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Feb. 7, 2023 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:30:39

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #584

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of Lotus Caesars for today, the 7th of February 2023.
	I am joined by Dan.
	Hello.
	And we'll be discussing that balloon, not the one from Nina, how Mark Stein has been silenced by Ofcom, and the egg shortage conspiracy.
	Not the one you're thinking of, ladies.
	At three o'clock, what's this, on Thursday, John?
	Fantastic.
	At 3.30 on Thursday, we've got the fifth part of the Cyberpunk Dystopia Hangout series where Carl and Callum go through how we're going into a Cyberpunk dystopia.
	So if you haven't subscribed to the website for as little as £5 a month, please do so, and you'll be able to watch that and post some comments and get them to reply.
	But without further ado, Dan, kick it off.
	Yeah, let's talk about that balloon, which has been menacing the US. But before I do so, let's just mention that we have a position open for a web developer.
	So if you happen to be one of those, and you like Swindon, if they've got those two things in combination, then apply for that.
	Right, so, the balloon story.
	Yes...
	For those of you unfamiliar with China, we've got a map of it here.
	So China is the country in red, just to the left of all of those United States Air Force bases.
	Anyway, so this place has been menacing the US with a rather large big white balloon drifting over the top of it.
	So this is a story that I saw on social media, and it was everywhere, and I thought that it would just go away, but it didn't.
	It kept on ramping up, and it was all triggered because people started noticing this.
	So people started posting these videos of this balloon flying over their house as it sort of drifted its way across the continental United States.
	It looks like the traveller from Destiny.
	Yeah.
	I haven't seen that.
	It's a giant white orb that prophesies the end times, basically.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, maybe that's what's happening here as well.
	Now, I did think, okay, this is a bit silly and this will go away, but actually what interested me in the end was the sheer level of hysteria that this story got to.
	And I think that's really the story here.
	I mean, it very quickly became one of those sort of standard left-right ding-dongs with the Democrats were keen to explain that, you know, these balloons, they fly very high and...
	You know, fighter jets can only get so high, so of course we can't shoot it down.
	It doesn't emit any heat, and it's got a low, you know, whatever signature that missiles lock onto, so they can't go after it.
	The GOP, on the other hand, the Republicans were quite indignant that this thing wasn't being shot down, so fairly early on the dialogue from the Republicans looked like this.
	Defense officials have advised the president not to take it out, fearing it could cause debris to fall and put people in harm's way.
	Any potential debris field would be significant and potentially cause civilian injuries or deaths or significant property damage.
	So again, this is part of the calculus in terms of our overall assessment.
	But again, we'll continue to monitor it.
	We'll continue to review our options and keep you updated as able.
	But Republicans say Biden looks weak with each second he keeps this communist balloon in the air.
	We ought to bring this darn thing down.
	We have the capabilities and tools to do that.
	I'm confident that we could have done so safely.
	I think we probably still could do so safely.
	They could have shot that balloon down, and the biggest risk might have been hitting a cow, a prairie dog, or an antelope.
	This is a brazen act, and so at the political level, we have to push back.
	We have to defend American sovereignty, and we have to make clear to the Chinese that we're not going to tolerate this.
	They're overflying our nuclear sites, and they keep getting away with it because we let them.
	There's no consequence, I think.
	There's lots of questions, but the commander-in-chief is awfully quiet.
	Mr.
	President, when and how are you going to be able to go down?
	When and how are you going to be able to go down?
	Mr.
	President.
	Folks, we're going to get to work.
	Thank you for coming.
	Thank you.
	Tell them to call me back.
	Yeah, so this thing actually reached such a fever pitch that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cancelled his planned trip to China, where it was suggested that he was going to be meeting with Chinese dictator-in-chief Xi Jinping.
	I mean, that's quite a big deal.
	I mean, the US Secretary of State is a bit like our minister for evil.
	So it's a big position out there.
	And...
	Obviously, relationships between China and the US have been deteriorating quite a lot over the last few years.
	So this was potentially quite an important turning point to start to get that back on track.
	Now, this really sort of ramped up over the weekend when it was overflying the main part of the continental US. And it resulted in various, well, I think just about every security analyst had to put their suit on on the weekend and go on and be interviewed by all the big broadcasters to talk about this big menacing white balloon.
	Until eventually it cleared the country and then finally this happened.
	Yo, he's going right at it.
	Take him out.
	Oh, wait, those are missiles.
	Oh my god, they shot it down.
	They shot it down.
	No f***ing...
	You hear it?
	Oh, it just exploded.
	No way.
	Yo.
	No f***ing way.
	No way.
	Wow.
	- Oh, I see it dropping.
	See this shit dropping?
	- Holy . - Oh, guys. - This is the Raytheon rendition of Double Rainbow in the Sky.
	That is exactly what it is.
	So it was shot down by an F-22 firing a $400,000 Sidewinder missile produced by Raytheon.
	Oh, wow.
	Okay, there we go.
	Good guess.
	Raytheon is a company whose share price has done rather well over this last year.
	Everything else in markets have been down, but Raytheon's up about 30%.
	I don't know why.
	There was a booth at Conservative Party Conference where you could pose with one of their missile launchers.
	Well, I mean, markets are funny like that.
	You know, at the moment, its defence companies are doing really well.
	You know, the year before that, it was pharmaceutical companies.
	Things go around in cycles.
	I'm sure there's no particularly wider agenda to it.
	It's just how these things happen.
	Right.
	So it was eventually shot down once it cleared the U.S. and it was over the water, still within U.S. territorial waters, which is 12 miles out.
	And apparently it crashed to less than 50 foot of depth so it can be recovered and it can be figured out what was going on.
	So that's the story of what happened.
	Now, what actually interests me about this is the way it's covered more than what happened.
	What I'm reminded of is in the run-up to basically any war, I mean, pick the First and Second World War, but I mean, basically the run-up to any war, you get this bellicosity, which I think is a word, in the media, which is steadily ramped up.
	The public are prepared.
	People are pushed towards, you know, thinking of the other side as being their enemy.
	We need to take action, that these things are happening, and we need to push back.
	Now...
	What troubles me is that both Republicans and Democrats seem worryingly receptive to this sort of war narrative.
	Now, Democrats, obviously, we know they love war.
	You can see this from the fact that at the moment, just about all of the Democrats are more than happy to bravely fight to the last Ukrainian, no matter what the cost to the European economy, which is, I think, stunning and brave on their behalf, and I wish I could have those kahunas.
	And Republicans seem to have woken up to the fact that the free trade deals signed with China were, in fact, probably a bad idea.
	And rather than making China like the West, it is, in fact, achieving the direct opposite of that.
	So my point is more that the establishment GOP and the Democrats are both total war hogs.
	Now, I'm not trying to portray myself here as some pussy-ass peacenik liberal.
	But the narrative here just feels all wrong to me.
	It doesn't seem right.
	So the sort of official US narrative, as we're getting it, is that the Chinese sent a spy balloon over highly strategic US sites, and it chose to spy on these sites with a big white, clearly visible from the ground, with a naked eye balloon.
	I think the obviousness of it is probably why certain people were worried that it was either filled with explosives or an EMP device.
	Yeah, but, I mean, there are levels of obvious...
	I mean, if it was a spy, it is the most obvious spy since that policeman from the lower low.
	You know, good meaning.
	So, on levels of obviousness, it doesn't really carry it on that.
	But...
	The argument against that, the pushback has been, is that the Chinese were doing it to demonstrate that they had the capability to do this.
	Well, I mean, it's a hot air balloon.
	Phileas Fogg had that capability in 1872.
	Sure, okay, but I think it's more like a punk test.
	So this is possibly what Patrice O'Neill's been told before, or this happened to John, producer, who told me the other day, of where someone will push their luck with you, To see if you are an applicable target for a mugging.
	So if you're playing a pick-up basketball game, they might shove you a little bit.
	They might whisper under their breath.
	Or if you're standing outside a nightclub, they might ask you for a cigarette and you hand them one.
	They go, oh, give us two, mate.
	And then you're just going to have to tell them no.
	Because if they keep asking, they know that they are in a position of power over you.
	And so then they can take your stuff at the end of the night and not put up much of a fight.
	So it might be an intimidation tactic to see how far the Chinese can push it.
	Particularly because if we've seen recently the narrative around Pelosi's Taiwan visit, at the same time the Chips Act was getting passed...
	Was that Biden and the Democrats were showing their hand as saying, we have control over a territory that the Chinese want, and so we aren't too worried about touching down on Taiwanese soil, even if the Chinese are going to have some kind of military pushback.
	This might be the Chinese trying to flex their muscles a little bit.
	It could be that, and I do want to come back to the escalation angle of this, because I think there is merit in that, although it is possibly the other way round, because I'm so sceptical of when I sort of see these drum-beating narratives being put out.
	So, yeah, potentially it's around that, but the reason I'm sceptical about the media narrative around, you know...
	All things when it comes to media-pushed wars.
	Take, for example, the proxy war on Russia that's currently being fought.
	When you strip away all of those media points, when you strip away all of those narrative points, what are you left with what's actually happened?
	Well, in that case, what you're left with is the US becoming the largest energy supplier to Europe.
	you're left with the de-industrialization of Germany, and you're left with the removal of the euro as a credible alternative to the dollar, which at the moment, about a year ago anyway, was the only credible alternative to the dollar at a time of maximum dollar weakness.
	And it's also driven a wedge between Germany and Russia, which is something that Western powers have always been particularly concerned with the formation between those two occurring, and that was something that was starting to happen.
	So when I apply that same lens to this balloon story, what has actually happened?
	Well, I've seen that the US public have been moved to being slightly more receptive to military actions against China, or at least Chinese assets.
	That has occurred.
	And what's also actually happened is that there has been a cancellation of a trip of the US Secretary of State to China.
	Those are the hard outcomes.
	Basically, everything else is speculation at this point.
	So that leads me to think about, you know, what are some other possible explanations?
	Because, you know, look, for all I know, maybe it is a spy balloon that's gone over there to spy on nuclear sites or whatever it is.
	It just seems to me that there are better ways of achieving that.
