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July 31, 2023 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:31:02

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #708

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Seaters.
	This is episode 708 and this is Monday the 31st of July.
	I'm your host Stelios and I'm joined today by Dan.
	Hi guys.
	And we are going to talk about the revenge of the shoplifters, UFO the hearings, and Gen Z turning its back on parenthood.
	Now, In the UK, there is a rising sentiment that the police is more preoccupied with the diversity, inclusivity and equity, the die agenda.
	Yeah, I think they've given us good reason to suspect that might be the case.
	Than it is with law enforcement.
	What with painting their nails and wearing high heels and driving around in the rainbow cars and stuff like that.
	That was a clue, I think.
	Yeah, things like that.
	And there are also the videos where we see police officers who are unable to, let's say... Yes!
	You enforce the law.
	And those are always funny.
	I like those ones.
	Yeah, with the suspects.
	Yes.
	And there was some that was viral.
	If you remember, there were five police officers who couldn't detain a suspect.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	There was all sorts of...
	panic around this and it was weird because it showed basically that there are some police officers that have got the job and that they seem to be vastly underqualified or basically they don't seem to be the right people for the job.
	Well my dad was a policeman but that was back in the days when you had to be like I think at least six foot to get in.
	Okay.
	And now you get these five foot three women and you just think yeah how's that going to work?
	Yeah, and the problem with these incidents is that they are not isolated, and they get seen, they become viral, and this leads to the communication of a message of reluctance of the police force to enforce the law, and also a sense of futility in reporting crime, especially what are considered to be low-level offenses.
	Now, this sends the wrong message to the wrong people.
	It sends a message that, you know, you can get away with offenses.
	And it sends the wrong message to many vicious people.
	Now, speaking of vice and virtue, you can visit our website, Lotus Seekers, And you can basically subscribe with £5 a month and you can have access to all our premium content.
	And watch, for instance, the latest symposium that I did with Karl on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Part 1.
	There will be a Part 2 released this coming Thursday.
	Now, if you want to listen to Karl talking about vice and virtue, be sure to subscribe and watch our video.
	Now, back to our topic.
	According to GOV.UK, overall crime in the UK is decreasing.
	But there is an issue that this is very abstract.
	I mean, what do you mean by crime?
	What kinds of crime?
	And also, how do you measure this?
	Yeah, that's the thing I was going to say.
	That for me sounds very much like, you know, who's doing the counting?
	Who's doing the classification of crime?
	Exactly.
	And let us see this website here, the Office for National Statistics.
	It says, crime in England and Wales, year ending March 2023.
	So it compares many years that end in March.
	Each year ends in March.
	So we have March 2019 to March 2020, and it goes on.
	So it says, okay, main points.
	The latest figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, CSCW, for those interviewed in the year ending March 23, that means for the year March 2022 to March 2023, showed that compared with the year ending March 2020, Pre-COVID pandemic, total crime decreased by 15%.
	Across the same period, estimates for individual crime types showed that overall theft decreased by 20%.
	The largest reduction was seen in theft from the person, but falls were also seen in other theft of personal property, 31%.
	Domestic burglary, 30%, and vehicle-related theft, 18%.
	Criminal damage decreased by 33%.
	It says that there is a rise, especially a rise in electronic fraud.
	It says there was a 549% increase in advance fee fraud, while bank and credit accounts fraud decreased by 14%.
	And it says also here, police recorded robbery offenses were 17% lower than the year ending March 2020.
	However, it again stresses out pre-COVID pandemic.
	However, there was a 13% increase compared with the year ending March 2022.
	So, what they're doing in this website, they're actually saying, they're comparing data taken from the year March 2019 to March 2020, and they're comparing it with March 2022 to March 2023.
	But there is no comparison with the previous years.
	Or, they do say it, so they don't get... Yeah, I get this.
	I use the Office of National Statistics a lot, and what they put in the summary tends to be a bit misleading, because you can go into the data, but it's bloody hard work to start digging.
	It's not that accessible to start digging through and make the comparisons that you actually want to make.
	What I want is an AI interface to this, where I can ask the questions exactly like you just said.
	But I mean, just thoughts on that one, okay?
	Those are pretty big changes.
	So that has to be behavioral change.
	We know it has to be behavioral change because you can look at the prison population.
	Prison population has not moved.
	I mean, we're basically running at full prison capacity.
	It's not that high.
	I can't remember what it is, but it's much lower than you think it is, right?
	So either the behavior of the criminals has changed or, you know, the behavior of the reporting of crime has changed or something like that.
	But it's not like more criminals have been arrested or anything like that.
	That's definitely not happening.
	Let's continue.
	It says, police recorded offenses involving knives or sharp instruments decreased by 7%.
	But there has been a 5% increase since the year ending March, 2022.
	Also, it says, for instance, the number of offenses involving firearms decreased by 2% compared with the year ending March, 2020.
	But there was a 13% increase compared with the year ending March, 2022.
	So, the thing is that the whole report is structured in a way that it focuses on the comparison between three years ago and right now.
	But it doesn't show the trend.
	It doesn't focus on the trends with the previous years.
	They make some sparring remarks about it.
	You know, by the way, this increased.
	Everything goes well.
	Crime has been reduced.
	But it's because at some point in the past it was a lot and now it's less.
	But it's worse than last year.
	And last year was worse than the previous year.
	No, actually, there is a rise.
	Sorry.
	Let me revise the statement.
	There is a rise in crime.
	OK, so I don't.
	Yeah.
	So I'm not unfair.
	OK, so let's go here into the shot.
	Talk about shoplifting, which seems to be basically out of control.
	I came across this.
	This tweet here by Martin Dobney, who says lawless Britain, feral gangs, Swarm co-ops brazenly looting, smashing shops and assaulting staff.
	Police fail to respond to 71% of cases.
	Some forces don't respond to 90% of the calls.
	And we have plus 30% assaults and plus 35% crime and theft.
	Now let's play it.
	Watch this video, please.
	Now, we don't have an audio for this one, but it shows that co-op has reported a 35% increase in crime and antisocial behavior.
	So we see many people who are basically kicking and trying to forcefully enter into co-ops.
	And we have two security guards who basically desperately try to prevent them from walking into it.
	And we have people shoplifting and cook.
	But you really are a low class criminal when you make co-op the target of your criminal actions.
	Yeah.
	And it says that this week we had more than a thousand incidents in co-op of shoplifting.
	And it says that in the last year we have thousands and thousands of attempts to shoplift.
	We see here people who, again, forcefully enter behind the counter.
	They, you know, collect the loot.
	And there seems to be, they are calling for an urgent change in police response.
	Now, all of this, let's say, is contributing to a feeling of futility.
	Because, you know, why call the police?
	They're not going to do anything.
	I've got to say around me, I don't think the staff would even notice if you shoplifted because there's nobody in them.
	There's like one staff member wandering around, but it's all electric tilts.
	I mean, you could steal as much as you want.
	Nobody would see it.
	Yeah.
	So let's, if you're more interested into seeing about the co-ops, we see co-op shops hit by almost a thousand crime shoplifting and antisocial behavior incidents every day.
	Sorry, correct me.
	I said a week before, but it's every day.
	It says a freedom of information request by co-op showed that police failed to respond in 71% of serious retail crimes reported.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Now let's look at the sum of the data from Statista.com.
	Okay.
	It is data about the number of shoplifting offenses in England and Wales from the year 2002 to 2003 to 2022 to 2023.
	Now, if you look here, you will see that this is the year, our year now, and you will see a very huge increase in the last two years.
	Yep.
	So the COVID dip.
	Yes, there was a dip, but there is an increasing, there is a very rapid increase in the shoplifting incidents.
	Yes.
	Which I must add, these are the reported ones.
	Yes.
	If we factor in this sense of this rising sentiment of it being futile to talk to a police that won't respond to at least 70% of the cases, we will see that basically the reality is much clearer.
	When does this go back to?
	It must be the early 2000s.
	And if you were to draw a line of best fit, I mean, you're getting a gentle upward curve.
	I'm pretty sure vastly more cases, I mean, Probably all cases would have been reported in the early 2000s.
	And now I could imagine that a lot of it just simply doesn't get reported or even noticed for like the reasons I've said, the electronic checkouts and so on.
	And we see here that it sort of peaked in the years before the COVID pandemic and before the war, which suggests, it may suggest that I may be wrong, but it may suggest that it's not just an issue of cost of living crisis.
	Oh yeah, right.
	Are you going to get more into that?
	Because I've got definite thoughts on the cost of living stuff, right?
	So, I mean, there is this debate.
	What is the principal driver of crime?
	Is it poverty or is it demographics, to put it like that?
	Well, you can look at the Great Depression, so the 1930s.
	Very homogeneous group dynamics.
	A period of intense poverty for, you know, at least 10 years.
	No increase in crime.
	Crime rates stayed the same.
	So that debunks the whole argument that poverty drives crime.
	Clearly that's not the case.
	Then you can look at other Western demographics and you can see at all income scales the propensity towards criminal activity remains largely consistent.
	You know, so you can have millionaire sports players who still commit crimes.
