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Sept. 19, 2023 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:33:19

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #744

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	is there anyone out there Hello and welcome to Podcast for the Lotus Eaters episode 744 on the 19th of September 2023.
	I'm your host Dan and I am joined by the engaging and enigmatic Beau!
	Enigmatic!
	The superb and scholarly Josh!
	Hello there!
	And Harry!
	Hi!
	No adjectives for me?
	Well, we're on a budget, you know, we can't just go spunking your superlatives all over the place.
	That's where the thesaurus ran out as you were reading through, was it?
	Would you like someone to torn some pages out?
	Russell Brand has used it up.
	Well, given that you said that Bo was enigmatic, like some shrouded figure... I'll take it, I like that.
	Right, Bo's the one who's really in charge of Lotuses.
	The humble, honest and humonculous Harry.
	Alright, okay, I guess I'll take that.
	You happy now?
	Right now, as you can probably tell, the boss man has gone on holiday, so he did say to be on the door, Dan, since you're the oldest, make sure our standards don't slip.
	So I've gone out and bought some beer and nuts.
	How old are you?
	Oh, very old.
	Never ask a man that on a live podcast.
	Always never ask women their age, not men.
	Yeah, counts for Dan as well.
	And Dan, at his sort of age, the wisdom, he should be fine with it.
	Fine with what?
	being told you're old.
	Oh, yes.
	Well, I am.
	I can't really avoid it.
	There you go.
	All right.
	I mean, not like boomer old or anything.
	Just, you know, late Gen Xer.
	All right, let's carry on.
	Yes.
	All right.
	Now, we've got to get into some...
	Oh, yes.
	Yes.
	No, actually, this is how I wanted to start the segment.
	So yes, Bossman has gone on holiday and because he's gone, we were able to hack his laptop and create this.
	This is our new promotion, Sargon.
	So while he's enjoying his holiday in the US, we are going to have a 50% off Um, all subscription tiers, including gold, uh, for the next, uh, three months.
	So, so enter codes are gone and, um, yes.
	Well, I know, I know Carl's away for today.
	Is he gone for like two weeks now?
	Yes, about two weeks.
	Oh, fair play.
	He's gonna, he's gonna be promoting us in the US.
	So I thought what we could do is we could, we could have a chat about, uh, some of the fantastic stuff that we've got going on at the Lotus Eaters.
	Uh, so should we start with you, Josh?
	Of course.
	What is it that you do for us then?
	Well, I've been doing the Contemplation Series, which has been a mainstay of the website for quite some time now.
	It goes back a couple of years.
	And of course, the series on our website... You're like employee one or two or something, aren't you?
	Two, I think it was.
	Josh is one of the early prototypes.
	I was, yeah.
	We hadn't yet perfected What a Lotus Eaters presenter should be by that point.
	There were some bugs with the speech where there's umming and erring in between sentences that weren't worked out in my generation but that has since been worked out with later presenters.
	Oh, thank you.
	Yeah, fantastic.
	But yes, this is my series and it's very good obviously because it's made by yours truly.
	Being a bit more serious now, though, it is kind of like my life's work, in that I have poured a little bit of my heart and soul into making lots of digestible, accessible sort of academic level content, whilst also not being really annoying and jargony whilst also not being really annoying and jargony and inaccessible.
	So the idea is that I'm trying to deliver university level education Although some of it is just entertaining.
	And the reason I like this, because I do like this one, the reason I like it is because you ask some bloody interesting questions and you never know where you're going to go with next.
	So you've done things like, for example, is, you know, are cities the problem?
	Which I liked.
	For some reason, back in 2021, you decided to do one on how to subvert an election.
	Yes, there was absolutely no reason for that in that specific year.
	It wasn't particularly topical as far as I can tell.
	No, obviously, because as we knew at that point all elections were, you know...
	The most secure ever.
	Fortified, very rigorous, strictly adhered to all of the rules.
	Yes, but it was very interesting because it looked at it from the perspective of, if you are a malevolent individual, how would you go about interfering in the democratic processes?
	And surprisingly easy, actually.
	I just tried it himself!
	I wish.
	And I'm sorry to tie one or two of these together, because you did one on are stereotypes valid at some point.
	I think that was with Harry, wasn't it?
	Yeah, that was one of the early ones.
	I haven't watched that one yet.
	And then you did one more recently.
	Have I been here long enough that I would be on one of the early ones?
	I suppose so.
	Well, as in before me.
	Well, there have been like, I think we're getting to 145 soon.
	Almost getting to 150, nice.
	They are, yeah.
	Shout out to Hugo.
	I was going to get onto that.
	I've got a list of Dan's questions here, so I'm pre-empting them already.
	I'm a little bit jealous that it's the longest running Because my epochs is a second longest run.
	It is, yeah.
	It is a close second as well.
	There's some measuring going on here folks.
	Yes, it's worth mentioning of course.
	Now the reason I was going to bring up the stereotypes thing is because you did that one on stereotypes and then recently I did one with you on the economics of crime.
	Yes.
	Where basically we went through crime by country.
	Yeah, and basically what we found out from that is that Basically, the crime statistics prove all of your stereotypes.
	Yes.
	If I remember the one that we did on stereotypes, I think the conclusion was something along the lines of, not every stereotype is going to be right 100% of the time, probably more like 90% of the time.
	Well, what they are is just a means of unconsciously basically totting up statistics, percentages, likelihoods of outcomes, aren't they?
	And because your unconscious mind is very, very good at dealing with large amounts of information as opposed to your conscious mind where it's difficult to deal with large sets of data.
	it actually does a reasonably good job and that quite often gets overlooked.
	So is that why you've got the midwit bell curve where basically stupid people get stuff right and really smart people get stuff right and then the midwits?
	The Dunning-Kruger effect.
	Educated just enough.
	Well, there are some questions about that.
	I think actually it wouldn't be a bell curve in my mind.
	I think normally idiots are more certain than actual people who know what they're talking about.
	Because people who know what they're talking about tend to know the limitations of their own presumptions and the amount of uncertainty to provide.
	So normally, if someone's very well informed, it still kind of beats the bottom of the bell curve.
	Yeah, but it's the midwits.
	They're the problem.
	They're the ones who think they know something because they watch a Channel 4 documentary on it or whatever it is.
	From my understanding of it, the midwits are people who've been educated enough to be educated to completely distrust their instincts and completely throw their instincts aside when the person who is educated beyond that, at the higher end of the bell curve, probably also doesn't always trust his instincts but knows enough to know that his instincts are right more often than not.
	You kind of need to look at the juxtaposition between tradesmen and university students.
	Tradesmen are very practically minded.
	They're very good at what they do.
	Also not necessarily at the bottom of the bell curve.
	No, of course not.
	Then you go to university and you've got to be educated into these stupid ideas.
	I mean it's the phrase that some ideas are so stupid you've got to be an academic to believe them and there's a lot of truth.
	This is actually another one that you and I did together when we were looking at whether artists and being creative was inherently left-winged like so many people including you Jordan.
	I know you're watching this.
	I'd like to suggest that just being being creative Being open to experience automatically means that you're more left-wing than anybody else.
	And we looked into it and we found a magnificent article that you brought up by some Indian guy who said, no, creative people are just far more likely to have gone through the institutions that brainwashed them into being left-wing in the first place.
	That makes far more sense.
	Yeah, it's very true.
	Yes.
	And also there is the point that if you're industrious, you're more likely to be right-wing.
	And if you're industrious, you're more likely to succeed in whatever industry you go into.
	You can use the example of a band both me and Harry like called King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, which is a great name.
	I don't think they're right-wing.
	No, no, no, but they're really, really industrious and they've been successful because of it, right?
	And it's proof that industriousness is... They've got, what, 24 albums out in the past 11 years?
	They released five great albums in a year, so they did quite well.
	Twice?
	Yes.
	But, um, I do carry on.
	No!
	Oh, no, I was just saying, a slew of interesting content on there.
	You put some out.
	What are some of your favourites, then?
	So, um, one of my favourites is the two-part series on the origin of humanity that I did with Bo.
	This one I put in a ridiculous amount of research.
	Oh, I like that one.
	Yeah, that was good.
	I'm listening to this at the moment.
	Very interesting.
	Thank you very much.
	But yeah, I probably put in about 100 hours of research into this, outside of work, on top of the research I did in work.
	So I was reading research papers, looking at archaeological reports, all sorts of stuff.
	It's not necessarily my field, but I did do a lot of evolutionary psychology, and I'm a sort of British craft enthusiast.
	So can I ask a question, which we might need to edit for YouTube, but is the Out of Africa thing complete bollocks?
	I don't think you need to censor that for YouTube.
	It's far more complicated than that because there are hominids outside of Africa millions of years ago.
	So to say human beings who came onto the scene at the sort of latest 300,000 years ago, to say that they're just out of Africa is a massive oversimplification because some of our ancestors were already in Europe before We were there.
	Because I don't know if you looked at this, but there was a thing going around Twitter about a month or two ago, which was basically throwing up genetic data of different groups.
	And it was basically sort of, well, it was all the sort of the Northern Hemisphere type groups were basically, you know, on one arc, down one side for the genetic data.
	And then it was sort of Africans and Aboriginals, which We're just a different... I don't know.
	I don't know the terms.
	I don't know.
	I think it was... Right, yeah, okay.
	It was Sub-Saharan Africans and Aboriginals were the ones because North Africans have more admixture with European, specifically more Southern European because of the connection to the Mediterranean Sea.
	Yeah, so is that a thing?
	Is that real?
	Well, you can look at different human migrations through the human genome.
	So you can kind of make estimates based on the genealogical information as to when certain peoples migrated to where they are the so-called native inhabitants.
	And you can kind of work backwards alongside archaeological evidence and they're complementary to one another.
	Basically, we came to the conclusion that the out-of-Africa hypothesis is just not accurate enough.
	There might be very, very ancient hominid creatures with a single ancestor somewhere in the East African Rift Valley, but that's not the picture of modern humanity.
	It just doesn't work like that.
	It's a very, very complicated tree.
	Say there's one ancestral mother from East Africa, it just doesn't work like that.
