Tim Pool Daily Show - Deadly Hantavirus SPREADING, Fears Of COVID 2.0
Aired: 2026-05-07
Duration: 57:17


=== Rapid Virus Spread Explained (14:48) ===

[00:00:05]  What is going on, Patriots?
[00:00:06]  This is Tate Brown here, holding it down.
[00:00:07]  I am two minutes late, so we're going to go through the intro really fast.
[00:00:09]  I'm back here, taking you from the morning to the afternoon in the Rumble Daily lineup.
[00:00:11]  I'm very pleased to be back with you guys today.
[00:00:13]  Anyway, okay, good.
[00:00:14]  I think that I caught up from the first minute.
[00:00:15]  I was running late.
[00:00:16]  I don't know what happened.
[00:00:17]  I just got on Twitter, and then the world went out, and Twitter went in.
[00:00:20]  It's just one of those things that happens.
[00:00:22]  What are you going to do?
[00:00:23]  What are you going to do?
[00:00:23]  Good enough for government work, right?
[00:00:26]  I don't work for the government, but we talk about politics, so I like to think I'm adjacent, therefore I can operate on government standards.
[00:00:33]  Anyway, I don't even know where I'm going with this.
[00:00:34]  I digress.
[00:00:35]  Hannah virus is spreading worldwide.
[00:00:37]  We're all dead.
[00:00:38]  It's over.
[00:00:38]  We're cooked.
[00:00:39]  It's over.
[00:00:40]  COVID.
[00:00:41]  You know, this is the problem.
[00:00:43]  This is the problem the CDC, the NIH, the WHO, all these goofy lab code agencies were telling me during COVID this is the end of the world.
[00:00:53]  And then nothing happened.
[00:00:54]  Nothing happened.
[00:00:55]  So now every time these Yahoos get up on the mic and tell me about some virus, I'm just like, oh, it's probably the cold, common cold.
[00:01:03]  And then I don't know what's going on.
[00:01:05]  This would be the one where I would expect some urgency, right?
[00:01:08]  Because, you know, the news, they're saying, oh, it has a 40% fatality rate.
[00:01:12]  And I'm like, I don't want that.
[00:01:15]  You know, COVID, I was like, ah, I can freaking Ironman that.
[00:01:19]  No problem.
[00:01:20]  What you have like a 0.01% chance of dying, bring it on.
[00:01:24]  You know, bring it up.
[00:01:25]  Why not?
[00:01:25]  You know, and then it's like a free vaccine.
[00:01:27]  You get the antibodies or whatever.
[00:01:30]  It's been like five years since COVID.
[00:01:31]  I don't even remember what the vectors of argument even were.
[00:01:35]  It's been so long.
[00:01:37]  But I don't know if you saw in the thumbnail, I drop in our channel here that we build the show off of.
[00:01:44]  And I was like, let's do a Hannah Vires thumbnail.
[00:01:46]  Da Our graphic designer, Patriot Jess, she drops in, just throws in a thumb and goes fire.
[00:01:52]  And I'm looking at it.
[00:01:53]  And the Fouchster is on there, the old Fouchster.
[00:01:55]  I forgot about him.
[00:01:57]  You know, it's been so long.
[00:01:59]  I thought he maybe died.
[00:02:00]  I don't know.
[00:02:01]  I didn't know what happened to him.
[00:02:02]  So seeing his face, you know, it brought me right back to those times watching TikTok, locked in the house.
[00:02:10]  You're just like texting your friends, and you know, no one can hang out, so you just hop on like Warzone and just grind for oh, it was horrible.
[00:02:19]  It was like one of the worst years of my life, but the Warzone was so fun playing Call of Duty Warzone was honestly peak.
[00:02:25]  Um, that being said, Hannavirus, you know, some mixed messaging, you know, a lot of people, um, from different you know degrees of credibility are saying, Look, okay, yeah, maybe the news is fishing for another virus here, but this thing is pretty scary, you know, it's pretty deadly, and it's transmitting human to human, which you know.
[00:02:44]  Hanavirus never does.
[00:02:45]  So, except in one strain, and the WHO, I'll get into the news.
[00:02:49]  The WHO did say that this particular strain is spreading like wildfire.
[00:02:56]  So, things are getting wacky and wild on the virus front.
[00:03:00]  I do have the great Alad Ilyahu joining me.
[00:03:03]  So, before we get into everything, I'm going to bring him in.
[00:03:06]  Alad, can we get a quick sound check, real quick?
[00:03:10]  I don't have audio from the great Alad Ilyahu.
[00:03:14]  He's not muted, or I don't think, but it could be an input issue.
[00:03:19]  So I think while he works that out, I'll just keep yapping here until we can get a word from him.
[00:03:27]  It's tough to say what's going on.
[00:03:29]  No one knows things on Thursdays.
[00:03:32]  Thirsty Thursdays is what some people have called it.
[00:03:35]  Throwback Thursday.
[00:03:36]  I don't know if you guys remember that on Instagram back in the day.
[00:03:38]  People chuck up a picture from five years ago and call it a throwback.
[00:03:42]  Absolutely absurd.
[00:03:43]  We're waiting on a lot because he is live.
[00:03:44]  From the White House.
[00:03:45]  And I am curious what he has to say, what's going on over there at the White House, which is now capitalized according to AP guidelines.
[00:03:56]  I think a lot might be here.
[00:03:57]  I'm not entirely sure what's going on.
[00:03:58]  He had to rush to get to his position in the White House.
[00:04:01]  Typically, we'll set this up beforehand.
[00:04:02]  But yeah, still no audio from a lot.
[00:04:06]  I don't know what the issue is here.
[00:04:08]  Let me check on my end.
[00:04:09]  Maybe there's audio is maybe not feeding from the right spot.
[00:04:12]  That could be a potential explanation.
[00:04:16]  Maybe we try that.
[00:04:21]  No, I would be hearing audio.
[00:04:23]  I think it's a way that it's probably calibrated.
[00:04:27]  It's one of those things.
[00:04:29]  Sorry, that?
[00:04:35]  Okay, so that means.
[00:04:36]  I'm getting audio.
[00:04:36]  That means I'm getting audio from Zoom.
[00:04:38]  I'm just not getting audio from Elad Ilyahu, which is very unfortunate.
[00:04:44]  You hate to see it, folks.
[00:04:46]  You really hate to see it.
[00:04:47]  Well, I'll leave Zoom on back burner.
[00:04:50]  If we do get word back from Elad, if his audio is working, then we'll bring him in.
[00:04:54]  I think that'll be some fantastic stuff.
[00:04:56]  But I'm going to move my Zoom over to this monitor.
[00:04:58]  I got two monitors.
[00:04:59]  We do things right here at Timcast.
[00:05:02]  I'm going to minimize all these windows.
[00:05:04]  And we're just going to jump right into the meat and potatoes here until we can get word from Elad.
[00:05:09]  I'll just hear him chirping in my little ears.
[00:05:11]  It'll be fantastic stuff.
[00:05:13]  All right, well, let's jump into this first story.
[00:05:14]  NBC News, US monitoring Hannah virus cruise passengers.
[00:05:17]  Dozens left ship after first death.
[00:05:20]  Oh my gosh.
[00:05:20]  So I don't know if you guys saw my tweet.
[00:05:22]  I've been monitoring the situation.
[00:05:24]  I've been monitoring the situation big time.
[00:05:26]  And what's been going on is I played Plague Inc.
[00:05:29]  I don't know if you remember the old mobile game, Plague Inc.
[00:05:31]  I created a virus called Hannah virus.
[00:05:33]  I started in Argentina and it took 20 minutes for me to kill the entire world.
[00:05:37]  So, based off the simulation, based off of my scientific simulation on Plague Inc. We might be cooked.
[00:05:44]  We might be cooked.
[00:05:45]  Now, thankfully, our health authorities have said otherwise.
[00:05:48]  Our health authorities, who, to be fair, the WHO, who the U.S. is threatening to withdraw from, along with all of our domestic health agencies, they would be incentivized to sound the alarm bell on this virus, right?
[00:06:01]  They would be directly incentivized to, again, secure more funding if this were a virus that were deadly serious, but they're coming out and they're effectively smothering the flames.
[00:06:09]  They're just trying to give us as much information as possible to indicate to us that there's not too much to worry about here.
