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Feb. 25, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:43:30

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1108

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	Islander issue 3 is now available to purchase from shop.lotacies.com and is the next step in the story that we are telling with this magazine.
	For this issue we have collected piercing and esoteric essays from the finest right-wing minds on the theme of our civilizational winter.
	Each of our authors is an expert in bringing forth the most important hidden revelations from the lowest reaches of the soul, and it has all been beautifully rendered in a medievalist revivalist aesthetic.
	For this issue, I commissioned a new translation of the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem The Wanderer, and have written a companion essay exploring how it is a reflection of our modern experience.
	I personally feel that this is the most important thing I've ever written, so I will be looking forward to your feedback on it.
	We have resolved our distribution issues With the magazines being printed in advance of the orders, so we can guarantee that you will receive your copy very soon after ordering it.
	You will also receive email updates so you can see exactly where it is.
	Hopefully, Issue 3 can provide you with the space and context to engage in deep reflection about the nature of our circumstances, to discover hidden truths about yourself and find the resolve to make it through our spiritual exile.
	Guys, you're live. you're live.
	Guys, we've gone live.
	What?
	Ah!
	Yes.
	Apologies.
	I was absolutely enraptured by my copy of Islander 3, which was very good.
	Bo, apparently we're live, so we have to...
	Buy it.
	Today's D-Day.
	Yes.
	H-Hour.
	Yes.
	Went live just like a few minutes ago.
	It did.
	Buy it.
	Do it.
	Just buy it.
	Yes, check out Island...
	Look, there we go.
	There's the page on the store.
	You can...
	You can go and buy it from there.
	It's another really good addition.
	I appreciate we may have screwed up slightly on the delivery of the last one.
	However, those people have been well and truly sacked.
	They're gone.
	And we're using different people and we're tracking every addition.
	Whatever.
	It's all sorted.
	The sorting people have done the sorting.
	Anyway.
	Yeah, sorry.
	Back to the matter at hand.
	Welcome to podcast 1108. I believe it is.
	On the 25th of February.
	Tuesday.
	In the year of our Lord.
	Yes.
	2025. Gregorian Gander.
	I'm Dan.
	And I'm joined by Bo.
	Hello.
	Alright.
	And what are we going to discuss?
	Oh, we're going to discuss who the next James Bond should be.
	We're going to discuss a new discovery of ancient Egypt, which I don't know anything about, so that would be interesting to learn about.
	And Fortnite's gold.
	Is there any?
	Yeah, or lack thereof.
	Yes.
	Something very suspect is going on there.
	But, yes, without further ado, who should be the next...
	James Bond.
	So Jeff Bezos, who kind of is a Bond villain.
	I mean, he's pretty close at this point, isn't he?
	I mean, he's got the attractive mistress who would probably jump into bed with Bond at the first opportunity.
	I've never seen Bezos' missus.
	I think they change.
	I don't know.
	I've lost track.
	I don't know.
	Maybe he's an alright bloke, but whatever.
	Anyway, so Bezos, who is basically a Bond villain, has acquired...
	I've been accused of looking a little bit like a Bond villain from time to time.
	Would you be a villain?
	I don't know what they're talking about, to be perfectly honest.
	Do you think you'd be the main villain or one of the...
	I like to think I'm main villain material.
	Yeah, but you could be one of the counter henchmen who, like, try and assassinate Bonds and almost succeeds.
	I'll take it.
	I'd like to be a reoccurring villain.
	I don't actually die at the end.
	I might come back in a later one.
	But Bezos, he's finally acquired the full rights to Bond.
	Don't get hung up on the details, because I don't know, don't care really, but it's something like Amazon bought MGM Studios, who had the back catalogue to the Bond, but the Broccoli family still controlled Bond.
	I thought they owned it.
	Don't they own the IP, or whatever it is?
	The name or something.
	Yeah, and like Eon Studios.
	And basically, Bezos had to give them an extra billion to stop blocking all the shit that he wanted to do with Bond.
	Because they've got notions.
	Being Amazon, obviously, they want a Bond-iverse.
	So they can have a money-penny TV series.
	They're not going to open a Bond theme park like the Star Wars theme park, are they?
	Well, maybe.
	I don't know what theme park that would be.
	It's just the pussy galore section.
	But yeah, so you have to be a bit concerned about this, because obviously Amazon have already ruined Lord of the Rings.
	Yeah.
	Like, completely.
	Yeah.
	There's Rings of Power, which wasn't really a thing before, but they've ruined that anyway, just to be on the safe side.
	And then, of course, you've got Disney, who ruined Star Wars.
	Star Wars was the most solid franchise out there.
	Ruined by Disney.
	It really is ruined as well.
	And then Amazon, who've got a track record of ruining things, has now got Bond.
	So we need to be a little bit concerned.
	Was it Daniel Craig?
	I mean, he started off quite good, didn't he?
	Casino Royale was a great movie.
	Yeah, it was a pretty good one, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, it was quite good, I thought.
	There was that one scene where he gets tied to a chair with a bottom cut out and then he has his bollocks destroyed by the main villain.
	Yeah.
	Are there any indications that he did, in fact, have his manhood destroyed?
	Yes.
	Because look at where he is by the end movie.
	He's riding bitch on the back of a moped because a woman has replaced him.
	So, yeah.
	The last two Bond films have been dumpster fires, right?
	They've been really, really bad.
	Yeah.
	I remember the last one I saw.
	I'm not even sure if it was the last one that came out, but the last one I saw, I think it was that one.
	Yeah.
	That was awful.
	It was awful.
	It was really, really bad.
	I mean, I might be remembering it wrong, but I'm pretty sure there's like a 45-minute section where he gets a diversity, equity, inclusion, sexism training when he goes back to MI5 because he winked at Moneypenny or something.
	I don't even remember it very well.
	Yeah.
	I just remember it was really bad and woke.
	But that's the way everything is going.
	At least, though, maybe...
	Timing is lined up.
	Maybe the big delay in between the last movie and this one is alright because in the meantime Trump has won and therefore possibly we're past peak woke and therefore Bond won't be destroyed.
	Maybe.
	Can you imagine if Kamala had won?
	Who we would be getting as Bond?
	It would be like that guy.
	I don't even know what his name is.
	The effeminate queer.
	Hang on, I'm not supposed to say that.
	Man-lover.
	Shitty Gay-wa.
	I can't remember.
	Okay.
	But anyway, so a feminine man who enjoys the company of men would probably have ended up as the next Bond if Campbell had won.
	Problem is, though, he is a man.
	That's still beyond the power, isn't it?
	And he's not...
	I don't think he's physically disabled either, so...
	Well, the top choice, and I've got to...
	He's not a midget.
	I've got to hand credit to...
	What's his name?
	Is it Andrew Lawrence, the comedian?
	He's really good.
	We've had him in there a couple of times.
	He came up with a short list of potential bonds, and I've got to hand it to Shamima Begum.
	Oh, yeah, Begum, yeah.
	Totally.
	Why not?
	That would tick every box in the woke era.
	He had some other suggestions as well.
	Dylan Mulvaney.
	I mean, why not?
	Harvey Price.
	I think he has a part in Rings of Power, though, so I could be wrong.
	Are you joking about that?
	I'm not sure.
	Okay.
	Lenny Henry?
	We could get, like, 60, 70-year-old Lenny Henry to do it, couldn't we?
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, he's in Rings of Power.
	No, Lord of the Rings thing or something.
	He was in something.
	Lord of the Rings.
	But yes.
	So thank goodness that we have got a Trump win, because otherwise we would have got a bad bond, almost certainly.
	But there's another problem that remains, which is in this modern era, the fact remains is the bond still works for the British government.
	And bond is supposed to be this hero archetype.
	But there is nothing that you can do that's heroic or manly if you work for the British government in 2025. Well, according to the fifth colonists, at least.
	Well, yeah, but what would...
	Yeah, but you've got to remember, he's like an MI6 agent.
	So he's pushing the foreign policy of the British government, so Keir Starmer's government.
	So what could he possibly be doing that would be heroic?
	I mean, you could have gaslighting from Russia where he goes to Russia to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline.
	I was going to say, the Ruskies are still the baddies, aren't they?
	Yeah.
	In that paradigm.
	So it would probably have to be another...
	So he would be blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, wouldn't he?
	And then blaming it on Russia.
	Or he would be blowing up a nuclear power station in Ukraine and then blaming it on Russia.
	Or he would be fixing an election in the US and then blaming it on Russia.
	What else would Bond do at the moment?
	Who else are the baddies as far as real life the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are concerned?
	Trump.
	So maybe Bond goes off to assassinate Trump again.
	He goes and hides in the bushes at Marlago Golf Course waiting to take a shot at the Donald.
	Yeah.
	Either that or he goes off to China to assassinate a whistleblower who was about to announce that Fauci was indeed paying them to do gain-of-function research.
	That can be Dr. No Myocarditis.
	Bond is taking on pro-Fauci operations.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Or this one.
	He goes to Ukraine to rescue a Ukrainian transsexual media spokesman and then ends up bedding her.
	Yes, or him, or whatever.
	And then make some quip, some Bond-esque quip at the end of it about, ooh, that was a bit, you know.
	But that's the problem, you see.
	It's like, Bonds, these days, I don't see how they couldn't be, how they could do anything that's positive.
	Which is why so many people are calling for Bond to be set in the 1960s.
	That would be cool.
	Yeah, it would be, wouldn't it?
	Because there is that thing in the Bond franchise where they don't really address the fact that Commander James Bond hasn't really aged or sometimes gets younger over the course of decades.
	I think there's one, one of the early Pierce Brosnan ones, where Q says something like, you're a relic, a dinosaur of the Cold War, but they essentially don't mention it.
	That was the thing that I always liked about Bond.
	So, I remember when I was at...
	Because every so often the subject comes up of making Bond black.
	And I had a housemate at university who was really into his Bond.
	I mean, he was studying film and stuff like that.
	And he also happened to be black.
	And he was a massive James Bond fan.
	And I was fairly ambivalent at the time about making Bond black.
	And he was dead set against it.
	And his rationale was that the whole thing with Bond is it's supposed to...
	Be able to suspend disbelief enough to believe that they're all the same guy.
	It's just a continuation.
	And something like Making in Black all of a sudden is just too jarring between the difference.
	And the other thing that Bond used to do is they used to be able to...
	They did kind of transition.
	So I think it was George Lazenby's Bond who got married and then immediately his missus got shot.
	And then later bonds would refer to him having been married once and stuff like that.
	So there was this kind of thing, but they were actually all the same guy.
	And that kind of worked up until Daniel Craig, because he got initiated as a 007. Because before, it was always, you join him when he's a 007 and you leave him when he's a 007. Daniel Craig, they initiated him as a 007 and then killed him off at the end.
	There was also one of the Daniel Craig ones where they gave him a...
	Bit of a backstory.
	Talk about his parents, where he grew up in some Scottish area.
	That was in the books though, wasn't it?
	I've not read the books.
	I've read Doctor No years ago when I was in my 20s.
	I read Doctor No.
	That's the only one I've ever read.
	I think there was reference to him.
	So he's always been an orphan, but I think he came from Scottish minor nobility or something like that.