	To kind of paint the picture a little bit, 1.8 million years ago there was a Homo Erectus, it was, living in Dmanisi in Georgia who hadn't even discovered fire yet.
	Georgia, of course, relatively close to Europe, isn't it?
	It's just south of the Caucasus Mountains.
	Are we talking about the US state or the bottom of Russia?
	The part underneath Russia, of course.
	Right, okay.
	Hang on.
	Back then, were all the countries joined up or was that even further back?
	Oh, are you talking about the landmass all being connected?
	Eurasia and such?
	It's essentially the same.
	Yeah, it's more or less the same.
	We're only talking a few hundred thousand years at most.
	Oh, OK, right.
	OK, fine.
	Was that at the point, just to correct me, was that at the point where there was still a land bridge between what's now the UK and Europe?
	Almost certainly, I mean... Yeah, I was going to say, because I think that was a few... Was that within the last 10,000 years?
	There'll be one at the Bering Straits as well.
	Also, here's another thing, just because I find this whole thing very, very interesting to talk about.
	I've learned recently, I think a lot of Europeans have a much higher mix of Neanderthal in them than any other groups elsewhere, which is one of the things that separates us from other groups across the world.
	Africans don't have that.
	Apparently Asians have... Denisovans.
	Yes, yes.
	But we don't really know anything about those guys because they just... We do know bits and pieces.
	I know that the Nepalese in particular have a large amount of Denisovan DNA which actually helps with their ability to extract oxygen from the high altitudes.
	Like the genes that help them with that come from the Denisovans rather than from the Nepalese per se.
	But then it just isn't well complicated.
	So there's anomalies as well, aren't there?
	Like some people's, or lots of different types of human creature, human type creature, that have come and gone completely.
	Completely risen up and then died out entirely.
	I'm not being racist or anything, but there used to be like whole loads of...
	No, I have to be clear just because you have to be so careful.
	This part might be too spicy.
	You know you get like loads of different species of monkeys and stuff like that.
	I mean presumably at one point there was just loads of different species of humans.
	Yeah, that's right, yeah.
	Like big ones, little ones, and you know.
	That's not controversial.
	You never know.
	My personal favorite is on the island of Flores in Indonesia, there are little four foot tiny cranial, like they had tiny brains and yet they still made relatively sophisticated sort of stone age tools.
	And they were hunting tiny elephants.
	So in this sort of weird dystopian world.
	Tiny people hunting tiny elephants.
	Well to this day you've got sort of, you know, giant people from northwestern Europe or the Maasai people of Africa and you've got really small pygmies in, you know, Papua New Guinea or something.
	To this day.
	I think Josh and I are probably in what like the top 1% of tallest people in the world because of how tall we are.
	Well you are.
	Well Josh as well.
	Thank you.
	Josh is tall.
	You're sort of unnecessarily tall.
	Josh is only like half an inch shorter than I am.
	Really?
	Is that the cut off point for you?
	You're like well Josh is fine but Harry no.
	Half an inch makes all the difference.
	I'm six foot three.
	Are you?
	Yes.
	You seem taller.
	I've got friends who are like 6'4", 6'5", 6'6".
	I've met a man who's the brother of a friend of mine who's 7'1".
	Ridiculous.
	That's just debility.
	That is unnecessary.
	It's kind of difficult for him as well being that tall.
	So let's not be insulting.
	I wasn't insulting him, no.
	On a completely different note, something that I really need to mention that's very important is I started off this series with Hugo, some of the old-timers, the longtime watchers, will remember Hugo.
	Is that necessary?
	Yes.
	We're painting a picture here.
	People only see us sat down.
	The first 40 episodes, me and him would take turns basically presenting to the other person.
	So he was integral to doing it.
	And before then, we were doing the weekend segments, which were before the segments that would have gone out on the actual podcast channel on YouTube.
	And we would just talk about random stuff, like I talked about Marx and all sorts of stuff.
	Yeah, one of the first introductions I had to this website was listening to the series, the two-parter that you and Hugo did on the life of Marx, his actual biography.
	Very interesting.
	Thank you very much.
	So yes, it was kind of born of that and then we realised, well why don't we make this a quality series that's on the website.
	Obviously, people have to pay to access it, but that means we can put lots of work into it and make it really good.
	So people do have to pay to access it, but they only have to pay £5 a month, which is notable.
	And if they use the code SARGONE, then they get 50% off for the next three months while the boss He's not on holiday for three months.
	He's on holiday.
	Carl doesn't know.
	Yes.
	And also, you can learn about lots of different topics and it's not going to be woke like a university.
	Yes.
	And it's probably going to present the facts in a bit more of a unbiased way because quite often I like to play devil's advocate.
	I don't like to tell you exactly what to think.
	And it's just genuinely interesting stuff, so instead of... Because I have this, because I quite like documentaries, and sometimes you'll be sat there and thinking, oh, okay, I'll put a documentary on.
	So you start scrolling through Netflix, and you look at the tiny thing, and you think, oh, it's just going to be unbearably bloody woke, and it's just going to tell you about bloody... The ancient black Egyptians.
	Yeah, and yes, yes.
	None of that.
	That's like contemplation.
	How Nogubu built the pyramids.
	Yeah, and then I just think, okay, well, I'll put on a Contemplations instead, because it's like a documentary, but without the fattiness.
	And sometimes it's even fun.
	Yes!
	Now, don't worry, there's still a hefty bit of twatiness in all of these.
	I am in them, yeah.
	So, what I wanted to come to, actually, is there's another one of yours, which I haven't watched yet, but it's on my list because I've just noticed it, and it's all about prepping.
	Oh, yes.
	Now, the reason I bring that up is... In fact, John, you can move on to the next one.
	I'll come back to the space one in a second.
	Here it is.
	Yes, so, because, you know, we found out last week that we all think about the Roman Empire all the time, but we didn't know that we all did, but we all do.
	I mean, I knew it.
	Yes.
	I thought it was kind of an unspoken thing.
	Well, I knew I was thinking about it.
	I thought we exchanged a look, you know, when men just glance at one another and it's like, Roman Empire, Roman Empire.
	We sit opposite each other and we quite often talk about the Roman Empire just offhand.
	It just comes up.
	Well, it's easy to stumble into a very complicated conversation about the intricacies of Roman politics.
	But the point is, we were all thinking it, and apart from you two, we didn't necessarily know we were thinking about it.
	Which brings me onto prepping, because surely this isn't only me.
	Tell me if you all do this as well.
	I've never asked anyone this before, so I'm thinking that all men think this.
	But do you ever sit at home and think to yourself...
	If there was a zombie outbreak, how would I fortify my house?
	And you look at the windows and you think, yeah, I could break up that shelving unit and, like, do that, and then I could, like, all that kind of stuff.
	I've already got it figured out, yeah.
	I mean, it's not necessarily a zombie apocalypse when I look at Lampedusa at the moment, I think, okay, when they arrive, what do I do?
	It could be a zombie outbreak, or massively enrichment.
	Yes, how do I avoid the enrichment getting through my front door?
	Do you guys all do that as well?
	Oh yeah, I've already got like a 10-point plan going.
	I'm ready for everything.
	Oh yeah, because you start thinking it through.
	You start thinking, okay, well, you know, in what order would I do things?
	So I've come to, first thing I do is like fill up loads of water containers, because that's absolutely crucial.
	Obviously, yeah.
	Then I would do basic sort of home defense type stuff, and then I'd start thinking through, okay, do I... and this is a tricky thing.
	You need to work out whether it's a fast zombie invasion or a slow zombie invasion, as to whether you do a quick raid on the shops or not.
	If it's the slow ones you can kind of do a Shaun of the Dead, sorry Bo.
	Yeah, you've got fast twitch muscle fibre zombies.
	Well hang on, now that sounds racist.
	Well the thing though I always think about is the water.
	Unless you buy like giant water butts that you can put hundreds of gallons in, you're just gonna die of thirst within three days or something.
	That's why the first thing is you need to fill the bath and all the water containers.
	You do that and you have a big stock of water treatment tablets so when you eventually do run out of water you can flee to the countryside somehow, you know.
	You guys have obviously thought about this in far greater depth than I have.
	Well, I did a whole video on preference.
	My main line of thought has been, who do I know who lives on a farm who owns guns?
	And I have family who do all of that, so I would just immediately flee to them so that I could just use their guns.
	So when the zombies are already running through the street, you're gonna get on a bus?
	Not on a bus, I've got a car.
	Right, you're gonna get in a car.
	I'm going to drive through the hordes, yes.
	Listen, if I have the windows up, how are they gonna get in?
	By breaking them?
	Yeah, well, if I drive through them, though, it'll be fine.
	Alright.
	I do think that guns would be less important than, you know, 100, 150 litre water bottles, though, to keep going on about that.
	Because you could just stay inside and drink.
	Yeah.
	Well, my main thought has always been, well, if it's the zombie apocalypse as depicted in most films, that being the slow moving zombies, as long as you wear thick enough clothing that they can't bite through it.
	It wouldn't actually be that difficult to just go out with a baseball bat or a cricket bat or something, take a few out on your way to the shop, raid the shop, and then go back.
	That would be very easy with the slow-moving zombies.
	As evidence for how much I think about the Roman Empire, I was considering getting myself some Roman armour, like replica Roman armour.
	So some Morica Segmentata.
	So after Shad came on last week, I found the website that used, Steel Mastery, and I'm working through my custom order for like a, was it Gambon or whatever it is, you know, the light armour.
	Gambeson.
	Yes.
	I'm not sure when I'm ever going to use it, but I just like the idea of having a set of armour at home.
	I feel like if S hits the fan, I know I'm not allowed to swear, You are going to be sorted though, if you have like a suit of armour.
	No one's going to mess with you, are they?
	Doesn't matter who you are.
	Oh, and actually back to the point of the prepping, I do have one of the spare rooms I turned into a food hoard.
	So I got loads of tins of beans and chips, biscuits and stuff like that.
	Next to your gold hoard, where you've got a big pile of gold, like Smelled the Dragon.
	Scrooge McDuck, giant silo full of golden coins.
	The thing is, I quite often think about it and then never do it.
	I quite often think, oh I really should probably hoard, I should get in lots of toilet paper and loads of tinned food and then I never actually do it.
