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March 27, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:28:39

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1130

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters episode 1130.
	I'm your host Harry, joined today by Stelios.
	Hello everyone.
	And returning guest, we're always welcome to have him back, Lewis Brackpool.
	Hello. Doing alright Lewis?
	I'm very well, yourself?
	I'm good as well, thank you.
	Where can people find you?
	Before I forget to ask.
	No worries, you can find me on X, formerly known as Twitter, Lewis underscore Brackpool, Instagram, as well as Substack.
	I've got to be shilling that more.
	When did you start a sub stack?
	A year and a bit ago, I think.
	How much have you posted on it since then?
	It's getting there.
	It's filling up.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, as it's going.
	Hey, that's alright then.
	I have a secret substack that none of you will ever find and that I have never posted anything to, but it does exist.
	Maybe in the future something will be done with it, but not today.
	I can't be bothered right now.
	So today we're going to be talking about the birth rate question and whether low birth rates necessitate, mean that you absolutely have to import the entire third world into your country so that the Bank of England can say that there is growth on a spreadsheet somewhere.
	We're going to talk about Poland banning asylum applications, a welcome change if you ask me, and seed oil communism.
	I know that a lot of people have a lot of strong feelings on seed oils.
	I've never actually looked into it personally, so I'm interested to see what you're going to tell me about all that stuff.
	Seed oil belongs to the people.
	We need to seize the means of seed oil reproduction.
	And production.
	And production, yes.
	Don't use seed oils for reproduction.
	I don't think that would go very well for you.
	Seed oil goes in a breeding contest to keep the birth rates of seed oil.
	It all fits together.
	It all fits.
	And then you ban those people born from that, from applying for asylum to Poland.
	See? It all fits.
	We also have Calvin's Common Sense Crusade out there later on today at 3 o'clock.
	So for the people who watch that...
	Tune in for that later if you've got a membership.
	If you've not got a membership, then I guess you just have to miss out.
	Or get one.
	Or get one.
	Or get one, like a cool person would.
	You're not uncool, are you?
	I'm pretty cool.
	I've got a membership, but I also work here.
	Anyway, so let's get into it.
	I wanted to talk about the birthrate cargo cult today, and that has come up because there has been a new article by the supposedly conservative publication, or centre-right publication, The Telegraph, from Lucy Burton, talking about how Britain must rely on immigration to compensate for our falling birthrate.
	Now, I know that birthrates are a very, very popular...
	A bit of discussion for people on the right and also the left, mainly because there's this idea that you need to up the birth rates to the 2.1 children per mother to make sure that you're at replacement rate, and if you don't do that, well, there will be consequences.
	You'll be outbred by the third world, and in the case of the establishment, they say if you're not meeting that, well, then you will have to have...
	Migration. Massive levels of migration to enable growth in your country.
	Economic growth in your country.
	And I think there are problems with both sides of those discussions that we'll get into.
	Just quickly, this has come out timely because it was 25 years ago, only the other day, that the UN published the replacement migration report.
	Yes. So it's interesting timing that this has come out now.
	It is very interesting timing, and it does seem, as with everything, to be somewhat coordinated because the woman who published the report that talks about this, Sarah Harper, she's an expert on aging, and she's had positions in the UN and other large global organizations.
	She's spoken at the World Economic Forum, as you would expect.
	And she's also had some very interesting positions that she's taken previously on...
	Whether it's good or bad that England has a below replacement level fertility rate.
	But I'll mention that in a minute.
	First, though, you should go onto the website and buy some merchandise.
	You wanted Islander 3?
	You thought you could get hold of Islander 3?
	Well, if you got one already, good for you.
	If not, they're all sold out.
	Too bad.
	You'll have to wait till next issue.
	Islander 3, never coming back.
	You missed out.
	But you can still take the opportunity to get an Islander t-shirt or poster.
	You can get mugs.
	You can get all sorts of things on the merchandise website.
	And they will make you happy.
	They will fill that void in your life.
	That bit of your soul that's been missing, what you need is a bit of Islander merchandise.
	And that will make everything better.
	That is not a guarantee.
	That is just what I'm saying.
	You will own Islander merch and be happy.
	Yeah, that's good.
	Klaus Schwab.
	Thank you, Stelio Schwab, over there.
	Klaus Panagiotou.
	Got your surname right.
	That's right.
	It took me a while, but I got it right now.
	You actually did.
	Yeah, thank you.
	Two and a half years.
	Two and a half years.
	I've been saying it right for at least a year at this point.
	Come on.
	But anyway.
	Buy the merchandise, you scroungy bastards.
	Anyway, onto the actual segment itself.
	So this article came out yesterday, and it was one that immediately got a lot of attention, because really, I find birthrate discussion to be somewhat of a misnomer.
	It's somewhat of a distraction.
	I absolutely believe, you know, I'm a father, I've got a daughter myself, that if you are...
	In the right financial position to be able to do so and raise a child in a healthy environment with somebody that you love, you should absolutely do so.
	And I think that you should do so and have as many as you can possibly manage because...
	Having a family is incredibly rewarding.
	Bringing life into the world is one of the most beautiful and important things that you can do.
	However, on the political dimension of a discussion like this, birth rates are always used either as a distraction from the more effective political action of what needs to happen, which is discussion, in my opinion, of the rapid demographic change.
	And people on the right will say, well, you just need to have more children, or else the demographics will change to the point where we're disenfranchised.
	I would say you shouldn't get into an arms race with birth rates with the third world, because Western European countries have always had lower fertility rates than most of the rest of the world.
	You will lose that.
	It's an anthropological observation that Western Europeans in particular have always had slightly lower fertility rates because of the environment that we developed in, which means that we had less children and spent more time On those children, raising them to make sure that they survived and lived good lives.
	I think it's R versus K reproduction strategies.
	That's the discussion there.
	And the other side of the conversation is that when you talk about birth rates, you're legitimizing the other side who say, okay, well, if it's so bad that you do not have replacement-level birth rates, then we're gonna have to find some other way to boost the population.
	Because the...
	The conversation always comes back around on these economic terms that if we do not have a boosting population, if it's not constantly increasing, this will lead to an economic downturn, which will impoverish people.
	So you don't want that, do you?
	But anyway, onto this discussion here.
	So, again, it's always used as some kind of backdoor method of saying, well, in that case, we need more people in the country.
	One way or another.
	It's interesting.
	The one narrative is, oh no no no, population reduction.
	And then the other narrative is, oh no no no, we need more people.
	Population reduction for certain populations.
	As we'll find out with Sarah Harper herself.
	Either way, so what it says, the official fertility rate in England and Wales is at a record low of 1.44 births per woman.
	Figures published at the end of last year show that the number of children born to British mothers has fallen by a quarter in 15 years.
	And of course this has nothing to do with...
	Impoverishment of the country, rising house prices, deteriorating social conditions, hostile culture, nothing like that.
	We've no idea why it happened, and there is only one solution, says the establishment.
	Meanwhile, fertility rate for foreign-born mothers has jumped the past two years to 2.03 children per woman.
	Professor Harper, the professor of gerontology at Oxford University, said, We have to accept that we are going to be in low-fertility societies, and the only way we can compensate for that is by looking at migration.
	We have a growing group of women who want to have children later, and they maybe only want to have one child.
	The idea that we're going to be able to replace ourselves by births alone, I really Two questions.
	Why not?
	And again, There's always this assumption with organizations, institutions like the Bank of England that growing population is always a good thing.
	But we've had a growing population driven entirely by migration for, what, a decade or two?
	At least by now.
	And the economic situation on the ground in the country is getting worse and worse and worse.
	GDP per capita has remained very stagnant or falling, and you can go around the towns and city centers, Across the country and see that there is widespread impoverishment.
	There are so many closed shops, so many foreign-owned shops which are fronts for foreign criminals.
	And you go, well, okay, it's the same as the tax question.
	They say, the country's getting worse, everyone's getting poorer, let's keep increasing tax.
	Well, people have been increasing tax over and over and over again for decades, and things have got worse and worse and worse.
	Well, we've been having this much migration into the country for at least 25 years, 28 years at this point, wouldn't it be?
	So the country's got worse and worse and worse.
	The only answer is more migration.
	Just keep your foot on that pedal.
	The labour market.
