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March 5, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:27:45
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1114
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Hello and welcome to podcast of the Lotus Eaters episode 1114.
I am very lucky today to be joined by Bo and Harry.
Hello.
So today we are going to be talking about the failings in October 7th, the Israeli...
7th of October.
Yeah, 7th of October.
We need to stop with the Americanisations.
I know that they've popularised it as October 7th, but it's the 7th of October.
I'm actually going to do...
It looks like it was the 11th of September.
I'm actually going to do a daily video this afternoon on...
because there's a new executive order out that says that basically English is the language of the United States now.
So I'm basically going to teach the Americans how to speak English.
Because they've...
I mean, they've not mastered it all these hundreds of years later.
But if I'm slipping up, that is also not...
What else are we going to talk about?
Oh, yes, we're going to be talking...
Beau's going to do a segment on returning to the moon.
That will be very interesting.
And JD Vance, we got some good meme-age there, haven't we?
Yeah, there is some news.
But it's mostly memes.
It's mostly memes.
Yeah, that's what we need.
Very quickly, thank you to Cindy Johnson for sending us a book on Loving the Planet.
Appreciate that.
We haven't read it yet, but we all got a copy.
And The Islander.
Do remember to buy The Islander.
It's been out for a week, and we've already sold, I think, 40%, which means we're selling.
We even printed more this time.
But at this point, last time, after a week, we'd only sold like, you know, about 30%.
So even though we got more, they are selling quicker.
So you're going to have to, you know, buy it.
And they are getting to people promptly this time.
Oh, yes, yes.
They are actually turning up this time.
Which is a very positive move.
We've not been scammed by a distributor this time.
That's always nice to know, isn't it?
So without further ado, tell us about a bit of something light-hearted.
Well, Israel-Palestine.
Yeah, yeah, the desert conflict across the other end of the Mediterranean, we shouldn't really be involved in, but we are.
Well, of course, obviously.
Because there are two main wars going on at the moment.
We always like to have a mix of wars going on, and we've done a lot of coverage of Ukraine and Russia recently, because that's where all the excitement's been going with diplomatic talks in the UK and the US. Very, very topical.
But let's not forget that the other big conflict is still affecting us.
And I would say, outside of the diplomatic area that Ukraine occupies, on a more ground level in the UK. Because we are da UK. We are no longer Britain.
We are no longer England.
We live in da UK. And you can't go to any major city without the potential, the high likelihood, especially if it's a weekend, running into some kind of pro-Palestinian march.
And so it does pervade a lot of society.
I remember even before I was up to date with these things, when I was working in a call centre.
Of course, call centres have a very diverse range of people who work there.
There would be people coming in wearing their Free Palestine hats before I even really knew what was going on there.
But...
Outside of the two wars, make sure not to get engulfed in the third war that will emerge when Islander sells out, which it will because it's selling very well right now because it's a very, very high-quality magazine filled with informative and intellectually stimulating articles that you can get hold of right now for a limited time on our website for the cheap, cheap price of £14.99.
If you don't get one now, there will be riots in the street trying to get hold of the last few copies.
So make sure you avoid that and get it while you still can right now.
Anyway, so let's take a look at some of the ways that it's affecting our...
Current discourse in the UK with Israel-Palestine.
And I think after that I'll also look into why it is that this particular conflict erupted in the first place.
Because we send a lot of money.
Obviously not the entire history.
There is a Marta-made podcast series that's about 30 hours going into that.
We're not going to match anything like that.
We did a three-hour one on the origins of the conflict, didn't we?
We went back to Roman times.
Which you should watch.
It's excellent stuff.
More the 7th of October itself, because Israel and the IDF have been doing some inquiries recently that have been pointing to the complete and utter failure of the IDF itself and its lieutenant general in charge to pass down information that they already had prior to 2023, because Israel and the IDF have been doing some inquiries recently that have been pointing to the They failed to pass down any of that information to the people on the ground who could have prevented the massacre that occurred.
It was interesting that you're bringing this up, because that was a very live topic in the days following October 7th.
And it's not been spoken about much since.
Yeah, there was loads of former IDF people coming up and saying, I just don't understand how this possibly could have happened.
You know, I served in the IDF. It's simply not functionally possible.
As far as I know, Israel is a very militaristic society, because they need to be to defend their borders.
They are always on high alert, and they, as confirmed by the New York Times and other publications and other members of the IDF, they had plans that Hamas strictly stuck to in 2022, explaining exactly what they were going to do on the 7th of October, maybe not pointing to that date specifically, and didn't do anything with it.
They dismissed it as whimsical dreams.
Yeah, but it's really weird.
This story just simply vanished.
So I'm glad you're covering it.
Whatever you've got for us.
One of the things I remember, and it might be complete conspiracy theory.
I don't know.
I just remember it being in the news cycle.
It might be complete nonsense.
I really don't know.
But I remember, again, in the days after it happened, apparently Israel had loads of their checkpoints or loads of their border walls and things.
They've got sort of automatic...
Machine gun type things.
And there would seem to be evidence, again, it might all be liars and misinformation, I really don't know, but that they would have been de-armed or deactivated or they'd had their ammo taken out or all sorts of suspicious things.
And again, in the news directly as the day it was happening and the next few days, a week or so, and then never heard anything about that ever again.
Whether it was deliberate, whether it was like super squirrel Hamas stuff, or whether the Israelis did it to themselves because they wanted some sort of false flag or what.
I don't know.
That's the question, because it seems to me like a complete failure on their part to protect their own citizens, which should be the main goal of a government.
I know we live in the West, we live in Europe, it's not what we're used to anymore, but Israel...
Seems dedicated to protecting its citizens and protecting its people.
This was a complete failure so the question is was it due to negligence and bad management essentially or is it a more conspiratorially minded allowing something to happen in the hopes that it allows them justification so they can go in and bulldoze Gaza as they have been doing ever since.
Or Hamas are the masters of 5D chess and just completely outwitted them on multiple levels.
Presented themselves as retarded, released the exact plans that they were going to do, Israel dismisses them as too retarded to do it, retarded enough to actually go through with it.
That would be an incredible plan.
I don't know how you would manage that when you're a bunch of sand people in an open-air prison in the desert, but...
You know, that would be very, very impressive.
But before we get on to that, so some of the developments that keep going on recently in the UK is things like this.
We've got actors like this one from The Crown called Caleb Abdallah, very, very British name right there, who's been interviewed by the police over attending a pro-Palestine Gaza rally.
Because this is the sort of thing that I want our cultural representatives.
Because we're all represented by Khalid Abdallah to be doing.
And he then complained about this by saying that the right to protest is under attack in this country.
That's funny.
I'm sure he must have been speaking up last August, right?
Well, yeah, bloody Southport.
I mean...
Is it that the right to protest is something he cares about or only when it's affecting his people?
Because I feel like he doesn't consider the people who were killed in Southport his people if he wasn't out on the streets protesting.
So do they routinely...
I mean, is it actually illegal to attend a Palestinian rally?
I mean, I would have thought not.
So he went to a Palestine Solidarity campaign protest in January and received a letter from the Met Police to attend a formal interview saying it will remain to be seen if this results in charges.
I feel like you must have done something then.
Because you are allowed to just go to that if it isn't peaceful.
It's been arranged.
That's not illegal, is it?
Also, obviously, I disagree with taking people in by the police for attending a protest, but that's pretty light stuff compared to what was done to everybody in August, right?
Oh, yeah.
All of the people who were just standing at the side of the road near the police getting hoovered up so that they could say that they'd made arrests.
People who said a crossword towards the police, jailed for 36 months, routine.
Yes.
Some of whom have died in prison already.
Yes.
So, thanks very much for that one.
We also get it in our universities where we've got protesters disrupting everything that they can, and this will also include...
Idiotic white English liberals who want to get involved in this so they can feel like they're making a difference.
Not that they care about the things happening to their own homeland or their own people, but they want to make a difference.
And so in this, it's Cambridge University have barred them from interrupting a graduation ceremony.
Is this a thing that lots of Brits have to live with?
Is lots of, you know, these Palestinian-type sympathisers?
Making a lot of noise.
I mean, you said you've encountered them a lot in your career.
Yeah, when I've been to Manchester on the weekends, they're always there.
Depending on which part of London that you're in on a weekend, I'm sure that you'll run into protests all the time.
If you're in universities where everybody is already, you know, woke lefty, then you're likely to encounter this sort of stuff.
I spent most of my career surrounded by lawyers and finance people, and there wasn't a strong contingent of Palestinian support.
I imagine there might have been a bit of a problem with snow blindness as well.
I went to Bath a few weeks ago, and yeah, lo and behold, outside Bath Cathedral, there was a little stand, Pro-Gaza stand.
It's a little one, but it's still...
Why should it be in Bath?
Why should it be in any of these cities?
Even Manchester, I know it's got a reputation as a very miserable industrial place.