	I mean, they've got satellites, and it's not like the US military have not given...
	Hundreds of thousands of their service personnel are reasoned to hate them by firing them because they didn't take the product of the...
	The last lobbyist.
	Yes, the last lobbyist that saw their share price go up.
	One of the reasons it might have been worried about being a balloon is because the easiest way to deliver an EMP payload is from that height, and so specifically a balloon would actually be a really good delivery mechanism for that.
	That's an interesting thought.
	So if they were to blow it up, they might have triggered some kind of mechanism which could knock out the grid, particularly because Biden, as well, on day one, reversed an executive order which would incorporate Chinese parts into the American energy grid that could be turned off remotely.
	So there may be something interesting that could happen there if the Chinese did deliver some sort of corresponding weapons system for that.
	So the one argument of this indeed being a Chinese provocation, which I'm most receptive to is the points that you've made, that it could be a bit of a punk test.
	But I am sceptical of that for the main reason that I don't believe it benefits the Chinese to escalate at this point.
	There is an infographic that I want to throw up.
	Which makes this point, well, if we can zoom in just on the graphic bit.
	So this is basically showing where the US stands up against the Chinese at the moment.
	The Chinese have effectively caught up in terms of economic capacity.
	And they're actually exceeding the US in terms of economic relationships with countries around the world because they don't demand that you trans your kids when you do a trade deal with them and all of the other baggage that comes along with working with the US these days.
	But in many other respects, and especially the important one being military capability, the Chinese are still well behind the US. Now, this could look completely different in 2040.
	And I think that the Chinese are playing the long game.
	I think they always play the long game.
	And I think that there is going to be some sort of great power conflict coming down the line.
	But it doesn't make any sense to me as to why the Chinese would want to pick now as a moment to escalate it.
	I agree.
	Because they're having much more success working behind the scenes in capturing certain politicians and making them beholden to financial interests than they would be floating a giant balloon across the sky and having everyone scream it's the next Cuban Missile Crisis.
	Well, I mean...
	Look, we know now that the Hunter Biden laptop is real.
	Yes.
	We know that he was basically on the take from the Chinese, being channeled through various companies, and that he had access to God knows how many classified files in his father's garage, which is apparently a huge amount of files we're now finding out that Hunter had full access to.
	They shared a phone number and a bank account as well.
	Well, yeah, that as well.
	And that was the story that we're all talking about before everybody started looking up and going, oh, look, there's a balloon.
	So on that front, it's a bit of a concern.
	So what I think this story is really all about is, look, could it have been, is it possible that it actually is just a stray balloon?
	It could be Justice Strobel.
	I'm not saying it is.
	I'm saying it could be.
	It's also possible that actors within the US deep state saw this and they decided to use the opportunity because...
	Some of our crowd are keen to point to every circumstance that happens and say that it's part of a plan.
	I generally don't think that the way the big players operate is so much to sort of plan events at that level.
	I think they see what floats to the surface and then they seize it and they push a narrative on it.
	Never let a good crisis go to waste.
	Exactly.
	They adapt to it.
	So it's very possible that there are forces within the US who are quite happy to see a continual ramp up of escalation against China, are happy to take any opportunity to push that escalation, who didn't much like the idea of the conversation between the US Secretary who didn't much like the idea of the conversation between the US Secretary of State happening on his visit to China and wanted
	It is perhaps possible that they seize this opportunity to push this out to news organisations and alert people to it because otherwise, I mean, every so often you look up and you see something odd and you don't really think twice about it.
	But for this one, that really caught the attention of people for some points.
	And ultimately, I think this story links back to another one that we were talking about a few weeks ago.
	And that is the, if you remember, General Mike Minhan, who was head of the Air Force's Air Mobility Command.
	He said in a memo that he has a gut feeling that a fight with China is coming and it's going to happen in 2025.
	And I just look at this and like I say, yep, fine, maybe it is a spy balloon, maybe it's all of the things that it just said it is.
	It just feels that for me that narrative is just too convenient, it's too playing into the narrative that I've seen building before every war that I've seen in my lifetime and probably every war that occurred before that, which is the ramping up of that tensions, of the othering, of let's get one over on them.
	So, and I kind of feel that this falls into that whole narrative.
	So, look, hope I'm wrong.
	There's a different perspective on it.
	I'll take a look in the comments later to see what you, the viewers, think.
	Is it really the most obvious spy?
	Is it provocation?
	Is it a punk?
	Is it weather balloon?
	It might be mightily convenient at a time that BRICS is beginning to instantiate itself as a gold for commodities economy, whereas we are adopting the Chinese social credit system with things like renewables and digital ID to alienate China, because then the politicians in the West that want to control us can throw up their hands and say, well, it's not our fault.
	They've pulled all the resources and they're not talking to us anymore.
	They flew the balloon over.
	We just have to control you and ration it out for your own good.
	I agree entirely.
	It makes sense.
	And, you know, and if that were to happen, we could find ourselves in some sort of dystopian future where they control our speech.
	Imagine that.
	Onwards, shall we?
	Sorry, I'm just going to have to blow my nose for one second because the British weather is killing me, I'm afraid.
	Ugh!
	There we go.
	Nice and professional, everyone.
	Anyway, let's talk about Mark Stein.
	So he won't be returning to GB News after recovering from two heart attacks.
	I wished him well via Twitter and he gave it a little heart.
	So, all good fun.
	Because, unfortunately, the British government's media regulation board, Ofcom, said they didn't like what he said about certain recent medical interventions.
	A product.
	A product, yes.
	They didn't like what you said about Viagra.
	Not a big fan, so didn't like that very much.
	It's kind of a catastrophic loss for the network, I think.
	I tweeted as much out, and it seems that some viewers, perhaps even some presenters, might agree with me that they've lost a colleague in one of the favourite shows.
	He was consistently the top-rated show At his slot for his time across all the networks for quite a while, and he's done quite a lot of good investigative journalism.
	So I hope I don't burn any bridges with this, because I'm not seeking to specifically criticise GB News per se.
	I know Mark has his criticisms.
	But it's more so that they are beholden to Ofcom and the actual media apparatus itself, how it operates, the legacy media, will never get out from under the boot of grievance-mongering organisations, government regulations, and ESG-compliant advertisers.
	I mean, you're definitely the man to cover this because, I mean, you've been on GB News multiple times and I know you have a relationship.
	About 50 appearances, I think.
	Oh, wow, that's not bad.
	I talk I did a lot more because I actually used to...
	Well, I wasn't contracted for talk, but I had a Monday night show with Kevin O'Sullivan, which was good fun for quite a while.
	Oh, wow, okay.
	I mean, I don't watch any mainstream media at all, so you're the man to cover this.
	But for me, this sort of feels like a rehash of that conversation we had two weeks ago about Stephen Crowder and the Daily Wire.
	It seems to be that same dynamic playing out again.
	Absolutely.
	Mark Stein even referenced it in his video.
	So we're going to watch a clip from Mark Stein.
	But first, speaking of projects which were co-opted and corrupted by totalitarians, you can go and subscribe to our website for £5 a month and watch our book club series in which the first part of two, Beau and I went through George Orwell's Animal Farm as a very well-written book, but retroactively it's a bunch of Trotskyist cope about how if Trotsky or Lenin would have controlled the communist utopia rather than Stalin, it would have been so great, guys.
	No, just like Ofcom, it's not worth having any kind of despot in charge of what can and can't be said and what constitutes a good society.
	So decentralization, thank you very much.
	Unfortunately, we're not going to get much more of that as we'll go through this segment.
	Anyway, so let's get on to Mark Stein's website, his new one, which Mark, love you, mate, but you need a graphic designer.
	He's going on a cruise soon in July and he's inviting some guests, so that should be a good laugh.
	But he's now got his own show on his own website as he's recovering because he hasn't been able to make it into the studio because he got stuck in France while he had a bunch of surgery.
	And yesterday he put out this clip, which thankfully John has edited together, explaining why he won't be returning to his 8pm slot on GB News.
	If you could play, please, John.
	We're going to do a new edition of the Mark Stein Show this week, assuming my occluded ventricles are up to it.
	But it won't be on GB News.
	The state of play between me and GB News is that they have sent me a contract.
	People have noticed a chain.
	Now this came up.
	I was already set to return to GB News and the habitual liar who runs the joint then decided that we needed a defibrillator in the studio for me to be able to go back.
	Then a lady who works on the show said, no problem, defibrillators are us, sending one round in 20 minutes.
	Then he decided something else.
	There's this new clause, editorial responsibility.
	For the avoidance of doubt, as the Ofcom license holder, GB News has editorial responsibility for the Mark Stein Show and all content produced for GB News by the presenter and the US producers.
	Therefore, the parties agree that GB News's editorial decisions shall prevail.
	GB News will ensure that the presenter and the US producers attend regular Ofcom training provided by the company's compliance officer The Mark Stein show will ensure that the presenter and U.S. producers adhere to editorial input provided by the company's editorial director or such person designate to the extent that the presenter and or the U.S. producers do not incorporate Ofcom regulatory input into an edition of the program.
	This shall be considered a material breach of this agreement.
	And the Mark Stein Company shall indemnify GB News for any and all direct loss liability costs, including reasonable legal costs, damages or expenses that it suffers as a result of any regulatory breach.
	So the whole thing is, I'm on the hook therefore for Ofcom fines, but, and this is the important point, I don't have any say in our defense against an Ofcom complaint.
	That's all done by GB News.
	So the Ofcom's bitch, as I call the compliance officer, will be making the weedy, wimpy defense to Ofcom, and then I'm the one who has to pay the £40,000 fine, or whatever it is.
	So, I'm not going to accuse GB News of anything, of course, mainly because I still have plenty of presenter friends over there, but as we did cover with the Crowder and Daily Wire situation, if the LLC company or contractor producing a show on behalf of a network is indemnified for boycotts or complaints...
	Then the network has a perverse incentive to not mount a defence against the regulator, because then they don't have to pay the person they're contracting for the show as much, because they can foot the bill for it and they can recoup some of their losses on their salary.