	It's not shoplifting, but it is other types of crimes, propensity to violence and various things.
	So on the poverty demographics, you know, I'd suggest that a non-biased reading of it, the data says what it says.
	Right.
	Now, this, as you can imagine, creates a political problem.
	And conservatives now woke up and they want to tackle this shoplifting epidemic.
	And let's see what they have here with an article that was published at the time.
	So it says here that since the era of austerity, forces across the country have abandoned many inquiries Sorry, have a second?
	Yeah.
	Forces across the country have abandoned many inquiries into the most common crimes.
	Police have blamed pressure on resources, saying they need to focus on high-harm cases and the most vulnerable victims.
	Until now, police have often refused to investigate crimes under arbitrary levels, such as a 50-pound threshold for shoplifting, even when there is evidence.
	In the year to March, forces charged a suspect in only 2% of vehicle and bike thefts, 3% of low-level assaults, 4% of criminal damage cases, and 4% of residential burglaries.
	Yeah, so what I found interesting there is the framing of this as being a post-austerity thing.
	So what they mean by post-austerity is after the 2008 crisis.
	What also happened around about that time?
	Well, immediately after post-2008, everybody, the right and the left, was looking at the banks.
	They were looking at the power structures that had failed us at many different levels.
	Everybody was looking in the right direction, and then all of a sudden, woke and racial agitation got corporate sponsorship at the highest possible level, and this sort of demographic conflict got massively whipped up.
	So I would say, OK, it's not the austerity that's causing this, because that plays into the poverty narrative, which I don't believe.
	It goes to the other narrative, which is demographic conflict.
	Let me continue.
	Senior police sources told The Times that some forces had been doing the bare minimum of investigation, such as gathering CCTV evidence, conducting house-to-house inquiries, and keeping victims informed.
	They said it was a mistake to view the most common crimes as low-level and treat them in isolation, which may add to what you have been saying, because they had a major impact on people's lives and organized gangs were often involved.
	Now, in this climate, because these are promises, right now these are promises that the police is going to respond more.
	There is a sort of incentive to get creative.
	And the majority of the public, if you see, the government has already announced that police will no longer attend the majority of mental health call-outs, shifting the burden to health services in a move estimated to free one million hours of officer time.
	So they're saying we are basically giving this to the health services, and this is gonna free time for police officers to basically go back to basics.
	Hmm okay, so I mean there is definitely something there in that law enforcement is used as a proxy for mental health services.
	I was watching the weekend the interesting interview between Tucker and Andrew Tate And he was asked about Romanian jails and he said yeah they're basically full of mentally ill people because they don't have a mental health service out there so basically all the mentally ill people end up in in jails and it's used to sort of cover for that.
	So I'm broadly sympathetic to having decent mental health provisions that can help in some of this but when it's at the sharp end of you know of a criminal act being committed and you're sending out a bunch of social workers That feels like the wrong intervention at the wrong time.
	You want to be doing mental health at a different stage of that process.
	Yes, and I have the impression that there is an over-diagnosis of mental health incidents because we live in an era where mental health crisis is over.
	Everything becomes psychiatric.
	On some levels.
	Everything becomes a condition.
	Masculine behavior is considered a mental health.
	Yeah.
	Basically anything other than being a good girl is considered a mental health deficiency.
	So there are here many CCTV cameras that have evidence, but if the police says that it will require them more than some particular amount of time to investigate them, they're going to look over them, if they're going to respond.
	But there is also another issue.
	Let's show this because sometimes you could even be looking at CCTV and that would be a distraction.
	Let's watch this next video.
	We have here twerking trouble.
	Police in Florida say a suspected shoplifter helped her accomplice steal by twerking in front of the security camera to distract employees.
	Officers say the two women got away with nearly $400 worth of merchandise.
	So it's not just looking at the camera, it's knowing where to look and where not to look, because it could be a distraction.
	So you see here, the one was twerking in front of the camera.
	Everyone.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So let's move on here to Waitrose.
	Yeah.
	Change the video.
	Yep.
	Get rid of it.
	Get rid of it.
	Oh, thank God.
	Let's move to Waitrose.
	Waitrose says that it gets creative and it says, the cure for shoplifters, love bomb them.
	It says, Waitrose, as a supermarket claims, extra friendly to customers is an effective deterrent.
	Now, one thing, when people start talking about love bombing others, it sounds a bit sinister in the beginning, you know, the saying that, yeah, they love you, but they have a weird way of showing you.
	Apparently Waitrose doesn't have a weird way of showing it.
	Waitrose claims being extra friendly to customers could prevent shoplifting.
	It comes amid a sharp rise in theft at £1 billion a year amid cost of living crisis.
	Tell us in the comments whether you think that will work.
	I think it won't.
	I think they just got a sharp PR person.
	I think somebody reached out from the mail online to Waitrose and said, what's your strategy for shoplifting?
	And it occurred to them that they could get a piece in the papers about what a nice shop they are.
	What a friendly shop.
	Right.
	Let's watch the next video, please.
	What more twerking is it?
	People don't go to work in a supermarket to be abused or assaulted.
	Likewise, we don't go shopping only to see some unscrupulous thief running out with bottles of whiskey that they don't want to pay for.
	We're looking at shoplifting, and much of the growth in shoplifting is being put down to the cost of living, so one would assume that there are adults, over 18, who are shoplifting to help their children.
	Is it not unfair to only penalise and target the teens who are shoplifting, and not the grown-ups?
	Kindly show me the proof that it's driven by the cost of living crisis.
	Because I know... Because I know... Well, where's his research?
	I'd like to read her, please.
	Her research, thank you very much.
	I stand corrected.
	A lot of the shoplifting that I see is just greed, thieving, stealing.
	I don't think so.
	Absolutely.
	So they can take it down a pub and flog it to their mates.
	There are people stealing baby food, stealing formula, nappies.
	They're not doing that to flog it.
	They're doing it because they're desperate.
	They're doing it because they have no choice in the matter, because they can't afford to buy these things.
	But not everybody's doing it to get alcohol, are they?
	There's a high percentage of professional thieving going on out there.
	If we find out that most shoplifters are female, are we going to start banning all females from the shop?
	Where do we start?
	Where do we draw the line?
	If we start with the teenagers, where do we then say, okay, actually we find that a certain race is more likely to steal or a certain sexuality?
	Do we start saying that they can't go to the shop?
	I'm the slightest bit concerned in who's doing the thieving.
	I want the thieving tackled by security staff, by the police, by the Crown Prosecution System, so that people get in front of courts and are suitably punished.
	You're a former police officer.
	Yes.
	Why aren't the police tackling shoplifting?
	Who's changed the priorities?
	Many moons ago, the police, stupidly themselves, made it public that they wouldn't deal with shoplifting less than £200.
	That, of course, created a criminals' charter.
	And unfortunately, retailers and members of the public are paying the price for it.
	Because so much is disappearing, which is not paid for, the retailers up the prices and us, the straight runners, go and have to pay more money.
	I must say, I don't understand why you said she was based.
	Well, she was basically just saying, you know, if you ban these people from the shops, the problem goes away.
	Actually, the other person, the ex-police officer, was saying that, you know, you need to make something.
	I don't think he was in favor of that policy, but I think she was trying to apply pressure.
	She was trying to apply extra pressure so that she would pressure him to conform into the woke agenda.
	So what are you saying there?
	What are you saying?
	What if some people of a particular group started doing this?
	Would you say that they shouldn't go into it?
	So I don't think she was saying anything.
	Instead of dealing with the issue, she immediately ideologized it.
	Yeah, and I must say, I used to live in a vibrant area of London, and the closest place to get a sandwich next to the office was a Boots.
	And I used to go in there and see shoplifting all the time.
	And it was never from the food section.
	It was always basically stealing makeup and stuff like that.
	This narrative about poverty, it just doesn't work.
	I want you to have a look at the next clip, which is basically the whole narrative par excellence here.
	It's advocated by some people and I want your reaction to it.
	What we have to ask ourselves is what is a bigger injustice in our society?
	Is it the fact that millions of people in a very wealthy country can't afford to feed themselves properly anymore?
	Or is it the fact that people are nicking fruit and fiber?
	Do you think it's wrong for shops to put the tanks on?
	I do, actually.
	I think it's really wrong.
	And it's wrong on so many levels.
	These companies are multinational companies, right?
	They've got the money.
	And I'm not advocating at all any form of shoplifting, because it's a criminal offence.
	And it's wrong.
	It's morally wrong, right?
	But if you can't put tags on, then it makes it easier.
	No, these are basic, fundamental shopping items that everyone... What about corner shops?
	No, that's even worse, because that's someone's livelihood.
	They don't have the money.
	But what if a corner shop puts the tags on?
	No, but I don't think anyone should put the tags on.
	We all agree we don't want shoplifting, so let's abolish the underlying causes.
	Why shouldn't a corner shop put the tags on?
	Because that's a big part of that person's income.
	We should abolish the underlying cause of shoplifting.
	Is he being accidentally based again?
	If you actually put tags on things, it highlights, oh, I'm here to be nicked.
	Harry, what do you think?