I still love parts of it, and it is still one of our historic cities.
We shouldn't be permeated with this stuff constantly.
The BBC, as well, are in trouble with counter-terror police because they did a documentary about Palestine, and the production company, Hoyo Films, had a 13-year-old narrator that they paid, and the 13-year-old narrator just happened to be the son of the Hamas Deputy Minister for Agriculture.
Oh, right.
And how much was he paid?
We don't know yet, because it described the sum as limited, but declined to put a value on it.
So the BBC just, well, accidentally...
A billion pounds.
A billion pounds is a limited number.
Every number below infinity is a limited number.
Well, we just don't know.
Yes.
We just don't know.
I'm sure it wasn't a billion pounds.
No.
Maybe USAID have been giving Hamas.
Well, yes.
That's the sort of thing that they did, isn't it?
They just channeled money to friends of friends of terrorists.
I think Vorsch did that as well.
I think he's a Twitch streamer.
I think he did a charity stream where it turned out the charity was basically Hamas.
Wow, I didn't know that.
Apparently it's very difficult not to give money to Hamas.
Just when I didn't think I could have a lower opinion of Vorsch.
You go and hit me with that one.
I mean, I can't believe that you can have a lower opinion of Vorge.
I didn't think I could, no, but lo and behold.
So is he that one who gets his wife cuckold on air, or is that another one?
That was Destiny.
Oh, I see.
Okay.
Now, I mean, it's a great shame that there is these desert sort of people fighting amongst themselves.
It is a terrible shame, but it's not really anything to do with me.
Or by my people.
Why are they here?
Why can't all the fighting be done over there if they must fight?
Why is the BBC giving money to them?
Why is it that they can protest here and they can make stands of solidarity here, but they're not signing up?
Well, yes.
Which is somewhat like those Ukraine war hawks in Canada.
I can think of one.
The armchair generals.
Yeah, the armchair generals, who the second, or the old Warhawk boomer types, where you point out, well, I mean, if you're so eager to defend the oblasts and take them back from Russia, you can sign up.
It's very, very, apparently that's an emotional and illogical argument, whereas to me it makes perfect sense.
Meanwhile, there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of young British lads who are like, I would like to sign up to defend my country.
If it means defending my borders, but nobody's giving me that opportunity, so I can't.
Sorry, that's just going to have to be another 800 billion of rearmament for Europe so that we can defend against Russia while flooding all of our countries.
You say it's nothing to do with us, but the Science Pico Agreement, the British mandate in Palestine, so therefore it's always our problem for the rest of time.
So, counterpoint, I don't care.
I mean, if we're going to, you know, get the Empire back going and decide that they're going to be some kind of British colonial territory that we administer, maybe, maybe then I'd be signing up for it and going, yes, please, adventure, action, excitement, yes!
But no, that's...
I wouldn't mind being the Viceroy of India, but I think I'd be quite good at it.
You do have the constitution for it, I reckon.
Give me a stiff collar and a cane and a...
Harem of women.
Havory group.
Yes.
Only the best, though.
Only the best for our Dan.
One of the most annoying things that happened recently was this.
As reported by the UK Aesthetics page, that this was a beauty spot in the Yorkshire Moors where a bunch of people had painted a Palestinian flag, and I think you can see the Palestinian flag on the image underneath.
Yep, there you go.
Free Palestine.
Just going to our natural areas of beauty.
I know Britain's got a bad reputation, but it is an extremely beautiful country.
And just defacing it.
Defacing it with their political propaganda.
And when people were annoyed at this, you get responses like this.
It's just a piece of rock.
If it's just a piece of rock, it seems rather unlikely the Israelis, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu, is going to be wandering past on his holidays on the Yorkshire Moors, see that and immediately recognise the error of his way.
He's going to be hit by a pang of conscience.
It's both just a piece of rock and also worth doing in the first place of defacing our natural beauty.
It's the first argument of the retarded shitlib.
The black stone in the cabar is just a bit of rock.
It's just a bit of rock?
It's just a bit of rock, don't worry about it.
Yeah, who cares?
Like this one, like this Mr. Bungle right here, great band, says, it's just a book.
I'm confused.
It's just a book.
It's just a flag.
Who cares?
Checkmate, bitch.
But I have to say, this story actually has a little bit of a happy ending, which is that a few gentlemen from a party that I shan't name exactly actually found the area after they were told where it was and cleaned it up.
Oh, good for them.
Yeah, cleaned it up.
While also pointing out, and I agree with this, that the people who did this should be sent back to the desert.
If they're so eager for it to be free, well, guess what?
You can sign up for the effort right this moment, in fact.
But, again, with all of this going on where it's just affecting, even in minor ways, people's day-to-day in this country, where there are all these people who are very, very supportive of foreign conflict that, you know, if they were just as English as you and I, shouldn't really concern them, shouldn't be at the front of their mind all the time.
Again, it's interesting to look into why the 7th of October happened.
And what started this new phase of the conflict that's been going on for the past few years now.
And that's exactly what Shin Bet, who are the Israel Security Agency, have been looking into.
They've been doing an October 7th probe, and it's a report that will be, I think, spoken about on next Tuesday.
So regarding some of the stuff that you brought up, regarding some of the military attachments and automatic machine guns that may or may not have been tampered with, I assume they will be...
Touching on that.
I would hope that they're touching on that if they want to be thorough.
But for the time being, Haaretz have this article talking about what has been found, which is that the investigations, some of which have been published on Monday, had made it clear that Hamas was able to surprise the Israeli military thanks to the decline in procedural discipline and what border units were had made it clear that Hamas was able to surprise the Israeli military thanks to We forgot how to defend, according to one of the investigators.
What Hamas managed to achieve was fundamental surprise, a coordinated assault of Kaffar, Aza, Nahal Oz, and dozens of other communities and army bases with no relevant intelligence warnings reaching the forces in the field.
From the general staff down to the territorial brigade, people actually were aware of the worrying signs, but they didn't take them seriously enough, nor did they pass this information down to the potential...
So by the sounds of it, a complete procedural failure.
And this is a country that much of the West is dedicated to protecting.
They occupy probably the biggest foreign lobbying group in the US, and we send them...
billions of dollars and billions of pounds of aid every year, and this is the kind of- this is the kind of security they're paying for themselves.
I think this might be something you mentioned.
Now, I believe...
I believe that because of all of these failures, the Lieutenant General of the IDF is stepping down.
He's resigning because he's saying that this was such a complete, horrific failure on his part to inform the battalions and the companies who should have known that they were under direct threat of being assaulted, as is what happened.
And they're getting somebody else in now.
But it's very, very interesting, again, when you pair this up with the fact that they had access to the plans...
In at least as early as 2022, according to this.
What, the plans for October 7th?
Yes.
I know I can be accused, it can be said I'm being distasteful, but how suspicious are you, or is it too cynical of me to think it was deliberate?
I think that's a fair question.
The failure to pass down the intelligence.
Because there are a few other things.
Oh yeah.
That's all you need to do often to create a false flag or to create an incident is just simply allow something to happen.
Like, before now I've said I thought that 9-11 was an inside job.
People say, you're mad, those 19 terrorists, we know they were like Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi Arabian.
That's not what you mean.
Yeah, of course they're not CIA assets.
I'm like, yeah, no, I don't think they are.
No, of course.
I think they were genuine Islamists, but they were just allowed to do...
Like the fact that Jack Ruby was allowed access to Lee Harvey Oswald.
The fact that Hamas were allowed to do...
It's a bit like that sport, whatever it is, the one where somebody throws something on ice and then people just scrub in front of them.
Curling.
Yeah, curling.
It's that.
I'm not suggesting the CIA act through the curl.
I'm saying they scrubbed the thing in front.
I do think it's a fair question to ask, and because people always get squeamish talking about this particular nation, I think it's fair to point out that this is not something that would be unique to Israel's government.
This is something that governments do, because governments...
In the modern era, are almost explicitly, most of the time, against the representative wishes of the people, and willing to do heinous things to advance their own plans.
And what has been going on at the same time?
Well, since Assad has been kicked out of Syria, they've claimed territory in Syria while all of this is going on, they've started to claim more territory from the West Bank, they're bulldozing Gaza, Donald Trump, I think they're in a ceasefire at the moment, and they have...
Put some kind of food blockade to the Gazans who are still in the territory right now to try to force them to accept the peace deals that they have put forward, which is essentially what Donald Trump has agreed to, which is just relocate all of them and pave over Gaza and turn it into some kind of Sunset Strip casino base.
Taken bits of Lebanon, force the issue with...
Iran, which is something Neti has always, always coveted.
And prior to this, Netanyahu is still in the middle of a huge corruption trial that started all the way in 2020 that had to be postponed for a time.
Well, at least we know this report won't be corrupt.
Yeah, yeah, at least we know that.
This one definitely won't be a whitewash, definitely.
Yeah, and it does, because Netanyahu's been trying to, you know, like, buy positive media coverage for himself for ages.