[00:06:15]  From NBC News, U.S. monitoring Hantavirus crews, passengers, dozens left ship after first death.
[00:06:21]  It also emerged Thursday that a flight attendant was being tested for Hantavirus at a hospital in Amsterdam.
[00:06:26]  So things are spreading quite rapidly.
[00:06:28]  Last I saw, this was the latest update.
[00:06:32]  It's down here.
[00:06:34]  One person who was on board the Hondias, which was the cruise ship, the sort of South Atlantic expedition cruise, there were 20 something Americans on board, and a few of them are.
[00:06:47]  Again, being contact traced.
[00:06:50]  One person, I'll read here.
[00:06:52]  One person who was on board the Hondius is at home in Arizona, another in Virginia.
[00:06:57]  Ooh, that's near me.
[00:06:58]  Two are in Georgia, and an unknown number are back in California.
[00:07:02]  Great.
[00:07:02]  Well, I'm glad we're on top of things.
[00:07:04]  You know, that's fantastic.
[00:07:06]  An unknown amount are in California, a state that has like 33 million people.
[00:07:09]  Thanks.
[00:07:10]  Yeah, thanks.
[00:07:10]  That narrows it down.
[00:07:11]  That really gives me some peace here.
[00:07:15]  According to authorities in those states, None were reported to have symptoms of the rare virus, with officials saying the risk to the public remains low.
[00:07:25]  And this is what Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's director, said.
[00:07:30]  This is not the start of an epidemic.
[00:07:32]  This is not the start of a pandemic.
[00:07:34]  So, again, these are the guys that would be incentivized to sound the alarm bell, and no such alarm bells are being sounded.
[00:07:42]  I think that brings me a bit of comfort.
[00:07:45]  That being said, we'll read into what the WHO had to say.
[00:07:49]  They held a press conference briefing a few hours ago.
[00:07:52]  I thumbed through it, but thankfully, the WHO, I was wasting my time.
[00:07:58]  Big problem with me.
[00:07:59]  I waste a lot of time.
[00:08:00]  I was wasting my time skimming through the press conference trying to pick out any useful information.
[00:08:06]  And then I opened the replies and they actually just put the highlights down here.
[00:08:09]  So, wow, yeah, I'm retarded.
[00:08:12]  WHO, this is some of the interesting bits here.
[00:08:15]  Last Saturday, the United Kingdom notified at WHO under the international health regulations of a cluster of passengers with severe respiratory illness on a Dutch flagged cruise ship, the MV Hondius, which had traveled from Argentina to Cabo Verde.
[00:08:32]  So far, eight cases have been reported, including three deaths.
[00:08:36]  That's pretty terrifying.
[00:08:37]  It's pretty terrifying.
[00:08:38]  And it's very tragic for these people.
[00:08:40]  I was talking to IRL.
[00:08:41]  Like, you know, jokes aside, you know, whatever, imagine how tragic that is, right?
[00:08:45]  Like, you're taking the trip of a lifetime.
[00:08:47]  I'm sure these people have saved up money for this.
[00:08:49]  This is really something that they're really interested in.
[00:08:51]  I mean, to take a cruise as boutique as a South Atlantic cruise, you have to be someone that is sort of very passionate about an expedition of this sort of nature.
[00:09:01]  This isn't your carnival cruise, right?
[00:09:03]  Like, you know, some people are using the anti cruiser cruiser cruiser.
[00:09:06]  Rhetoric, which is fair.
[00:09:09]  But this isn't your grandma's retirement check cruise or your carnival cruise or whatever.
[00:09:18]  These people are, I'm sure, well to do, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:09:21]  So it's very sad.
[00:09:22]  It's very sad.
[00:09:22]  You're going on this trip, again, trip of a lifetime, and then it just devolves into tragedy.
[00:09:26]  I mean, that's very horrifying.
[00:09:28]  A couple died, which is terrifying.
[00:09:31]  Another gentleman has died.
[00:09:33]  Very sad stuff.
[00:09:35]  I mean, for, again, what should be the trip of a lifetime to just rapidly descend into tragedy?
[00:09:39]  That's horrifying.
[00:09:43]  But again, the silver lining, I suppose, if there could be one, is that again, the WHO is insistent that this will not be a pandemic.
[00:09:53]  So, anyway, Hantavirus are a group of viruses carried by rodents that can cause severe disease in humans.
[00:10:00]  People are usually infected through contact with infected rodents or their urine, droppings, or saliva.
[00:10:07]  The species of Hantavirus involved in this case is the Andes virus, which is found in Latin America and is the only species known to be capable of.
[00:10:14]  Limited transmission between humans again.
[00:10:17]  This is uh, this is this guy.
[00:10:18]  I never know how to say his name, he's got like an Ethiopian name.
[00:10:21]  Um, Tedros Adhanam Gabriasis.
[00:10:26]  Gabriasis, um, he's been the director of the WJO for a while now.
[00:10:30]  Director General, you guys probably remember him from COVID actually.
[00:10:34]  In previous outbreaks of Andes virus, transmission between people has been associated with close and prolonged contact, particularly among household members, intimate partners, and people providing medical care.
[00:10:46]  That appears to be the case in the current situation.
[00:10:48]  So, again, like if you're close proximity living with your family, that's again prolonged close contact with someone.
[00:10:56]  So, if they are infected, it's going to pass along to you.
[00:10:58]  Intimate partners, obviously, if you're bumping bellies, you might come down to the case of the Hansa.
[00:11:03]  People providing medical care, again, the doctor on board of the cruise ship was one of those that was infected, which just obviously makes a lot of sense.
[00:11:10]  So, they go on here to like break down like the timeline.
[00:11:13]  He's like, you know, giving shout outs to all these random prime ministers and everything.
[00:11:16]  Very nice.
[00:11:17]  Well, this is the key kind of piece here from that hour and a half long press conference.
[00:11:23]  While this is a serious incident, the WHO assesses the public health risk as low.
[00:11:29]  Everyone, everyone, stop panicking.
[00:11:32]  You know, put the toilet paper back on the shelf.
[00:11:34]  We're going to be okay, according to the WHO, which nailed it during COVID.
[00:11:39]  They had everything under control during COVID.
[00:11:41]  I don't see why we should be worried here.
[00:11:43]  It also shows why the international health regulations exist and how they work.
[00:11:49]  Oh, who is working with multiple governments and partners on the response under those regulations?
[00:11:54]  Our priorities are to ensure the affected patients receive care, that the remaining passengers on the ship are kept safe and treated with dignity to prevent any further spread of the virus.
[00:12:05]  Well, problem, problem.
[00:12:08]  Um, yeah, hello, Mr. Dr. Tedros.
[00:12:10]  Yep, I have a question.
[00:12:11]  Um, like 20 people disembarked in St. Helena, so a lot of this that's why we're seeing all these cases in the United States again, these people.
[00:12:19]  Left the boat late April, went back to America, went back to whatever country they were from.
[00:12:23]  A lot of them were Americans, and they only got contacted like four days ago.
[00:12:31]  Hello?
[00:12:31]  I mean, that's, you know, that does sound, you know, ring an alarm bell a little bit, I suppose.
[00:12:38]  Anyway, I mean, these guys again are insisting, you know, what am I, I'll trust the science here, but like, what's going on?
[00:12:43]  What's going on?
[00:12:44]  We contacted people three days ago, and they're freaking, again, who knows what they were up to?
[00:12:48]  Coughing on people, you know.
[00:12:50]  Not giving me six feet of separation.
[00:12:52]  Not their fault.
[00:12:53]  They didn't know.
[00:12:53]  They didn't know that they could potentially be carrying this deadly Hansa virus.
[00:12:58]  But one guy was in Virginia.
[00:13:00]  What if he's my neighbor?
[00:13:01]  I don't know.
[00:13:02]  They didn't tell me.
[00:13:03]  They didn't say.
[00:13:05]  So things are getting wacky and wild.
[00:13:08]  This was the quote.
[00:13:09]  Again, this is what brings you a little bit of comfort.
[00:13:11]  Again, because I said at the top of the show, and it is so true.
[00:13:14]  It is so true.
[00:13:15]  The WHO would be directly incentivized to be like freaking out right now, freaking the frick out.
[00:13:20]  And they have not done that.
[00:13:21]  So take a look at this clip.