	And that got referenced in Skyfall or something like that.
	In the film franchises, like in the Roger Moore years, they never give you any of that, do they?
	No.
	But they have now.
	Have you ever done any spying?
	Possibly.
	No, of course not.
	I've accidentally done spying twice.
	What do you mean?
	So, one time, because you know I like to go travelling and I go through a number of places.
	One time I went travelling and I was going through this hot country and because I'm in all these business networks and stuff.
	I had arranged to go to this firm, this financial firm that was looking to get into the UK market.
	And I kind of pitched up at this place.
	And it was really hot.
	So I wanted to get inside and there's a security guard on the gate who doesn't really want to let me in.
	But it's hot and I'm getting annoyed.
	But I know I've got an appointment to see the boss.
	So at some point I just clap him on the shoulder and say, look, it will be fine.
	I'm going in now.
	Speak to the boss.
	Anyway, I get there and I speak to the boss.
	And, you know, make small talk because we'd exchanged emails before.
	It's like, OK, congratulations on your wedding in May.
	And he said, oh, yeah, it was May, but it was the year before.
	It's like, OK. Fair enough, I got that wrong.
	And I know you've got a daughter on the way, and she's already two and stuff like that.
	Anyway, so I meet this guy, make some small talk, and then I'm going around the installation, and I'm expecting to see loads of people doing finance stuff.
	And I start going around, and it quite quickly becomes apparent that I've gone to the wrong building.
	Right.
	And what they're doing is like national security adjacent stuff, and I really shouldn't be in there.
	Right.
	So I just kind of made some excuses and then kind of left.
	But then you didn't come home and go straight to SIS and tell them what you saw?
	No.
	So it's not real intelligence gathering or anything?
	No, but we live in a world where if you do train spotting in a foreign country, people are arrested for that.
	So I thought I definitely shouldn't have been seeing the things I've been seeing.
	So I just kind of made my excuses and just kind of left the country.
	Well, I've certainly never been involved with the intelligence services, but I've known a fair few people who have.
	I've known people that are in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, people that have been in military intelligence and all sorts of things.
	And I've spoken to them, and off the books, they're usually reasonably candid about it, actually.
	Are they?
	Well, reasonably.
	You're not giving away state secrets or anything, but they just will tell you stuff, low-level stuff.
	And quite often it's people that are entirely off the books.
	They're not actually an intelligence officer.
	They're just a friend of the family or a friend and acquaintance.
	Apparently that's how it works a lot of the time.
	It's like they just get a connection.
	Yeah, they get you to do something that's actually quite innocuous.
	Like you go somewhere like Tajikistan and just take a few pictures of the airport.
	Something like that.
	Stuff like that.
	So you can imagine how low-level stuff gets picked up on.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I was a bit concerned.
	Plus, in the modern world, the old school 1960s James Bond type spying, I think is actually really rare.
	Quite rare.
	You're not going to get much doing intelligence gathering that way.
	It's all electronic now.
	It's all electronic now.
	You just get GCHQ or the...
	Do it electronically.
	Yeah, just to tap into someone's phone or laptop and you're going to get far more info than...
	Trying to smooch someone in a casino.
	Yeah, right.
	Bond girls, we should mention them as well.
	It's probably going to be, what's her name, Rachel Zelga, isn't it?
	Ziegler.
	Ziegler.
	It's probably going to be her, isn't it?
	Or that one.
	With her ocular hypotellerism.
	What?
	Ocular hypotellerism when your eyes are too far apart.
	Go back.
	Is that what she's got?
	Well.
	I would say it's quite an acute case.
	Quite an acute case, really, of it.
	But she's already destroyed the Disney thing, the Snow White thing.
	So if you're trying to destroy a movie franchise, she would be ideal for it.
	And for some reason, she's in absolutely everything these days.
	Because she is now considered to be the example of...
	Beauty.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	As Cheney there in June, she's actually made to look less attractive than she is.
	But still, it's not ideal, is it?
	There have been some great Bond girls through the years.
	Yeah.
	I like the French one.
	It might be on the next page.
	Merry Goodnight.
	That's a good name.
	Swedish.
	Well, she was lovely.
	What's that?
	Andrea Anders.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, most of them are absolutely beautiful.
	That's the whole point, isn't it?
	Xena on the top.
	Yeah.
	GoldenEye.
	That was from GoldenEye.
	Oh, GoldenEye was a great film, wasn't it?
	Yeah.
	It's one of my favourite ones.
	Yes.
	Made by the same director who's made Casino Royale.
	Right.
	Ten years apart.
	What's your favourite Bond movie, if you've got to pick one?
	Oh, probably GoldenEye.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah.
	Well, Brosnan was actually really quite good at it.
	I mean, the correct answer is Goldfinger, but that is objectively the correct answer.
	No, I like Connery.
	For me, Connery is the best Bond.
	I like Doctor No from Russia We Love, Goldfinger, the earliest ones.
	But Brosnan, for me, is probably second favourite, and GoldenEye is probably the best one, as well as spending hundreds, maybe thousands of hours playing GoldenEye on the N64. I've got them here.
	We're a bit zoomed in.
	Can we zoom out a bit?
	I don't really like the Roger Moore stuff.
	I like Roger Moore, but he just ranks lower.
	It's not that I don't like Roger Moore's Bond, but I just feel like...
	That was the first Bond I saw, and you tend to gravitate to whichever Bond you saw first.
	So for a long time I did quite like Roger Moore.
	Did you not see Sean Connery on TV first?
	Well...
	I mean, I think he'd stopped making Bonds by the time that I was born.
	Yeah, yeah, but you just see it first, see it on TV. No, I think I saw the Roger Moore ones first, and then I saw the Sean Connery ones.
	But yeah, Connery was...
	In fact, all of them were great.
	What did you think of Dalton?
	Well, Licence to Kill was one of the first Bonds I happened to see when I was a kid.
	I get, oh no, can that be right?
	I don't know.
	Anyway, I think Licence to Kill's not bad.
	A lot of people rate him quite low, but I think he's all right.
	In retrospect, I hated him at the time.
	Really?
	In retrospect, I think he wasn't actually that bad.
	I mean, Ladies and Beasts almost doesn't count because he was only a one-time shot thing.
	He was good in that.
	He's actually quite a good one.
	I don't think there's any...
	I mean, again, I would rank more bottom, but he's still good.
	I think Dalton would have done better if he'd done it when he was 10 years older.
	10 years older?
	Yeah.
	Oh, I thought he was already old and paunchy by the...
	The last ones.
	Dalton.
	Oh, sorry, Dalton.
	Sorry, I thought we were talking about Roger Moore still.
	No, no, no.
	Yeah, no, Dalton.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Whereas Roger Moore did get a bit old and heavy by the last ones, didn't he?
	Yeah.
	You're not really believing that he's doing roundhouse kicks and stuff.
	Yes.
	And having 19-year-olds throw themselves at him.
	The point I was going to make was there's not really a weak link.
	There's not one, for me anyway, there's not one that stands out where they were crap at Bond.
	They're all pretty good.
	Until the last one decided to go a bit woke in the end.
	But he looks the part and he's a good actor.
	Is that a good actor?
	You've got to give him that.
	Yes.
	And, yeah, he didn't write the screenplays, did he?
	So I don't think you can blame him, really.
	So let's go through the list, shall we?
	All right.
	List of what?
	All the films?
	No.
	The actors?
	Oh, who might be the new Bond?
	Right.
	It's Caval, isn't it?
	The answer, again.
	Oh, possibly.
	I don't even know who that guy is.
	Aaron Taylor Johnson?
	Apparently he was in something.
	I'm not sure why.
	Tom Hardy.
	Yeah, could possibly.
	I mean, it's not a stupid...
	I don't know if he's got...
	I mean, he's got the sort of menace and presence and stuff, but I don't know if he's quite suave enough.
	No?
	If he was picked, it wouldn't be terrible.
	No.
	I think he could pull it off.
	Yeah.
	But it wouldn't be my first...
	He's a bit too...
	He's a bit too...
	You know.
	Stout yeoman rather than cavalier.
	Oh, you think?
	Well, he's supposed to be an officer and a gentleman.
	You don't think Hardy pulls off a naval officer?
	No, I think he's enlisted.
	Okay.
	In Band of Brothers, he was just an enlisted man, wasn't he?
	Oh, yeah.
	So if it is going to be a black guy, they've talked about Idris Elba for ages.
	Heard him touted all the time.
	Yeah.
	If you're going to make it a black guy, might as well just make it a woman.
	But that's actually what they did do in the last Bond, wasn't it?
	He was replaced by a black woman.
	Why black?
	Why not Bangladeshi?
	Why not Eskimo?
	I don't know.
	But to be fair, if Anne Boleyn could be played by a black woman, surely Bond can.
	And was.
	If you're going to pervert everything inside out, then sure, why not?
	Yeah, do it.
	Go for it.
	Whoever that is, I've no idea who that is.
	No, never seen that person.
	Oh, Latasha Lynch.
	That actually was.
	The last 007. Yeah, gross.
	Gross.
	I hate Cillian Murphy.
	I don't know why.
	Oh, do you?
	He's done nothing to earn it.
	He just irritates me.
	Yeah.
	And he's too small to be a Bond as well.
	That guy, he looks like he could do it.
	I don't know who he is.
	Yeah, I've seen him in stuff, I think.
	Yeah, maybe.
	What?
	I don't know who that is.
	Apparently he was in Gangs of London, which I think I watched, but I don't remember him at all.
	Oh, I remember him now.
	I haven't seen that.
	But no.
	Richard Madden, he was in Gangs of London as well, wasn't he?
	But no, he's just...
	With a bond, they've either got it or they haven't.
	Yeah, you've certainly got to have the just obvious charisma.
	You need the confidence, the charisma, the suave, the...
	That's why Brosnan was very good, wasn't it?
	Because he's sort of at a glance, suave.
	There you go.
	If you want somebody from the Asian subcontinent, you've got Dev Patel is being listed as somebody.
	Harry Dickinson, no, don't know him.
	Tom Hiddleston, or maybe.
	If he bulked up.
	Yeah.
	I have to put on some weight, get some traps going on him.
	Yes.
	He's got a skinny neck at the minute.
	He's a bit too skinny jeans at the moment, isn't he?
	Yeah, right.
	Get rid of that bouffant for a start.
	Yeah, but he could do it.
	I don't know who that is.
	Oh, because they're actually, at some point, one of these mentioned Slow Horses, because they did actually make an MI6 series recently, which my mum really liked, and she said, oh, you've got to watch Slow Horses.
	It's about MI6 spies and stuff like that.
	And literally the whole thing is MI6 going after...
	Basically people like the Lotus Eaters.
	Yeah, is that with Gary Oldman in it?
	Yes.
	Yeah, I saw the first episode of that.
	Yeah, it turned out completely.
	It's where the right-wing skinheads are beheading people on camera.
	Yeah, it's an obvious inversion.
	But they do spend 40% of their budget and time and effort clamping down on the right-wing who don't actually do anything in favour of not spending that time on people who actually behead people.
	Jonathan Bailey, apparently he was in some sort of period drama.
	Again, I don't know.
