
	He's a very good player.
	He missed the penalty.
	I mean, the other thing is here, once again, they're trying to frame this as being driven by the children.
	They're trying to frame this as being their decision.
	But at the end of the day, I would not be surprised if this is actually...
	It's quite a good example of the exact same thing that Rowling is worried about when it comes to young people transitioning in the first place, which is this is a direct example of young children being vulnerable to manipulation and vulnerable to the whims, desires, and agendas of those older than them.
	They have probably been bombarded.
	Over the past few weeks with, we're going to do this, we're going to do this, we're going to do this.
	Isn't it wonderful that we're going to do this?
	You want this to happen, don't you?
	Oh, you definitely want...
	And the kids probably don't care.
	They're just like, okay, yeah, sure, whatever.
	As long as I get my cookie at the end of the day or something like that.
	And they say here, we've received only positive reactions from parents and the change to the house names.
	Change was entirely driven and led by our pupils.
	And they feel proud of how it affected this change.
	How much does a three-year-old care that they have driven change?
	The only change that a three-year-old wants is their nappy.
	Yeah.
	I mean, let's be honest here.
	It goes on, the next article is talking about parents backing it apparently as well, which, honestly, none of these people seem to talk like parents that I would know.
	But if we move on, just for the sake of time...
	John, if we move on to the next article, I just want to draw a comparison here between the treatment of these issues, women's issues you could broadly describe it as, when it is the trans rights activists pushing their agenda, as opposed to when it's somebody like Taylor Swift, who I don't really know that much about her, but she acts enough like a radical feminist for me to be able to...
	Conclude that she probably is one, or at least she talks like one, and when it's someone like Taylor Swift pushing these different talking points.
	So Taylor Swift has recently released a 10 minute long version.
	Why any pop song like that needs to stretch out to like Pink Floyd song-length levels?
	I have no idea.
	But her song All Too Well is making women reassess the large age gap relationship.
	Oh!
	Oh really?
	Oh really?
	So what you're telling me is that when it's a child being told by an adult that you're a different gender, this is who you are for the rest of your life, let's get you booked into surgery, that's absolutely fine.
	But when it's a grown woman, this article is about her being 21 years old, going out with 30-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal, ooh, the gap there is immense, it's suddenly exploitation.
	And he's exploiting her because of the age gap means that she's so naive, so vulnerable.
	What 21-year-old woman would have wanted to go out with handsome, rich Jake Gyllenhaal?
	Oh, the trauma that she must have gone through!
	I know, but it just goes to show the absolute disparity in treatment between these issues when it is on the side of the trans activists and what agenda they want to push, but then also they at the same time can hold that inherent contradiction of saying, well, when an older man...
	As long as it's against men, I think, is the defining characteristic here.
	As long as it's against men, it's fine.
	But if it's an older man who's 30 years old with a 21-year-old woman, then it's exploitation.
	It's simple.
	Don't think about it.
	Don't worry about it.
	And just...
	It's just ridiculous, isn't it?
	But yeah, that's about all I've got to say there.
	Yeah.
	Well, we've actually got more on this coming up on Dispatches, which will be up in a couple of days, so do tune into that.
	But for now, I'm afraid we do have to continue on the subject of radical feminists, because we are going to talk about Meghan Markle.
	And, well, some non-news for everyone.
	Meghan Markle has been interviewed on the television again, and this time with Ellen DeGeneres.
	Ellen DeGeneres, was that?
	I heard there.
	Never, never.
	Anyway, we'll get the first web clip up here.
	And this, I believe, is the first time she has sat down for an interview since the infamous and, quite frankly, just terrible opera Winfrey won eight months ago, which, as we know...
	The royal family was particularly displeased about.
	But anyway, if we scroll down a little bit, Meghan Markle, in this interview, according to Sky, spent most of the time revealing just how happy she and Prince Harry were living in California to Ellen DeGeneres, who had previously referred to them both as the cutest couple.
	Why do I just, in my head, when I imagine this, I'm just seeing, the only thing I'm seeing is the Wojaks of Meghan being the, come along dear, and Prince Harry being the downtrodden, dejected, completely drained, yes dear, you know, that's why, aren't we having such a wonderful time in California?
	Yes, dear.
	Yeah, that's all I can picture in my head.
	Yeah, it would be amazing if in one of those moments he actually, I don't know...
	Isn't it funny as well that Meghan's always the one who comments on this and Harry sort of stays at arm's length with his head down, talking into his shirt.
	Take it from me, I am waiting for a glorious Tyrion Lannister moment from Harry at some point.
	Maybe it's wishful thinking.
	Which Tyrion Lannister?
	Oh, what?!
	Disavow.
	Disavow if that's what you're talking about.
	Which one are you talking about?
	There's some bad stuff happening to Tyrion is all I'm thinking.
	I don't want to mislead people.
	No, I'm referring to, of course, well, his wishing for the entire...
	Oh, okay.
	Turn to ashes in your mouth.
	Oh, you mean his trial?
	Yes, I should have been more specific.
	I was thinking about how some of his relationships ended up in Game of Thrones, and I was going to say, I don't stand by those comments.
	I wasn't alluding to that at all.
	Anyway, I shall move on.
	The interview is, of course, broadcast just over a week after Meghan apologised for misleading the Court of Appeal over her recollection of the information which provided authors of an unauthorised biography finding freedom about her and Prince Harry.
	But anyway, Meghan shared some touching details about her family life to Ellen, saying that...
	Raising two children so far as a mother has been, well, wonderful as it is, I'm sure, for any caring mother.
	Of course.
