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April 15, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:32:50

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1143

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters.
	I am joined by Dan and Stelios.
	Hello everyone.
	The date today is the 14th of April 2025.
	If you get your date from the Lotus Eaters, I'm a little bit worried for you.
	You should know this by now already.
	And if it really matters to you, it is also podcast 1143.
	We always include the number in the document.
	I like the number.
	I've lost track.
	It just reminds me of how long I've been here, like I'm part of the furniture now.
	If you add the digits, they equal nine, which I think is a good thing.
	That's true.
	Lucky number, is it?
	So, today I'm talking about esoteric occult assassination attempts.
	Stelios is talking about the debate between Douglas Murray and Dave Smith and then...
	Are you sure it's the 14th?
	No, it's the 15th.
	I wrote the document yesterday and so what I did was I looked at the date in the corner of my laptop and that was the date then.
	It's not important, alright?
	I've just taken it.
	What if somebody's just cancelled an appointment or something?
	Dan's taken a day from you.
	Don't let this slide.
	I said it was the past, okay?
	I live in the past.
	Groundhog Day.
	Apparently so.
	I forgot what I was saying now.
	Oh yeah, Dan, you're telling us about how you can sell drugs.
	Oh yes, I've got an amazing side hustle.
	Can't wait to tell you all about it.
	Graduated into a hustler.
	Yes. Yes, it started off as a bit of a side project because you're supposed to diversify your income streams, you see.
	So yes, I'll tell you all about that.
	I'm looking forward to this one because Could do with a bit of extra income.
	Yeah, sure.
	But anyway, on to this dark story.
	So, today I'm going to be telling you a tale of murder, attempted presidential assassinations, a secretive occult group, and Austrian painter enthusiasm.
	And so, you might be saying, Josh, are you trying to get yourself in trouble with YouTube?
	And the answer is no, but maybe yes.
	A little bit.
	This is actually the fourth proper attempt at seemingly killing Trump.
	Has there been another one?
	Yeah. He didn't get as far as some of the others.
	Certainly didn't get as far as Crooks.
	So the first one is Thomas Crooks.
	That was the Butler, Pennsylvania one.
	Well, it was the first one that we heard about.
	I bet there's been loads.
	There's the Trump International Golf Club one.
	Yep. That was the...
	The Ukraine mad guy.
	And then there was the Coachella rally after that, where a man had possession of two firearms, ammunition, multiple passports with different names, and an unregistered vehicle with a fake light.
	So that one never got off a shot?
	No. Okay, the other two did.
	And this is...
	Well, that's what I'm talking about.
	This is the new one that came about.
	So the person you're seeing on screen here is Nikita...
	Kassap, who is a 17-year-old from Wisconsin.
	What he did was he murdered his stepfather, Donald Mayer, 51, and mother, Titania Kassap, who was 35. Bit of an age gap there.
	So he shot his mother at least three times, twice in the stomach and once in the neck, and then he killed his stepfather by shooting him in the back of the head.
	So the mother was 31?
	35. 35. Oh, okay.
	And he's how old?
	17. Right, okay.
	Donald is obviously a bit of a player.
	I mean, the dad.
	Stepdad, yeah.
	So, he didn't kill the family dog who he took with him to flee.
	So he did show a slight bit of mercy there.
	And he was arrested after running a stop sign while driving his stepdad's Volkswagen Atlas in Kansas, which was about 800 miles away from his home.
	So he'd run away.
	And on the 1st of March, the local county sheriff found them both dead.
	And you might be saying, well, what's this got to do with Trump?
	Yes. Well, he allegedly killed his parents to gain the financial means and independence, I suppose, to assassinate the president, Donald Trump, and overthrow the US government.
	So he was going to use the US $14,000 he took from them to finance this attempted assassination.
	And he also planned a terrorist attack, which included drones and explosives, which I hear is one of those things that is perhaps more difficult to guard against.
	I've got to say, despite the fact what he did was truly awful and reprehensible, you can't fault him for his ambition.
	Yes, I suppose that's a way of looking at it.
	I mean, I think if your ambition is to kill your family, that's a pretty bad ambition.
	Oh yeah, but he went much bigger than that.
	I mean, he was, what, drone strikes on...
	I mean, it's pretty big.
	So, the material found on his phone, and this is according to the authorities, so from now on, take everything I say with a pinch of salt, was linked to the order of nine angles.
	Anyone familiar with them?
	Is that a Masonic thing or something?
	Not quite Masonic, but you're sort of right about the esoteric aspect of it.
	Okay. So, he also wrote a three-page manifesto, apparently, explaining his actions, which he allegedly had neo-mid-century German views and was apparently anti-Semitic.
	Not that those things...
	I would imagine that they're both part of the same thing.
	But apparently he also had images of a certain Austrian painter on his phone with the caption, Hail this Austrian painter, hail the white race, hail victory.
	And this struck me as a little bit strange, because that's sort of like a socialist having a picture of Marx with the caption, We need to seize the means of production for the proletariat.
	A little bit strange, isn't it?
	Why? I don't know.
	It's like me saying, having a picture of, I don't know, Ludwig von Mises saying, I need Austrian economics.
	Yeah, but he's true.
	You're all a bunch of socialists.
	So we're saying that he was an admirer of the Austrian painter?
	Yes. He wanted to call Trump, who absolutely the entire left-wing calls literally Hitler all day long every day.
	But don't focus on that part of it, because that's...
	That's actually a reasonable argument and might actually help legitimise things.
	But apparently he discussed his plans with others as well and other individuals allegedly assisted and were aware of his intentions.
	Don't know anything about these people.
	Did they work for CNN or were they just mates of his?
	I don't know.
	That's all we know so far.
	That's all we've been told.
	However, there is a massive deep rabbit hole with his association to the Order of Nine Angles.
	So, before I go on paying attention, the charges are...
	Why wouldn't I?
	Just making sure.
	Charges at the state level are two counts of first degree murder, two counts of hiding a corpse, theft or property of property over $10,000, misappropriating ID to obtain money, potential federal charges include conspiracy, presidential assassination and use of weapons of mass destruction.
	So that's a pretty long list.
	But anyway...
	Did he use of weapons of mass destruction?
	So he actually got the drones, did he?
	I don't know.
	These are potential charges.
	I don't know whether it's actually...
	I mean, if he actually used weapons of mass destruction, I mean, that's kind of burying the lead, to be honest.
	I would start with that.
	He didn't actually use them yet.
	Okay. So he intended to use them?
	Yes. So the order of the nine angles.
	So I'm no expert, and I only have a cursory knowledge of esotericism and the occult, and nor am I into it.
	To be clear, I just know about it because it's interesting.
	So the Order of the Nine Angles is not an organisation but a form of belief.
	It's a system of belief, I suppose.
	It's got no real organisation and its adherents are a very small number of people.
	It's a sort of synthesis of Norse mythology, ancient Greek mythology and hermeticism.
	It's starting to sound a little bit cool now.
	They're described as Satanists, but that's not really true in the sense that most people mean it as they reject Abrahamic religion entirely.
	They self-describe Satanists as Abrahamic atheists, which I think is fair enough.
	They are sort of atheists, really.
	They don't actually believe in Satan a lot of the time.
	And they use the term themselves as a placeholder for a sinister divinity.
	So they might describe Satanism...
	But they don't mean it in the conventional sense.
	And this order originated in the United Kingdom, and the group claims it was established in the Welsh Marches, that's marches and not marshes, so the borderlands, in the late 60s by a woman who had previously been involved in a secretive pre-Christian sect which survived in the region,
	apparently. And the account also states that in 1973 a man named Anton Long was initiated into the group and subsequently became its Grand Master.
	That man is believed to be this guy.
	David Myatt.
	Here he is speaking to the BBC in 2000.
	So he's believed to be the founder of the Order of Nine Angles, as well as the white nationalist, I can probably say it once, neo-Nazi group Combat 18. He denies this, although even...
	The Order of the Nine Angles.
	Own literature names him on a few occasions.
	I think it's pretty safe to say it's probably him.
	And I'm pointing this out because it's interesting.
	His father worked as a civil servant for the British government.
	Interesting, isn't it?
	It's all going to come together.
	Nick Lowes has recorded a conversation with this guy.
	He met him in a pub and I think secretly recorded it and the file is now online.
	Nick Lowes...
	Of Hope Not Hate.
	Oh, him?
	Yes. The guy who vets all the candidates for reform?
	That's the man, yes.
	And he also runs a communist hate group.
	That is widely thought of as being an intelligence agency.
	Yes. At least associated with them.
	And I would also like to point out that Nick Lowell's, not too long ago, less than a year ago, had his company's address in his Twitter bio at some point last year.
	And if you're dealing with these sorts of people, there's no way you would do that without some sort of intelligence protection.
	Just throwing that one out there.
	This is my own speculation.
	So remember I said that this guy...
	Set up both the Order of the Nine Angles, which is an occultist group.
	He also set up Combat 18, which is potentially a neo-Nazi group.
	So in the UK, in 1998, Combat 18 leader was found out to be a police informer, which is interesting, isn't it?
	So it says here, Charlie Sargent, the former leader of Combat 18, who is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of fellow Nazi Christopher Castle, was a police informer, according to a BBC television documentary.
	And it presented evidence and confirmed many suspicions that...
	It had been infiltrated by the police the whole time.