	Or I'll buy like eight tins of soup and they just sit in the cupboard and I think it's not enough anyway.
	The toilet paper couldn't be the most crucial element.
	I mean that was like over the pandemic wasn't it?
	It was like leaves work.
	Throwing that out there.
	Oh, and by the way, and maybe you'll tell it, because we must let you get to your preppers thing, but I've looked, the thing you want is condensed milk.
	It's like the highest concentration of calories per tin or something like that, condensed milk.
	So if you're having a prepper store, that's what you want.
	I also think how long is the apocalypse going to last though because some tins of stuff go off within a year but some will last for like 10 years.
	I don't believe that.
	I think they last forever and they just put a use by date on them because they have to.
	Right, we'll have to source an incredibly old tin of beans and Dan can test that theory on the podcast.
	It's going to be the next podcast.
	Dan eats old beans.
	That's what you're following us for, isn't it?
	I'm just making it up.
	You tell us about the Prepper Bomb, Josh.
	Sure.
	So, obviously it's not about zombie apocalypses.
	It's actually focusing on more likely scenarios whereby there's some sort of natural disaster.
	You know, how people have been screwed over in the States when there have been extreme weather events, things like that.
	Or perhaps economic collapse, or things along those lines where, you know, they are possible and it's worth considering.
	And I just talk about all the things you need to know about.
	It's sort of an entry-level thing that I don't go into the weeds as much as I probably could.
	Well, there are whole YouTube channels dedicated to it.
	There are indeed.
	I've debated starting one, just doing all the bushcraft stuff, because I'm very much into that.
	Basically what I do is I have like a bug out bag which is like a 65 litre thing packed full of all the stuff I'll need in the case of I need to get out of here as quickly as possible.
	So I just put that on.
	It's got food, water treatment tablets, Copy of what?
	Never mind, carry on.
	Um, you know, everything you could possibly need.
	Right.
	And, um, I also just keep a large stock of, of tinned food and lots and lots of large bottles of water.
	And for the most part, that's all you really need.
	Um, just for sort of preempting a crisis.
	Very good.
	Very sound.
	But, um.
	Right.
	Quickly go back to the previous one.
	Oh yes.
	Also, this is another one I did with Bo actually.
	I feel like you get lucky and do all the ones that I'm very passionate about.
	But this was talking about the James Webb Space Telescope.
	And if you want anything that's going to lift your spirits about how we are actually living in a great time to be alive and how Things are amazing and you know look at how beautiful the universe is.
	This is it.
	So that is exactly what I was thinking of when I said that you sometimes go on Netflix and you try and find a documentary because they've got one up about the James Webb telescope but they just managed to make it Californian and woke and just nauseating and I had to turn it off.
	I am neither of those things and therefore it's good.
	Yeah, we explain the images as well.
	We say, here's an image that we've got.
	This is an image of the oldest galaxy ever.
	It's close to being towards the age of the creation of the entire universe and stuff like that.
	It's really inspiring stuff and we do kind of wax lyrical about how amazing it is, but rightfully so.
	It's an achievement of humanity, of our day and age, that we can well and truly be proud of, I think.
	Well I think the James Webb is the best thing ever, quite literally the best thing ever created by our civilization.
	I wrote an article called that and I've written a couple of other articles about it.
	The Edge of Forever is probably one of my favorite articles I ever wrote if I'm going to play my trumpet.
	But it's great because I think what really matters is if you genuinely care about the topic.
	That just counts for so much.
	It just usually comes through to people watching or listening.
	You genuinely are interested and care about the thing that you're talking about.
	And so, yeah, with your contemplations, that's, you know.
	That's actually brought me on to a very important point because actually caring about what you're talking about is very, very important because having an interest in the world around you, lots of different interests, and I cover, you know, loads and loads of different topics in lots of different areas, but having this general interest in loads and loads of different topics in lots of different areas, but having this general interest in the world and being curious about it and finding things out and it being rewarding, it's one of the best
	If you need, you know, a pick-me-up, start learning about something new and that will carry you forward Just producing this series has given me a profound amount of understanding of the world as well as giving me lots of meaning because you see, not to go all American Beauty on you, but you get to see the beauty in the world, don't you?
	You get to see How lucky we are to be here and appreciate things.
	And when you hear people talk about politics all the time, you don't hear that sort of thing, do you?
	It's all doom and gloom.
	Everything's getting terrible.
	But there are other things other than politics in the world.
	And it's worth bearing that in mind, because also they're worth defending against the political attacks.
	And you've got to know what to value in your society to be able to defend it in the first place.
	So what's the right wing environmentalism one about then?
	Because that's another one I've spotted that I mean to look at.
	Yeah, so that was me, Connor, Rory, and who else was it?
	I think it was us three, and we were just talking about our connection with the environment and how the left co-opting Caring about the world around you is surrendering too much ground, quite literally, and there is a conservative perspective on custodianship over the world around us.
	I kind of invoked the biblical notion of stewardship, that it's our duty as the apex species To promote the flourishing of human life as well as non-human.
	I like that framing.
	Right-wing people are the apex species.
	So I noticed that you and Rory were on this episode.
	So did we finally come to a conclusion on trees versus hedgerows?
	Ah, yes.
	This has been a multi-year debate at this point, but this is just talking about the rural character of Britain because there's the sort of typical Southern England hedgerows delineating the boundaries of fields.
	And it's this managed approach, whereas I prefer wilderness.
	I prefer things being rugged and untouched by the human hand.
	And I wanted more woodland because I enjoy that more than the fields.
	Fields have a place, obviously, obviously agriculture as well.
	Very, very important.
	But, I think that we've deforested a lot of Britain and it's a tragedy, in my opinion.
	Fantastic.
	So there's no conclusion to that just yet?
	You didn't come to a full stop answer?
	Well, it's a memetic ongoing debate.
	The war rages on.
	Yeah.
	If you say so.
	Okay.
	So, and we should also talk about, Beau, you've got a pretty good history type of thing going on.
	Pretty successful on the website, I've noticed.
	You've got that pretty good history thing going.
	Well, his one is the top episode, isn't it?
	Is it?
	Yeah!
	Yeah, you come out on top.
	Oh, did I?
	Yeah, we did a survey and, uh, oh, I'm not supposed to mention that, but, uh, yeah, no, no, you're- Well, it is pretty good!
	And viewers and everything!
	Well, yes.
	So, why is Epoch so- oh, in fact, no, before I ask you why Epoch is so bloody good, uh, we probably would have done the transition thing by now, so welcome Uh, fresh set of lovely you people.
	We've got a promotion on at the moment, which is Sargon.
	So basically, if you're wondering what's going on here, is the boss has gone on holiday.
	So standards have lacked slightly, and I was able to get onto his laptop and put a new code in.
	So you now get 50% off any tier for the next three months.
	So it was cheap.
	It is now ridiculously cheap.
	So enter code SARGON on the web.
	SARGON with an E, if you're listening.
	And you can watch some history stuff.
	Is he actually wearing that?
	I was going to say, is this a real picture?
	Yeah, it doesn't look like it's shot.
	No, he was actually giving a speech by the beach for some reason.
	And the sombrero was to add to his authority.
	The new version of Photoshop, you basically just take a picture of him with a microphone in his hand, and you say, well, put a hat on, and give him a cocktail, and it did that.
	That's AI, that is.
	So he wasn't wearing the sombrero.
	Except the fingers on the cocktail, either.
	Yeah, and AI can do fingers now.
	Oh, wow.
	That's terrifying.
	Yes.
	So yeah, EPOX rather.
	I am just a complete and utter history nerd, fan, geek, and all I've ever really wanted to do is somehow try and make a living, try and pay my bills by just talking and chatting about history.
	Because you didn't actually start off doing that, did you?
	You had a proper job in finance.
	Oh right, oh yeah, for nearly 20 years I worked in asset management and commodities and all sorts of things.
	Because it's very, very difficult to make a living talking about history.
	I mean, there's a few jobs you can do, like you can be a curator in a museum or something.
	You could just be a history teacher.
	Who wants to wrangle an entire class of children?
	Yeah, I don't really want to coerce kids into listening to me.
	But I am one of those people who, you know, at a pub or a barbecue or a dinner party or something, we'll just start talking about history.
	And a lot of people don't like that.
	A lot of people just wait for you to stop.
	So you just keep going?
	Until they submit.
	Yeah, no, I'm not a sociopath.
	But so I did start my own channel, History Bro, check that out on YouTube.
	subscribed to History Bro.
	And I spoke to Carl a few times, a couple of times, about Hannibal, Alexander the Great, Xenophon.
	Oh, Carl likes a bit of history.
	And so when Carl started Epochs, he wanted, you know, a resident history nerd.
	And I volunteered.
	Did he start it without you then?
	Yeah, yeah, I didn't join for what, three months?
	Four months maybe?
	Well, three or four months.
	Epochs was your thing wasn't it?
	I thought the very first episode was you and Carl.
	Yeah it was, yeah.
	But Dan was asking, I wasn't here, I wasn't at Lotus Eaters from day one.
	Oh I know, I meant to spend the beginning of Epochs.
	It's always been mine, yeah.
	It's alright, I was there 3,000 years ago.
	I don't believe you!
	Quoting Elrond.
	I've got my wish to just talk about history because I can sort of endlessly do it.
	Where my background is ancient history, classical history, but epochs I can do whatever I want within reason.
	Sometimes the subjects Cole just decides or wants to do but usually most of the vast majority of the time it's just up to me and so whatever tickles my fancy.
	So as I say even though my background is ancient history I go all over the place.
	Because this is the thing, when you learn it at school, they make it so stuffy and boring, it's hard not to be bored by it.
	But literally, it's the most exciting things that have happened ever in history, is generally what history is.
	So, when you get into it, as long as you can get to what's actually happened, it is fascinating stuff, all of it.
	The only problem is, is I was reading an article the other day saying that it was fundamentally sexist.
	Good.
	Because it has literally hit, the thing is, his story.
	Oh well, you know, I don't care about that.
	I'm just interested in... That's not even the actual etymology of the word though, is it?
	I'm just interested in... well, things that are interesting.
	And I'm one of those people that something has to be extremely dry and boring before I sort of switch off.