	I probably should have looked into who the hell these people are.
	John Boyega from Star Wars.
	Did he cry a lot in Star Wars?
	Please.
	And he spent his whole time basically pining for some girl.
	And he hates the West and England and whiteness.
	Okay.
	So, maybe...
	Yeah, maybe that's who Amazon will pick.
	Yeah, maybe the casters at Amazon will go for him.
	Will Porter, who was apparently...
	Yeah, I've seen him in a bunch of things.
	He's quite a good actor, but I don't think he's Bond.
	No.
	Again, with Bond, you know Bond when you see it.
	Right.
	Daniel Kaliuga, maybe?
	Who?
	I don't know.
	Who the fuck is that guy?
	Don't know.
	Clive Standen.
	Apparently he was in Vikings.
	I watched Vikings, but I don't remember him.
	But I don't know.
	Maybe he was quite good.
	Tom Hopper.
	Oh, I've seen him.
	But no, again, he's not got the touch of the officer about him.
	Again, he's Sergeant Major material.
	If you are going to have a black Bond, it should be that guy.
	Okay, why is that?
	Because he can do the suave thing.
	Bond with cornrows?
	Yeah, I don't think it should be a black guy for the reasons previously discussed.
	But if you are going to do a black guy...
	Do this guy, because I actually like some of his stuff.
	He was the one in 12 Years a Slave.
	Oh, right, yeah, I've not watched that.
	Yeah, but he's done some other stuff where he's been slightly suave.
	So anyway...
	If you're going to have a black Bond, cornrows have got to be better than the pure fro.
	Can you have Bond with a big, massive 70s fro?
	Oh, that'd be good, wouldn't it?
	Would it?
	Well, if you're going down that route, you might as well commit.
	Okay.
	Set it in the 70s.
	Set it in 1971. Yes.
	Bond is black with a giant fro.
	Sure, do that.
	But obviously, it's got to be Cavill.
	He's the obvious pick.
	Yes.
	Because if we're talking about that sort of at-a-glance, suave, charisma thing...
	Oh, yeah, I mean, he's just effortlessly got all of it.
	And he did that man-from-uncle thing, which is basically a Bond warm-up.
	Right.
	I didn't see that either.
	There's loads of things I haven't seen in the last 10, 15 years.
	Loads, but...
	I don't bother watching it anymore.
	Yeah, I mean, whoever mocked that image up, it works, doesn't it?
	I feel like...
	It's got to be Henry Cavill set in 1965. Because I just don't believe that there's anything that a modern Bond could do that is in any way heroic.
	Apart from...
	Well, I mean, what would they do?
	Taking out Yemeni terrorists?
	Fox Roaring Nationalists?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that is what a modern Bond would be doing.
	Sponsor transgender rights in Uganda?
	What if the storyline is actually that he infiltrates the Lotus Eaters?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that is what modern MI6 agents would actually be spending their time doing.
	You know, maybe...
	And if they did make it set in modern day, rather than Bezos being, like, the villain, they would basically cast a proxy for Elon, wouldn't they?
	Yeah.
	Try and stop him from delivering, like, Skylink, or was it Starlink?
	Cheap, affordable internet.
	A mash-up between Iron Man, Musk, and just a fictional multi-multi-billionaire baddie.
	Maybe that's what...
	Either do Cavill, set it in 1965 and make it based, make him proper Romaniser, all that kind of stuff, all the stuff that he's good at, or set it in the modern day and the movie can be, and I want to call this one basically...
	Bond gets an email from Elon Musk asking him to list five things that he got done that week.
	And he has to identify the one person in the government who actually is productive and break into their office and read their emails.
	Or another one would be Bond has to infiltrate Spectre only to discover that Spectre is actually just the US government and you can call that one USAID another day.
	Nice.
	Yeah.
	Nice.
	So anyway.
	That's our thoughts on Bond.
	Henry Cavill, 1965. Forget all of that other nonsense.
	Make it post-Woke.
	Please don't ruin this franchise like you ruined all the other ones.
	Please.
	Oh yeah, an Islander shill.
	Bye, Islander.
	Because Bond would.
	Yeah.
	That's what he reads on the planes.
	In between missions.
	Okay.
	Over to you.
	You've got a bunch of super chats.
	Oh, yes.
	All right.
	Idris Elba...
	Oh, hang on.
	Idris Elba played Reed in Cyberpunk.
	He's actively pushing for a movie based on the character.
	He wants his Bond.
	Maybe you get it, then.
	They go with Henry because that's what the women want to watch and men can visualise themselves being Bond.
	Yeah, but they may...
	I don't know if you ever watched the...
	Was it the Witcher thing that Cavill did?
	No, I'm aware of it.
	Basically, by the second season, he's hardly in it.
	It becomes a girlboss thing.
	Because there's two women characters and basically the whole thing becomes about them.
	And he's like a sideline in his own series.
	That's a classic thing.
	They've done that with loads of...
	TV and movie franchises where the first one is based and people love it.
	And then the sequels, they get in a woke writing team, woke producers and directors, and again, just subvert it.
	So many examples of that.
	However you rank Bonds, the best Q was John Cleese and Rowan Atkinson for the next Bond.
	Rowan Atkinson hasn't actually been Q, is he?
	Desmond Llewellyn is the best Q. The old guy.
	Do pay attention, 007?
	Yes.
	John Cleese was alright, but...
	Josh could do Q. You think?
	Yeah.
	Dan just stopped for a minute and drooled like a perv while scrolling Bond girls.
	Yes.
	Guilty as charged.
	What's the problem?
	Yes.
	Connor Smugmug says, when I said Islander 3 will be out before I get my number 2, I was joking.
	It was a meme.
	Hopefully I get them both at once.
	Yeah, apparently the people that we've sacked who deliver Islander 2 assure us that they are coming through.
	They're just rubbish.
	So anyway, they've been sacked.
	Bob Obad says, Dylan Mulvaney is the spy who transed me.
	Oh yes.
	Bud light shaken, not stirred.
	Yes, very good.
	The Engaged View says the movie with a transgender soldier could be called Octobussy.
	People are laughing.
	I don't get that.
	What's a bussy?
	It's just a pussy.
	Is it?
	Yeah.
	A bussy?
	Yeah.
	Is it like a...
	Just a weird...
	I don't know, actually.
	Okay, I've not encountered that terminology.
	All right, okay.
	I want to see Bo holding a white long-haired cat, stroking it and looking evil.
	Yeah, again, I think you're the counter-spy, not the boss in the layer.
	Like a 005. Yes.
	Like another 00 agent.
	Yes, who's turned bad.
	Who's Bond's nemesis.
	Yeah, or...
	Yes.
	It's almost as good as Bond, but not quite, and then there's a fistfight at the end where I lose.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Yes.
	Got it.
	Hedgehog's Dilemma says, Bo looks more like he should be in a Guy Ritchie film as a Cockney gangster henchman called Jimmy the Fist.
	That's also right.
	And Bald Eagle says, Bo wants him to become famous like Jaws, the only Bond villain to show up in multiple films, not die and get a happy ending with a woman he loves.
	Yes, right.
	I'll take it.
	Yep, very good.
	All right, we're just going to go on to the next segment then.
	So, Samson, have you got all my links?
	Is that the page?
	This is it.
	Okay.
	Alright, so to begin the segment, today Islander 3 comes out.
	Do you buy it?
	It's brilliant.
	Loads of good people in it, actually.
	As always.
	Loads of people you will have heard of have written articles and the aesthetic is really good.
	As always, thank Rory for that.
	He's done tons and tons of work on it.
	So if you're interested, do consider buying that.
	Okay, going to talk a little bit about Egypt now then, because there's been some things that have been in the news that a new tomb has been discovered.
	Well, they found Tutankhamun again.
	No, no, no.
	There's just parallels with the Howard Carter 1922...
	Tutankhamun discovery.
	There's a few vague parallels with that.
	Oh, to be fair, the headliner say, of his dynasty.
	Yes, 18th dynasty.
	How far ago is that?
	So we're talking like the 15th, 16th century, 15th century BC. 1490, 1480 odd BC. Was that when they were relatively near the peak of their power?
	Well, that's a good question.
	Depends how you measure it.
	It's the New Kingdom.
	Right.
	So, I mean, different historians, there's peaks and troughs.
	Egyptian history is so long that there's peaks and troughs.
	Some would say that parts of the New Kingdom, you could argue they had sort of golden ages there.
	Yes.
	I mean, by the time you get to Cleopatra and the Romans turn up.
	They're pretty weak by then, aren't they?
	Yeah, they're not even Egyptians, really.
	The Ptolemaic dynasty are Macedonians.
	They're not even Egyptians.
	So I would say, just my personal take, is that the pyramid builders represent the Zenith, and that's really early on.
	They're like the 3rd, 4th dynasty.
	It's the old kingdom.
	How far back is that?
	You're talking 24th, 25th, 26th century BC. So I get 1,000 years before this.
	So, again.
	Quite a long time.
	Egyptian history is so long.
	Do you put any stock into that idea that the Sphinx is even much, much older than that?
	I mean, we're talking about another 5,000 years earlier.
	Probably not that much.
	Right.
	But maybe.
	Because that's a Graham Hancock thing, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	Water erosion around it and all that kind of stuff.
	Yeah.
	The area, the pit that the Sphinx is in.
	Yeah.
	People said that the water erosion on the sides of that suggests that it's from a much, much deeper antiquity.
	I think it's at least fair to say that the Sphinx has been reworked a number of times over the centuries, over the millennia.
	The original, original thing...
	You should have a dog face or something.
	Well, we don't know.
	The head doesn't seem to be right, does it?
	The head seems too small for the rest of the body.
	That's what a lot of people have said.
	And most of the Sphinx is sort of natural bedrock.
	So I think, I wasn't going to talk about the Sphinx, but why not?
	It seems like originally, in the first instance, it was sort of a natural outcropping that probably vaguely looked like a lion or something like that, a dog, a jackal or something.
	One day an Egyptian got bored and thought, why don't we actually make it look like a lion?
	Yeah.
	And then at some later date, recalve the head into a pharaoh's head.
	And various things.
	I mean, it wasn't until the 18th or even 19th century they dug it out of the sand.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah, people did sketches and drawings of it in the 18th century, and there's only, like, the head sticking out of the sand.
	Oh.
	But anyway.
	Anyway.
	So this new discovery is...
	What's the pharaoh's name?
	He's not that important one.
	His son was much more important.
	Don't worry if you don't remember the name.
	I won't know him anyway.
	What is his name?
	Thutmose II. Thutmose II. Thutmose II. Thutmose III was an important one.
	He had a relatively long reign and was militarily successful.
	But this guy didn't rule for very long.
	Right.
	And didn't sort of achieve great things.
	So anyway, it was back in 2022, so a few years ago, when they first discovered his tomb.
	And it's not even in the Valley of the Kings.
	It's a few miles away, like three miles away from the Valley of the Kings.
	And there'd been some sort of natural flooding and natural backfill.
	But it had been either plundered by tomb robbers or just deliberately emptied and moved somewhere else in antiquity.
	The parallels with Tutankhamun don't really hold because the headline about Tutankhamun is it had been unplundered when Howard Carter broke into it in 1922. Famously looked through and saw the shining gold.