	It's quite sporting this, because I think that all of these neo-Nazi groups would have disappeared decades ago if it wasn't for the police and intelligence service bolstering their numbers, keeping them alive, paying their subs.
	I do think that they are a significant number of people involved, at the very least.
	I wonder if there's any actual neo-Nazis left inside them, or if it's just all police now.
	I think there are one or two actual...
	Real people that do a lot of the bad things.
	And the other 25 people in the room turning up, making war room, paying the subs are just police.
	I guess so.
	Here's another one.
	So this is how the FBI funded a book publisher.
	And I'll read from this a little bit.
	So it says...
	A man with close ties to white supremacist organisations has received more than $100,000 from the Federal Bureau of Investigations as an informant court documents have revealed.
	Joshua Caleb Sutter of Columbia, South Carolina has worked with the FBI since 2003 according to records obtained by investigative journalist Ali Winston.
	So this guy was actually the leader of the Temple of Blood.
	That's Temple OV Blood, not OF.
	And that's how it's spelt, for whatever reason.
	And this is the American cell connected to the Order of the Nine Angles, which, of course, was originally set up in the UK, in England and Wales, I suppose.
	So he was the leader of that group, basically the American chapter of it.
	And, of course, this happened.
	The recent plan to assassinate Trump happened in the United States, of course.
	He also infiltrated Atomwaffen, which is another neo-Nazi group.
	Probably in his capacity working for the FBI.
	And the only reason that this all fell apart was that he started handing out material to college students, which in their mind legitimised the crackdown, right?
	But also it made him much more visible and therefore potentially jeopardised the FBI's intel gathering.
	It's also worth mentioning that Ruby Ridge, you know, that horrible thing when the...
	The federal government murdered two innocent people.
	The father of the family who were attacked by the government, Randy Weaver, went to an Aryan Nation meeting.
	He wasn't a member, he just attended the odd thing.
	First Amendment and all that, fair enough.
	And there was a man at these meetings that...
	For about a year, tried to pester him into selling him a shotgun that was sawn off slightly below the legal limit.
	And so, eventually...
	I wonder what that guy's other profession was.
	Yes. He was an FBI informant, by the way.
	Oh, right.
	Okay. That was what you were thinking.
	Yes. And eventually, Randy Weaver ended up giving in, which was the entire justification for the feds raiding his isolated property that he lived on.
	Self-sufficiently, with his family, minding his own business, and resulted in the murder of his son and wife.
	Well, he did soar off a shotgun very slightly below the legal limit.
	Let's just remind ourselves here that what I've done is I've listed lots of these sorts of groups that have got proven links to the feds.
	Either people being informers, working for the FBI specifically, or even if they join the group, eventually they got some dirt on them and managed to twist them to becoming an informant.
	That's usually what happens.
	It's not that they infiltrate them.
	It's that they get dirt on someone and they blackmail them into becoming an informant for them.
	So, by this point you're saying, okay, well, we get that perhaps there's some suspicious circumstances around this.
	But why would they target...
	Trump specifically, as in within the order of nine angles, because of course, I think that this 17-year-old was not working for the FBI.
	I think if there is any sort of involvement in that sense, maybe it's the people he was communicating with.
	At the most, but we can't say that for certain.
	We don't know is the truth of it.
	But, of course, there's enough reason for people in the intelligence agencies, given what Trump has said, to feel like their career, their life, not in the sense that Trump's going to kill them, but their entire way of life might be ruined.
	Their gravy train.
	Exactly. Which is enough incentive.
	But also extremes thrive on victimization.
	So I can sort of see how, if someone is in...
	That's fear.
	And they constantly get bombarded with a message that everything around them is going to kill them and destroy them.
	That's usually how things get done.
	I'm not supporting it.
	I'm explaining a social phenomena.
	When people get used into victimization narrative, they tend to see everything as self-defense.
	Even the most crazy...
	Things such as what he did.
	No, that's a fair point.
	So here is, surprisingly, the Order of Nine Angles has a website.
	And this is a post from the 20th of December, 2023, where they endorsed Biden-Harris.
	And I'm just going to read this in their own words, because that's not what the mainstream media does.
	But I'm not saying this group is good by any stretch of the imagination.
	I don't think they are.
	But here's what they say.
	Politics can be summarised as a net loss for humanity, a political system we have adopted out of fear of the others in which the lowest common denominator of opportunism and emotionality triumphs over any kind of leadership.
	That being said, democracy is failing worldwide.
	Nations are going broke, preparing for war, inundated with refugees, beset by internal refugees, ruled by careerists, psychopaths and perhaps most ominously electing leaders who are associated with foreign powers.
	This means the arc of history bends towards the end of democracy and soon.
	The last thing we want right now is one of these Christian band-aid do-gooders like Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis to take over and fix things.
	We want to rush into the abyss so that the end of history can come to its natural terminus and a new dark age will be visited upon the earth.
	Error. They're making an error.
	Accelerationism doesn't work.
	If it did, South Africa would have been fixed a decade ago.
	That's true.
	In this new era...
	Might will make right, the claw and tooth will always be red, and blood will cross the land like an ever-flowing stream.
	The strong will oppress the weak, and the weak will die, and natural selection will resume.
	This can only happen through weak humanist leadership that will stumble, its way into war, famine, recession, terrorism, corruption, and human misery.
	The self-deletions will leave before the battle commence.
	Only Biden-Harris can bring about this advancement of history, and therefore we endorse the Biden-Harris campaign in 2024.
	So I think that the motive here is quite clear, isn't it?
	Although, of course, this wasn't written by that 17-year-old, you can see why.
	When they've got bits of it right here and there, but they've just weaved it in with a whole load of absolute schizo-nonsense.
	I'll say that, judging by what I read here, it seems more like, you know, wildly irrational thinking.
	I think that's a fairly safe bet.
	I think they would even describe themselves as irrational, coming from esoteric occultism.
	Perhaps. So, you might say that these groups have been linked to murders, assassinations and terror plots, and so...
	On the face of it, it seems like a matter of public safety that these groups are heavily infiltrated by intelligence types and informants.
	I think that that's a pretty good and strong argument, right?
	That it could just be that it is as it looks and there's nothing much more to it than that.
	That these people are a danger to the public and therefore they're of concern to...
	Well, the only thing that I wonder about is not whether they've been infiltrated by the Feds.
	Is there anyone in them who isn't in the Feds?
	That's the only thing that...
	My question.
	Well, from what I've been able to gather from my research, they do seem to scoop up legitimate believers, but it seems like a very significant portion are involved in intelligence.
	So, let's take, for example, the London nail bombings.
	You might be able to remember this one, Dan, from 1999.
	Oh yes, the Admiral Duncan pub one.
	Yeah, there's a few, so...
	Basically, he targeted three different places.
	It was a largely black area, a largely, was it Bengali area, and then a largely gay community area with nail bombs.
	And it killed multiple people, injured multiple people.
	And then what happened was there was a strong public appetite, understandably, to prevent a future attack because it's scary.
	Just random explosions.
	Well, nail bombs are bad, yes.
	And what it did do is it gave the government justification to pass lots of legislation that might otherwise have faced lots of wider scrutiny.
	So you've got the Terrorism Act of 2000, the Criminal Justice Act of 2003, the Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006.
	So lots of these things cite things like...
	You're not going where I think you're going with this, are you?
	What's that?
	Well, we've spent the whole time talking about how most of this stuff is just the feds in disguise.
	I'm saying it's possible.
	I'm not saying I know for certain.
	I'm just saying that there is an incentive.
	There is precedent.
	Right. So, here is the BBC approaching David Myatt, basically accusing him of being the main inspiration for this attack.
	And so he's obviously the person implicated in forming the Order of the Nine Angles, and here he is being held responsible for this.
	And as far as he was aware, he wasn't necessarily that affiliated with that group.
	They confronted him at his home.
	So it was certainly believed that he played a role in it, even though it may or may not have been the case.
	So I think that what I'm trying to point out here...
	It's entirely possible.
	A lot of people in intelligence agencies have their backs up against the wall.
	I'm not saying it's happened.
	I'm not saying it's because of that.
	I'm just saying that it makes sense to bear it in mind because the people releasing all the information to the public are the intelligence agencies.
	They're the ones that have swept this up.
	That Thomas Crookes kid, for example, there's definitely something fishy going on there.
	It's also worth mentioning as well that he got caught by local police.
	So it was the local police that found his parents' bodies.
	It was the local police that pulled him over when he was driving his stepdad's car.
	And so perhaps it foiled things.
	And just an added layer of, I suppose, confusion here is that we also know that lots of the intelligence agencies take this esoteric...
	This is a CIA program called the Gateway Program, one of the prominent ones.
	There's also Project Sunstreak, which is another one where the CIA were involved in investigating things like that.
	Here's a CIA report on entropy and psycho...
	I've always been unable to pronounce that word for whatever reason.
	Psychokinesis? Psychokinesis, thank you.
	And then, of course, there's things that everyone knows about MKUltra.
	I've been trying.
	It just doesn't work.
	I've not been able to do it.
	Clearly, I've just not been doing it right.
	So, on the one hand, they've been infiltrating these groups probably because they are dangerous.
	I think that's fair to say.
	On the other, they're also heavily involved in the same things that many of these groups are actually looking at at the same time.
	And one has to wonder, well, this assassination attempt, how did a 17-year-old kid manage to basically plan all of this and know how he's about to approach it, who was talking to him?