	Yeah, for the labour market.
	And it doesn't really make any sense to me.
	The ageing expert said that there had been a generational shift as a lot of women who would have previously believed that to be an adult and female was probably to have children are now reconsidering this.
	So there has been a change in the culture and we can only guess as to why that might be.
	Please do not refer to anything like...
	U.S. aid payments to foreign NGOs that like to spread leftist propaganda around Western nations and the rest of the world, if I'm perfectly honest.
	We've also got this particular graph here in the article saying the fertility rates are record low, and you can see it was already on a downward turn when it gets to about here, when the abortion act comes into force, but then you see an even greater acceleration of that dip.
	So we have the baby boom.
	Things start to level out naturally because that was a very special circumstance that led to that particular boom right there.
	And then abortion comes in and it just goes and then it's leveled off for a few decades until we get to now and things get worse and worse and worse.
	And there are a number of factors leading to all of this.
	And they say experts have suggested that more women are choosing to prioritize careers or buying a house over having a baby, meaning many are having children later in life or not at all.
	In the UK, the average age at which mothers give birth has riven from 26 in 1975 to 30 or 31 in 2022, the higher since records began.
	At the same time, the Office for National Statistics has projected that the number of people aged over 85 will nearly double to 3.3 million by 2047.
	Professor Harper's comments come days after Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, warned that Britain's ageing population poses major obstacles to growth.
	So that's the only thing that we've got to be worried about.
	As always, growth, we need the line go up!
	Line go up on a graph somewhere.
	And again, there's questions to ask, which is growth for who?
	Growth for what purpose?
	Growth for the improvement of living conditions in the country?
	Or growth for the sake of...
	I think it's two children, I believe.
	Entitled to some kind of break?
	Tax break of some sort?
	So, like, incentivising the idea of having children?
	There have been some governments that have had some success, I believe.
	I've actually got it in an article later on, or at least it's mentioned in an article later on, but Hungary's pronatalist policies, I think, have been able to increase the birth rate from...
	There's a 1.23 per mother to 1.5 per mother.
	So that's quite a jump, but still not to replacement rates.
	There's only so much in a modern environment that you can do to incentivize people to have more and more children.
	And it does seem to be a reflection of the culture.
	It does seem to be a reflection of...
	Feminist priorities, wanting women to be out of the home instead of raising children.
	Yeah, if you make it not cool to have kids, and the culture is, no, no, just don't worry about that.
	There'll be a number of other things as well.
	Access to contraception and abortion.
	And then there's going to be things just like general contact with globalized, liberalized culture, even in the third world, as I'm going to mention in a few minutes, does seem to have this effect of reducing birth rates.
	But, As I'll get onto in a minute as well, the actual process of increasing diversity in countries also has a negative effect on birth rates.
	So it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle.
	And on that, it's interesting that Sarah Harper here is talking about how we need migration because the birth rates are too low.
	Implying that birth rates being low by themselves is a bad thing.
	Well, if you go on her Wikipedia page, which talks about all the things that she's done, you know, being part of the UNECE Population Unit, which is a UN institution.
	She's spoken at the World Economic Forum.
	Global advisor on aging populations to the International Bank HSBC.
	Someone who's actually got quite a decent amount of influence by the sounds of it.
	Well, it goes to the bottom, and in 2023, she told a Daily Telegraph that a falling birth rate in the UK would be good for our planet.
	She thinks it's a good thing that the high-income, high-consuming countries of the world are reducing the number of children that they're having.
	So evil, man.
	What changed?
	Yeah. Well, it depends on the population she's talking about.
	Doesn't it?
	It's bad when European nations have enough children to replace themselves, because white man bad, I suppose.
	But as a solution to that, you still need to have an increasing population in these countries to keep the economic wheels spinning.
	So you're going to have to import all of these hostile foreign populations, who...
	By themselves as well are net tax drains and do not contribute economically to the countries.
	Speaking of European countries, I think that the whole way that Europe is treating this problem turns it into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
	Because what they're doing is that they are looking upon several trends and they think that these trends are going to last forever.
	So for instance, they're saying women right now give birth.
	To an average of an older age, let's say 35, and they assume that this is going to keep happening forever, that it's never going to change.
	It's fundamentally mistaken.
	Demographic predictions are notoriously fallible.
	So when they're saying that in order for us to retain the replacement rate, we need influx of people, well, the question is, where do these people come from?
	And what are they doing?
	And frequently they come from countries where they are, let's say, low-skilled.
	They don't have much education and they are low-skilled.
	Very incompatible cultures as well.
	What happens essentially is that we have a huge influx of low-skilled people that drives wages down.
	And by driving wages down, it becomes incredibly more difficult for...
	Let's say common people, people who aren't, let's say, the rich of a society, to procreate, raise a family, and end up thinking that maybe that's a good idea.
	So that's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
	Whether they intend it or not, that's the effect.
	That is happening.
	It's incredibly more difficult for the native population to raise families.
	But also, there are several assumptions there that are mistaken, such as, for instance, a reduction in population is always a bad thing.
	It isn't.
	And the GDP goes up.
	It doesn't always go up.
	Sometimes, especially when we're talking about particular countries from the Middle East, it actually has a negative effect on the GDP.
	Even if it doesn't go up, even if it doesn't go down and it increases, the question is how many people is it going to be distributed towards?
	So GDP is one thing in absolute terms.
	The common person is represented in the overall domestic product.
	I've said for a long time at this point that the actual population of native-born British people in this country has remained a pretty steady 41 to 42 million over the past 40 or so years.
	If the population remained at that kind of level, as we're rapidly reaching, I think the figure in the Telegraph article is 72.5 million by 2032.
	If the population reduced to a much more manageable 41 to 42 million, say 45 million, to allow for productive European migrants who remain in the country to stay here and contribute to us as well, because they can integrate.
	I don't see how that would be a bad thing at all.
	The infrastructure would have an incredible load taken off of it.
	The NHS would actually probably be fit for purpose to a better extent under a population of that size.
	The roads would be clearer.
	There would be less competition for wages, meaning that people would have better livelihoods.
	There would be less competition for land, houses, businesses.
	Business property, people would be able to open up their own business as much easier.
	I don't see any negative side effects to it at all, personally, outside of the Bank of England and other large GDP-based institutions scaremongering about it.
	Personally, that's my look at it.
	And you can see that this seems to be, on a certain level, coordinated because at the same time you get people like Lord Philip Hammond...
	Going on Sky News, as shown here by Connor, who posted this on his Twitter, saying the exact same thing.
	We need growth, so we need managed migration.
	Let's hear it from the horse's mouth.
	Deliver the growth effect.
	There will have to be some additional managed migration.
	We will need more workers, possibly only for short-term workers, but we will need more...
	Foreign workers in order to deliver the homes and the infrastructure that the government is proposing to build.
	And politically, that's going to be very challenging.
	And if I was the government, I think that's where I'd be focusing my attention now, persuading the public that over the next four or five years, in order to deliver all this growth-promoting infrastructure and house-building, we will need to bring in some foreign construction workers, albeit for a limited period of time.
	Okay, so the country's going to part.
	How do we fix it?
	Keep doing the same thing that we've been doing for 28 years, but slightly more this time it'll work.
	And as Connor points out in here, the Office for Budget Responsibility doesn't believe Labour's promise 1.5 million new homes will decrease house price inflation because at least 1.5 million migrants will be added to Britain over the period that they are built.
	So you're bringing in more people to solve the problem that is constantly being caused by more people constantly coming into the country.
	Self-perpetuating cycle of BS.
	If I didn't know better, I would say that there was something malicious going on here.
	But I would never say that because then large international American NGOs might come after me saying such a thing.
	But on the birth rate question again, the point about fertility rates going down...
	Seems to be something that's universal whenever a country comes in touch with this liberalised, globalised culture.
	Like, this is an article from the Imperium Press from almost three years ago now, actually, called The Third World is Going to Cop It, where he looks at fertility rates across the world, across different populations, and sees that this trend of reducing fertility rates is...
	Pretty much universal.
	So he says, But
	they started off pretty bad already from 1.66 to 1.55.
	And he carries on.
	Even Africa, by far the continent with the fastest growing population, is starting to show the effects of global liberalization, particularly in urban centers.