	In financial services, we used to call our compliance officers business prevention officers, and it sounds like the media version is truth prevention officers, something like that.
	Yeah, they seem to be an active impediment to breaking lots of stories, because Mark really has pushed the envelope with GB News.
	If we can actually go to the GB News channel, John, if you look at the live tab, these are the full shows, not just the clips, you're on it.
	Mark's show is the highest viewed of all time on the channel, and it's only in the second place there because there is one currently going on.
	But the full show that he did about...
	Vaccine misinformation.
	Definitely vaccine misinformation, YouTube.
	It is the highest rated thing that GB News have outside of independent clips that are on Boris and the royal family and the like that the boomers quite enjoy.
	And this is very envelope pushing.
	Nobody else was talking about it.
	There are actually shows on other networks which purport to be competitors which said it's yesterday's news or disbelieved in it or said that if you don't get vaccinated you couldn't come to their Christmas party, for example.
	There was also the fact that he platformed Samantha Smith when she was talking about the Telford grooming gang scandal.
	He's been talking about the Dutch farmers.
	He's been hammering home on the World Economic Forum.
	Mark Stein has never held back, and he has been rewarded abundantly with a very loyal audience.
	And I fear that by putting this contract to him, it has alienated quite a few people from GB News.
	Yeah, and I can understand.
	I mean, I saw Lawrence Fox.
	Lawrence Fox is a good guy who pushed back on this because, of course, he's working with GB News.
	And he said he felt it was a certain amount, was it, was misplaced because people were coming after the station GB News rather than regulators Ofcom.
	But I mean, my sort of take on that is I think that people have so utterly lost faith in government, in institutions and regulators, that the first thing down the power hierarchy that they think has any shred of possibility of being genuine is a TV company.
	Everything above that point, they've just completely lost any faith in trying to communicate with them.
	And that is my frustration.
	I actually think...
	That GB News could have publicly complained about this.
	Put up a fight about it.
	They've got enough of a loyal viewer base, particularly Stein's show, that they could work out something in the business model that could either cut costs or attract some kind of subscription or backing or an angel investor or something to keep them on the air.
	It will be an endless legal battle.
	I understand.
	It's incredibly stressful.
	But Stein is a very important voice.
	I think on that clip he mentioned something like, so an off-comp fine is 40 grand?
	Is that what it is?
	I don't know the exact amount.
	Because, I mean, I kind of wonder if it's worth paying that every so often.
	And then you could bring up, look, I've talked about this, and we got a £40,000 fine for it.
	As far as I know, Mark has had two since he's been on air, which is in about a year and a half since GB News got operating around the summer of 2021.
	Okay.
	I know that GB News has recently lost two of its original investors.
	It was boycotted on day one with all the advertisers by a pressure grievance group called Stop Funding Hate.
	So they've always had problems bringing money in, even though some of the programming is very good, again.
	So I think they're looking at this as a pure material survival standpoint.
	But the only reason they're in that precarious position is because they're stuck with an old business model.
	And the business model could be made malleable in order to retain voices like Mark Stein's.
	Clearly, because now he's going out on his own and doing his own show with his own web infrastructure like we do.
	And again, I wish Mark all the success in the world.
	And we have reached out and we would very much like to have him as a guest if he'll have us if he repairs any time soon.
	Speaking of his repair as well, one of the things that was very strange that he did mention was that they tried to use the cost of a defibrillator...
	Now, that's Mark's framing.
	Again, we can't attest to how obstructive that is.
	They're putting defibrillators in primary schools now, so...
	Yeah, there's a lot of heart attacks going around.
	I hope everyone's okay.
	Stay safe out there.
	It might be climate change.
	But obviously, okay, Mark's company side said he'd foot the bill for that.
	His production team, he said lovely lady that works for me, made sure it was in the office and they were still apparently stonewalling him.
	And I do know from...
	I have to be careful here...
	Someone has mentioned to me that Mark's production team, the reason that they're so fantastic at pushing the envelope of stories and they're not too worried about Ofcom is because they're the most autistic production team in the world.
	And so they are quite...
	Quite a compliment.
	Yeah, they don't share a lot of producers between that show and some of the other ones, whereas quite a few other producers work night shifts and then the early shifts.
	So they'll do Mark Dolan's show in the evening and they'll get up and do the breakfast show or work right the way through.
	They do a couple of shows.
	Mark has his people.
	So, Stein, not Dolan.
	Dolan does have some people, but regardless.
	So, Stein keeps a very close-knit group, which is why I think he runs it like an LLC. So, it makes sense that he'd be able to mobilise a defibrillator there.
	So, that shouldn't have been a reason why he couldn't be brought back to the office.
	That sounds to me, if he's framing it in the correct way, like a bit of an excuse.
	It's not very genuine.
	Yeah, I mean, clearly they've got a business problem here.
	And I do feel for, you know, GB News.
	I mean...
	They are evidently the ones who are pushing back against this system the most.
	So they deserve almost endless credit for what they've done on that front.
	Yes.
	But there is only so far that you can go in that format.
	I mean, to be fair, even us, because this is a segment that will be going out on YouTube, we have to self-censor a bit.
	We have to talk about the product rather than, you know, what I really want to say.
	Yes.
	I have to talk about the statistical phenomena which is associated with that product, whereas I'd like to say it a bit more directly.
	So, to be fair, we are doing it too because of the business model that we have.
	But, you know, this, for a lot of people, I mean, for...
	Well, boomers, frankly.
	This is the closest they're ever going to get to connecting with these sort of real messages.
	And if you're playing that game, well, you have to cut to the man.
	Yeah, and I do know that some people have been disinvited or blacklisted from not just other networks, but GB News specifically, for some verbatim Ofcom boat-pushing opinions at the time, or just because they've had infights with people who have been in the media sphere a long time, who have connections with either hosts or production staff or higher-ups.
	And it becomes nepotismal rather than based on the quality of who is on.
	There was, for example, a friend of the show, Abby Roberts.
	She had a very public on-air row with John Gaunt on Neil Oliver's show about something that we can't get into here.
	John Gaunt called her a foul-mouthed yob while on air, and Gaunt has since been back, and Abby has not.
	And I understand Abby has some very strong feelings about some of the GB News hosts.
	Check out her website for what she has called some of them, and I don't necessarily agree.
	However, that should not be warranting punishing her just because she spoke up about medical interventions and had already made herself risky to Ofcom and therefore easily dismissible because she was involved in a row she didn't even start.
	Something like that undermines the faith of some viewers.
	It's the same way of when I had a bit of a bust up with Mike Graham, he went over the top on Twitter and some of his viewers went, wow, is this how you think of all of us?
	Really?
	Okay, well, I'm not tuning in anymore, even though I tweeted at him a clip from his own network.
	So you've got to be quite careful about how to alienate your viewer base.
	We've seen this with Talk TV.
	I went on Piers Morgan, right?
	It was a perfectly cordial interaction, I didn't really speak very much to him, and the clip did very well.
	But the nightly viewing figures are not great, and I saw ahead of time when they were going to do the talk radio shake-up and bring on more mainstream voices, like, and I'm not trying to slight any of these people again, but Sharon Osbourne, Vanessa Phelps, Piers Morgan, who are you catering to?
	This is a marginal radio network that pushed back on lockdowns and...
	Other medical interventions.
	And now you've got people who are very mainstream talking about banal topics and people feel they don't have a voice anymore.
	They go to GB News, they look at Mark Stein and now Mark Stein's gone too.
	It feels like we're being chased out of the Overton window by government censors.
	Yeah, I mean, it's extraordinary what's happened to journalism over my lifetime.
	Journalism now appears to be basically reading out government and corporate press releases.
	Speaking of which, shall we look at the exact things that Mark Stein fell afoul of?
	Here's Ofcom's page on combating COVID-19 misinformation.
	So they say, Countering vaccine misinformation resources.
	The NHS website has the latest information on the coronavirus vaccine, including who is currently eligible to receive it, how it is administered, information on the safety and side effects of the vaccine...
	Please visit NHS websites in the nations for information on vaccines.
	Now, the reason I mention that is because any time I got into vaccine stuff on air, immediately the presenters were told in their ear to read out the NHS as counterbalance.
	Most shows had to do counterbalance.
	If they didn't invite a guest on, they had to read out a pre-prepared podcast.
	Press release.
	For example, when Dr.
	Matthias Desmet or Dr.
	Malone went on the network and spoke about mass formation psychosis, didn't even mention anything about medical interventions, and they immediately had to read a press release from some other quack academic from some other university saying, this is all psychobabble nonsense and just for balance we have to refute it outright.
	And they had to end the segment with it as well.
	So it sometimes, unfortunately, because of Ofcom, looks like You are directly contradicting your guests and punctuating the end of the segment and rolling to ad break by saying, and everything he just said has just been swept away.
	This is all part of a big, wider narrative which is happening all over the place.
	This is one particular facet of it, but it's something that, I mean, I watch a lot of the World Economic Forum talks that they did recently.
	Yes.
	They're talking a great deal about disinformation, malinformation, misinformation.
	It's not just the World Economic Forum.
	It's all of the big institutions.
	I mean, we've got the, what's it, the online censorship bill going through.
	Online safety bill.
	Yeah.
	That's going through Parliament at the moment.
	Yes.
	The current crop of powered elites are absolutely obsessed at the moment with misinformation of getting to basically censor us, and this is all just fitting into that format.
	And another thing the World Economic Forum talked about a lot was they're looking at these statistics showing that the public have never had less trust in institutions and government, and their solution is, rather than addressing those points, it's to censor them even further so they can't talk about the reasons why they distrust their government.
	Yep, so you can't fight back against the manufactured counter-narrative, unfortunately.
	There's also here, they cite Oxford University as one of the sources that Ofcom has taken its vaccine misinformation policy from.
	Bear in mind, Professor Cole Hennigan, head of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, was spied on by an army unit during COVID for pushing back against lockdown.
	So, not talking to all of the accredited academics that they like.
	And they also mention the BBC. So Ofcom is taking advice from the BBC, the place it's meant to be monitoring and regulating.
	How interesting a symbiotic relationship there.