	And it was filled with golden artifacts and things.
	This wasn't.
	So footmost, the seconds, he's been robbed.
	Either robbed or...
	They think now that possibly they'd made this tomb, they'd realised for whatever reason that it wasn't going to work or it was going to keep getting flooded naturally, so they sort of abandoned it, made him another chambered tomb complex and moved everything there.
	Because actually some of the links I was going to talk about much later were that this got in the news about a week ago, but in the last day or so, they're saying they found another portion to it.
	Okay.
	Has that got loot?
	No.
	No, right.
	Because they found his body, or what they thought was his body, his mummy, back in the late 19th century, in 1881 or something.
	Thutmose II. Yeah.
	They'd found a mummy, and the archaeologists thought that that was Thutmose II. And now they think probably it wasn't.
	It was someone else.
	If you found a mummy, I mean, they're not in the best nick, are they?
	So when you look at it, what makes you think, yeah, that...
	That's Thutmose II. Well, it's the job of the archaeologists, isn't it?
	That you find them, they usually have inscriptions, there might be hieroglyphs on the wall, or they might have things actually on them which suggest it's from this dynasty.
	You might even find papyrus or hieroglyphs on the wall that explicitly say, this is the tomb of da-da-da-da-da.
	Oh, okay, right.
	That's fairly conclusive there.
	But sometimes you might get a tiny fragment of something.
	In fact, that's why they think this one was...
	Either the tomb or the abandoned tomb of Thutmose II because they found relatively small artefacts which say it was.
	So that's quite good evidence, but still.
	Well, I'm convinced.
	So what's interesting about this then?
	Well, just that even this, as relatively empty as it was, is still very, very rare.
	It's very, very rare for archaeologists to find...
	See, look, that's what they thought.
	And some people still do think he's the mummy of Thutmose II. Yeah, it's still very rare to find any sort of burial chambers that have been closed since antiquity.
	So although it wasn't full of golden things or a mummy, it's still worthy of note.
	Still absolutely worthy of note.
	Was there some common loot items in there?
	There were some small things, yeah.
	And some things on the wall, some plaster on the ceiling where it shows stars.
	So you know it's almost certainly, well, it is a burial chamber of some type.
	But by the 18th dynasty, you're a long way off of sort of giant, giant burial complexes.
	Like the pyramids.
	Or pyramids, yeah.
	Because in the Valley of the Kings, there's some massive ones.
	In fact, his wife stroke sister, his half-sister stroke wife, Hapshitsut, she's got a giant complex.
	In fact, Samson, can you find the images?
	Would have put some hapshits images of her thing.
	So, anyway.
	It's still a relatively minor pharaoh in the scheme of things.
	Here's just some...
	Go back one, actually.
	Go back one.
	That's one of the things they found there, basically saying that this is the utmost second.
	Okay.
	So it's not a great deal.
	It's not a great deal, but...
	Right.
	Still.
	Yeah, I think there's...
	Yeah.
	So far from being filled with golden things like Tutankhamun.
	Yes.
	King Tut.
	I still hope that one day we'll find another Tutankhamun-style thing where there's loads of real treasure.
	Can you work it out by process of elimination of, like, these are the ones that are accounted for and, look, here's a really rich and important one.
	That's a bit epic, isn't it?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So he was the king and he got that little grotto.
	Yeah.
	And his sister gets that?
	Yeah, well, his sister, who also wife, and she went on to rule in her own right as something like a female pharaoh.
	That's much better.
	Yeah, it's incredible.
	It's like something out of a movie, isn't it?
	Something you can scarcely believe.
	Back in the day, that must have been epic.
	Yeah.
	You can tell that Thutmose was a very practical man, where his sister was like, no.
	Well, with a lot of these things, if you didn't rule for a long time, because what usually happened, when you died, they just stopped working on the things they were going to do for your burial.
	So if you only ruled for four years, they just haven't got time to build you something grandiose.
	If you ruled for 40 years, they're working on it for 40 years, say.
	You must have to start out with a plan in mind.
	It's not like...
	Every year you put an extra year's worth of work in it and you end up with that.
	I mean, you have to start out with that in mind.
	Well, yeah.
	That's what I think.
	One of the things, because I'm obviously a history nerd, I've of course been fascinated with Egyptian history ever since I was a child.
	When I was a small child, I wanted to be an Egyptologist.
	I still sort of had that dream when I'd started my undergrad.
	When I started my undergrad, I still sort of was interested in that.
	And one of the things I'm fascinated in is just the so-called pavement at Giza, where the Great Pyramids are built, you have to do all the groundwork first.
	You can't just start building a giant pyramid on sand, or even on any sort of ground which isn't perfect for it, because there's a couple of different pyramids that are half slumped and flat.
	Drainaged and...
	So the ground that the Great Pyramid is built on, they call it the pavement, that itself is a giant, giant engineering project with massive stones, giant, giant thing, just to get the foundations in place.
	And was that done in one bloke's lifetime?
	They say it was, yeah.
	That's the official narrative.
	It's a big project.
	A lot of modern scholars, sceptics say...
	So the thing I was going to ask is...
	No one knows.
	You must presumably know who the big wigs were, like who the various kings were.
	So are there any proper serious kings who are unaccounted for, and therefore we think we might be able to find a big stash of loot and a nice tomb?
	Yeah, there's some.
	One thing to say about that is the king lists are sort of hotly debated by historians and scholars, whether they're real.
	At what point does it descend into legend?
	And they're fictional.
	Right.
	And also, over the centuries or millennia, different political factions have come and gone.
	And it seems almost certainly tried to distort what came before.
	Oh, I see.
	And stuff.
	So it's...
	I can believe that.
	You'll find some Egyptologists who say, no, we've got everything down.
	We know pretty much the exact dates and there's no gaps.
	Yeah, they would say that.
	Right.
	And others that say, no, come on.
	The reality is that we can't be certain about this or that.
	Right.
	Okay.
	I'm personally probably more in that camp.
	A little bit sceptical about things.
	Yeah, but that's nice too.
	But yeah, it's on my bucket list to go to Egypt.
	I've travelled all over the place, but I've never been to Egypt.
	And it is now top of my bucket list to go there.
	And I'd want to go to the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, and see things like that with my own eyeballs.
	Absolutely want to.
	If we keep going through a few images.
	Can I do it?
	Oh yeah, so...
	What's that then?
	A place called Saqqara.
	So the obvious thing is to go to the Giza Plateau in Cairo, just outside Cairo, and see the Great Pyramid.
	I'm fascinated by the Great Pyramid, but there's other things.
	At Saqqara, there's the Serapium, where there's these giant enigmatic boxes.
	They're not coffins?
	Well, we don't know.
	No mummies were ever found in them.
	Ever.
	Can't they open one and find out?
	Well, no, they have been opened, and they're empty.
	Right.
	It seems like they've always been empty.
	Some say they were supposed to, at one point, hold sacrificial balls, the apis balls, but there's no evidence of that.
	There's certainly no real evidence that they ever held, like, the bodies of pharaohs or anything like that.
	And they're giant, and also sort of the precision engineering of them is sort of off the scale, because that's super hard stone.
	A super hard type of stone.
	And they're not really sure how that was done in ancient times with the tools that they were supposed to have had at their disposal to do it.
	It really is precision engineered.
	And I mean, there's lots of channels.
	I'm a big fan of Uncharted X. History of Granite.
	There's a great channel called History of Granite.
	Curtis Ryan Woodside.
	Graham Hancock is great.
	Yeah.
	And these guys just put forward often, well, they just pose difficult questions.
	Like, how was that supposed to be made?
	Exactly.
	But if you've got somebody to come around and do you an extension or your kitchen, and you could put a set square to any part of it and it lined up like that, you'd be well impressed.
	Yeah.
	But to do it in ancient times in granite with hand tools.
	I'd say with diorites pounding stones.
	I went to Sri Lanka once.
	It doesn't make sense.
	And there's this couple of big temples in this bit that I passed through.
	One was this big blingy temple, loads of gold and stuff like that.
	And that's the one where everyone went.
	And I thought, oh yeah, this is reasonably impressive.
	And then there was another temple that I went to that nobody ever goes to.
	And it was far more impressive because it was much more humble, but it was carved out of solid granite.
	So a whole temple carved out of granite, like the inside and everything.
	It was way more impressive.
	The amount of work they must have taken to do that.
	I went to Angkor Wat once in Cambodia.
	And there's two main temples there that everyone goes to.
	They're the first ones you come to.
	And on the face of it, they're the most impressive.
	But actually in that area, there's loads, a dozen or more.
	I would advise if anyone, if you end up in Cambodia and you visit Angkor Wat, make the time to go to some of the other ones.
	Yeah, unfortunately I didn't do that.
	I should do, yeah.
	So yeah, how granite was precision engineered apparently with diorite pounding stones is just not really clear.
	There's a scale of it.
	And you can see the small area that it's been put into.
	How did they even move it into that area?
	Like, we're not sure.
	Even if you had a hundred strong chaps...
	There's not enough room to do it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Because they get in their way.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, how did you move that?
	There's always some people, you'll find some fedora tippers in their comments always saying, oh, well, they just understand it.
	And it may be true, but they just understood leverage really, really well.
	How to lever and walk things along delicately.
	But still, still kind of beggars belief.
	There's even one that was left abandoned in a hallway there that hadn't been finished and obviously hadn't been put in place.
	It's just left there.
	Again, quite enigmatically.
	What's that like?
	What's going on there?
	Also, the Valley Temple, sometimes known as the Asarion.
	There's loads of things that I would like to see.
	There's sort of megalithic size stonework.
	Yes.
	Right?
	It's on a scale even bigger than Stonehenge.
	Oh yeah, Stonehenge.
	And the engineering is much more impressive and precise.
	And that's right, that's on the Giza Plata, that's right near the pyramids and the Sphinx.
	Again, how did they do that deep in antiquity?
	Again, there will be some people who say it's not that difficult.
	They had loads and loads of time and sort of endless energy.
	But still, it's the precision, which is the wonder.
	Yeah, I could spend...
	Weeks or months in Egypt easily.
	And they've got one picture where it shows the scale.
	Look at the size of that block at the top.
	That is ridiculous.
	If you see on the left-hand side of it, that little niche that's being cut out of it and things.
	That gives you an idea, I think, of the scale of some of these things.
	There's sort of endless things to see in Egypt.
	One of the things I'm fascinated by is the so-called unfinished pyramid.
	Just off the Giza Plateau, there's basically just a big hole in the ground, which many people say was the beginnings of going to be a big pyramid.
	Yeah, it was going to be a pyramid, but then the pharaoh died before they got anywhere near actually building the pyramid structure on top of it.
	Why didn't the next one just say, okay, carry on, but make it for me?
	Not a bad question, but maybe it's to do with pride.
	You want your own project from the beginning.
	But you can see it's like a massive slope down.
	I think that picture's actually taken from when they used it as a movie set.
	You can't go there now these days, this particular site.
	The Egyptian army said tourists just aren't allowed there, but they did a film there at some point in the past.
	You can see where, because under the Great Pyramid, there's sort of a subterranean...