	So I do try and pick, obviously, Interesting things.
	But yeah, so I've jumped around all over the place.
	I've done a few on World War II and 20th century things.
	I've done a few with all of you guys, quite a few with Josh.
	One of my favourite series was about World War II, Operation Market Garden, when the Brits and Americans liberated Holland.
	I really enjoyed that because I knew nothing about it and I got to sit in... Yeah, Bridge Too Far.
	Oh, that's a really good film.
	Yeah, yeah.
	That's an old one, but he's a really good film.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And the original novel is great, and I keep rereading it for some reason.
	The one I did with Harry, I've only done one with Harry, but that was on the Spanish Civil War.
	Yeah, I found that really interesting.
	I don't actually re-watch them very often, but occasionally I will.
	And I re-watched that one a month or two ago, and I thought it was a really good one actually.
	Yeah, I enjoyed it.
	I learned a lot from it.
	I find that when you watch one that you did a year or so ago, there hasn't been enough time passed and you've done enough of them that you kind of forget and you kind of watch it as a viewer.
	I did that with a few episodes of Contemplations.
	I was just like, oh yeah, that's a good point.
	I was like, wait a minute, that's me!
	And just to make it clear to the audience, the reason we don't tend to rewatch our stuff a lot is not because it's boring.
	All of these are absolutely fascinating.
	It's because you tend to watch them like three times, the editing process.
	Yeah.
	You've got them completely by the time they come out.
	And plus, sort of, you lived it so you know what's coming up.
	You know what's going to be said.
	And yeah, you have to re-watch it, or I do, a few times in the post-production phase.
	So you've actually lived it and then watched it at least probably a couple of times over.
	So going back and watching it again, is unnecessary and usually a bit weird however I still have done once or twice.
	It is still useful to occasionally go back and look over work you've done if only because you'll have done so much research in the preparation for it that some of it just won't have stuck in your head as much as the rest of it so sometimes it can be good to go back over your own work just to remind yourself of a few things.
	And we've done a few, haven't we Dan, on more economic things.
	We did the tulip Tulip Manor.
	The Tulip Bubble.
	We did Wall Street Crash.
	Yes.
	And we did Black Tuesday.
	Oh, yes.
	When Soros stole the pound.
	Yes.
	To be fair, John Major made it very, very easy for him.
	But, I mean, that one, for example, that one's really important because it basically sets up the world.
	I mean, it's why George Soros is so rich and is able to, you know, do all the malign stuff he's to do.
	It's why we came out of the Euro.
	I mean, it's why we have so many currency difficulties in Europe.
	I mean, it's a setup to a huge amount of stuff, like why the Tories came out and we got Blair and then we got, you know, the mass immigration that followed and the move to the left and why Tories have become a left-wing party.
	I mean, it just sets up It's such a pivotal event.
	It's very kind of you to call it important, but some of these stories are because to be ignorant of one's past is to forever remain a child.
	The present is a product of the past and you can't hope to understand the present without an appreciation of the past.
	Yes.
	I'm paraphrasing Cicero there.
	And most of the stuff that you cover is, you know, it could have gone either way.
	And if it did, we would be living in a very different world if just a few of these had gone a different way.
	Occasionally I've heard people say things like, oh I don't care about World War 1 or World War 2, it doesn't matter anymore.
	It doesn't affect us anymore.
	That's one of the most ignorant statements anyone could ever say.
	Right, yeah, yeah.
	That is a pretty backward thing to think.
	But even if you go back to the ancient world or the medieval world or something, it really does matter in all sorts of ways.
	But, you know, the thing is with some of these stories is they just sort of throw away flippant things that, you know, you could do without.
	And some of them are some of the greatest stories, you know, because history or truth is sometimes much more fantastic than any fiction.
	And I feel, without going too over the top, I feel sort of genuinely privileged in the old sense of that word, lucky, to be able to bring these stories to some people.
	Sometimes I get comments where people say, oh I've never heard of that thing, I had no idea about that at all.
	Yeah, there is actually one story which is genuinely the most fantastic.
	It's just, it would make the best movie ever, the story of this one man's life because of the stuff that he did and the stuff that he got away with.
	And I'd love for you to cover it, but I can't because it just so happened that he spawned a religion.
	And if you talk about this particular chap, we'd probably get firebombed or heads cut off or something like that.
	But that guy... Is it L. Ron Hubbard?
	No, I think I know who it is that you're talking about.
	I'm being silly, of course.
	Well, he was basically this Arab king guy.
	He was a warlord.
	Yes.
	Big fan of kids.
	I'd love to cover that one, but, you know, can't do that.
	Well, I think we can.
	Tom Holland wrote a brilliant book called, is it In the Shadow of the Sword, I think it's called, about the life of Muhammad.
	Yes, I wasn't going to say it.
	Blessed be upon his name.
	So, you can talk about it, it's a historical figure, probably.
	And so, we would be allowed to talk about it.
	Right, okay.
	Creating a thumbnail might be a bit difficult.
	There is so many things though, and that's one of the things I'd like to say to some of the people out there.
	Just have a big question mark, like a Pokemon card.
	Who is it?
	Some of the people get lots of recommendations or requests.
	Right.
	And unfortunately, you know, can't get through them all.
	So do still keep asking and things if there's a particular thing you want.
	But yeah, we only do one a week, so.
	Yes.
	Yeah, could never really get through.
	So what's some of your favourites then?
	Well, I would say More than half, two thirds or three quarters of them are sort of equal in my mind for, I just loved it.
	Because I nearly always pick something that I am genuinely interested in.
	One of the ones that, you've asked me this before, and one of the ones that sticks out in my mind, which is actually a bit of an anomaly, so it's not sort of your classic history lesson type history, was I did the history of Formula One with Thomas Dowling.
	Shout out to Thomas Dowling.
	because he loves racing and karting I thought you were going to say racism for a second then he's a professional racist I mean, he might as well, I don't know.
	And it's the only one out of 124, 125 odd episodes we've done now, which isn't sort of your classic textbook history type of history.
	Yeah, that's not what you normally do.
	No, right.
	But I particularly enjoyed that because, like I was saying to Josh earlier, if it's a topic that you honestly, genuinely are interested in and love, It's not work anymore.
	Right, okay.
	So my thoughts on Formula One, because I used to watch this when I was little, but it used to be a very different sport a long time ago, because you used to watch it a bit like... and this is going to make me sound bad, but I'm going to have... everyone's thinking it, so I'm going to have to go there.
	But you used to watch this 20 years ago, because you knew there was a serious chance that somebody was going to be turned into a human fireball on a big race.
	So a NASCAR, yeah.
	But that doesn't happen anymore.
	Which happens sometimes.
	Sometimes you'll see cars on the first corner when they're all bunched up together will still knock each other a little bit.
	That was the angle of this episode as well.
	It's all about the history of results and the cars and everything.
	But also how extraordinarily dangerous it used to be.
	You quite often see, not often, but back in the early 70s was when it was most dangerous.
	And something like one in seven drivers died every season.
	One in seven every season?
	Bloody hell!
	And yeah, there's quite a few examples of guys crashing and their car going up in flames and they burn alive essentially live on TV.
	That doesn't happen anymore.
	Romain Grosjean, a few years ago, got in a fire, and it was one of the first fires I've seen in years and years and years, and he got out and sort of, he did burn his hands a little bit, but he walked away from it.
	But I mean, they wear proper flame suits, and they've got, you know, firemen... Oh, there's endless things now.
	I mean, the petrol tanks are like a bladder made out of a space-age material, which sort of is almost impossible to rip.
	Whereas back in the day, I mean, Jackie Stewart had a crash.
	Once, where he came off the track and just crashed into the side of a barn.
	They don't have barns at the sides of the track anymore.
	And he was crushed into the cockpit and the cockpit filled up with petrol, his old school petrol tank, natural tank, and the electrics weren't turned off.
	So he's sitting in a bath, trapped in a bath of petrol.
	And, well, he obviously survived, because he's still alive to this day.
	But yeah, it was extraordinarily dangerous.
	It must have been squeaky bum time, though.
	Yeah, terrifying, terrifying.
	Yeah, sometimes a marshal was once hit by a car and basically exploded on TV.
	Yeah, it's a South African Grand Prix and the man in the car, Tom Price, was also killed.
	So, yeah, it used to be extraordinarily dangerous.
	Pretty disgusting, actually.
	But anyway, enough about Formula One, because that was a bit of an anomaly of a one, but we go through all the history of it.
	What else have you done?
	Oh, you've got the Bridge one, yeah.
	Bridge 5, this was the series with Josh.
	Is it a five part series?
	Yeah it was four or five wasn't it?
	Yeah and the novel A Bridge Too Far is one of my favourite books and of course they made a film out of it.
	Dickie Attenborough made a film out of it and it's the story of when the British and the Americans Paratroops dropped, the airborne dropped into Nazi-occupied Holland and it was a bit of a debacle.
	Oh yeah, I mean this is ballsy British spirit on display in spades.
	Yeah, and that's Monty Bernard Law Montgomery who was sort of responsible for it and it was a bit of a bit of a balls-up actually, but also many heroic actions also took place.
	I've had a few guests on.
	It's nearly always with Carl, but a fair few with you, Josh, and a few with a few other people.
	But I have had the pleasure and honour of having Apostolic Majesty on a few times, another history YouTuber called Apostolic Majesty.
	And whenever he's on, It's really brilliant, because I just pick his brain rather than me sort of taking the reins and leading it.
	I just sort of ask him questions, let him sort of lead the conversation.
	And his depth of knowledge, his breadth and depth of knowledge is truly remarkable.
	I had a mini-series with him about the origins of World War One.
	There should be a link for that, John.
	And had him on, I talked to him about a couple of other topics as well.
	I would have him on all the time if I could.
	It's very good of him to give me as much of his time.
	But, you know, I've spoken to some other people, you know, an early one with a drinker, Critical Drinker, talk about Waterloo.
	There's one with Maula Longman, one with Dankula talking all about the history of his Mad Lads series.
	So a whole hour or two about that.
	I've had Calvin on.
	Calvin Robinson talked about Christianity.
	Yeah, I had Luca Johnson recently talking about Pitt the Younger.