	She said Archie loves to dance, Lily loves to teethe, Archie loves being a big brother to his younger sister, and this is the worst bit.
	The family now refers to Degeneres as Auntie Ellen.
	So they only seem to have interviews with people they're already good friends with.
	Well, I'm sure that means that there's no awkward questions that get asked.
	Yeah.
	But anyway, this is where it gets interesting.
	After this, this is the last eight minutes of the video, it was revealed that Megan went to join in with a prank after DeGeneres told her through an earpiece to carry out embarrassing tasks in front of unsuspecting market stall vendors.
	This is what everyone is talking about.
	Oh, God.
	So shall we see...
	Do we have to?
	What we do, I'm afraid.
	Let's see what this is all about.
	I'm going to crawl out of my skin watching this, aren't I? What do we have here?
	What do we have here?
	Whatcha got?
	Whatcha got?
	Well, we have a variety of vinegar-based hot sauces.
	Let mommy taste some.
	Let mommy taste some.
	My boo loves hot sauce, so...
	My boo loves hot sauce, so...
	I wanna try some.
	I'm gonna try it.
	Start you with a mild one.
	Balance up and down.
	You're very excited.
	I can't wait.
	I can't wait.
	Eat it like a little chipmunk.
	Mmm.
	Mmm.
	That's not spicy.
	That's not spicy.
	Let me try something real hot.
	Let me try something real hot.
	Mommy wants some heat.
	Mommy wants some heat.
	Have we had enough of this yet?
	Have we had enough of this?
	I've had enough of this.
	It does go on.
	Does it?
	Must it?
	Yeah.
	I think I've seen enough.
	I think we can pause there.
	Thank you very much, John.
	So, yeah.
	I failed to see the comedy.
	How the not-so-mighty have fallen even further.
	I mean, if nothing else, it was an excellent demonstration of her ample acting ability.
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, this is just embarrassing.
	But some of the responses have actually been pretty gold.
	So we can treat this as a palate cleanser, if you like.
	This is royal biographer Angela Levin, who said on GBU's this morning that it was one of the worst things she had ever seen.
	I think it's one of the worst things I have ever seen in my entire life.
	It's sort of how low can you go?
	Is the royal institution, is the monarchy made a mockery of by association?
	Well, of course, because she's still a member of the royal family, although not a working member of the royal family.
	These things rub off, don't they?
	I mean, if you're friendly with someone who behaves abominably, people think that, actually, can they trust you?
	This was shocking.
	The other one, which was...
	Her telling in minute detail about a car that broke down when she was trying to get acting jobs and she had to crawl through the back.
	But she went into amazing detail.
	Now this happened about 16 years ago when she was Very young.
	And that struck me that how come she can remember that in great detail, but she can't remember talking to an aide over a very serious matter over several months about finding freedom, which was very important to her and very important to Harry.
	Cheers, George.
	That will do.
	Very perceptive there in terms of recognising Meghan's selective memory of the past events within her own life.
	And also, just speaking for everybody with taste there and everybody for Britain, yes, it is very embarrassing.
	It is a national embarrassment that this woman is, through merit of being part of the royal family now, kind of...
	Representing the royals to a certain extent.
	I mean, you wouldn't see Liz running around markets.
	I mean, that poor chap.
	That poor chap who was actually at the store just looked awkward and confused more than anything.
	As I would be, I'd be like, what is this nutbag doing?
	Is this Meghan Markle?
	What's she doing?
	Why is she doing these?
	Go away.
	Security.
	Security.
	Go away.
	Please.
	No doubt she would have made a case of racism out of that as well.
	But it's honestly, it's almost as if she's applying for a job at CBeebies.
	Oh, no, don't give her any ideas.
	Oh, darn it, I shouldn't have said anything.
	I don't want Meghan Markle on Blue Peter, please.
	I mean, I've not watched Blue Peter ever, actually.
	I had no idea it was still going, to be perfectly honest.
	It is.
	Oh, it is.
	But anyway, another entertaining response has been Telegraph's review of Meghan's interview, which is here, and they basically summed it up as, well, it is really, quite generously, a cheesy and plastic interview.
	I'm shocked they gave it three out of five, to be honest.
	Yeah, it's exceptionally generous.
	But they say, Meghan's performance suggested her acting skills had been wasted all those years, playing an ambitious legal secretary on Suits.
	If we scroll down a little bit.
	Oh, is that what she was in?
	Yeah, she was in Suits.
	And while amusing, it was also hard not to think of Harry at home with his head in his hands.
	The entire affair was massively toe-curling, particularly if your second name is Windsor and you grew up in a castle.
	Needless to say, looking at that performance, she did not blooming grow up in a castle, did she?
	She wouldn't have left the castle if she was seen acting like that.
	She absolutely would not.
	I don't know if I'm referring to anything historically accurate there, but I'm sure that in the past the royals probably took any of the less desirable members of the family and just kept them out of public notice and kept them out of sight from people...
	If Megan was actually part of the royal family and had behaved like that, I'd imagine she'd have been in one of those rooms far away from where anyone could see her.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, if we scroll down a little bit more, I think right near where the bottom was.
	Yes, here we are.
	So...
	A bit later on, it says, Megan often struggled to hold back tears talking to Oprah.
	Seated across from Ellen, she couldn't stop smiling.
	Amongst an adoring audience, all wearing masks, funny enough, she radiated California positivity.
	And this interview felt like the sort that could only take place in a land of endless optimism and boundless sunshine.
	It was as bright as a Hollywood smile and probably as fake as one too.
	Yeah, that was what I was going to respond to all of that, is that the idea of Californian positivity and the endless optimism and boundless sunshine.