	Tags on nappies we've heard about.
	Well, nappies, blocks of cheese, things you need to zip into pocket.
	No, you just bloody punish people.
	Yeah, but you know, the funniest thing here is when she says, don't put security tagging because it screams, I'm here to be nicked.
	To shoplifters, everything does.
	Okay.
	So.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	And, and one other thing though, because it, many people don't notice it because it's in the context of, you know, the left is always the sensitive one.
	Now, they're talking about multinationals that, you know, they can afford it, as this person said.
	What about small-sized to medium-sized businesses who cannot afford it?
	What about them?
	You don't mind?
	Okay.
	Now, one thing, next link, let's see what is being done, in some cases, because I want to end in sort of a white pill.
	Now, the government announces that there will be, as we said, that there will be, that the police will no longer attend the majority of mental health call-outs.
	Right.
	Suella Braverman has promised that there will be reduced And also we need to talk a bit about the chief constable of Greater Manchester.
	Anyway, sorry, I can't find it here, but I'm just going to tell you.
	We have a Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, Steve Watson, who has called for a return to back to basics approach, which seems to be working.
	And it has a 38% increase in charges for burglary, 22% increase for robbery, and 53% increase for vehicle So there are things to be done.
	So I like fundamentally the way that he's approaching this because that is the opposite to the Statistica thing.
	The Statistica thing is saying of the crimes recorded in the database, these have gone down.
	Don't care.
	Because I can see prison numbers aren't going up.
	What he's saying is the charges for burglary are going up.
	That tells me the police are doing something.
	It's not just the number crunchers And this is the main difference between the left and others, the way they view things.
	This is a specific policy that is meant to tackle a specific problem.
	So if you see before Owen Jones and the other person, they were constantly talking about, well, it's all about restructuring society completely.
	It's all about justice.
	It is, but they have a really weird view of justice.
	But what they're doing is that they are shifting from something that should be the judges at the judges' discretion to the shop owners and the police officers because they constantly have this argument, well, okay, what would you do if, for instance, you were completely desigate?
	You would go and steal and whatever.
	They put this line of argument.
	That's up to the judges to decide.
	It's not up to the shop owner or the police officers.
	So that's it.
	I think that, you know, there's a shoplifting epidemic and it needs urgent tackling.
	Now, one thing to say, because I heard that recently that soon you're going to be going on vacation.
	Yes, plan to.
	Will you go to a sunny place or not?
	Hopefully.
	Hopefully.
	So, because there's a shoplifting epidemic, I would strongly incentivize you to buy sun protection.
	Well, it's not that sort of holiday.
	I'm taking the missus with me.
	Yeah, but no, no, no, no, no.
	Because maybe they steal it and maybe you get a sunburn.
	Like the daughter of Heidi Klum.
	Heidi Klum's modern daughter, Lenny, she shares a glimpse of her horrific sunburn during Exotic Getaway.
	So maybe, you know, you don't want to get a sunburn done.
	Yeah, right.
	On to your segment.
	Yes.
	Stelios, do you remember that balloon that floated menacingly over the US a couple of months back?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	What was it?
	It was the spy balloon.
	Was it a balloon?
	Yes.
	So, I mean, everybody was all over this at the time.
	It was like a fad for a week.
	It was in the news stories.
	And everybody was convinced it was a Chinese spy balloon.
	You know, the right and the left were convinced of this.
	The left was saying, okay, yeah, it's a spy balloon, but, you know, don't worry about it too much.
	We can't shoot it down because, you know, you can't just go shooting stuff down over the US.
	And the right was saying, yes, it's a spy balloon, but you've got to shoot it down.
	It's the right thing to do.
	And eventually the compromise was they let it fly out over the other side and then they shot it down and then they recovered it, right?
	Now, amongst that furthor, there was one man who doubted the narrative on that.
	Let's have a look at this clip.
	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 he just said it is.
	It just feels, 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 tension, of the othering, of the, you know, of let's get one over on them.
	So wise man that.
	Is this the man, the notorious man who won against Clint Eastwood in the Who Would You Marry competition?
	Yes, that one.
	So anyway, so that segment, I sort of go through my reasonings as to why I think there's something else going on, which is a building up of tensions against China.
	And this is basically a useful mechanism for that.
	But the logic just didn't make sense to me for actually being a spy balloon.
	So anyway, so that happened, they shot it down.
	And then what happened is you then had the US basically flying around shooting down a whole load of balloons, including $180 So where are we now, five months later after this story which only one brave man said is not what it seems?
	Well, we've got this Reuters article.
	Sidewinder missile.
	So that went on.
	Anyway, so where are we now, five months later after this story, which only one brave man said is not what it seems.
	Well, we've got this Reuters article, so let's have a look at this.
	I'll read you the key bit, Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder told reporters, "We assessed that it did not collect while flying over the US.
	The balloon did not transmit any data to China.
	It never collected any while flying over the US." Right, so it didn't do any spying.
	It didn't even collect any data.
	And he said, we are aware it has information gathering technology.
	I mean, there are people who are in the mood of shooting stuff on air for a hobby.
	Yeah, but I don't want...
	$100 balloons being shot down with $400,000 Sidewinder missiles.
	I mean, I know they like debts and deficits a bit like we do, but that is a bit ridiculous.
	So he said that it did have information-gathering technology, but it wasn't used.
	So what do we mean by information-gathering technology?
	So a microphone or a camera of any sort, which you'd expect to find on a weather balloon.
	Um, you know, had that.
	Anyway, so basically, you get into this, um, the follow-on story from this.
	It turns out that this balloon, five months ago, it didn't have any special equipment at all.
	In fact, all of the equipment on it was standard equipment that you could buy, um, retail.
	And actually, the vast majority of it was American technology.
	So you could have recreated that balloon by going into retail stores in the US.
	So, you know, not a spy balloon, not an EMP device, you know, not the next generation of radar technology or anything like that.
	But this is the sort of thing.
	So all of these stories, they come along and, you know, they capture everybody's attention.
	And then they let out a little addendum to it, you know, a little follow-up that goes on like page seven of, well, I don't know.
	Usually they break the news when there is another event and we have stories like that.
	You know, nothing burgers.
	Come out of nowhere to divert public attention.
	Yeah, I think that's a lot of what it was.
	And actually, if you follow this one through, it turns out that basically what happened is the land-based radar systems received an upgrade.
	And after they received an upgrade, they started picking up loads more stuff, including these little hobbyist balloons and this one.
	I mean, this one was quite large.
	It was visible from the ground, which is what got them there.
	But basically, the new radar system got upgraded, got a whole load more stuff.
	Big story for a week.
	Lots of furore, lots of ratcheting up against tensions against China, and then the correction comes out, and I bet nobody noticed the correction.
	I mean, I managed to notice it, but I mean, I could have easily missed this one, so I felt the need to do a follow-up.
	And I almost didn't do a follow-up until I saw something which I thought was actually vaguely connected.
	Did you catch the pod on Friday where Carl was talking about UFOs?
	Now, I thought, ooh, that's bloody interesting, because, yeah, it's an interesting subject, but I hadn't picked up on the hearings either, so I saw Carl's segment on that, and then I went and started having a look at, you know, the hearings that sat underneath it.
	Now, in the segment on Friday, Carl was fairly open-minded towards the idea of aliens actually being here.
	I seem to remember that he wasn't always quite so open-minded on the idea of aliens.
	Let's watch this.
	Hello, freak bitches.
	There was a WikiLeaks that was just released today about NASA knowing about aliens.
	Really?
	Yes!
	Bollocks.
	Yeah, basically.
	So that was a Joe Rogan thing between Karl and Rogan, I think back in 2017.
	And that was really when things started to get ramped up.
	There was a New York Times article that came out then, which was like pushing this stuff.
	And basically, it's been really interesting since then, because there's been Constant drip drip of stuff coming out of the US government saying, Ooh, maybe aliens, you know, maybe you might want to check this out.
	And they, and they kind of leak it out in this sort of give us a bit of homework.
	Yeah.
	It's like, you know, we're not, we're not saying anything, but you know, maybe aliens.
	Right.
	Anyway.
	So, so this is, this is a typical example.
	This is, this is a more recent thing.
	This is a NASA briefing on UFO sightings.
	This is an example of one that I showed at the hearing recently.
	This is a spherical orb, metallic, in the Middle East, 2022, by an MQ-9.
	I will come back to the sensor question that David raised here in a moment.
	This is a typical example of the thing that we see most of.
	We see these all over the world, and we see these in making very interesting, apparent maneuvers.
	This one in particular, however, I would point out, demonstrated no enigmatic technical capabilities and was no threat to airborne safety.
	So, I mean, this is one example.
	This is a NASA briefing, but, I mean, the Navy has been releasing a whole load of footage of stuff like this, where they show you these, like, fast-moving orb-type things going around.
	I've seen some counter-perspective that says actually the fast-moving stuff is a little bit suspicious, because basically, if you have a fast-moving aircraft, Um, monitoring something that's actually moving reasonably slowly, but the fast-moving thing is looking down on it, and then the thing is sufficiently high.