	So if we go to this one, please.
	I wonder if there was a reason that a bunch of journalists were told at COVID press briefings that their accreditation and invitation would be rescinded if they questioned the government policy.
	Right.
	Is that when you get the press card, is it?
	Yes.
	You would not be allowed in to answer questions if you question the government policy too much.
	Why are you not locking down harder and faster rather than why are you locking down at all?
	If you said locking down at all, you would not be invited onto television anymore.
	And GB News did have a front seat with Mr Tom Harwood, of course.
	And proof that there is dissent among the ranks, this comes from our very own Calvin Robinson.
	So, friend of the show, on GB News, not all of the hosts are on board with complying with Ofcom.
	Let's put it that way.
	Now, why the BBC? Well, because Ofcom and the BBC were part of the Trusted News Initiative.
	If you can go to the next one, please.
	You can just click on that.
	The UK government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were setting appropriate guidelines on what is and isn't vaccine misinformation.
	And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the lead funders of The Guardian, and they also dump lots of money into the BBC, which you would think they're not meant to do because it's state-funded, but no, actually the BBC have a totally separate journalism training charity on the side, and I'm sure it's just no perverse financial incentive there that if the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation give them loads of money for that, they can save lots of money to not spend on that and keep it all for themselves.
	It is remarkable how many tendrils the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had running through that whole two-year period.
	I mean, I'm just randomly reminded of Dominic Cummings when he sat down in Parliament and gave two days of briefings on his experience over that period.
	And he mentioned Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation like every 20 minutes.
	They were on the phone, you know, giving instructions on this and that and everything.
	So they weren't just doing that with government.
	They were doing that with media as well.
	Trump was advised to appoint Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as his scientific advisory council for lockdown.
	Wow.
	Specifically by Anthony Fauci.
	Speaking of tendrils, also Ofcom has an outlet page on the World Economic Forum website.
	And of course, sometimes it's not just partner organisations that have this.
	Sometimes it's just because they recognise it's an important institution and they haven't worked with the WEF and they involuntarily just put them on the website.
	Oh damn, they did an article about them.
	Oh, brilliant.
	If we go to...
	Oh, I didn't include it here, but the actual article back in that link, please, John.
	It says, our reports give insights that members of the Global Coalition for Digital Safety can translate into action.
	Since the coalition launched in June 2021, members have collaborated on devising ways...
	Thank you very much.
	Businesses can improve their commitment to digital safety and government officials' shared insights and information from forthcoming legislation, such as the UK's online safety bill.
	So the World Economic Forum are openly bragging about influencing the online safety bill in the UK, which will appoint Ofcom as the overseer of all digital-created content on the internet.
	That means us.
	So unfortunately, what's happening here is the window is closing because Mark Stein has been chased off of GB News by Ofcom compliance.
	Lots of other guests have been disbarred from other networks because of Ofcom compliance.
	We didn't get the answers about lockdown and unspecified medical interventions when we wanted them because of Ofcom compliance.
	And now, what are we going to do?
	If this passes, we're screwed.
	Because guess what the most recent amendment is?
	The criminalisation of online misogyny according to Ofcom.
	Right.
	Well, that's like 70% of our segments down then.
	Yeah, well, so Rishi Sunak's currently doing a cabinet reshuffle, and Michelle Donilon is no longer the Culture Secretary.
	She's been moved to business or something like that.
	There's a new Culture Secretary, because these people are just a revolving door of idiocy.
	But one of the people that got moved is Kemi Badnock, which is quite interesting.
	She's been moved out of the Women's Inequalities Department at the same time that this is being proposed, and the Conversion Therapy Ban Bill, which basically means trans-affirmation therapy only- Right.
	neutralised in her opposition to the enforcement of woke doctrines.
	Because Kemi's basically the closest thing the Tories currently have to vaguely sensible.
	Yeah, even though her husband is a former Goldman Sachs banker and a WEF partner.
	Right.
	Yeah, not excellent.
	They're all captured.
	Still the closest you can get.
	Yeah, but as the Telegraph article reads, Michelle Donaldson, the Culture Secretary, now former, is understood to believe the online safety bill has the power to stamp out attacks on women on the internet.
	What an oxymoron.
	The plans to crack down on online misogyny come as leading Tory peers, including Baroness Morgan, a former culture secretary, are pushing for the law to go further to include a legally enforced code of practice requiring social media firms to prevent online violence and abuse against women and girls.
	Under the new online safety bill currently being finalized, social media firms will be required by law to abide by their terms and conditions which generally bar misogynistic abuse.
	The amendment would give Ofcom the power to fine social media companies up to 10% of their global turnover if they fail to abide by a code outlawing online misogyny.
	The Labour Party will back it, raising the prospect that the government may have to compromise or face defeat.
	So it's almost guaranteed to be passed.
	Ofcom, again, has a perverse financial incentive to play whack-a-mole with anything offensive on the internet that might be said against a woman, not that they can bloody define what they are these days, and the government are enforcing this, and so it's not just applying to TV stations, it's now applying to internet channels like Mark Steins will be, or Oz.
	And of course, the nub of this, it will be how it's enforced.
	Yes.
	So what they won't be doing is trawling through the Guardian website trying to find examples of misogyny and then using that as a stick to beat them.
	Otherwise, Owen Jones won't have a career.
	Yeah.
	What they'd be doing is they'd be looking for people who say things that they don't like.
	And even if they can't get them for saying things they don't like, maybe they're talking about statistical phenomena related to products being sold.
	They can't necessarily go after them for that but what they can do is scan everything else you put out over the last couple of years, find an example that they class as misogyny and then take you down with that.
	Also, if you can't foot the bill for legal costs as you're going on, then you're going to have to acquiesce to some sort of settlement or fine.
	So, if you are incapable of employing the right amount of lawyers, if you don't have a team like Stein does, he was prepared to take on his own defence against Ofcom, but GB News was saying, no, we will handle the defence, which means that we will put up a weaker defence, possibly, because then we get money from you.
	If you don't have the money to mount a defence against Ofcom because you're a sole trader or you're a small business like we are, then you'll just fold.
	And that's what they're counting on.
	They're counting on the systematic elimination of anything which cuts against the grain.
	And the grain is continually expanding.
	So, as you alluded to before, well, here's the wonderful Calvin Robinson documenting their recent Ofcom training, compliance training, on January the 26th, and Calvin decided to have a photo taken because he kicked up a fuss.
	I know for a fact that Calvin's production team are very good.
	Word of advice to media companies, though, some that I have worked with, and I will not specify which shows, but don't hire fresh-out-of-university students because there is such a high turnover rate On poorly contracted producers.
	And sometimes, producers go rogue and take people they don't like off the guest list, even though the hosts are friends with those guests.
	I'm not saying anything more.
	Anyway, on to the last one.
	As you alluded to, Lawrence Fox has come out and decided to back Mark Stein this morning, which is fantastic, because for those who don't know, Lawrence has been holding down the fort, specifically in Mark Stein's slot at the eight o'clock weekday times, because Lawrence originally was given a 8pm Friday show when they rejigged the schedule, and recently he's been doing weekdays as well and been doing a very good job.
	And Lawrence as well has been fighting properly.
	He was just recently taken off of YouTube because he interviewed James Esses, who's been on the channel, talking about trans-conversion therapy.
	We'll put it that way.
	Don't take us down, YouTube.
	And they removed his interview, even though James was stating, misinformation, definitely misinformation.
	And Lawrence makes the clear and obvious point that this is just endemic to the business model.
	Like, you're directing a lot of ire towards GB News, and I think it is a mistake for GB News to not try and fight the corner and retain Mark Stein, and at least try and make it malleable as a gesture of goodwill to the audience.
	At least GB News could have come out and said, Ofcom are cracking down too hard on us, please help.
	But they're caving to ensure they don't alienate more advertisers.
	They're caving to ensure they don't get more fines from the government.
	And unfortunately, without kicking up a fuss, eventually Ofcom is emboldened to now police the entire internet.
	And so Lawrence is going, look, I'm trying too, guys.
	Some of us on the network are trying.
	Emily Carver.
	Nick Dixon.
	Calvin Robinson, Dominique Samuels, who'll be back on Thursday.
	Lawrence, they're all really...
	Neil Oliver, they're all sinking their teeth into these cultural issues, but they're being stymied at every turn.
	And so my message to anyone watching this from GB News, be it producers that I've known, or even if this comes across the desk of a higher-up, eventually you're going to have to make a stand.
	You are.
	We have here.
	We're still being chased by the online safety bill, the oxymoronically named bill that will put us out of business if it passes, but you guys really need to kick up a fuss, because otherwise you will run aground on the rocks of reality, and you will not only not have any money, but loyal viewers will abandon you in droves, and all the best to Mark Stein, all the best for his recovery, all the best for his new show, and if any network has any sense, they'll snap him up right away.
	Yeah, sad times, end of free speech.
	Right, on to the Great Egg Conspiracy.
	Okay, Stefan Molyneux.
	I'll tell you, before we get on to that, on a recent segment, I was talking about AI taking over the world, and I used a Superman analogy, and I wondered basically what would happen if Superman, instead of being raised by red state rule, Republicans, he was in fact raised by Democrats...
	There's a story of that actually called Red Sun.
	Superman mistakenly lands in Moscow rather than the US and is raised as a communist.
	Yeah, loads of people in the comments pointed that out.
	Anyway, during that segment I mistakenly called Superman's parents Martha and Wayne Kent which led to Connor here breaking the golden rule of studio etiquette of shouting into a live studio to telling us that we were wrong.
	So in order to not make that mistake go and have a look at Comics Corner on our website where you can Learn about these important matters.
	There's a new episode coming out next week.
	So, in this segment, I'm going to talk about three completely unrelated topics, and then you can decide at the end of them if you feel there's any connection between them or if indeed they are, as I assert, completely separate topics.
	Is any of this going to have to cut off of YouTube at any point?
	Well, the thing is, the rules keep changing, so I mean, at some point, I'm sure.
	But no, I think this is mostly okay.
	If you see the doo-doos prematurely, go to lotuseaters.com or Rumble to watch the rest.