	Have you ever watched anything by Bill Hicks, the old comedian?
	Oh, I haven't.
	He died in the 90s.
	He had many jokes about California, everybody being plastic.
	He said that the sun's always out there, it's always warm, the people there must be lizards.
	And he had something that ended up inspiring a tool song, appropriately named Enema, about how California should get washed down, flushed down into the Arizona Bay or something like that.
	Just get sucked into the ocean, off with you, bye-bye.
	Yeah.
	And when you see stuff like this, it really does make you sympathise with his perspective.
	Yeah, it does.
	They live almost in their own virtual reality, don't they?
	And I think that's the most important, the most significant and productive thing you can take out of this interview, really.
	It's the encapsulation of Californian ignorance and arrogance.
	It's one cultural elite being interviewed by another to an audience almost, again, entirely face-masked, who just want to see sunshine and rainbows and will not see anything else.
	Yeah, I mean, this is once again, you're right, there is one cultural elite being interviewed by the other.
	We have seen time and time again with Meghan, she seems to surround herself with people who are not confrontational, who are completely unwilling to try and challenge any of the claims that she is making.
	They will simply nod and Oh, gasp every so often.
	I think we've all seen the clips from the Oprah interview.
	Whenever Meghan says anything, no matter how absurd or unreal it may sound, or how much it may need challenging in terms of, did that actually happen?
	Oprah just sits there, mouth agape, shocked.
	Oh my goodness.
	But at the same time, we know all of these people are hypocrites.
	Ellen DeGeneres recently, I think last year, got called out for treating her staff backstage like absolutely Absolute garbage.
	There are so many photos available online of Oprah happily openly introducing young upcoming starlets to Harvey Weinstein.
	We know behind the facade that is Hollywood, it is a festering cesspit of degeneracy.
	Yes, it is.
	To be perfectly honest, it encourages people to go there and ruin their own lives for the idea of some kind of stardom so that you can get up in front of a crowd of people just like you and virtue signal to how perfect and virtuous that you all are.
	I mean, I absolutely stand by the Ricky Gervais Academy Awards.
	Was it the Academy Awards?
	The Golden Globes.
	Yeah, the Golden Globes.
	On my birthday in 2020.
	I will never forget that.
	Was that on your birthday?
	That was a hell of a gift.
	Thank you.
	It was a hell of a gift.
	You know nothing about anything.
	You're not in a position to tell...
	You don't live in the real world.
	You're no position to tell anyone how to live their lives.
	Of course, he can do it far better than I can.
	But it was just about one of the most...
	I think fresh things I've heard from someone in a very, very long time.
	Yes, Ricky Gervais is one of the few people who was in that sort of group who was able to and willing to call them out on all of their BS. And once again, it seems that Megan has expressly escaped to California so that she can be in that sort of bubble where she doesn't have to get challenged by anybody.
	And Harry, who's a shame to anyone, also called Harry, not that I have any...
	Personal responsibility there.
	It just lets her get away with it.
	He's absolutely cooked.
	And for the love of God, man, get your house in order.
	Yeah.
	Well, there's only one way he can do that, isn't there?
	I must say, I didn't know that fact about Oprah, that link with Harvey Weinstein.
	Have you not seen the images?
	No, I haven't.
	All over the place.
	If you just type in Harvey Weinstein Oprah, there are...
	Hundreds of photos of her just sort of like, oh, here's so-and-so starlet, here's so-and-so starlet, you know.
	It shows you the rank hypocrisy that exists within Hollywood.
	Yeah, and she continues to enjoy the rank that she's at in the Hollywood cohort.
	Yeah, no one will call her out.
	That is absolutely, needless to say, disgraceful.
	But we actually, I mean, Hollywood, if anything, and I think, well, Ricky Gervais does an excellent job in pointing this out.
	I mean, Ricky Gervais himself...
	He's far from a conservative.
	I mean, he's one of the most socially liberal progressive people that there is.
	I don't know how much I'd describe him as a progressive.
	He seems to be kind of in that old school, I don't know how you describe it, maybe atheism plus Sam Harris.
	He's always been a supporter of, for example, gay rights, gay marriage.
	He's always been very ecologically sensitive as well.
	Well, I mean, the further we get from those movements, the more that him staying in place from those positions that he used to hold, well, that he still evidently does hold, but not changing to carry with the tides that are pushing everything further and further left.
	As the Overton window shifts, all of a sudden he is becoming closer and closer to, you know, you could say centre-left.
	Yeah.
	In terms of his attitudes, because I've not heard him talk about transgender issues, although at the same time I would imagine that he would probably be in maybe the J.K. Rowling position if he did come and speak out about that.
	It seems to be the case.
	Not Afterlife.
	What's his comedy show called?
	Humanity.
	If Humanity is anything to go by, that would suggest he's very much in that camp.
	He made fun of the whole dead-naming thing in the case of Caitlyn Jenner.
	Oh yeah, good.
	I'm glad that there are still people out there who are willing to, in the mainstream eye, who are willing to make a stance and put their foot down alongside Dave Chappelle and others like him.
	In the case of Meghan Markle, what he's picking sure about this Hollywood culture is that it doesn't have anything to do about them collectively believing they're doing the right thing.
	It's about them being...
	Posturing the fact that they're doing the right thing to each other.
	It's very self-righteous.
	It's to inflate their own emotions.
	It's amoral.
	That's what it is.
	And, well, there is an entire, of course, segment that I have done on this, based on, of course, the wokeness, or the hyper-reality of wokeness, so please do have a look at that.
	But that is it for this segment, so let's move on to the video comments.