	And I think that when the US government is at war with the intelligence agencies, And the intelligence agencies, we know for certain, are not averse to carrying out these sorts of things abroad.
	We have plenty of evidence for that.
	But it's literally their job to do it abroad.
	Exactly. Is there really a big difference between them doing it domestically and them doing it externally?
	I don't think there is.
	I think that there's a strong incentive there.
	I don't know for certain, and I'm not going to suggest that it's a done deal or anything, but it's worth...
	So to be clear, you're not saying that the Feds are behind some of this stuff, you're just not saying that?
	Yes, that's a good way of putting it, I think.
	I think the fact that there's this long rabbit hole, and many of these groups seem to be inundated with this sort of thing, that if he was coordinating with people, I think there's a good chance one of them was connected to an intelligence agency.
	Is what I'm saying in a nutshell.
	It's a very deep rabbit hole.
	I'm not surprised many people haven't looked into it.
	But there it is.
	We've got one comment.
	Josh is a fed.
	Only government incompetence doesn't get the date right.
	Dan side-eye him for me.
	Damn it.
	I've been outed.
	Right, so a few days ago there was a debate at the Joe Rogan podcast between Douglas Murray and Dave Smith.
	Oh, I heard that one.
	Yeah, I watched it as well.
	Yes, I think all of us have watched it here.
	Yeah, it was popular, that one, wasn't it?
	Because, well, for reasons I'm sure you explained.
	I got about two hours and ten minutes before I gave up all hope.
	I think, actually, the last 50 minutes were really, really good.
	Oh, right.
	Stopped at the wrong point.
	Yeah, you should watch all of it.
	Yes. Right, so I want to say that we can't talk about all of the...
	We can't talk about all of the debate.
	It was three hours.
	I'll talk about some of it and I'll try to help people structure their thinking about it.
	So I think we can split it into six sections or issues.
	One is the first 40 minutes, roughly, where they were talking about platforming issues.
	The other is about algorithmic issues.
	Then they were talking about foreign policy, Qatari funding in the US, and then we have the have-you-been-to-Gaza section, which we are going to talk about.
	And then the last bit, I think, was the collateral damage section, where, to my mind, the way I saw it, Dave Smith was making more of a deontological argument about the collateral damage involved in Gaza,
	whereas Douglas Murray was...
	I'm not sure what you mean by that.
	Well, we'll get there.
	No, no, no.
	It's literally the word deontological.
	I don't know what it means.
	Where you say that there are some things that are right and wrong to do, full stop, irrespective of consequences.
	Oh, that's what it means.
	I think that's how I would give a charitable interpretation of this point.
	So it's a clash of two different ethical perspectives on the issue.
	Right, so we can't talk about all of it, but I'd say that...
	From what I heard about it, I expected it to be much worse.
	And I expected there to be much less disagreement, and I expected there to be much more of elitism than there actually was there.
	Quite a lot, though.
	There was some, but I think that the degree of it is overstated.
	Maybe this is where we may disagree about a bit.
	I found that I agreed with Dave Smith on...
	The vast majority of the things he said.
	And I was quite surprised at Murray being...
	How do I say this?
	Utterly insufferable from start to finish is how I'd phrase it.
	That's not too bad.
	I was going to say that he was quite focused on a very specific topic.
	I mean, yes.
	I don't think he hid this.
	No. To be very fair.
	I think that basically he did come off as arrogant in several places, but that is his style.
	If it's a problem now, why wasn't it a problem before when he was targeting the Wokies?
	So it's his style.
	And also I think that the degree in which he was presented as saying that some people shouldn't be platformed, I think that this is a misrepresentation.
	His main issue was an issue with balanced platforming.
	Can we talk about the platforming side of things?
	Yeah, but give me a minute so I contextualize the platforming thing.
	So basically, the first 40 minutes were about Daryl Cooper.
	That was what the first 40 minutes were about.
	Who was interviewed by Tucker Carlson and he made a statement that Churchill was the real villain of World War II.
	At least that's how I think he...
	What I think he said.
	He said that turn of phrase, didn't he?
	Yeah. He also had a thread talking about why he thinks that Churchill was the real villain of World War II and because he was platformed by Tucker Carlson, everyone was talking about it.
	I think it's largely because Churchill could not afford to be Churchill, so he had to make some concessions.
	Well, I think that it's a good thing for people to check our Churchill roundabout discussion.
	I think there was healthy disagreement in it.
	I think it was a very interesting discussion between us all because we basically had a panel of all the hosts and we had a very mature and civil discussion.
	And we had plenty of perspectives.
	So I think that that was a good thing, to have several perspectives without hitting each other and try to...
	Right. So Carl did another video on whether Churchill was the villain of World War II, and he doesn't think that he was.
	I don't think he was either.
	I mean, there are lots of villains in World War II.
	I think what he's trying to do there by making that statement is...
	What I understand from it is that he's trying to say that perhaps Churchill's role in doing bad things is understated, but I wouldn't say he's the principal villain when you've got a certain painter and a certain moustached Georgian.
	Perhaps that was the point, but I do think that Murray has a good point in saying that a lot of people start doing revisionist history because they...
	They claim to want to disagree with US foreign policy or Israeli foreign policy.
	And my question is, why don't you disagree with the foreign policy of Israel and US without doing historical revisionism?
	Why do you need that?
	So I personally find it very suspicious.
	Two things at the same time.
	Yeah, but why not go for the search goal here?
	If you're intellectually curious about one thing, why wouldn't you be intellectually curious about all the other things?
	They discuss this same thing in the podcast, don't they?
	And I think it's fair to revisit things.
	I don't think there's any settled history, is there?
	And I think that no one here is saying that you shouldn't be intellectually curious and think critically about what you're...
	Maybe. No one here.
	Okay, nobody in this room, but...
	Murray, basically, the set of sort of boomer truths that we've been handed down suits him very much, and therefore he does not want anybody questioning these things.
	And he starts off by saying, look, I'm not criticising anybody for looking at these things.
	But he blatantly is criticising people for looking at these things.
	I don't think that this was his issue.
	He does criticise, and everyone criticises and everyone they disagree with.
	He was saying things like, you know, to Joe Rogan, if you're only putting up people who are critical of...
	This view.
	people are not hearing the other side.
	Oh, I'm not hearing the other side.
	I mean, what about every Hollywood movie ever made, every bloody BBC and all the publicly funded documentary ever made, like 99% of the books that have ever been written, and, well, 100% of the ones you can actually buy in the bookstore, I think I have got the
	mainstream view of this.
	So if I then occasionally hear a Joe Rogan podcast where they put the other side, I don't think that's going to warp my perspective.
	I haven't got the other bloody side.
	The issue is that maybe,
	Maybe it won't change yours, but the issue that Mario was trying to say is that when you have the number one podcast and you have a massive reach, well, maybe you need to show both sides, which I think Joe Rogan...
	The rest of the audience, they get every single Hollywood movie ever made as well.
	I also thought it was the worst thing...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	You go ahead, Stelis, please.
	I think actually that was one of the worst things Murray said, is that you should do this thing that I want you to do with your podcast.
	And it's like, hang on a minute.
	You can say, I've got these really interesting people who are going to love it.
	You can say that.
	They'll give you a new perspective on things.
	Maybe they'll help inform the debate.
	You don't start making demands.
	He's trying to scold Joe Rogan.
	Moralising isn't coercing.
	I know.
	That's the issue, because you can definitely say that, well, people are allowed to do lots of things.
	You don't necessarily say that if I disagree with you, it means that I want the government to coerce you.
	But I think that people...
	We can definitely have a civil society that exercises moral pressure without that moral pressure disintegrating into state coercion.
	But I think that Joe Rogan should get on whoever he wants, and he just said...
	He does.
	Yeah, he does.
	And I think that he explicitly said, didn't he, when that came up, that, well, I invite people in that I find interesting.
	So maybe he understands the view that Murray's trying to push.
	But the reason Murray's pushing it isn't that he actually cares about a fair hearing.
	He's already made up his mind.
	He's hiding behind the concept of fair play because he's picked...
	He's nailed his reputation to Israel.
	And the reason that he's pushing Joe Rogan to do that is he feels like Joe Rogan's platform isn't unequivocal enough in its support of them.
	And he's trying to say, well, it's fair.
	But I don't think that his problem is that it's fair.
	There are lots of things that he's not fair about by not inviting other people.
	Definitely. But the point is that when you're saying that other people should be invited, you don't say that they should be invited because they are...
	The platonic idea of objectivity.
	Of course.
	Everyone has their biases.
	Everyone has their allegiances, if you would like, if you want to be very cynical.
	But that doesn't mean that when you have, for instance, the massive reach, you shouldn't try to address, to present every side.
	And if your shtick is, I'm a relaxed bro and I want to hear everyone, yeah, platform everyone.
	And that was Murray's point.
	He didn't say that people shouldn't be platformed.
	He said, if you are to bring historians, you should also platform other people.
	That was the issue.
	He didn't say you shouldn't platform biased people.
	But also, where does the balance have to stand?
	Because I think there are some issues like, I don't think people should cover themselves in excrement.
	I shouldn't have to then have a person on the podcast saying, actually, I believe that's a good thing.
	Exactly. Joe Rogan did a really good episode about bees and he never got on somebody a week later to talk about wasps and Douglas Murray is not complaining about that.
	Douglas Murray is only complaining about the other side of the things that he cares about, which is quite a narrow subset that he spends most of his time on.
	That's not equivalent to talk about bees and wasps.