	Kenya's total fertility rate of 3.4 is still a lot higher than any Western country, but it is a decline.
	From 4.8 in the years 2009 to 2019, which is an enormous decline in fertility rate, if you take it in total percentage.
	What's happening, and he puts it down to the fact that all of these cultures have had very traditional, very particular ways of living up until very recently.
	They've come in touch with this globalized Western liberalized culture, and it has just run straight through them.
	And this is something that is going to happen more and more and more to the third world.
	As it's affected by all of this.
	I think it's mostly economic.
	I don't think it has to do with the political aspect.
	Well, I mean, when I say globalized and liberalized, I mean technology and economies.
	If people are given the choice, usually they delay having children.
	Yes. I mean, when they aren't in very strict environments that incentivize them to.
	Of children.
	I mean cultures.
	And it's in this article that he mentions Hungary as well, and he says that, you know, they've improved the fertility rate, but it does seem there to be an upper limit on that.
	And this is what leads to situations like this.
	This is quite a famous graph at this point.
	Only 56% of births in England were white British in 2023.
	You can see the different regions.
	Up in the northeast, it's 80%, but down in London...
	Unsurprisingly, it's 21%.
	Again, to show how global this whole situation is, you can also see he did one about America as well, from state to state.
	And you can see across each of these states, especially the ones across the southern border, Texas, New Mexico, California, they go down as low as 15% in 2023, which is...
	Absolutely ridiculous.
	And again, I think that there might be something intentional about some of this which is that there has been a study done last year talking about the effects on greater levels of diversity on fertility rates.
	And this is a very, very interesting study.
	Let me go through some of this.
	America has seen increasing diversity and declining birth rates for a long time.
	Racial minorities made up about 10% of the population in 1950, but account for more than 40% today.
	The total fertility rate was 3.7 kids per woman in 1960, and around 2.1 in 2007 is around 1.7 today.
	A viral academic working paper by Umit G. Gurun and David H. Solomon argues the two trends may be linked.
	Perhaps rising diversity is a reason that birth rates are declining.
	This could be the case, for example, if people tend to marry others of the same race and have more trouble finding partners in diverse places, or if places with higher diversity tend to have lower levels of trust and more social isolation. This next bit's from another analysis I've seen of this.
	Solomon's study utilizes data from 1850 to 2021, drawing on U.S.
	censuses and the American Community Survey to establish a direct link between racial diversity and birth rates.
	Two key concepts are central to this analysis, racial isolation and immigration shocks.
	Racial isolation refers to the scenario where an individual is part of a numerically smaller racial group within a local area.
	For whites, a one standard deviation increase in this isolation leads to a birth rate decrease of 0.044 children per woman.
	Conversely, when the share of whites in an area increases by a standard deviation, there's an increase of 0.064 children per woman.
	Paints a clear picture as the white demographic becomes less concentrated due to immigration, their birth rates diminish.
	Longitudinally, this study observes that increased racial diversity since 1970 might explain between 20 to 44 percent of the decline in U.S.
	fertility rates, highlighting the profound effect of demographic changes on birth rates.
	And as a result, I can only...
	I assume that this kind of code-switching in rhetoric that Harper does, where she's like, well, you know, the falling birth rate is great for the planet, it's all about the planet and the environment, and then turns around and says, well, this means you're going to have to have more people in the country.
	Again. As you mentioned, it becomes self-perpetuating, and I would argue is being done on purpose.
	And again, this kind of diminished cultural cohesion in more diverse populations and groups has not just been noted on a broader nationwide level, it's been noted by Amazon.
	By Amazon, when they were looking at which stores were at most risk of unionising.
	So, you don't want the staff to unionise.
	And you think to yourself, okay, well, that'll cost us money, that'll cost us time.
	How do we prevent that?
	Well, they've got a heat map that ranks which stores the most risk of unionizing.
	As part of this heat map, they track a number of different factors, and the higher the score of these factors are, the less risk there is of unionizing, right?
	One of the most important ones, they note here, is that the heat map says lower rates of racial diversity So
	according to all of these documents.
	So the important part there is that if you want a group to be less cohesive, not be able to work together against you who are the authority in a position of power, you want them to be more amongst other factors.
	This has an equivalent in politics and it was played by the left who was losing the working class and said that they need to mix population and suddenly they began open borders but the people they imported are reaching critical mass and they're going to make parties of their own.
	So now it's not so much...
	I think it's not so much the left that is the issue here.
	It is definitely an issue, but also it's the purely economic side that says GDP is the only thing that matters.
	It's an establishment problem, I would argue.
	But that's all the information that I have for that.
	Do with it.
	As you will.
	Let's go through the rumble rants that I've received here.
	So, starting from the bottom, $5 from Alex Adamson55 says, Harry and Josh, you are conscripted to undertake a most holy and ordained task.
	You are to create TV, movies, and game segments covering the Sharp series.
	You are to enlist Bo in this task.
	I need an excuse to watch Sharp, so cheers.
	I've never seen that.
	Blood for the Blood God with an incredible...
	$200. Thank you.
	Thank you so much for your support.
	We really appreciate that.
	Says, have a good rest of the night off, Lotus Eaters crew.
	And you too, my friend.
	Akrul, for $5, says, you can't be an alpha male without being a father.
	For most people...
	Potentially. I would say you can be a Sigma male, though.
	But I am a father, so not Sigma confirmed.
	That's a random name sent in two $1 Rumble Rants, thank you, says, Everything in the West is inverted.
	Our elders have created a system that treats men like defective women and vice versa.
	Criminals like victims, adults like children, etc.
	Is it any wonder, then, that with a society as destabilized as ours, most people struggle with forming families.
	Regardless, I do believe we'll come out of it stronger.
	I can only hope so, and you've sent another one in for a...
	Oh, sorry.
	Sorry. I was like, wow.
	It sounded, yeah.
	Yeah, there are definitely cultural problems over the suitability of, well, how many men perceive the suitability of the women they interact with on a day-to-day basis and have to come up with the...
	Cost-benefit analysis of, do I want a family with this woman?
	Because that is a problem.
	That is a problem these days.
	But there are still good women out there somewhere.
	Maybe. Anyway.
	Before I start, I need to address the chat, because I do pay attention to the chat, as you all know.
	My tie is not just pink.
	A bit pink.
	It's a bit pink, but it's also a bit red, a bit blue, a bit old.
	It has all sorts of colours.
	It's the whole rainbow.
	It's your pride tie.
	It's not my pride tie.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	You're not going to let that stick.
	You know, I remember you bought me that pride one, didn't you?
	What? I've never bought you a tie.
	An actual pride tie?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Harry brought it to me.
	I've never, ever presented a tie to anyone as a gift.
	I'm joking as he was in the beginning.
	I have no pride ties.
	Right, okay.
	He is a bit gay, though.
	Harry, the bullying is going to continue until morale improves.
	I remember your lads hour call.
	These were the guardians.
	And now you're misbehaving.
	The bullying is going to continue until morale improves.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm sorry, Stanley.
	You say it now, but you're going to mean it later.
	Okay, come on.
	Okay. Nice.
	It's the fist bump on air.
	Yeah, the third party.
	Yeah, I'm just...
	I'm taking notes at the back.
	Right, okay.
	Right, so we are going to talk about Poland, and Poland is an interesting case in this world we're living in because they put forward a policy that I think is a bit sensible, but it has been...
	Portrayed in somewhat a misleading light in several ways.
	So first of all, a lot of people are saying that Poland is banning application asylums full stop.
	It's not exactly like that.
	What they're doing is for 60 days they are restricting asylum applications primarily from men that come from the Poland-Belarus border.
	Oh, okay.
	That's a lot more limited and less triumphant than I saw people reporting it on.
	Exactly. So they're going to do that for 60 days, and we don't know whether they're going to contain it or not.
	My view is it's better than I expected from Donald Tusk, but there are several concerns about his stance across the years, but also his platform.
	So they voted for this.
	And we have here the President Duda signed the new bill today, which makes it possible for Poland to deny all asylum requests by the illegal migrants trying to break through Poland's Right, so what is interesting here is that the border between Poland and Belarus is very turbulent.
	When it comes to migration, and one would expect it not to be, but it is.
	Because as far as migration flows are concerned, Russia and Belarus are using migration flows in Europe as a means of hybrid warfare.
