#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?

28:12Yeah, the culture of a stepperlep appears to have been sort of lost in its entirety. It hasn't been. It hasn't been. It's just been wildly suppressed, like everything else, like masculinity, like natural, you know, the natural culture of the country. I wrote the other week about this ridiculous thing where the Shakespeare birthplace trust inevitably is waging war on Shakespeare. And the new thing is, why are we doing so much Shakespeare or the Shakespeare birthplace trust and why aren't we spending more time celebrating this Bengali poet? Said Bengali poet wasn't born in Stratford, but on Avenure, jerk.

28:53Probably if you go to his birthplace, you won't find all that much Shakespeare. fear. But it's just filled all of the institutions, all cultural institutions, all filled with stupid thinking like that. I think the slight difference is there's a sense of rebelliousness in America that we don't. Well, there is in Britain as well. There is everywhere. You can very effectively squash it. And for some years in America, they tried to squash that in America. And Americans use the biggest hammer they could find to hit back against it, which is Donald J. Trump. And the British public haven't yet found a hammer.

29:37Very interesting. Yeah, if you think about who Americans are the progeny of, I'm aware that immigration, recent immigration, what is this down a little bit? But they're the descendants of people who said, eight -week journey at sea, limited chance of survival, not really too sure what I'm going to. Count me in. Yeah, I know there is an explanation of that. Yes, but there's also, you know, there's, I'd like to think there are plenty of illegitimate buggers back home as well. And there are plenty of brave people and plenty of people who may not have left the islands, but who still have similar instincts, you know.

30:15It just seems like there's at least in the UK and not among most of the friends that I spend my time with, but that's because I, I very carefully selected my group of friends to not be those people. But when I hear the commentary that happens online, I do think, huh, this shared reveling in discontent, in, if you were to ring one of your friends and say, in the UK, get that in you. Thank you, Douglas. Time for you to do your first ad read. There we are. Utonic. If I become wildly ill from drinking this, it's bad for you, isn't it? It would look bad, but you can hold it together. I'm sure you've taken worse across across across your illustrious career.

30:56Thank you. Very good. Come on. Come on. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.

31:05Oh, it's delicious. Very up. Yeah, you were paid to say that. Yeah, this, I always remember I rang a friend and I said, I'm like, what are you doing today? What do you tell me about what you've done today? Oh man, living the dream. Took the bins out this morning. It's been raining all day. You know, that classic, British sort of banter though. It is, but it feels to me like it, be careful sort of what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be in some ways. And rarely that's kind of, I wanna get, rarely you, it's hard to reverse that. Like people bond in the UK over this sense of shared suffering over this sense that that things are sort of a little bit crap and not necessarily Well, you have to make them better then yep, I think so so is I don't really like winding Although we're doing a bit of it at the moment.

31:57Yeah, well, we can bond together over that. Conor McGregor. Saviour of Ireland Interesting figure Interesting figure big fan of stimulants Really? Oh, yeah, okay. Oh, yeah, I've been reliably told What sort of stimulants we're talking about? The prototypical nasal delivery system, the patented... He kind of regularly likes his cocaine. Oh, I see. Right. Oh gosh. Right. Huh. Wasn't immediate what I was thinking when you mentioned that. But no, I quite like the fact that he stood up and said what his shithole, the politicians as a making of his home country of Ireland at the moment. And then his statement was confirmed by the fact that all Irish politicians condemned him for saying it.

32:47That's always, always, just like your right. Yeah, always sign that you're right. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I don't know everything about him is admirable, but I'm, I'm, I'm, saying that again I mean like since when did the Irish become such weak people when I was growing up they were car bombers and no I mean I don't know about that but no there was a some years going dairy London Dury it was made European City of Culture I mean I'm leaping to the northern island but and the moment there was announced that dairy London Dury was to become European City of culture, somebody put a car bomb outside the offices of the European City of Culture.

33:34It fortunately didn't go off, but as a local friend of mine said, in one way we were introducing them to our local culture. Anyway, I mean, I have lots of views about the Irish, but I never thought of them as people you could just walk over and the current generation of politicians with their immigration policies are much more seem to suggest that you can just walk over the iris. So rather surprising. Have you tried to tie any of these threads together? Sort of what we're seeing? Well, I tried in a book some years ago called Strange Death of Europe and said almost everything I had to say about that and how much of a Cassandra do you feel like now?

34:17I think I was pretty much right on everything. Yeah. I didn't know how fast the timeline I'd be right on or which countries but you didn't require a profit, it just required somebody with eyes. If you are madly import people from all over the world, you don't particularly want to be part of your society and shove them into county carry. You'll create problems. I've been fascinated by the pace of the news and how quickly there's a lack of stickiness that they've all had. Is it disturbing that we regularly just forget or sort of luck away from catastrophes or is it just sort of par for course in the modern world now?

35:09Because remember when Trump got shot? No, me neither. Yeah, I know. That disappeared within days. It was amazing. And it just seems like you haven't even got much from an explanation about the shooter. And I don't see anybody really because there's always something new. The velocity of news. I remember in AS level media studies in Stockton Sixth Form College, there's told this story about a lady on September 12th, 2001, who's a PR agent, and she advised all of the companies that they were working with to dump every piece of bad news that they had. Oh, there was somebody in the British government who was an advisor.

35:47You could have bad news. You could have bad news, that's right. And then she lost her job. Yeah. I don't think it. I think the devices we all have in our pockets speed everything up. But what I can't quite understand is that I mean, I have to be across all or most of the news, certainly about the things I need to know about. Because it's my job as well as my passion. But I can't understand that the people who have the buzz on their Apple iPhone for updates of news when they're not in the business of it. It seems very very unhealthy to my view. It's, I think it creates a sort of cycle of panic and forgetfulness and self -aggrandizement and oh my god have you heard, you know, you know, earthquake in Myanmar.

36:40Ah, that's bad, but it all flows by and it's always like that. I'm not quite sure what people are meant to do with most of the information that's coming their way if they're not in the business. Not quite sure, it's expected of them other than to kind of some people they think. Follow in it. Yeah, sort of prove they care or something. I don't know, I wish more people would read books. It just, you know, you've spent the last few years not in the US that much. You've been traveling. Not maybe the way that most people would consider traveling. Right, I didn't take a gap here in Thailand. Shame. But with that, you know, we've had a lot of, an awful lot of turmoil over the last few years and it just, it doesn't, very few things seem to stick.