These are the charges that he's been charged with, a number of other charges as well, including accepting tens of thousands of dollars of cigars and champagne from a Hollywood billionaire producer, which, to be fair, is...
Is a pretty cool bribe to take.
It's true.
I wouldn't say no.
I don't mind being convicted of bribery as long as the bribe was a cool one.
Yeah, exactly.
If someone gave you like $10,000 of cigars, are you saying no?
Yeah, I hate cigars.
Champers, I'll take the shampoo.
You'll take the shampoo?
Champagne.
Do you need that?
I call champagne shampoo sometimes.
For a lot.
Okay, just because you miss it.
I take the shampoo.
You've not had to say that word in too long.
I don't actually buy much actual shampoo.
There is lots of purple on the Rumble Rants, which we very much appreciate.
I didn't even realise they're colour-coded.
I don't know if there's better than purple, but I think purple is the best I've seen so far.
So the binary surfer, who's actually in green, many of these...
Who's called out their binary?
Yeah, well, he's a good chap, so that's all right.
He can green it up.
Many of these Korea protesters claim lots of benefits, but you're also funded via NGOs, which are funded by taxes, so you're basically paying for them to F up your day.
Yes, well, that's a good point.
I mean, really, the position of a true-born Englishman should be, you know, I don't care.
You know, these are people, you know, fighting in a foreign land about a foreign issue.
Yep.
Just to finish off the point that I was making when we moved on to Rumble Rants.
Oh, sorry.
Yes, this is not a criticism of the people of Israel, this is a criticism of the government for either, as could be speculated, allowing this to happen, or...
Or being so lax as to just completely fail in their duty to protect their own citizens because innocent people did die over this.
Yes, yes.
And so that's just the point that I wanted to make.
And I think if this is the return in investment that we're getting for all the money that we send over there, that Israel citizens should also be questioning what the hell are you doing here?
Yes, no, fair point.
Mr. Denton, this is one of those lovely purple ones, is the anecdote to obnoxious protesters is shame and humiliation.
Israel uses sewage cannons on them, but maybe start off with tomatoes if you don't have a can.
Well, I like that.
Yes, sewage cannons on protesters.
Yes.
Binary for protests we don't like.
Yes.
Obviously, yes.
Binary server, read the Hamas attack on Israel.
Those automated drone guns are mobile, belt-fed and fully loaded.
They literally fire on anything in the range that doesn't have a friendly radio frequency.
Yeah, but how confident would you feel if somebody said, look, here's your little radio pack.
Go and wander around in front of a thing that's on a hair trigger that fires anything.
You'd be thinking, well, what if the battery went or the signal get interrupted?
Or there's just gremlins in the summer.
Yeah.
Like ED209 from Robocop.
Suddenly you have 10 seconds to complain.
All the bird lands on the census.
I'm not sure I like that idea.
Steelfang with another one of those lovely purple ones.
Last night, Democrats proved they don't care about the American people.
They didn't stand up for the Americans that have been hurt in some way.
They are corrupt, vile tyrants.
What happened with the Democrats last night?
Well, they're just always bad.
I was going to say, is this any different from the way the Democrats normally are?
And lastly, we've got the Neo-Unrealist.
The problem with the false flag narrative is Israel never needed an excuse to invade Gaza.
I've lost track of how many times in 30 years even a foiled attack would have resulted in the same operation.
I mean, that's absolutely fair.
I do think it is speculation on that, and if the Israel, if the IDF's own inquiries are saying that it was just a complete massive failure on their part, I mean, that doesn't look great for them either.
People are losing their jobs over this.
Usually, I don't chalk things up to incompetence.
It's quite remarkable that they had detailed plans of the Hamas plan for the 7th of October, didn't pass them down to anybody, and these plans even had detailed logistical information regarding the IDF that could only have come from leaks, and they just decided, eh, not our problem, not our problem.
Alright, so a bit more science and space news.
You know I love a bit of space news.
I like doing history segments, space segments, foreign policy segments.
I'm your man for that.
Dave.
You're hurting me, Dave.
I can feel it.
Carl can't watch 2001 A Space Odyssey.
It's his greatest failing.
What do you mean he can't watch it?
He can't watch it.
He can't get through it because he finds it too boring.
I imagine there's just a little chimpanzee banging tambourines in his brain.
To be fair, it is a bit boring.
Very long cutscenes of very poor quality special effects.
Incorrect, terrible take.
Poor quality special effects?
Now you're just doing it on purpose.
No wonder you think The Moon Landings was faked.
Because of also poor quality special effects.
But it was directed by the same guy, clearly, though.
It was like late 60s, was it?
It came out?
69, yeah.
It's revolutionary.
It still looks great today.
Bad, really, for the late 60s.
Anyway, we are returning to the moon, or at least unmanned probes, landers, and rovers, and drones, and things.
Moon stuff is happening.
In the last week or so, ten days or so, three different landers have gone up and an orbiter.
I'm sorry, that's the best way to put it.
Moon stuff is happening.
Breaking.
Moon stuff.
Sorry, carry on.
You heard it here first, moon stuff.
We do like a bit of moon stuff.
What, yeah?
Yeah.
It's cool.
I mean, it's not like a planet or anything, but it's, you know.
I'd like to own a little bit of a lunar regolith in the little thing that you put on the shelf.
Yeah, that'd be cool.
A lot of those later turn out to be petrified wood, but yeah.
Maybe you'll get one out of this set of trips.
Yeah.
Well, so the idea is that we're going to go back, go to the moon.
Yes.
But like hundreds, thousands of times, if we're to build a permanent moon base, permanent...
Moon station that's semi-permanently manned with a lunar orbiting station.
All these things are required if we're going to go to Mars.
So if we're going to do all of that, we actually need quite a lot of infrastructure on the Moon.
We need to be able to land and take off from the Moon hundreds and hundreds of times.
So we just need to start doing that because the Artemis 3 mission, that's the big one.
Which is scheduled for 2027. I suspect it will get pushed back a year or two, but at the moment, slated for 2027, a manned crew is supposed to be going to the moon, the Artemis 3 mission.
So before they can go, and they'll be landing at the south pole of the moon.
Have they picked the astronauts?
Yes.
It's a shame that they're not going to be more famous than they should be.
Yeah, they're not already sort of well-known names and faces.
Yeah.
I think they will be.
If we do go back to the moon.
If we do go to the moon.
Bo, it's all right.
I'm here.
You don't have to placate him.
It's fine.
I just see his eyes when I say go back.
You can't tear his eyes.
I'm not even doing a segment today.
I just had to sit on this one so I could do the air quotes for the return.
So when we...
When we return to the moon after when we were there in the 60s and 70s...
Which we have recorded footage of.
We need to have a lot of things in place.
So one of the main things is looking for water on the moon.
Because if you can find water, even if it's under the surface and even if it's ice, you can then do all sorts of clever chemical things and separate into oxygen and hydrogen and make all sorts of...
Rocket fuel and air.
Rocket fuel and air and all sorts of things.
And for even hydroponics, growing things potentially on the moon.
All sorts of stuff.
If you're going to have a manned or semi-permanently manned base, you're going to need ice.
So they think that the best chance of that is at the South Pole, inside craters, often inside craters that are permanently in shade.
Weirdly, there's actually ice on Mercury.
Yeah, yeah.
For the same reason, inside craters that have never seen the Sun.
Because Mercury is tidily locked to the Sun, the way the Moon is tidily locked to the Earth, i.e.
the same face always shows us.
So, yeah, on the dark side of Mercury, it's open space and sort of always has been.
So it can be...
Quite nippy, actually.
Yeah, it can be a bit nippy.
Even though you're right next to the sun, basically.
So, OK. So, sending up...
My mouse doesn't seem to be working.
Can we scroll down on this?
First few links, just to show people that it is in the news cycle.
You've told them to buy Islander, haven't you?
I must interrupt myself to say, buy Islander magazine, the third issue of the Lotus Eaters magazine, Islander.
It will get you on time for the low, low price of £14.99 with some great writers in there.
Are you in there?
I'm not in there this one.
I should be in there.
I have been in it before.
But there's AA, Luca, Carl himself, the big man himself.
Who's the golden one?
Oh, the golden one.
Oh, God.
Marcus Follin.
Marcus Follin, a.k.a.
the golden one.
I can only read his articles in his voice, which makes them very funny.
So do consider buying Islander.
You can keep it on your coffee table full-time.
Okay, so first few links, just to show that it's in the news.
There you go.
There you go.
So one of the three landers that's gone up very recently, Blue Ghost, it's called.
Firefly Aerospace is the company.
So, yeah, some people think, oh, it's just Bezos and Elon.
I was going to ask, which eccentric billionaire is funding this?
There's loads of these companies.
Really?
There's loads.
Yeah, I'll talk about some later.
But this one's called Firefly.
Right.
That was a great series.