	And the Polish are excellent at pointing that out.
	Now, there's a myth in especially right-wing circles that says that Russia would never be behind something like that, but that's a myth.
	Obviously. Yep.
	Okay, good.
	Right, so we have several...
	A hostile nation might send hostile populations into our countries.
	Who would have thought?
	You're taking the conversation to another side.
	I'm not saying that Russia doesn't have some policies, which may be good on this, but on this case...
	Oh, no, no, no.
	I'm agreeing with you.
	Yeah, I'm not saying you're disagreeing.
	I'm just recontextualizing.
	Your comment and what I want to say.
	So the Polish are persistently highlighting this.
	So we had this video that went viral here a few days ago.
	We have people trying to cross the border from Belarus.
	We see them here.
	They're trying to opening a hole in the border.
	And they come in and the Polish Border Patrol comes and arrests them.
	And it went viral.
	It got 26.4 million views.
	You see the Polish guards are coming.
	And they have been accused several times for pushbacks that are considered to be against the ECHR rules.
	Now, my view is that when appeals to the ECHR take place, it's mostly the people who are doing the appeal.
	Now, that's a conversation for another time, but there are several clauses within the ECHR, for instance, in Article 8, when they're talking about the right to family life, that they don't suggest that there is an unconditional right to not get deported.
	They are conditionalizing a right to not get deported according to respect for public security, the common good, all the things we're talking about.
	The situation there is turbulent for a long time and this June, last June, about nine months ago, there was a soldier who died from a knife attack at the border.
	It's not the...
	You know, it's not the forest with Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin where everything is really peaceful and nothing bad is ever happening.
	It's actually a very violent situation in a very turbulent place.
	Right. What is interesting is that the border is here.
	For those for whom geography isn't your stronger card, the border is here.
	It's literally in the heart of Northern Europe.
	Please, could we zoom out?
	Yes, so it's literally here.
	And what is interesting is that the main routes for migration are here, the eastern route, the western route through Spain, the central route through Italy, and the eastern route through Greece.
	What on earth happens here?
	Because the Polish are correct in saying that...
	The Russians and the Belarusians are using migration flows in hybrid warfare.
	And I have these stats from the European Council that talk about arrivals of illegal migration.
	They call it irregular, but let's say it as it is.
	And they highlight only these routes, which is interesting.
	What this whole thing shows is that despite some voices within the EU that are saying that this shouldn't take place, it seems like the only way for Europeans to do something about open borders is to link it to Russia.
	And this is what happens in the Polish case.
	Now, I have some, let's say, articles here by The Telegraph about Poland.
	And if you see...
	Just the titles.
	So here, Polish border stopped to death by a migrant on Belarus border.
	Here we have the previous Prime Minister of Poland, who says Muslim migrants are destroying European culture.
	We have here, this was an article by Stephen Edgington.
	He's written a few on it by the looks of it.
	Yes, also here, Britain can learn from Poland's rejection of illegal migration.
	And globalization.
	Does great work, friend of the show.
	And like the UK, Poland does not want multiculturalism.
	So they're pretty much pretty switched on on this issue for their border.
	Now, depending on who you ask...
	They may be more switched on about the other routes in Europe or not.
	But it looks like there are several considerations when it comes to Donald Tusk and his whole stance towards multiculturalism.
	Speaking of multiculturalism, we have a new interview gone out with returning guest Dr. Benedict Beckel.
	About the dangers of multiculturalism, and we're talking about several things, particularly the tendency of Europeans to view other religions in terms of the Protestant-Catholic divide, which led to the separation of church and state after 130 years of bloodshed within Christianity.
	So when we're talking about other religions...
	The question arises as to why would we want to do that even if in 130 years things are going to be okay?
	Why would we want to go through that stage?
	Right. So there are several considerations about Tusk because a lot of people may jump and say, well, he may be our guy.
	We don't know.
	But there are several indications that he is definitely pro the progressive side.
	Right. So, for instance, he has been accused for promoting hate speech laws, especially having to do with offenses and the trans lobby.
	He does seem to be a bit to the left on several key issues.
	I think he was campaigning as essentially a moderate return to normality after the PIS government.
	Yes. That was his campaign, and he is on the center-right government, and also in the European People's Party.
	That is the, within quotation marks, center-right that has been.
	Yes. But that was particularly disappointing coming from them.
	You have a point.
	Right, here we have a political article that is lamenting Tusk's decision to go forward with that policy.
	And they're saying here, Poland's government aims to temporarily suspend the right of arrivals to claim asylum, even though that clashes with both international law and European Union rules.
	That's from October 14, 2024.
	That's about five months ago.
	But Prime Minister Donald Tusk insists he will not backtrack.
	As he says, it is our right and our duty to protect the Polish and European border.
	Its security will not be negotiated with anyone.
	Tusk said on social media on Monday afternoon.
	Right, so what is interesting is that this seems like, to my mind, this seems like closed borders for me, but open borders for thee.
	Because he has been heavily involved with the European People Party.
	I think he was its president at some point.
	Now it's the party of Ursula von der Leyen, who is, you could say she occupies a high position.
	She's great.
	She's lovely.
	And he says, well, anything my group, my team was saying about our enemies, I'm not going to care at all about it.
	I'm going to have closed borders for me.
	Interesting. It's good for Poland.
	I was going to say, it's better than lots of Western governments do.
	Yeah. It's good for Poland, but also I think that a lot of people should follow his example and maybe say, well, maybe we should guard Europe.
	Right, so he says, Tusk, a former president of the European Council and a key leader in the center-right European People's Party, that also includes Ursula von der Leyen, is reflecting a harsher tone on migration sweeping the...
	A tough border policy is also part of Tusk's effort to ensure that his civic coalition party is in sole position to win next year's presidential election.
	We need to bear this in mind.
	Right, so we have here another article by RTE.
	It says Poland to adopt, decrease, a spending right to seek asylum.
	And they're talking about how Poland and the other EU states along the bloc's eastern edge have accused Russia and its ally Belarus of orchestrating a campaign of pushing thousands.
	Right, so why is it a problem for the center-right of Europe when all these migration flows come from Russia and Belarus, but it isn't when they come from all the other routes?
	Why is it a problem there, but not anywhere else?
	Yes, so what they're doing is they are talking about Poland in the same way we are talking about Europe.
	They're taking a very parochial view of the problem.
	Yes, but that is really interesting because all it is, it seems that their only concern is the origin.
	Who is behind those migration flows?
	Yes, I do think Russia and Belarus, and in this case, I'd say it's mostly Russia, does want to conduct hybrid warfare to Europe because Russia has a power structure that is very forward-looking.
	That's a feature of...
	Of the countries that don't have frequent, let's say, change of who occupies the top spot.
	They have decades of policy in advance.
	Sounds kind of sensible when you put it like that.
	Policy orientation.
	So why is it a problem when the same people, let's say, come from...
	From the Belarus border, Poland-Belarus border, but it isn't a problem for Europe and for Donald Tusk's mates when they come from every other place.
	And question, why is it the case that they think that only Putin represents a threat to the EU?
	Because I agree that to an extent, he does, and Putin's Russia does represent.
	Threats to Europe, but they're not the only threats.
	And I'll just share an anecdote.
	I've spoken to several people close to me, and I'm saying, okay, you're really anxious about Putin's Russia.
	Yeah, you are.
	Tell me why.
	I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, but tell me why.
	They list all sorts of considerations, and I say, yeah, I agree with you.
	Why don't you apply that to other areas?
	Of the world that are behind these migration flows.
	So I think what's going on here with Poland is a good wake-up call.
	It's good if in several places people like Donald Tusk and other European leaders are stepping up and say, no, I am going to guard my country's borders.
	It's good if they start doing it, but we shouldn't lose sight of the bigger picture.
	And it isn't just the issue of where they come from.
	The issue is saving Europe.
	Yes, and you are right.
	There seems to be a problem with the entire European establishment, which is that when it comes to fighting back Russia, all of a sudden they're starting to put armies together.
	Now that America looks like it's starting to pull out, they're starting to put more money into their own defence.
	I think that those in a vacuum are not bad things.
	It's the fact that at the same time, most of these countries, their leaders, are more than eager to say, well, we need to protect ourselves from Putin, while at the same time destroying their own countries from the EU.