37:27Now, even causes that people were once unbelievably ardent about. It is sort of manana, manana, something new, something more sexy, something more recent. And the ability for anything to be Lindy is increasingly difficult. To be what? Lindy. The life cycle of a non -paraship, like an idea, it's a talib sort of repopularized it. Basically the classics are the classics for a reason. If something's been around for 500 years, it's probably likely that it's going to be around in future. The problem being that we are living in a never -ending now, where almost all of the content that you consume today was created in the last 24 hours.

38:08In fact, that's exactly how Instagram stories and Snapchat and stuff like that work. Yes. If you see something today that's on the trending side of X and it's still there tomorrow, you think, fucking hell, that's a big story. It's still here tomorrow. Yes. It's a big story. I often say this about, Sun the War Zone, so I spent recent years in, is it's, I sometimes come back and I, and you know, happened in America, and I get this sense that people have fed up of the war. I go, but it's not your place to be fed up of the war. You're not in the war. You know, a near the war. What you're saying is you want the story to change, but the story's not there for you.

38:54It's not there for your edification or entertainment. That's a very unhealthy attitude. I come across quite a lot. Oh, can't it just be over? Oh, but no one in the region wishes that.

39:11Yeah, that's a peril of coming back from places where the news is real. Where none of it's metaphorical and none of it's abstract. I think criticisms from people who are getting pinged on their iPhone a few too many times per day seem a little bit dickless. Yeah, I just got back from Ukraine again the other day and I watched the unfortunate episode in the Oval Office between President Zelensky and the President of Vice President and I watched it with some Ukrainian soldiers in a trench at the front line and well I watched it and then the noticed that a bit later they'd noticed it and I was profoundly depressed by what I sore and then actually was rather energized with the fact that the response of the troops was different.

40:08Also, well I said to, I said to the commander of the drone unit that I was embedded with, you know, I can't be kind of noticing that as you were scrolling through your Instagram and at that moment that was one of the things that came across your phone, along with, you know, the usual cat videos and sort of hot chicks sort of thing, you know, and there was a picture from the Oval Office and I said, did you have any reaction to that? And he said, well, we were kind of encouraged not to spend too much time focusing on the international two -ings and four -ings. And he said, I was rather pleased to quote it and the post he said, shit happens all the time.

40:48But I've got a job to do. He went out and he put the bomb on the drone and sent it off. Keep calm and carry on, droning. That's always rather encouraging in a way that what people get head up about, nevertheless is a level of which people are so. And you know, whatever one of the people's thoughts about that war, you know, he and the other people in the trench, their homes are 30 kilometers behind us, and the Russians were one and a half kilometers that way. So none of it is abstract. You know. Do you know Freya India? You're familiar with her? No. Blond, a young blonde girl, writer, very good, on the sub -stack and doing some stuff with the free press.

41:35Things. Oh yeah, yeah, I've seen the byline. Yeah. And she had this conversation with her at the start of last year. She was talking a lot about how people criticize Gen Z for taking stuff that they see online and turning it that's right. Come on, keep feeling yourself. Very good. And they see it as reality and people criticize Gen Z for turning the virtual into the real in this way. And so we have to realize that a lot of these kids are spending eight, ten hours a day on screens, far less asleep, far less around other people. So I understand it makes sense sort of rationally if you were to just sort of explain the situation why are you over prioritizing what's happening digitally over what's happening in the real world or your real world.

42:25Again, new stories from outside of your territory of your domain of control, sex -journalizing of agency, all this sort of stuff. But yeah, she said the online world is the real world for these people. and I kind of get the same sense here. I kind of get the same sense that people who don't know what's happening on the ground, who don't understand sort of the implications of what this is, they get to lap within the sort of narrative and then you're in the trenches with these people and they're like, well, I've got a job to do. So I kind of can't afford to. But we shouldn't be of the Dejected belief that people are always what they are now One of the things that's much strung me in the last 18 months in Israel Has been the generation that I partly write about in this new book are Very largely people from a generation who their elders thought were, you know, iPhone obsessed, snapchat and Instagram.

43:40Brainrod, just wanted a party and have fun and, you know, beyond Instagram. That was what a lot of older Israelis thought to, 1467 and 73 and, you know, and so on. And then actually when their country was attacked, this is a generation that has stood up and shown its It's madly being galvanized. They really have. I mean, I've been with them for much of the last 18 months and whether it's in Gaza or in Lebanon or in Israel or in Judea or some area. And I'm constantly struck by this. These are people whose contemporaries in America and Britain are still described in the terms that they were described as until October the 6th, 23rd and 23.

44:26So it's not inevitable that people can't rise for an occasion or can't change. It's not inevitable that because there's a sort of virtual era you've been in that you'll always be stuck in it. I do think when I came back from at least Christmas last year, I spoke to a friend who's a politician and I mentioned this phenomenon of just because people have been, it does not mean that when a time of trial comes, which is something I had on my mind a lot in recent years. It's not inevitable that at the moment of trial, some people, a lot of people don't step up and really show what they are for the good.

45:08And this friend said, yes, it's true. It's circumstances, isn't it? And I said, I've got a slight tweak to make to that observation, which is, yes, it's circumstances, But it's not just circumstances. It's circumstances plus whether you have well -cultured people up until that moment. This is why I've cited a few times and I cited in this book, the terrible statistics for the percentage of young Americans who be willing to fight for their country if it was an imminent threat of invasion. The number of British young people would be willing to fight for their country if it was an existential risk.

45:51And this is something, I say this in democracies and death cults, but if you look at the stats, it's terrifying. Shortly after Ukraine was invaded by Russia in February 22, there was a poll asking Americans, you know, what percentage of them would be willing to stay in fight if their country was invaded. And only just the majority of Republicans said that they would stay in fight and only just the majority of Democrats. And as I quipped at the time, that means the rest of them would hot -foot it to Canada, assuming the Canada wasn't the invader. I think when I first made that observation, that seemed like a joke now.

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47:41Does it indeed? Yeah, I'm not quite sure of the, is that just what happens? I say Canada and you go, yeah, Pornhub. Yeah, no, you haven't, wait for my 300 IQ move here. Yeah, I'm watching this with interest. The secret weapon in the trade war that Canada needs to use is to restrict access to Ponte. That's how they fight back. You want to talk about tariffs? We'll see what happens when you don't have as free and easy access. Yeah, exactly. That's the comedian came up with the idea. I think it's a strong solution. strong. We see if Mark Carney has the balls to do that. No, I was fascinated by that.

48:23When that poll first came out, a lot of Americans wrote about it and said, Crikey, that's not good news. But I wasn't so depressed about it because in my interpretation, the concept for most Americans of their country being invaded by a land evasion from other countries, not just hard to imagine. It's impossible to imagine. It's not impossible to imagine if you live in Donetsk or in Dedenkiv, but it's not impossible if you live in Latvia or Lithuania or Estonia anymore. But it's impossible for most Americans to imagine. So, in a way, it's not really a fair question. It's like me saying, you know, how do you think you'd behave if UFOs landed?