[00:13:22]  This is where she just douses the flames of fears surrounding the Hanta virus.
[00:13:26]  And let me know if you believe her.
[00:13:28]  That would be interesting to hear what everyone's take is on this.
[00:13:30]  Take a look at this clip.
[00:13:31]  This is not coronavirus.
[00:13:33]  This is a very different virus.
[00:13:35]  We know this virus.
[00:13:37]  Hanta viruses have been around for quite a while.
[00:13:39]  There's a lot of detail that we know.
[00:13:41]  I'm going to ask Anais to come in and say this, but I want to be unequivocal here.
[00:13:44]  This is not SARS-CoV-2.
[00:13:46]  This is not the start of a COVID pandemic.
[00:13:48]  This is an outbreak that we see on a ship.
[00:13:50]  There's a confined area.
[00:13:52]  We have five confirmed cases so far.
[00:13:55]  We completely understand why these questions are coming, and we are trying to provide all of the information that we can.
[00:14:01]  That's why we're having a press conference here to give accurate information, and we're grateful for all of those out there who are asking these types of questions.
[00:14:09]  But this is not the same situation we were in six years ago.
[00:14:12]  It doesn't spread the same way like coronaviruses do, it's very different.
[00:14:17]  It's that close, intimate contact that we've seen.
[00:14:20]  And most Hantaviruses don't transmit between people at all.
[00:14:23]  Most Hanta viruses are transmitted from rodents or their feces or their saliva, their droppings, to people.
[00:14:30]  And only this one particular virus, the Andes virus, which has been identified here, we've seen some human to human transmission.
[00:14:36]  And again, I want to reiterate the actions that are being taken on board are precautionary to prevent any onward spread.
[00:14:44]  And so there's a lot that is being done right now to be able to try to minimize the risk even further.
[00:14:50]  But I do want Anais to come in and provide a little bit.

=== Hantavirus Transmission Pathways (05:05) ===

[00:14:53]  No?
[00:14:54]  No.
[00:14:55]  Thank you.
[00:14:57]  Freaking goyum.
[00:14:59]  Yeah, so big concern here, obviously.
[00:15:01]  She's like, don't worry.
[00:15:03]  This only spreads from rats to people.
[00:15:05]  There's nothing to worry about.
[00:15:06]  By the way, there is one specific strain that does go from animals to humans, from rodents to humans.
[00:15:11]  Sorry, from human to human.
[00:15:13]  And that we identify.
[00:15:14]  That's the strain that we have.
[00:15:15]  That's the strain.
[00:15:15]  By the way, you know, all that thing I said about you can only get it from rats.
[00:15:19]  Ignore all that because the strain that we're talking about here passes from human to human.
[00:15:25]  Okay, all right.
[00:15:26]  You know, she says we have nothing to worry about.
[00:15:28]  Then I guess everyone stand down.
[00:15:30]  Stand down.
[00:15:32]  Look, odds are this probably is one of those things where it's like an Ebola thing where everyone freaks out.
[00:15:36]  And in three to four weeks, we're just like, oh, wow, wasn't that weird?
[00:15:38]  We all just memory hole it.
[00:15:40]  You know, knock on wood.
[00:15:42]  I hope that's what happens.
[00:15:45]  But who knows?
[00:15:45]  I mean, this is the problem.
[00:15:46]  You know, Matt Walsh pointed this out.
[00:15:47]  I think it was Matt Walsh.
[00:15:48]  She said, Look, you know, they're probably right, but they've lost so much public trust because of how the whole COVID thing went that if this is deadly serious, people are just going to be like, Ah, well, you know, they said that last time and that wasn't the case.
[00:16:04]  So Tim actually sent this trackhanta.com.
[00:16:09]  Someone got this thing fired up quick.
[00:16:12]  And this is how you can track how many cases there are.
[00:16:18]  Let me zoom in here.
[00:16:22]  Okay.
[00:16:24]  Unverified signal news mention.
[00:16:28]  So, this is like them giving the news what's going on.
[00:16:31]  This is obviously the pathway.
[00:16:32]  So, they left from Ushuaia.
[00:16:34]  They went to St. Helena, which is right here.
[00:16:36]  Fun fact about St. Helena that's where Napoleon was imprisoned after he got mogged by the British and then he died there.
[00:16:43]  And I believe he was buried there for quite a long time.
[00:16:45]  And they've eventually moved him back to Paris, Gay Paris.
[00:16:49]  But yeah, the whole plan of the ship.
[00:16:52]  As I understand it, it was boom.
[00:16:54]  We'll hit Ascension Island, which is up here, then St. Helena, then we'll mosey on over to Namibia, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:17:02]  Sorry, change of plans.
[00:17:03]  But when they docked in St. Helena, one person died in St. Helena.
[00:17:08]  And then her, sorry, it was the husband dive in St. Helena.
[00:17:13]  And then the wife jumped on a plane because she was feeling bad, went to Johannesburg over here, which, you know, it is Africa, but Johannesburg's got some pretty nice facilities going on.
[00:17:22]  They have a lot of first world amenities there.
[00:17:25]  Gets to Johannesburg, collapses in the airport, and then dies.
[00:17:30]  A third passenger also flew to Johannesburg.
[00:17:33]  So the couple that died were Dutch.
[00:17:36]  And then the gentleman who fell ill, Johannesburg, he's currently on a breather in Johannesburg right now.
[00:17:44]  And that is who they've been sort of wrenching on to determine more about this virus.
[00:17:48]  And that's how they determined it was the Honda virus again, they have him alive.
[00:17:52]  He's on a breathing machine, which, if you don't know how a breathing machine works, they're basically just Pumping oxygen into your bloodstream so you can survive even without your lungs, which lowers the fatality rate from 40% to like 15%.
[00:18:08]  So, prayers for this gentleman.
[00:18:09]  I hope he survives, obviously.
[00:18:10]  And I'm very thankful to him because, I mean, look, for better or for worse, him fighting and staying alive is why we're able to determine so much about this virus.
[00:18:18]  But then the boat leaves St. Helena, pulls up here to Cabo Verde.
[00:18:23]  And then this is where a lot of detection has been going on.
[00:18:26]  And the initial plan was actually to.
[00:18:28]  Go to the Canary Islands, which I believe is still the plan because this is the boat right now.
[00:18:33]  And they're en route to the Canary Islands.
[00:18:38]  And from there, that's when they can really wrench on this thing, start to clear people, get them off this boat.
[00:18:44]  Evidently, a few people were already allowed to leave, but then they've fallen ill.
[00:18:48]  And then, like I said at the top of the show, we do have a suspected case in Switzerland, which would mean that Hansa virus is indeed in Switzerland.
[00:18:56]  And then, obviously, there's cases in the United States.
[00:18:59]  I saw Israel had a case.
[00:19:00]  Go figure.
[00:19:02]  China has been spooked a little bit as well, but I don't believe China's had any reported cases yet.
[00:19:09]  And I think pretty much everybody on board was European or North American, and then an Israeli, I guess.
[00:19:15]  Anyway, all this to be said, things are getting alarming.
[00:19:21]  I mean, look, I know these guys are saying no big deal, no big deal, but WHO has contacted 12 countries for possible antivirus exposure.
[00:19:29]  Guys, they're on top of it.
[00:19:30]  You know, they did such a bang up job with COVID.
[00:19:33]  Then we have nothing to worry about here.
[00:19:34]  I don't know if you guys saw this.
[00:19:36]  This poster, 2022, said 2023, Corona ended, 2026, Hantavirus.
[00:19:41]  Granted, this could have been one of those things where he tweeted 2023, Corona ended 2026, and then sent out like 50 tweets with all the different known contagious diseases, viruses, et cetera, and then deleted all the ones that weren't Hansa virus so then he could go around and say, Oh, look, I'm a genius.
[00:19:56]  That's probably what happened here, but a lot of people are circulating that.

=== Quality Drops Across Board (05:51) ===

[00:19:59]  Finally, this is a good take.
[00:20:01]  I think this is the correct take from Jarvis.
[00:20:03]  He posted here, feeling safe from the Hansa virus due to my long standing policy of never interacting with anyone who would go on a cruise.
[00:20:10]  So true, and a lot of people are resonating with this.
[00:20:14]  I've been on a lot of cruises, actually.
[00:20:16]  I've been on a lot of cruises.