	If you happen to live in the Aarhus area of Denmark, come buy Albert's Cocktail Bar at the 25th of November and watch me do a little stand-up set at 8pm.
	If you come by and tell me that you know me from the Lotus Eaters, I'll buy you a drink.
	All you have to do is to sip through a bit of comedy.
	Yeah, I would stay home too.
	Women aren't funny.
	See, that just makes me want to go.
	I would show up if it weren't for the fact that being unvaccinated, I don't think I'm allowed to travel, to be perfectly honest, sadly.
	What are Denmark's rules on that?
	I don't know.
	I'd have to look into it.
	Just looking at the way that Europe has been going over the past few weeks does not fill me with hope.
	I'll just put it that way.
	No, no, I have to be honest.
	Very much good luck on your comedy set.
	I don't know if you've done one before.
	I've never done one before.
	But it takes an absolute set of brass balls to be able to go up on stage and tell people jokes.
	So good luck with that.
	I hope you do well.
	Yeah, and if all of us fail to come, then if there's any footage of it, please do send it in.
	We'd love to have a look.
	Yeah.
	Let's go to the next one.
	I have a theory about what's happening.
	Which is, I think a lot of writers, not only in games, but also in films, have stopped reading books.
	They're just watching films.
	Starlight Lancer clips along at a fair pace, with characters and locations described in colourful and vivacious ways.
	However, the book reads like anime-given prose form, and I could envision a gaudy Japanese cartoon as I read it.
	The inclusion of a salaciously described Catholic schoolgirl uniform is a little stereotypical, and so I hope the rest of the Axon saga improves.
	Nice one.
	What is it?
	cscooper.au as well, just for the little shout out.
	Also, we need to remind everybody that given that it is International Men's Day, just to remind everybody that at half two, after this podcast is done, Carl's interview with Philip Tanzer, the men's rights activist, well, gay porn star turned men's rights activist.
	Very interesting trajectory that he has taken will be released on the website to anybody with a bronze membership or above.
	So make sure to keep an eye out for that because it will be a very, very interesting conversation that we've got there.
	Yeah, we're really excited about it.
	And yes, you will be too when you see it.
	And CS Cooper, for you, nice use of the Gray and Linehan clip.
	I think he's probably right, sadly.
	But if you're interested in him, once again, check out cscooper.au.
	Yeah.
	I don't know much about sci-fi fiction, so I don't really know how to elaborate or add to that, really.
	Oh, I'm a nerd, so I know enough, but I don't know as much as Carl and John and their massive Star Trek conversation they had this morning, because I might be a nerd, but at least I'm not a Trekkie.
	Yeah, I know second to nothing about Star Trek.
	I'm probably the biggest layman on this subject.
	On the matter of people watching films as opposed to books, I can very much see how there almost seems to be a negating effect at the expense of literature going on, given that, well, people attend the cinema, perhaps watch a film, and, well, even if you read the book after that,
	your imagination is already confined Yeah, you've tainted your ability to participate in the media because books are a participatory medium through which to engage with fiction and also non-fiction because you have to be paying strict attention to it.
	And just as well, given the fact that books can be way more long-form, you're able to impart so much more information, which can in turn sort of add greater meaning to it on a philosophical term.
	I'm one of those weirdos who, despite loving Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining, I actually far prefer Stephen King's original book, if you've ever read that, just because...
	Embarrassingly, I've seen the film.
	I haven't read the book.
	Lots of people haven't read the book.
	No, no, lots of people haven't read the book, because everybody says that the film's so much better anyway, you don't need to read it.
	But if you want much more of a character study than the film gives you, read the book.
	It's very good.
	Just don't watch the Stephen King-directed adaptation from the 90s, because that's rubbish.
	I shall take that advice.
	Let's move on to the next one.
	Speaking of being chads, before lockdown, when I was at a fitter level, sometimes women would approach me in the gym.
	Now...
	I'm telling you this.
	The most chast thing you can ever do when a woman approaches you is say no.
	No, no, no.
	Let me explain.
	There are those women, bitches, who've never been told no.
	Daddy's special princess.
	If you've never said no to one of these types of people, you've never experienced true euphoric joy.
	Trust me.
	It's hilarious.
	Moving swiftly on, let's go to the next video comment.
	Hello, Lotus Eaters.
	Today is my birthday.
	Actually, tomorrow is my birthday, but by the time you see this, it'll be today.
	So I'm wondering if Callum is in, can I get an orcs, orcs, orcs?
	Or if Carl's there, can I get a birthday salute?
	And if Leo's there, can I get a hello?
	That's it.
	Okay, happy birthday to me.
	Cheers, you guys.
	Well, we can say on...
	Happy birthday, and we can say on Carl's behalf and Callum's behalf, happy birthday, but as far as the podcast goes, as far as the podcast goes, you're stuck with us, but I'm very happy to offer you a happy birthday, and a salute of my own, and even, just for Callum, a double finger gun.
	Yes, and me, and I sincerely hope that you're enjoying your, you enjoyed your whiskey or apple juice, or whatever that is.
	You're in maybe.
	Maybe, it could well be.
	You know, there's different strokes, you know.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, let's move on to the next one.
	Soon may the Wellerman come to bring us sugar and tea and rum.
	One day when the time is done, we'll take our leave and go.
	Wait a second there.
	Just thought of something.
	Rum is just from sugar.
	But sugar is from the Caribbean.
	And tea is from India.
	Those are on the opposite sides of the world.
	How does the Wellerman bring both these goods of the British Empire to England at the same time?
	Do you have any idea?
	That's going to bug me now.