49:09Martians started telling you what to do. He's just so -no. But it was the same in the UK after about a year ago, I think, after partly because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but there was also, I think, the head of the chief of the defense staff said, if this escalation continued in Europe, then it might, we might have to have conscription in the UK. And again, that sounds like nobody from this generation can even imagine that. That. But that was just what he said, and then of course, there's a poll and it asks young people from the ages of 18 to 40, which is the ages of our four bears, when they went to fight in 1940 and 18 and 19, 19, 19, 19, 45, and the majority of people said that they wouldn't fight even if Britain was at existential risk of invasion.

50:00And by the way, when I looked at the figures, I mean it was, there were some great, I think it was inside that one was that the one of the main reasons why people said that they wouldn't fight was they just the most banal things that they've been told by Hollywood films and things which is oh you know and little bits of Gandhi which was you know the number of people who said things like war doesn't solve anything. You know, what a bad.

50:37So there was that. And another way I think I was fascinated by I think 9 % of the young people questions said that they couldn't fight because they had someone at home they were looking after. Also say mysterious answer to me. I'm looking after my nan so I can't fight to protect. Do Vizzy bringing her tea in the morning to stop? Maybe I think someone doesn't kick the door down. Yeah, it's very strange. Anyway, but the point is, the reason I mention this rather laboriously is I do think that it's very, very hard to predict how people actually react at a time of trial. One of the reasons why I tell some of the personal stories I do about the people I've spoken during the war in Israel in the last year and a half is because it's so interesting to see who steps up and how people react.

51:35And you know, the heroism of some people, indeed many people, when you realize what's a stake, I quote the opening of on democracies and death cults, This thing I've thought about a lot, which comes up in Tolstoy more in peace, which is when the two armies are facing off against each other in the old Napoleonic style, you know, where they face each other on the battlefield, and the order has not yet been issued to advance. and Tolstoy brilliantly describes how every soldier on each side knows that the step they're going to take is not just a step, it's a movement into a totally different realm.

52:32And that, you know, that in that case you are from the realm of standing there uniform polished on guard meant to be holding a line and from the moment you're one step that way, you're in the place where you'll just have to do anything. And that's one of the reasons why I'm interested in this, because this is the most real, it's why war is so terrible. And also for writers so fascinating is because that transition from one world to another totally different world seems unfathomable until you're in it. What have you learned about what what time does to people?

53:21A lot, but I would say the simplest, the most important one is that it shows people, it shows humanity, humankind, and it's absolutely worse. And it also, it's absolutely best. There's nothing comparable to it in human experience that brings out the Paulingness of which our species is capable and the greatness and sometimes at the same moment. What greatness have you seen? And awful lot. I mean, there were some stories I tell in the book like, I mean, there's a young woman I met early in the conflict who had lost her fiancé. He had been at the Nova Party in the desert when Hamaz attacked at 6 .30 in the morning.

54:26Hundreds and hundreds young people are rave and when Hamas terrorists fired Rockets and then drove in on military jeeps and started raping and killing and butchering, he managed to get, he was one who did manage there. The young people trying to get into cars and get out were blockaded by Hamas and killed in the cars and then it caused a backlog of the cars of people trying to escape and then people were just being killed where they were. There were a couple of other He directs it from the party and won this young man found and he took four strangers in his car, drove them to a nearby town called Bashiba, dropped them off, drove back, they begged him not to.

55:08He spoke to his girlfriend on the way and she said, please don't. He went back, filled up the car with another group of young people from the rave, drive it back. He goes back a third time and on the way back the third time Emma has killed them all. But this is just amazing, amazing human greatness. There's a friend who I mentioned in the book who has a story that should be much better known, he's a wonderful young man called Nimrod and he on the morning woke up in his home outside Jerusalem when the sirens were starting to go. The rockets coming in thousands of rockets from Gaza and he was in reserves, being a special forces guy and he was in reserve.

56:01He woke up, realized for messages from people in the south how serious it was, got a call from his commander in his unit in Jerusalem, your called back, and he said no, we needed South. And he drove and he picked up a pistol on the way, and I think eight rounds of ammunition. He went past every police checkpoint, security army checkpoint, the stuff, and it started to go up. He said he didn't see a live body until the early hours of the afternoon. But then he engaged the terrorists and he fought with them for the next 48 hours saved many lives. But on the way he said to me, he said, when I got to the junction where there were all these dead bodies lying around or the party goers and others, he said, when I got to the motorway junction, I was certain I would not survive that day.

56:58And he stopped, he pulled that, got out of the car and pulled into a ditch and he made a phone, he got on his phone, he made a video for his two children and he said, I wanted them to have a message from me that when the phone was found on my body, they'd have something and he survived and I just filled with admiration, filled with admiration for people like that. Amazing. Amazing. We're very, very lucky in America, Bristol, and other countries to produce people like that, but we could. We should. Explain the title to me again. On democracy's and death cults, it's currently in between a lot of Easter box.

57:47I showed you Amazon bestseller lists. Yes, just before we started. There's an awful lot of, I will explain the title, but yes, it did amuse me that I'm currently battling in the Amazon .com bestseller lists with, I'm currently in number 12, but number 13, sneaking up behind me is, it's not easy being a bunny. An early reader book for kids, beginner books, you probably got it. And I'm also, but I'm chasing, I'm getting very close to catching up with a great term you probably know as well called Hippity hopperty, little bunny, finger puppet boardbook freester. What's a little blue truck springtime doing very well?

58:37You know there was a humorist in the UK many years ago who discovered that in the 70s or so the three things sold books in Britain in those days were anything to do with cats nets, anything to do with golf and anything to do with Nazis. So he wrote a book called golfing for cats with a cat with a swastika on band on a cover. How did it do? Quite well, I think. I'm not sure there's a perfect crossover in the Venn diagram of those readers, but yeah, no, next time I'll call it democracy and death cults and Easter bunnies. No, the title goes to something I had thought about for a long time, and which I try to answer in the book, which is what attitude, people in free liberal societies, he's democratic societies, societies are a piece, can take towards what I call the death cults.

59:42I should stress by the way that our societies have experienced plenty of death cults in the past. I give the example, there was a Spanish philosopher from the last century who was much opposed to the rise of fascism in Spain, Francoism, and a meeting at the universe he taught at the students at one point started chanting Viva la Muerte, long lived death. He said this is the moment when this necrophilic utterance, this is the moment when it all goes wrong. So it has happened in the past, but the death cult I'm primarily writing about and talking about in this book is the death cult of Hamaz and Islamic jihadists in general.