	I had a chat with him just the other day.
	Luke Parker talked about Kohima and the Chindits and things.
	So it's not always Carl, but it's nearly always Carl.
	And yeah, I just hope I can do some of these stories justice because sometimes it's something that's so important to me.
	For example, the story of maybe Shackleton springs to mind.
	And are we going to do a Wellington series soon?
	I say series, probably just two parts.
	They're so important to me that I feel like I'm almost not worthy to be talking about it.
	Oh, you know, I'll do it anyway.
	It's not going to put me off.
	But if I can bring some of these stories, you know, like we did one on the Hundred Years War.
	I did one with a couple with John Wheatley about the Wars of the Roses and things.
	They're such important stories.
	If I can bring it to people who didn't know about it before.
	Yes.
	Made the world a little bit richer.
	And that's something of value.
	Rather than sitting at a desk all day at a commodities trading firm or an asset management house, making some fat cat a tiny bit richer.
	That's not really fulfilling to me.
	Whereas if I can inform people about important things in history, it's nice.
	That was my thoughts on finance as well.
	Pays well, lots of spreadsheets, very boring.
	Yeah.
	And doing something like this is actually quite fun.
	Yeah, making the shareholders a tiny bit richer.
	Spending all my time and energy doing that, essentially, that's the net result of how I spend my days.
	Is that the shareholders at State Street or Northern Trust or J.P.
	Morgan are a tiny bit richer because I wasted my life nine to five, five days a week for them.
	Whereas now you're making people culturally richer.
	Well, hopefully, sometimes at least.
	Yes.
	Sometimes at least.
	What else have you got for us on the list to have a look at then?
	Is that... Did one on... Dot Holiday.
	Dot Holiday.
	So like I say, it's not all ancient history.
	There are loads on ancient history.
	Yes.
	On Archergus and Solon and Pompey and all sorts of things.
	But sometimes it's just someone that I particularly am interested in and love.
	And Doc Holliday was one of them.
	Just the story of Doc Holliday's life.
	Quite a remarkable person and life.
	You know, the shootout at the OK Corral.
	The gunslinger who died of tuberculosis.
	Yeah, TB.
	Yeah, he died young.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But yeah, I... And was he really as good as the sort of cultures made him out to be?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, he was fast.
	Apparently, he was genuinely one of the fastest runners.
	He wasn't all that accurate.
	But you didn't have to be, because it would usually take place at point-blank range quite often.
	Yeah, I suppose you just stand close to the person.
	Show ever's got the quickest draw.
	But apparently, he was very, very fast.
	But at the OK Corral, he had a 10-bore shotgun.
	So you sort of, it's difficult to miss if you're at like 10 yards.
	The speed of his shot doesn't matter as much if he's got a shot.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's like a small cannon you had on him.
	10 ball.
	It is absurd when you see those videos of slow motion quick draws where they're also super accurate with all of the shots as well.
	That's always amazing.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But I mean, just the 19th century sort of Wild West, because Doc Holliday's life is really at the end, really.
	I mean, people argue, historians argue about when did the Wild West end and things.
	He's sort of undeniably at the end or towards the end of that period.
	Nonetheless, it's still sort of classic Wild West stuff.
	Um, so yeah, that's, uh, sometimes if, uh, me and Kyle haven't got a, you know, a real series or something in mind that we're absolutely dying to do, it would just be left up to me to pick something.
	To be fair, California, given its crime rate, could do with chaps like this.
	Back again.
	Vigilantes, essentially.
	Yeah, well the Earp brothers and Doc were fighting on the side of the law.
	So they were sort of the good guys.
	I mentioned Shackleton a minute ago.
	We did a little series where I did Scott of the Antarctic about conquering Everest.
	Did one about Shackleton.
	Again, a bit like Doc Holliday or the Duke of Wellington or something, it's just one of my favourite, among my favourite things, or Henry V or something, just sort of read and re-read about.
	So this is why you need a British aristocracy class, because most of them will just spend their time going and having lunch and stuff, you know, but some of them will think, okay, I need to conquer Evidus, or the Antarctic or whatever it is.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I've done one on Sir Charles Napier, did one on Clive of India, and Gordon of Khartoum.
	So yeah, there's a fair few sort of specifically British heroes in there.
	Because men of his age were just ripped by the spirit of, I need to go and do something completely bloody remarkable.
	And they did.
	Most of the great things that happened in Britain that are accountable to individuals have normally been aristocrats who've been twiddling their fingers, looking to go out for Adventure, really.
	Because it must have been incredibly boring to be sort of rich in that time period, because you didn't have anything to keep you busy, and you didn't have Lotus Eater subscriptions available at only £5 a month with the code Sargon, you get 50% off for the next three months.
	But, you know, you would have just had dinner parties to go to and, you know, croquet to play, so actually going off and doing a jungle or a mountain or something.
	Yeah, you do need that combination of leisure time and money.
	Yes.
	But Shackleton was a very serious guy.
	You know, he wasn't just this, he wasn't just like a multi-millionaire playboy and couldn't think of anything else to do.
	It was sort of his whole life's ambition to try and reach the South Pole.
	And, you know, we were pipped.
	Well, Captain Scott was pipped first, but then Ernest Shackleton went back.
	And yeah, the extraordinary adventures.
	The thing to take away about Ernest Shackleton is that he didn't really get anywhere near the South Pole on his last famous expedition.
	It was all about an escape, an evasion, a survival ordeal.
	You make a point.
	We used to have loads of these guys and now we've just got Elon Musk.
	Got like one guy who's gonna go, I'm gonna go to Mars.
	Now we've got Massive restrictions on how people can get about the place.
	If you are a young man, it's financially restrictive to try and get about the place.
	And also, most young men are probably being distracted by the fact that they have... I'm sorry to stab this dagger in your heart.
	I know it's a soft subject for you, but they have on-access demand pornography.
	They have video games that they can get access to and just mess all the time with.
	They have no... Why did you pick the adjective soft?
	That's up for interpretation, Dan.
	I know it's a soft spot for you, is what I'm saying.
	I'm not even going to try and unpick that.
	There are still some people like Sir Randolph Fiennes, for example, a modern day adventurer.
	Yeah, but everything's on Google Earth.
	He's getting on now, though, isn't he?
	Oh, yeah, he's an old chap now, yeah.
	Yeah, my point is that it's more and more financially restrictive and it's less risk to reward.
	A very young talent.
	Callum, yeah.
	Yeah, or Luke Miles.
	Yeah, someone.
	Yeah, these guys do still exist.
	They do still exist, but not in the same numbers, you could argue.
	Do you think anyone would be making an Epochs of Callum in 100 years time?
	Maybe.
	Mechabomite.
	Won't be making it about me.
	I doubt it.
	There's also some...
	I do do a lot of ancient history things as well, because as I say, that is really my forte.
	So there's all sorts of things from the ancient world.
	One of my favourite ones was on the Year of the Four Emperors, which is just Rome on steroids.
	It was after the death of Nero.
	Nero had murdered every single member of his own family, sort of extinguished the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
	And so Rome... All of them?
	Yeah, including his own mum, murdered his own mum.
	Is he right?
	Well, that's up for debate.
	A lot of people say no, he was just very, very, very sadistic.
	I think he may have been clinically insane, but most historians say he probably wasn't.
	I don't know, it's not normal, sane behaviour to wipe out your bloodline though, is it?
	No, but, no, not at all.
	Did he at least have lots of kids?
	I mean, it might be more normal these days.
	But you know, there's sort of a very, very high benchmark to say that you're clinically insane.
	Lots of people do, you know, mass murders or kill their own family and they go to trial and psychologists say, no, you're fit to stand trial.
	You knew right from wrong and you did it anyway.
	To be fair, a lot of Americans at the moment are turning their kids into eunuchs and they're considered sane.
	I doubt.
	So, you know, the difference between being just evil and sadistic or clinically insane, you don't know what you're doing, you're not responsible for your actions.
	I think, I don't know, Nero probably was.
	But anyway, after he was, the Senate declared him sort of an enemy of the people of Rome, the Roman diadem was up for grabs and a bunch of different generals from all over the empire vied for control.
	And in one year there was four emperors.
	Or you could say in 18 months there were six, including Nero.
	So anyway... Was one of them Listros?
	But yeah, so that's sort of a period in Rome that is, for me, you know, among one of my favourite episodes.
	Right.
	Because it is so, sort of, extreme.
	Yes.
	But there are, we have got all sorts on there.
	Even from Rome, so... One of my other favourite ones was, we talked about Tacitus' Germania, an ancient historian called Tacitus, living in the age of, sort of, Trajan times.
	Is that where we get the word Germans from?
	Sorry?
	No, I don't think so.
	Oh, okay.
	And he wrote a book about the Germans.
	Right.
	The Germania, or the Germania.
	Right.
	Which survives to this day.
	It describes the ancient Germans.
	That was one of my favourite ones.
	What did he say about the Germans?
	We have to be careful because I referred to the survey results earlier and one of the comments from why people unsubscribed was because of your German racism.
	Really?
	I thought we did enough, to be honest.
	We've got to step up our game.
	Yes.
	So what did Tacticus say about the German zone?
	Well, a number of things.
	One of the main things is that they're a wellspring of people that are sort of undiluted by our foreigners.
	Oh, right.
	Well, that aged badly, didn't it?
	That's one of the things he said.
	Also, they're very noble.
	They don't really need many laws because they just naturally tell the truth and things.
	So that is still true.
	And they're sort of very big and extremely barbaric in terms of military prowess.
	So it's actually a mixture of things that are both good and bad.
	But you have to watch the episode, become a subscriber and then watch the episode.
	No spoilers!
	So yeah, you can see on the side they also recently did one about the War of the Spanish Succession and the War of the Austrian Succession and coming up next, this coming Sunday, is the Seven Years War.
	Those last two feature Frederick the Great So again, very, very Germanic.
	So maybe there is a bit of a bent towards German-ness.
	Right, okay.
	Well, if you're doing history, and history tends towards wars, I mean, you'd be hard-pressed to leave them out, wouldn't you?
	We also did one on the war on the Eastern Front, the Battle of Kursk.
	So there are a few, sort of, World War II things.