[00:20:16]  I had a family member who worked for a company that, you know, contracted cruise ships, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:20:23]  So I've been on my fair share of cruises.
[00:20:25]  Let me just say this is a nightmare scenario.
[00:20:28]  So we're going to keep moving along here.
[00:20:31]  We are at halftime going to bring on the great Matthew Williams, better known as the Prudentialist.
[00:20:36]  He is, I would say, one of the brightest minds on the right.
[00:20:40]  He is a well read gentleman, and he does a lot of kind of.
[00:20:45]  Sociology adjacent thinking, you know, kind of like society, like, you know, sort of postulating these different, you know, where society could go, different societal changes, et cetera.
[00:20:57]  So I wanted to bring him on to discuss if the country can survive another pandemic and kind of what COVID did to this country.
[00:21:04]  I think that'll be quite interesting.
[00:21:05]  We'll get into that.
[00:21:06]  I just broke something, I think.
[00:21:08]  With that, I do want to get into this.
[00:21:09]  I want to get into this.
[00:21:11]  I tweeted this a few days ago.
[00:21:14]  Google reviews used to be.
[00:21:15]  So, okay, well, let me just set the table here.
[00:21:18]  Let me set.
[00:21:19]  The tone for why I'm talking about this.
[00:21:21]  This person said giving a restaurant a three star review is illegal in Germany.
[00:21:26]  So, this guy gave this restaurant a three star review.
[00:21:31]  And the German government, German law, said, We received a complaint that your review is defamatory under German law.
[00:21:38]  Your review is removed for now because German courts have set a low threshold for businesses to challenge reviews as defamatory.
[00:21:47]  Bizarre stuff.
[00:21:47]  So, I put some commentary on here about how useless Google reviews are nowadays.
[00:21:51]  It's Thursday.
[00:21:52]  It's a slow news day, but I think I would have talked about this because this is very pressing.
[00:21:55]  This is very pressing.
[00:21:57]  Google reviews used to be honest.
[00:21:59]  In 2015, a 3.5 star rating meant the restaurant was average.
[00:22:02]  Now, 3.5 stars is basically a public execution.
[00:22:07]  Users are increasingly reluctant to leave low ratings unless something was truly awful.
[00:22:11]  Everyone is afraid to be critical or a Karen.
[00:22:13]  And I posted a graph here using a data set that indicates that yes, the average review of a restaurant in 2012 was 3.9 stars.
[00:22:21]  Now it's 4.4 stars.
[00:22:22]  So.
[00:22:24]  If you aren't aware of this evolution of the star rating, right?
[00:22:28]  If you're not aware that people are, that there's been starflation, right?
[00:22:32]  Rating inflation.
[00:22:34]  In Germany, you could get arrested if you aren't up to date on these sort of things.
[00:22:36]  You could literally get like fined or whatever if you keep giving three star reviews.
[00:22:40]  Because a three, look, three stars is supposed to mean the restaurant is average.
[00:22:45]  You know, three stars is supposed to mean that was edible, that was sufficient.
[00:22:49]  I got what my money, I got my money's worth.
[00:22:50]  You know, I paid $12 and I got a $12 meal.
[00:22:53]  Three stars.
[00:22:54]  That's what a three star should mean.
[00:22:56]  And then a one star should be like horrible, like it was a horrible, awful experience.
[00:23:01]  But no, the average rating for that same sort of restaurant, like, oh, it was fine.
[00:23:06]  You know, I spent $12 and I think I got $12 worth.
[00:23:09]  That gets you like a 4.5 now.
[00:23:13]  Like, what is going on?
[00:23:14]  You know, what is that?
[00:23:16]  I mean, it's a very salient question.
[00:23:18]  This is an example of all of these different mechanisms that we have in the United States specifically that should be able to push back.
[00:23:25]  Because, like, no one in their right mind would argue that.
[00:23:29]  Restaurant quality has been going up since 2012.
[00:23:32]  Certainly not the case.
[00:23:33]  Restaurants have gotten exorbitantly expensive.
[00:23:35]  Just to go outside anymore, it costs like $50.
[00:23:38]  I mean, it's unbelievable how expensive everything is getting.
[00:23:42]  And the restaurants now, I don't really eat out very much anymore.
[00:23:45]  I used to eat out more, but I rarely eat out anymore because it's so expensive.
[00:23:50]  It's so expensive.
[00:23:50]  I mean, it's literally like $30 to just have a sit down restaurant experience.
[00:23:54]  Even fast food is expensive, like McDonald's.
[00:23:56]  You know, McChicken's like $3.50 now.
[00:23:58]  I mean, like, what is that?
[00:24:00]  I mean, and they're like, oh, inflation's like 7%.
[00:24:03]  Well, McChicken tripled in price.
[00:24:04]  So explain that, economist.
[00:24:07]  I don't want to hear it.
[00:24:09]  Inflation more like 300%.
[00:24:11]  That's basically what's going on.
[00:24:13]  It's absolutely unbelievable.
[00:24:14]  And this rating system, you know, in theory, the Google reviews would be a mechanism that the public could utilize to, again, correctly classify the decline in restaurants and to give you an indicator that if you go there, you will waste your money.
[00:24:28]  Because that's the worst experience possible going to a restaurant, trusting the Google review, and then wasting $30 because it was like crap.
[00:24:38]  And it's happening so much.
[00:24:40]  And the Google reviews should be that final bastion.
[00:24:42]  It should be that last stand for the consumer to indicate that, yeah, this restaurant is not worth your time.
[00:24:49]  Don't go there.
[00:24:50]  But instead, a 4.5 can either mean, yeah, it's average or whatever, it's good.
[00:24:56]  Or I've seen luxury steakhouses that are getting 4.5.
[00:25:00]  So I don't want to hear it.
[00:25:01]  I don't want to hear anything.
[00:25:04]  And then if you point out that, hey, restaurant quality has gone down, and then if you dare to speak up at the restaurant, if you dare to say, Hey, something's wrong, or hey, this is not prepared properly, or hey, you overcharged me, or something.
[00:25:15]  You get called a Karen.
[00:25:18]  You get called a Karen.
[00:25:19]  I mean, what is going on?
[00:25:19]  This is ridiculous.
[00:25:20]  This is why I've been sounding the alarm on the Karen slur for a long time.
[00:25:23]  It's like, okay, when you think Karen, you think like uppity, you know, woman that has high expectations that cannot be met, et cetera.
[00:25:31]  No, that's not what's happening anymore.
[00:25:32]  That's not what's happening anymore.
[00:25:33]  They're calling anyone a Karen, anyone that has any basic expectations or standards for like any public, you know, any service whatsoever.
[00:25:41]  You're a Karen now.
[00:25:43]  It's absolutely ridiculous.
[00:25:44]  I mean, it's just over the moon.
[00:25:46]  Standards are dropping across the board.
[00:25:48]  Everything's getting worse.
[00:25:49]  Quality is dropping across the board.

=== Return to Reading Articles (11:08) ===

[00:25:51]  And the people that dare to have the gumption to question that and stand up for themselves and advocate for themselves, they get met with a slur.
[00:26:01]  Karen's a slur at this point.
[00:26:02]  I'm not afraid to say it.
[00:26:03]  It is.
[00:26:04]  It is.
[00:26:04]  It's a slur.
[00:26:06]  And not to white knight here, not to turn into a full blown feminazi, but if you're like a woman and you complain about service, You're absolutely going to get hit with the Karen label.
[00:26:15]  At least, guys, they can maybe be like, well, you know, he's standing up for himself.
[00:26:18]  You know, he's advocating for himself.
[00:26:20]  But a lady, you're cooked.
[00:26:22]  You're cooked.
[00:26:22]  Like, if my mom, you know, had a problem at a restaurant and she said something in the back, you know, in the kitchen, they'd be like, what a Karen.
[00:26:28]  You know, what's her problem?
[00:26:29]  If I did it, I might get away with it.
[00:26:32]  It's absolutely ridiculous, dude.
[00:26:34]  It is, it's driving me up a wall.
[00:26:35]  But I think what we should do, I could go on about that all day long.
[00:26:39]  It's just crazy to me that people in Germany are getting arrested for fairly rating restaurants.
[00:26:42]  We are going to bring in Matthew Williams here.
[00:26:44]  We've got to have a word with the Prudentialist here and see what he's got to say.