	Well, you could pick any subject.
	If it's not something that Douglas Murray personally cares about, he does not...
	Give a toss if you hear the other side of it or not.
	It could be, but the point is that he is raising an issue that maybe he has a point here, and I think he does on this.
	Not on the issue of not platforming people like the ones that Joe Rogan has.
	You think that Douglas Murray has the right to tell Joe Rogan what sort of guests he should have?
	I think everyone has the right to exercise moral criticism on others, yes.
	If we have free speech.
	Joshua's point was about free speech.
	And this applies to Joe Rogan.
	Joe Rogan says, I want this person to speak on my platform.
	Then the same thing applies for criticism.
	Well, again, Murray spent most of that podcast trying to shut down free speech.
	If you'd ask him directly, he would say, I'm not trying to shut down free speech.
	And then he would go on to make seven or eight points, which clearly indicates he's trying to shut down free speech.
	I think that this is basically projecting a point that he didn't say.
	Because on multiple occasions, he said, and I do have videos here, where he constantly qualifies without saying that his issue is you're giving those people platform.
	His issue was that you're giving those people platform without also giving platform to other people.
	Number two, if you are going to talk about a conflict and you have...
	You have lots of people who claim on the one hand to be experts.
	Implicitly, people treat them, your massive audience treats them as experts.
	And when they're criticized, they go back and say that,"No, I'm not an expert." And he gave the example that Daryl Cooper denied.
	Debating Andrew Roberts on Churchill.
	I think Murray has a point here.
	He says own it.
	I'll let you move on in a second, but I just want to knock on the head the idea that we're not hearing the other side.
	The entirety of the mainstream media is bombarding us 24-7 with the other side.
	I don't think Joe Rogan has any obligation to give us a double down on the mainstream view.
	Yeah, but if the question is about the audience and the reach of Joe Rogan, so if suddenly the mainstream media changed entirely their narrative...
	Maybe then Rogan would start heisting the other side, because that would be interesting.
	Yeah, it would be interesting, but why not host both?
	Because the mainstream media already does that.
	It doesn't, and the point is that Joe Rogan has credibility.
	Mainstream media has lost credibility.
	Well, that's the mainstream media's problem.
	It's not Joe Rogan's problem.
	I think there are two things to add here.
	The first of which is that I think that Douglas Murray had an idea of Daryl Cooper that's perhaps worse than the reality, because recently Daryl Cooper's done a history video talking about anti-Semitism and things like that, where he's painting it as,
	look at these terrible things that the Jewish people have been through.
	So I don't think he's necessarily...
	Trying to rehabilitate a certain historic figure because of that motivation, unless he's very cynical and did it to cover his...
	Backside, in which case, you know, you're entitled to have that opinion.
	I don't know the guy very well.
	The second of which is that Douglas Murray has also been doing the media rounds, talking to lots of different prominent publications, and he's a prominent journalist, one of the big names in political commentary.
	And by saying, you shouldn't speak to this Daryl Cooper guy, I don't like him.
	I don't think he said you shouldn't speak to Daryl Cooper.
	He said Daryl Cooper should speak to Andrew Roberts.
	And Daryl Cooper denied it.
	So his point wasn't that Cooper wasn't platformed.
	His point was that when Cooper was offered a platform to debate Andrew Roberts, he said no.
	As he should have done, because what Andrew Roberts will do is take him down some alleyway of more and more specific avenues, because he is a full-time historian who focuses almost exclusively on this period, and he'd be able to catch him out on that.
	So that says that you shouldn't debate people who know more about...
	No, because he will be disingenuous in the way that he does it.
	So, I mean, I sometimes have debates with people who aren't experts in economics, and I keep the debate at the level that is appropriate for them.
	Because I'm doing it honestly.
	If Andrew Roberts does it, I know.
	He will out-specific him on something and use that as a debating tactic and say, oh, you don't even know about that bloody tank movement on the left-hand side of that field over there.
	Why shouldn't the audience listen to it?
	And there could be other historians with other stuff.
	I don't think it's a productive way for Daryl Cooper to spend his time.
	I don't want to get hung up on it, but I just say I agree with him.
	Anyway, so let's play clip two, which is a short one.
	I don't really do debates.
	Yeah, I think it's weird to mainstream very fringe views constantly and not give another side.
	I think that's weird.
	Pause. So he doesn't say it's weird to have people from one side.
	He says it's weird to not have people from the other side.
	But we do.
	He's talking about Joe Rogan not having a balanced diet of guests.
	How many people only watch Joe Rogan and absolutely nothing else?
	I think many, because if you take the idea that mainstream media are completely delegitimized in the minds of people, and people hate-watch it to just sort of get an idea of headlines of what happened during the week, and they go to podcasts, then podcasts have increased responsibility.
	I think...
	They should get the public...
	We should get the public funding then, shouldn't we?
	Instead of the BBC getting four billion a year, some of it should come to Lotus Eaters.
	Right, so let's go to clip number five, please, because I'm conscious of time.
	Right, here is a place, before we play it, here is, I think, a place where Murray didn't fare well on the have-you-been-to-Gaza question.
	This... This seemed rather...
	Out of all of the things that seemed elitist, this seemed like one of the ones.
	Like, have you been?
	I've been there for eight months.
	I make a habit of only talking about countries that I've actually been to.
	It's like, well, that's not really fair.
	Well, I'm sure he has spoken about North Korea.
	I'm sure.
	Yeah, also, you know, I don't want to go to the Congo, but I would like to talk about it being dangerous because it's an important step to making it not dangerous.
	Yeah, so I want to say still that his point was in response of something else Dave Smith was saying about specific things that you would think that maybe someone should have been there in order to talk about it.
	But still, I think overall here, that's not a strong point.
	Let's play this.
	Rockets. It was a very bad idea.
	No, there was not starvation in Gaza after 2005.
	No, there was no deficit of goods coming in.
	I've been plenty of times.
	There was no deficit?
	No. No goods were kept out.
	Have you been to the crossing points?
	No. When were you last there at all?
	I've never been.
	You've never been?
	Am I not allowed to talk about it now?
	Have you ever been to Nazi Germany?
	Are you allowed to have feelings about them?
	You can't time travel, but you can travel.
	Okay, but so what?
	So what's the point?
	Lots of people have been there and agree with me, and lots of people have been there and agree with you.
	Yeah, but if you're going to spend a year and a half talking about a place, you should at least do the courtesy of visiting it.
	All right.
	I just think this is a non-argument.
	You don't think?
	No, I think it's a non-argument.
	Well, you have to go and touch the ground?
	No, I think it's a good idea to see stuff, particularly if you spend a career talking about something.
	Yes. I have a journalistic rule of trying never to talk about a country, even in passing, unless I've at least been there.
	Okay. It's sort of normal.
	Okay, no, I think that basically that this argument discredits all sorts of historical elements of sort of, you know, reliance upon history.
	The funny thing is, I sort of get what Douglas Murray's trying to say here.
	He's trying to say that there are some things that you can only really find out if you go to a place, which isn't actually a bad argument, and I think if he said it in that way...
	It would have been more convincing, but he was saying it so forcefully.
	But the way that Douglas Murray ended up saying it is if Trump decides to, you know, nuclear bomb Tasmania tomorrow, then Douglas Murray can't say anything about it because he hasn't been to Tasmania, which is obviously absurd.
	I think Dave Smith had really good responses here afterwards, because on the one hand, I sort of get what Murray says.
	If you can do something, go and do it.
	It adds to your research.
	But the problem with this is that...
	As Dave Smith said, is that when you go to especially war-torn regions, and regions where, you know, in other cases, where they're very corrupt, and you are there the guest of governments, what are the chances that they are going to show you things that aren't representative of the place?
	And let me just give an example.
	But also a quick point.
	It's a bit easier for Murray because he's not burdened down by things like family and children.
	I mean, the rest of us are supposed to take the kids on a...
	You know, three weeks to, you know, east of Ukraine, if we want to talk about it.
	Well, I think that we can talk about all these regions by relying on information, and even if you go there, the information you could be given could be entirely wrong.
	I think, and Smith made the point about Iraq, and some people who allegedly went there spoke about weapons of mass destruction.
	Yeah, well, they claimed that there were weapons of mass destruction there, and they were cited as experts, and actually, there weren't.
	And of course, there was one person, Dr. David Kelly, who said he was an expert, who went there and said there weren't, and he mysteriously died.
	Right, so let's go to the next one.
	And before we play it, I'm going to say that this is from the last bit of the struggle session.
	Yeah, you're right.
	Where they were talking about the death toll in Gaza and all of the things you would expect were there.
	The contest about the numbers, people about...
	Talking about the ceasefire, Dave Smith talking about the collateral damage.
	And I think that that was a tragic section because the topic is tragic.
	And I think that I want to play what Dave Smith said here.
	Okay, I think you're...
	Okay, they're not being slaughtered.
	They're being killed in a brutal war started by Hamas.
	Yes, it's babies and little kids screaming out for help under rubble and no help is coming.
	They sit there under the rubble until they die.
	That is the level of human suffering that's being inflicted.
	And if you want to say, well, listen, that's a price that I'm willing to pay to try to degrade Hamas, even though you yourself recognize that we can't totally eliminate them, but we could maybe degrade them or maybe take them down a peg.
	And the price for that is...
	Is these babies being tortured to death, essentially, whatever you want to call it?