	Yeah, so at the end of the day, that's a welcome move, I think, by Donald Tusk, and that's a good policy.
	But it should be extended to all the borders, not just the Poland-Polish-Belarusian borders.
	And also, it shows a lot about the hypocrisy of the EU, because...
	What Donald Tusk is doing here, well, some of them are against it, but he does it regardless, and I think he's right on this.
	But the problem isn't just Putin's Russia.
	There are all sorts of threats to Europe.
	Too much of a convenient narrative.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So it's very monolithic.
	It's just, yeah, we only have one problem, and let's solve this problem, and it's going to be heaven on earth.
	It's not going to be heaven on earth.
	There are all sorts of...
	Problems that Europe faces and they should take care of them.
	Alright, let's go through the Rumble Ramp.
	We had one during that segment from Alex Adamson at $55 again for another $5.
	Thank you very much.
	Saying, good man.
	For those who have not seen Sharp, go watch it immediately and go and read the books.
	Actually, cover the books too.
	Aren't there something like 25 Sharp books?
	I didn't know that there was books on here.
	The series was based on some of the earlier books, I think.
	I forget the name of the author, but he did a kind of narrative...
	History book on Waterloo.
	Oh, cool.
	As well, which I also...
	Yes, and I like the fact that Sean Bean is playing Sharp, and I have these DVDs.
	Yeah, I've been...
	My friends when I was a kid were obsessed with them, showed me a few episodes, which I've completely blanked out of my mind for some reason.
	I need to sit down and watch them and pay attention.
	I think it's Bernard Cornwall.
	Yes, that's the name of the author.
	There's a ridiculous number of sharp books written by Bernard Cornwall.
	I'm going to have to dig through that.
	Yeah, there's a lot of them, though.
	I don't think they're that long.
	They're like little adventure books.
	You have to.
	Full sub.
	Have you read some of them?
	Yes. It has been a while.
	22 novels in the series.
	There you go.
	There you go, yeah.
	22. 22 of them.
	And he's written loads of other books as well at the same time, so he's one of those really productive writers.
	That's awesome.
	Right, shall we get on to your segment?
	Shall we?
	I'm going to bring it up on the screen, and there is a mouse.
	Here's the funny box.
	Funny box.
	Thank you very, very much.
	Two seconds.
	There we go.
	Lovely. Right, so to preface before we properly begin with this segment, I just want to give a warning.
	I'm not here to give anybody health advice.
	I'm not here to give anybody dietary advice.
	You're all adults.
	You make your own decisions.
	because when you go into subjects like these, there is a tendency in the alt-health sort of area to sort of go a bit off-piste, let's say, but this segment is not...
	Generalised, make incredibly broad claims, etc.
	Yes, exactly.
	But today, I thought it would be something different to talk about seed oils.
	It is one of the most prominent topics within the health sphere.
	I'm sure you guys have seen lots of things in the burger patties.
	The things that the stomach can't digest well and they straightforwardly turn into fat.
	Yes, it's horrific, in my opinion.
	So you're going to be hearing a lot of opinions.
	The most I know, my opinion, is that if you do a fry-up with oil of some kind, it tastes grim.
	If you do it with some proper butter, it tastes amazing.
	And that's what I've done.
	I've started using butter, personally.
	It's great.
	I've never used the oil.
	My opinion.
	Not for any, like, political, ideological reason.
	I would just hate the taste of the oil on the food after it was done frying.
	Whereas with the butter, it adds to the flavour.
	I love the taste of oil in the morning.
	Disgusting, Ned.
	It's a very med attitude.
	It is, isn't it?
	We Germanics, we like our butter, we do.
	Oh, lovely.
	So, what are seed oils to begin with?
	Well, seed oils are vegetable oils extracted from the seeds of various plants.
	Some common examples include soybean oil, canola, or used to be called rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, and...
	Safflower, safflower, and grapeseed oil as well.
	Obviously, you've probably seen this is an American version of seed oils that they obviously produce over there.
	We've got something extremely similar.
	But there's obviously a big controversy around what they are and what they potentially do to the human body.
	But firstly, how are they made?
	Most seed oils are...
	Made using industrial processing, which typically includes mechanical pressings to extract, obviously, some oil, chemical solvents to extract the rest, deodorization and refining to make the oil shelf-stable and neutral in flavor.
	And this process often includes high heat, which can affect the oil's chemical stability.
	Now, we could just play this without sound whilst we chat.
	I don't like the way it's made, personally.
	It looks horrible, the way it's made, and it's very, very off-putting.
	I think also Aristotle said it's bad for you.
	Yeah. In my opinion, Aristotle said seed oils are bad for you.
	He was the first seed oil disrespecter.
	It's in the politics.
	Don't ask me which page, but it's in there.
	Lost book.
	The big thing about seed oils as well...
	That's just grim.
	I mean, that's a horrible plate to begin with.
	Why would you want any vegetables at all?
	But still, then put oil on top of the...
	No! Put oil in front of salad.
	I don't eat salad.
	I told you, this is like gore.
	No, just put some...
	Why don't you put butter on the pan?
	Sorry. I've also heard that apparently beef tallow is really, really nice as well, but I've not tried that.
	I've not tried that personally, but...
	Samson's giving the thumbs up.
	You can use beef tallow as well as skincare routine.
	Apparently, allegedly.
	I don't know if I'd want to...
	I'm not sure if I want to be stinking of beef tallow for the day.
	Hey, it might attract the ladies, you never know.
	Yeah, you never know.
	You never know.
	Well, one of the big concerns as well about seed oils in particular is how much of it is in our supply, especially within supermarkets and chains.
	So I run an analysis earlier through AI on the estimated presence of seed oils in food products, especially within the UK.
	But please take this with a pinch of salt because, you know, AI can be pretty...
	Seed salt.
	Sea salt, yeah.
	Celtic salt.
	So, processed foods, things such as snacks, frozen meals, ready meals, things like that.
	Look, look at that.
	That's mental.
	No thanks.
	That is pretty grim, but also at the same time, if you showed me video from the inside of a slaughterhouse, I wouldn't be feeling hungry afterwards either.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Like a steaming television B-movie.
	Yeah, there's like night shift.
	Yeah, that's...
	That is minging.
	Just keep it rolling whilst we talk about it.
	What is that?
	Is that gravel?
	I think so.
	You don't want to know, Harry.
	Okay. It's uncomfortably brown.
	70-90% of processed foods contain seed oils like soybean, canola, sunflower oil, or corn oil.
	Restaurant and takeaway food, according to the analysis, nearly 100%.
	Yeah, I've heard that McDonald's switched to seed oils back in the 80s from beef tallow for frying their food in, and apparently McDonald's used to taste a million times better.
	Yeah, and I think RFK wanted to do the change.
	Yeah, where is it, RFK?
	Come on, we need the beef tallow.
	Supermarket packaged goods such as crackers, cereals, bread, sauces, salad dressings, etc.
	60-80% often include seed oils, especially as emulsifiers.
	What it says here.
	Or fats.
	Health-branded or low-fat foods.
	Oh, that's so often.
	Oh, that was grim.
	Yeah, we're keeping this rolling, if you don't mind, whilst we do it.
	Yeah, we should definitely.
	And we should replay it if it ends.
	But the question remains, why is it so common?
	Because we see so much of it everywhere.
	Well, number one, it's extremely cheap to produce on an industrial scale.
	That's the main thing.
	When something's so cheap and you can replace it and move it around...
	You can get it on a factory production line that you can run 24-7.
	Exactly. Seed oils like soybean, sunflower, canola and corn are cheaper to produce than traditional animal fats or tropical oils such as butter or coconut oil.
	These crops are high yield, easy to grow on mass scale and heavily subsidised in countries like the US and this makes them attractive to food manufacturers aiming to minimise production costs.
	Another one is a long shelf life which benefits packaged goods.
	Industrial seed oils have a long shelf life especially after refined, bleached and deodorised a common...
	You mentioned about the 70s and 80s.
	Well, government guidelines since the mid-20th century promoted them over animal fats.
	Just those things that we've been eating for millennia at that point.
	No, we finally found the one thing that's better than the thing that made us healthy for millennia.
	Funny that.