	That's a very philosophical question, you could almost say, but I have, sadly, no answer.
	No, to be honest, I'd probably have to have the video replayed.
	Perhaps it was the jetpacks they had back then, but...
	Yeah, all you can say is, well, thank goodness for economic liquidity.
	Yeah, I suppose so.
	I suppose those are the things that bring the two together.
	Or perhaps the guy writing the song just didn't really think too hard about it, you know?
	There you go.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, the world's round, so just carry on straight and you'll end up somewhere.
	John giving us all the geography lesson there.
	It's a very layered topic to go into, but the financial system is corrupt to its core and has been for a very long time.
	Did you know that countries are listed as corporations?
	Think of money in terms of energy, in terms of currency.
	And where is all our creative energy flowing to and what systems is it building?
	What are the figures associated with Vanguard and BlackRock?
	Who are these people?
	Things start to get a bit weird when you start going down that rabbit hole, but the system does need to change.
	It absolutely does.
	Yes.
	You mentioned Vanguard and BlackRock.
	I'm less familiar on Vanguard, but I have recently started looking into BlackRock myself.
	And the more that you see that they have had large involvement with the US government, the more that you see that...
	One moment...
	The more that you see that their CEO, Larry Fink, is a member of the Board of Trustees with the World Economic Forum, and therefore in bed with Klaus Schwab, and they all operate off of the back of a...
	Oh, thank you, DeBaystape, for taking the double finger gun.
	I appreciate it.
	Yeah, the more you see that BlackRock chooses who they invest in based on ESG, which is all about basically making companies more and more woke, The more you see that, yeah, the business world as it stands, even within the private sector, is becoming more and more corrupt.
	Probably as a result of Schwab's push for this idea of stakeholder capitalism, companies who are going to push the world forward into some kind of new utopia, whereas really companies are there, I mean, from a purely capitalistic standpoint, the companies are there to make money.
	That's what they're there for.
	Yeah, to make money for their shareholders.
	Yeah, so there's definitely corruption going on, I would say.
	Yes.
	High finance has been a huge problem, really, for some time.
	Isn't Nigel Farage now part of something that's actually trying to contest this?
	Is this what he's been advertising on YouTube?
	Because I've had a few of his adverts show up on YouTube.
	I was going to say, because these are very, very similar points.
	I think he's investing in, is it gold?
	It might be.
	I've no idea.
	Because gold is such a concrete asset to have.
	Gold is gold, you know, so I'd imagine it would be so.
	Especially if he's more libertarian-leaning.
	Libertarians love their gold.
	But the biggest, I suppose, most obvious expression of the fact that, well...
	Monolithic institutions haven't really changed their activities is the fact that since the 2008 crisis, only one person was ever jailed.
	The actual system itself hasn't really...
	Well, BlackRock bailed a lot of people out of the 2008 crisis as well.
	So that's another funny...
	How do you think they got all that influence in Washington?
	So, yeah, let's carry on.
	Let's carry on.
	On yesterday's podcast about Milo and the Bishop's Conference, I read the article and I think there's a missed opportunity here to talk about the left-wing protest against the Bishop's consideration to deny communion to politicians who are pro-abortion.
	The point being that just as one can self-identify as any gender or black or whatever, it seems like one can self-identify as part of a religion while neither believing nor practicing it.
	I think it's important to note this since traditional religions are often cited as As counters to wokeness, but this example is one of many reasons why it's not the case that they're countering it but in fact just falling into the same trap.
	That's a very good point.
	I did actually, when I was reading the article, notice that and actually thought of that point myself, but I left it out for the interest of time and also because it seemed to be going a bit off topic from the actual subject of the segment itself.
	But you are absolutely right that it is weird that there is a left-wing group of Catholics who want to support abortion.
	Whatever your feelings on abortion are, if you're a Catholic, surely that Idea only goes one way, which is you don't like it, you don't want it.
	So it's strange to me that, yeah, you're right, people can identify as religious without actually taking on any of the religious values that come with that.
	Yeah, very strange.
	Yeah, of course, being woke allows you to masquerade as whatever you like for any purpose.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so you pretty much have a blank check.
	But let's move on to the next one.
	Good day, Lotus Eaters.
	Yesterday in the English class, we talked about white privilege and colour blindness and how...
	According to one student in my class, if you look at Arab people, or black people, or Greeks, or Somali people, and you don't look at them primarily as a group member of their skin color, ethnicity, culture, religion, well, you're inherently racist and part of the problem of racism.
	Everybody cheered for this student, including my teacher.
	Yep, that is exactly what Critical Race Theory tells us to think.
	Your students have been, well, your fellow students have been subverted, so I'm sorry, very, very sorry to hear that.
	All we can say is, well, well done on being vigilant and for ultimately seeing it for what it is.
	I just hope that, of course...
	You can have such an effect on the students around you who are, of course, going to be very impressionable.
	Hopefully you can sneakily hand out some red pills under the desks or something.
	And remove all copies of Genderqueer if you find them as well.
	Burn them.
	Let's not go that far.
	No, do burn them.
	Songbooks deserve burning, perhaps.
	It's Liz's 30th birthday and mine.
	And so we have all the decorations.
	Hers has got piñatas.
	Mine does too.
	And the decorations for the break room, of course.
	Oh, yeah.
	For mine, honey.
	And for this.
	And then a fancy taco bar.
	And they have all these decorations up, but my birthday's not even for two weeks, so I still have two weeks left of 20s.
	Hey, savor it!
	It's nice to see that some companies do actually make extremely good efforts to honour people's birthdays like that.
	That's actually really wholesome, to be fair.