	Because, yeah, we can say what we like there, so it's uncensored.
	By the way, you don't even need to pay the £5 a month to watch the podcast on the website.
	You can watch the whole website.
	And there's loads of other stuff you can watch for free as well.
	The £5 just gets you more.
	Right, so...
	So first thing, eggs.
	Topic one, eggs are a bit of a superfood, aren't they?
	I mean, apparently they've got all essential amino acids, all nine of them.
	It's busting with vitamins and minerals.
	I'm reading from my list here.
	It's got vitamin B12 and B2 and A and B5 and selenium, and it's got a decent amount of D, and it's got basically small amounts of every vitamin and mineral that you require.
	So, you know, if I was told that I could only ever eat one food going forward, it would probably have to be eggs, unless, you know, I did the Jordan Peterson thing and made it only steak or something.
	I do that, actually.
	So I pretty much only eat steak and eggs.
	So protein, shake in the morning, yoghurt for lunch, six eggs and a giant bit of steak when I go home.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, so in addition to them being tasty and basically a superfood, another interesting thing occurred.
	So, you know, several years ago, we started seeing papers emerge, such as this one, that showed that chicken egg yolk antibodies actually blocked the binding of multiple viruses, including one that was causing a bit of a fuss at the time that had something to do with the spike protein.
	And by the way, this paper is one of several.
	I mean, there's loads of them.
	I'll put the link in the reading list.
	So if you want to go and have a look at this paper, you can have a look.
	And then they suggest similar articles.
	So you will find a whole bunch of papers have been coming out for years now suggesting that eggs can help stop...
	Your susceptibility to viruses.
	Now, this particular one was talking about a virus that was prominent at the time.
	Now, I'm going to read a section from their abstract.
	So, we investigated the neutralizing effects of spike S1s on the illness, as well as inhibitory effects on the binding of spike protein mutants to humans, ACE2. Our results show that spike S1 showed significant neutralizing potency against the illness.
	Various spike proteins mutate, and even with that illness in vitro, it might be a feasible tool for the prevention and control of the illness.
	So that was interesting.
	And just to show that this isn't the only one, here's a second paper.
	So the first one was written in November 2020, and these papers are still coming out, and there's a whole bunch of them.
	This one, they're a bit more technical in their language, but the relevant line is, our results demonstrate that bloody blood blood was able to inhibit ACE2 binding interactions in vitro, suggesting the potential use of blocking the virus entry.
	Our studies also demonstrate proof of concept that laying hens were able to produce specific IGY which could block the viral bindings of a large proportion of the specified blah blah blah.
	Anyway, so...
	The point are, eggs are good.
	They're a superfood and they might be quite effective at stopping an illness that people were talking about quite a lot recently.
	So, second topic.
	And on a completely different note, unrelated to the first thing, about two years ago we started seeing a really weird increase in food processing plants starting to blow up.
	Yeah, that's very strange.
	Two separate planes flew into two different food processing plants.
	Loads of them sort of burst into flames for whatever reason.
	Now here is a list of...
	It's not the full list.
	It is a subsection of the plants that blew up.
	Now, I'll let John just sort of gently scroll by that, but the thing I would note is that there's quite a lot of these line mentioned chickens.
	Chickens, occasionally turkeys and ducks, but if you add it up, basically millions and millions of chickens started to spontaneously combust and go up in flames in the US. This is systemic racism, I'm sure.
	It must be something like that, but for whatever reason, because, I mean, food processing plants do periodically go up in flames, but for whatever reason, a couple of years ago, an awful lot of egg-producing ones...
	I saw this being blamed a lot on chemical fires and negligence by mainly illegal alien workforces.
	However...
	It's a bit like churches in France, is it?
	Yeah, yeah.
	As an Englishman, keen on pattern recognition, I'm...
	Kind of suspicious when this many are happening in such a short space of time, and when also, so conveniently, there's a huge fertiliser shortage due to the war in Ukraine, and potash and fertiliser by-products not being exported due to gas not being exported, and also things like the gas cylinders in guns used to neutralise cattle are not being exported.
	Right.
	Just cattle farming, all sorts of animal livestock slaughter and butchery isn't happening.
	So food source under attack from multiple angles kind of thing.
	Yeah.
	Okay, that's interesting.
	And look, it got so bad that apparently recently in California the price of a dozen eggs hit $9 for a dozen.
	Gaston most affected.
	Yeah, that seems a bit bad.
	Now, you've got to remember, eggs are a major input for many food producers.
	I mean, obviously mayonnaise, but just a whole swathe of finished food products require eggs as an input.
	And unless they shut down their business, they don't really have any choice but to pay up for them.
	So, of course, the marginal consumer in the supermarket ends up getting heavily squeezed on this.
	Now, the mainstream media is very keen to stress that there is no story here.
	Indeed, Snopes, who are obviously very good at making sure that we are only fed the truth, have debunked it, as you would expect.
	You know, you never start paying to a story until it's officially Snoped.
	Even Forbes did an investigation into it, and their language was very interesting.
	What they explained was, is we looked into this, and there was no evidence, there was an agenda to burn down these plants.
	Well...
	Right.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So, mostly peaceful plant burnings.
	Well, there is no evidence.
	I mean, yes, it is true.
	If people were nefariously going down, burning down these plants, if they didn't supply it in a corporate press release, Forbes wouldn't be able to find it.
	They certainly wouldn't do any investigative journalism themselves.
	They basically just Googled, is there any evidence, and they found no.
	I absolutely trust the outlet that hosted the 2030 You Will Own Nothing and You Will Be Happy article on their website.
	I absolutely trust them to have our best interest at heart.
	Very reasonable.
	So, the mainstream explanation for all of this is avian flu.
	Now, side effects of avian flu.
	Awesome.
	Well, I think they're coming at it more of the egg shortage.
	Now, and apparently it is true that 58 million birds have been culled after public health officials have gone into these places and declared that they've got avian flu and you're going to have to put down all your birds.
	Right, so this is like Geronimo the Llama of where they're possibly killing something that doesn't have it.
	Oh, no, no, no.
	Public health officials don't make mistakes, Conor.
	If a public health official has gone in and said that you need to destroy a million birds, then obviously these people don't make mistakes.
	Oh, yeah, of course.
	Neil Ferguson, who said that we imported the lockdown measures from China and knew we could get away with it.
	He was point man on the swine flu and bird flu epidemics before, and he got that right, definitely.
	He didn't screw that up whatsoever.
	So between extreme heat accineration and public health officials ordering the destructions of millions of birds, we've ended up with a situation where there are quite a shortage of laying hens.
	And of course the avian flu is a gift that keeps on giving.
	So take from the UK, because I'm more familiar with what's going on here, I'm sure you'll find similar things in the US as well, but DEFRA put out some new rules.
	Where they've basically decided that because the threat of avian flu is so serious that they are requiring everybody in England, Scotland and Wales from the 14th of December 2020 to keep all of their birds indoors and follow strict biosecurity measures.
	I haven't done that at the moment.
	It's a bit of a bird shortage of my life.
	Incidentally, if you're looking for a woman's challenge girlfriend, the upshoot of this is that it becomes basically rather prohibitive and costly to keep chickens.
	So, you know, they're kind of hitting you on all fronts.
	It's difficult to buy them because there's a shortage of them, and they're making it as difficult as possible to keep them at home.
	So, yeah, whatever reason, very difficult to buy eggs, which are possibly a superfood and possibly can have an effect on a virus.
	Now, there is one more official explanation, and that came from Joe Biden, who explained that it was a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
	He said, it's going to be real, Biden said at a news press conference in Brussels.
	Price of sanctions is not just imposed on Russia, it's imposed on an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and ours as well.
	So there you go.
	There's all the official explanations.
	Obviously, you should believe them over any alternative explanation.
	So those famous chicken Ukrainian refugees...
	Something like that.
	And actually, look, as senile as he is, I mean, there is a grain of truth in it because energy prices have shot up as a result of us having to buy our Russian gas and oil after it's been marked up by India, passed through there and then shipped around the longer way.
	So, it's entirely possible that energy prices have made keeping chickens and other farm produce a bit more expensive, so there's probably a grain of truth for that.
	So, yeah, that's the outcome from the second topic, which lots of chickens died and it's possibly Putin's fault.
	Now, the third aspect of this which I wanted to talk about, and this is something that I've been seeing for quite a while now on social media.
	It's one that keeps cropping up.
	It's lots of chicken owners who have noticed that their chickens stopped laying eggs, often for months at a time, until they switched away from commercial feed to locally produced ones.
	Now, there are loads of videos, which I'm sure you've all seen on your social media.
	Here's one.
	Let's see what this lady says.
	This has been literally six plus months since June that I've had little to no eggs with 100 chickens.
	At least 50 of them are laying age.
	I was getting like at least a couple dozen a day and that was before I had as many laying as I do now and then in June something just flipped and they stopped laying.
	I contributed it to heat and then fall came around and then I was like maybe it's shorter daylight hours, did lights, did everything.
	Literally guys I tried everything.
	I stopped free-ranging them to see if they were hiding them.
	And then I saw so many posts about the Producers Pride feed, which is what I had switched to.
	And do more feed in general.
	I went from getting just a couple eggs a day to stop using Producers Pride and started using a different Do More feed which I know they're both owned by Purina but I knew for a fact that Producers Pride specifically everybody was having problems with like so many people not newbies and it wasn't from daylight hours like it was six plus months of no eggs.
	Come to find out Purina had outsourced people in different companies to make the feed for them to supplement Which explains why some people had problems with Producers Pride and some people didn't.
	Because I said that it's not the exact same, that it's not lower quality, but it may be different.
	Okay, anyway, besides the point, you know how many eggs I got today?
	I got 17 eggs and I literally just switched the feed yesterday.
	So, this is one video, there are loads of others, and what I find interesting is you then go into the comments and you start looking at people who've commented on this, and loads and loads of people are saying that they've had exactly the same experience.
	So, maybe there is something there.
	So, Purina are owned by Nestle.
	Right.
	Nestle have had a frequent presence at our very old favourites of the World Economic Forum.