1:00:41I say that the I was one of the shortly after the 7th of October when I went to the region when to Israel first. I went to a reunion of some of the survivors of the Nova Party and one of the young men who survived said to me after showing me his footage from the morning, which was too graphic to go into, but he said, what would you do if this happened in your country? And I thought, but I didn't say to him, but it has. You know, it has happened in my country. Happened at the Manchester Arena in 2017. It happened at the Bata Cloud Theatre in Paris. In 2015, it happened at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando in 2015.

1:01:35It's just that it... Most people don't know what to do about it and try to pass it over. It hasn't happened, thank God, hasn't happened as much. But it's really, I suppose, it's in part, as well as being a first -hand account of war, the purpose of this book, is to try to answer this question that I've tried to answer all my life, which is what attitude you can take and what response you can make to people who have totally different values to yours. Because there has been this presumption which we both grew up with, which is what we have is whatever one has or wants to have. And But we all have the same desires in this life.

1:02:26Some people do, and some people just don't. And some people want to, you know, they want to make the world burn, and some of them want to make other people burn. And take as many people as they can with them, and much more. and the taunt that Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, ISIS, Hamaz, Hezbollah, the taunt, they always have is the same, which is some variation of we love death more than you love life. And in fact Hassan Nazrallah who went to the meet his maker last year in Beirut, the head of Hezbollah, he said this for decades, he said, you know, the thing with the infidel is that they love life and this is their great weakness.

1:03:29And I think that's not the case. But I know for sure, and it's one of the things that this book is about, is it is not enough to just like life or to enjoy life. If you're going to enjoy life, you also have to be willing to fight for it. And sometimes that's metaphorical, and sometimes it's really not. A quick note, I partnered with function because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year function run lab tests that monitor over a hundred biomarkers and then they've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan.

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1:04:51That's functionhealth .com -modern -wistim. I've been pretty fascinated by the reaction online, over the last thing with the Ukraine, with the Middle East, with sort of a broader conversation about the Jewish community at large generally. I wonder how much Elon's opening up of X has contributed to outgroup tribalism now that maybe some of the Guardrails have been taken off with regards to that Yeah, it feels to me like the world has reached some new fever pitch of sort of outgroup passion Against whoever they see as escape goat whoever they see as being in the wrong and nobody can agree on who is in the wrong, which is one of the most interesting observations that everybody acts as if the facts are already settled, whilst never being able to actually agree on what the facts are.

1:05:48So I say they're settled, you say they're settled. We don't agree, but both of us act as if they are. And yet I just do the reaction, especially in the West, to a rapidly developing kinetic situation on the other side of the planet. Well, I mean, I think I've said you before, there's been one of the things I noticed in the internet age was that we'd gone from the era of we disagree about our opinions or our interpretations of an event. And then the internet age has given us the great things if we disagree about what just happened. And that does throw up its own manias. So on the reason I try to see things with my own eyes is because I'm always pretty confident that someone's going to try to tell me I haven't seen something I've seen with my own eyes.

1:06:47And sure enough that happens all the time, but you have the reassurance, if you know, as that, you know. And I do find that interesting. There are, for instance, I mean, there are people who would like to regard themselves as civilized people, I'm sure, who just will not accept that what happened on October 7th happened, which was one of the reasons why I went there straight away was because I knew that would happen. When did you get there? I got there in October of 2023. 23, I went because I was in Times Square the day after the massacre as it was still going on. And the, there was an anti -Israel pro -Hermans protests happening in the center of Times Square with people supporting the massacre.

1:07:38And I thought, well, this is one thing that's going to happen is they're going to pass over the massacre. They're going to celebrate it and pass it over. They're going to pretend it didn't happen or try to diminish it or minimize it.

1:07:54And I just didn't want to see that happen. There's what many people said, it was like watching Holocaust denial in real time. And yes, I mean, and in the other main conflict going on the moment in Russia, Ukraine, you know, I mean, at the highest level of the American government, there have been people who have implied that, you know, Ukraine started the war or is the aggressor? And that's, that's disturbing to see because there are some things that just have to be agreed upon. You know, it was Russian tanks that rolled into Ukraine in February 2022. It was Hamas terrorists who invaded by the thousands into Israel on October 7, 2023.

1:08:43Like, less at least agree to that. As what you describe as the sort of the online thing is definitely massively worsened. And I think it's because I mean, all the sluices are up, all of the guardrails, all of that. And there's good in lots of ways. Look at what happened when our societies tried to say there's only one explanation for, for instance, the COVID virus coming out of the area where that virus was being made and that it was to do with Chinese people eating that's from a wet market and not to do with the lab that was making that virus happening to be leaky. We were told consistently that the lab leak was a conspiracy.

1:09:42And one of the reasons why that's so poisonous to the discourse as a whole is because it understand to be makes people say, if I've been lied to about that, what are the other things that are true? What are the other conspiracy theories that are not conspiracy theory? It comes a gateway drug. Yeah, and I think a lot of people on that, and then of course there's a great habit and is a kind of enjoyable. And people, I believe, everything's being kept from them. And doubtless, some stuff is being kept from us. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not. But I think the conspiratorial mindset is flourishing at the moment.

1:10:20And it's funny because you can, well, it's funny, but it's also more importantly serious because it's a sign of very unhealthy thing in society.

1:10:34When the JFK files were released the other week, there was a lot of excitement that, you know, finally, we're going to discover exactly what happened. And I wrote a column while after saying, no, the thing we've learned from the JFK files is that the president was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald with the gun that Lee Harvey Oswald owned that Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald noticed was missing from the house that morning. And it was funny because I noticed that to the extent that I monitor reactions to anything I say I noticed how many people were annoyed. No, they're still, they're stressing, he wasn't as good a sharp shooter as he's, you can't stop it.

1:11:24It looks, by the way, on that one, it's quite interesting. It looks like what happened was the CIA were monitoring him, but he carefully Lee Harvey Oswald, because he tried to defect to Russia once before, and he tried to defect Cuba. And so the CIA were monitoring him. They didn't want to reveal the methods by which they did that. in the process, one of the biggest conspiracy theories of the modern era was born. But I don't think I'll persuade anyone who thinks otherwise on that, who's deeply into the idea that LBJ desperately wanted to do this or X wanted to do that. And the problem is, what you're used to, is that the problem is that the algorithm rewards the crazy.