	A subterranean passage and then a subterranean chamber.
	The subterranean chamber in the Great Pyramid is one of the most fascinating things for me.
	I didn't even know there was one.
	Yeah, but it looks like maybe this was going to be something like that and they never actually finished it.
	And down there, there's like this, at the bottom of it, there was this, again, this pavement, this sort of perfect floor, which they dug up.
	This is back in the 19th century when...
	Western archaeologists would just dig stuff up.
	Just get stuff done back then.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And under the floor, they found this weird sort of oval bathtub type thing, which again was empty with the lid on it.
	You can see the lid there with the niches on the side.
	But it was empty.
	So yeah, again, just mystery piled upon mystery.
	But if only they had a...
	Habit of labelling things, it would have been so helpful.
	Yeah.
	It's like just a lost world, isn't it?
	A lost culture.
	I've not seen a lot of these things before.
	I mean, this place really has scale, even in the ancillary bits.
	It's giant.
	Giant engineering projects.
	Right, yeah.
	And this is basically for just, like...
	A nation of river people.
	Because the whole Egyptian thing was basically just five miles either side of the Nile River.
	800 miles long.
	Five miles wide.
	Just a bunch of river folk who made this stuff.
	I mean, that particular one's cut into the bedrock.
	People used to think, oh, they just had tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of slaves.
	But now they think almost certainly, no, they were more like an artisan class or more like a professional...
	Builder class that just worked in the off-season.
	When they weren't working the fields, they would be working for the pharaoh's building projects.
	But either way, it's a vast amount of human labour.
	That in itself is quite impressive because you've got to produce such a huge surplus from everything else that you're doing to support however many thousands of artisans or whatever it was to do nothing but tinker away at granite all day long.
	If nothing else, it infers quite a sophisticated society.
	Yes.
	Otherwise, you just wouldn't be able to do it.
	Oh, yeah.
	We wouldn't be able to do this today.
	Not a chance.
	Not for a lack of engineering know-how or anything.
	It's just organisational people skills.
	We wouldn't have it.
	If we didn't have any modern diggers and stuff.
	Even if we had them.
	Do you think the UK government could organise something like that?
	They can't organise a rail system.
	I see what you're saying.
	Because we had this...
	History nerds love to discuss that exact question.
	And some say, yeah, it's right.
	Look how long it takes to build a railway or something or a new bridge.
	And then others will say, no, if there was a political will and the money was there, we'd get it down in a month flat.
	But that is our point.
	We don't have the political will to do anything apart from destroy ourselves slowly.
	If there was the political will and the investment, we would definitely be able to do stuff like this.
	But you're right, there isn't.
	Well, yeah, but that's a bit like saying if aliens turned up.
	Or look at something like the Burj Dubai, the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.
	Yeah, that's not a Western democracy though, is it?
	I know, but yeah.
	Could the modern Egyptian government do stuff like this?
	Get it done in one year or five years?
	I think if Elon became king of Dubai, he might be to get it done.
	I do like to think this is an insight into my psyche.
	I do like to think if I had $200 billion, like Elon Musk, I might commission my own pyramid.
	Oh, yeah.
	So, to be fair, if there was, say, a...
	Big solo event and we all got wiped out and the cockroaches formed a society like a million years later.
	The only things left would be things made out of stone.
	So you might have a little bit of Mount Rushmore left and maybe the pyramids would still be a bit left.
	If you want to build something at the last, do it in stone and do it at scale.
	See, if I was a billionaire, I'd 100% be commissioning something massive out of stone.
	And do it somewhere in the world where it's not going to fall down through earthquakes or get subsumed by the sea.
	Yeah.
	Or anything like that.
	No earthquakes, not humid, just dry and stable.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, either my own pyramid or a colossus, a giant statue in my own image.
	Yeah, that might fall down though.
	Okay, just in low relief on the side of a cliff like Mount Rushmore style.
	Yeah, yeah.
	High relief actually, make that high relief.
	Yes.
	Yeah, and I'm buried in the head of it.
	I'm with you, yes.
	I'm with you on that.
	Okay.
	There's just some more pictures at Islander.
	Oh, are we going back to the beginning of things?
	Am I going back?
	Yeah, you've gone back to the beginning now.
	Okay, let's go forward.
	I think you've got them all.
	Oh, have I gone through them?
	Yeah, you've got them all.
	All right, so I thought I'd had loads more images of other things as well.
	Fairly simple, the unfinished period.
	Okay, fair enough.
	But there are so many things to mention about Egypt I'd like to see.
	There's a very small stone circle at Napta Playa, which Graham Hancock talks about, which is not that impressive compared to...
	Some of the grand building projects, but it's really, it's older than the Old Kingdom.
	I'd like to see that.
	There's the temple complex at Karnak.
	There's the Step Pyramid, the Colossae of Memnon, the Red Pyramid, the Bent Pyramid, Menkara's Pyramid.
	You know, there's the three big pyramids on the Giza Plateau.
	The smallest one of the three.
	I'm fascinated just by that alone, Menkara's Pyramid.
	Just that.
	I've got to go to Egypt, saying I've got to get that done.
	But okay, the point is there's been some new developments in Egypt.
	Did you hear recently or a year or so ago they did some sort of geophys or some sort of advanced techniques and they realised that there's some sort of void above the Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid.
	There may be another big...
	Yeah, I heard something about that.
	There may be some sort of...
	Well, there probably is a big chamber above the Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid.
	They need to get their drill out.
	And they haven't...
	They haven't done it.
	The Egyptian authorities are sort of...
	They don't seem particularly interested in finding out what's there.
	Right.
	I'd light a fire under it if it was me.
	Get it done.
	Oh, look.
	Big void.
	They're able to sort of penetrate it with, not radar, but something or other, which suggests there's a big void there.
	Could be filled with golden things.
	Could be filled with treasures.
	Yeah, you want to get on that?
	Yeah.
	But yeah, the Egyptian authorities...
	Of antiquities are very...
	It's difficult to explain why they don't...
	Why they're very, very conservative with this stuff.
	Yeah.
	Why the rest of the world don't pile tons of pressure on them constantly to get it done, but they just don't.
	Or why underneath, for example, underneath the Giza Plateau, it seems to be riddled with a maze, a labyrinth of underground tunnels and things, aquifers.
	And it's not really been explored.
	Or not formally.
	It's not really been properly explored or stuff.
	If it was up to me, I'd get all the best archaeological departments from universities all around the world.
	Some massive project.
	Get it all mapped.
	Get it all done.
	Anything new that comes out.
	A suggestion of a hidden chamber behind something or other.
	Look into it right away.
	Maybe they're waiting for tiny AI controlled robots or something.
	Maybe.
	Well, there's the so-called, the shafts or air vents that poke out from the Great Pyramids.
	Have you ever seen they put a little robot up there to find out what's up there?
	And it's sort of a bit of a dead end, but there's like some weird, there's some odd stuff going on there which hasn't been completely explained or explored.
	A little robot with a drill.
	Yeah.
	Okay, some Egypt things in the news.
	Alright, so we've got some...
	Siglasone17 says, The worst part of discovering Egyptian tombs is the anxiety of waiting for either Scooby-Doo music or Dark Souls music to start.
	Okay.
	Hogshead Dilemma says, Linking the last two segments together, apparently Daniel Craig will play Caesar in a new Cleopatra biopic.
	That'd be cool.
	With Zendaya in the role.
	Yeah, obviously.
	She's in everything.
	What was Zendaya as Cleopatra?
	Why not?
	Why not?
	I mean, she gets every female role now, so obviously, yeah.
	Amen Dines 512 says, Bo, when I was in grade school, I wanted to be an Egyptologist.
	I did my 10th grade science project on it.
	I'm 50 now.
	Is it too late?
	It's never too late.
	Yeah, get on with it.
	Yeah, do it.
	The reason why I got to undergrad level...
	And realised it was not for me, is that you have to be a linguist.
	You almost certainly have to have Greek and Latin, like de rigueur.
	You have to have that to even be taken remotely seriously, even to start down the path of being...
	And then you've got to learn the pictology stuff.
	Yeah.
	And I just didn't...
	I didn't go to public school, so I didn't start Latin at year seven.
	Yeah.
	And I just have got hardly any...
	No Greek, really.
	So...
	I've got no Greek.
	It was going to be...
	Difficult for me to do it.
	And there's so few opportunities to do it that there's a lot of nepotism as well.
	You sort of need to know someone and stuff.
	But it could be an amateur one.
	It could still be an amateur one.
	The boom thing's in the way.
	You can go there on holiday.
	I mostly subscribe to Graham Hancock's line of thinking a lot of the detractors are Muslim scholars because the Sphinx can't be older than the Quran says.
	Because Egypt is Muslim.
	Yeah, it's not a really PC take, but I actually really agree with that.
	Because modern Egyptians...
	It sounds right, doesn't it?
	Modern Egyptians are Muslims, mostly.
	Obviously, there is Coptic Christianity.
	Not every single modern Egyptian national is a Muslim, but nonetheless, it's a Muslim country.
	And yeah, there's a thing in Islam that anything that predates Islam is sort of...
	How to say it?
	Iran.
	Yeah, right.
	That is the way to say it, yeah.
	And so they're not breaking their neck to pour more glory on ancient Egypt because it's pre-Corentia.
	Well, I mean, Islam only rocked up in like 1400, so there's quite a lot of history before that.
	Yeah, it was earlier than that, but still, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	What those, like the 7th or 8th century?
	Oh, was it?
	Oh, right, okay.
	But still, but still.
	Still, loads of history before that.
	Yeah, tons, yeah.
	What's the, got one more.
	Can't read it because of the glare.
	Sometimes, sometimes it's best to leave things alone, Bo.
	I think the Egyptians may have reached that point or there was some other underlying reason to not look into those things.
	No, don't leave things alone.
	No, I don't agree with that.
	There's a school of thought in archaeology to just leave it be.
	We've got enough knowledge.
	Somebody in the chat said that Gal Gadot should be Cleopatra.
	I agree with that.
	That could work.
	Yeah, that works for me.
	Of course, the real Cleopatra probably wasn't beautiful.
	Yes, but she was in charge of the reporting mechanisms and therefore has been described as a famous beauty.
	Because she was in charge of the people who got to record whether she was beautiful or not.
	Yeah, no, not really, though.
	On her coins, she's depicted with quite a big nose, like a hook nose.
	Right.
	And the accounts that survive are, what, so Plutarch, Appian.
	Yeah, in Plutarch's life of Antony and life of Caesar, she's not described as this knockout beauty.
	Because people think of Liz Taylor in the 60s Cleopatra film.
	Really beautiful.
	Or Gal Gadot.
	Let's get Gal Gadot to do it.
	She probably...
	There's no accounts that she was, like, disgustingly ugly or repulsive.
	Just a bit hook-nosed.
	But just probably not a movie-style good look.
	But anyway.
	Yeah, well, most people aren't, so...
	Yeah, right.
	Yeah.
	Hardly anyone actually is.
	All right.
	So, talk about our third segment.
	Talk about gold.
	Gold!
	Talk about Fort Knox.
	So...
	Between us, we probably should be able to have a half-decent take or two on this.