It got cancelled well too soon.
Never watched it.
Great.
I never watched it.
This mouse just simply is dead.
Is that the most that you know about space?
Can you pass me that?
I'm going to pass it to Bo.
Why do we constantly have mouse issues on this podcast?
It's because you can turn it on, that's why.
I assumed it was already...
Very forceful, Dan.
I did notice something about this little picture that we've got on the top of this article here, which is that obviously you require a ridiculous...
Oh, sorry.
You require a ridiculous amount of competence to be able to pull something like this off.
And I noticed it wasn't very diverse.
Oh, right.
I don't know if that means anything.
If watching Hollywood has told me anything, it's that you don't succeed without a diverse set of scientists.
That was that Ridley Scott film, right?
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, The Martian.
Thank God Donald Glover was there to save the day.
Thanks for treading water there while I was having a problem.
Why you turned the mouse on?
I sorted my document out.
Okay, so, yeah, it's gone to the moon and it had a little lander on it and, I mean, real sceptics would say that's just some set somewhere or it's just all not real or, you know, the heavens are only 200 feet higher or whatever.
I don't know.
We have got a comment who says that, yeah.
So, but there's other ones.
On a Falcon 9. A dedicated SpaceX Falcon 9 went up the other day and that had two things on it.
Athena, which was another lander, and Trailblazer, which was an orbiter, both looking for water ice.
If you believe it, that's an image from the surface of the moon.
Oh, I believe you.
I believe you.
It's okay.
That's the Earth.
I believe in current year we have the technology to pull off this.
That's supposed to be the Earth, if you're credulous enough to believe that.
Is the Earth even real?
It's a bit round for me, Bo.
Shouldn't it just be a flat disc?
Yeah.
On the back of a tortoise notice.
Where's the ice wall?
So they're looking for the wall trust, and there's all sorts of other experiments on it.
In fact, the Athena's got a small, what they call a micro drone called Grace.
I think it's like a mini...
Rover thing.
I don't think it's one of the helicopter things like they had on Mars.
Yeah, go back one.
Go back one.
So that's Athena.
Yeah, created by Intuitive Machines.
So that's another one of these companies, Dan.
Intuitive Machines, not SpaceX.
It's their own thing.
There was actually an IM-1.
Which failed.
They sent that up, I think, last year.
And it kind of failed.
Someone dropped the ball and there was some minor technical problem.
And it sort of kind of crashed when it landed.
One of its feet.
It looked very similar to that.
That is a massive F-up.
I mean, if you're working at a place like this, you might occasionally forget to press record.
And people just talk for half an hour.
But imagine if you're working at a company and you did something that resulted in your...
200 billion dollar probe just like smashing into a rock or something.
You'd feel like a right prat for ages, wouldn't you?
Yeah, you would, yeah.
It's much less than 200 billion, incidentally.
That's part of the story.
These things are way, way cheaper than everything used to be.
Because NASA has got a program where it's called Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLIPS. Which is NASA working in unison with private people.
So someone like SpaceX builds the rocket and pays for the rocket.
Some other company like Intuitive Machines will actually build the lander and pay for all of that.
There's loads of these companies.
Ceres Robotics, Blue Origin, Deep Space Systems, Astrobotic Technology, Draper, Lockheed Martin Space, Moon Express, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and there's more.
They will build all the landers and do everything, and NASA just build the, sort of oversee it all, and green light it all, and they will just build sort of the science instruments, and they still control JPL, so they still control the data coming back and all sorts of things.
So in other words, in other words, another way of saying it, NASA's just outsourcing loads of the cost, loads and loads of the cost.
That's some really nice, inspiring philanthropy.
Yeah.
I'm glad that they do that.
Good for them.
Because that's what they've done with the low-Earth orbit thing.
That's why SpaceX can sort of exist.
It's because NASA used to have a complete lock on it, right?
Yeah.
They say, no, everything that goes into orbit is NASA, or perhaps a push, the US Air Force.
Well, then there was a whole period where the Russians dominated it.
Oh, sorry, I just mean in the United States.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
But it used to be the case.
I imagine if you approached NASA in, like, 1982 and said, I'm a billionaire and I want to launch my own stuff into low-Earth orbit, they'd be like, no.
That's our domain.
No, go home.
But now, because they've run out of money and various things, they'll let someone like SpaceX or Blue Origin or whoever do their own thing.
So now, a mission like this only costs, say only, but costs like 100 million or something, rather than billions and billions.
That is surprisingly cheap.
Yeah, yeah.
I would like to think within 10 years I could afford one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Then you can go test it out for yourself.
Is that moon really up there?
As he brings his butter knife and crackers with him.
Was Wallace lying to me?
Yeah, it's made out of Wensleydale.
There's loads of things that they're testing.
They want to make sure that at the South Pole, they need to do lots and lots of experiments at the South Pole, basically, because we're going to build a base there, almost certainly.
And keep landing and taking off from there.
So they need to make sure that there definitely is lots of ice there.
If we're building a base in the South, we're going to have to kick the Nazis out first, right?
Oh yeah, sure, sure.
The Nazi space base will have to be dismantled.
I'm sure they'll be considerate neighbours.
Bruce Lee and Elvis can help us.
They've both been spotted on the moon.
JFK as well, let's not leave him out.
He and Elvis have been staying in the same elderly home together.
Bruce Lee, Elvis and JFK in the Nazi moon base.
They say they need to do experiments on sort of the radioactivity, light conditions, dust.
Need to do loads more experiments on just like the dust.
When retro rockets, when rockets blast the Earth, the lunar surface, when they touch down, need to do loads of experiments on that, for example.
Apparently it's very, very difficult, almost impossible to model in a computer.
You have to actually do it for real and measure things.
Why do you need to know where the dust goes?
Well, there's loads of reasons.
If you get moon regolith in the wrong thing, it could be disastrous.
Yeah, that's really important.
So, yeah, and just lots of other experiments.
So, I just think we're living in an exciting time.
Oh, yeah, that's the great Scott Manley.
Play this without any audio.
There's just some things to look at while we're chatting.
So, yeah, there's been quite a few.
There was a lander called Peregrine.
That was an astrobotics technology one which went up not too long ago.
Unfortunately that failed.
Things often fail.
That's the other thing.
More missions that have gone to the moon have failed than haven't.
Yeah.
Loads and loads of missions that have been to Mars over the years.
I'm talking since like the 1970s.
Loads of them have failed.
Well, it's genuinely hard to do this stuff, so you expect a failure rate, even if the best people are doing it.
It's just jolly fortunate that wherever it is, the seven times that people went, they all worked flawlessly first time.
Apart from Apollo 13 and Apollo 1 and some of the Gemini emissions and some of the Mercury emissions.
Didn't lose any people on the moon, though, did they?
No, he was lucky, very lucky, yeah.
Yeah, very lucky.
Very lucky indeed.
Very lucky, very lucky.
You can present as much counter-evidence as you want, it's just more evidence for him, somehow.
Well, I think the point stands, but fair enough.
So there was the Perikin lander, there was that IM-1, which they called Odysseus, which fell over, unfortunately.
Yeah, the Firefly Aerospace, that thing, the Blue Ghost.
The Japanese company called iSpace have sent up a Hakuto R2. Again, that's in space at the moment, on its way.
So the Japanese are getting in on it.
I think that was sent up on a Falcon 9. So we're living in an interesting time of space exploration, and particularly the Moon.
We've got to do loads of stuff with and on the Moon before we can go to Mars.
And so all of it is, as I said before, is leading up to the big one, Artemis 3. And I wonder if...
There'll be enough evidence there for people to believe that...
Because lots of people think we're not even in low Earth orbit, don't they?
We obviously are, yeah.
Crazy people.
Yeah.
Some people think the International Space Station is also just a PSYOP and obviously fake.
No, that's definitely real.
Okay.
I just think it's a shame those people won't be a bit more famous for having the, you know...
When it happens.
Yeah, when it happens.
Because there's people, the odd person like me, that will sort of try and make a big song and dance out of it.
But the mainstream media don't really talk about it all that much.
However, one day in 2027 or after that, it will just be sort of in the news cycle fairly suddenly.
We've landed on the moon.
Those that are watching it and follow it and watch space channels and science channels, they'll know it's coming and be counting the days until Artemis 3. Like I was with James Webb and stuff.
But for most people, they won't be aware.
And suddenly it'll be on, like, BBC and it'll be everywhere in the mainstream news cycle that, oh, actually, there's dudes on the moon again.
For the first time, sorry.
Sorry.
I think it's again.
But I suppose the broadest point to make is that human progress is still going forward.
There's this narrative, isn't there, this sort of...
Pessimistic, doom and narrative that everything is sliding backwards.
That the higher watermark of human civilisation was post-World War II times.
And that everything's sliding backwards.
We're regressing.
Well, people are getting stupid.
Literacy rates are going down.
People are more stupid than they used to be.