1:12:06I noticed on the day that the JFK files were released, some Wankrag online started a live stream that was suggested to me and it was its title was JFK files reveal Israeli plot or something and there was There's no such thing, but that gets engagement. Whereas JFK scholars reading documents live, it'll take about four months. That's sexy. Less engagement. You're not going to watch them reading the documents. And you know, that's just the reality of the era we're in. And you can't stop it, but I think people should be alive to it, should be aware of it. This is one of the things that's being done to us by these darn devices that tell me all about Easter Bunny Books.

1:13:22It seems like the sort of scapegoat out group finger pointing dynamic. It feels like that has been shunned up at least over the last couple of years. Yeah, and as I say in this book, I mean, it's inevitable because historically we know this is a case. And I say this to somebody who isn't Jewish, but it will almost always end up with the Jews. Why is that the case? Very interesting question. One is that right and left can both do it. Oh, it's like an equal opportunity victim. Yes. Right. Both right and left can do it. I say at one point in the book, the only interesting thing about anti -semitism is that it's, which isn't to say that all criticism of Israel is antisemitic, which isn't etc., etc.

1:14:09But I think that one of the interesting things about anti -semitism is that it's famously a shapeshifting virus. It can come from anywhere. It can come from the political left. to come from political right. It can come from people wearing jack boots and it can come from people wearing covid masks. You know, laterally we've been less attuned to the existence of the second, you know, there's been, there's always this expectation that it'll be the same as last time, but it doesn't. It moves. But the reason why I do think that that's a perennial to the conspiracy a sea mind is because the Jews can be blamed for everything and just have been historically.

1:14:48They get blamed for being poor and for being rich. In the 19th century, British anti -Semitism and indeed continental anti -Semitism relied on the trope of the Rothschilds and of the impoverished Jews from Eastern Europe. and they just did both at once. They can be accused of being very religious and trying to push religion and also being ultra -secularist, the most secular, pushing atheism. They can be blamed for being stateless, rootless cosmopolitan, so there was a line that anti -Semites of the right used to use and the left about Jews. And now they get blamed for having a state. So it's a sort of perennial.

1:15:37And I think if you want to get an exact and wide is, it's many reasons because there's different types of anti -semitism. There's is lamek anti -semitism, there's types of Christian anti -semitism. I think that it ends up usually being that historically Jews are almost perfectly positioned to mirror whatever your own failings are. And this is a line I quote in the book from a great Russian writer, Fassley Grossman, who said in the 20th century, and his masterpiece Life and Fate, he said, tell me what you accuse the Jews of, and I'll tell you what your guilty of. is fascinating insight this. It's a mirror to your own failings.

1:16:27So for instance, the main accusation that the Revolutionary Islamic government in Tehran uses of the Jewish state of Israel is that it's a colonial power. And this is quite funny to me because, I mean, by the way, the Supreme Leader of Iran last year wrote a thank you letter to students at Colombia and other American Ivy League universities for coming out for the last year and a half on the anti -Israel protests. He wrote them a thank you letter in joining him in the anti -colonialist cause. There is one country in the Middle East which has been colonizing the place more than any other in our lifetimes and that's the Iranian revolutionary government in Tehran.

1:17:19They colonized the great country of Iran in 1979. They've in the years and decades since they've colonized Iraq, arch colonized Syria, colonized Yemen, colonized and destroyed Lebanon. But they say the Jews are the cloneless power. Another very good example just right there, the President of Turkey, a very close enemy of mine, a recipe type, Ed Wann, who I initiated a to family tree poetry competition against many years ago. That's a by way. You have friends in high places. I do. And then good enemies, the best. The recipe of Edwan, President Edwan of Turkey, accuses the Jewish state of being an occupying power, which is hilarious if you know Cyprus at all.

1:18:16Because the North half of Cyprus is occupied by Turkey. Now, still has been for 50 years. totally illegal occupation that nobody in America or Britain or the West seems to give a damn about. So when Edouard says the Jews are occupiers, all he's doing is telling us about himself. That's all. And when, I mean, it works every which way you do it. The Nazis accuse the Jews of being racists. It's almost as if it tells us something about the Nazis. It's an extraordinary thing and this works almost every way. Yeah, people accuse the Jews of things they're guilty of and because they're a small enough portion of the global population and tend to outperform, not always by any means, but tend to outperform in the areas they go into.

1:19:21They're almost the perfect scapegoat. Is this not true over the groups too? Oh, yeah, for sure. Never anywhere as much. Because of this shapeshifting thing I describe. And because there are very deep theological reasons for it. You know, it took until the 1950s for a Pope in Rome to say the Jews are not responsible for the killing of Christ. That's a long time for the church to confirm that. So, you know, you have many centuries of Christian anti -Semitic pogroms and much more. The Islamic world has not yet caught up with that and much of its still blames the Jews for rejecting the revelation of Muhammad because when the inventor of Islam came up with the idea and went around trying to get other people to join him, the Jews were among the first people who said no thanks, we've already got our religion and we'd keep it.

1:20:26What are the lessons for the wider world from the Ukraine, from the Middle East, over the last few years? What should people take away from the way that these sort of complex have unfolded in the response? Because it seems, and a lot of people sort of say this, It's a ever -escalating kinetic engagement to the sort of burbling below the surface. You mentioned before about the only job of the politicians in government is to keep the economy going. There's maybe some fertile ground to sow seeds in with regards to that, which is going to raise tensions. I would say more. I watched a video from the PM of Singapore, who as far as I can tell, I'm sure there's critics of Singapore out there and I'm not a geopolitics expert.

1:21:19As far as I can tell, Singapore's kind of a shining light of some areas of growth governance. Oh, sure, of economics. Yeah. And he said himself, you know, that economic turbulence like this has preceded a lot of pretty big conflicts in the past. And if you've got a few petri dish examples of this actually happening before you've got the economic pressure happening as well globally, the era of free trade is over, you know, could be. Traveling should be about the pleasure of the trip and not the stress of packing, which is why I am such a huge fan of nomadic. This travel pack, the 14 -litre travel pack, is what I wear every single day.

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1:22:39Right now, you can get a 20 % discount of everything from nomadic by going to the link in the description below, or heading to nomadic .com slash modern wisdom. And they ship internationally. That's nomadic .com slash modern wisdom. What should everybody keep in mind, given what you've seen from the front lines of the two most recent

1:23:06I don't know. I mean, I'm very wary about using other people's tragedies as mere sort of learning, you know, points. But I can tell you the few positive things that I have picked up. And one is a very straightforward one, which I think is a very important one for the West, which I go into in this book, which is, because I mentioned, I mean, it's about this, these twin worlds. And how does the democracy, whatever you're, whether a Democrat, Republican, doesn't matter, labor, conservative doesn't matter. But what can anyone who broadly speaking likes the societies we're from and wants them to continue, wants them to do well?