[00:26:47]  Hey, Matthew, can you hear me?
[00:26:49]  Sure can.
[00:26:50]  How are you?
[00:26:50]  How are we doing, boss?
[00:26:51]  Well, it's good to hear from you.
[00:26:52]  It's good to see you.
[00:26:53]  We had some audio issues yesterday, so I'm very relieved that we can hear your sultry voice.
[00:26:58]  I think it's fantastic.
[00:27:00]  Before we get into the meat and potatoes of what we want to discuss today, I was wondering if you could give the people a quick intro of who you are and what you do.
[00:27:07]  Yeah, sure.
[00:27:08]  My name is Matthew Williams.
[00:27:09]  I am a writer and an editor and the host of two shows called Do You Even Read and The Digital Archipelago, covering various books and literature.
[00:27:17]  Inside our sort of political scene, everyone tells you to read, but we actually break it down and actually do it alongside looking at the cultural artifacts of the day, discussions on art, culture, and where politics are moving America.
[00:27:27]  So I'm very happy to be on.
[00:27:28]  Thanks for inviting me.
[00:27:30]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:27:30]  And, you know, before we kind of get in, I mean, a lot of people, obviously, this has been the narrative on the right is like, people need to be reading more.
[00:27:36]  Like, you know, us moving away from a print based society has been detrimental for the intellectual development of your common people.
[00:27:43]  On your end, as a bookworm, I think it would be fair.
[00:27:45]  I know it's a bit of a slur to call someone a bookworm, but I think you would classify as such.
[00:27:50]  Have you seen people actually taking that advice?
[00:27:53]  Have you seen more interest in, you know, literature, classical literature, challenging literature, et cetera?
[00:27:58]  Have you seen this on your end?
[00:28:00]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:28:01]  I mean, the market has moved, especially in this scene, I think on the right, towards an emphasis on the classics or great men and the canon.
[00:28:09]  But even in politics, we spend so much time saying, well, this author says this without ever actually reading it.
[00:28:14]  And sometimes that's associated with a GigaChat image being posted or whatever.
[00:28:17]  But I think at the end of the day, more people understand that the past is the gateway for us to understand the future.
[00:28:25]  And so much of our own cultural identity has been lost by just becoming an openly illiterate society.
[00:28:32]  You know, McLuhan writes about orientalization.
[00:28:34]  Our forms of communication have radically changed.
[00:28:37]  We've become far more pictographic and we're meme oriented or we're visually oriented.
[00:28:41]  Yeah.
[00:28:42]  When we look at our own sort of American canon of great books, so many people, because they don't read or even understand the scriptures, our American understanding of our own literature and our identity is lost.
[00:28:53]  You can't read William Faulkner, for instance, without understanding the Old Testament or the New, for starters.
[00:29:00]  So, I mean, I think that there's been a return to having people read, but it's a very self selecting process.
[00:29:05]  I think that more often than not, our boomers and Gen Xers, they grew up with like Walter Cronkite or, of course, the late Ted Turner.
[00:29:13]  You know, sort of saying what the news is going to be, and we've sort of reinvented that with podcasting and influencers.
[00:29:19]  But when you know they tell you that this is what it is, it's the same thing with books, and I think that people are really returning to that sort of literacy culture.
[00:29:26]  I mean, this is fascinating, and you know, I brought you on and I we were kind of discussing you know what we could you know hit on in the news, and I'm like, I think this conversation should be a bit more open ended and kind of discuss some of the more like sociological phenomenons that we've seen recently.
[00:29:39]  Um, and that's why I think this is like an important point to hit on because what I'm seeing, you know, as a Zoomer, I'm 25.
[00:29:46]  What I'm seeing among a lot of people my age is almost this desire.
[00:29:50]  The word that's been used is analog.
[00:29:51]  So people are desiring analog experiences.
[00:29:54]  And what's interesting on the print side is, again, I think primarily, I mean, correct me, you know, maybe you agree or disagree.
[00:30:00]  I think the primary value with the book is that whatever's in there doesn't change.
[00:30:03]  So the thing with like news is it's constantly changing.
[00:30:06]  It's tough to really dwell on a topic.
[00:30:07]  It's tough to really challenge assumptions because you just read the article really quickly, maybe formulate a quick take and then move on.
[00:30:14]  And it's never, nothing's ever permitted to dwell upon the news cycles moving constantly.
[00:30:19]  It seems like.
[00:30:20]  Everyone has a five minute memory in regards to anything.
[00:30:23]  You know, low time preference is kind of gone, I would say, for the most part.
[00:30:28]  And I think that's something that gets sacrificed on the altar of, again, you know, social media, fast moving news cycles, et cetera, is our ability to dwell on topics, our ability to think deeply, our ability to interact with things that aren't changing.
[00:30:45]  And for the most part, our ability to interact and dwell upon things that are lasting.
[00:30:51]  And I mean, you're seeing some of this.
[00:30:53]  Push back, push of Zoomers back into Christianity.
[00:30:56]  That's an indication that people are kind of sick and tired of just being thrown around by the world.
[00:31:02]  Yeah, I mean, people really want the truth more than anything else or what they believe to be the truth.
[00:31:07]  And I mean, I think you're absolutely right.
[00:31:08]  We do have this like goldfish memory when it comes to the timeline, so to speak, or our social media feeds, where it can be very quick for someone to disavow a position that they were ardently holding to just five or six weeks ago, depending on what was favorable in the news cycle and whatever angle that they were trying to take.
[00:31:25]  To get the most clicks, the most views, or to be the edgiest or most contrarian personality.
[00:31:30]  And I remember about 10 years ago, there was a big article and a push for this sort of analog revolution where, you know, millennials had famously pushed and re-adstarted, you know, basically the vinyl industry and record, you know, collections had skyrocketed under that sort of hipster era 10, 15 years ago.
[00:31:45]  And even now, people are, you know, amassing, I think, libraries because they know that what they have isn't going to change.
[00:31:51]  And it's the same thing with our physical media, not just with books and whatnot, but also with DVD collections or even for older media, VHS and so on, because they know that that can't be changed or edited in streaming.
[00:32:02]  There's not going to be a, A content warning saying that you know this movie came out X number of years ago, it reflects the signs of the times, and it may not be beneficial to viewers today.
[00:32:11]  And we've already seen that in the past, you know, during the last several years, where streaming services will remove content or they'll take episodes out of seasons.
[00:32:19]  They've done this with South Park and other shows.
[00:32:21]  So I think that really there has been this great push to have again ownership over space, not just you know physical space, but intellectual space as well.
[00:32:30]  I actually want to read and understand what's going on because when we look at the world around us, definitions change instantly during the Biden administration.
[00:32:37]  We watch with our own eyes the definition of a recession get changed overnight.
[00:32:42]  So I think that it becomes all the more important for us to collect and understand, you know, older ways of thought, older dictionaries and things like that, things that really can't be changed and are removable.
[00:32:51]  Because, as, you know, I'm sure a lot of the audience knows, like a lot of everything that's been happening in the grand scale of history is five seconds ago.
[00:32:59]  And everything that you had believed in prior to that is what kept civilization going.
[00:33:04]  And it's important to stick to those things.
[00:33:06]  Yeah.
[00:33:06]  I mean, I totally agree.
[00:33:07]  And on your first point, I mean, we saw it case in point, you know, Vauban books, they're kind of this upstart book.
[00:33:12]  Publisher, and they had republished a copy of The Camp of the Saints, which is obviously this book that a lot of people have read and they have found it quite instructive for their sort of political, philosophical framework.
[00:33:23]  You know, it's fictional, but it was written quite a long time ago, and pretty much every aspect of the book has culminated in the reality that we live in, but on steroids.
[00:33:34]  So it's actually, he probably underestimated how bad things could really get.
[00:33:39]  And for Vauban Books putting this out, again, this is a book that when you read it, there's nothing in there that would.
[00:33:46]  Particularly be offensive or that sort of thing, maybe offensive to some modern sensibilities of the furthest left individuals.
[00:33:54]  But their problem wasn't with the book.
[00:33:56]  Their problem was with that people would read this book and then construct a political philosophy that would undermine kind of this postmodern blank slate theory concept that's kind of ruled, that's been the beating drum of this regime that's been in place in the postwar era.
[00:34:12]  And so Amazon just removed the book.