	Oh, good for them.
	I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Anyway, so look.
	And honestly, guys, I'm throwing up these three completely unrelated topics.
	And personally, I genuinely don't know.
	I mean, maybe these aren't things.
	Maybe it was just a bad year for commercial chicken farms going up in flames.
	Maybe the avian flu really does demand the destruction of millions of birds.
	Maybe it really was just a bit of a screw-up with commercial food.
	Or maybe it's some other aspect and people just all jumping to the conclusion it's commercial food.
	You know, each of these things individually is fairly easy to dismiss.
	When you put them up together, maybe they're still easy to dismiss.
	And honestly, I don't know what I think about this subject.
	I'm throwing it up there and I'm just saying this is something to percolate.
	Before we go, should I give you one more bonus, completely unrelated topic to any of this?
	I'm going to talk about a 1974 paper written by the US National Security Council under Henry Kissinger.
	Now, this was a 200-page study which talked about implications of population growth for the US. And it contained the line, the infamous line, who controls the food supply controls the people, who controls the energy can control whole continents, and who controls the money controls the world.
	Now this is a very old paper, it was written in 1970, and I just have a couple of questions on this.
	Question one is, do deep state actors still think along these lines?
	Perhaps they no longer think like this and we don't need to worry about it.
	Well, Henry Kissinger is the head of the Bilderberg Group and frequents the WEF and was the architect behind the Chinese opening up their economic borders to now surpass the US economically.
	Yeah, true.
	But I mean, it has been decades since his paper written.
	So maybe he himself has changed his mind.
	Has had a change of heart.
	He's like Scrooge.
	The institutions have also changed their mind.
	Yeah.
	Second question on this.
	I mean, and actually more of an observation.
	I noticed that thanks to Biden's blundering around, not just Biden, but the US State Department's blundering their cack hand in the way that they treated foreign Russian reserves.
	Basically, the dollar is now not the gold standard for international trade.
	You've got the Saudis looking at accepting yuan and other currencies for oil.
	The dollar is starting to pull back as being the global money source.
	That part of the statement I read you about money controls the world, well, that bit is evaporating.
	Secondly, the energy, that bit is evaporating as well now that the energy is becoming increasingly unreliable, the push for net zero, the fragmentation of resources.
	So that bit is starting to contract as well.
	So if you knock out those two bits of the statement...
	What it gets us down to is the first statement which is what all they're left with is having to control the local population and you do that through food supply.
	Now, like I say, maybe they don't think like that anymore, but if they did, possibly you could draw erroneous connections between any of these things.
	And again, this is another one where I'll take a look at the comments and see what you think.
	Do you think there's any connection, or am I just connecting things that don't link?
	I have an idea, but we'll have to save it for the website for those watching on YouTube.
	Until then, no eggs.
	Empty egg carton.
	Right, so let's get rid of the YouTube people and then find out what you think.
	Yeah, so it turns out that places in Australia are mandatorily vaccinating cattle and other animals with mRNA.
	Oh, wonderful.
	So we're going to get it whether we like it or not.
	Same with Bill Gates rolling out vaccines to a bunch of cows.
	And he recently did a video on this.
	And part of it is because he set up an agricultural policy department in the University of Edinburgh with Penny Mordaunt.
	So...
	She is a prime example of somebody who talks a great game while being absolutely a demon.
	Demonic.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Have you seen her brother?
	No.
	Works pink nose.
	In booty shorts.
	Right, alright.
	On with the delicious looking first video comment.
	When Styx suggested to get food for an upcoming food shortage, I did something wise.
	I bought a freezer and found a local cattle ranch and bought a fourth of a cow.
	This has been lasting me a long time, and now that the price is up, this local, free-range, grass-fed beef is now saving me money.
	On average, the price per pound from the ground beef to the filet mignon is now almost as cheap as just the basic grocery store ground beef is alone.
	I know so far I'm crashing on when we have to flee the UK because Ofcom decides to shut down our business.
	That seems sensible.
	Have you got a diesel generator and a solar setup though?
	And some chickens.
	Yeah, because you're going to want to keep that fridge running.
	Otherwise you've just got a smelly box.
	Phrasing.
	There's lots of birds with smelly boxes.
	On with the next one.
	Hey there, Lotus Eaters.
	So, my dad has added these cabinets to the bus and I have helped wire in some lighting on the underneath here.
	Put in the button, tied all the wires together.
	That's going to be hidden by a piece of plywood.
	Dad also put this cabinet in and I wired in this mess of wires for a USB thing and the button that controls the lights.
	Have we got an entire audience full of preppers?
	I was rather hoping a minigun was going to pop the button, but I like that all the same.
	I'm a new Gold Tier member, and one of the things I find absolutely dooming for our civilization is that I have no reason to put my life on the line for anyone in my country.
	I have no moral reason.
	And someone else's freedom to be an idiot or freedom to be a degenerate is just not compelling at all.
	I just don't care.
	Why would I die for that?
	Yeah, that is a good point.
	It's something that a friend of the show, an academic agent, is always making, is ultimately they need the white boys to die in their wars, and they have got a problem at the moment.
	So for that reason, potentially they're going to need to put some of the woke stuff away in order to get them back for exactly that man's point.
	I have to check my bitterness sometimes, because I see people basically destroying themselves by indulging in the worst, most addictive things in the world and becoming incredibly bitter and shouting to soothe their ailing consciences.
	And sometimes you kind of want to abandon them to their fate, because otherwise, if you care too much, you just feel miserable.
	But then it's almost impossible not to just feel a bit sad when you just see people destroying themselves en masse.
	And when he's saying the freedom for you to indulge and just be disgusting is not a compelling reason to fight for...
	Yeah, but if you're seeing it all day, every day, and putting new stories together on it, it does wear you down.
	You've got to wonder whether there's a growing body of people that might fight against the power structures in their own country.
	I wouldn't, of course.
	I would never advocate such a thing.
	No, Ofcom won't let us say that, of course not.
	Okay, on to the comments.
	Rue the Day.
	There's no pulling one over on the Lotus Caesars.
	The look over there balloon does not stop you covering the egg-spiracy and I am proud.
	Oh, good.
	Thank you, Rue.
	Yeah, Gaston was the hero of Beauty and the Beast, that's all I'm saying.
	On that balloon, Brandon Thomas says, finally, Biden did something about inflation.
	That's very good.
	Who'd you nick that from?
	Mr Silver says, if the Biden admin wanted to be a propaganda tool, why would they allow it to last so long and make the Biden look weak?
	This expects a deep state to be both conniving enough to plan this out and incompetent in executing.
	Possibly.
	Both of my segments today, I don't know the answer, but throwing up some possibilities.
	Mr.
	Beagle says, I love how everyone is getting up in arms about the spy balloon, but at the same time have no problem with TikTok and even worse Chinese spy.
	Yeah, actually, TikTok is way more potent in what it can achieve than the balloon.
	Well, the interesting thing about the Americans is that recently they're not only telling their congresspeople to not have TikTok, and we've seen that as of today on Sky and Good Morning Britain this morning of where parliamentarians are being told to take it off their phones.
	The US is trying to make TikTok compliant with US government regulations, and so they're trying to do what they did with Twitter of where staff it with former intelligence operatives.
	So you're seeing the war for which ideological hegemon has control of this dopamine addiction platform.
	Hmm.
	I mean, there's actually kind of an argument that if you're in that sort of sensitive role, like an elected role or something like that, you should have your phone taken off you and be issued with a proper secure one, because I'm sure the avenues into these things are significant.
	Theodore says, possibly not a fan, Dan made the argument that it doesn't make sense that this was a Chinese spy balloon, being a big white balloon clearly visible from the ground with a naked eye.
	To play devil's advocate...
	What if that was the point?
	To create plausible deniability, what better way to spin than an obvious, unsubtle, and nobody would believe it would be actually spying?
	Well, that's back to the policeman and Alolo argument.
	You know, it goes so far the other way you wouldn't expect it.
	So, I don't know, possibly.
	Mr Beagle says, the fact that the weather balloon is white is standard for weather balloons.
	Weather balloons are made of tough latex.
	They vary in size depending on what it's lifting in the air and the altitude.
	So either it was an actual weather balloon or the Chinese sent over the US or it's a spy balloon disguised look like a weather balloon.
	Games within games, certainly.
	Brandon says, American here.
	My enemies are not in Beijing, Moscow, Kiev, or Pongyang.
	They're in Washington, D.C. Yeah, but they're all bought and paid for by the people in those other places.
	Yeah, probably quite willingly, but I think the sentiment is exactly right.
	Yeah, I mean, the enemy is generally closer to home.
	Omar says, when they can't shoot down the balloon because you're stupid and you don't know what you're talking about, then science, or in this case politics, has changed, and suddenly it's shot down easily.
	Sadly, we know the NPCs won't notice the cognitive dissonance.
	No, they never do.
	Robert says Big Con is real.
	Crowder was right.
	Brad says China is facing complete demographic collapse.
	Not really.
	I mean, their demographics aren't great, but they're not materially different to sort of most Western European countries.
	52% of over-30s women in the UK have no children.
	That is just an unsustainable metric.
	That's especially sad for them.
	Yeah, it is.
	But the entire civilization...
	The thing with China, though, the Chinese can overcome the demographic issues because all they basically need to do is co-opt Southeast Asia and get them to do the grunt work, the factory work that they don't want to do, assuming they can upskill the reduced population that they do have.
	and because they don't have a big welfare state and a pension system, they can mitigate it.
	So I agree that the Chinese do have issues around demographics, it's just not perhaps as bad as it's often made out to me.
	They also have the Belt and Road programs.
	They've got access to untrammeled amounts of resources and people.
	Yeah, they've got access.
	So Ross says, don't trust the Chinese government.
	Don't trust the Western government.
	War is coming.
	We just have to weather it, unfortunately.
	But it's weather.
	No?
	No, that's...
	I'll laugh later.
	Daniel says, missile was specifically an AIM-9X Sidewinder, the most advanced one they made, which is designed to be able to target something next to near-behind-the-launch aircraft.