	OK, but from the other side of that story, like if there's like I got little kids, I don't know if you have kids.
	I know you have kids, Joe.
	If anybody ever was saying to me that, like, my kids were the acceptable price for this policy that we want to put into place, I'm saying I don't think there's any scenario.
	Any scenario, Douglas, where there would be any time where you would accept Israeli kids dying like that as an acceptable price for a policy that you're going to be advocating for?
	First of all, again, go back to what is actually happening.
	I think we can post the video.
	So that was the last bit.
	I had to show it because I want people to get an idea of what the debate was about.
	So my issue...
	Basically, is that Murray has a point when he talks about historical revisionism and the unbalanced platform.
	Because if you want to, for instance, criticize the Israeli operation in Gaza, the war on Gaza, if you want to criticize potential involvements of the U.S. government into it, and as Dave Smith was saying,
	he was particularly worried about a potential conflict with Iran.
	You don't have to take the route of, let's say, revising World War II history.
	These two are disconnected, one thing from another.
	If you care so much about this, go straightforwardly and talk about that.
	Which, for the most part, maybe he's doing.
	I'm not saying this against Dave Smith, but I am saying it in support of Murray's point that there is an issue of responsibility with respect to balanced platforming and,
	you know, bear in mind of the potential dangers of movements who may profit from it.
	Yeah, I think that...
	There was a little bit of equivalence in what Murray said that you didn't do there, whereby he was trying to suggest that Daryl Cooper had things to say about contemporary Israeli policy.
	Even though it wasn't said explicitly, it sort of implied that the reason he's doing this isn't that he's actually interested in history, it's because he's got things to say about Israel.
	And I think that that is a false equivalence, because...
	He's known for doing lots of things about history.
	Whether he's an expert or not, people can debate.
	I personally think you don't...
	I think you should judge people on their merits and not their credentials necessarily, and I say that as someone who's paid a lot of money to go through and get credentials.
	You're even more credentialed than I am, so...
	To be fair, and I will say this, because there was also another part.
	I think I had it for Clip for...
	No, it's okay.
	Let's just forget it.
	But they...
	That was a non-issue.
	It was presented as being a debate about expertise, and it wasn't, actually.
	And I think that's on the fourth one.
	It's okay.
	Let's just leave it.
	But what both said is that not every view is of equal value, and Dave Smith agreed on this.
	So I think it was a red herring by some people to present the debate as...
	Being a debate about experts versus non-experts.
	I think also the subsequent debate coloured how people viewed the podcast and people debated it outside of it, didn't they?
	And I think that actually most people are in agreement that as long as you have good arguments, people will listen to you.
	And it doesn't necessarily matter about your credentials, but sometimes people with credentials can be very wrong, sometimes they can be very right.
	I think most people agree with that, and it's not actually that complicated.
	And in communities, in scientific communities, you have disagreement.
	Fitness bros, for instance, they're really confusing me.
	Are you supposed to have coffee with an empty stomach or not?
	I don't know.
	I drink it every morning.
	I'm still here.
	Me too, yeah, but half of them say yeah, half of the others say no.
	That's true of experts as well, to be honest.
	A lot of my time in psychology is just, you know, two sides.
	Right. Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Yeah. Oh, you want me to read them?
	Yeah, I could read them if you want.
	Can I read a comment that isn't the Super Chat, but I just saw it and I thought that was interesting.
	I was waiting until we were on the bit that isn't on YouTube before I could say it.
	But Scanline says, Murray probably tells drunk straight guys that they can't know they're not gay unless they've been there.
	On Doomhan says Joe Rogan has had on tons pro-Israel people, including Gadsad.
	I think that this was addressed on the debate in the beginning, and he sort of said that he may have tilted towards the side that is more Israel-critical.
	But he has had.
	I think what Joe Rogan said was that he hasn't specifically had someone on to talk about Israel and nothing else, which Douglas Murray was taking exception to.
	It's that they've been brought up in conversation, but that's just the format of Joe Rogan's podcast.
	It's not so much.
	They don't really usually focus on one topic and that only.
	But thank you for the $10, Doomhand.
	There's this thing here.
	Do you want me to read it for you?
	Because I can't watch them.
	Akrul says, for $5, says, I think Joe Rogan and Dave Smith were arguing for the supply side of free speech, and I think Douglas Murray was trying to get them to consider the demand side and what the effects of an oversupply is.
	It was a good way of putting it, actually.
	I hadn't thought about it like that, but economising the discussion actually is quite useful, yeah.
	And then Hewitt, 76, for $5, says, Only one has to look at the roles of the security services in Northern Ireland on both sides to see how this works.
	Well thank you very much!
	Right, so...
	Tell us how to sell drugs, Dan.
	Yes, well, I've got myself a little side hustle going lately.
	I started with selling weed anyway.
	I mean, it all goes back to about a week ago now, when my RV got torched, or my motorhome.
	Depends, you know, whether you're an American or not.
	They call it a recreational vehicle.
	But anyway, my RV got torched, and so obviously I'm a bit out of pocket for that.
	So my uncle sets me up with a guy who can supply seeds.
	So I started off just growing them in the back bedroom, you know, fairly standard.
	Stick them in a pot, let them grow, let them take their time, all that kind of thing.
	Then you just hand out, you know, samples to, you know, locals, you know, nearby people who sort of live in your area and they're soon knocking you up for more of it.
	Which then brings you back to your setup because now a couple of grow pots is not going to cut it anymore.
	You know, you're going to need to get suspension racks in there and halogens and all the rest of it.
	You're going to need to get sprinkler systems because you're trying to go for a bit of scale now in order to, you know, meet the local demand.
	Of course.
	That takes up a lot of room.
	You've got an increase in capacity.
	Eventually you might need a whole house just to house your very legal flower growing operation.
	And on the point of the halogens, and I'll give you an interesting anecdote.
	So what a lot of people in this game do is they basically put their growing property...
	Under the flight path of a major airport.
	And because the way that the police normally find these places is by flying a helicopter with an infrared sensor to see which houses glow.
	And so they can't do it.
	And do you remember when that volcano a few years back went up and all the...
	Or the one that was called something like...
	Yeah, the Icelandic...
	Yeah. He just dropped it in one.
	Did he?
	Yeah. Everyone at home applaud.
	Say again.
	I think that's how it's called.
	Anyway, so Heathrow...
	You've got an advantage being Greek, because you've got lots of long words that kind of sound like them.
	Excessive vowels and stuff.
	Well, anyway, so Heathrow got shut down, and they were able to catch a whole load of people in the flight path of Heathrow, because their houses were glowing, so they're growing weeds, so you need to be a little bit careful of that.
	So then, because it was expanding so nicely, I then rented a bungalow...
	Down the road, to give me a bit more space, because there's only so much you can do in your back bedroom.
	Got a couple of staff, got a couple of botanists working for me, some guy who sort of shifts stuff around, all that kind of stuff.
	And that's when I then got into meth, right?
	Lovely little business.
	I thought, because I'd watched Broken Bad, I thought it'd be a lot more complicated than it is.
	It's actually quite straightforward.
	You know, you've got your acids, you've got your phosphorus, you've got the pseudo, you give it a mix, you stick it in a lab oven, you know, you break it up, get your crystals.
	Yeah. And it's also much easier logistically because the price per pound is much higher.
	Well, and it's going to get even more interesting from here because I reckon that I've got to the level of rep in my game now that I can connect for Cocoa Leaves.
	So, yeah, I think I'm on the up and up.
	Now, if you're worried about me freely admitting this on a podcast, I would say, don't worry, don't worry, because I'm in the UK.
	And the police in this country do not care about actual crime in the UK.
	What they care about is something called non-crimes.
	You see, there's non-crime hate incidents.
	That's their favourite thing.
	They're back in business, aren't they?
	So if you're just selling a little bit of weed, the odd baggie of meth, they're not going to give you any problems.
	If you go on bloody Facebook and you say something that Keir Starmer doesn't agree with that might make a normie not vote for a mainstream party, oh, you're definitely going to jail.
	Your feet won't touch the ground.
	You will be treated to a display of efficiency in policing and judicial system that you would swear that Elon Musk had designed the whole system.
	Yeah, the police have certainly become much, much more political these days.
	Yes, it was all non-crimes I get for, speech and stuff.
	In fact, I was in, a few months back now, but I was in Swindon Mackie D's and this little hoodlum.
	Starts asking me if I've got five pounds for him or something.
	He's like, well, why don't you have your own money?
	He's like, well, I just got out of jail.
	He's like, oh, what do you do?
	He's like, oh, I didn't do nothing.
	I was in for six years.
	And I instantly knew that he was lying because in this country it's three years for not doing nothing.
	So he must have done something, otherwise he wouldn't have got six years.
	Maybe he did nothing twice.
	Could be.
	Yeah, it could be, yeah.
	Maybe he said something incorrect.
	They never happen many times.
	Be gone, you little ne'er-do-well.
	So anyway, and the second reason that you don't need to worry about me is because I'm actually primarily talking about my time on Schedule 1, which is an overwhelmingly positive...
	This is the Steam game of the moment, you see, where you're basically...
	Well, what does it say there?
	It says, from small-time dope pusher to kingpin, manufacture and distribute a range of drugs throughout the...
	I've seen people playing this.
	Yes, I got this idea from Worth a Buy, which is the only decent...
	I watched that as well.
	Yeah, he's the only decent games reviewer on the YouTube as far as I can tell.
	There are a few, but he's...