[00:34:14]  They just removed the book from their store.
[00:34:17]  And there you go.
[00:34:17]  Now, no one, no common man, you know, a lot of people in our sphere, you know, they're used to digging for PDFs to, you know, find certain books or writings or that sort of thing.
[00:34:26]  But the average person, they can't pick up a copy of The Camp of the Saints anymore.
[00:34:30]  And it works.
[00:34:31]  That's the unfortunate thing censorship actually kind of works to some degree.
[00:34:34]  Now, people have lost access to the book.
[00:34:35]  Now, granted, it came back on the store and it like went to like number one in fiction for a little while, which is crazy.
[00:34:41]  But that's an indication that you need to start building up a war chest of your own literature, of your own physical media items because.
[00:34:49]  If you're just fully dependent on the internet, that can be taken away from you and then you lose access forever.
[00:34:54]  Yeah, I remember that there was a great post from the Twitter user, Bennett's Phylactery, Kevin Dolan, the founder of the Exit Group.
[00:35:01]  It said, you know, a book is really banned when it costs you like $5,000 to get a secondhand copy on like, you know, Amazon or Abe Books.
[00:35:09]  Like, that's really the sign of it all.
[00:35:11]  And I mean, I'm glad that Valbin Books had the opportunity to have the Camp of the Saints return onto the Amazon store because that book really is a very frustrated and accurate criticism of the.
[00:35:20]  Egalitarian liberation theology of sort of the Western Christian world in regards to immigration and national identity.
[00:35:27]  And of course, you know, everyone, you'll see it as sort of almost like a copypasta at this point, where they'll talk about burning down the beautiful oak door every day on Twitter.
[00:35:35]  And I mean, it's just good.
[00:35:36]  I mean, one, it puts the books being reinforced.
[00:35:38]  The Streisand effect is still very real.
[00:35:40]  But at the end of the day, right, it does go to show that we need to be looking towards, you know, the actual physical copies and not things that can be edited or deleted.
[00:35:48]  A really good example of this, I don't know if it's in The Atlantic or a different publication, but years ago, back when like Freakonomics came out with Levitt and others, there was a debate between, I think it's Stephen Levitt and, Steve Saylor over the issue of whether or not abortion was a policy that reduced crime.
[00:36:05]  And that debate is still up there for you to find, but their names have been edited in posts to where now it just says authors.
[00:36:12]  You can't even find out who actually participated in said debate over this issue.
[00:36:16]  So, I mean, it really just goes to show that, like, unless you have the physical copies or you're hosting your own server and your own library, that it's very easy to lose access to this information.
[00:36:26]  And I mean, it really just goes to show how messed up and twisted our world is when it comes to.
[00:36:32]  Our perception of reality.
[00:36:33]  Because for a lot of people who rely on the concept of journalism or is as objective as it can be, you're left sort of wondering and realizing, oh, like unless I have something physically in front of me that says X, Y, and Z, they can edit that to say A, B, and C tomorrow.
[00:36:49]  And no one's really going to know the difference.
[00:36:50]  Yeah.
[00:36:50]  I mean, Tim, you know, Tim Poole, obviously a host of Tim Guest IRL, he points this out all the time he'll be reading an article in the morning for his morning segments.

=== Physical vs Intellectual Domains (02:48) ===

[00:36:59]  And then by the time the night show comes along and he wants to use that article for, The show, they've changed it at some point after the lunch break.
[00:37:06]  They just changed something in it, and it wasn't like an update of information, it was just they reworded the entire headline.
[00:37:12]  And so he has to go into like the archive and like actually remember what it initially said.
[00:37:16]  I mean, it's so bizarre, and they just do this all the time.
[00:37:19]  Um, and you know, to your initial point, I mean, the with Camp of the Saints specifically, part of the reason it's so resonates so well, part of the reason that you see people cite it so often, at least my personal belief, is that because it's not a book that's pile driving, like this is, I think, a big problem in our space specifically, is you have so many pile drivers who will just Post a street scene from London or Paris or New York City of how bad things have gotten, and they'll go, It's so over or whatever.
[00:37:45]  And it's like, I think everyone kind of knows by now, like, if you either get it or you don't, I think that's fair.
[00:37:51]  I mean, it is important to spread awareness and whatnot.
[00:37:53]  But what I think the Camp of the Saints does so well is because it's an enjoyable read.
[00:37:58]  Like, you're not reading it as if it's someone's PhD dissertation.
[00:38:02]  It's a book that you can read that communicates ideas in a captivating way.
[00:38:06]  And on the right, that used to be our wheelhouse, that used to be how we had disseminated ideas.
[00:38:11]  Was through, again, stories, through allegory, through complex but digestible pieces of literature, of media, et cetera, where now you have two options.
[00:38:20]  It's either this kitschy movie, I'm not gonna name names, but a kitschy movie that just sucks and it's like a waste of your time to watch, or a 30 page article that's unreadable and it reads like a MIT PhD dissertation.
[00:38:35]  So it's just like books like that, I think, penetrate the zeitgeist the most efficiently because, again, You can pick the book up as just a general enjoyer of literature, and then it communicates very vital ideas to right wing philosophy through it.
[00:38:50]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:38:51]  And I mean, this is why I think so many people are drawn not just to Raspail's Camp of the Saints, but also the fiction in the writings of Ernst Junger.
[00:38:59]  Like you read Glass Bees or you read any of his other fictional work, and you kind of understand not only are these right wing ideas being communicated, but they're also in a story and in a setting that is digestible, relatable, and captivating in a way that captures things that are not just.
[00:39:15]  Autobiographies or old journals or these like really antiquated, you know, sociology reports from anthropologists exploring.
[00:39:22]  Don't get me wrong, those journals are great and amazing.
[00:39:24]  But I mean, when we're trying to communicate ideas and I think in a more digestible form, you know, the right, I think in a lot of ways has sort of lost that storytelling, captivating capability because, you know, so often we've had great themes of heroism and self sacrifice, these things that would be the pillar of like Western, especially like American Protestant culture that kind of gets lost for the wayside.

=== Adopting Different Identities (13:09) ===

[00:39:47]  And I think people have kind of been scared to stand up for their beliefs.
[00:39:51]  And instead, you get God's Not Dead rather than something like Hacksaw Ridge that, you know, I think is a much more, uh, Effective way at sending a message about standing to your convictions and belief than this long, preachy sermon with really bad acting.
[00:40:05]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:40:06]  You're hitting the nail on the head there.
[00:40:09]  Something that you had said earlier that really stood out to me was you said a lot of people will have a physical domain that they have locked down, et cetera, but people feel very unstable in the sort of intellectual domain because, again, things move so quick.
[00:40:21]  People are so dependent on current events, again, to formulate their or to develop intellectually.
[00:40:27]  And so you asserted that, again, people need sort of control over their intellectual domain.
[00:40:32]  And to kind of go into this story that's everywhere right now, right around in the Hansa virus, and everyone's trying to figure out what's going on here.
[00:40:38]  Again, obviously, the WHO has come out and said, yeah, it's not that big of a deal, et cetera.
[00:40:42]  But what I think is vital here is I actually understand why people appeal to experts so often, because it's exactly what you said.
[00:40:50]  People feel very unstable intellectually, they don't have command over anything intellectually.
[00:40:55]  And the idea of the expert, right?
[00:40:57]  The idea of an expert is someone that, This is his intellectual domain and he has complete command over it.
[00:41:03]  Therefore, this can be someone that can be trusted.
[00:41:05]  And I think that's really vital.
[00:41:06]  Now, obviously, that compact was broken, where now you have a lot of these experts, so to speak, that have some sort of political aim, some sort of angle that they're trying to get at.
[00:41:16]  And it's really broken down.
[00:41:17]  But I think it kind of hits at this core issue that you're talking about no one feels particularly stable intellectually.
[00:41:22]  Like people are getting thrown around by the timeline all the time.
[00:41:25]  People are getting, you know, just they don't have a hand on the wheel.
[00:41:29]  They're just, Getting tossed around left and right because there's very few domains in their life that they feel completely like they completely know it in and out.
[00:41:37]  That as soon as they get met with a political issue, they can quickly decipher what would be sort of the correct take on it and that sort of thing.
[00:41:46]  And people are really struggling with that.