	Basically, the optical effect as you go past is that the thing is moving very fast over the land, but actually it could be moving quite slowly.
	Okay.
	But anyway, there is definitely a feeling that the US establishment wants us to be discussing the possibility of aliens.
	Thus this meme, which I just thought was, um, Yes.
	Yeah.
	If you are listening to this and you get the opportunity to take a look at the podcast, there was a beautiful meme there.
	I won't spoil it for you.
	Right.
	Anyway.
	Unidentified flying object doesn't have to be aliens.
	Oh, yes.
	We haven't identified it yet.
	Oh, yes.
	But there was.
	Yes.
	So I agree.
	But there was a lot of hinting.
	Yes.
	That's exactly what it is.
	OK.
	Because it was identified then.
	Well no it's not.
	It's an unknown to the public flying object.
	Yes, yes.
	And actually this is one of the things I was going to mention but I'll mention it now.
	A lot of it comes back to the same issues we talked about before with the weather balloon thing.
	It's an upgrade to the radar sensor.
	So the upgrade to the radar sensor got that balloon that we had in April.
	But the military guys got their upgrade in the early 2000s.
	And then when they did that, they started picking up a whole load of more stuff, these little blips, which were probably again balloons, most of them.
	And when they got this big data set of unidentified stuff, they were able to identify about half of it.
	and the half that they did identify were balloons.
	So maybe the other half is like, yeah, all aliens.
	It's Zargon coming to spend a weekend in Vegas or whatever it is.
	But anyway, so the UFO hearings that Carl alluded to on Friday, so these guys came up.
	So this David Fravar, the Ryan Graves and the David Grush chap.
	So I spent the weekend skimming through on 2X Speed as much of this as I could to sort of get a feeling for what's going on.
	So So let's dig a little bit.
	Let's start with that David Craver guy.
	So that was one of the original TikTok viewing footage that came out.
	So he was a Navy pilot and basically in 2004 he says that he had an encounter with an alien craft that lasted about five minutes.
	What was the nature of his contact?
	Because there are people who write books about their encounters of a fourth kind and they're weird.
	So basically what he was saying is there was a disturbance in the water that looked like it could be a submarine or something like that but there was something going on under the water and then this tic-tac thing came out and sort of flew around a bit and spiraled around a bit.
	And there's some footage that's been released of this stuff, and the problem is that when you look at the footage, it's completely unremarkable, because it's like, you know, what the hell am I looking at here?
	What makes it credible?
	It's just a flying object, you don't know what it is.
	Well, I mean, you don't know what you're looking at, so the footage itself isn't that remarkable.
	What makes it remarkable is the narrative that gets laid on top by the pilot, because the pilot is a credible, respectable person, elevates the footage that would otherwise seem remarkable.
	So the combination of the two, the testimony, the narrative and the footage that goes with it.
	Because actually, again, with that footage, a lot of the stuff could be explained by optical illusions and so on.
	There's things about them rotating in another one, which could be linked back to the camera system and all this kind of stuff.
	Anyway, so he's a pilot and he said he saw this thing for five minutes.
	His wingman, who was actually a wing lady, Alex Anne Dietrich, was torn on that.
	You don't want to be sexist with...
	No, so wing person, whatever we describe them as.
	A wing officer?
	Yes, yes, perhaps that.
	So she's scored on the idea that it was a five minute encounter, which you described that would have been a lifetime in observational terms.
	It was more like 10 seconds at most.
	But actually, I found her interesting as well, because she's spoken to some reporters.
	She didn't come on to this thing, but she has spoken to reporters.
	And what she describes is that when they got back to the Nimitz, And, you know, said we've seen this unexplainable thing.
	Basically the senior officers just weren't interested.
	They didn't think it was important.
	So either they've seen enough pilots misidentify something, Or they're read in on the alien situation.
	Or they've been told, oh, your naval research is testing some drones.
	If your pilots see anything, just dismiss it.
	But they didn't seem particularly bothered about what was going on.
	And that was a consistent theme as well.
	Ryan Graves, he's on there as well.
	Acting as if they knew what it was.
	Well, what she says is they just weren't that interested.
	It's like, well, you know, if I walked into the office, and I said, oh, yeah, I met Zarg on the Destroyer outside, he's just landed.
	And people would be like, oh, that's interesting.
	There would be a bit of reaction to it, as long as you believe me, right?
	Whereas she went back to the Nimitz and said, you know, we've seen these things, like, okay, right, fine.
	Anyway, so Alan Graves had that as well.
	So he again is a former Navy pilot, and he claims that his squadron saw UFOs every day for a period of months between 2014 and 2015.
	He says he never saw them himself, but this was in a military training area, and it was a lot of blips after they upgraded their radar system, which is my link back to the original story of the Chinese weather balloon, right?
	And also we know that the training area they're in, we now know, isn't that far away from a Chinese spy base in Cuba, I think it is.
	Okay.
	So again, you know, what were they?
	Were they balloons or something like that?
	Because a lot of them were just blips on the radar, but they didn't see.
	Too many balloons.
	Is it like IT or something?
	What?
	From the horror movie with the balloons, you know, Pennywise.
	Oh, yeah.
	Too many balloons.
	Yeah, I don't think it's those sort of balloons.
	I don't think it's like the red ones.
	I think it's something else.
	I think they're like silvery metallic type things or whatever.
	Anyway, and he relates the story of basically, I can't remember if this is history or somebody that he worked with, but basically two airplanes flying along and a balloon type thing with like a cube inside basically whizzed past between the two planes at incredibly close range, right?
	Um, and again, he went back to the, um, I can't remember if he was the Nimitz or something else.
	He might have been, um, Theodore Roosevelt.
	Shit, whatever.
	Anyway, so he goes back there and starts describing this to more, um, senior pilots, because he would have been quite a young man at the time.
	He would have been a, you know, A fairly young pilot.
	And apparently the senior pilots looked at the footage for about five seconds and then just shrugged and walked off.
	So again, the same experience.
	The more seasoned officers didn't seem to think that this was a thing and didn't really respond to it.
	But they're convinced that they saw something remarkable and, you know, it's become a bit of a thing for them.
	And these guys have been talking about it for years.
	And then you've got that guy in the middle, the David Grush guy.
	So he's a former intelligence officer.
	And again, I find it interesting that he doesn't say anything, he doesn't say that he saw anything first-hand.
	No one saw anything first-hand?
	Well, David Fravor did, but the rest of them all seem to be second-hand stories.
	And the Gersh guy is basically explaining how the US has crashed alien spacecraft.
	They have non-human bodies have been recovered.
	I don't know what they mean by non-human bodies.
	Was it, you know, was it a Soviet chimp, you know, smacking buttons?
	I don't know.
	But anyway, non-human bodies have been recovered.
	And basically, his answer to every question was, I can't talk about this in an open setting.
	So, you know, let's have a closed session and I can tell you much more about the specific questions.
	So, I mean, there was a lot of excitement ginned up for this, I understand, hoping that, because these men have made extraordinary claims.
	Was he called there to testify or did he go to testify?
	Because otherwise it seemed a bit like a gossip.
	I have something to tell you, but I won't say, I can't say it.
	Yeah, so the way I think it works with these things is you are formally called to them, but these guys have been putting themselves out there doing interviews and having discussions and basically making a lot of noise about what their experience is for a long time now, so they would be the logical people to reach out to.
	So they were summoned, but I think they were perfectly happy to have that.
	Another thing that I found interesting is they all cite a New York Times article.
	That was hugely influential.
	This is a 2017 article that I pointed to earlier.
	Let's see if we can throw that up on the screen.
	So yeah, that's the one.
	So this New York Times article was cited by all the guys in the hearings multiple, multiple times.
	They kept on saying, I urge people to go and read this article.
	So for those of you who haven't read it, let me give you the highlights.
	It talks about the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.
	For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program participants, and records obtained by the New York Times.
	The program produced documents that described sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift.
	Officials with the program have also studied video encounters between unknown objects and military aircraft, including one released in August of a whitish oval object about the size of a commercial plane chased by two Navy fighter jets from the aircraft Nimitz off the coast of San Diego in 2004, which I think was that David guy.
	Um, the program collected video and audio recordings of reported UFO incidents, including footage from a Navy aircraft surrounded by some sort of glowing aura traveling at high speed as it rotated as it moves.
	The Navy pilots can be heard trying to understand what they're seeing.
	There's a whole fleet of them, one exclaims.
	A 2009 Pentagon briefing summary of the program, prepared by its director at the time, asserted that what was considered scientific fiction is now science fact, and that the United States is incapable of defending itself against some of these technologies discovered.
	My obvious reaction to that is going to be that the United States doesn't know how to do defence anyway.
	It only ever does attack, and it lost against the Taliban, who were wearing sandals.
	So, you know, space aliens with access to four-dimensional physics, I would say, stand a pretty good chance.
	I've actually done a Broconomics on this alien stuff not too long ago, so that's going to be my plug.
	So, Broconomics aliens.
	Basically, I go in there into My reasoning on what I think is happening, and I sort of break it down maths-wise as to what I think is going on, because basically my pitch in that one is that I think there are definitely alien civilizations out there.