	I haven't found any other one.
	Yeah, so there we go.
	There's my meth lab.
	Could do with tidying up.
	I need a cleaner or something like that.
	Yeah, all those tin cans on the floor, Dan.
	It's like your desk.
	Yes. Those Coke cans.
	I thought so.
	No, I think there's phosphorus, the red ones.
	You're not drinking that, are you?
	It's terrible for you.
	No, no, it wouldn't be.
	Is there phosphorus?
	I don't know.
	I think there is a small amount of phosphorus in the food we eat.
	Some of the cool things that you can do in this game is that you can buy extra properties, the aforementioned bungalow, and you can buy a bit of bling.
	You know, you can get clothes, you can get haircuts.
	You know, there's the place you can get a haircut.
	But they call it a barbershop.
	Is that you as the Joker there?
	That's my character, yeah.
	I've got to say, this was the bit that sort of...
	You look like you need a few more trips to McDonald's there, Dan.
	Blimey, you're wasting away.
	Just a breeze would blow me away, wouldn't it?
	But anyway, this bit took me out of it because the whole reason you play games is a bit of escapism, but you like to immerse yourself in it.
	So when I saw a barbershop, I was like, no, that's not right.
	They're supposed to be called Turkish barbers.
	Is that a place where you can go and offload product by any chance?
	Because in Swindon, actually, there was one shutdown.
	They were running drugs out of it.
	£150,000 worth of drugs were being run out of just one Swindon barber's.
	Why are you dressed like the Joker?
	I don't think that's a point to focus on.
	The point is, I was absorbed until I saw that.
	Because I just thought...
	Because I'm so used to these things being called Turkish barber that I just...
	Well, they don't need any laundering because look next to them.
	Well, yes.
	Yes. It flipped me right out of it.
	Anyway, back to the game.
	So, in the game, you soon get yourself into a cash problem.
	And what you need to do is you need to launder money.
	So what you do is you buy a legitimate business to launder your cash through.
	So in the game, I bought a literal laundry.
	In fact, it's in the picture there.
	And a car wash.
	You know, close to the barbers.
	Following Breaking Bad there.
	Yes. And actually, while we're on the subject of Turkish barbers, has anyone noticed that they're never actually Turkish?
	No, they're very rarely Turkish.
	And it's sort of like how Chinese food or Indian food is actually quite often run by people from adjacent cultures.
	It could be Bengali or Pakistani, but they'll call themselves...
	An Indian takeaway, because it's got better marketing.
	I don't know if they could get away with that.
	You'd want them to be at least a little bit Asian, wouldn't you?
	Well, I've been to a Chinese restaurant.
	Did you buy a sweet and sour from a Pakistani?
	I've been to a Chinese restaurant where it was Englishmen staffing it, which was weird.
	I was just like, this is the one place I didn't expect you to be, but here we are.
	Well, yeah, but it is true.
	If you've ever been into one of these and you greet them with a hearty Meribah, they don't know what the hell you're talking about, because they're not Turks.
	From my experience, they're usually Albanian, from what I've seen.
	And that got me...
	A few herds around Swindon.
	Oh, okay.
	But that got me as well, because the other day I saw this stat, you see, and this stat is talking about highest arrest rates by nationality.
	So the Albanians are 32 times overrepresented by their population in the UK, which is very significant.
	So Albanians, Afghans, Iraqis and Algerians, they're all the sort of people that seem to be staffing all of these Turkish barbershops.
	So that doesn't make any sense to me, because how can these people possibly be committing all of their crime, all of these crimes, right, when they spend all day in a Turkish barbershop?
	They can't be doing both.
	They're just hustlers.
	They're cutting hair by day, crime by night.
	Well, I don't know, because...
	They take a dark turn.
	As soon as the sun goes down, the crime takes over.
	They all seem to be there, and I just don't get how they find the time for any crime, if they're all day, every day in those terms.
	There's also the fact that perhaps many of the people committing the crime have been brought here illegally by the Albanian people traffickers.
	Well, there's that.
	Anyway, back to the game.
	Another thing that you can do in the game is when you start making a bit of money, you can buy yourself a fancy motor.
	You know, a nice...
	Nice fancy motor.
	Speaking of which, has anyone noticed how outside the Turkish barbershops there are always like three or four high-end German autos?
	Always? Yes.
	Yes. Because, I mean, there's a place in town that I like to go and get my lunch and I have to walk past about four Turkish barbershops and they all have like three or four premium German autos outside.
	And they're all quite new reg as well, so they're probably higher purchase.
	Well, they've got a good corner on the market.
	You see, hair, it grows.
	Yes. And you've got to continually get a haircut.
	It's not like something that you can get this service once and it comes back.
	So you see, what they've done is they've just hustled their way to getting very premium cars.
	I'm obviously being sarcastic here.
	If you haven't got it, the one person in the audience.
	There's always someone.
	No, I think you're right, Josh.
	You're right, Josh, on this, because it's been throwing me off, because...
	Because I'm a bit weird, because I've got the background that I do used to be a VC and stuff like that, I can't help myself when I go into a business but sit there and try and reconstruct the P&L in my mind.
	So if you put me in a restaurant, I'll take a look at the menu, have a gander at what I think the average order value is, how many covers have they got, what's the flow, a little bit of dynamic of the usual occupancy rate across the day, have a quick look at their staff costs, what I think the rent is,
	and I try and reconstruct the P&L in my mind.
	I just naturally do that as an instinct.
	I normally get it about...
	Right as well.
	The only time I got it seriously wrong was in a London venue.
	It was a big, I think it was a Big Wetherspoons, right on a prime, absolute prime street.
	I think it was pretty much opposite the Ritz or something, this big pub.
	And my number was coming out a bit rich, and I had a word with the manager, and he said, oh yeah, it's the rent.
	We pay, I think it was 60 grand a week in rent.
	Blimey. Which is a bit steep.
	Wouldn't mind owning that property.
	Well, yeah.
	It's almost like that...
	Because then I just had to revise down my estimate of what the staff were getting paid.
	It's almost like there's no point moving to London because your wages just get arbitraged away by boomer landlords.
	Almost certainly, yes.
	Unless you're rich, there's no point living there.
	Yes, but this is the thing that throws me off about these Turkish barbers, you see, because I wander past them, and I see that they've got four nice German autos outside.
	The higher purchase on them has got to be something like 900 quid a month, because they're all quite new, they're all quite high-end.
	So that's, what is it, that's 3,600 a month that this place has got to cover.
	Then you've got to add on your rent.
	Let's say...
	6k a month, something like that.
	You've got to add on your business rates, 500 quid, generously, we call it that.
	You've got to add on utilities, that'll probably be another grand.
	And then you've got to assume that their car payments are not more than about a quarter of their total spend in their private lives, because they're going to have, well, they're going to need to eat, they're going to need to, well, they've probably got kids as well.
	They've all got kids, from what I can tell, because they turn up at the barbers every so often.
	So, you know, multiply that car payment up by four, that's 14.4.
	In total, we've got just shy of £22,000 that this place needs to clear every month.
	So then let's reverse engineer the profit side of this.
	So they're charging £11 for a haircut.
	Let's assume marginal cost of a quid per haircut for the gels and the...
	You know, whatever else that goes along with it.
	So we're clearing £10 a haircut, 25 working days in a month because, you know, they're not open Sunday, but they're open the rest of the days.
	Let's assume I...
	Well, I don't even need to assume.
	Because I walk past so many of these every day, I can always see what's going on inside.
	There's never any customers.
	Very rare, isn't it?
	I think they do about six haircuts a day, legitimately, because I walk past them all the time and they're always...
	Well, I say always...
	Occasionally you'll see someone in there, won't you?
	But it's rare.
	There are a few of them that do get customers, but I still think that they're money laundering fronts a lot of the time.
	If they've got more than one or two barbers in the shop, they're probably more likely to cut a lot of hair because they wouldn't have them there otherwise, would they?
	Well, my thinking was, you know, I reckon they do about six haircuts a day, but let's say I'm wrong by half and it's a dozen.
	And let's just say, oh, okay, I'm wrong by a factor of three on top of that.
	So let's assume they're doing 36 haircuts a day, 20 minutes per haircut.
	They're open eight hours a day.
	That means 12 hours of cutting for those 36 haircuts that mean every time you look through the window, there should be one and a half seat filled at any time.
	So there should always be between one and two seats filled at any time, and I do not see that.
	But let's assume they do 36 cuts a day, clearing £10 a cut, 25 working days in a month, and they're netting £9,000.
	I just told you that their costs can't be any less than about £22,000.
	So that leaves me a bit embarrassed because I'm supposed to be the economics guy at Lotus Eaters, and I can't figure out how they're making their money.
	Maybe with these new Turkish methods of cutting hair, they've shaved down the time, see what I did there, of how much a haircut.
	Because sometimes, even with my haircut, which is not one of the standard ones, they can have me in and out in 10 minutes, 15 minutes.
	Possible. Maybe it's there.
	Anyway, we sidetracked enough talking about Turkish barbers.
	Back to the game.
	Anyway, so in the game, you earn a lot of money from drugs and you need to launder that through legitimate businesses, right?
	Okay, so how do you launder money?
	I managed to find an explainer on the interweb as to how you launder money.
	It looks like they've been paid off to hide that.
	Have we lost our internet?
	Oh, okay.
	Hang on.
	How strange.
	Here we go, here we go, here we go.