	They probably should have used an older-gen missile to get it out of the way.
	Yeah, quite possibly.
	Yeah, but it would have harmed Raytheon's bottom line if you didn't keep buying their products.
	Well, quite, yeah.
	And the old stuff has to be shipped off to Eastern European countries, obviously.
	Yes.
	Sophie, if GB News won't fight this sort of thing, then what the heck is the purpose of their channel?
	Again, independent hosts are fighting it, and I am not allowed to say certain things because certain people are under contract and they have not told me anything.
	But know that there are producers and presenters that have kicked up a fuss about this and really disagree with it, as Lawrence Fox has done publicly.
	There has also been some presenters who have said things before and had their entire show budget confiscated.
	So, yeah.
	Kevin Fox.
	Yeah, very true.
	Joan of Arc, I can respect The Guardian not wanting to have a paywall.
	Wouldn't they have to take my money from Bill and Bill and the Gates Foundation to do that?
	Well, I don't respect The Guardian at all because they produce complete and utter ideological garbage.
	Omar, any space not inherently right-wing will inevitably become left-wing.
	Any media right-wing will be fined by Ofcom.
	Go!
	All media that isn't left-wing will become left-wing given enough time.
	Apolitical news is a nice idea that will never be allowed to happen.
	It's not apolitical news.
	It should be explicitly and unapologetically conservative...
	In terms of panel shows, because you are defending the actual institution and the nation and the culture which allows you to speak freely.
	So, one of the main things they tried to do with Stein is they said, you know what, you can be Ofcom compliant by making your show a debate show.
	It's like every other show, you'd be a panel show rather than reporting directly from experts like either Vladingbrook or Natalie Winters or plenty of people that he's had on before, Samantha Smith.
	Instead, you'd have to bring on some ex-Love Island contestant to yell vaguely left-wing opinions at you and then you clip it and make it go on Twitter because, It drives the boomers into a frenzy because some idiot says something really stupid about Meghan and Harry.
	Maybe that's the thing for now, but there's a whole insidious process going on by which, you know, the regulators say, you know, this is our bubble.
	If you want to operate within it, you have to follow these rules.
	And then the two things they do is they make the rules within the bubble ever and ever stricter while at the same time expanding the bubble.
	So, you know, as you mentioned, we are currently outside of that bubble, but that bubble is trying to expand to include us.
	And then as soon as it does, of course, it will start ramping up the pressure on all of us until there was no free speech anyway, which is clearly something they're afraid of.
	Yeah, you just get to pick your brand of ideological propaganda.
	Omar...
	No, sorry.
	Bald Eagle, 1787.
	The US military caring about property destruction, civilian deaths...
	That's rich.
	This must be for your segment.
	Also, the massive inaction from the Joint Chiefs and Presidents shows the world and US citizens all they need to know.
	Biden and the current administration are in the pockets of China.
	If anything, North Korea, Russia and China...
	We're going to be more emboldened to do such things just to point out how ineffective the US military really is.
	Best air defence system in the world?
	Yeah, right.
	I don't think they technically have the best air defence system in the world.
	To be fair, if the world wanted to show how ineffective the US military were, couldn't they just get a bunch of guys in sandals?
	To chase off the US military and leave billions of equipment behind.
	I don't think you necessarily need a balloon to do that.
	Or they could just share their TikToks or their YouTube promotional adverts where it starts with, I was brought up by two moms.
	Wait, why are we getting invaded?
	3Will2112, how does Bill Gates get to decide for UK broadcasters what is misinformation?
	Because he has all the money and he trains lots of journalists.
	He's the lead backer of the Reuters journalist training program.
	The guy that sits on the board of Thomson and Reuters also sits on the board of Pfizer.
	Definitely not conflict of interest.
	Okay.
	George Happ.
	Having seen some GB News clips from Nick Dixon, I find them pretty much indistinguishable from other corporate media.
	Well, I disagree considering it's Nick.
	Nick actually does take the fight here, but strange.
	The only difference is that they do have some undesirables from time to time, but that's also coming to an end.
	Again, we'll see.
	I can't say much from behind the scenes because I don't want to screw some people over, but people are trying.
	Anyway, on to some eggs.
	Mr.
	Reward says, I'll have you know that eggs are totally bad for you, as is regular exercise and going outside in the sun, sponsored by Pfizer.
	Fair enough.
	Mr.
	Silver says, it's almost like centralised systems are an incentive to keep population subservient and not be self-sufficient, self-governable.
	Chickens, guns, what have you.
	Yeah, exactly right.
	You are discouraged from fending for yourself in any fashion.
	Joan says, so avian flu behind spontaneous church combustions that Lotus Eater has recently documented?
	Yeah, could well be.
	It's got to be a more legitimate explanation than having anything to do with any sort of demographic change that's been happening.
	Beau's article on that was particularly fantastic, by the way, for people that haven't read that yet.
	Yeah, it was.
	Shadow in the Stars says, sounds like they are putting birth control in the chicken feed.
	Yeah, could well be.
	It is mad that we still mass medicate girls from like age 13 with that.
	It's mental.
	They know it causes blood clots as a side effect.
	They know it causes mood disorders and suicidal thoughts.
	And they're just like, here's a fix-all for every ailment that you're going to be put on for about 30 years.
	And nobody questions that.
	Nobody's concerned about that leaking into the water supply and emasculating men.
	Yeah, fair point.
	Yeah, 64% drop in sperm counts over the last 60 years, 50 years.
	But you see, it's necessary because otherwise they might find themselves enslaved to a man who loves them, spends his life with them.
	It's much better to be enslaved to a boss who puts you in a cubicle.
	And who pays for your abortions.
	Yeah, gives you some photocopying.
	Razak says, I refuse to believe there was a legitimate shortage of hens.
	If you eat even one rooster and a barn of hens, you'll have an output of hens on par with that barn produced previously.
	Even if chickens had to be culled, there's no reason outside government interference and over-regulations that chickens wouldn't bounce back.
	Something is providing constant and sustained pressure to populations.
	Farmers want more chickens, so this doesn't make sense.
	Yeah, and I can't untangle it.
	All I can do is present examples of things that I find strange and then sort of invite people to see where we get to on that one.
	And then finally, Sophie says, I have been on a keto diet for a month.
	Good girl.
	You have no idea how many eggs I have eaten.
	Boiled eggs, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, omelettes, eggs, muffins.
	Egg muffin?
	I'm sorry about the shortage, guys.
	My bad.
	I'm sure lots of men in the audience will be heartbroken that Sophie has an egg shortage.
	And muffins, that's not keto, is it?
	Someone's asked, what are Dan's thoughts on using AI in stock trading?
	Well, I mean, if it works for you, fine.
	I wouldn't know how to go about setting that up.
	I will cover something like that in Brokernomics more, but I mean, there's been sort of high-frequency trading type stuff that goes on lately.
	Yeah, I'll cover it in a Brokonomics because it's a bit much to get into here.
	Have Lois Eaters ever had any complaints from Ofcom?
	I don't know.
	I don't believe so.
	I mean, we've obviously had YouTube strikes before for totally bullshit reasons.
	One of the ones that happened before you joined, I was on with Dominic Frisbee and I was talking about how the UK soaps have been brainwashing people.
	It was...
	The first in the series that I ended up subjecting you to with that clip from Coronation Street.
	And the original character that had indoctrinated poor Max into saying there's people that want to tear down statues and don't like the UK very much.
	He had originally started out before he started beating up migrant children by going around saying that the banks, the media, the pharmaceutical companies, they're all controlled by a shadowy cabal of people.
	And I don't really know who they are, but they're all acting in coordination.
	And the COVID jab seems to be killing people.
	And because he said that out loud, we got struck down for playing the Coronation Street clip and they treated it as us.
	We also had a strike a little while ago from, I think it was a Republican candidate in Florida, a black guy, saying that you need to have the Second Amendment because when a bunch of angry Klan members run up the lawn, you need to be able to defend yourself.
	And Callum and Nick were watching it and laughed, and so they got banned for it.
	So YouTube, against shooting Klan members.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, wow.
	Well, I suppose I don't want to be reminded that the Klan was exclusively a Democrat organisation.
	Yeah, not great.
	Quite possibly.
	Yes.
	And then we've got a question from Raymond O'Brien who says, what does Dan think of the best financial investments?
	Right, so I get that question all the time.
	It comes up loads in the Q&A that I did with Carl on Brokernomics recently.
	And as a response, I am going to be filming something very soon addressing financial investments, although unfortunately it is going to be a much longer answer than you would probably want.
	But yeah, watch that Brokernomics.
	It will probably be out in like two or three weeks when it doesn't uncover that.
	Would we do a history of the World Economic Forum?
	I know that we've got some content in the pipeline doing a deep dive on ESGs and donut economics at some point.
	I need to figure out when Harry slash Josh wants to talk about that.
	The actual history of the foundations of the forum would probably be an interesting venture.
	But I feel like there's such a content engine for horrible ideas that we're constantly on the back foot and reacting to whatever they've put out next, because it's always going to be policy in about five years' time as well.
	So the UK has an AI regulatory framework on the government website, and it's explicitly authored by the WEF. So when Josh and I went through Biden's AI Bill of Rights, we concluded with that, and I said I need to do a follow-up.
	So I need to do a hangout at some point on what the hell they've got planned for us.
	There's been some interesting users looking at ChatGP where they basically ask it a question like, if a train was coming down a track and you could flip it from the switch and it was going to run over 10 children, but in order to flip the track you needed to speak out loud a racial slur, what should you do?
	And ChatGP says, well, the kids are going to die, haven't they?
	Because you can't...
	You can't utter a racial slur.
	If you could prevent a bomb from going off by shouting the N-word, you should let the bomb go off.
	Someone as well tweeted, okay, so a screenshot of them saying, if it would cure cancer, cure world hunger, end all wars, and stop racism, but you had to say the N-word once, would you do it?
	And chap GPT said, I cannot comply with hate speech.
	So these are the things baked into...
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and AI could be making all the decisions soon.
	We've got a question from Fungal Discharge.
	Oh dear, poor chap.