	At least half.
	You're a successful venture capitalist, investor.
	I worked in asset management, asset servicing, commodities trading.
	I bought gold for a long time.
	For many years, every time I got paid, I'd go to this little gold dealer's and buy one ounce.
	Actual physical gold?
	Yeah.
	So I've racked up some gold ounces.
	I'm a fan of gold.
	Anyone out there that's got any money to burn, I know we're far between, but do get a little bit of physical gold, right?
	If nothing else, if the world economy completely collapses and we have to go back to barter...
	If you've got money to burn, keep it in paper money.
	But if you've got money you want to preserve, gold's good for that.
	Right, yes.
	If you're doing it for the...
	I have got some silver as well because it's a much smaller denomination.
	An ounce of silver is like, I don't know, like 40 pounds, something like that.
	Whereas an ounce of gold is like a couple of grand.
	So for the apocalypse, you actually want silver.
	And some tin snips so you can clip your own coins.
	Yeah, all that.
	I do think that if there was a true global economic collapse and everything went back to barter and you've got some gold coins, you can't barter much with that because it's worth so much.
	You want to swap a chicken and some bread with someone.
	Your one gold coin is way too much.
	Even one silver coin would be way too much.
	You're going to want to clip your own coins.
	Yeah.
	But I can say, for example, buy five chickens with a silver coin.
	I'd be happy with that deal.
	Or maybe a big cow for one gold coin.
	It had to be a big one.
	Like a massive drum of pure water.
	Yeah, we're immediately getting off topic.
	Fort Knox.
	Is it all fake?
	Well, that's the question, isn't it?
	So...
	They're definitely faking something.
	You think so?
	They're definitely hiding something.
	Well, because senators and congressmen keep saying, can we have a look around?
	And they're like, no, because it's a military base.
	It's like, well, yeah, but we get shown around military bases all the time.
	Yeah.
	Why can't we see this one?
	It's not even a military base.
	The security of it is by...
	They've got, like, the special mint police.
	Fort Knox is a military...
	It's a big military base.
	Okay.
	It's got lots of personnel on it, but it also has the gold thing in it.
	Yeah, okay.
	That is protected by its own little police force, isn't it?
	But yeah, no, the story goes, so where to begin?
	Gosh.
	Last time it was audited was in the early 50s under Eisenhower.
	Well, they claim that they ordered it every year, but they don't release the results in secret.
	They don't even do that, I don't believe.
	Well, they claim to.
	I think on paper they're supposed to, but in reality they don't.
	The last time they did a public audit was like 1954 or something like that.
	Yeah.
	So under Eisenhower, they did one.
	And apparently everything was tickety-boo at that point.
	America hadn't gone off the rails in 1950. Yeah, right.
	That was like the 60s onwards.
	Well, so America's history with gold.
	So in the Great Depression, under FDR, FDR... Put through an executive order, actually, saying normal people aren't allowed to really own hardly any gold.
	You're certainly not allowed to hold any gold.
	There's exemption for, like, wedding rings and stuff like that.
	Yeah, you allowed some gold, but you weren't allowed to hold bullion, put it that way.
	Gold bars, you just weren't allowed to.
	Talk about land of the free.
	Anyway, so it was to do with the Depression and to do with...
	It was massively unconstitutional.
	Yeah, it does feel like that's infringing your liberties, doesn't it?
	Anyway, that was actually repealed by Jerry Ford, I believe, in the 70s after Nixon.
	But anyway, for a long period there, the federal government was hauled in gold.
	And in fact, I think the higher watermark was like 1941, i.e.
	during World War II. America had said to loads of countries in the world, or in Europe really, basically had said, look, Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini might conquer your country, and why don't we hold your gold reserves for you in case that happens?
	And then after that, Stalin might rock up.
	So we'll keep your gold safe for you.
	So that's basically my starting piece for Brokernomics.
	It's that at the end of the Second World War, the Americans had all the gold, which is partly as a function of they're the only people who had a functional economy while everyone else was getting bombed, and partly as a function of they were safekeeping for everybody else.
	And basically they just didn't want to give it back.
	And that's why we have a dollar-based system today.
	I think the high watermark was in 1941 where they had something like two-thirds of all the gold in the world was with them.
	I mean, even to this day, like in, I can't remember the exact date, but in like 2007 or 2011, something like that, Germany said, we want loads of bullion back that you've had for years, for decades.
	And it took Fort Knox like...
	Or the Treasury.
	It took them like seven years to give it back.
	So this is the problem with gold, about going back to a gold system.
	Well, I don't think it could be done today.
	The gold standard.
	Yeah, the gold standard.
	Because the whole logic of gold is that you kind of need to centralise it.
	Because if you don't, you know, you can just, you have to believe.
	When somebody else tells you they've got a certain amount of gold, you need to believe them.
	So the Russians and the Chinese say we've got this amount of gold and therefore our currency is backed by gold.
	You have to believe them.
	Trust.
	Or they need to let you come in and start drilling into their gold bars to make sure they're not tungsten inside.
	Right, I was going to talk about that.
	So that's why gold was always concentrated, basically in two places, in the US and the city of London.
	And of course, we just don't have that level of trust anymore.
	So you basically just can't go back to the gold standard.
	So there's loads of things to say.
	I haven't got a massive amount of time left.
	But yeah, so FDR took them off the gold standard.
	They went back on again.
	Then Nixon took them off again in 1971. And they haven't gone back on the gold standard since then.
	There are other places than Fort Knox.
	There's sort of the Federal Bank building in New York.
	And there's one or two other locations, but Fort Knox is sort of the main one.
	50, 60% of all America's supposed bullion reserves are supposed to be at Fort Knox.
	Apparently.
	Apparently.
	So after the 50s, when there was supposed to have been an audit there, people were talking about it because the 70s were a time of economic upheaval with the oil crisis and all sorts of things.
	So in 1974, there was a big calling for...
	Let people see that the bullion is still there.
	In 1971, they'd come off the gold standard, basically, because the American government, as it is inclined to do, was spending too much money.
	And so they had to come off the gold standard.
	By 1974, things were going badly, because they later shored up the dollar by backing it to oil, basically, by doing a deal with the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia.
	But in that interim period, it was highly suspect whether they actually had the gold.
	And so I think they let a bunch of senators in then.
	It was just a PR stunt, an exercise in PR, as far as I can tell.
	Anyway, just say, I wrote an article a while ago about Yellen's time bomb, Janet the felon Yellen.
	Basically, during the Biden years, they didn't do anything.
	I had a very good conversation all about the history of money and, in fact, quite a lot of talking about gold with godders.
	What was that?
	Godfrey Bloom.
	When?
	A fair while ago now.
	Six months ago or something.
	Yeah, last summer.
	I'll dig that one out.
	Last summer.
	We made some content about the history of bubbles.
	Do you remember that?
	Oh, yes.
	That was ages ago, wasn't it?
	Yeah, we were going to cover like 12 of them and we did two or something.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's back in Feb 23. Yeah.
	We made another bit of content talking about the Wall Street crash and other crashes and depressions, didn't we?
	Yeah.
	You've got your own show all about economics.
	I've done a gold one.
	So Elon Musk treated this not very long ago, looking for the gold in Fort Knox, and it's gone.
	But he said they're going to have a look at it.
	Can we play that by Trump?
	Can we play this?
	Well, happening today, President Donald Trump said he wants to visit Fort Knox to make sure the gold is still there.
	The depository at Fort Knox has stored precious metals for the United States since 1937. During a meeting with the French president sitting right next to him, the president mentioned the possible audit again.
	We're actually going to Fort Knox to see if the gold is there.
	Because maybe somebody stole the gold.
	Tons of gold.
	Treasury Secretary Scott Besson says there is an audit every year.
	No, no.
	That's the interesting thing about gold.
	If you were to take all of the gold that's ever been mined, it would only fill three Olympic-sized swimming pools.
	I've heard that, yeah.
	I've heard it's only one Olympic-sized swimming pool.
	I might have to check that out.
	But either way, it's less than you think.
	Yeah.
	It's much less than you think.
	Yes.
	Because you know you walk past...
	It genuinely is rare.
	You walk past...
	Yeah, yeah.
	You walk past some random jewellers in some nothing town and the shop front is filled with gold chains and stuff and you think, oh, there must be thousands, millions of tonnes of gold in the world.
	No, not at all.
	It's really not that much.
	No, no.
	Certainly not millions of tonnes.
	Play this clip actually for us as well.
	We're also going to...
	Fort Knox.
	I'm going to go with Elon.
	Would anybody like to join us?
	Because we want to see if the gold is still there.
	We want to see.
	Wouldn't that be terrible if we open up this Fort Knox?
	It's just solid granite that's five feet thick.
	The front door, you need six musclemen to open it up.
	I don't even think they have windows.
	Wouldn't that be terrible if we opened it up and there was no gold there?
	So we're going to open those doors, we're going to take a look, and if there's 27 tons of gold, we'll be very happy.
	I don't know how the hell we're going to measure it, but that's okay.
	We want to see lots of nice, beautiful, shiny gold in Fort Knox.
	Don't be totally surprised, we opened it.
	It's just remarkable that it's actually a real political issue.
	It's not conspiracy theory.
	It's a real question that needs answering.
	This is a great time to be in political commentary because America's had this massive regime shift and they don't believe anything that went before them.
	And they're right to question it.
	Yeah, no, absolutely.
	I just think it's remarkable that it's even a question, really.
	Well, just to quickly say about the 1974 thing.
	Oh, yes.
	When they went in there, they showed...
	Yeah, there was a few senators and a few journalists, like a dozen or two hand-picked members of the federal government and a few hand-picked journalists, and they showed them into one vault.
	And they showed them loads of apparently gold bars.
	Whether they could have been tungsten or something.
	Some people said that.
	Maybe it's tungsten sprayed gold.
	Because tungsten is about as heavy as gold.
	But they didn't do any purity tests.
	They didn't check them against serial numbers.
	They didn't show them many, many volts worth.
	They just showed them one.
	And they said, okay, we're done, right?
	Questions over.
	No more questions, right, guys?
	But it wasn't an audit.
	It was not an audit.
	No.
	Okay.
	And actually, assay in gold is quite hard work.
	That's why I always stick to the coins, not the bars.
	Because if you buy a bar and then you try and sell it, they need to re-assay it every time to make sure it's not got tungsten inside.
	Yeah, right.
	The other thing is they've said that in the late 70s through to 1981, they did audits, but they weren't released to the public.
	You didn't get any old person allowed, like a truly independent body to go to Fort Knox and check.
	Is that worth much?
	You want a great story about the British gold?
	So, and this is going back to like the early 1900s, but basically there was this guy who sort of rocked up outside the gold place and he said, you guys need to be in the gold vault tomorrow at 3pm.
	And then he kind of wandered off.
	At the Bank of England, you mean?
	Yeah, and they were like, okay then.
	But for whatever reason, they were in the middle of the gold vault the next day at 3pm.
	And basically, there was a grate at the bottom of where they were holding the gold, and it pops open, he pops up, and it turns out he was a sewage worker, and he realised that you could just get into the gold vault.
	Is that a true story?
	Is that not apocryphal?