[00:41:48]  Yeah, no, I agree absolutely.
[00:41:50]  I think that our, since 2007, and the sort of, you know, basically we've turned ourselves into a giant Skinner box in which we can access this almost, you know, John D esque scrying mirror in our pockets all the time.
[00:42:03]  And I think that for a lot of people, that is very psychologically disrupting because all of a sudden you can have a pretty well rounded opinion on something or offer a take.
[00:42:11]  And I mean, we're all now producers.
[00:42:14]  We're all now creators, whether we have 50,000 followers on Twitter or you're just a nobody screaming into a void of screams on TikTok and the rest.
[00:42:23]  All of these things really do a good job at creating a very schizophrenic environment where you have to be constantly consuming and constantly regurgitating.
[00:42:30]  It's very bulimic in the sense that.
[00:42:33]  We're always eating and we're always regurgitating a talking point from somebody else, or we're in agreement with a certain camp of people and we're going to agree and amplify that message because we really don't like that other guy.
[00:42:43]  And at the same time, our ability to have a pretty comprehensive understanding of a subject matter decreases rapidly.
[00:42:50]  And what makes this whole, you know, Hanta virus even worse is that we just, you know, COVID's been now six years onward and the absolute destruction of the American medical, you know, public trust has been completely eroded.
[00:43:03]  They had, The closest thing to a nigh infallible understanding of the world that the average American would take for granted.
[00:43:11]  And so we've now seen over the last six years the absolute destruction of that public trust.
[00:43:17]  And when you look into the background of some of these people, like Anthony Fauci, for example, you're left realizing, oh my gosh, like we're in real trouble.
[00:43:24]  Like I first heard of Anthony Fauci when I had to do some research on the AIDS crisis in the 80s.
[00:43:29]  And it's like, oh, this is the AIDS guy.
[00:43:31]  We're kind of in trouble.
[00:43:33]  And one of the things that we now see with the WHO and everything else is that, well, we've been through this before, we've had scares before.
[00:43:42]  And while I don't think this is going to blow up the way that it is, I think you also see on the timeline a lot of people are either really wanting a sequel to COVID or worse, they just are like, ah, whatever.
[00:43:52]  And I think that the tragedy out of all of this is if something actually dangerous were to happen, I'm not saying the Hanta virus is going to be it, but if an actual dangerous influenza or some other respiratory virus were to be a problem, the actual ability to contain the disease and to treat it and cure it would be nigh impossible because you've now destroyed the trust of half the country at least.
[00:44:14]  But also globally, it's like, well, we know how this works.
[00:44:16]  This is all politics.
[00:44:17]  And a disease that is commonly associated with rats is now, okay, it was on a cruise ship and it's travel, so that raises some significant public relations concerns.
[00:44:27]  But we have to spin it in this other way.
[00:44:29]  That way, we're not disrupting a multi million dollar industry.
[00:44:32]  And again, that public trust, those institutions disappear and their value.
[00:44:36]  And so, for the average person, you know, it's like, well, I'm going to go listen to this guy.
[00:44:39]  And we create our own Walter Cronkite, who's going to tell everything about us on what we need to know.
[00:44:44]  And we effectively offshore our moral and our psychological reasoning about the world around us to somebody else.
[00:44:51]  And as dangerous as that can be sometimes, it's really become the norm for most people.
[00:44:55]  That is a, I mean, that's an excellent point that you finished off with.
[00:44:58]  Again, that people are, yeah, kind of outsourcing their.
[00:45:02]  Their intellectual framework to figures.
[00:45:04]  And it's not to say that maybe the person that you look up to maybe is sort of trustworthy, maybe is disseminating good, healthy takes, et cetera.
[00:45:11]  But the problem is they're susceptible to the exact same things that you were susceptible to, where again, throughout history, no one's ever had a totally iron mind insofar as they could get, you know, sidetracked on a bunny trail or they can, again, maybe take a position that would be dangerous or potentially even self destructive.
[00:45:28]  And you're just going to follow right along with them because, again, you're.
[00:45:32]  Sort of intellectual framework doesn't stem from anything grounded, anything consistent.
[00:45:36]  It's just more attached to someone that you're like, this guy is generally consistent, so I'm going to take his word for it.
[00:45:42]  And this isn't speculation.
[00:45:44]  I've seen this happen.
[00:45:45]  Again, I'm not going to trash anyone here, but we've seen some high profile cases of people that previously were quite good, quite trustworthy, and a lot of people latched onto them.
[00:45:54]  A lot of people put a lot of faith in them.
[00:45:55]  And then as soon as they sort of diverged and maybe explored something that would maybe be a bit damaging to our long term goals as right wingers specifically, they just end up sort of self destructing and.
[00:46:07]  Quickly erode their ability to push the football down the field, for lack of a better word.
[00:46:14]  Yeah, and I mean, this really does have a lot to do with I think one, it's the pursuing of grabbing, you know, getting the bag, as people like to say.
[00:46:22]  There is obviously a financial incentive to this, especially now that places like Twitter are monetized, and that, you know, just like so many of us, myself included, you know, if you have nothing else to do with your spare time, then why not, you know, throw yourself into the fray and start writing and posting and recording things and seeing if you can get an audience.
[00:46:38]  I really do use that sort of metaphor a lot that this is just a void of screams, and we're all screaming, hoping that someone on the other side can hear us.
[00:46:46]  And when you manage to get more ears on you, there is, of course, that sense of responsibility that comes with am I being accurate?
[00:46:54]  Am I being articulate?
[00:46:55]  Am I leading people in the right direction?
[00:46:56]  But also, others are like, well, what is the financial gain out of this?
[00:47:00]  Am I going to go viral?
[00:47:01]  What's the ability for me to maximize the global audience or to maximize the number of subscribers that are actually going to pay?
[00:47:09]  And I think that once you start looking at it in that lens, it becomes very dangerous, not just for right wingers, but everyone in general, even if you're a non political content creator, that all of a sudden you can be finding yourself, well, this isn't who I was six months ago.
[00:47:24]  This isn't who I was two years ago.
[00:47:26]  This isn't who I was in my positions or my rationality.
[00:47:29]  And I mean, you can look up on Twitter right now, political compass test, and you can just see how people have bounced around all four quadrants in the matter of anywhere from like three years to six months.
[00:47:40]  And it just shows how malleable, especially young people's minds can be, but also at the same time, how easy it is to manufacture public opinion on things, especially from the powers that be.
[00:47:50]  Absolutely.
[00:47:51]  And it really, I think, you know, part of the problem here, part of the underlying, you know, reason for this sort of phenomenon is a lot to do.
[00:48:00]  I mean, it's almost something you would hear on Fox News, but it really is a simple response.
[00:48:04]  It is liberalism to a large degree, because again, this is something that sort of inflicts, it sort of seeks to liberate the individual from any sort of.
[00:48:12]  Pre assigned identity, right?
[00:48:14]  That is the ultimate culmination of liberalism is just truly a blank slate, right?
[00:48:17]  This is just a person and they can change their name, change their identity, change every single thing about them.
[00:48:23]  And so, what ends up happening is you see with teenagers is they almost view themselves as like an edit character screen where they can sort of adopt all these different identities.
[00:48:32]  And this transcends the political spectrum.
[00:48:34]  This is everyone does this because even to get granular, you know, well, I like this certain aesthetic.
[00:48:39]  And then, you know, I like, but I like this certain, you know, there's like certain aspects of.
[00:48:43]  Of every single person that they feel like they can modify, that's not really grounded in anything in their upbringing or their environment, but it's something that they ultimately picked up on online or potentially through their friends, which are just laundering online ideas through.
[00:48:57]  And so, what you end up having is it's very rare to find someone that is truly genuine, truly a sort of product of their environment, but it's not really their fault because these environments now have sort of reflected the culmination of a bunch of rootless individuals, a bunch of deracinated individuals, a bunch of blank slates.
[00:49:16]  And so, most of our environments don't really mean much anymore.
[00:49:18]  I mean, I've made this point on the show before.
[00:49:20]  It's like I've traveled quite extensively, and I found that if you're in the central business district of Tokyo, London, Paris, New York, besides some small architectural quirks, they're basically indistinguishable.
[00:49:31]  There's going to be an HM, there's going to be a Starbucks, there's going to be a McDonald's, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:49:36]  And ultimately, what we're pushing towards is just this generic consumer individual.