	Right, so this is, if I can make it work.
	So this is just some random article I found that has an explainer on how money laundering is done.
	So let's go down to that bit.
	Right. God, I hate...
	Oh, it's just unresponsive.
	This is like an advert for not using the Daily Mail, isn't it?
	Right, okay.
	Work, damn you!
	Britain is moving.
	Scroll down, Samson, scroll down.
	According to the Daily Mail, Britain is moving further towards France.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, anyway, there's an explainer at the bottom of this about how money laundering is done, but I'll give it to you instead.
	So, basically, you get your money from your criminal activity, and then you put it into a legitimate business, and you mix it in with their meagre amounts of earnings, and then you pay it into the bank, and then you can do whatever you want to do with it.
	It's actually better if you don't have real customers, because that way you can launder more money.
	Yes. So, Dan.
	I'm a barber, let's say.
	Or I have a restaurant.
	No one comes in, or very few people come in, and I have 100 pounds pouring on a daily basis.
	So I have all the money from the extra activity, and I file my tax reports saying that rather than 100 per day, I have 10,000 per day.
	Yes. And get taxed, and suddenly I can use the remainder.
	Yes. Yeah, you have to pay tax on it, but at least it's in the system and you can buy legitimate stuff with it.
	Taxation is theft, drug dealers.
	You're more upset about the taxing, aren't you, rather than anything else?
	Well, I mean, they're providing an essential...
	No, I'm joking, of course.
	While I'm on this side tangent, this tweet I felt was relevant.
	I only type Turkish barbers near me.
	That does seem to chime with our experience, doesn't it?
	I've also seen that same image be used for pubs near me as well, which is a lot more wholesome and heartening.
	It's believable.
	I also quite like this tweet here.
	One of our ten Turkish barber shops has been raised on charges of money laundering and dealing cocaine.
	I've been a loyal customer for three years and I had absolutely no idea they were barbers.
	There is that.
	Anyway, so, sorry, I've got sidetracked.
	I was trying to tell you about my drug industry and my money laundering, and we keep getting sidetracked, weirdly, onto Turkish barbers.
	Sorry, I just need a haircut.
	We're all over the place, ladies and gentlemen.
	I just really, really need a haircut, that's all.
	Yes. Anyway, so...
	I do like to notice things, you see.
	I notice things, which does get me into a lot of trouble, but I do notice things.
	I mean, I notice all sorts of things.
	So, for example, this morning, when I was walking through Swindon, I noticed that election posters are going up, for example, for the Romanian presidential election.
	Ah, yes.
	Very important.
	Yes, and these posters are going up in Swindon, because obviously, if you want to reach the Romanian electorate, well, Swindon is the natural place to put your posters up.
	Anyway, so that's just an example of the sort of noticing.
	I'll give you another example of the things I notice.
	Back where I am, a sweet shop opened about five years ago.
	It's actually quite a good sweet shop because it's near the cinema.
	So for example, I took the kids to watch Minecraft and we popped into this sweet shop and they got some sweets and stuff like that and the little one went through her entire bag and I didn't notice and then she was a bit sick afterwards and all the rest of it.
	But it's a nice little sweet shop.
	Anyway, that's been open for five years and about two years ago, and even though I use it during the day when I do happen to take the kids to the seminar, a couple of years ago me and the wife went to the Pizza Express.
	Which is nearby it.
	And it just so happens to overlook it because the pizza expresses up one level and it looks down over the road that the sweet shop is in.
	And we went there and I did say, can we have the table over there?
	Because I wanted to sit and watch.
	Anyway, so the wife was prattling on about whatever it is that women talk about.
	And I was kind of sat there keeping an eye on the sweet shop because it must have been about 8 o'clock at night.
	Now you would think, right, that the kiddies would not be buying sweets.
	At that hour of the day.
	And they were not buying sweets at that hour of the day.
	So I just sat there and watched it.
	And what I was watching is a constant cavalcade of young men with a slightly dusky complexion would turn up outside the sweet shop in a premium German auto.
	And then they'd go inside, and I could see it quite clearly from where I was, because I had the best vantage point from this particular table that I requested.
	And so basically, they would go in, and the staff change over, you see.
	So during the day, when the kiddies come in, they've got a couple of bored English teenage girls who do it, and then about six o'clock or something, they switch over to a different set of staff.
	You man it in the evening.
	And these staff, I tell you, they are brilliant.
	They are absolute mind readers.
	Because what would happen is these men would walk through the door and they would reach under the counter and take out a large sweet bag and without even asking these guys what they wanted, they could just look at him and know.
	They'd hand him the bag and then he'd turn around and walk out again.
	And there was a constant flow of this.
	And not only that, right, not only that, is that their sweets are so good that I actually saw, because we were there for a while, we were there for a good 45 minutes or so, I was starting to see the guys who I'd seen go in at the beginning were then coming back again, having finished all their sweets.
	They've got a really sweet tooth.
	Yes, they were coming back and they were being handed another bag from under the counter.
	They're going to get fat doing that.
	Well, exactly.
	Someone should tell them.
	Exactly. I mean, that's just some of the weird things that I notice, you see.
	And, of course, I'm just a financier.
	I'm just a podcaster.
	So, obviously, I just look at this and I just think, well, good stuff.
	Good sweets.
	Nothing suspicious going on here.
	It's not like I'm a police constable or anything.
	It's not like I'm a detective.
	Because if I was, I might look at that and think there was something a teeny tiny bit suspicious going on.
	I could see how you think that.
	In plain sight.
	For years, you've never, of an evening, got a real hankering for something sweet.
	Maybe you've had your dinner, a little bit of time has passed, you've started digesting it and you think, I fancy a sugary treat.
	You've never got that feeling?
	And maybe even so strongly you can go back again.
	I'll just go to the cupboard.
	You've got nothing there.
	You've got the need for fresh sweets fresh off the shelves.
	Right. It must be that.
	Very Moorish.
	It must be that.
	You might say.
	And they're obviously attracting the right clientele because I tell you the motors these young gentlemen were driving were premium German autos.
	They really were.
	They really were.
	Anyway. So anyway.
	Well, we're now like 20 minutes into my segment, and I haven't actually done a segment yet.
	All I've done is waffled about a video game that I'm playing and things that I've noticed.
	So I ought to try and dig up a segment.
	So let's go on to Trending News, shall we, and see if I can find something that's topical at the moment.
	What's this?
	Let's go to the top of this.
	So, trending news stories this weekend.
	What's this one?
	This is...
	I don't know why it started at the bottom.
	It's very dramatic.
	Yes, we're going to find out what is...
	Will the Daily Mail actually work this time?
	Yes. Stay tuned and find out.
	So what's this?
	Oh, here we go.
	So the trending news story from this weekend is police raid barbershops.
	The moment police raid barbershops as part of a nationwide crackdown on criminal gangs hiding in plain sight using hairdressers, sweet shops and car washes.
	No way.
	Good lord!
	I did wonder why my sweets were so moorish.
	I've been eating a bag a day.
	Look at it.
	I've been very awake.
	Um, right.
	Hundreds of American-themed sweet shops, hairdressers and car washes have been raided as part of a mammoth operation on suspected money laundering rackets.
	Spearheaded by the Britain's FBI, the National Crime Agency, officers from 19 police forces in England hit 265 premises, which investigators believe are being used by criminals to hide dirty cash.
	No way.
	I never would have thought this.
	The only thing that I'm a bit surprised about there is the number 265.
	I mean, is that just in South Wiltshire?
	No, they said nationwide.
	It's not quite enough, is it?
	That's like 1%, maybe?
	Optimistically, that might be 1%.
	Well, they don't have the capacity to deal with it all.
	They keep on popping up.
	It's like...
	Whack-a-mole, isn't it?
	I mean, if I was being super cynical, you know, you could just say, why don't you just raid all of them?
	I have no objection to that.
	Why not close them all down?
	Well, why not find the people that run them and send them home?
	You have to assume that a number of these barbershops and vape shops and sweet shops are legitimate.
	So you could just say, OK, if we raid you and you're legit, we give you like 20 grand cash compensation.
	Now, at first glance, you might think, well...
	That's going to cost a lot of money.
	I can guarantee you, if you raid every vape shop, barbershop and sweet shop in the country, free cash flow is not going to be a problem.
	Okay, I have a scenario for a good movie.
	Right, go on then.
	We have Corrupt Cup, who raids with his cup buddies and cup lasses.
	A corrupt...
	Yes. And they say, okay, it's legit.
	And they give them also the 20k.
	Yes. And they also do money laundering and they get...
	Oh, clever twist, clever twist, yes.
	Yeah, you've got to be careful.
	I also have a business proposal for you.
	Yes. What about if we...
	Can we refuse it?
	You can if you want.
	I'm not the godfather here.
	Okay. So, how about we go into every one of these shops around the country, we arrest the people running them for...
	Money laundering and selling drugs.
	We take all their assets and send them home empty-handed.
	Not only, but actually deport them afterwards as well?
	Yes. And think of all the money that could make.
	Think of how it could finance the entire operation and perhaps...
	It would become self-sustaining afterwards, doesn't it?
	It would, yeah.
	It would actually make us money if we just started cracking down on these people.
	It's sort of, you know, capacity's not really an excuse if you can make money doing something.
	Because you can expand it.
	I've got to tell you, this really shocks me because, you know, who could have possibly, possibly seen any of this coming?