	I'm glad that whatever company you're working for is actually...
	Seems to, on the smallest level possible, care, which is more than most people can say for the jobs that they're working, sadly.
	Yes.
	But no, good for you.
	Nice office as well.
	It's alright office, yeah.
	Anyway, let's move on.
	Why?
	Why?
	Yeah.
	I couldn't agree more.
	I love dogs.
	Don't tell my girlfriend I said I love Ellie the most.
	We'll keep quiet if you do.
	Now, I've not got a dog.
	I wish I had a dog.
	Sadly, I'm currently living in flats.
	It's not very convenient to own a pet, but as soon as I get myself a house, I'm going to get a dog because I really want a dog.
	Me too.
	Let's move on.
	Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you may begin your deliberations.
	Yeah, I know this scene.
	We the jury find Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty.
	So say we all four person.
	Brilliant.
	Fingers crossed that we'll be getting that verdict soon.
	I mean, it's been three days in deliberations now, which is just for how concrete the case is for Kyle Rittenhouse, having defended himself.
	It should not have taken this long, but we might have to cover next week some of the dirty, dirty business that has been going down behind the scenes at that trial.
	So keep your eyes peeled.
	Well, keep posted, and we'll see what happens there.
	I've had conversations with people and explained to them why I don't trust mainstream media as a news source anymore and that I get my news from podcasts now.
	Their follow-up question is always asking me why I trust the podcasts to be a reliable source of information rather than the well-funded research of a TV program.
	And I've always personally found my answers unsatisfying to them.
	What would you recommend?
	Whoa, that's a good question.
	What I would say potentially is that we do not have the same incentives to lie to you as large mainstream forces.
	Also, we are not wrapped into the same structures that a lot of the mainstream media forces are.
	For instance, you've got the BBC in the UK, which is...
	It could be just considered an offshoot of the government.
	It's just state propaganda at this point.
	CNN is tied into all of these other political causes.
	And also just the fact that I think you'll find it very hard to find a company or media outlet that does not have some kind of political or ideological bias to it.
	But the way that you can know whether to trust some over others is how open they are about it.
	I don't think anybody's going to deny that we have a particular political bent to us, but when you've got an organization such as CNN that tries to market itself as a completely neutral news outlet, while so obviously being as partisan as they are, it makes it difficult for people to believe what they're Yeah, you just don't get the level of discussion in mainstream media that you do with us.
	We've actually extended it to critical theory itself.
	We are subjecting critical theory to the scrutiny of critical theory, which means we are basically in a position of being free of any bias whatsoever in that sense.
	Well, in those discussions, I mean more generally in the podcast.
	Yeah, but we're engaged in the business of exposing ideological power structures for the sake of doing so.
	For me personally, I just care about what's the truth.
	So I don't feel that many people can recognise that same desire in most mainstream outlets anymore.
	Yes.
	We're a bored church.
	I hope that helps.
	We're a bored church and we act out of conviction.
	Yes.
	Personal conviction.
	Let's move on.
	Hi, D and little Joan with another Legend of the Pines.
	This is my new favorite ghost story.
	The Taj Mahal Casino Ghosts in Atlantic City.
	Legend has it, a gambler jumped off the 10th floor and killed himself and continues to do that in the afterlife.
	He sometimes appears as a cloud that knocks over chairs and one time knocked a dealer unconscious.
	I guess if he can't get even on the casino floor, you get even.
	In the afterlife.
	That's really cool.
	I like that story.
	Oh, and that's all we've got for the video comments.
	Do you want to start with the written comments?
	Yes.
	So, Soup Con Harry says, That's a very good question.
	I wouldn't be surprised if we did see him standing...
	Standing for a possession, in some form.
	See, I would find it doubtful whether it was a case of him attempting to raise his profile or not, simply purely because of the fact that you nor I had really heard of his name before today.
	So, unlike a Colin Kaepernick, who was very, very successful in raising his own profile, and Colin Kaepernick, say what you want about him, he's become an excellent marketer of himself.
	He was the guy who kicked off the taking a knee at sports games.
	I don't see Azeem Rafik having done anywhere near...
	I can see him starting a pressure group.
	Maybe not running for political office, but a pressure group maybe.
	A pressure group perhaps, and from pressure group you can see how much it goes, but as it stands here from the information that I've seen today, I don't think he was successful enough in boosting his own profile, if that's what he was going for, to be able to stand for office.
	Justin B says that people call things racist for any reason when it is just normal insults.
	If someone wants to insult another person, then try to find a switch that will trigger that person regardless of their own feelings.
	That doesn't mean they are racist, just dicks.
	Yeah.
	I think men are very well adapted to being able to find those little buttons to push with each other, whether we recognise it or not.
	Because once again, that's what banter is.
	is you recognise what's going to be fun to joke about with your friends and what isn't but if you want to be really harsh you can press that button that you know shouldn't be pressed.
	Yeah.
	Harry Ashman says the representation point is actually potentially valid in the Yorkshire case as this is reasonably well known.
	Yorkshire has a very large South Asian population that's true actually where culturally cricket is huge yet very few players have made their way into the country's set up.
	Whether that's because of a genuine issue or a phantom issue where parents or players are put off That's a reasonable point, actually.
	Seeing as all I'm being told there is that they've got a very large South Asian population and that's led to, despite the fact that there's been so few South Asian players within the club, without being presented once again with more evidence, I'm not going to be able to say either way because it...
	Whether or not it looks suspicious, it could be a case of genuine meritocracy, meaning that the people who were applying, who were part of the South Asian population, maybe just weren't good enough for the team.