[00:49:41]  And that is going to be the final sort of state of man.
[00:49:46]  I think the way when people identify that this is happening, what their response is is, okay, well, I need to sort of adopt identities that may differentiate myself from that common man.
[00:49:56]  So it's a healthy impulse, but the problem is, again, it just allows you to get thrown around.
[00:50:01]  And those identities, since you chose them, you can change them when you no longer feel like they suit you.
[00:50:05]  And again, I'm not talking even about gender here, although that is obviously something people entertain, but people will pick up like niche political ideologies or really kind of in the weeds, like religious identities.
[00:50:17]  And that just changes every five years.
[00:50:19]  I mean, we see these people that, you know, like on the Christianity side, for example, they call it denomination hopping, where it's like if you bump into them once a year, every year they're going to be on a different arc, like a different religious arc.
[00:50:29]  And I don't necessarily blame that individual.
[00:50:32]  I think that is like a sort of product of our time.
[00:50:35]  I think that's the reality they have that healthy impulse, which is, wow, this world is really rotted and disgusting and gross.
[00:50:41]  I need to differentiate myself.
[00:50:42]  The problem is it's them never going back to who they are or like who their ancestors were, but it's typically adopting something new that came across their desk via.
[00:50:51]  Twitter or something like that.
[00:50:53]  Yeah, I wrote an essay about two years ago now called The Coming Identity Bubble, where so much of our self formed images of our identity, ideology, politics, religion, etc.
[00:51:06]  A lot of it, I think, will come to a sort of a pop where you sort of realize well, am I actually walking the walk that I say that I am online?
[00:51:14]  Or is this explicitly now become a performative feature of what I say is all about myself?
[00:51:19]  And so often we kind of form this Dickensian, telescopic philanthropy or this concern about someone else.
[00:51:27]  Where we can get really riled up about a really niche political issue or a cultural thing halfway around the world, but the guy doesn't know his neighbors.
[00:51:35]  He doesn't know who his city councilman is.
[00:51:37]  He doesn't know there are so many opportunities for culture, family, and community that are right outside of his door.
[00:51:43]  And so, through this form of digital deracination, which is another subject I've talked about at length over the years, that it really kind of comes to show that unless you're actually living sort of that healthy balance, you're trying to maintain the royal path, to keep this in a Christian lens.
[00:51:58]  That, you know, all of a sudden it's very easy that we can fall far too much and that we're on the phone all the time or that we're constantly trying to live this sort of performance lifestyle rather than the lifestyle that we actually advocate for.
[00:52:12]  And more often than not, it happens, especially in religious circles and politics as well, where you can allow yourself to just be, excuse me, programmed by algorithm rather than, you know, am I actually seeking the truth?
[00:52:28]  Yeah.
[00:52:28]  No, that's so salient.
[00:52:31]  I think everyone in the audience can probably identify something in themselves in that, as I can, and probably certainly knows people in their lives that are at the logical end of that.
[00:52:42]  And what you see often is, again, people just spiral out, crash out, and you just don't hear from them for a while.
[00:52:47]  I think that's typically the end result.
[00:52:49]  Well, Matthew, we are running a little bit out of time.
[00:52:51]  I do have to get to an ad after our conversation.
[00:52:56]  Where can people find you for more?

=== Finding Me on Twitter (04:20) ===

[00:52:57]  Because they're going to be hungry for some more.
[00:52:59]  Well, I'm very grateful for the opportunity to speak.
[00:53:01]  It was a real great opportunity.
[00:53:03]  Very happy for it.
[00:53:04]  You can find me on Twitter at Mr. Prudentialist.
[00:53:07]  Just go look for the little frog.
[00:53:08]  You can't find me or miss me.
[00:53:09]  I'm often on Orrin McIntyre's show, usually once or twice a month on there.
[00:53:15]  But along myself, I am the host of the show called The Digital Archipelago and Do You Even Read?
[00:53:20]  This coming Wednesday, the 13th, myself and my co host will be reviewing and discussing Grayson Quay and his book, The Transhumanist Temptation, and he'll come on as well to sort of discuss the.
[00:53:32]  Religious perspective on the ongoing AI and transhumanist craze that we see from Elon Musk and others.
[00:53:37]  But as always, Tate, thank you so much for having me on.
[00:53:39]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:53:40]  I'll be watching out for that.
[00:53:41]  Grayson's a patriot.
[00:53:42]  You're a patriot.
[00:53:42]  That's going to be great.
[00:53:43]  A lot of patriotism going on there.
[00:53:44]  So thanks so much.
[00:53:44]  Thank you, Matthew.
[00:53:45]  Catch you next time.
[00:53:47]  All right.
[00:53:47]  Well, that was the great provincialist.
[00:53:49]  Yeah, he's just a high IQ patriot.
[00:53:52]  I think we'd love to see that.
[00:53:53]  So I got to play a quick ad, a quick word from today's sponsor, and then we'll wind this showdown.
[00:54:01]  Let me get that.
[00:54:02]  Sort of fired up for you guys here.
[00:54:06]  Let's see if I can get this going.
[00:54:07]  All right.
[00:54:09]  Let me punch in a little bit and stay tuned.
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[00:55:10]  Well, thank you very much to PDS Debt for sponsoring the show.
[00:55:13]  Very happy to have them on board.
[00:55:15]  And with that, we got to wind this show down for the week.
[00:55:17]  I'll see you guys on Monday.
[00:55:18]  I'll be very excited to be back with you.
[00:55:20]  I hope you enjoyed the conversation with the Prudentialist.
[00:55:22]  I was really excited to have him on.
[00:55:24]  You can follow me on X and Instagram at Real Tape Brown.
[00:55:28]  I will be monitoring the Hana virus situation.
[00:55:30]  It's going to be wacky and wild to see how this develops.
[00:55:32]  And we'll be back tonight for Tim Kest IRL at 8 p.m.
[00:55:36]  I think what we're going to do next is send you guys over to the great Devorey Darkins.
[00:55:41]  He's always got something cooking over there on the Darkins Media Network.
[00:55:46]  We'd love to see it.
[00:55:48]  And let's get you guys heading on over there.
[00:55:52]  I'll send you guys over there in a second.
[00:55:55]  Maybe.
[00:55:56]  But yeah, you know, what's interesting is on the topic that me and the Prudentials were discussing, I've seen this pushback into dumb phones.
[00:56:03]  I don't know if you guys have seen this.
[00:56:04]  This has really been the craze recently, I think, specifically among millennials and Zoomers, you know, people that have had smartphones for the majority of their life, is they're ditching the smartphone, interacting with the dumb phone.
[00:56:15]  And it's funny, I know a lot of people that have, I've met a lot of people that have done this and they're like, I can't go back, bro.
[00:56:21]  Like, this has changed my life.
[00:56:23]  I can like see new colors, smell new smells.
[00:56:25]  It's really a terrific, wonderful thing.
[00:56:27]  So, I think I might test that out.
[00:56:28]  I think I might do that and see what's going on.
[00:56:30]  Cause everyone I know that's like, yeah, I tested it out.
[00:56:32]  Once they actually did it, they're like, I can't go back.
[00:56:35]  It's changed my life.
[00:56:36]  I think the smartphone really is poisoning.
[00:56:38]  And you can still obviously access Twitter and everything through your desktop.
[00:56:41]  So, it's not like you're going to be cut off from the world.
[00:56:43]  But again, it just breaks up that constant flow of information to yourself at all times.
[00:56:48]  It's probably not healthy for us to be knowing the goings on of everyone in existence at all times.
[00:56:54]  So, anyway, that was kind of an exciting thing that I had seen a lot of people embracing that.
[00:56:59]  Attack on Surge X is bring back Nokia bricks.
[00:57:02]  Yeah, literally.
[00:57:03]  Yeah, literally.
[00:57:03]  That's what we need.
[00:57:03]  That would save the West forever.
[00:57:05]  So, with that, X and Instagram, Real Tate Brown.
[00:57:07]  We'll be back tonight for Tim Kassauer at 8 p.m.
[00:57:08]  Thank you very much for watching.
[00:57:10]  I'm going to send you guys over to Devoree, confirming raid, bada bing, bada boom.
[00:57:14]  And we'll catch you guys next time.
[00:57:16]  Thank you very much for watching.