	Beginning of the 1970s and 80s, dietary guidelines pushed to reduce saturated fats in favor of polyunsaturated fats, a category that includes seed oils.
	This manufactures to switch from animal fats to tropical oils to industrial vegetable oils to appear heart healthily or heart healthy.
	The big one is a rapeseed oil.
	Which gained attention during the 1970s, although high in its toxicity originally, the large quantities prompted Canadian scientists to develop a less toxic variant called canola oil by the 1980s, which, that's where the name was coined from, canola.
	And over the following decades, they created genetically modified varieties to improve resistance to pesticides or herbicides, contributing to its popularity.
	To understand as well, rapeseed oil was primarily used during the early 20th century as a machine lubricant.
	Especially in steam engines, ships, and industrial machinery because of its excellent resistance to heat and its ability to cling to metal surfaces.
	Okay. Yeah.
	On its own, that doesn't necessarily mean it's terrible for you.
	That's why they need to refine it.
	So is it terrible for you?
	You should buy olive oil.
	Just that, like that.
	Is it terrible for you, and how is it terrible for you?
	If it's good for you, how is it good for you?
	These are my interesting questions.
	Exactly. Well, the big question is, is it healthy for us?
	In my view, absolutely no.
	No, it's not.
	Obviously, everything in excess.
	Can be bad for you.
	But when you look into some studies, a lot of studies, independent studies, you find that the high levels of omega-6 fatty acids, particularly...
	I can't even say that.
	Linoleic? Yes, linoleic acid.
	Forgive me, I'm so bad at pronunciation.
	And how these fats behave in the body during cooking.
	Seed oils like soybean, corn, sunflower, cottonseed, and grapeseed oil are very high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, which can make up to 50-70% of the fat content in some of these oils.
	Excess omega-6, especially without enough omega-3 from sources such as oily fish or flax, may Promotes the production of pro-inflammatory compounds in the body.
	So that's why there's a big thing around.
	You get bloated.
	You get bloated, and this chronic, low-grade inflammation is believed to be a contributing factor to things such as heart disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune conditions, and others as well.
	Where does communism come into this?
	So, we've got to have it in everything, and you must eat it.
	Okay, yeah.
	So I thought, play on words.
	You could argue fascism.
	You could argue that.
	It's just authoritarianism in general.
	Yeah, that was the point, essentially.
	But what's interesting is this all came about when I...
	Put forward a Freedom of Information request to the UK's Food Standards Agency.
	It's obviously the one that measures, of course, you know, safety, regulation, everything like that, to investigate the research into CEDAWS.
	Instead of just believing everything online about it, is it bad for you?
	Is it really, really horrible?
	And it's generally the...
	The answer that you'll get on whether it's bad for you or not will depend entirely on whether the person that you're listening to is left or right wing as well.
	Exactly. So I thought, well, let's take away the bias of online and everything, and let's just look.
	I wanted to look at it myself.
	Here's the worrying thing about this, is when I put forward the request and got an answer, they gave me all these files to go through, went through them, of course.
	But no evidence currently suggests that the FSA has undertaken any independent investigations into the broader chronic disease risks associated with this, or associated with seed oils.
	That to me, in my view, if there's not been this push for investigations, that to me is a big...
	Public health oversight.
	I don't know what your opinions on it is, gents, but if they're not conducting research and they're just saying, yeah, it's all good, everything's all good, and there's no sort of counter, I go through in my substack a lot more information that you can obviously have a look if you go onto it and you can see all the information and what I sent through.
	It's pretty scary when you look into it like that.
	So what's annoying about this in its entirety is the fact that so much within the supermarket has it in.
	That's the thing.
	Because it's so cheap and you can just distribute it out willy-nilly.
	The same happens with artificial sweeteners.
	So I like cooking stuff myself.
	I like cooking what I eat.
	Don't want other people just pouring their ingredients inside it without me knowing.
	And what I found out was that the reason why lots of takeaway food...
	It tastes like heaven.
	It's because they throw sugar and artificial sweeteners in it.
	It's cheating.
	Is it aspartame, I think, is one of the sweeteners?
	That's one of them.
	I've heard people say that that can lead to some kind of disease or heart issues or something.
	Everything's cancerous these days.
	Carcinogenic, I believe the term is.
	I like knowing what I eat.
	Yeah, and that's a big important thing, is knowing what you eat.
	And the problem is, When you look into subjects like this, you end up checking the package on absolutely everything.
	And then you look and go, I feel like I can't have that.
	I can't have that.
	I can't have that.
	And then you're just almost stuck.
	But I find that to be bizarre that, you know...
	Everything seems to have, like even bread has like sugar in, like massive amounts of sugar and stuff like that.
	And you're like, I thought it was only like three or four ingredients for bread.
	It's just insane.
	But obviously, I'm not your dietician.
	I'm not your doctor.
	You know, I'm just someone that loves, is a bit too nosy, trying to figure out what's going on, what the truth is when it comes to, you know, random topics such as this.
	And it is a pretty big topic.
	So, you know, it's all up to you, the audience, and what you decide to do with what you consume.
	So that's all I'm going to leave it for.
	Generally, I will say, because I've had people scaremongering and Carl going on about it as well, I don't really eat much that has seed oils in it, so I'll just stick to my microplastics in the balls, thank you very much.
	Oh, yes, yes.
	Yeah, that's a big one.
	In tea bags as well, apparently.
	Microplastics in the tea bags?
	Yeah. Allegedly.
	Well, that's the thing.
	Whether or not you want to take the seed oil thing at face value straight away, there is so much in our food, even in the packaging of the food, which clearly has detrimental effects to us, like the microplastics, which can get into your balls, and they can get into your brain, and they can be transferred by, if I remember the Josh segment that he did, they also were found in a child's brain, which might have been due to breastfeeding as well.
	Yeah, and you know, please fact check me on this, but I believe it's 70% of...
	Like health and chronic disease is all revolves around the gut.
	And gut bacteria as well.
	Exactly. Which also has a big effect on your mental stability.
	Exactly. So it literally is all about really diet and moving, you know, and that's kind of the key things.
	But you know, like I keep saying, you know, it's up to you what you want to do.
	The kitchen is important.
	80% of physique is built in the kitchen.
	Work out, eat lots of red meat, and smother everything that you eat in gravy.
	That's my rule.
	There you go.
	That's it.
	Let's go through the rumble rants, and we've got a few that have been sent in here.
	So, the engaged few.
	If you like the aftertaste of butter on fried foods, Harry, you should try frying in bacon grease.
	I love making my grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon grease instead of butter.
	Not tried that before, I'll maybe give that a go and some beef tallow as well and see what I like most.
	Alex Adamson, again.
	Audiobooks, I assume these are the sharp audiobooks, are 13 hours each.
	The show doesn't cover half of them.
	And the ones they do cover are heavily downscaled from the books.
	Many skip plots.
	The show just didn't have the budget.
	As you would expect, it was an early to mid-90s TV show and I think that they were like hour and a half long specials each as well.
	So they can only cover so much.
	KO7776 says, I have pretty bad seasonal allergies and carnivore diet clears them up 80%.
	Our diets are way more connected to our health than most people realise.
	You'd think it would be common sense, right?
	I tried the carnivore for a month.
	How'd it go?
	Pretty good.
	It sounds pretty heavenly to me, to be honest, because I don't really ever want to eat anything but meat anyway.
	It's meat and dairy products, right?
	Yeah, meat and dairy.
	That sounds perfect.
	Are you allowed to drink booze?
	No. Never mind, then.
	Ramshackle Otter says, remember pure olive oil is also wholesome and healthy, as I learned living in coastal Croatia, along with many first-hand accounts about Kevin Spacey.
	Oh, dear.
	That's a based comment.
	Oh, there you go.
	And the Habsification for a dollar says, if you're going to use oil, use coconut oil, avocado oil, or like the ancient Greeks or Romans, olive oil.
	There you go.
	Let's go through the video comments.
	Hey guys, you know that silly lady who was saying that, oh, she can't lose weight because of racist society?
	There's a modicum of truth there.
	You see, if you are constantly stressed out and anxious about anything, yet your brain releases huge amounts of cortisol, which prevents you from losing weight.
	And so it doesn't matter how much you diet, if you are constantly anxious about anything, you can't lose weight.