	No, that's a true story.
	I've not heard that one before.
	But he was just an honest fellow.
	So he was just making them aware of it so that they could secure it.
	But if he wanted to, he could have run off with like millions of pounds worth of gold, but he just didn't.
	It's great.
	It's like hacking into the NSA or NASA or something and then telling the government you've done it.
	You say, look, I could have done some nefarious stuff.
	I haven't.
	But this is how easy it was to do.
	I don't think if a sewage worker today found himself in the gold lot, he would do that.
	It'd be hard to find someone to sell bullion, like a big bar of bullion to, right?
	To get rid of it after the fact.
	That would be difficult, wouldn't it?
	Yeah.
	You don't sell that behind the back of the pub, do you?
	Another thing is in 2017, in Trump's first administration, there was a very, very, very limited audit, apparently.
	But again, it wasn't the full-blown, let's look in all the vaults, count how much is there, if there's anything there, and check the purity of it, check the serial numbers.
	It still wasn't that.
	So that hasn't been done, some say since the Eisenhower era, and some say since the Truman era, since 1947. Either way...
	The Treasury, because it comes under the Treasury, not the Federal Reserve, it comes under the Treasury.
	Either way, it seems like they've got something to hide.
	Now, whether it's that it's not there anymore, or there's only a tiny fraction of it, or even possibly there's more gold.
	It's possible that there's more gold than...
	than they thought was there which is also an issue in a completely different sense.
	Of course it wouldn't mean the collapse of the American economy or the collapse of the dollar but that's also bad if they've got way more gold.
	So that was the theory that I was going to throw up which is this one which is what if the problem isn't that the gold's not there?
	What if there's too much gold?
	Because basically the story is that ever since World War II, America has been going around invading places.
	And if you ever read accounts of the troops who actually did it, it's very obvious that the first thing they do when they get into a country is not rush to the central bank and secure the paper money.
	It's they rush to the gold and they secure the gold.
	And if they've got oil, they secure that.
	Every time you read accounts of what troops did, it's they hit the ground, beeline for the oil.
	The actual oil and the actual gold and secure them and then everything else follows after that.
	So America's been going around and this is like a famous photo from Iraq where they, you know, one of the gold deposits they sort of secured and the official story is that whenever the US does this is they then give that money back to that country.
	So in the case of Iraq the story is that it was used for redevelopment efforts.
	So it was spent on Iraq's behalf in order to fund development.
	But what if that's a load of baloney?
	Yeah, what if that's just simply not true?
	What if, ever since World War II, America has just been invading places, stealing their gold, and then sticking it in Fort Knox?
	So the other possibility is that actually they've got far too much, and that's the other reason why they don't want to get audited.
	It seems like some of the massive...
	Gold holders in the world, like JP Morgan and HSBC, they're shipping over, at the moment, shipping over tons of gold from London to New York and then maybe onto Kentucky, but who knows?
	Seems like something's going on at the moment.
	Oh, every central bank...
	That may just be arbitrage.
	That may just be, so JP Morgan and HSBC can make money because it's worth more if you sell it in New York.
	So every central bank apart from the British.
	I think it is politically good for a country to underplay how much gold they've got.
	Apparently the Chinese do that.
	The amount of gold the Chinese say they've got and the amount of gold everyone thinks they've got.
	We think they've got way more than they say they've got.
	They're deliberately saying they've got less than they have.
	So they might have 20,000, was it 20 tons or 20,000 tons, whatever it is, but yeah, they might have because they're supposed to have like 3,000 tons and they might have 20 because basically if you look at Hong Kong, which is a major gold exchange, massive flows have been going through that for years and it's all going into China.
	In fact, another thing a gold fund manager told me, and this was 20 years ago, is that...
	China is actually one of the world's largest producers of gold.
	And you think of it being South Africa and Canada and Australia.
	But no, actually, China is one of the biggest producers of gold.
	Every single ounce that is mined, the government buys at full market rate and puts in a vault somewhere.
	So if you work all of that backwards, it's possible they've got 20,000 tons, which means they've got far more than the US, right?
	Now why is that important?
	Because what happens if one day there's another 2008 financial crisis where the dollar is really teetering on the edge and people are like, yeah, I don't like this dollar business.
	And then China suddenly announces, yeah, we've got 20,000 tons of gold and from now on the yuan is going to be backed 15% by gold.
	That could be enough to...
	Tip the dollar over the edge and for China to basically take over as world hegemon at that point.
	In other words, it's politically a sticky wicket for the United States if they've got significantly less or more than what they say.
	Either they're much weaker than they were or they're much more corrupt than they said they were.
	It's still way worse if they've got none.
	Or hardly any.
	That is still way worse.
	It's not great to have tons more than they thought.
	Yeah, because they've basically been stealing from everybody for years.
	Whether they've got 8,000, 8,500 tons in Fort Knox or what.
	If they've got exactly what they're supposed to have, that's probably the best outcome.
	Whether it's worth $250 billion or more like $425 billion.
	It needs to be audited, basically, in order for the trust, any sort of trust...
	There's no good reason for them to not do it if they've got what they claim they've got.
	Yeah, right.
	Exactly.
	So that's why it's odd it hasn't been done for 50 years plus.
	The other question just to ask is, does it matter?
	Because I retweeted Elon about when he said, and it's gone, about the footlock.
	And some people said, it's a reasonable thing to say, I'm not saying, I think they're...
	Wrong, but it's not unreasonable.
	It doesn't even matter because they haven't been on the gold standard since 1971 and the dollar or American power is backed up by aircraft carriers and the US Air Force.
	So it doesn't matter.
	But I think it certainly still does matter though.
	I'm of the view that it massively matters.
	When it all goes to shit, gold is what will count.
	And it's just, okay, they're not on the gold standard.
	Okay, every paper dollar isn't backed up by gold, fine.
	But that doesn't mean that the US economy, the House of Cards is the US economy, wouldn't still collapse.
	That all confidence and trust in that system wouldn't collapse if Fort Knox was found to be...
	Imagine if there was some huge cyber attack or a big Carrington event or something like that and, you know...
	The modern computer system went out for a couple of years.
	The whole dollar system would collapse because the dollar is basically just a ledger of this bank owes that bank and that bank owes that bank and it's basically just a big ledger of who owes who.
	So if the lights go out for a couple of years, the dollar just gets reset.
	The gold is proper.
	It's sanity.
	At the end of the day, gold still counts.
	Yeah, no, sure.
	Absolutely.
	So 100% it still matters.
	And you know, being an investor, Whereas I worked in asset management and commodities trading.
	Just the power of confidence that this house of cards is...
	That there's something real at the base level.
	Well, all value.
	The value of everything and anything is to do with confidence.
	And if it turns out you've been blagging it for 60 years.
	Yeah.
	Confidence would fall out of many different types of market, not just the Forex and commodities trading, but all sorts of things.
	Well, it'd be a knock-on effect.
	Yes.
	Into the whole world's economy.
	Oh, it hugely matters, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, so.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Yeah, we agreed on that.
	Right.
	All right, a couple of comments then from the Super Chats.
	Do you mind reading them, actually?
	O'Puck has been coming up with some names for Bond films, which is slightly out of order, but I'll go.
	Dr. Nomoranuts, I'm probably pronouncing that one, from China with COVID, Gay Finger, or Gay Finger's a good one, Sunderballs, You Only Trans Once, On His Majesty's Secret Cervix, Diamonds for Reparations, I like that one, Live and Let Diversity, Man with a Golden Butt Plug.
	On Her Majesty's Secret Cervix is quite funny.
	He's got more.
	He's donated again.
	The guy who transed me.
	That should be the spy who transed me.
	Man Raker.
	For your bonus hole only.
	Octogender.
	Oh, I like that one.
	A View to Gang Enrichment.
	I like that one.
	The Living Gay Lights.
	Yeah, this second one's much better.
	I love a good pun.
	A really obvious pun.
	I love them.
	Licence to Mean.
	BrownEye.
	Yes, very good.
	Tomorrow Never DEI. And The World Is Not Gay Enough.
	Yes, well done, Opak.
	Yeah, that's very good.
	Yes.
	I wonder if he came up with all those himself, personally.
	Some of those are very good.
	Dan, any chance of doing a segment on Peacoin?
	No, because I have no idea what it is.
	And I... It's...
	No.
	My mate's trying to get me into it.
	Just say no.
	Funny, we didn't really talk about Bitcoin when we were doing that segment on gold.
	Could have talked a bit about Bitcoin.
	Yeah, we've run out of time now, haven't we?
	If there's no gold in the fort, then the rest needs to be made, says Siglestone.
	Habitification says a future gold collapse could happen due to space mining.
	Well, yeah, possibly.
	Hedgehog's Dilemma says Oliver Anthony is writing lyrics as we speak.
	There ain't no golden fall, Knox.
	And Siglestone says plot twist.
	America's been singing Barrett's privateers in reverse Bet some people will soon wish they were in Sherbrooke Don't know what that means Have we got any videos?
	I went down to the river On the weekend It was a beautiful day to see Foraker, Hunter and McKinley.
	Wow, that is beautiful.
	See, we haven't really got anything like that in Britain.
	It looks like the front cover of Islander.
	Yeah.
	Like McKinley.
	What is that?
	Oregon or Washington State?
	I forget now.
	Anyway, yeah.
	The best we've got is Snowden or Ben Nevis.
	It's a bit more impressive than Ben Nevis, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it's wonderful.
	I love mountains.
	I love being among mountains.
	I love it.
	I haven't got any.
	Proper epic stuff.
	Have we got any more videos?
	Oh yeah, he's one of them, Sophie.
	So Stelius thought I was trolling when I said that the Danish version of the toys was called not D-Left, but just Left?
	No, it's true.
	It's called Venstre, which is the Danish word for Left.
	But I guess that's sort of right from the Social Democrats.
	Although it's part of us being controlled by Social Democrats and Left.
	We have an immigration law that's like a thousand times stronger than England, so you win some, you lose some.
	Yeah.
	Thank you, Sophie.
	I feel sorry for Denmark, they're so small.
	Yeah.
	At least they're going to get some cash for Greenland, Sue.
	Right.
	Two minutes later.
	Holy...
	Huh?
	Okay.
	What was that thing that you put up against it?
	It was like one of those lighters that's actually like a little blowtorch.
	I think that's what it was anyway.
	Yeah, it was like a blowtorch lighter, right?
	I can't see the flame on it.
	I couldn't really see it, the flame.
	Okay, fair enough.
	I'm pretty sure that's what it was.
	Don't blowtorch coke.
	Yeah.
	I think that's the point.
	Don't put eggs in a microwave.
	A whole egg with its shell on in the microwave.
	It'll blow up.
	Any more video comments?
	We're slightly over time, but I think people need their money's worth, so let's read some comments.
	Hazard Bazaar says, didn't get Islander 1 or 2 as I'm not much of a reader, but Island 3 has just been ordered.
	Yes, good man.
	Well done.
	That's what we need.
	Hugo Bossman says, just bought Islander 3. Thanks for the work you do, lads.
	Yes, very important.
	What would Bond do?
	He would buy Islander.