	A few World War I ones.
	Usually every November, on Armistice Day, I do something in and around World War I.
	I'm going to do a series on T.E.
	and they were fighting the Romans as well.
	I mean, they've clearly got a bit of a bit of a bolshie side to them.
	Right.
	Well, coming up, the next other things we want to do, we're going to do Wellington as soon as Carl comes back.
	Oh.
	Could you scroll back up a bit there?
	Oh, there you go.
	I'm going to do a series on C.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, the uncrowned king of Mecca.
	Yes.
	So we're going to do one all about that.
	Karl wants to do one about the wars, the civil wars of Marius and Sulla, which are the Roman civil wars just before the age of Caesar.
	And where Karl and I, right at the beginning of my History Bro career, we did some long ones on Hannibal and Alexander, and we're going to redo, sort of, you know, Look at those for Epochs.
	But also, very soon, again when Carl comes back from the United States, we're going to do quite a long, it's going to have to be a whole series on the Iliad.
	Maybe get Stelios in on it as well, being a Greek man, would be really helpful.
	No way!
	You didn't know?
	And then it follows on from that to do the Odyssey and then maybe Vergil's Aeneid after.
	So there's a whole lot there.
	And one other thing to say, I'm going to do a series at some point on the turtles, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
	That's a bit left of field.
	How does that flow directly in from the Iliad and the Odyssey?
	Well, when I say the turtles, what I really mean is the real histories of the life of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello.
	Vasari wrote the lines.
	An Italian man who lived at the time wrote, or just after, wrote biographies of them all.
	So I'd quite like to do a series of four there.
	Because they are also fascinating, interesting lines.
	True geniuses, certainly in the case of Leonardo and Michelangelo anyway.
	Excellent, right.
	Now, we better do a segue because we're going to have a new cycle of Utahards pop up.
	I'm going to quickly go to the toilet because I'm two beers down.
	You just go.
	I won't be missed for two minutes.
	We don't need you.
	No, it's alright.
	We'll cover for you.
	We won't mention anything.
	We can edit this in when we get a new batch of Utahards.
	You have to be very polite.
	You have to be nice and they're potential subscribers, so yes.
	Right, there's no way they could go and check this record, is there?
	Right, if you were a Utard and then you signed up, you are now, you were never a Utard, that's how it works.
	Okay, we're going back like Stalin and changing the record.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	Dan Stalin.
	So, alright, the boss man is on holiday for a couple of weeks and while he's gone we hacked his computer and we've set up this new code which is SARGON.
	Uh, and now if you put that in, you're gonna get 50% off, um, any tier on the website, where there's lots of fascinating stuff.
	And we've been having a bit of a, bit of a thing this week, where we talk about, um, some of the, um, exciting, interesting, engaging people.
	But we've also got to cover Harry!
	Harry, what is it that, uh, what is it that you do for us?
	Well, I do plenty of things, actually.
	Thank you for asking.
	I do Comics Corner with Connor, which is not a weekly series.
	It's a monthly series for those who are slightly more patient of our subscribers.
	I like to think it's got a bit more prestige to it that way.
	It's for the patrician viewers, really, if we think about it.
	So you're an economist.
	Yeah, or know the economics of it.
	So you understand supply and demand.
	The less there is of something to the greater demand, the more valuable it is.
	That's right.
	The marginal utility of an episode of Comics Corner, to my mind, is far greater than the marginal utility of, say, a Brokonomics.
	I'll segue into a different question.
	So what does Comics Corner teach us?
	For example, if I were to watch this, would I know if Spider-Man could beat a Space Marine?
	I don't think I've read that particular story.
	We've not actually covered Spider-Man because Connor and I, due to our prejudices, have primarily covered a lot of DC comics up until this point.
	I thought DC was Josh has returned.
	Hello.
	Wasn't DC the rubbish one and Marvel the good one?
	I mean, it depends entirely on your opinion, really.
	If you're talking about the films, then for a long time people said that DC was the rubbish one, Marvel was the good one.
	But I think now we're all in perfect agreement that they're both absolute rubbish and you shouldn't pay attention to either of them.
	Just want to preface this by saying, Connor and I covering comics does not in any way suggest to anybody watching either this video or the series that you should go out and buy any modern comics being produced by Image, Marvel or DC.
	Every single one of them is absolute dribble being poured down your ear trying to propagandize and brainwash you.
	Same with the films, they're all crap, don't watch them.
	So that was basically going to be my next question because Obviously, when the film started coming out, I thought, oh, I'll check out the source material.
	And there was a big comic shop in town, and you go and buy the comic, and it's like, what the hell is this?
	Well, that's one of the big problems, really, with trying to get into comic books.
	The reason that Connor and I are into them... Well, I can't really speak for Connor, but I can speak for myself.
	You alright there, Josh?
	Oh no, it's a disaster!
	Look at what's gone on!
	We're supposed to be maintaining the standards while the boss man is away.
	There are no standards, Stan.
	Now look at you, like foraging squirrels.
	Good God.
	Alright, so, yes, comic books, for me, were something that was more of a product of the time that I grew up in, that I got into them, because when I was much younger it was very popular.
	You first had the first wave of comic book films come out, like the original X-Men films, and you still had a lot of the television programs from the 90s, like the X-Men TV series.
	Spider-Man TV series, even reruns of the old Batman animated series always being on TV on the Cartoon Network.
	That sounds like something very different.
	That's more your wheelhouse, I'm sure.
	That was a thing people will remember.
	Alright, probably.
	When Eric eats a banana, an amazing transformation occurs.
	That just sounds like a rip-off of Pop-Art.
	Eric is Banana Man.
	It must be before your time.
	He said it doesn't sound anywhere near as good as Danger Mouse, if you ask me, but still.
	Danger Mouse was, yes, Danger Mouse.
	That was great, yeah, it was David Jason.
	But when I was, when I was growing up, you used to go into the newsagents, and I think you still can, and you'll get comic books there, where they'll print different versions from the ones that you can find in normal comic shops, more for mass consumption.
	They had, like, the Ultimate series from Marvel, so you'd have these enormous printed versions of the Ultimate Spider-Man comics that I used to read all the time.
	I used to, Get those, and I was like six at the time, so when eventually, as all comics do, they reveal themselves to not really be for kids anymore, and a character gets horribly raped, murdered in some brutal way, or burnt to a crisp right there and then, and I'm like, Mom, Dad, this isn't what I thought it would be!
	But still, you know, comics, like... That's dark, isn't it?
	Ever since around the 1970s... Hang on!
	If you're a superhero, why would you get raped?
	I mean, you're... I don't think it's the superhero... You're not that superhero typically.
	I'm trying to think... You're not that superhero typically.
	died and was replaced with married.
	Did these allegations come out at the time, or was it like 11 years later when the Green Goblin came out against the COVID vaccine?
	This story was about 30 years after the death of Gwen Stapes.
	You've got a question, why wait 30 years to bring it forward?
	I mean, these are fictional stories.
	Well, let's just say these are the allegations.
	Since about the 1970s, comic books started to get darker and darker and darker, the The original run of DC and Marvel before, well, DC because Marvel only really became Marvel in the 1960s, but DC had what's called, I think it's the Golden Age in the 1930s and 1940s when you had superheroes like Batman and Superman first emerge, and they were much darker back then.
	Superman less so, but Batman, contrary to popular understanding... Early Superman was like that.
	He wasn't dark, but he was a bit darker than you would get in the really cartoony era in the mid-1950s and 1960s when the Comics Code began to be applied to a lot of comic books.
	And in fact, you can watch that on the two-parter that Connor and I did on the history of superhero comics, where we covered all the way going back to the late 1800s and French comic books that were being spread around at that time, and then in the second series when we go up to the more recent era of comic books.
	I don't know.
	If you go back to the previous link, John, that gentleman in black and white looks almost identical to Report of the Week.
	The food reviewer is spot on.
	I think one of the things that Connor and I contribute to this is, for one, this was Connor's baby.
	It was the part one and two of the history of superhero comics comics.
	Connor has for a very long time had a gigantic chronology of comic books that he's been trying to sort out specifically with DC because that's his favorite one so this was a labor of love for him but we also add greater cultural and societal context into it as well so for instance the Comics Code Authority which came in in the 1950s to regulate and censor a lot of comic books
	and was complete nonsense because a lot of the goals that it was aiming for, you could say would actually be somewhat virtuous in trying to prevent cultural subversion by people, but were pushed by the sorts of people who, say, for instance, saw that Batman had an adopted son as a sidekick and looked saw that Batman had an adopted son as a sidekick and looked and went, gay, obviously noncing that young boy, despite there being no
	A kind of deranged and subversive and very suspicious mindset that sees a man and his adopted son and assumes that one must be buggering the other at some point.
	Yeah, but why would he make him dress up in tights?
	a superhero outfit.
	You're not supposed to think that into that particular logic.
	Do you think anybody in green tights is automatically being buggered?
	Did you have to wear green tights at any point in your youth, Dan?
	No.
	Josh, you're the therapist here.
	I'm not a therapist, but sure.
	We've got a subject here for you.
	What do you think of when you think of green tights, Dan?
	Well, I do.
	And I think you're going off of more recent cultural memes that have been propagated purely because of the strange opinions propagated by the people who put these ideas forward in the first place.
	The sort of person... Call up a bloody image of Robin from the original Batman and tell me that is raging masculinity.
	Okay, if that happens and the desk lifts and elevates slightly, I'm going to be very suspicious here.
	Alright, move on, move on.
	Next one, next one.
	What I'm saying is the person who was involved in that, there was a very interesting connection because if you're aware of Alfred Kinsey, which I'm sure anybody here, you are aware of Alfred Kinsey, right?
	He was one of the guys who propagated the sexual revolution.
	He had a book in the late 1940s and then a follow-up in the 1950s that insinuated that half of all American males were homosexual and were just repressing it.
	Something ridiculous, like 60% of them had been cheating on all of their wives.
	Yeah, and also researched the sexuality of young boys and it turned out that in doing the research, one, he'd been interviewing a lot of prison populations of men who were in prison and presumably if they had wanted a sexual outlet and they were only surrounded by other men, had to express it in a very particular way which is where he suddenly got that 50% of all American men are gay.