1:23:53What can they do if those societies are tested? And I think one of the things that is really very obvious to me now is you need to know what you're fighting for. You need to know that what you're fighting for is something that you cherish and you love. And I think that there has been in the period of de -energizing, which hopefully we're coming out of, but in that period we have all been told in a mirror of compression and elsewhere where the what we have is not good. You know. As I said in my last book in the War on the West, we have been told that, you know, like we're guilty. I mean, this is all horse shit, by the way.

1:24:42But I mean, you know, that we're uniquely guilty from colonialism or uniquely guilty from slavery or uniquely guilty from racism or all of this stuff. It's total horse shit. We should never have put up with it for so long that among other things, people from the world wanted to come to countries in the West and then tell us how bad we were. Should never have agreed to that. Somebody came into my home and said they didn't like my home and they thought it was uniquely awful. I think I'd tell them to scram. So why we put up with this for so long, I don't know. But we have been, and arguably many young people in particular, young and young, have been told that what they have been born into is not good.

1:25:34And one of my first instincts when I saw that poll of young Americans and young Brits, you know, would you be willing to lay down your life for the country if something terrible happened and you had to step up? I think one of the reasons why the yes vote is so low is because it doesn't matter whether your patriotic or not, you've been told your country's rotten. You know, there was an article written on the day mail the other week by a very smart young British guy who's a right wing. I think he's sort of a reformed voter type saying, why would I lay down my life for my country when it's let me down so badly?

1:26:11When, you know, our politicians don't listen to us. So it's not just a left -right thing by any means. But I think people have been told from a lot of different directions that our countries are not good. And I think that's not true. I never thought that was true. I've got a long enough memory and I've traveled enough, run up enough air miles in this life. To know that's not true. But if you tell people that it's the case for a long time and you de -energize, I mean you demotivate them, you tell them that they're rotten, then yeah you can really demoralize society. I think that needs to turn around.

1:26:51I think that people need to recognize what we have that's good. And as I've said to you before, the footfall alone tells us all we need to know. Footfall alone tells it. Nobody is trying today to make their way out of America to get to the safe harbor of Venezuela. Nobody's even leaving Britain to go to France. Certainly nobody's leaving France or Spain or Italy to try to get to Algeria. And in turn nobody from Algeria is trying to break into sub -Saharan Africa. Very few people are trying to break into communist China? Absolutely no one is trying to hot -foot it to North Korea. Okay, so it's like all of the countries that people in the world most want to come to are now what they have been for decades.

1:27:53America, Canada, Australia, Britain, France, and so on. So why did we put up with being told that these countries that are demonstrably the places people want to come to are bad places and everywhere else is good? It's just so sickening to me. I've had enough of it and I think most people have. Is that sense that things would be better if we were more like them over there. Is that a dynamic that's sort of fueling some of this? Which bit do you mean? The fact that if only we were a little bit more like, well you did at least they're living a little bit sort of closer to simplicity. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:28:43That's the real colonialist thinking. That's the real, that's the real orientalist thinking of our time. is the idea that it's actually rather wonderfully sent up in white loaches among other things. Is that stupid idea that other cultures have a depth of philosophy that we don't have? Or other cultures have a spiritualism that we don't have? Yeah, I mean, it's a phenomenon I've described before of people going backpacking to see temples in Thailand. wonderful things, absolutely, going to Myanmar to see temples, wonderful things to see, absolutely. But you should also visit Winchester Cathedral or Salisbury or some peaches in Rome or Chattra, you know, on and on and on.

1:29:40It's a very interesting mindset that the Western mindset is that what we have isn't rich enough. I described this recently at Archive, I borrowed Eric Weinstein's great analogy about ice cream. Have you heard this?

1:29:59It was a brilliant observation. Some years ago Eric and I were talking about this weird thing where the West had been sort of tricked into thinking, or we'd been sort of told that we need other flavors to make ourselves interesting, because otherwise were not interesting. You'll notice by the way that it doesn't work any other way around. Nobody goes to Ghana and says, I just can't help noticing you don't have enough Welsh people. And you could really do with it because it'll bring you some colour, some much needed diversity. Nobody would think of going to Pakistan and saying, I'm really a guy, he's you're seriously.

1:30:42He just don't have enough French culture here. But you do do it always with the West. You do do it always. And Eric's observation, which I thought was just brilliant, that classic way he can do does a refined, complicated question. He said, he said, you know, Dr. Swin, I was growing up. I had the impression for a while that vanilla ice cream was the base ice cream. It was like the base flavor and that all other flavors of ice cream were flavors added onto vanilla ice cream. And it's the same with us in the West. Vanilla, if you want to look at it like that, is a very complicated and rich flavor of its own.

1:31:31It's not the case that everything added to it is being added to a non -flavor. And I wish we realized that. I wish we had a little bit more. I never want to talk to a thumping nationalist stuff, but I would like people to have some downpried and things they should have some downpried. How have you avoided becoming, or maybe you have more nihilistic, despondent down? I'm interested in what the personal prices that you pay to be on the front lines of these things. I've seen an interview with you in Piers Morgan, where there was a brief interlude for a rocket to go overhead and then you brush yourself off and got back to it.

1:32:23I'm interested in sort of what it's been like for you over the last couple of years.

1:32:30Not really for me to say. I think it goes back to that point about seeing things that they're best and that they're worst at the same time. You know, I can't deny that when you see some things too much too close up, it has some kind of effect on you. I describe some of that in this book actually, but it's counted by the encouragement one gets. I don't mean encouragement for the people. I mean, literally seeing people who are encouraging to me in their actions. And you know, I, I, there have been in both conflicts. I spent more time in the Israel, Gaza conflict than in Ukraine, but I was very struck near the beginning of Ukraine conflict when I was with Ukraine Armed Forces when they would It took retort Kursan from the Russians.

1:33:36And all these unbelievable sight, all these people coming out from their houses after eight months under Putin -esque rule, coming, being liberated by their own army and unbelievable scenes and conversations and sights and I find real heroism on the battlefield a remarkable thing. I mean, unbelievably encouraging and positive. I like and feel enormous encouragement from seeing people fighting for life. I think it's almost unequaled as a thing to make you feel optimism about the species and particularly fighting for life against people who worship death. You know, I tell a story in this book about, which is a slightly difficult story to retail actually, but the mastermind of October the 7th, Yachiasin Wai, who was a proper psychopath, I mean, as you'll see, when the segment's about him, I mean, a proper psychopath, you know, who was in his really prison in the 2000s for the strangling to death, various Palestinians who he had fallen out with.

1:35:21Anyway, he had such necrophilic fantasies as a man, you know, promised even before the 7th of October, he said, we will go over and we will get the Jews and we will tear their hearts out of their bodies.