I think the point is, no, there's a bifurcation.
One set, one...
One set of humanity is becoming much more sophisticated and clever and achieving yet more wonderful things, whilst another set is becoming dumber and less literate and more backward and barbaric.
Both things are happening at once.
If only there was some sort of way to distinguish between those people.
I feel as though the forced living space being shared by both of those might explain why certain countries' literacy rates and height and other metrics seem to be going down.
Less so than an English person being dumber than they used to be.
I think English people are just as smart as they always were.
On the point of progress, we have had a period of the last 20 years or so where...
The best and the brightest have often been attracted and gone into the world of electrons.
So basically, there has been progress, but it's been like delivering software.
Whereas we're kind of now entering a period where atoms are making a return, where people are doing actual stuff rather than software.
And it's nice to see the balance tip to people doing progress in something which is actually tangible.
Yeah, no, I agree.
No, it's nice.
I've feared that the same reason why architecture isn't as great as it used to be, or one of the main reasons, is just money.
There's not much profit to be made in building a fantastically, a giant, fantastically ornate naval hospital.
For example, at Greenwich, there was a naval academy stroke hospital, which is one of the most fantastic examples of architecture ever.
That wouldn't get made these days, not because we're not capable of it, not because we don't have the imagination, but there's no money to be made in doing it, so it's just not really going to happen.
Whereas back in the 18th century or something, it wasn't necessarily about that.
It wasn't about profit as much.
A lot of the nicest buildings in America were just incredibly rich philanthropists saying, I want a nice building here.
I'll make it a library.
With their names slapped all over the top of them.
Fair play to it.
If they pay for the whole thing, I'd say that's their right.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Extending that analogy, I feared that I might live through an age where we wouldn't really rekindle...
Much exploration and lots and lots of time and energy and political will spent on space projects because it's not profitable enough.
Well, it looks like now that there is definitely a commercial interest, big, massive commercial interest in going to the moon, going to asteroids, going to Mars and on.
The exploration of the entire solar system, essentially.
I mean, it's almost like the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
A sort of perfect stepping stones, in a way.
It's almost as if it was laid out for us to do it that way.
But the first thing is to get a permanent settlement on the Moon and get used to going to the Moon and back regularly, as though it's sort of nothing.
I mean, that's the idea that SpaceX and Elon has got, that there's sort of a fleet of starships in low-Earth orbit, and they're shuttling back and forward to the Moon.
There's dozens of them.
They're taking off and landing, obviously reusable.
That's taken off from the Earth to low Earth orbit and to the Moon and back.
Just completely as routine.
I mean, at completely the other end of the spectrum, I had to make the point on yesterday's podcast that car attacks in Germany are now so frequent that they don't even linger on the news.
They just drop immediately off the news.
Instead, it'd be much better if we lived in a world where flights to the Moon were so frequent that they just dropped off the news.
That would be us going in the right direction for once.
It looks like hopefully that will happen and fingers crossed in not that long a time it won't be 30 years before that's a reality I think, I hope.
It might be as few as 5 to 10 years where there's SpaceX starships in low Earth orbit being refuelled all the time and we actually go to Mars before I die of old age.
It just might happen.
So, okay.
That's that segment.
Oh, right.
Let's have a read through some of the rumble rants.
Right.
Skittenhund says, I have the same shirt as you, Harry, but I'm curious if people also call you Wednesday Adams or if it's just me.
Well, that's a very kind compliment.
Last time I wore an outfit like this on the podcast, I was called the only Weasley to ever get into Slytherin because I am a trendsetter.
The movie Moon should be on your list to watch.
Watch Sam Rockwell's character work on a moon base where he mines helium-3 and sends it back to Earth.
I've watched that.
It's very good.
And goes mad.
Yeah, I've seen it.
I've seen it a couple of times.
It's David Bowie's son, his directorial debut.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I quite like Sam Rockwell.
He's quite good in stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
SpaceX is 90% of the world's rocket launches into space.
One of the reasons why Starlink...
It now has 5 million users.
Musk is absolutely dominating, which is why they find it difficult to shut him up, because they need him.
There's Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy, but obviously the Soyuz goes a lot.
What's the French delivery system called?
I can't remember.
I think SpaceX do do the heavy lifting now.
But I wouldn't be surprised if they actually...
Ariane 5, sorry, that's the French.
I wouldn't be surprised if they actually are 90% of them because he's lowered the cost of the ton into space so much.
90% sounds higher to me, although I don't know and I could totally believe it.
I could totally believe that, that it's as much as that.
And then Alex says, Bo wants Trump to build a Dyson sphere by next Tuesday.
Don't you, Bo?
That would be nice, wouldn't it?
Yeah.
We also have...
Two others that you missed out, so I'll read through those.
Matt Hammond says, I did see that the Arab nations have all come together to try to present a counter-proposal for Gaza, but the fact is, I mean, unless they're going to plan on invading Israel, Israel's blockaded all of the food, what are they going to do?
In the same way that Russia has the cards...
Israel has the cards in this conflict.
That is if you're going with a more conspiratorial explanation for why it happened.
Anyway, so, on to the final segment of the day.
Let's talk about the UK media declaring war on JD Vance for no good reason.
They decided to go into dirty, dirty smear merchant mode.
as they always like to do, and decided that J.D. Vance saying something completely innocuous was terrible, and to misrepresent it to the extreme.
But first, where you will not find smearing, or dirty, dirty smear merchants, or any sort of misrepresentations of yours, mine, or anybody else's views, is Islander, where you'll be able to read through and get lovely articles in this lovely format and presentation by people like Carl Benjamin, Morgoth, where you'll be able to read through and get lovely articles in this lovely format and presentation Available right now for a limited time only for the low, low price of £14.99.
Get them while they're hot, get them while they are still here, because they will not be here forever.
Anyway, so we all saw that Europe is rearming at the moment.
This is a very, very...
Alarmist line here from this, but this was Ursula von der Leyen saying that we are in an era of rearmament in Europe and we're putting in, what was it, 800 billion euros or dollars?
...into rearming Europe.
As you pointed out on the podcast yesterday, very, very nice that they want to do that so that we can all go to war with Ukraine, but not put that same amount of investment into protecting our own borders or remigrating people that shouldn't be here.
here.
That same amount of money would get you 57 million deportations of third worlders.
That sounds like a pretty great deal to me, to be honest.
But no, we don't get that.
We just get conscription for Ukraine, who are already having such trouble that, as you showed again on the podcast yesterday, they are taking men off of the street to conscript them right then and there.
In plastic cuffs, yeah.
In plastic cuffs.
So that's the cause that we're supporting right now.
And of course, there's been the attempts to broker a peace deal with Russia, headed by Donald Trump and JD Vance.
And Vance, in an interview just yesterday, decided to make a comment on...
On the fact that getting the rare minerals deal with Ukraine adds an economic investment into Ukraine by the US, which basically guarantees there'll be US forces on the ground, US men, which is the same as a security guarantee, while also giving them greater economic investment.
I mean, this is one of those points that's so obvious you wouldn't have thought it'd need to be made, but obviously it needed to be made...
To Zelensky, because he didn't seem to appreciate this.
If you've got US contractors rumbling around in eastern Ukraine, obviously the Ruskies are going to think twice about driving tanks over the top of them.
I mean, I thought that was obvious, but apparently everybody with a Ukraine flag in their bio, and even Zelensky himself, hadn't figured that out.
The European establishment is incredibly stupid.
We need to consider that as well.
But also, he made a comment as part of this that it's a better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn't fought a war in 30 to 40 years.
A very vague comment, not naming any country in particular.
And he said a random country.
He didn't say, I'm specifically talking about, and then list the country.
The UK and France, for instance.
He doesn't say anything like that, but...
Right.
But the UK media decided, well, this means the UK and France then.
And decided to run with it.
And then a load of our politicians decided to run with it as well.
Because you know the best form of diplomacy, whether or not his remarks could be misinterpreted by anybody, the best form of diplomacy is then to immediately start throwing out insults.
Conservative Shadow Defence Secretary James Cartlidge pointed out both the UK and France deployed forces alongside the US and Afghanistan, adding it's deeply disrespectful to ignore such service and sacrifice.
Good point, he wasn't.
Simple as, reformed UK leader Nigel Farage, who never saw a news story that he couldn't jump on, said that Vance was wrong, wrong, wrong, adding that the UK stood by America for 20 years in Afghanistan.
I'm so glad you hitched yourself onto that bandwagon, Nigel.
You look like a dick.
That's not what he said.
The whole premise of arguing with lefties is them pretending to not understand so that they can say stupid shit.
That should not apply to Nigel Farage.
He should not be making a basic mistake like that.
Nigel Farage, let's be perfectly honest, if he had been born 30 years ago and wasn't in charge of...
He would be a slop merchant.
He would be a slop account on Twitter, slop posting all day, because that is basically what he did here.
He saw some slop, and he couldn't wait to gobble it up.