	And my logic for that is because the universe is a massively big place.
	And I use a sort of a trick to try and explain how many stars there are.
	But imagine Elon Musk, right?
	He's got $150 billion.
	$150 billion.
	But I imagine every dollar was a star.
	That's still nowhere near to the amount of stars in the universe.
	There's way more than 150 billion stars in the universe.
	Because the visible universe isn't the entire universe.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	That's a big part of it.
	So what if you took every human on earth and you made them all as rich as Elon Musk and each dollar was a star, would you now have the amount of stars in the universe?
	No.
	Nowhere close.
	Okay.
	What about if you add in all the mammals?
	Nope.
	What if you add in all the fish?
	Nope.
	What if you add in all the birds?
	No, still nowhere.
	So if you took every single individual, and I'm not talking about species, I'm talking about every single individual fish, bird, mammal, human, and gave them all 150 billion, and each dollar represented a star, you are still nowhere near to the amount of stars in the universe.
	In fact, you have to add on insects, because there are thought to be 10 quadrillion insects on the Earth.
	But if you add those on, And you make each individual insect as rich as Elon Musk, and each dollar represents a star, right?
	Finally, you're up to the amount of stars in the universe.
	So it is a phenomenal amount of stars out there in the universe, right?
	And like you say, and it's even debatable, we know how big the universe is because of the observable compared to the whole thing, right?
	So Basically, through sheer weight of numbers, I find it almost inconceivable that there aren't other sophisticated alien civilizations out there.
	The problem is, they're very far away, and speed of light is a big limiting factor.
	So then I turn it around and say, okay, well how likely is it that they've come here?
	And the argument there goes, why would they even look at us in the first place?
	Well, yeah, so I don't even agree with that bit, right?
	But I'm thinking about what would have alerted them to us being here.
	Because the thing that a lot of the alien people agree is that these things started showing up after the nuclear missile tests, nuclear weapons went off.
	And that makes sense because that is a pretty clear signal that radiates out into space that somebody's doing something interesting on that planet.
	But the problem is, right, is that that propagates out at the speed of light Right, and then they'd have to come back here at the speed of light.
	So let's say that they were able to come back at 90% of the speed of light.
	Let me just be a contrarian.
	Yeah, you're going to go to the trans-dimensional travel stuff?
	Yeah, could be.
	Let me finish my thought.
	Yeah, but I'll finish my thought now.
	But the thing is, even if you say, okay, they had instantaneous travel here, right?
	The sphere of knowing about us, because this information propagates out at the speed of light, right?
	So you can basically then say, okay, well, that's the sphere around our planet, because the bombs went off whatever they were like 60 years ago or something like that, or 70 years ago.
	So it has to be within a 70 light year radius, but they would have been alerted to the fact that we're here.
	And when you calculate the number of stars in that system, and then you run it through the Drake equation, basically you need to dial the Drake equation all the way to the top.
	And if there are civilizations living that close to us in that radius, then the number of civilizations in just our galaxy alone is vast.
	I mean, millions and millions and millions of them, which maybe, but then I come on to...
	I'm not saying that there are not.
	I think also that chances are that there is life out there.
	I don't know the form it takes, but you never know how advanced it is.
	That's the issue.
	Maybe it's from our current physics that we think that nothing is faster than light, but we don't know if they have more advanced physics.
	And in that case, as you said before, we are in a more precarious situation.
	Yes.
	I think we definitely need to colonize stars.
	Because if there is an event that Earth is being attacked, we need to have a second on other planets.
	I think if we're being attacked by something that understands how to cross interstellar distances, we don't have the remotest of a chance.
	It would be like the USS Nimitz going up against an anthill in your garden.
	I don't think we stand the slightest chance.
	I'm not worried about it, but basically where I get to in that episode is I then go on to say, okay, you can basically track, there's like a 10 to 15 year lag between the alien sightings that people see, the shapes that they describe, and then new US aircraft Um, coming out of top secrecy.
	So all of the sightings in the 1950s described a shape which then basically closely resembled the B-2 when that came out and so on.
	You can basically follow it through the decades that, you know, there is a particular shape of UFO observed and then 10 to 15 years later, either that aircraft then emerges Or you then get a declassification of a program that was working on something but then didn't get anywhere and then iskabel was scrapping it so we can declassify it now.
	And in all cases the sightings follow the test aircraft stuff.
	And then basically where I end up with on that one is the PSYOP angle of this.
	Which is, I can smell Psyop all over this stuff, so that's interesting.
	Now, I also want to address your trans-dimensional point, because what you're alluding to there is, don't be constrained by Einsteinian physics, right?
	It's a general point about physics.
	Physics is an ongoing institution.
	So you speak to some physicists who are just absolutely convinced, no, speed of light Well, they don't even say speed of light, they say speed of information, which in their minds also covers, you know, wormholes and all the rest of it.
	You can't possibly travel faster than that.
	There is, you know, looking at post-Einsteinian physics, which is something that Eric Weinstein talks about.
	We've got a tweet from him here because this point that you're making about much faster travel came up.
	Um, and, and he, he responded to that.
	Um, he also sort of go, yeah, yeah.
	So that's the tweet.
	So, so when they were describing the, uh, you know, the, uh, the issue of, of being troubled, you know, faster than the speed of light.
	Now I, I have followed up on his stuff and his arguments, um, for how he thinks it could be done.
	Right.
	And, and he's basically saying, okay, so if this stuff is viable, then there were possibly 10 extra dimensions.
	And it's either six and four, one way or the other.
	So it's either six spatial dimensions and four temporal dimensions, or six temporal and four spatial, right?
	I have no idea what that implies.
	Well, I mean, you even tried getting your head... Well, okay, so a super dumbed-down layman's version of this, which is all I'm capable of giving you, which is like, can you imagine a one-dimensional object?
	I remember they were saying about Pac-Man that it's two-dimensional.
	Yeah, well, I'll start with the string, but imagine a one-dimensional string, right?
	Yeah.
	If you had access to the second dimension, you could fold that string through the second dimension, you could make the string cross at points, so that you could travel from one end of the string to the other in a moment, okay?
	Like a wormhole.
	Yes.
	Now imagine a two-dimensional object, right?
	If you've got a piece of paper that had no height, because actually a piece of paper is a three-dimensional object, right?
	Yeah.
	Imagine a perfectly flat two-dimensional object.
	If you had access to the third dimension, you could fold the two-dimensional object through it and make it touch at various points.
	And the same logic goes for if there was a fourth spatial dimension, you can fold three-dimensional space through the fourth dimension in order to make points meet, right?
	Tell us in the comments how you think we can access higher dimensions.
	That doesn't involve an ayahuasca ceremony, right?
	Yeah.
	So that's basically what's going on.
	But I mean, you try getting your head around six extra spatial dimensions and four temporal dimensions.
	I mean, I don't know.
	Is there anyone on the planet who could do this?
	So basically the point is, if these aliens, like either A, have the engineering chops to harness enough energy to travel at say 90% the speed of light in order to get here, they are so far ahead of us.
	And if they've mastered trans-dimensional maths and trans-temporal maths, And I don't mean like, you know, when I say trans, I don't mean, you know.
	Transcending.
	Yes, yes, that kind of stuff.
	So if basically we're up against aliens that can understand six spatial dimensions and four temporal dimensions, so they're that smart, but they can't get their head around the concept of the ground.
	And so they keep coming here and crashing into the ground.
	Maybe they watch War of the Worlds and they know that the minute they opened their gates they had some sort of germs that killed them.
	And maybe they want to make sure.
	Yeah, but by flying into the ground.
	Yeah.
	That's the thing.
	I think if they're smart enough to do all of this stuff and cross dimensions in order to travel from one side of the universe to the other and get here in an instant, they're not going to keep crashing into the ground, are they?
	I mean, we've got like Tesla autopilot, which can basically drive you from your home to the office most of the time without crashing.
	And these guys are like a million years ahead of us.
	What?
	A drunk alien pilot.
	Yeah, so that is basically the closest you can get to a logical argument on this, is that there are aliens with advanced technology, but in their society they also have certain demographics that don't behave responsibly, and they basically come joyriding and crash into stuff while on the alien version of weed or something.
	I've been on this for three years and I can't find anybody who speaks this language, which now that is a huge clue.
	going on or is there something real going on right so again so talking about eric eric weinstein you know what what does he think is going on with um this because what he alludes to is okay well where are all the physicists that are supposed to be working on this let's see what he says i've been on this for three years and i can't find anybody who speaks this language which now that is a huge clue imagine that you say that we've lost control of our airspace we're being menaced uh threats to civilian aviation military aviation
	they're seeing these things every day they defy the physical laws and there are no physicists anywhere to be found that smells like bs or it smells like a pathological level of bureaucratic incompetence and marco rubio and kirsten gilderrand if you're out there um can you please find out why there are no technically competent people on an area on an area of national security and And please don't mumble the word stovepipe or need to know or sources and methods.
	I mean, we had a Manhattan Project.
	We staffed it with physicists.
	You have a physics problem.