1:35:43In the end, he was killed by a young soldier from a regiment called the Bismillah who aren't even fully soldiers. And this young man who killed Sinwa are within less than a year of the 7th of October was not even in uniform when Sinwa invaded. And I went into Raffa just after Sinwa was killed and I went to see where he was and was with the unit, and included the men who killed him. And I thought, well, an extraordinary a wonderful thing that this man high on death finally had death delivered to him by someone who wasn't even in uniform. It's in part time, Scotty. He created his own downfall. And that sort of thing, I mean, I think that, you know, we all know there are different ways and different philosophies and different theological systems to look at the battle between good and evil.

1:36:56But this one, that one is a very clear one to me. And I, yes, I've, I've, I've got far more opportunism actually, funnily enough than I have pessimism, despite everything. Does it make dealing with criticisms or accusations of motive or whatever from the internet? Does it put those sort of things into perspective. I never gave a shit about that, as you know. I'm fascinated by it. I'm fascinated by how few shits you give. Yeah. I always have been. I just don't care. You know, I was saying to somebody recently that I really, I mean, I slightly wonder what would have happened if I'd have grown up in the social media era and I have, you know, friends and folks more of that sort of surveillance.

1:37:50But I think the truth is, is simply that I think that people sense of whether you're going right or wrong in your life or your career and whatever.

1:38:06Who takes advice from complete strangers? And don't we all, I'm sure you, as with me, you listen to advice or criticism even from people who care for you and you care for or love and, you know, who love you, who you admire and who admire you. I mean, I reckon, I mean, without getting all smolxy, I reckon that if you said to me, I saw this interview you did and I think you shouldn't have said that or whatever. I would actually listen to that. Because there are some people who I respect, whose opinion I think, yeah, that matters. But if you were just some random online saying, why the hell would that?

1:39:01But, you know, I think I've said to you before that one of the interesting things is of course is, is because the very nature of criticism is you have to work out. I think I said this to you on the first spoke. You have to work out whether the person criticizing you is criticizing you to improve you or to demoralize and destroy you. And the friendly critic. So I was saying, I'd like to think of the same thing if I said, you know, I would just thing, you know, you might think I wouldn't be saying something critical of you, other than if I thought it would improve you in some way or make something better for you.

1:39:45But if I was some leveled troll who desperately wanted to destroy Chris Williams and hated him and wanted him to fail. And I like started screaming, advice at you. Well, how would you listen? You shouldn't. But I mean, you know, definitely have an advantage if you grew up before the deranging in online era, because I think some of that sense has created from that. But I mean, you know, it's, I don't think it's a difficult superpower to acquire. I really don't. Yeah, as said, everybody that is fantastic at something that comes naturally to them. What do you mean? Well, just I think you seem to have a big fuck you streak.

1:40:38And Ryan Long taught me this comedian. He said he always... Oh, I like him. I did his podcast. Yes, I introduced him. Yeah, yeah, he's great. Him and Danny. he said, he always sort of discredited the things that came easily to him. He always assumed that there was more value and something that he had to work harder at. So he's really great at sketch comedy. Yes. And he's actually very funny. He's fucking fantastic. And to him, sketch is just that they fall out of him on a daily basis. So he always looked at other twists and art forms. Maybe there were comedy or maybe there were tangential or maybe they were totally separate.

1:41:15And he always assumed that those were the ones that were really valuable because he discredited the thing that came so easily to him. He always said, well, the sketch comedy think like, everybody's got access. He said, no, no, no, no. Not everybody has access to that. Yeah. You're a freak. Yeah. And you have that skill. So do you have something like that? Things that come easily to me? Yeah. We're always, at least for me, my own worst critic. stuff that comes easily to me that I think other people assumed that that's the case is networking. That was something that as an only child who then becomes a club promoter, you are perfectly positioned to observe social networks and see how they go.

1:42:02It's never anything that I've practiced myself. It's just something that came out of life and programming. And yapping, I mean, always being good at yapping, you know, from a kid. Right. But so do you think you look down on those things as skills? I certainly, I don't look down on them, but I do assume, I, because they come easily to me, I'm not convinced that I value them in the same sort of way. I value them in myself, and it's some very happy that I've got. But. So what are the things in that you put an onus on that you don't think you have? Oh, that's a good question. And fuck you energy would be one of those.

1:42:42Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, instead of getting mad, I tend to get sad. I'll sort of turn, I don't know. But it's true, it's true, I lay. Yeah, in many ways, I think you can work past that quite easily. Interesting. At least operationally you can, but there is an initial hurdle where I will tend to, I'll tend to blame myself for something. So it's one of the reasons I asked about the criticism, actually, I would say I'm a criticism hyper responder. sometimes. And I created a list of different ways that me and perhaps other people have dealt with criticism with varying degrees of success. Oh yeah. Get bitter.

1:43:21I think if any critic is a hater, just throwing envy and shade, recite the quote, don't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from. Number two, Chan, you're in a David Goggins and use it as fuel to prove people wrong. Number three, get a quantumist and see every criticism as a gift which you can learn from. Number four, get psychoanalytical. And think of criticism to the window into the mind of other humans, bonus points for inferring sweeping generalizations about the public at large from whatever you read. That's very good. Be incredibly precise with language, so no spell words which could be misconstrued or present.

1:43:55Front -run potential criticisms by caveatting before speaking. Hey, I'm just an idiot spitballing a bro signs theory here. That one's awful. Acknowledge both sides. Hey, look, I think climate change or women's mental health or poverty in Africa is an important an issue we should focus on. But. That's all, that's a week one. Avoid exposing yourself to it. Never search your name on Twitter or Reddit. Don't read the comments. Oh, that's definitely true. Yes, of course. Dampen down the edginess of your opinions and statements. So the point gets made, but in such a gentle way that people can't find anything sufficiently objectionable to get mad about.

1:44:26That's not great advice always. This isn't necessarily advice. These are just strategies that I've gone through. Interesting. Deny that it gets to you and just breath work, busy, meditate, scroll, Brazilian jujitsu, your way to distraction, or final one, take it to heart doubt your abilities and fear that you're not cut out for any level of exposure at large.

1:44:45And I think that it's probably the last one, which people online, a lot of people online would be hoping with anyone they're attacking. To be able to slow them down. What they're hoping is that they'll do something that will demoralize you and I imagine. I mean, I know that when I really want to demoralize someone, that's the sort of thing I do. Well, I always think that if you do the, I actually think the only, the most effective form of really nasty criticism is to like find out what the really weak spot is on someone. There was a crazy woman many years ago in London who used to she was actually Jewish but she was most very vicious vicious anti -Israel protestor imaginable and she used to turn up with a group of other maniacs and like disrupt things like like the Jerusalem string quartet played at the Wake More Hall and they were like, ah!