	The problem's in her head.
	Yeah, they should stop cultivating victim mentality.
	Weightlifters of the lotuses.
	This is what I've wanted to do for ages.
	Lifting with lotus or lotus lifters.
	Anything like that.
	I have wanted to get a guy, get Samson or someone with a camera to come in and just record Josh, me, Rory, a few others maybe.
	Working out.
	Just have a bit of fun.
	I think it would be great and I think it would be good inspiration, good motivation for people watching at home.
	And also, it would be fun to have a deadlifting competition as well.
	Although Rory would easily beat that because Rory's one rep max on deadlift is something like 220kg.
	Which is pretty damn good.
	And then celebrate with slop that contains rapeseed oil.
	And then have KFC straight after.
	Although I'd probably win the bench.
	So there you go.
	So I've been seeing this weird revisionism from a lot of leftists online where they're basically trying to say that the Irish were never oppressed and that they're like evil colonizers that were fully integrated into the, you know, British system.
	And as well as the fact that they're like, oh, they're also Confederates because some fought for the Confederacy.
	Let's ignore the fact that like 80% of the Irish were on the Union side, though.
	And as well as the fact that it's like most people have Palestine flags in their bio, and Ireland is like one of the most loyal supporters of Palestine.
	It just shows how treacherous they actually are.
	I believe in the Civil War as well, I'm mainly getting this from Gangs of New York.
	Wasn't it that the Irish were basically brought in and said, fight in the army and you'll get immediate citizenship and they were just used as cannon fodder?
	That's another film that I haven't seen.
	It's a really good film, mainly for Daniel Day-Lewis' performance.
	It's a really good one.
	I wasn't too thrilled about Leonardo DiCaprio's Irish accent, but...
	I've heard his South African accent.
	Wait, is it an Irish accent?
	Is he playing an Irishman in that?
	Yeah, well, to be fair, Blood Diamond's a great film.
	I still haven't seen that.
	You've not seen Blood Diamond?
	For God's sake.
	I know, it's terrible.
	For God's sake.
	To be fair to DiCaprio, he's got quite a few gems in his catalogue.
	Yeah. And I agree with him that inequality is a problem.
	And that's why, Dan, your economic analysis will always be basically right, but missing a special something.
	Some time ago, audience member Dean Brooks promoted his book The Decline Effect, which covers the behaviour of complex systems.
	He finds that inequality is over-determined, even in systems as apparently simple as YouTube viewership and illiteracy rates in areas with libraries.
	The problem with the left is they think they can legislate against inequality, causing catastrophic failure.
	The problem with the modern right is that they don't understand inequality, missing making it work to advantage.
	Inequality is inevitable and it's completely natural as well.
	The Pareto principle alone just shows that.
	Were those all of the video comments that we had, Samson?
	Got another thumbs up.
	You're feeling very positive today, Samson.
	Thank you very much.
	So let's go through some of the written comments from the website Bisley shooter says I'm a landlord I've had two sets of couples who both said they wanted to start a family after they bought a house Neither could afford a house in spite of two incomes each one set stayed for eight years No kids the others had kids ten years after ten years and finally moved into their own house Well congratulations start to that But yeah, one of the big considerations with having a family in the first place is stability.
	Stability and access to a support system.
	So people want to have family and friends nearby so that they're able to raise the kids and be able to have some time off as well, because that's one of the big difficulties that comes with being a parent is no longer feeling like you have any major agency in your own life, having no time off.
	And so if you don't have the basic stability of knowing that you own the place that you live, especially when that's been an expectation for...
	Centuries up to now to be able to have your homestead, it's going to put people off having kids.
	And it does make it really, really difficult.
	Mr. Fibble, a vast reduction...
	Fibble. Sorry, Fibble.
	Yes, thank you.
	A vast reduction in global population would be unquestionably good for all countries.
	Reminder that it has doubled in Gen X's lifetime.
	Were we underpopulated before then?
	The strain of this is affecting all types of research from raw materials to food to living space.
	I agree with this.
	During the 19th century, the British population grew from about 13 million to 31 or 32 million.
	And the question is, were we any less great a nation just because we had a smaller population?
	Obviously, industrial conditions, changes in hygiene allowed for a massive explosion in the population as well.
	But yeah, this idea of...
	Constantly growing, the population always being a good thing, this infinite growth, does seem to come from a holdover mindset from the Industrial Revolution where you have the progressive curve of history where everything is getting better at all times, including...
	Greater and greater numbers of people in these countries, and it really does not seem to fit our current circumstances anymore when things are getting just worse and worse.
	Yeah, I just remember a few decades ago, two decades ago, there were people who were literally saying the exact opposite, that the population is going to just rapidly explode and you won't have space.
	Yeah, they were overpopulated.
	Yeah, it's just...
	Those same people still say the same thing, but then they speak out of both sides of their mouth when they say that, well, we're overpopulated, that's why fertility rates going down is a good thing, but also that will lead to underpopulation, which is why we need to replace you in your own country.
	Funny that.
	Sophie Liv.
	Well, if you have less people, you wouldn't need the extra houses and infrastructure that you need people to build.
	This is always the obvious rebuttal to people saying that you need more houses, you need more than this, and we need more migrants so that you can get that built.
	Well, I mean, if we didn't have all these extra people in the first place, then why would we need all that extra stuff?
	They don't have a rebuttal to that, so they just call you racist, illogical, irrational, bigoted.
	They have no rebuttal to the argument.
	It's the same...
	It's the same as when you see people who are like 60-year-old war hawks who are saying that we need to start sending European teenagers and young men into the front lines in Ukraine.
	And you go, well, you can sign up yourself first there, buddy, if you want to escalate it into a full-on ground war.
	And then you go, this is just irrational.
	Don't you understand?
	I'm 60 years old.
	Okay, so why should you have any say in the fact that a 20-year-old should go out and get shot for Ukraine?
	People just don't have rebuttals to this.
	Someone online is not having babies that I would have an issue with, it's the sex required to make the babies.
	I'd rather get a tooth pulled.
	Okay. Never heard that one before.
	Okay, buddy.
	Fodder17, I hear a lot of people say that they want Yeah, and this is to address something else.
	This is a problem that I've had with some of the messaging that's come from this very podcast itself that I think has confused a few people, which is that some have said that, well, your ancestors lived in abject poverty and horrible conditions, and they had as many children as possible.
	So you have no excuse.
	I think for young men who are already struggling, feeling disenfranchised, who have no hope for the future, no ability to own a house, no stability...
	That that is not the message that you want to be sending to them.
	It's not an inspiring message.
	It's going to be telling them, listen, you are poor.
	You have been disenfranchised.
	Nobody represents you.
	Make life more difficult for yourself.
	Obviously, that's not to say that having a family isn't incredibly rewarding for its own sake.
	It absolutely is.
	But that's just ignoring the fact that having a family, having children, is a massive financial burden.
	It will make you materially worse off and it will take all of your time and if you are in an already financially strained situation, it will put massive pressure on your relationship.
	It's really nice to have this idealized view of parenthood that you have a kid and then all of a sudden everything's sunshine and rainbows.
	Life is still difficult.
	You'll still face all of the same challenges, but now you have an extra mouth to feed.
	And yes, you will love them.
	You will take care of them.
	They will inspire you.
	That's all beautiful.
	But for young men who don't see any hope in the country right now, it's not the message that they need to hear.
	And I think it is counterproductive and makes people seem completely out of touch.
	That's just an extra little thing I wanted to add there.
	Captain Charlie the Beagle.
	Funny that for the last 30 years in the West, we have been bombarded by propaganda about overpopulation only to find out that we need to import huge numbers of barbarians because of our falling birth rates.
	If I remember right, it was C.S. Lewis that said, That's a nice sentiment.
	Lewis farting in the bath says, Solving a falling birth rate by importing foreigners is like trying to put out a fire with petrol.
	It has never and will never work.
	Absolutely. Omar Awad, It's ironic that they always claim to want.
	Yeah, I mean, most GDP growth...
	If it factors in government expenditure as well, it's completely worthless as a metric, because the governments and the fiat currencies can just magic money out of nowhere anyway.
	So you can always just say, well, the Bank of England needs to lend this much more money through gilts, therefore the GDP will go up, therefore everything is fine, right?