Mmm, yummy slop.
If he had been born 30 years ago in Indonesia.
Yep, exactly.
He would not be able to help himself.
That's not to say that Farage hasn't done some good stuff with Brexit and everything, but that's just how he is these days.
Banging pots and pans outside his front...
It would be strange if he'd done that, wouldn't it?
In solidarity with Zelensky.
If I was Nigel Farage and I'd done that, I'd be really, really embarrassed.
Reform have been pro-Ukraine.
I don't know about every single one of them.
I actually don't know Robert Lowe's position on it.
He's probably based like all of his other positions.
But Tyus actually went out there and said loads of explicitly pro-Ukrainian things.
Oh, he pictured himself making soy face at the flag.
Yeah, a crazy-eyed soy face.
It's a shame, because Tice is getting much, much better on everything else.
Is he?
Yeah, he's actually alright on some other stuff.
Remains to be seen.
You'll need to give me some pretty strong evidence of that.
So, how many are you going to send back, Mr. Tice?
That's the only question that I need answered, and if he's not got a good answer for that, then I'm sorry.
I can't forgive you.
If they claim to like cricket and tea, then they don't go back.
Also, Dan, of the two people I could be on the podcast with right now, I also feel like you two have the least reason to stick up for a form.
Especially Tice, yes.
Actually, his position is that every...
Because he wants net zero, which is effectively every time we bring a third welder in, we get rid of a native Brit who just gives up on his place at the same time.
So his position is actually even worse than that.
That's like the...
It's one for one.
Replacement theory.
Yeah.
But you are right that Farage and Tyson and such have been very, very pro-Ukraine, although personally I don't see how brokering some kind of mutually beneficial peace deal to get Russia out of Ukraine, or at least to stop the war, I don't see how that's seen as an anti-Ukrainian position when they have so clearly lost the war.
It's not if you're one of those poor sods in plastic off being dragged to the front line.
It's probably that bad if you're trying to skim off the top of the incoming aid flows.
Here's the thing about...
Let's just talk straight for a moment.
Let's just be perfectly, painfully honest.
Yes.
The battlefield reality is that the Ukrainians have lost that war.
Yeah, yeah.
That's the bottom line.
They lost it like a year ago, two years ago.
That's reality.
Those are the facts.
They will not be retaking the Crimea, right?
They won't be taking back the territory from the oblasts.
So this talk of Putin cannot be allowed to win for as long as it takes, it's all nonsense.
It's nonsense.
It's tough talk.
The armoured brigades of Russia will not give up that territory.
That's the battlefield reality.
The Ukrainians had a couple of years, three years or whatever it has been now, to win on the battlefield.
They failed to do so.
Unfortunately.
Even with the full backing support of Europe and the US. Not that I'm gunning for Russian armoured divisions.
That's just the reality now on the ground.
Jacob Rees-Mogg tweeted yesterday, or whatever it was, Putin cannot win.
It's happened.
He won.
He's won.
So, let's start dealing with that reality.
That doesn't make me a pro-Russian propagandist.
It's just reality, isn't it?
Right.
And of course, I think the situation has been...
Wrong from the start, because we've covered before the peace talks that initially went on.
After the conflict started, and I do think that Ukraine was encouraged by the US and the UK and their other allies.
Yeah, they got borrised into continuing the conflict, losing more men, losing more territory, and then three years later, as soon as you've got the new administration in America, all of a sudden, well, we'll give you a peace deal as long as you carve up a real nice load of your resources for us.
What this is like...
So I do think that they have been thoroughly abused.
In this whole situation.
And I do think Zelensky has also played a heavy hand in that.
What this is like is when you've got two people who actually know how to play chess.
And you know quite often in a game, they know that somebody's won.
And at that point, the other person lays down their king because they know the other person has won.
However, actually, they haven't yet forced a checkmate.
And you might have to play for another hundred turns to force that checkmate.
But they both know that the other player has won.
This is essentially that.
Everybody who can see this can see that Ukraine has lost, but Russia just hasn't forced a checkmate yet.
Except all of Ukraine's buddies have been going into his ear going, no, you can still get him back, you can still get him back.
Because they don't know how to play chess.
Keep going, keep going.
They just sacrifice more and more pawns.
Yeah, how many men need to die?
How many men?
The argument, I think, Julia Brewer-Hartley said, the argument of don't make all the already...
Already killed people and raped women.
Don't make their sacrifice in vain by giving up now.
Yet more people killed and raped.
What an insane logic.
Amazing.
What an insane logic.
Very Churchillian.
No, the battlefield reality, Julia, is that the Russians have won.
So, stop.
Getting men butchered for no good reason now.
Come on.
The liberal bloodlust is unmatched.
It's the opinion you can only hold if you know that you personally will never be going anywhere near a front line ever.
It really is disgusting to me.
Morally repugnant.
But just to carry on a little bit with this...
Oh yeah, because we've got some memes coming.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we had Lib Dems saying, oh my god, this is disgusting.
More Conservatives saying, I'm too stupid to actually watch the full clip, so I'm going to make an arse of myself as well.
Obese Jecti...
BBC Two's Politics Live program said it's difficult.
I don't know why you would want to call your child obese, but, you know, fair play.
It's difficult to see who he was talking about.
If he wasn't talking about Britain, how about any other country?
Any other country in Europe that's not been involved in a war for 20 years, there's plenty of them.
Yeah, there's loads of them, actually.
There's plenty of them, so it's actually quite obvious to see that he wasn't talking about that.
The Guardian ran with it as well.
LBC ran with it.
And then LBC had Nick Ferrari describing Vance as dumb and aggressive because of these comments, despite the fact, again, Nick Ferrari apparently too dumb and aggressive himself to actually listen to what was being said.
So much boomering with a hard R. And JD Vance just was like, well, here's the full clip of me saying it.
This is dishonest.
This isn't what I said.
The best way to handle it, really.
Just call them out.
But now we get onto the juicy stuff that I actually wanted to talk about.
I've had the cover now.
There's some news for you.
Let's talk about memes.
Yes.
Yes.
Because J.D. Vance is my new favourite person in the world, not necessarily because of anything that he's ever done in his own life, but because apparently he has the ability to bring people together.
To bring both sides of the political aisle together because he has the most malleable face in all of politics.
This started a few months ago following his He doesn't have a meme-able face.
You have a semi-meme-able face.
I mean, every so often, people will meme something up of you.
And it's like, oh, that's not bad, actually.
That's not bad.
Thank you very much, Dan.
But I mean, you're a rookie.
I'm not wearing eyeliner.
You're a rookie when it comes to the meme-ability of his face.
I was waiting for the moment to say that.
And above all, he's comfortable enough with his own sexuality to clearly be wearing eyeliner.
Oh, listen.
It wasn't a phase, OK? That was his life, all right?
The Black Parade is...
Still going to this day.
All joking aside, I don't think he is.
Surely he's not.
He just happens to one of those people who just looks like it.
He just has fabulous eyes.
He looks like he's much worse than Vance.
He really looks like he's wearing a highlight.
The Manchester mayor?
Yeah, and he used to be a Labour MP. If you look at him, you'll be like, is that a highlighter?
But he's not.
Vance has just got a...
A less bad case of Andy Burnham.
The thing is, if I didn't see this, right, I'd have completely forgotten what J.D. Vance looks like these days, because instead, I think he looks like this.
This was last Friday's meeting.
You have to say please and thank you, Mr. Zensky.
This is just my entire Twitter timeline for days now.
Variations of this, and they're becoming more and more abstract, more and more absurd.
Though you've got brands using it, because apparently you can just morph this man's face into anything.
Here he is just being a cool guy, just like, ah, listen, I know we didn't get the deal this time, Trump, but do you forgive me?
Do you forgive me?
Has somebody made a Vance meme generator yet?
I don't know who's making all of these.
Or are people having to do this manually in Photoshop?
This looks like a manual one, right?
Because it takes time and dedication to turn JD Vance into Emperor Vitellius.
I don't know why you'd want to do it, but somebody did it, and thank you.
That's not very fair.
Vitellius was a really bad one.
Well, I don't know.
Sort of a butcher, Vitellius.
Maybe this is...
I mean, we've still got 2028. We'll probably have eight years of Vance.
Let's see how he does, eh?
Let's see how he does.
We're living in Vance's world.
They're just an endless source of entertainment for me.
What else do we have?
It's not just Vance's word, it's that shocked Vance.
I don't know why they all just make it.
So for those of you who are listening, this segment might be slightly lost on you.
Regardless to say, we've got lots of chubby-ified Vance's...
Whatever you're doing, pull over and watch it.
This JD Vance looks like he should be being body slammed by Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania 3. He looks like a 70s wrestler.
He looks like Andre the Giant.
What else have we got?
I don't know what that is.
I don't know what this is either.
This is ideal JD Vance.
If Vivek Ramaswamy had his way, this would be the real JD Vance.