	Because, I mean, this has taken, you know, commentariat by shock this weekend to discover that there are sweet shops and barbershops and vape shops that are being used for money laundering.
	Everyone was absolute gobsmacked to hear this.
	At least need about a year and a half's notice, perhaps?
	Yes, if only there was people who had mentioned this sort of stuff.
	Now, there was a podcast.
	I don't know who these chaps are.
	Probably awful racist.
	But these chaps, 18 months ago, were kind of making this exact point.
	This exact point.
	And at the time, they got attacked by sensible leftists who were just saying, no, no, no, no, no.
	There's no problem at Turkish barbershops.
	Don't be so simple.
	It's a very simple answer.
	Low energy costs, low capital costs, labour-intensive work, plus Turks, they're not Turks, will happily work 80 hours a week.
	Source, I've lived around these people since I can remember.
	Stelios, you're an impartial source as a Greek man.
	Did Turks work that hard?
	No comment.
	Dan knows better.
	Dan knows better.
	Aaron is obviously being very sensible at the time, squashing any notion of this having happened.
	And yet, weirdly, these chaps, whoever the hell they are, they got it right 18 months ago.
	Strange-looking chaps, aren't they?
	Yes. And it is causing shockwaves across the sensible commentariat, because...
	Like Christy Allsop.
	I mean, somebody said to her, did you think that every town, however small, and even small villages have at least four Turkish barbers?
	Did you think men's hair was suddenly sprouting at an alarming rate?
	And she said, I genuinely thought the modern fashion of very short kids' hair, often with extra design elements, was the reason for the increased number of barber shops.
	I would say that that's retardation, retardation, retardation.
	Well, I mean...
	To you, Stelios, she used to have a show called Location, Location, Location.
	I hope you haven't seen it.
	Well, Kirsty Allslop represents, you know, what was the majority opinion in this country for the last 18 months ever since that awful racist podcast started making a bit of a fuss about this.
	The only thing is...
	I've actually spoke to some police officers about this, just in passing, and they were well aware of this going on, and they were saying that they're just struggling to keep up with how many there are.
	That was the reason.
	Well, I mean, I can imagine that they're struggling because, of course, they're decades...
	You know my sweet shop story about when I sat there in the Pizza Express watching this place?
	I did wonder to myself what would happen if a police officer was sat where I sat and could see...
	The bleeding obvious right in front of him.
	And then I thought, actually, no.
	No, because what would happen is he would spend the entire time on his phone going through Facebook to see if anybody had said anything that might cause a normie not to vote for the mainstream parties.
	In fact, people pointing out these shops existed might even be the people on Facebook.
	He would be like, OK, that guy's getting arrested tomorrow.
	Anyway, so I don't have to worry about any of these things because I'm playing...
	Yeah, let's go back to it.
	I'm playing Schedule 1, which is the hot new game on Steam about being a drug dealer.
	And if I was a drug dealer and I had loads of bling, do you know what I would spend it on?
	The merch shop.
	Our merch shop, there you go.
	You can buy a mug or a magazine or something.
	You don't launder money, but you get a cool t-shirt.
	No, we don't launder money, but we do make good t-shirts.
	Alright. We've got one Rumble rant from Scanlines.
	Maybe next time you should get a Turkish barber on to give the other side and we can all understand what's happening better.
	That was well worth the dollar.
	Yes, thank you for that.
	That was money well spent.
	How did you earn the money, though?
	We've got some written comments.
	We've got some general comments.
	Economic Zone 17. Flawless intro, lads.
	Josh, Callum never got the date wrong.
	Peace be upon him.
	I know, that's because he never said it.
	He didn't believe in the date.
	And now look what's happened to him.
	Dates didn't exist.
	I sort of think that we've been doing the podcast for so long.
	I've done countless flawless intros that I'm more interested in exploring the flawed ones.
	They're more interesting to me now.
	You see, you've got to keep the novelty up.
	I'll just mix something, definitely.
	I'm messing up.
	You are doing this in your second language.
	It doesn't matter.
	It's impressive, alright.
	Give yourself some credit, Stelios.
	The Rooster Man says, Josh, oh no, I just read that one, idiot.
	Captain Charlie the Beagle just got my copy of Islander 3 in the post today and I must say it looks amazing.
	I'm highly impressed with the quality.
	It almost makes me regret not getting issue 1 and 2. Well, you should feel very bad about that, but I'm glad you're enjoying issue number three.
	You missed out on my poem in Islander 2 forever.
	I poured a little bit of my heart and soul into that one.
	Edmund Dante says, Don't get to catch Ellie live very often, so I'll comment whilst I have the time on my honeymoon.
	Dan, don't worry about sharting yourself after a heavy night out.
	If you've ever woken up on a random street in the wrong city with sword underwear, you've never lived.
	Wise words.
	So for my segment, Omar Awad says, The government loves plausible deniability.
	They don't need to force or even encourage bad behaviour.
	Just choose not to act on anything that might be beneficial to their end goal.
	That's very true.
	And I'll do one more before moving on to that.
	Thomas Howell says, Josh, I'm just asking questions.
	Okay, that's quite a short one.
	Lord Inquisitor Hector X says, I've met mental patients that makes more sense than that political manifesto.
	Right, so John V says, Good morning or afternoon, Dan, Stelius and Josh.
	Good morning and afternoon.
	I still need to watch this infamous debate between Murray and Smith, but it was interesting how I saw people who respect have completely opposite opinions about it.
	That's nice and that's also why we're here.
	I don't think we had completely opposite opinions.
	No. There's some overlap here.
	You know, I...
	I marketed it in a more combative way today in the office just to get you around.
	You made it sound like we're going to go at it.
	Yeah. In an argumentative way.
	That Texas gal.
	Love, brother Stelios.
	Love, Texas gal.
	Could not care less about that debate.
	Lol and Lord Inquisitor Hector Rex.
	Thank you, guys.
	Should have a roundtable discussion about the debate.
	Too much nuance needed for one segment.
	I completely agree.
	Basically, I didn't show...
	Two-thirds of my links.
	That's true.
	We're too busy butting in and sabotaging your segment.
	There was an argument to be had.
	We can't let a segment break out in the middle of it.
	Yeah, what are we here for?
	Am I my ones, am I?
	I believe so.
	I can read them if you wish.
	Supreme General David Fruiga says, Welcome to the pothead of the Lotus Eaters.
	Very good.
	George Hamp says, let Dan cook.
	We need local competition for the foreign drug dealers.
	Yeah, I think the best solution to driving away the foreign drug dealers is you get very competent Englishmen to do it.
	Think of the purities, think of the benefits for their financial situation.
	Actually, you can disrupt the drugs trade quite effectively.
	Of course, there are lots of...
	You just go in there and get a haircut.
	Completely disrupt their day.
	The funny thing is, because I live in Swindon...
	Where this podcast is based.
	You actually go into the Turkish barbers?
	I have no choice.
	I only found out...
	There is a Portuguese one on the background.
	I found an English one, and that's where I got my last haircut.
	If you're thinking it's looking particularly good, this is an English haircut.
	But that's the first one I've got in the entire time I've been here.
	There was a guy who said...
	I found a Portuguese place within about a week.
	There was a guy that I went to a barber's that Carl suggested when I first moved here and he was telling me that he'd been living in Iraq around the time that ISIS were there and then he moved.
	And that makes me think, hang on.
	Callum had the same thing as well.
	It makes me think, hang on a minute.
	If you were out there and you moved when they went away, that means you're ISIS, right?
	So he had a straight razor to my neck, and I don't think I've ever sweated so much.
	Probably not the time to make up a fuss at that point.
	No. What have we got?
	Thomas Howe says, Dan, you son of a bitch.
	I've been trying to put off buying Schedule 1, and now I pretty much have to.
	Yes, just do it.
	It's early access, but it's all right.
	Omar Ward says, as much as I'm sure the government would love to put an end to criminal money laundering by deporting foreign criminals, it would probably have a significant impact on money laundering from importing criminals.
	Yes, clever point, yes.
	That's a good comment.
	And somebody online says, why would you have to buy a whole business to launder the money?
	Just say that you've been doing freelance work as a furry fetish artist.
	Those guys are loaded.
	What are you talking about?
	I've heard about this online.
	They get paid an extortionate amount of money to make weird degenerate pornography for people, and they draw it out.
	They draw out the fetish for them.
	But they get paid, like, thousands.
	Per commission.
	Why don't they just use AI?
	Well, there's going to be a lot of degenerates out of a job.
	Although I imagine that AI has content guidelines.
	How degenerate are we talking?
	As in, as degenerate...
	Actually, no, I don't...
	No, hang on.
	I think I withdraw my question.
	Michael Brooks says, Dan, as a former head chef, I do this whenever sitting in any venue.
	My dad was a former banker and always used to work out things like this out loud.
	It's simple.
	The drug and people trafficking money must be washed.
	Yeah, I'm glad it's not only me who can't make these businesses add up in their head.
	They don't add up at all.
	To be fair, we know it's not going to be the Indian food shops because it involves washing.
	That was really low-hanging fruit.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm better than that normally.
	It's just that there are a lot of Indian food shops in Swindon that are very unhygienic.
	A few of them enclosed down for rats and things like that, where they've gnawed through the food and actually eaten it, and there are rat droppings in the food.
	So it's topical.
	And on that lovely note, hope you aren't eating.
	It's time to end the show.
	Thank you very much for watching.
	Same time again tomorrow.

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