	It's a complete scam.
	Let's go through some of yours.
	Okay, so Poland, Omar Awad says, never forget asylum is a charitable act, not mandatory like the globalists would like you to believe.
	And Lord Nerewa, this mass migration situation seems increasingly to be a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
	But unlike taking one's own life, which is bad enough, we're taking a load of other lives along with it.
	It's deeply responsible, a demographic suicide bombing.
	Yep. Do you want to read through some of your comments?
	Sure. Omar again.
	I believe that's beef, not bean.
	Bean tallow.
	I'd be interested in that.
	Yeah, what you need to do is you just need to get some nice bean juice and fry up your food in that.
	British, innit?
	Beans. Bean means.
	Oh, God, I'm just remembering.
	I showed my friend the other day at the pub.
	I showed him the day in the life of a true Brexit.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And he's talking about the get some beans in ya.
	Heinz beans.
	Yeah, Heinz beans.
	Beantallow is obviously cheap enough to make a profit on fish and chips.
	Would be interesting to see if it could compete with the cheap seed oil alternative like Organic does with other farmed food.
	I know I myself wouldn't mind paying a slight premium for better food.
	Fair enough.
	You can afford it.
	Sure. Sophie again.
	Hey, if you ever want to put somebody off seed oil, just make them read.
	Is it...
	Junji Ito's Grease.
	Harry knows what I am talking about.
	I bet he's making a face of disgust just remembering it.
	What is that?
	Junji Ito's a horror manga artist from Japan.
	Grease is a story where there's a family who live above a restaurant that they manage that doesn't have proper ventilation.
	So all of the oil...
	Collects and pools on the walls and is in the air to the point where it creates like an oil fog.
	As a result, the youngest son who's hit puberty has got the worst, worst acne.
	In the world, and there is a disgusting and horrific scene where he's bullying his little sister, and he looms over her and squeezes out all the puss on her face.
	For a guy who's done some pretty disgusting artwork in the past, that's the grossest.
	That one scene, you know, it doesn't have gore, there's no dismemberment or blood, but that is the grossest thing he's ever drawn.
	Yeah, that sounds a bit mental.
	It's something, you know...
	Very queezing about...
	Yeah, and when we did a comics corner on it, I think it was Jack did the video wall for it.
	I was sat there and had the image right there for the entire show, which was lovely.
	You should watch that video, by the way, if you subscribe to the website, because that is one of the really, really good comics corner episodes that we did.
	Fuzzy Toaster says, I store and keep fat and lard for cooking.
	It's bloody lovely.
	Yes, lard is very good as well.
	Very, very good.
	AZ Desert Rat said you should try fries fried up in beef tallow.
	Yes, I'm still yet to give that a go because all I've known throughout my life is literally seed oils and it's so depressing.
	Yeah. Yeah, it really is depressing.
	AZ again.
	I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
	Are y'all grossed or by...
	Are y'all...
	I'm guessing that me...
	Are you grossed out by the video because of the oil processing or because of the quantity?
	Just a thought because we've been pressing olives for oil for millennia.
	I think it's...
	It just looks gross.
	It just coming out of a machine like that just doesn't look natural.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Because it's a machine.
	For me, it was mainly the slimy stuff that was being pressed out into a large vat.
	Although, for all I know, the audio was off.
	That could have been the runoff that they don't use anything for.
	They always find a use for that.
	Well, it might go into machine lubrication.
	Who knows?
	And in your food.
	But again, if I were to be shown a video of the goings-on of the inside of a slaughterhouse, I also probably wouldn't feel particularly appetised after that either.
	I had a friend who his dad worked in a slaughterhouse and, you know, he said after a month or so of doing it, you get used to it.
	I don't want to be used to such a...
	Yeah, he slept very soundly and ate as much meat as he wanted.
	Fair play to the lad.
	I love the way I look at you now to, like, help with pronunciation.
	Yeah, all you southerners looking to the northerner to get pronunciation correct, right?
	If you can't get oil out of a plant by squeezing it in your hand, then it's bad for you.
	Animals are the best source of cooking oils.
	Advocados, coconuts, olives, etc.
	are good, but not as good as animals.
	Sorry, Stelios.
	There you go.
	Do you have any rebuttals, Stelios?
	Rebuttal. I don't know why he's apologizing to me.
	I think it's because you said you've got to get...
	Olive oil.
	Yeah, olive oil, avocado, like oil.
	They're the best.
	Didn't you say that?
	No, I said olive oil.
	Just olive oil.
	Okay. Which is understandable.
	Fair enough.
	And to be expected.
	Well, there you have it.
	I don't think there's any more.
	You do have a couple more if you scroll down.
	We have another section.
	Forgive me.
	Let Lewis go through his next two and then we'll go through your last ones.
	Okay, Justin B. When it comes to seed oils, there are reports that they increase estrogen production in the body.
	So not good for men and likely to unbalance women's hormones.
	Not to mention that the plastic bottles that they use will be leaking microplastics into the oil.
	This is particularly reported for anything soy.
	Yeah. Obviously.
	Slammer 101.
	Teabags are often made from plastic fabrics.
	Yes. Switching to natural fabrics is one way to greatly reduce microplastic intake.
	There we go.
	Let's go to the Stelios zone.
	Garbage human says Louis is back.
	Fantastic guest.
	Who says that?
	Sorry. Russian garbage human.
	Ah, thank you very much.
	I think I've seen his ex, actually.
	Okay. Very cool.
	Thank you.
	He does show up on a lot.
	Before we go on the Stallion zone, I have a comment by A, who says that I'm banging my hands on the table and it's bad for audio.
	But, I mean, I'm sorry if it has been unlistenable to you as you're writing, but I think we've changed the mics.
	And I don't know if...
	Why we got rid of the mic stands.
	Well, one of many reasons.
	They were also just horrible to use.
	So I'd like if in the live chat now people could tell us also if they have an issue with that, with sound.
	Because we haven't heard comments about sound in a long time.
	Not since we switched to the mic arms, yeah.
	Right, okay.
	So first, Kipa Orlan, Stelios the Holy.
	There you go.
	North FC Zoomer, what happened to The Stelios?
	We definitely need to change this.
	There has been a rebellion that has to be put down.
	It's Brother Stelios.
	Brother Stelios, yeah.
	But also...
	Brother Stelios, The Stelios.
	Oh, it's getting so confusing keeping all these in my mind.
	The Wigan Survivalist.
	It's okay, Stelios.
	I love you, Ty.
	It looks like a Switzerland's drumstick lolly.
	And Russian again.
	My friend.
	So he says, Stelius, you're a bit gay, Harry says.
	And Stelius took that personally.
	It was a compliment, my friend.
	You'd wish.
	Means happy.
	Means happy.
	It reminds me of Tropic Thunder.
	I don't know if you've watched it.
	We're at towards the end.
	Jack, no.
	Robert Downey Jr. says, it's Hollywood.
	Everyone's gay once in a while.
	Wouldn't you in the audience like to know?
	And one more Rumble rant saying that's a random name.
	Every time I see Lewis on the podcast, I'm unenthusiastically enthusiastic about his presence.
	Unenthusiastically enthusiastic.
	I think he's still making fun of your enthusiasm about the $200.
	Wow. So that was a genuine...
	It's not like it's going straight to your pocket, is it?
	Yeah, I know.
	Wow, I wish I could...
	Sam Weston says, it's the Lotus Eater.
	Everything's always gay.
	Everything's always fake.
	Everything's always gay.
	That's just how it is around here.
	So I think that's all...
	Have a cookie crumbles.
	That's all we've got time for today.
	Thank you very much.
	Everybody say thank you to Lewis and remind them again where they can find you.
	We've got your sub stack up on the screen.
	Thank you very, very much for having me.
	Really means a lot.
	Love the audience, obviously, as always.
	It's after glazes.
	Yeah, I'm trying to chill.
	Yeah, I am anti-glazing, but I'm, yeah.
	Just being, trying to be, well, very polite.
	Yes, X. You can go on to X and find me on Lewis underscore Brackpool.
	You can find me on Substack by typing in my name or thestateofit.stubstack.com and, of course, Instagram by typing in my name and YouTube if you wanted to.
	There you go.
	And thank you again for watching.
	We'll be back again tomorrow at the normal time.

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