	If these things are here, Joe, they are here from so far out of town or they are co-mingling with us on Earth.
	I can't tell you which.
	Yeah.
	So his argument is basically that the number of people who graduate with a PhD in physics, it's not a big number.
	You know, you can see these people coming through the university system, unless they're running a shadow university system, which doesn't seem right.
	I mean, you got a PhD.
	Is it likely that they're picking up people at 11 or 13 or 15 and then running them through a parallel university system to get their PhD?
	That would be very rare.
	I mean, it could be the case.
	Yeah, but it sounds right and plausible.
	Maybe they've found some, you know, prodigies or something.
	Yeah, but it doesn't seem right, does it?
	So you can track the number of people who are graduating with a PhD in physics.
	And then you can say, OK, well, where are these people?
	You know, where have they gone?
	And it's not like there's a huge number of them who are dropping off the radar, contributing nothing, but they're just moving to a big house in Virginia.
	And, you know, the whole bunch of them are clustering there and driving off to, you know, some intelligence agency every day.
	That's not happening.
	Right.
	So so he's saying, well, if we've got alien technology, Why aren't there a big clustering of people with the skill set necessary to do it?
	Anyway, in that interview, he then goes on to talk about the three types of physicists that you would want, and I cannot for the life of me remember the names of them, but it's three disciplines within physics that you would need if you were going to try and reverse-engineer this technology that we seem to be seeing, and then not going off to work for the government and that kind of stuff.
	Where is there concentrations of people with PhD in physics in these areas?
	Where are they clustered?
	And I'm going to give you a little bit of analogy now for my old thing, private equity, because I would often encounter smart people from basically, you know, anywhere.
	It would be quite common to find somebody who was formerly a barrister or a surgeon or loads of physicists would crop up in venture capital and private equity because it's like, well, they just wanted to make some money, right?
	So is there an unusual concentration of them in one place?
	Well, actually, there might be.
	So let's have a look at this.
	This is a website of a remarkably successful hedge fund, Renaissance Technology Websites.
	Can we go to the About tab, please?
	Can we click into that?
	And yeah, there we go.
	You can see it there.
	90 PhDs in mathematics, physics and computer science.
	It just so happens that there's a New York hedge fund With a remarkable, absolutely remarkable concentration of people with maths and physics degrees in exactly the areas that you would want if you were looking into this stuff.
	Now, this hedge fund is quite remarkable.
	I can't quite get my head around what they did because the way that I approached it was more about people and business logic and stuff like that.
	These are quant-drivens.
	So these are guys who basically sort of, you know, just do numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers.
	This is going to happen and nobody can follow all the bloody hell they've said.
	But their returns are astonishing.
	I mean, they're averaging over a long period, something like 66% returns year after year, which is just ridiculous.
	I mean, this is a money printing machine, this hedge fund.
	Um now I mean 66% in any one year is is unremarkable but just trust me over a long period that is just that is just absurd and it happens to have all of these people that you would want if you were running this so you know I'm not I mean it might actually just be a hedge fund it probably is there's like a it's very very probable it's just a hedge fund full of smart people but that could be a possible front for Alien reverse engineering.
	I'm just saying.
	Okay.
	I'm just following the logic of Eric Weinstein, okay?
	Right.
	So anyway, so what I had been thinking was that all of this, right, it's an either-or.
	It's either aliens have turned up and they're like buzzing around like drunk aliens, like you've said, or it's a psy-op.
	And I just wanted to throw in one final perspective from one guy who sounds quite interesting, one of these UFO-type people.
	He presents a third option, which, no, it isn't either a PsyOp or aliens.
	Actually, it could be both.
	Let's watch this.
	It's a distinction between what humans are doing and what is, let's call it, innate extraterrestrial activities.
	Now, I think the complexity of that is a barrier to its understanding.
	In other words, In 1991, I had a pretty senior intelligence official who was involved with this subject come to me.
	He says, if you tell the public the truth about this, the truth is less believable than the fiction we've been selling.
	So remember that in 1953, we have a document from the director of the CIA talking about the quote, psychological warfare value of the UFO subject.
	There's a 1985 CIA document describing the psychological warfare value of their operations in Brazil and Argentina that have been abducting and torturing civilians made to look like an alien event.
	So when someone who's new to the subject, like Mr. Grush, who's quite young, and some of these congressmen who are just learning about it, they don't have the information yet.
	Which is what we're trying to get to them that you have to entertain to Totally separate events going on, but they're copycat.
	So since, you know, if you look at the reverse engineered human craft, we call them ARVs or alien reproduction vehicles, or ATs, just advanced technology craft.
	Those simulate an ET craft pretty closely to look at it up close, but in terms of their maneuverability, how they come and go.
	And we've also created what's called stagecraft to cause abductions of people.
	Now, why would that happen?
	Because they eventually want to sort of have a global, militaristic, totalitarian grip on the whole public about there being some alien invasion.
	It's like a bad Hollywood movie.
	But that's been the long-term defense plan.
	So I don't know if I believe him because he's basically saying, oh yeah, there are aliens who visited us and there's also a Psy-Op going on.
	Now I'm not sure about the alien thing.
	I mean, I'm not going to rule it out.
	I'm just going to say I place a low percentage probability on it.
	However, I absolutely agree with him that there is a Psy-Op being brewed up here.
	And I think basically what's happening is they're letting this stuff bubble along and they're seeing what traction it gets.
	And they're thinking, you know, could we ever, could we ever do anything with I don't know.
	If we wanted to, could we bring in alien lockdowns?
	The aliens are coming quick.
	Transfer all your freedoms and your wealth to us.
	So, look, tell us in the comments what you think, but I'm going with Psy up on this one.
	Right.
	OK, so I'll have to sort of speed up the third segment.
	We're talking about incoming Gen Z demographic bomb.
	Now, Dan, you're a wise man and you're looking upon the young generation.
	Yes.
	It requires your wisdom.
	I'm trying to understand them.
	Maybe you could... Understanding young people.
	So basically they're good looking, but stupid.
	Okay, so Gen Z, I want to talk about Gen Z shows a shift in attitudes with respect to parenthoods.
	And these attitudes are adding to the mix of an already really bad demographic situation, a demographic problem, and that from which Western countries suffer.
	Now, Gen Zers, they want some me time.
	And there are also Citing other reasons for wanting to postpone having children or not wanting to have children at all.
	And some of them think that it's going to have a negative impact on their wealth and income.
	Now, do you want to embark upon a journey of economic prosperity?
	That's a yes.
	So, visit our website, sign up on Lotus Eaters, with £5 a month you can have access to all our premium content.
	And you can actually find out about what not to do if you want to increase your wealth.
	And watch the latest Broconomics, Economics of the USSR, where The esteemed gentlemen over here, Dan and Josh, are talking about the economics and the USSR.
	So, when you want to embark upon a journey of creating wealth, you really need to know the don'ts.
	Start with the don'ts and you'll find out the do's in the meantime.
	Yes, I'm saying that, you know, I'm really interested in USSR history all the time and... Yeah, it turns out their economic plan left something to be desired.
	Yep, right.
	Okay, now let us have a look upon the current demographic trends in the UK.
	Let's see here.
	I mean, demographics have been trending down quite alarmingly for some time, haven't they?
	Yes.
	OK.
	Thanks, John, for the help.
	OK, so it says here, conception in England and Wales.
	This is from ons.gov.uk.
	Annual statistics on conception to residents of England and Wales with number and rates by age groups, including women aged under 18 years.
	Now, let's go to main points.
	It says here, in 2021, there were close to 825,000 conceptions for women of all ages in England and Wales.
	This is the first increase in the last six years.
	So in the previous six years, there was a downwards trend.
	Now they're saying it increases, but... Well, first of all, that's transphobia, because as we well know, it's not just women who conceive.
	Yeah, okay.
	Women aged 30 to 34 years had the highest number and conception rate for the fifth year in a row and the lowest percentage of conceptions leading to abortion.
	So there's a shift because I remember a lot of, I remember from previous generations, many women were giving birth into the, you know, 25 to 30 or even 20 to 25, at least in their twenties.
	But now there's a shift to the early thirties.
	Yeah, because I can't afford a house.
	Yes.
	So it says, the conception rate for women aged under 18 years in England and Wales has more than halved since 2011, when it was 30.9 conceptions per 1,000 women of the same age.
	In 2021, it was 13.2 per 1,000 women of the same age.
	Now, let me say, that's a good thing because it says women aged under 18.
	Right, it says here in London there is a decrease by 20.9% in birth rates since 2011.
	Across the board?
	in birth rates since 2011.
	And it says the latest...
	Across the board?
	We're not talking about under-18s, are we?
	Of all the English regions and Wales, London has seen the biggest fall in conception rates over the last decade.
	Wow.
	That's big.
	Yeah.
	The latest data suggests that for the first time since records begun, women outside of marriage or civil partnership have a higher conception rate than those within marriage or civil partnership.
	Well, hang on.
	Say that again.
	Say that again.
	I dare you.
	I double dare you.
	More children are being conceived out of marriage than in now.
	Yes.
	Oh, we are fallen, aren't we?