1:45:47I attacked the string quartet. Couldn't you find a stronger target. But I remember writing a piece about her. For some reason I knew that if I just said you know you're just and either I just a man or whatever, I wouldn't you know she'd had it all. But I remember thinking because she would sing these mad songs. She'd sing something with a song with new lyrics by herself that were like hating. And I remember just describing her as a semi -trained singer. Oh, that was the one. I put my finger on the thing that she was just like, God, I was drained. I thought it was so funny. You just, you just watch and then I bet that's the one, you know.

1:46:39Adolf Hitler, well, bleeder, failed artist. But yeah, I, that's an interesting list. What happened to you in the Guardian? Oh, yeah, they libeled me and lied about me so badly in the column that they had to pay very substantial expenses in libel damages to me. I'm actually there's a there's a and expenses and read out an apology in high court in London, which was they tried to do the classic thing. I think I can say this. Sometimes when somebody's forced to do a libel retraction, they sort of they don't tweet or publish anything and then they suddenly do it and then they do masses of things so that it gets buried even on their own timeline.

1:47:34But I made sure that didn't happen. How? Well, I went quite big on the retweets and So an Elon helped by retreating it. And actually, I think currently it's the most viewed apology in the history of British legal cases. So I wasn't unhappy about that. You did ask. Jesus Christ. There's a principle among journalists generally, you don't sue, because it's all kind of rough. And this one was so egregious. I just... What did they do? I don't... I don't really repeat the label, and I just have to... Ah, right, okay. Yeah, well, it was interesting, correct. Yeah, that's fair. I don't know, I mean, I only sort of spied it.

1:48:30I needed to do something happening, and I didn't really understand what it was, and then I went and had a little bit of a look, and then the way that these libel things are written out as well. There's so odd. Well, I mean, everyone knows that. I mean, despite being a member of the press myself, I mean, you know, one of the worst things about the press is that, you know, sometimes they get something like wildly wrong, but it's like from page and then the correction is three years later on page 49 in a, you know, small type and so on. Everyone knows that. And, and it's just part of the rough and tumble.

1:49:00But I think, I mean, having opinions that you disagree with or wrong is all just fair enough, but you can't go around and just make shit up and claim that it's true. Or at least you're oughtin' to, and you're certainly oughtin' to, if you're the guardian observer, newspaper group, and present yourselves as some kind of guardian of the truth. I'll give it now. So yeah, but I don't do that very often, but I am. There are a few times when I've had substantial donations from people who've libeled me. I wait. And then act and win. Is there a proposed use for the proceeds from this? I thought I'd extend the moat around my house and building you drawbridge actually.

1:50:10Some of our butlers? I'm not sure there's room for them. I mean, there's got to be a limit, don't they? You can't have it. What do you think, um, I know you don't care, or it seems like you don't care. What do you think people commonly misunderstand about sort of your worldview, your positions?

1:50:34Don't really know. I mean, um, it fascinates me how little time you sort of spend in a self -critical, self -reflection, not that you don't see where sort of failures and stuff come from, but that there's just so few shits given. Well, I mean, I'm very self -critical. One of the one I learned this from Anthony Paul years ago from his novel, there's a brilliant observation in one of them that you should always presume that people are very critical, who are very critical, do turn the criticism inwards as well. That's absolutely true. And I think it's actually constructive. I think it would be wildly odd if you were critical of other people and not of yourself.

1:51:24But I think broadly speaking, it's a good thing to be self -critical, so that. But I don't know, I don't spend much time thinking what other people think about me. I generally take the view, I mean, of course I think it's healthy because I think it. Nobody says, I have this really unhealthy thing I like in order to think. So everyone's a good judge of character. That is one of my favours. No, almost nobody says, actually, I'm just not a very good judge of character. I'm just not good at telling who's a serial killer. And there are various ones like that that are very obvious. But I think that in general my attitude is to be wary about thinking about other people's thoughts about me because I think that people who are express great admiration or you know whatever about me I kind of don't Obviously, that's nice, but I don't want to absorb it too much because I don't want to become a dick or any more of a dick.

1:52:36And people who really don't like what I say, I don't think that's great either. I mean, I go back to this thing. I think that, I mean, where I would be very, very sensitive would be if I made an error or something like that, because then I'd feel that I made a mistake, I got something wrong and that would that would bother me. And does when I do, you know, make a factual error or something else, really annoying and has happened. But I don't think it pays to spend around my time thinking about what other people think about you. I just don't, I think it sort of means you don't get on with things And I've got a lot to do.

1:53:26What's coming up? Well this book obviously We just got to beat the bunnies and with your help to the top I'm doing a lot of travel to roll out the book Which is great which I love it's a funny thing with books is how's your coming on? I'll be right back. You're hiatus at the moment, taking over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got other fish to fry for. Okay.

1:53:59Yeah, one of the great things about books is that you, or the odd things about books is that when you've done the book, or when you finished it, you haven't finished it. That's when the work starts. Because the moment, like, I think we're talking, well, we are talking on the day that the books officially out in America. And so, you know, so like from now that people start reading it. And for me, that's great, because that's when the book really starts. And of course people can listen to it on audible where you get these dulcet. No, not you, you never read it. I read it on audible. And the, yeah, so I mean, that's nice as well.

1:54:42And that, By the way, I mean, that is, you know, it's fantastic. Now, it's one of the great things doesn't get enough attention, the upsides of some of the tech. I discovered that there's a wonderful readership, listen to the ship, which wasn't not there before audio books took off to the extent they have now, which is thanks partly to podcasters and the way in which people were able to, are able to absorb and wishing to absorb, you know, information and discussion and books. And that's just fantastic. There's a fantastic audience out there of people who might not come home and crack open a book at the end of the day, but we'll listen to it, and they get the same thing, plus with me and their ear.

1:55:36Yeah. So I love the business of a book being out, even one about some pretty dark stuff like this one, but yeah. When you do a fun one next, when do we have a nice fun one? Well, that's a good question. Yeah, I have a backlog of books in my head, are the ones I want to write. Are there any fun ones? Easter 26 is calling. Well, yeah, now I know the frigging competition. The bunny market.

1:56:12No, I've always got a lot to do. Always a lot of my mind. And projects and... Yeah, a lot to do. I look forward to seeing it happen. I appreciate you, man. I always love getting to speak to you. It's really lovely. Likewise. right back to you as I discovered Santa America. Well you're here for a little while until you fly up again. Thank you. I appreciate you, man. Take care.