	I would never make a definitive claim without seeing some substantial evidence for it, or else I might feel that I'm participating in that same game of filling the gap with racism.
	Yeah, I would say the same thing as well.
	I think it would be an overreach to diagnose that as a case of racism in virtue of the South Asian population present in Yorkshire.
	If you do think there's a problem, it needs to be looked into further.
	Still something I didn't think of, so thank you for that, Henry.
	Omar Awad says, Sounds to me like Rafiq definitely has numerous legitimate grievances.
	Yeah, he does.
	But it also feels like he might be using more serious accusations to get the results he wants to see at a time when racism is more likely to prompt change without proper introspection.
	That's exactly what we think, pretty much.
	The George Winder says regarding Rowling, as Gad Saad pointed out, rather than using the phrasing diversity, equity and inclusion, transposed the latter pair for diversity, inclusion and equity, thereby arranging the elements properly for economisation, thus giving us the most appropriate DIE, giving the suppression of one's critical faculties required to embrace these concepts.
	Yes, that was one of my favourite parts of reading the parasitic mind, was his repeated use of the phrase, die, instead of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
	And that's something I need to get stuck in my own head so that I don't slip up by accident and use the official terms myself.
	I think we've moved on to the Rowling...
	We've got one more from Student of History.
	That is related to the Rowling one.
	Oh, no, no, no, go ahead.
	Yeah.
	So the Taylor Swift synopsis, she dated lots of people and made songs about them and now is a wealthy and successful musical artist.
	And now she's upset that she was exploited.
	Absolutely true.
	Even before I was paying attention to much, I think it was well known within many circles that Taylor Swift would have a boyfriend for six months, maybe even less, just so that she can write her next big single, which would always inevitably be a hit.
	And then she would always get all of the sympathy from the mainstream press going, oh, poor Taylor's been in another breakup.
	Oh, how terrible.
	But yeah, that's a good point, actually.
	She's claiming that she was exploited when you notice a pattern of behavior like that.
	I mean, I'm not going to make any strong claims here, but you could.
	Maybe imply that she was the one exploiting them for material for her albums.
	100%.
	Once again, oh, I'm so sorry that you got to go out with Jake Gyllenhaal, fancy, well-mannered...
	Taylor Norton.
	What's his name?
	Taylor Norton as well.
	Did she go out with Taylor Norton?
	Yeah, she did.
	What, from Twilight?
	Yeah, she did, apparently.
	Oh, fabulous.
	So she made her way through all of the Hollywood hunks and is now completely...
	Complaining about it, like, ten years later.
	Good God, woman.
	I mean, also, I'm not going to take advice, and I'm not going to be sympathetic for a woman rapidly approaching her mid-30s who's been in a number of relationships who still doesn't have any children.
	That's your own fault.
	Maybe you should have planned for the future a bit better.
	Maybe that's why she's kicking up a fuss.
	Oh, God, I'm 31.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, God, I don't have any children yet.
	Oh, no.
	Somebody, please.
	Write me a single.
	Yep, Joseph Smith.
	Remember in the eyes of the far left, J.K. Rowling is a murderer.
	She's denying our existence!
	Yep, exactly.
	Pretty much that's what they always say.
	Kevin M. My chief takeaway from the J.K. Rowling segment is that the Babylon Bee once again failed to post fake news.
	That's the strange thing, Babylon Bee.
	They're supposed to be a satire site, but every day they're more just cultural commentary at this point, let's be perfectly honest.
	X, Y, N, Z. Oh, you...
	Rowling invited this S into her life when she started pandering to her fanbase over Dumbledore being gay.
	But it would be funny if she used her copyright control to scuttle their special.
	That's a fair point.
	That is a fair point, but not knowing many of the details, I wouldn't be surprised if there are separate copyrights for the book franchise as opposed to the film franchise.
	given it's the 20th anniversary of the films that that means that there's some weird legalese that excludes her from being able to exert any rightful control.
	Oh, once again, just to reiterate, over the franchise that she created, how ungrateful do you have to be?
	Good god, it just, oh, it annoys me.
	Callum Dayton: "As someone who grew up watching the Harry Potter films, as did I, and listening to the audiobooks narrated by Stephen Fry, this is just making the cake of cack of things." Never heard that phrase before.
	I quite like it.
	When Rowling joined the intersectional feminism stuff, that made me turn my back on her.
	When she got bit for actually using her brain for a moment and thinking about the cause she was part of, that made me look over the shoulder and go, "It's not nice, is it?
	Welcome to the club." Otherwise, if it wasn't her, none of these actors would be where they were without her.
	You could say she effectively made them.
	That's my point that I've been making.
	That's why she's arguably the embodiment of the woke pathology, because she subscribed to something and postured an allegiance to something she did not understand, and now it's eating her from the inside.
	So to a point, you could say, why should we be sympathetic?
	Putting it like that, she's made the Faustian bargain.
	All these people aligning themselves with woke intersectionality are making the Faustian bargain because the whole idea of this intersectionality is that there is this minefield of traps one after the other that you can trip up over just because it's so inherent with contradictions, absolutely filled with contradictions.
	So if you subscribe to that mindset, you are going to trip up somewhere and the results are not going to be pretty.
	Let's carry on.
	Spadroon to Rapier says, "Let's just talk about what a disproportionately small proportion of the populists that are trans.
	Why do they have so much lobbying power?
	Why do they deserve it?
	They shouldn't and don't." I'll tell you why, because they seem to have managed to co-op the entirety of the LGBT lobbying group.
	Because everything...