	I'm just saying what we hear from GOV.UK.
	Right.
	We have statistician comment here.
	He also says this.
	He shares Dan's... How should this?
	Not enthusiasm.
	It's a negative.
	It's disdain, I think.
	Yeah.
	That's what I was going for.
	Interestingly, our data show a high conception rate among women who were not married or in a civil partnership.
	Right.
	So it seems that, you know, lately, you know, people are and the family is under attack.
	Yes.
	So let us go and look at UK fertility rates, OK?
	Because you may hear this and say that, you know, for a There was an increase since last year, but the truth is a bit, we need to bring the bigger picture in mind.
	Now these are data from the total fertility rate in the UK from 1961 to 2021.
	So if you can see it reaches sort of peak in somewhere like 19, in the mid 1960s, and then it plummets.
	That's the baby boom, what you just showed me.
	And then it plummets.
	Yes.
	Now to one of the lowest.
	Now it's around 1.53.
	Yeah, and basically all of the economic problems we've got now is because there's loads and loads of boomers, and they promised themselves loads of things in retirement, and now there aren't enough kids coming up.
	And actually, just to interpret this graph a bit, people aren't so used to doing the number stuff.
	Basically, if you can get a spike like that on the left-hand side of the graph, then that's fine, as long as you then keep the rest of the line above a minimum of two, because that gives you a replacement rate, so that when you're designing social programs, such as we're going to give ourselves loads of pensions, And NHS provisions and all that kind of stuff.
	You need the line to be above 2 in a pay-as-you-go system.
	But when it drops below that, basically, it just breaks everything.
	It breaks our entire economy.
	I think it's 2.1 that is the replacement rate.
	And that assumes a high coupling up rate, a high marriage rate.
	Yes.
	Which isn't happening.
	It isn't.
	But the replacement rate for the population to stay the same needs to be 2.1.
	And 2 is not good enough, but it's 1.53.
	Now let's go to Europe and have a look at the trend because this is a really interesting conversation.
	The demographic problem has all sorts of aspects and unfortunately some people treat it only as an economic problem.
	I personally think that it isn't just an economic problem.
	But basically only Faroe Islands and Monaco are maintaining their population levels.
	Yes, so European average is 1.5.
	We have, as you said, Faroe Islands 2.71.
	There's like six people on the Faroe Islands.
	Okay.
	We have Monaco 2.08.
	That may seem good in comparison to others, but it's still below rate.
	So we have Gibraltar or whatever.
	Okay.
	So let's expand statistic and we will see here that where is it?
	Okay.
	United Kingdom 1.57.
	Yeah.
	We have Germany also 1.53.
	We have Switzerland 1.5.
	We have Switzerland 1.5.
	Let me show, Greece is in 1.38.
	Let me say, the numbers change a bit.
	I've heard even worse.
	I've heard that Greece is also 1.32.
	It's not good.
	I mean, is it good or is it not?
	It's certainly not good when you've got an economic system that needs more people every year, because basically what governments will do is they will look at data like this and they'll say, OK, well, we can't operate the current economic model With this level of birth rate.
	So what do we do?
	Do we, A, change the economic model and say to some people, all those bonds that you bought, yes, sorry, we're not going to pay those.
	Or do you, two, do you import as much of North Africa as you possibly can to try and drive up the per capita number?
	That is the major issue.
	And because the problem with the demographic is that the less young people we have and the more older people we have who are pensioners for more and more years.
	Essentially, there's a disproportionately large burden to younger people.
	So, there are all sorts of issues.
	For instance, in France, that is why they try to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
	Basically, they're burning the whole of France for this reason.
	Now, Italy is also not 1.3.
	Spain is 1.29.
	So, the European South has an issue.
	Yeah, so Italy's interesting because of course you had that new Prime Minister.
	Georgia Maloney.
	Yes, and she came in saying all of the right things.
	And then basically what happened is somebody sat her down and showed her a series of numbers like this and then showed her another graph that says, okay, this is government entitlement spending.
	And when you put the two together, it can't work.
	So now she's all like, oh yeah, well, maybe immigration.
	It's like, oh, you bloody sellout.
	Right.
	Let's see also in the UK, in the U.S., U.S.
	birth rates drop as women wait to have babies.
	And we have also here really, you know, plummeting birth rates and fertility rates.
	By all means, read it.
	We don't have that much time, so I'm going to move forward.
	Now, check Connor's interview with With Stephen Jay Shaw about his new film, Birth Gap, Childless World, and the Kamin Demographic Collapse.
	I must say that this is a brilliant interview.
	By all means, check it out.
	I haven't seen that one yet.
	I'm going to check that out.
	That sounds interesting.
	This is a brilliant interview.
	All right.
	Okay.
	Add something else to the picture because, you know, the demographic problem is a really complex problem.
	We can't solve it in half an hour.
	But I want to say that there are pressures that are sort of social pressures or cultural pressures that you could say have something to do with wokeness to young people.
	There is a sort of incentive to make young people guilty of having kids.
	So we see in this situation where many young people do not have kids, we have a lot of other people who are accelerating and they're telling basically, no, no, don't give birth to more kids because it's going to increase carbon emissions.
	It's going to be bad for the environment.
	It's going to be all sorts of problems.
	Yeah, I'm not sure I care that much about those ones, because if you believe those narratives, you're so bloody stupid that you shouldn't be reproducing anyway.
	But there are plenty of younger people who should be having kids, who absolutely should be having large families because they're good role models, but they can't because they can't afford a house.
	Right.
	So I think we're going to skip this video.
	We're going to go to the next one.
	I want us to have a look at this person who gives various reasons as to why some people should not have kids.
	And now, obviously, I think some people should not have kids.
	Some people should not have kids, but I don't think that's the majority.
	But the reasons he gives, he doesn't say that people shouldn't have kids, but he gives several reasons that I think have to speak a lot to Gen Z. And I want us to listen to what he has to say and talk about it and evaluate it.
	Let's watch the first clip.
	So, in today's video, we are going to be talking about 10 reasons why I decided to live a child-free life.
	Now, this is a video I've been wanting to make for a long time for a number of reasons.
	Number one, I want to let other child-free people know you're not alone.
	There's a lot of us out there who've decided not to procreate, okay?
	Number two, for people who might be trying to decide if they want to have kids or not, I'm going to give you 10 reasons why you shouldn't have them.
	Do what you want with those.
	And finally, for people who already have kids, these are some reasons to put them up for adoption!
	I'm joking.
	I'm joking.
	You had the fun making them babies, now you've got to raise them.
	Let's jump right into it.
	Reason number one why I'm living a child-free life and don't want to have kids is because they're expensive.
	They are expensive.
	All the people I know who got kids is always complaining about being broke because of the kids.
	Kids are expensive.
	And it's not like you only have to like pay out money for three, four years.
	It's like 18 years.
	And then some.
	Even when they're grown, they want money.
	It's just, you know, it starts out with diapers and pampers and his school clothes and then it's the dentist and then it's soccer jerseys and it just keeps going and going and going and going.
	It never seems to stop.
	I work hard for my money, especially times like now when I'm physically in hotel rooms, scrubbing toilets, making beds.
	I work too hard for that money to give it to some kid.
	No.
	Kids are expensive.
	How can I put this?
	I think there are a lot of men like him who are not raising children.
	Yes, and maybe if they feel that way, they shouldn't be raising children.
	But the question is, what is the message that is sent across?
	And I think that basically this echoes some feelings.
	It's not that this person obviously is causing people to think this way, but there are many people who think this way and say, no, I'm going to forgo giving, I'm going to forgo parenthood because it's going to be a problem to my, let's say, wealth.
	So that's one issue that I want to stress.
	The atomistic drive which is saying everybody needs to be a good consumer and the highest ideal in life is the spending of money.
	Yes.
	So that's an issue because we have, let's say, a sort of infantilization of young people and who seem to become very cynic about it.
	And they view the notion of the family as something completely foreign to them and as something that is basically going to, instead of it being a source of main value for their lives, they look upon it and say that, no, this is going to cost.
	Well, that's because that is the message that is constantly pushed in entertainment media, which is the family, especially the father, is defunct.
	Yeah, but there's an issue that, you know, you want money, you want to build wealth.
	What for?
	There's a substitution of viewing money as an end in itself to viewing money as just a means.
	And you know, what is interesting is that it seems to me that most people up till now in the human history, they have thought of, you know, the material resources as being something that they put into for raising a family.
	So raising a family was seen as a major pillar of value for people's lives and they work their And also more broadly on the resource point.
	There is a strong school of thought out there on the left that we are about to run out of resources on the planet and the world is already overpopulated.
	Resources is just not an issue.
	They just don't understand the economics of it.
	And the left has been pushing this since the mid-1800s.
	Right.
	Let's go and watch the next clip, please.
	Reason number two.
	I've decided to live a child-free life.
	It's a lifelong obligation.
	I don't do well with responsibility, okay?
	Anybody who knows me knows that.
	I like a very carefree, low drama, low obligation life.
	To bring into my life a lifelong obligation, I just know I wouldn't do well with it.