Sadly...
Sadly, it's not.
H1B Vance isn't real, and he can't come for your job yet.
That's Elon's idealised version of Vance.
No, I think this is Elon's idealised version of Vance.
One that he can use some IVF treatment and get another baby out.
That's basically average Swindon woman.
Yeah, actually.
And yet you're undoing your belt then.
Well, yes.
Well, one has to get comfortable.
Oh, okay.
All right.
It felt some shifting down there.
Okay.
There's this horrifying one.
That's nightmare fuel.
That is nightmare fuel, but also still kind of funny.
Like had his face ripped off by a chimpanzee attack.
Reconstructed Vance.
This is punished Vance.
And actually, it's entirely in character for Zelensky to turn up next time with a pet chimpanzee.
Yeah.
Yeah, why not?
Yeah, okay.
Who knows what could happen, right?
This is my new negotiating tactic.
This might be a premonition.
And then there's just endless vances.
Hang on.
All of those are that guy from LBC. What's his name?
Oh, James O'Brien.
Yes.
They do make him look a lot like James O'Brien, don't they, actually?
But this is the entire timeline for so long.
What have we got in the replies down here?
There'll be more.
There'll be more.
The one above is awesome.
I love that one.
Little Shrek lollipop Vance.
That's great.
And there's a wall of Vance.
And again, bringing everybody together.
I don't know who's making these.
I've seen lefties sharing them, like this twat, Evan Loves Wharf, who's one of the worst posters out there.
I've seen very, very far-right accounts posting all of this.
But we're all coming together under this.
Whatever this is.
Because there are so many little variations.
The bottom left where it's tiny features in a big head.
This is Charlie Kirk Vance.
And look, there he is with Charlie Kirk, right there.
And it's important to remember as well, right?
JD Vance on Twitter swims in our circles.
Yeah, yeah.
He might be watching this.
He follows...
He might be watching this right now.
All joking aside, I'm a big fan of him.
Oh, yeah, I think he's great.
I'm totally rooting for him for 2028. Why is there a Carl Benjamin J.D. Vance?
Which one?
This one?
No, to the right.
Oh, this one?
No, up and to the right.
That one?
Yes.
Well, actually, all three of those...
They're all different variations of Carl.
That was Sargon circa 2014. What, this one?
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is modern Carl.
Yes.
This is Carl 20 years from now.
Yes.
So not only do we have amazing Vance memes, they give us the ability to see the future.
It's quite incredible.
There's a meme, there's a way.
I still don't know.
I don't know why the baby Vance lollipop ones always get me.
But again, he follows Roar Egg Nationalist.
He follows other people.
I've seen Roar Egg Nationalist sharing these, which means that JD Vance is going onto Twitter and just scrolling through endless oceans of his own face and presumably liking them.
Well, the thing is, I've been photoshopped in a number of things.
We all have.
I nearly always find it good and funny.
I nearly always find it funny being shopped in something.
Yeah, there was a segment a while ago that we did on, what was it?
It's not revenge porn, but that one where you basically photoshop people onto porn images and stuff.
And about how it was really upsetting women and how basically...
Samson laughing.
I did say at the time, I want people to do that for me, but nobody has yet.
But...
There you go.
It's actually good for J.D. Vance, the J.D. Vance sort of name recognition.
Yeah.
Because if you're well known enough...
If you're well known for this...
Well, for anything.
This is going to be his presidential campaign poster come 2028. For his product, right?
You've got to, to win a presidency, you've almost certainly got to have permeated the public consciousness fairly deeply, right?
Yeah.
And he's certainly done that.
The thing is, even the leftists I've seen sharing this, right?
Because again, I don't know who's making these.
I can't tell, looking at this, does the person who made this love J.D. Vance?
Do they hate J.D. Vance?
Are they indifferent to J.D. Vance?
Who cares?
Because it's all kind of making him more likeable as well.
I think it's good for Vance because what you're basically doing is, I mean, we've been going through this with hearty, genuine chuckles.
So you're kind of subconsciously associating J.D. Vance with a good feeling of chuckles and warmth and all the rest of it.
And if that's what his brand is, that does him really well for 28. No, I don't.
I've seen...
I've seen clips from it.
What he does is he's associated coffee with his podcast and the reason he does that is because people like coffee and therefore they transfer those feelings of liking coffee onto his podcast.
And this is what's happening here is we are associating a good chuckle good means.
They keep getting better.
Again.
Magnificent.
That one's not J.D. Vance.
I don't know.
That's just impressive.
I don't know what that is, but I like it.
I like it a lot.
I want one.
That's the new thing.
That's the next thing.
Trump merch.
We need JD Vance meme merch.
We need this as a little toy.
You can give it to your children.
Hours of fun.
Hours of fun.
So yeah, God bless you, JD Vance, and thank you for taking all of this on the chin, because I reckon you're having a good laugh looking at all of these as well.
Let's go to the final Rumble rants and video comments.
There is MarksLives who says, on my TV I see 24-7 Rumble content like Y... Do we have any non-payward, non-political stuff?
I think the only non-political stuff we have is Lads Hour, and that's payward.
Yeah, that's payward.
There's a lot of cultural content, but most of that...
There are various symposiums, contemplations and epochs that were made freemium.
There's probably a few hours.
Actually, I know the answer to this one.
Somebody from one of these places did get in touch with me and I was basically too busy to get back to her.
So if I can sort out the meeting, I might do something like that.
Catch Up says, my Islander 3 arrived during the podcast.
Bye, Islander now.
Yes, you the viewer.
I'm talking to you.
That's correct.
See, he's having a great time.
He's already got his Islander.
Where's your Islander?
You don't have one, do you?
Because you've not bought it because you're a loser.
Oh, shots fired!
The engaged few says, by attacking a son of Appalachia, you have incurred the wrath of his brothers and sisters.
The UK press should stay away from here because you'll run out of journalists before we run out of mine shafts.
The hills do have eyes in those places.
Only in mine shafts, of course.
Well, you ain't from around these parts, are you, boy?
The neo-unrealist says, the thing that scares bitter clingers of the rules-based liberal order is, if anything, Vance seems more zealous about MAGA ideology than Trump.
Trump is transactional and vulnerable to flattery.
Yeah.
That's why I like the guy.
Yeah.
But he's like odds-on for 28, isn't he?
I think so now.
Yeah.
Oh, apparently, according to Scanlines, all of these are coming from 4chan.
And they're currently having Vance threads.
So, trust 4chan to be the ones to do some excellent memeing.
Thank you, 4chan.
Your service is appreciated.
Now, we've also got the lovely subscriber comments.
Well, we've got video comments.
Oh, and video.
Yes, let's do a video comment.
I should have hosted this one.
I sort of know what I'm doing, more or less.
After your daily video about the Oscars, Harry...
I was left with the impression that you hadn't heard of Amelia Perez.
I'll leave a list of YouTube videos about it that I recommend that you watch.
Oh dear.
as well as share this clip of it with you.
I'd like to know about sex change operations.
I see, I see, I see.
Men to women, or woman to men.
Men to women.
So it's a tranny movie.
Yeah.
I don't think I'll be watching...
Pass.
Hard pass.
That looked abysmal.
Maybe with enough beer, that would be a funny film.
Unintentionally funny.
It's a film about a cartel drug lord who has the tranny operation.
Why do you know this?
And then basically turns into a Mrs. Doubtfire movie where he looks after his own kids.
Is that real?
Are you telling me?
No, I'm not.
If anything, we should.
I've seen the Nerd Erotic video on it.
Oh, okay.
So I think that we should watch it.
Maybe we should do a drunk live stream.
No, but we should watch it.
I still think we should be doing, like, Mystery Theatre.
No, but you know you get that whole genre of where you film people and they react to stuff.
Yeah, Mystery Theatre 3000, isn't it?
Okay, well, we should do one of those.
Yeah, I want to get drunk and watch terrible movies.
It's a great time.
I'm out.
I'm not interested in that.
Hard pass.
So, if we gave you drugs, would you be interested?
Oh, okay.
Even less so, if anything.
Okay, but it's for them.
It's horrible.
It's for them.
Yeah, I'm prepared to make lots of sacrifices.
But not that.
Lots of time and energy, but not that.
Not even just to have a drink and laugh with the lads?
Pass.
No, no.
Oh, right.
Bo doesn't love you people enough.
I don't want to watch tranny stuff for love nor money.
Thank you.
That's fair.
It wasn't the big controversy around it, is that they cast a shock horror, an actual woman, as the post-sex change character.
Because I saw a lot of people pissing and moaning on Twitter about it.
Actual woman.
Oh, really?
Okay, so it was a tranny.
Yeah.
It was a tranny all the way down.
Next video.
Good morning, Lotus Eaters.
I whipped out a quick part two from the last hiking trip up to Cutford Lakes.
Here's to hoping 15 megabytes is enough to maintain some picture quality.