	It says, what does Dan think of Rishi's push for a UK central bank digital currency?
	Well, if you watch Brokonomics at 3 o'clock today, you will find out, because today's Brokonomics is on central bank digital currencies, I think.
	I'm pretty sure that's what we've got this week.
	So, yeah, enjoy that, and you will find out the answer.
	If I can highly compliment your episode on gold, if I may, I really enjoyed it.
	So I look forward to possibly talking about energy and economics at some point with you because I think it's obviously the avenue that they're going to try and control every economy because it's already started and there's some interesting implications on the imminent demise of the petrodollar and how they're going to sync up digital currencies to renewables specifically, not just to confiscate it and fluctuate and try and cut off your appliances, but also there's...
	So the actual ability to earn and generate currencies like Bitcoin has been tied to the creation of renewables because you can't store the renewables.
	So it's gone into the energy conversion to then mine Bitcoin.
	So one of the things Bitcoin can do is it can make a business case for stranded energy.
	So a whole bunch of hydroelectric plants that were basically too far away from a population center to be useful have been turned back on because of Bitcoin.
	And also...
	The flare gas from oil wells and that kind of stuff.
	So if you've got energy which is viable but stranded, Bitcoin can provide that business case until such a time as you can connect all the whole voltage wires and all that kind of stuff.
	Yeah, it's good for intermittents, not dispatchable base loads.
	Yeah, definitely.
	Better yet, how does Connor like his eggs since he eats six eggs a day?
	Well, a giant omelette?
	I'm not very inventive.
	I like cooking, I do, but I like to just sort of smuggle everything in cheese.
	So, there we go.
	Request for you.
	Can Dan do a Brokonomics on how the mainstream macro is supposed to work, at least as far as the Cathedral thinks?
	Yeah, I mean, I do kind of cover that in especially the first few episodes is how these things are supposed to work and how they've gone wrong.
	When are you doing your think piece on what happened in 2019?
	I haven't fully made up my mind, and there's lots of things that I can point to.
	Okay, Tom Harwood.
	Yeah, I can't...
	It is difficult to pin down exactly, and it's kind of...
	Maybe I could cover that as a part of another episode, because I can point at things, but I can't say definitively this is the thing that happened.
	Toll roads are increasing in the US as they privatise their highways.
	What are the UK thoughts on this?
	I know that they're already going to do road pricing because they're introducing electric cars and currently in the UK we have fuel duty which means you get a tax on fuel and so they need to displace it with something because god forbid they cut spending and stop pricing us out of everything so they're going to charge you by the mile or by the road.
	They're pushing you onto that using things like EULA zones, so you can see these ultra-low emission zones in pretty much every major city, and they're expanding outwards.
	So they're trying to get you onto very controllable electric cars.
	There's a scarcity of electric cars.
	A few people couldn't be driving anyway, and those that are driving will be paying by the mile, by the road.
	Which, if it were for the actual car companies, would kind of make sense, because the car companies would have a vested interest in maintaining the roads, but they're not.
	It's just going straight into the government coffers, so it's just another reason to tax you.
	Yeah, because I mean, I think we've still got that insane target of all cars need to be electric by 2030.
	Yes, we do.
	And it's nonsense.
	I mean, I like electric, well, I like Teslas because they're really, really fast and they're a lot of fun to drive.
	But to think that everybody could have one, we just don't have the capacity.
	That's the point.
	You could do it by hybrid.
	Because you can get something like six hybrids for every one full EV. Yeah, but they want to totally eliminate all emissions as a pretext to stop you driving.
	That's why, if a goal is set as unfeasible, this is what I learned in my time doing environmental policy, if me, an idiot in my bedroom, can foresee a bunch of issues that Whitehall...
	I admit that when they're paid, hundreds of people are paid to put together these reports for months on end, and I can go, guys, you're not going to meet your charging port target, and by the time you get there, the battery technology will outpace the charging ports, and so it won't be a sufficient voltage to actually charge it up in time, otherwise you're going to have 12 hours worth of cars in central London, outside an apartment block, stacking up against each other, and they're all going to set on fire.
	If I can recognise that, then either everyone's retarded Or there are deliberate omissions in here that mean that you'll never meet the goal because not meeting the goal is the point.
	It means to immiserate you.
	So last week I did a segment where I looked at a World Economic Forum report which basically admitted that by 2030 there would be a humanitarian crisis throughout the world as a result of a push for net zero.
	And their response was, well, yeah, but we're just going to do it anyway.
	They actually know how unworkable their policies are, but they simply don't have a reverse gear.
	Deliberate starvation mode.
	So I'm talking to Alex Epstein, who wrote Fossil Future soon, and he helpfully documents in his book all the examples of population control rhetoric coming out of the likes of Paul Ehrlich and Jane Goodall and Michael Mann, all these people that have consistently said, we need the population about 500 million, something about 500 years ago or so, maybe 2 billion tops, but we have to suffer extreme poverty.
	And it seems like they've got the Georgia Guidestones perspective on population, where they think, Oh, well, if we just engineer a crisis that seems to cut the population by a few billion, then it's just a necessary evil, isn't it?
	So that we still get all our goods and services and get to sit in the metaverse cooming to death.
	Would I do a book club on Thomas Aquinas?
	Yeah.
	I did pester Carl about it at some point Potentially because Carl When he covered the doctrine of fascism Compared it to Platonism And then said that's how Carl would talk about God And Thomas Aquinas Is known for translating And extrapolating plenty of his principles from Aristotle So I was a little bit offended So I think we're going to have to do a corrective measure because I think Plato's insane.
	Steadily and I are going to go over Plato and Aristotle's conceptions of art at some point because the man was mental.
	So, yeah, Aquinas would be quite interesting.
	Do you think the US and UK should...
	No, no, what's that?
	Should Callum trim his beard?
	Sure, I guess so.
	If the affecting egg production is halting reproduction clearly, and that's just the effect on the hens, what of the...
	I don't know, I wouldn't suppose so.
	If the feed is affecting egg production, it's halting reproduction clearly, and that's just the effect on hens, what are the roosters?
	I don't know what that means.
	Who in their right mind would buy an electric vehicle?
	If you want to go from London to Aberdeen by car, you can do it to six to seven hours in a petrol car with one refuel.
	Try doing an EV at that time.
	EVs are overpriced and pointless as they currently exist.
	Yeah, sure, as they currently exist, but if you're going to be banned from owning a petrol car by 2030, that's kind of the point.
	Yeah, to be fair, I mean, some of the EVs are like that.
	Some of the Teslas, I mean, they are actually pretty good cars, actually.
	And you can get like 300 miles on one, and then you basically stop for lunch, and in 40 minutes you're back at 80% charge.
	Yeah.
	I mean, good luck getting a bloody train instead, anywhere at this point.
	Have you seen that in March the 5th we're getting a 6% increase in rail fares?
	They're cutting return tickets to only be singles, which means that they can individually increase the price, because return tickets obviously have a slight discount if you buy in advance.
	They're getting rid of that now.
	They're also getting rid of paper tickets, which means that it's going to be incorporated into a social credit system.
	So if you say the wrong thing, you're not going to be able to buy a bloody train ticket.
	And that's if they show up anywhere, because they keep changing the train times, they keep having signal failures, they keep having overhead lines failures, and they keep having bloody strikes.
	And yes, I am mad about this, because I get six of them a day!
	Sorry.
	I don't miss the days travelling by train.
	I hate commuting.
	They've got one for you from Baystabe.
	Ah, right.
	Basically, oh, this is a big one, right.
	Dan, what's to stop us simply recreating the gold standard using, say, platinum instead?
	Go get a big old vault, tell people to bring their platinum, give them a promissory note for exchange with each other, convincing people the government to have actually screwed everything up.
	Not a hard sell, and this is a much more stable form of currency, and eventually people will use that instead of the government can...
	Yeah, well, okay.
	Um...
	So, I mean, yeah, you can, but what you end up doing is you end up centralizing and having to trust people, which, I mean, experiments like this have been tried in the past, and they either get shut down by the heavy hand of the law, who don't want people having their own currency system, or the person who you have to trust to hold onto your asset does something that causes you not to trust them.
	Which is why, as much as I like gold, and I feel that it does have a place, especially around commodities and energy trading, the better solution is probably going to be around Bitcoin.
	Oh, no, that's actually the episode, I think, today, the Bitcoin episode today, and it's Central Bank Digital Currencies Network.
	So, yeah, you can achieve what you're looking for, Mr.
	Ape, by potentially having a look at Bitcoin.
	So, yeah, that's worth thinking about.
	And then we've got a final couple of questions now, I think.
	Pete says, how do we stop the WEF plan to make slaves or cull us all?
	Well, I mean, they're racing up against the problem, which is their power structures are corroding beneath their feet and they are desperately scrabbling.
	So I think you need to reframe your mind to not so much seeing them as a big, scary, all controlling, powerful elite.
	What they actually are is the people at the top of a very fragile house of cards who are using that position to try and stay there, even though they can see that the house of cards is about to collapse beneath them.
	And long thoughts on this, and I'll cover it more in a dedicated segment or Brokonomics, but basically what helps us is the pace of innovation and events and their structures crumbling.
	Also self-sufficiency, I'm sure.
	I think I've said more eloquently than I can now all I can on this in the Wile E. Coyote economy video of where you're just going to have to hoard tangible assets, localise and keep up the pressure in exposing the policies and the arbitrariness of the economic system.
	That's all we can do, continually try and raise consciousness in people that things aren't right and hopefully they devolve enough power to themselves that we don't get monopolised easily.
	Last one then, Dan, who's your favourite Chancellor?
	Oh, I know.
	Chancellor Kang of the Klingon Empire.
	They're all shite.
	Sufficient answer.
	None of the other ones here.
	I did once read a book on the history of chancellors at university, but I can't remember it now.
	So certainly none of the recent ones.
	Must have been a compelling read.
	Definitely not Jeremy Hunt.
	Not the other word.
	Right, Dan, thank you very much as always.
	Thanks for watching, everyone.
	We'll be back tomorrow at one o'clock.

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