	That's a very curious choice of sample.
	That seems deliberate to me because any person who's involved in research with half a brain would know that going to a prison population isn't necessarily a very representative sample of the entirety of the population, is it?
	Yes.
	He should have chosen somewhere more neutral like a Catholic church.
	He'd also been going around asking an actual paedophile about his and had a very very infamous table in one of the works on the amount of satisfaction.
	So how does this tie to comics?
	Because of the fact that the source of person who was involved in the Comics Code Authority in promoting these standards in comics was related to...
	Ah, so did it get captured back then?
	Yes, it was captured from a very, very early time, back in the 1950s.
	And that's one of the interesting things, is that superhero comics, for a very long time, have been a conduit medium through which liberal propaganda can be put out there, essentially.
	I'm a person who really enjoys old superhero comics and I enjoy the stories of them but I think one of the things that I've discovered going through a lot of these old series is just how deep a lot of this has been from a very young age because of course if you're a parent And you get your kids a comic book every week or every month, you mainly just worry, is there inappropriate material in it that would mean too violent or too much sex?
	These old comic books from back then wouldn't have had that much stuff like that in it, but there would have been much more subversive and difficult to spot messaging for them.
	Is Comics Corner actually about cultural subversion?
	Unintentionally.
	At first it was just because Connor and I wanted to talk about comic books and a series and we really enjoyed doing that.
	But as we've been going through, we've been discovering, rediscovering, that a lot of the series that both of us and the stories that both of us enjoyed when we were younger either just weren't as good as we remember.
	Although some of them, some of them are.
	For instance, The Long Halloween, Batman.
	Batman is an interesting case here because The very nature of Batman's character is such that it's very difficult to write a left-wing Batman story.
	It's really difficult and writers have struggled to do it for years and failed constantly because he is somebody fighting against the entropy of Gotham and to re-establish order in the face of chaos.
	You could get a left-wing Batman if his parents died in a famine.
	That would work.
	Would that work though?
	Actually, to be fair, there is one story.
	We've not covered it, but it's called Superman Red Son.
	It's an Elseworlds story where Superman landed in the USSR instead of America and became basically the Soviet man.
	Connor actually told me about this.
	And Batman in that story is an anti-Soviet subversive agent trying to bring down the communist world order.
	It could have been worse.
	He could have just landed in LA or something.
	Yeah, instead of Kansas.
	Yeah, San Francisco.
	Can you imagine what Superman would be like?
	One of the commenters said his parents died on January 6th.
	Ashley Babbitt?
	I mean, she was the only one, right?
	Lord Inquisitor Hector Rex said that, so thank you.
	Thank you very much.
	So, obviously there's different Elements of comic book stories that we can take and examine and not all of them are going to be this way But it seems that quite a few of them also primarily because a lot of comic book writers are Massive leftists like one of the most famous writers out there from comic books He wrote Watchmen Batman Killing Joke lots of other series that are very well known like V for Vendetta Alan Moore is fat communist Hagrid
	I've seen a picture of him and he does look like that.
	He's honestly quite a revolting man who accidentally stumbled on a few stories and wrote a few stories in the 1980s that were genius and absolutely brilliant and I can't really deny that but then he writes a character like Rorschach from Watchmen who is
	The quintessential reactionary character and then complains that everybody related to him and thought that he was the hero the entire way through and now as a result I believe the most recent news story I've seen regarding Alan Moore is that he's planning on donating all the money that he made from film adaptations of his work to BLM.
	I mean, honestly, BLM have already been known for about two, two and a half years to be even more so than we already knew when they first came out with a bunch of mansions.
	We already knew that they were a grift, Alan.
	Maybe you should look into that before you give them money because you're just buying them more mansions.
	But anyway.
	Oh, well, OK, fine.
	It does seem like a total boomer.
	Oh he's worse, he's an actual communist.
	As I say, I've watched Watchmen, the film, and the only character, well not the only character, but the character I sort of sympathise with the most was Rorschach.
	Yeah, everybody does.
	Well that's interesting because the film adaptation of it by Zack Snyder is accidentally not subversive in the way that the comic book is because Zack Snyder being a more, not simple minded, but not Not as willing to deep dive into these.
	He's the sort of guy who'll write something and film something just because he looks at it and goes, that's really cool.
	Saw Rorschach and went... He got the surface level message, not the subversion level.
	Yes, and he went, Rorschach's really cool!
	And just made him really cool in the film.
	Would you ever do anything on 2000AD?
	Did you ever read 2000AD?
	I really want to.
	I was not really into any of the Marvel or DC stuff, but I did Read a fair bit of 2000AD, you know, Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper.
	I really do want to cover some Judge Dredd at some point soon because we are very US-centric with the sorts of comics that we cover, even if the writers, some of them are Scottish and English from the British invasion from the 80s.
	I still want to focus on some of these old English comic books as well because 2080 is really cool.
	Judge Dredd, An English character?
	Yeah, 2008 year, a British imprint.
	Oh, I didn't know that.
	I didn't know that either.
	Yeah, I think a lot of people just assume that he's American, but he's a British character, originally.
	Well, what?
	The character?
	Well, well, in origin of the people who wrote him in 2008.
	Oh, okay, I'm sorry, I lost it.
	Yeah, I know that... I was going to say, Mega City One's not supposed to be in Hampshire or anything, is it?
	Although it's feeling more and more like it could be.
	It could be Portsmouth.
	Yeah, when we get the South East London Superstate, yes, in the corner of England.
	I remember reading somewhere that there's a sort of colloquialism that Portsmouth is actually one of the most densely built up places, like city-wise.
	It is, Portsmouth- I don't really remember it very well.
	Yeah, the stat that I always remember for Portsmouth is that Portsmouth residents have a greater linear frontage of motor car than they do of house.
	Blimey.
	Because basically they've pretty much all got two cars, and two cars is wider than the average house in Portsmouth.
	So if you're fat in Portsmouth... So this is like the opposite problem that I have going into old houses where all the door frames are too short for me.
	So they're just too wide.
	So city density goes like Tokyo, Hong Kong, Mexico City, Portsmouth.
	I don't know about the people, but it's just impossible to drive through.
	Just impossible.
	I've heard that as well.
	Yeah, I try to avoid driving in European and British cities as much as possible anyway, because they are not built for cars in the slightest.
	What's the next one then?
	So the next one was Kingdom Come and this... No, no, no, go back, John.
	So Kingdom Come is a very famous comic book from the 1990s that was kind of a commentary on a lot of the trends that were going on at the time.
	When I talk about how comics these days have a lot of very, very dark subject matter, it's more comics from the 90s and early to mid-2000s that went really dark, because nowadays you just have complete S-libs writing all of them, wokey left-hugs.
	Was it corrupt leftist propaganda in the 90s as well?
	Um, not quite as blatant and with more of an eye on trying to tell a coherent story, but all of the messaging is still there.
	It was more trying to uphold and propagate the, uh, liberal order of that time, which is more to be expected given the fact that- I can't even remember what the liberal talking points in the 90s were.
	I mean, there's a little bit of climate change, but it was alright in the 90s.
	Well, watch the video to find out what exactly it is.
	Also watch the video because in it, Connor kind of fills in some of the gaps that were left out of the history of comics, because this one came first where he spoke more about 90s comics.
	And if you look at that thumbnail there, you see that image.
	That's Captain America, and he doesn't have a gigantic tumour sticking out of his chest.
	He looks like Elon Musk there, doesn't he?
	That was the kind of art style that a lot of comics had in the 1990s, and that was a particularly infamous one done by an artist called Rob Liefeld, who was known for creating the most grotesquely musculatured comic book characters ever, and also couldn't draw feet.
	So, you would get this, but then there would never be a shot that shows the full body, so you can see the tiny, tiny little pointed toes that he would give these people.
	That's like a beer belly moved up, isn't it?
	Yeah, I think it's based on an Arnold Schwarzenegger picture from when Arnold Schwarzenegger was still competing in bodybuilding in the 1970s.
	Had a pair of beer breasts, apparently.
	Arnold Schwarzenegger had an enormous chest.
	Oh yeah, he didn't look like that though, did he?
	Yeah, but yeah, that was a particularly strange version of that.
	But you got a lot of this art.
	You got the really edgy comics coming through where you'd have characters called things like extreme with an X at the beginning and a hyphen and then tree.
	That's aged really poorly.
	That sort of 90s naming convention where it'd be like a Z on the end of something and it'd just be a regular word.
	So let me see.
	It rubs me the wrong way.
	I'm just getting some examples up.
	So Rob Liefeld himself wrote a series called Young Blood where you had characters called things like Bad Rock, Riptide, Shaft, Shadowhawk, Professor Knight.
	And these aren't even some good, these aren't even the best ones.
	You have characters called Die Hard, things like that.
	Just like movie names, extreme.
	You wanted everything to be cool and extreme.
	And Kingdom Come was a commentary on that style of comic that was coming out at the time.
	And then we've also spread out into not just covering Western American comics.
	Like for instance, we did the fifth episode was actually on the film trilogy of Unbreakable Split and Glass, the M. Night Shyamalan film trilogy.
	Now I know that his name among some circles of the culture is a little bit of a meme because...
	Admittedly, he has made some absolutely terrible films in his time, and in fact about 10 minutes near the beginning of this was me dissecting and absolutely demolishing the most recent film of his that had come out at the time called Knock at the Cabin, which was absolute rubbish.
	Is that the Crop Circle one?
	No, that's Signs.
	That's 20 years old, Dan.
	Oh, okay.
	I enjoyed that film, though.
	I've not seen it.
	But the series is both a superhero film series and also a commentary on the power of comic books to inspire people at the same time.
	So we thought it would be appropriate to do so.
	Rehabilitate the third part of the film series, Glass, somewhat, because a lot of people hate that.
	I hated it the first time I saw it, but I thought it was okay.
	Watching it again, I thought it held up much better than I originally thought it did.
	And once again, we were able to extract some story beats and elements from it that I don't think we were expecting to, like a commentary on The pathologizing of the exceptional in the modern era where the sorts of people that we're talking about in the previous segment when we're talking about the kinds of men who went out and did great things, the great individuals, these days are pathologized from a young age.