	That's why they've had the LGB disconnect and form the LGB alliance, because the LGBT, as it stands at the moment, should basically just be the T. Because everybody else involved in that movement is on their side.
	Dan Taylor.
	Strange Emma Watson's feminist mentors were J.K. Rowling and Julie Bindle, both who are TERFs.
	I know, but Emma Watson, I think, has recognised the backlash that comes with it, and has done lots of virtue-signaling on Twitter about, oh, here's all these trans rights...
	Charities that you can donate to.
	And I really hate the phrase trans rights because I don't believe that trans people are denied any rights that are available to anybody else.
	Or what they actually want are extra human rights.
	Oh yes, absolutely.
	They want entitlements.
	Kevin Fox.
	So they lose their S because Rowling wrote a book about a killer who dressed as a woman, haven't heard the same vitriol against Thomas Harris, writer of Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon, etc.
	Or Robert Bloch, who wrote a book about the eponymous transsexual Psycho.
	Yes, because that was based on a book in the first place.
	Yeah, I mean, Robert Bloch obviously is probably because most people don't even realise that Psycho was a book in the first place.
	They always think it's Alfred Hitchcock.
	Oh, Alfred Hitchcock must have been a transphobe.
	It's all nonsense.
	And it's probably just because those authors were not as in the public eye.
	Yeah, but it's not as well known.
	Yeah.
	Based Ape says, J.K. Rowling is the ultimate example of the left.
	We'll never be pleased.
	Never try to please these people who are unpleasable.
	Never try to reason with unreasonable people.
	Absolutely agree.
	Based from Based Ape.
	Yes, as always.
	Long talks with on the Nietzsche.
	I'm not surprised the people who advocate for the modern versions of book burning and deplatforming would also excommunicate an author from their own work.
	It's not your artwork, it's the people's art, comrade.
	I feel bad for advocating for book burning now.
	Yeah, there's a point.
	Kevin Fox, led by children, my arse.
	Those kids have never heard of Seacole until their teachers forced it on them, so it was led by leftist teachers.
	I absolutely agree.
	Absolutely, who are trying to present these three-year-olds as intrinsically woke.
	There's something extremely cynical about that.
	Yes.
	Anyway, let's move on to Meghan Markle.
	So Kevin Fox says, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, the new improved version of...
	How do you pronounce this?
	Hyacinth Bucket, I assume?
	Hyacinth Bucket and her husband.
	I don't know what that is.
	Neither do I, sadly.
	I can't really comment.
	No.
	But Bay State says, Can someone please tell Meghan that that royals are not cringy Hollywood actors?
	Yeah, that royals are not cringy Hollywood celebrities.
	Sadly, she's trying to rebrand them as such.
	Yes, if the idea is to make a mockery of modern royals, then unfortunately she seems to be selling the idea.
	And the royals in general make enough of a mockery of themselves, but they've got her helping her a lot.
	They've actually made people who otherwise weren't sympathetic to the royals actually sympathetic, because they've actually seen...
	Such as me, for instance!
	They've got...
	They've got Meghan running out there making them all look like fools and I'm just like, oh, we don't deserve this.
	So if these are the anti-royals, I'm a royalist.
	Yeah, I suppose so.
	Yeah, anyway.
	Joseph Catsley says, how are those American talk shows still airing?
	They're so awful.
	I'd love to know who's watching them and why.
	Probably very wealthy people, unfortunately.
	I'd imagine very wealthy people and ideologues who do not realise that they are in a bubble.
	Yeah, those who only want to see sunshine and rainbows.
	So Justin B says such a dignified member of the royal family, so glad that Harry married her.
	Aren't we all?
	Yes.
	John Wade says, grief, that's awful.
	No more, Megan, please.
	She's too much like my ex.
	It's not cute.
	Oh my God, John Wade, that is terrible.
	I'm so sorry you had to go through that.
	But unfortunately, you're probably going to hear a lot more of her giving her constature.
	XYNZ says, Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
	Don't be surprised if there's another car accident in the near future.
	Well, isn't Megan already a car accident?
	LAUGHTER Good point.
	Rick from Berlin says, In the 90s, we'd rebel and scream, turn off your telly.
	Now it's time to get off all social media.
	Stop spreading the names of these parasites who only want fame at all costs and build something worth for your life and family.
	Cheers, guys.
	Much love from Berlin.
	Much love to you, too.
	Kevin Fox says, For someone who wants to be left alone, she seems to be doing exactly the opposite at every high-paid opportunity.
	Yup.
	And Spadering to Rapius says, Let's just say that Meghan is no Grace Kelly.
	The model for joining a European royal family.
	I'd agree.
	I just want to, one of the honourable mentions, Michael Magoys says, Bill Hicks didn't die, he rebranded himself as Alex Jones.
	And to that I say, shh.
	Yes, and last of all, was it Magician of Sweden?
	Thanks to the Lotus Ease Podcast, I've finally gotten the courage to pick up Volume 1 of the unabridged Gulaga Peciago.
	That is absolutely fantastic.
	Seven pages in, it's a complete black pill.
	The language Solzhenitsyn uses is gorgeously evocative and seemingly intrinsic part of the reading experience.
	Please don't miss out on it.
	Good luck with that.
	Good luck.
	And, well, unfortunately, that is all we've got time for today.
	Thank you ever so much for tuning in.
	It's been an absolute pleasure.
	We have one more shill, which is, again, to remind you that it is International Wednesday.
	We have Philip Tanzer's video, which is coming up at 2.30.
	So please do watch that.
	I think it'll be out now.
	Out now.
	Yes, it is 2.30.
	Goodness me.
	So, yes, again, thank you very much for watching.

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