	Even if I would like, if I ever had a child, I would do what I had to do.
	You know what I mean?
	I would not be a deadbeat dad.
	I would take on that obligation, but I would be crying on the inside.
	Probably the outside.
	I just don't do well lifelong obligations.
	I'm definitely not gonna like bring one into my life that can't go away.
	That I can't quit.
	Moving on.
	Reason number three.
	Third reason I don't have kids, and this goes along with the second one, it's just added stress.
	It is added stress.
	Another thing I hear from parents is that you constantly worry that your child is okay.
	They go to school, you worry somebody's going to shoot up the school.
	You know what I mean?
	Wherever they go these days, you got to worry about something happening.
	My stress levels are right, you know what I mean, where they need to be.
	They're good now.
	And I do things like meditate.
	I'm always out in nature, try to hold those stress levels down.
	I'm not going to bring a child into this world and raise it way up here.
	I don't know if I could deal with that.
	And let's be honest, if I had a child and something did happen to them, I'm not strong enough to deal with that.
	Okay, so one of the points he made there was that... Responsibility and stress.
	Yeah, if he was raising children, he'd be crying on the inside.
	How does he think he's going to feel 30 years from now, sat on his porch alone, nobody ever rings him up, nobody ever gets in touch, and across the road he can see the other guy with his seven grandchildren playing with him?
	Not good, not good.
	But the point is that I think people should be incentivized and should be, in a sense, socially pressured.
	Of course, I don't talk about initiation of force.
	That's against my principle.
	But I think that it's not OK, morally speaking, to tell people, well, OK, you don't like responsibility, then don't assume it.
	It's like infantilizing them.
	Just say, okay, you're not good enough, you don't have it, just stay there.
	If you do something that requires responsibility to be taken, you should take it, yeah.
	Yes, and also the stress element.
	That's an outcome of value.
	If you have value in your life and you find value in your life, you do have the stress that this value is not going to be recognized the way you want it to be, or that it's not going to be realized in the way that you want it to be.
	So having value and anxiety, they go together, but it makes life meaningful.
	Yeah, but the taking on responsibilities is a part of maturity.
	And I think what's happening here is the normal societal functions that would move you up the responsibility ladder and basically turn you into an adult are absent here.
	And so he's a, this guy's a 35, 40 year old child, effectively.
	Right.
	Now let's move into our next article and we will end with this.
	Yeah.
	So young.
	The young put off having children by global fears.
	Okay.
	Let me, I'm still trying to find out with a mouse.
	Okay.
	It says only half of Gen Z and millennials plans to start a family as finances and global anxieties put them off having children.
	A survey found research by one Polar Man thousand people aged 18 to 34 who had not begun a family found a one in four had ruled out having a baby completely.
	Now let's see here.
	That's the most, Interesting bit here.
	It says child-free future.
	The most common reasons deterring 18 to 34 year olds from having children.
	49% is more time to focus on myself.
	Financial issues is 47%.
	Watch Broconomics.
	Fears about the state of the world is 38%.
	Concern about the impact on the environment is 35%.
	Prioritizing career, 28.
	Existing health issues, 22.
	Now, if you want to find out a bit more, I read a brilliant article by Freya India here on UnHerd.
	Why doesn't Gen Z want children?
	By all means, if you're interested into it, just give it a read.
	Right.
	Should we go to video comments?
	Yes, let's do that.
	Excellent.
	I'm not saying I've done this, but if you just take them, nobody knows.
	You bag thief.
	Well, they're just sat there.
	The bags at the supermarket are free.
	No one cares.
	Seriously, you think the lady there working on minimum wage cares if you take the five pence back?
	Steal.
	Oh yeah, you should steal the plastic bags, yeah.
	So I just had a minor quibble with Stelios' take on being pro-progress, and I know as a co-host I've already kind of made the observation, but my problem is that progress is very much subjective based on the person who is deciding what it is.
	For example, I think we should bring back death penalty and sink the boats.
	Most people would consider that barbaric.
	I consider it progress.
	Also, check out Sue Tech's episode on Doctor Who.
	It's amazing.
	Right.
	Just let me say one thing.
	I think that this leads to moral relativism, and I am just not a moral relativist.
	I also think that there's a distinction between our conception of progress and actual progress, which I think is objective and we're trying to portray.
	We could be wrong.
	You could be right, I could be right, or wrong vice versa.
	I made this through Global Warming and I think I can do this within 30 seconds.
	So I drew this picture of the Earth and one of the things I wanted to show you is this.
	And I believe one of the reasons why the planet is heating up is not because of carbon emissions, no.
	I believe that the reason why it's heating up, particularly in the North, is because the Earth is turning around.
	And it does this every 500 years, and there's historical evidence of this.
	Whilst it's doing that, the planet will remain on its axis, and this gives us the time of day.
	So that won't change.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Maybe you should write a paper and try to publish it.
	Yeah, so I think what he's alluding to is that there is an issue with the axial tilt where the magnetic north is very different from the tilt and I think the magnetic north has now moved to something like
	Siberia or something is well out of the line and so the actual tilt is off and you combine that with the slightly irregular orbits and you can have an effect there but there needs to be more research done on it and of course the research isn't being done because the only people getting funding are the people who promote the argument is all about CO2.
	Even though there are loads of other interesting climate aspects, They're not explored because the science is captured by the narrative, which I think is kind of what he's going with there.
	We have another video from, I believe, This California news is pretty serious.
	An illegal Chinese-run biolab was found and raided by the CDC and other health agencies in the unassuming town of Reedley, California.
	They found samples of COVID, malaria, HIV, STDs, and more.
	They found vials of blood, tissue, and bodily fluids, but also thousands of unlabeled vials.
	There were a thousand bioengineered mice that one lab worker said were meant to be easily infected by COVID.
	Too much to cover in 30 seconds, so please read more for yourselves.
	Yeah, I think I'd better do that.
	Right.
	Let's go to our written comments now.
	For the first segment, Le French is single, ladies.
	How far away from the San Francisco situation do you think London and UK cities are?
	Few years, I'd imagine.
	I don't know, five years, something like that.
	Baron Von Warhawk.
	Love bombing and having a friendly smile can stop shoplifting.
	Preposterous.
	These people only respect strength.
	Yep.
	If you try to be friendly with them, they will view it as a weakness and only rob you more.
	As demonstrated with Meezy, only the threat of punishment can hold back the barbarians.
	I think Mr. Warhawk is spot on there.
	This is spot on.
	Brilliant comment.
	Okay.
	Someone online.
	You could legalize the shop owners defending the property with firearms.
	Yes.
	Natalie Pendrick King.
	I work in a shop on Oxford Street and I use the Waitrose strategy.
	If someone is suspect, they get extra help and attention.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	And then you get accused of harassment and profiling.
	JC.
	These are the end times.
	I hope not.
	Ethelsun95.
	So many times it has been shown that it's not simply the severity of punishment, but the likelihood of being caught and punished, punished that acts as a deterrent.
	Time for broken windows policy so that, yeah, time for broken windows policy so that the overall crime rates come down and police can then focus on the serious stuff.
	Not let shoplifting go ahead because you need to focus on murders.
	Bad behavior becoming the norm begets worse behavior.
	California refugee in California, and especially cesspits like San Francisco, the majority of theft isn't reported anymore because many stores get stolen from over 20 times a day.
	Just a single store for just theft, not even car break-ins.
	Also, every drug user and drug dealer who is passed over because of all the violent crime.
	You want to read some of yours?
	Yes.
	Grant Gibson says, thank you for following up on the balloons, Dan.
	This is the work the media should be doing.
	This is why you guys are worth ten quid.
	Thank you.
	Exactly right.
	Miss Rat says, I don't doubt the size of the universe and the possibility of aliens.
	My question is the same as yours, Dan.
	Would aliens ever want to come and see us?
	Yeah, I mean, the closest I can get is your argument, which is maybe there's, like, drunk teenage aliens or something.
	Yeah, something like that.
	They shoplifted something and, hey, they tried to get away with it.
	Yeah, this is their version of Spring Break or something.
	Joan of Arc says, UFOs are a distraction, if not a fall on PSYOP.
	Changed my mind.
	Yeah, so I'm absolutely convinced that there was a PSYOP brewing here.
	And I just think it's a separate question, but is there also actual alien activity going on?
	But I place a really, really low probability on that being the case.
	Let me see.
	Californian Refugee says, Dan, is an extraterrestrial being working with the Chinese to distract us from the WEF Corporation?
	Wake up, people!
	Could be the case, and... I believe we have time for one more?
	Yeah, go on.
	Do some from your section, then.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Left French are single ladies.
	Having a kid is the most valuable experience there is.
	No argument can take that away.
	Yep.
	And California refugee, if all welfare and benefits programs ended tomorrow, the invaders would go pack up and go home.
	Women would marry men instead of the state.
	Boomers would have to sell their investments to fund retirements and nature would heal.
	Right.
	Pretty base, this California refugee.
	Right.
	So, our time's up.
	I had lots of fun today.
	I hope you did as well.
	Thanks, Dan, for your contribution.
	And see you tomorrow.
	See you, guys.

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