	If you're a young man that shows any level of exceptionalism in your life, you're immediately Thrown off to the side and kind of fenced in where you're told that you've either got something wrong with you, you're majorly autistic, you need to take ADHD medication, all of this.
	All things that might actually from a medical point be true but also might be good for them in the future to be able to go out and achieve things.
	You're basically just pathologising masculine behaviour at this point.
	Yes.
	I like when you said that.
	You said exceptional men looked at Beau and then you said might be autistic and looked at me.
	You're welcome!
	Hey, some say it's the next stage of evolution.
	I have heard that before.
	Yeah, I think that was the Predator film from 2017 that said that.
	Wasn't that X-Men?
	That is in there.
	I'm pretty sure it was.
	It's a theme in it.
	The point of X-Men is they're all like potentially the next stage of evolution, not that they're all autistic.
	They're all really good at maths.
	So a realistic version of X-Men is just all on 4-channel day long.
	Exactly that.
	I mean, the powers of 4chan surpass the X-Men at this point, I reckon.
	Yes, that's true.
	They've delivered more sort of actual miracles, haven't they?
	Yes.
	Right.
	And then we've also gone into, and this is somewhat of a controversial area among the right wing, is we have taken a look
	At one particular Japanese comic series called Berserk, which is absolutely fantastic, a brilliant series and brilliant storytelling which far surpasses most of every Western comic I've ever read, but some suggest that by virtue, purely virtue of it being Japanese, that it should just be immediately dismissed and said it's subversive, it's disgusting, it's degenerate.
	It's not.
	The same thing with comic books being a medium through which you can tell stories, and those stories can have good values or bad values, good storytelling or bad storytelling, applies similarly to the sorts of media that comes from Japan, and I think that there is a sort of knee-jerk reaction that a lot of right-wingers, particularly those who are terminally online, have when they react to Japanese media because manga, anime, all of it is a medium through which to tell stories.
	There are tropes that you can have on those that you might find distasteful but those tropes aren't going to be found in every piece of media and you should judge the media itself on the quality of the storytelling and the themes held within.
	So that's my little piece there for anybody who... So the title of this one is The Black Swordsman and the Golden Age.
	So is the sword black or is the person wielding the sword black?
	The main character is Guts.
	He is the Black Swordsman.
	He dresses primarily in black with black cape and black armor.
	And also his sword is one that's been very, very influential because it's an enormous sword that's not this big.
	But obviously, imagine you're reading the comic and it's there.
	The sword is about that big on the comic page.
	So it's enormous.
	That seems impractical.
	Well, he's strong enough that he can deal with it.
	And it's been very influential on other... It's compensating.
	Yeah, it feels like it.
	This was one that I really enjoyed doing.
	It was very popular because people were asking for us to cover something like Berserk and I've been reading it over the past year or so.
	So we found it was a really good opportunity to talk about it.
	It was one of the most popular episodes that we've done so far.
	And for anybody who did watch it, and if you haven't, you should by subscribing to the website, Sargon.
	Sargon with an E. Yeah, with an E at the end, 50% discount.
	Because he's on holiday.
	There he is, right there.
	Look at him.
	Our Lord and Saviour, the man who will save the West.
	So while he's away, get 50% off.
	Yes, and look out for the next episode of Comics Corner because we might be doing a follow-up because there is a lot of Berserk, the story, and a lot of it is very, very worth covering.
	So that's something that I really enjoyed doing.
	Excellent, check that out.
	Should we go to videos?
	Yes, let's do that.
	So since we want to talk about basic recipes from our respective countries, the beans on toast thing got me kind of hungry, so I just made some slow cooker pulled chicken.
	Normally you do pulled pork with barbecue sauce.
	So that's what I'm going to have for dinner today.
	Nothing fancy about it, but really good and a homemade treat.
	And I am going to give English breakfast a good, honest go.
	So look forward to that.
	Thank you.
	My first thought on that is that looks gross, but a few seconds in I decided it looked delicious.
	Yeah, at first glance it's gross, but then you realize that's pulled pork.
	Pulled pork's really nice.
	What's this one about?
	Okay, here we have a bongo you can enter, and a very young soldier.
	Okay, let's go inside.
	The Nazi office is here, and with the office we of course have...
	A Nazi!
	Actually, we have two additional Nazis.
	This is fun.
	I was wondering, yeah.
	They seem like friendly enough chaps to me.
	So, hang on, am I to understand correctly that in Denmark they have Nazi theme parks where it's men's jobs to dress up in a Nazi uniform and just sit around talking German?
	Where do I sign up?
	Looks like they're drinking wine as well, yeah.
	And also, these men must get funny looks on the bus on their way to work.
	Why shouldn't you get changed at work?
	They take their job very seriously, Harry.
	They walk to work in their uniform, they're very proud.
	Maybe they get a staff card.
	We have battle reenactment people, actual military LARPers, don't we?
	And someone turns up as the Nazis.
	Fair point.
	Yeah.
	I don't know if we've recreated the actual video.
	Have we got any more videos?
	Yes, I'm Sonski, Galis Bera to the Lotus Eaters.
	Since I quit my public sector job, I've been temporarily living in Greece with my girlfriend, and it's been interesting to say the least.
	While here, it was brought to my attention by my girlfriend that a fertility clinic in Crete was raided by police because it was a front for a human trafficking organization.
	There's a lot to go through, so I'll just give you some links so you can check it up in your own time.
	Apparently the head was a respected medical professional.
	Trust the experts, eh?
	Anyway, something to let you know about.
	Para colo y filimo.
	I remember you mentioning that in the Gold Tier Zoom call, actually.
	And, um, yeah, it's unsurprising, really, that these sort of gateways into Europe are taking advantage of the huge wave of migration And uh, they're capitalizing on it by making money.
	Like this is what happens when you have these huge waves of migrants.
	It's not that they find a better life.
	It's that they get their organs harvested and you know, they get the babies taken away and all sorts of stuff.
	That's a bit rough.
	Right.
	What's the next one?
	Hello everyone.
	I'm taking a three week vacation to the UK and I wanted to share some pictures I've taken and some observations I've had.
	First and second day, I left the airport and headed to Winchester to see the Great Hall and some other things.
	First of all, The food is phenomenal.
	Everyone who accuses your food of being bland is lying to themselves.
	Yes.
	The meats and breads are of high quality and don't need the massive amount of spice as many people like to put on their food.
	Also, because it's a meme, I had some beans on toast and it was great.
	Hey!
	There you go!
	You are now honorarily a British citizen now, after saying that.
	And well done for going to Winchester.
	Winchester is the true capital of England, by the way.
	It is lovely.
	It is, yes.
	I am unironically a Wessex nationalist.
	I want us to spit off and become Wessex again.
	The Kingdom of Wessex.
	I don't like that Anglo-Saxon nonsense.
	You can have Mercia.
	Yeah.
	Celts.
	Anglo-Saxon invaders.
	Don't recognise them.
	Just because they're old migrants doesn't mean they're good.
	What ancient kingdom are you from, Bo?
	Uh, what would it be?
	Uh, somewhere where the Icene... Ancient?
	Yes.
	Um, yeah.
	If I'm Wessex, it would be... I'll be the, uh... It'll still look like Kent in Essex.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Yeah, there.
	Kent.
	Yeah, that's an old kingdom.
	Right.
	Guys... You are more than welcome to come to Australia.
	Come and stay with me.
	Check out this wonderful view.
	And... There aren't really...
	All that many dangerous spiders where I live.
	They're just big and annoying and stupid.
	That does look lovely.
	Check out that.
	It does.
	Come on Callum.
	Come to Australia.
	Come hang out with me.
	Oh, Callum's not here.
	We don't know where he's gone.
	He's away again.
	To be fair, I used to be scared of all of the dangerous stuff that lives in Australia.
	I'm now far more concerned about their police, like, choking you because you haven't worn a mask or something, so... I do want to go to Australia.
	Although it's not just the spiders I'm scared of.
	My missus' mum's from Australia, and when she lived there when I was younger, she said you used to just open cupboards, and it wouldn't be a spider, there'd just be a scorpion there.
	That spooks me.
	I don't mind scorpions nearly as much as spiders.
	I don't know what it is, because they're in the same sort of family, aren't they?
	Well, I'd be more scared of being killed by scorpion venom spiders.
	Scorpion feels more crushable.
	Like, you feel like you could take on a flying pan.
	Exactly.
	As long as you saw it coming, whereas spiders, they're flighty little.
	Yeah, well, a scorpion, you know which direction it's facing.
	A spider can go in any direction.
	It's the eight legs and the multiple eyes.
	Scorpion, you know what you're dealing with, don't you?
	Welcome back to Lotus Drinkers.
	Let's get into the booze.
	This is Nobody Expects a Spanish Inquisition.
	It's an eight-year-old member's room exclusive.
	It's a cheeky 67.5%, or 579 bottles of it made.
	That's a whiskey.
	Nice.
	That wasn't saying it under basis.
	You need to get in on that, Dan.
	Was that whiskey, was it?
	It was, yeah.
	Named after Monty Python as well, isn't it?
	I like mead.
	Mead is good.
	Yeah, mead's nice.
	Having had a bit more of that recently.
	I like all alcohol.
	That's my contribution.
	I like it all.
	Oh, you like it all?
	Josh is going to take all of this once we're done.
	Have you tried mead yet?
	I have, yeah.
	Lovely.
	I had mead at his birthday.
	Someone sent us a bottle of it, didn't they?
	Yeah, it's nice stuff.
	I've had a couple of kinds of mead before.
	Oh, well I'll be having that then.
	I think it's all been drank by Karl, actually.
	Finished it off in the lads' hour.
	The last one.
	He's gone now, he's just wandered off.
	That's why he's gone for two weeks.
	Have we got time for comments, John?
	We've got like, can we go till extra ten minutes, John?
	Alright, let's do a couple of quick ones.
	We'll just do the top ones.
	Sounds like more lads-our-style content.
	Loving the laid-back content so far.
	Good, it's working.
	Dan's looking like everyone's favourite supply teacher.
	I don't know what you mean.
	Shadowy, dark figure.
	Lots of other good comments, we'll have to read them in our own time.

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