I'm editing this listening to Trump's address to Congress, and so far so good.
If you saw part one, the critical item that I left at the truck was my snowshoes, which proved to be a very exhausting error.
Still worth every step.
If you're watching this, Carl, keep your eyes peeled going forward for any big foot in the background.
I hope y'all are having a good week so far.
Is he there?
Is he there?
Oh, no, sorry, actually.
That is a beautiful thing to have.
I'd love to.
I'm really jealous of this dude.
We spoke to him on a gold tier Zoom a couple weeks back, and I was very jealous of where he lives.
That's beautiful, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah, quite enchanting.
Cutthroat.
It's called cutthroat something, though.
It's very ominous, isn't it?
Don't think about it.
No.
Don't worry about it.
Sure.
Right, what's this one?
Hello, everyone.
I wanted to show you guys this lake that I like to visit.
I kind of wish I'd come here when I was completely frozen, but I still think it looks really cool.
I also wanted to say that I was very sad that Connor's going to be leaving the Lotus Eaters, but I do want to wish you all the very best for your future endeavors.
You're going to do great, and hope that you come on the Lotus Eaters often as a guest so it'll be like you never left.
Thanks a lot for everything, and take care!
We will pass that on to Connor.
That's very kind.
And that's a very, very pretty lake.
At first I thought it was a salt lake.
I thought it was like mudflap.
But it's ice.
Yeah, it's ice.
Yeah, again, we don't have many vistas like that in Britain, do we?
We've got a few, but yeah, it's not as...
Again, I'd love to go there.
It's really nice.
We've got the lake.
Maybe we should have you round.
Sure.
Why not?
Shall we go through the written comments now?
Yeah, go on then.
So, Lord Kevcroft says, Afternoon, chaps.
I've just had my copy of The Islander through the door.
Thank you for all the continuing great work.
Well, thank you, Lord Kev.
And North FC Zuma says, Dan, the Civil War Brokonomics was excellent.
Organization is far right and I wholly disavow when things collapse.
Lotus Eaters definitely should not set up a hub.
Yes, no, of course, we would definitely not do that sort of thing.
So, Luca Clark says, Islander 3 arrived today.
Needless to say, I'm rather pleased with my new reading material.
And Michael Henderson says, My Islander 3 has arrived.
So there you go.
We've given you three examples of people who have actually received their copy.
I'm so glad we've not been screwed by the distributor again.
Honestly, that was just mortifying and embarrassing.
Harry, do you want to read your ones or shall I? I'll read through them.
Yeah, I'd ban it.
I'd ban that.
Overnight.
If people want to go out independently hiking...
Whatever, but if you're going to turn it into a political thing where you go out and fly your flags for a foreign country and their foreign interests, no, banned.
DJ Vance.
I remember going to a Labour Party conference in 2018 and the first thing I saw when I entered was a Palestine flag with many more around the complex.
Not a single England flag or Union flag could be seen.
This was one of the main things that woke me up.
Yeah, obviously it's going to be Labour.
Fuzzy Toaster, I reckon there will be a giant extra planetary stations before there are feasible off-world colonies.
I think this is actually related to your segment, Beau, but I'll carry on.
How else will we fuel the gardens of Venus and the foundries of Mars?
Asteroid mining stations, baby.
Side note, I will not be drawn in to quibble over which planet is better.
I posit the 40k Imperium mindset.
Is there anything exploitable on it?
Yes, set up a colony.
Damn the consequences.
Thoughts on that, Beau?
Yeah.
Alright.
The Bull.
Intel agencies.
Alright, alright, alright.
Not sharing critical intelligence with the field is a tale as old as time, whether by hoarding or trying to allow something to happen.
There needs to be a full in those agencies, and that includes all Western intelligence agencies.
Yeah, this is not specific to Israel, or Mossad, or the IDF. All of these kind of large governmental agencies are corrupt to the bone.
And they need to be rooted.
As they said there, it's a story as old as time.
Going back to the ancient world, pretend you've been attacked by someone, so you can then attack them.
As simple as.
A somewhere person says, it's just a piece of rock.
Yes, but a piece of rock in my homeland, so you can go away.
Completely agree there.
Would you like to read some of the next ones, Dan, for Bose, or shall I carry on?
You've got a lovely reading voice, so why not?
Oh, thank you very much, Dan.
That's the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me on this podcast.
Lord Naravar, I can't imagine how exciting it must have been in 1969 to see the moon landing in real time.
Maybe we can recapture some of that.
Yeah, that was probably amazing if you were there.
I'd love to have seen that.
That real event.
Yeah, that was...
It's important.
And the thing is, right, that's why I keep going on about how it's a shame that the people who will actually land on it are not more famous.
Because put it like this, let's say, let's say that you did, I did a daily, Lotus Daily video that had a billion views, right?
And there was a high, right?
But there was some thought that maybe I'd procured one of those Indian firms to boost it a bit.
And then a couple of years later...
He's saying that Indians face the moon landing.
And then a couple of years later, you did a daily video that actually got a billion views.
Well, you wouldn't get the recognition that you deserve because you were only the second one to do a Lotus Daily video.
So you've been bossing your YouTube videos.
No, they've been bossing your views.
They would be much higher if they were.
But this is my point.
I think the recognition should go to those who truly deserve it.
That's my point.
It sort of really does.
Again, in history, there's so many examples of when it's not the first person that gets remembered for something, or the wrong person gets credited with being the first person.
It's the way it goes, isn't it?
Unfortunately.
Yeah, I'll carry on.
Rose Ganella says, We have to go back to the moon, and there's a simple reason why.
Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on.
Whether it happens in a hundred years, or a thousand years, or a million years, eventually our sun will grow cold and go out.
When that happens, it won't just take us, it'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Sun Tzu, and Einstein, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes, and all of this, all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars.
I think that's a fair perspective to take on it, actually.
Yeah, yeah.
Only living on one planet is putting all your eggs in one basket.
Yeah.
Not even worrying about the death of the sun.
We could just get hit by some sort of mass extinction level asteroid or event.
It could happen long before the sun.
Also, the sun won't just sort of go cold and will freeze.
It will expand, become...
Yeah, it will expand and maybe even swallow us up, but certainly burn us to a crisp.
Or there might just be too many liberals.
Yeah.
And you just want to, you know, set up a New England somewhere.
I feel like at some point...
Space England.
I don't mind the sound of that.
In the distant future, we'll be able to travel a significant portion the speed of light at some point.
The engineering of that isn't actually impossible.
And we can go to other...
We can go to other stars, nearby stars at least, and there may well be habitable planets.
It should be in our destiny to leave this solar system for other habitable planets.
As a man who can still somewhat tenuously claim to be young, I just want there to be frontiers again.
That's the thing.
In the modern era, it's really shit that I couldn't just be exploring the edges of the Empire on the frontiers.
Rather than just pushing the boundaries of taste on Twitter.
Well, I mean, you stopped me from doing that today, so thank you very much for that.
One interesting fact that there are lots of places on the Earth that are still unexplored, essentially.
Big chunks of the Amazon Basin.
Did the government sponsor me to do it for the glory of the Empire, though?
No.
No, no.
Exactly.
Base Tape for my segment says, Thank God we have Starmer sending British lives to die for Ukraine instead of Corbyn sending British lives to die for Hamas.
And neither should be any of our business.
Dan should look into negative income tax rates.
Says, We can only hope that the war is like chess.
Capture the king to win and not an RTS. Kill every single enemy unit.
I did look into negative interest rates.
I did Brokonomics on it a while ago.
I can't remember what it's called though.
I'm sure you can find that if you go back through the archive.
It's only about time that JD Vance gets his own very fine people hoax.
Yeah, that is basically what this is.
Not quite to the same level, though, because they're not accusing him of having praised Nazis.
Sophie Liv, the one who really disrespected us in regard to Afghanistan was Biden, pulling all of his own troops out in the middle of the night without even warning any of our troops, effectively leaving them alone behind enemy lines as if they were cannon fodder, and yet no one ever talks about that.
That's an excellent point.
Bleach Demon.
The fact that Vance has triggered so many people, especially the LBC gnomes, makes me ready to vote for him.
I can't wait to see Vance drive the Euro weenies before him and laugh at the lamentations of Zelensky.
George Happ.
I like the fat Vance memes.
They remind me of the electric Pence ones from back in the day.
Hopefully we won't see such a repeat in character failure.
Huge upgrade, isn't it?
Pence to Vance.
Huge.
Yeah.
Kamala Harris to Vance as a VP. Night and day.
Yeah.
And Jimbo G finally says, Speaking of occupation, more stabby-stabby outside the local mosque after a Ramadan celebration last night becoming as normal as rain in the UK. Oh, joy.
Happy, pleasant note to end that out on.
Yes, right.
So, anyway, it's a good night from me and it's a good night from him.
There we go.
Cheerio.
See you in the next one.
Bye, Islander.
Yes, bye, Islander.
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