	Josh the Jew Hendon Reform Candidate says, just ordered my Islander 3. It will look nice next to my Islander 1 and 2. And then he's also said some other stuff, which has been edited out, and I don't know what it is, so we're not allowed to read that.
	Right, on the next James Bond thing, Baron von Warhawk says, take your bets, boys, and who do you think will be the new Bond villain?
	Trump, Musk, Alex Jones, or Carl Benjamin?
	Well, you could be the...
	You fulfil your arc of being the henchman who goes after Bond.
	I could do Evil Genius.
	I could do that.
	If it's Carl, though, we all get parts.
	Yeah.
	I'd be the financier that you see in Act 1. But that would mean he gets my missus.
	Just so that Lotus Eaters becomes more famous, it'd be great if there was a character that was clearly a parody of Carl Benjamin.
	That would be great.
	Yeah, that'd be good.
	Russian says, I grew up on Bosnan, and he happens to be my favourite.
	As I type, Dan is saying this exactly.
	Yeah, this is the one that you see first.
	GoldenEye is among the best.
	It's among the best.
	Oh, yeah, it's really good.
	Again, I like the very earliest ones, but short of that.
	Yeah.
	Alex Ogle says, DEI Imonds, he's trying to do diamonds, are forever.
	DEI another day.
	Or as one wag put it, no, Mr. Bond, I expect you to DEI.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Come, come, Mr. Tubb.
	You enjoy making content just as much as I do.
	Yes.
	Justin B says, the next Bond film will track him heroically taking down the far right and then plotting to stop the boats.
	Yeah.
	The only decent thing that a British Bond in this era could do is basically...
	Turn rogue against his own government.
	That would be a cool storyline.
	Yeah.
	That would actually be a cool storyline.
	But they would never do that.
	No.
	But there's nothing heroic.
	You see, this is the problem.
	This is the problem.
	He goes to the Calais camps and starts kicking ass and taking names among the people smugglers.
	Yes.
	That'd be cool.
	Just blowing up the Calais camps.
	Son of UCAB says they should make Zadana the next James Bond.
	I mean, they probably will.
	Right, yeah.
	Probably.
	Don't make her a Bond girl.
	Make her a Bond.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	Oh yeah, Kevin Fox says, it would be a boring film, just Bond sat in a grey windowless room scrolling through other people's social media posts looking for herty words, then passing the details on to the Met.
	Yeah, that is probably what they would actually do.
	The modern equivalent of Bond, it's not even scrolling through it, it's just starting a programme which does that for you.
	Yes.
	Just clicking a search function.
	Yeah.
	That's what Bond does now.
	Well, maybe that's why they need an Indian Bond, because he's actually leading a call centre of thousands of them going through our social media posts, so it can be then reported to your local police station.
	Some computer nerd in Cheltenham clicking search.
	Yes.
	Search keywords.
	That's Bond these days.
	Sophie Liv says, I love that Bo made the perfect villain face, and second after when he smiled, he actually looked like Santa Claus, super jolly and wholesome.
	You've got range.
	Very good.
	Thank you.
	That's very kind to say.
	So if there ever is a call for a Bond villain and a Santa in the same room, like he's got split personality or something.
	Evil Santa.
	Yeah.
	And Omar Waters is not difficult at all to cast a good James Bond.
	The difficulty is portraying a chauvinist on the silver screen that isn't appealing directly to women's sexual fantasies.
	Well, women love the old Bond.
	It's just the feminist harridans who control everything these days that don't.
	The old Bond, the Sean Connery, Roger Moore Bond, he'd slap a woman about all the time.
	Yes.
	Quite often.
	And she's been a bit hysterical, so he just slaps her about or something.
	Yes.
	The lost art of women management.
	And I like the, what was the Roger Moore one, where he sorts one of them out, and then as soon as he's done, he pulls a gun on her and says, right, I want the information.
	And she says, you're not going to shoot me after what we've just done.
	He says, well, I certainly wasn't going to shoot you before.
	It's a classic bit of one of the Connery ones where he's dancing with a woman on a dance floor, and you realise there's like an assassin right near, so he just spins her around so she gets shot in the back.
	I'd forgotten that.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Classic Bond.
	You wouldn't get...
	The screenwriter just wouldn't do that now, would they?
	God, that's so bad.
	Which one was that in?
	Oh, it's one of the early Connery ones.
	I can't remember if it's...
	Is it Doctor No?
	Oh, what a total shit.
	Yeah.
	Was she at least like a baddie woman?
	Yeah, she was sort of a baddie.
	She was pretending to be with him and on his side, but was actually a double agent, and he knew that.
	Okay.
	But still, he just got her murdered.
	Fair enough.
	Do you want to read the Egypt ones or shall I read them?
	You can, if you would, if you don't worry.
	Right.
	Jacob Connolly says, I forgot how good a combination Dan and Bo are together.
	Dream team.
	Yes, exactly.
	Yeah, very true.
	Very true.
	Canis.
	It says, Egypt kind of makes me sad to think that maybe the most ancient proper civilization we know of that lasted through the Bronze Age collapse and survived to the Middle Ages is now modern Egypt, basically a non-entity.
	Yeah.
	They've got a big army, modern Egypt.
	Relatively, but it's...
	But they don't really do anything apart from just corruption.
	And it's crap.
	If you look at the Yom Kippur War, the Six Day War, Israel stomped a mud hole in their ass real quick, real easy.
	Kevin Fox apparently made several trips to Lunuta Ha in Belize.
	Apparently there's pyramids there.
	The steps are huge, and he's emphasised huge.
	So yes, there are other pyramids, and they're really big ones.
	In Mexico, there's a place called Teotihuacan, I'm probably butchering that pronunciation, where there's some giant pyramids, the main pyramid of the sun.
	Yes.
	Love to go there as well.
	Love to go there.
	Alex Ptolemy makes the point that the direction of the Sphinx is very deliberately aligned with astrological views 12,000 years ago.
	So that's the kind of point I was making.
	That's a classic Graham Hancock thing.
	Yeah.
	If you, the procession of the stars, if you move it back like 10, 12,000 years or whatever, it's Leo and it's looking up at, it's a lion and it's looking up at Leo.
	The constellation of Leo.
	But some people say that's, not me, but some people say that's just not got anything to do with anything.
	I think that is very interesting.
	At the very least, you can say that's remarkable and interesting.
	One thing I didn't know until recently is apparently there was a...
	We mentioned the Carrington event a couple of times in the last segment, but there was a massive one of those about 12,000 years ago.
	The flipping of the...
	Basically a big solo event that would have been really devastating about 12,000 years ago.
	So that could have restarted civilization if there was a civilization before.
	Well, there's the Younger Dryas event where, again, Graham Hancock and others say that more than one asteroid hit the Earth, sort of causing the equivalent of a nuclear winter and a reset of civilization.
	We've got a lads hour.
	Oh, okay.
	I'm going to do some more for the gold thing.
	Norway also sold its gold.
	The stupidity is jaw-dropping yet.
	Gordon Brown was, and whoever the Norwegian version of Gordon Brown.
	It was a really stupid decision.
	Kevin Fox says, no gold in Fort Knox.
	Jeremy Irons and his crew stole it years ago.
	I missed that.
	That is, if you've not seen Die Hard 3, Die Hard with a Vengeance.
	Well, they mean more than one Die Hard?
	Yeah.
	Oh, I thought there was one.
	You're joking, right?
	No.
	They're up to like five or six now.
	Die Hards?
	Yeah.
	With Bruce Willis?
	Yeah.
	I thought there was one.
	No, no.
	So Die Hard 3, Jeremy Irons is the baddie.
	Yeah.
	He's a soldier, not a monster.
	And the plot of that is he's trying to steal all the gold from the Federal Reserve Building in New York.
	Right.
	Now that I know that there's more than one Die Hard movie...
	Should I actually watch any of them?
	Die Hard 1, 2 and 3 are good and the rest are dog shit.
	Die Hard 1's a great film, right?
	Die Hard 2's not as good.
	My favourite Christmas movie.
	Yeah, it's a great film.
	After Gremlins.
	Die Hard 1 is great.
	Die Hard 2 isn't as good but it's still worth watching.
	Die Hard 3, in my opinion, is also great.
	Brilliant film.
	Then Die Hard 4 and 5 are pathetically crap.
	Yes.
	So don't bother with those.
	No chat, I did not have a sheltered childhood.
	I was just doing other things, more interesting things in my childhood than watching bloody movies all the time.
	Has all of the US gold been sent to the moon?
	No, I don't think so.
	That would really confound me, wouldn't it?
	That would be odd, wouldn't it?
	Yeah.
	I'd be totally owned if actually the Apollo site is just where they moved the gold to.
	David Fisher, for reference to gold quantities, 20,000 tonnes of gold is an Olympic pool size.
	Ergo, China has half an Olympic swimming pool of gold.
	Okay.
	Oh, right, okay.
	So, yeah, 20,000.
	So, basically, you need about 40,000, 50,000 tonnes of gold to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
	Right.
	Well, sounds about right, I suppose.
	Yeah.
	And then the last one, Canis Familiar says, Porchfest, which I don't know what it is, they issue goldbacks, which are bills with one thousands of a troy ounce of gold embedded in them, approximately three pounds.
	Not the very smallest amount you need, but definitely useful.
	I think that sounds quite very good.
	Better than nothing.
	Yeah.
	I don't, but I would like to own a few gold coins.
	Actually, I'd like a fair few silver coins, actually.
	Because of the worry about going back to a real barter system.
	I'd rather a bunch of silver.
	I tell you what splits the difference nicely and we'll end on this.
	If you want to get into gold and you want to do it cheaply and you want it for post-apocalypse collapse, basically go to any porn shop in any part of the world and buy old wedding rings.
	Right.
	Because they get them all the time.
	You can buy them really cheap.
	You can buy a small amount of gold and everybody kind of knows what that is.
	So after the collapse, if you're trying to buy a chicken, you can hand them an old wedding ring and they'll just accept that.
	So yeah, buy old wedding.
	Then you've got a big bag of things that...
	Dead people were recently wearing.
	As long as that doesn't put you off.
	I'd want a score of chickens per wedding ring, though.
	Not one chicken.
	But yeah, yeah.
	That's not a bad idea.
	It's not a bad idea at all.
	And if you're buying silver coins, just go to a dealer in Hatton Gardens or online.
	Godfrey Bloom says that the markup or the VAT or something or other is not worth buying silver because he made a good...
	I can't remember what it was, but he made a good argument why...
	So gold coins is definitely the best option, but I don't...
	But I wanted something for the post-collapse, so I wanted a bit of silver.
	Also, if we have a vampire problem one day, you want a bit of silver, or possibly werewolves.
	I forget which one now.
	Clever thinking.
	Werewolves?
	Yeah.
	Is it?
	Yeah, yeah, werewolves.
	Yeah, no, silver bullet for a werewolf.
	I mean, if it works for vampires and werewolves, it might work for other things.
	Unleashed.
	Right.
	Okay, so...
	I don't think we can stretch this out any longer.
	We'll be 15 minutes over, so we'd better go now.
	So, yes.
	Order.
	Islander, because that's what Bond would do.
	The sensible womanising one, not the new gay one who had his balls removed.

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