Speaker 1: Meaning a live man like this, Man, you letting butterfly
Speaker 1: flatting and wing big down in a forest. Man, it
Speaker 1: gonna cause a tree fall, letting five thousand miles away. Man,
Speaker 1: nobody see it. Nobody else see you don't need know. Man,
Speaker 1: He's like you followed another story and you got it
Speaker 1: like that mast Win Man go like a dang on pano. Man,
Speaker 1: don't matter. Man, all right, this this is something a
Speaker 1: little bit different, just you and me. I know we've
Speaker 1: been doing the monologues lately, but it's an anniversary. Just
Speaker 1: hit five hundred episodes round about four years of me
Speaker 1: seemingly yelling into the void. And so I thought I'd
Speaker 1: do two things at once. One a retrospective what's happened
Speaker 1: over the last four years, both from the perspective of
Speaker 1: this show and also the world at large. I'll be honest.
Speaker 1: When I started this, it was a hobby, just something
Speaker 1: I did as I wrapped up the first or the
Speaker 1: last few weeks of college, splitting time between two different cities.
Speaker 1: I remember well that first episode, episode zero, with Paul Fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: The guys still have a lot of affection for we'd met,
Speaker 1: had a great conversation. I wasn't doing anything, and when
Speaker 1: he and I spoke kind of the sud, I was like,
Speaker 1: well that went pretty well. I bet I could do
Speaker 1: that again. Been lurking for a long time, and you
Speaker 1: know what, figured it was a way to make my entrance.
Speaker 1: And those first couple months were weird, right, I was awkward,
Speaker 1: didn't really know what I was doing, what I wanted
Speaker 1: to say. But you know, we found some sort of
Speaker 1: red you know, we picked up the the old theme
Speaker 1: song sense copyright strict, can't use it anymore. Stricken I
Speaker 1: think that's the correct term of that form of that word. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we went through the early berserk edit thumbnails and eventually
Speaker 1: found our way to the og right format at a
Speaker 1: buddy makeup for me, and you know, things kind of
Speaker 1: carried on in that that kind of holding pattern until
Speaker 1: well I was working at a factory, started doing more
Speaker 1: episodes for five a week, the first big push, if
Speaker 1: you will. But you know what, I got married, got
Speaker 1: a real job, and it kind of faded into the background,
Speaker 1: but you know, it kept growing, figured out what I
Speaker 1: actually thought, more, got better at least I hope at
Speaker 1: doing what I do. And yeah, almost a year ago
Speaker 1: it well became what I do my full time gig
Speaker 1: and if you can forgive me a moment to be model,
Speaker 1: and uh, I appreciate that right. I couldn't do this
Speaker 1: without you guys. You support what I do, and I'll
Speaker 1: be honest, it's kind of rare right that I get
Speaker 1: to do my favorite thing every day, So I appreciate
Speaker 1: that right. Not to get too emotional about it, but
Speaker 1: during those four years where you know, all these changes
Speaker 1: happened to my program, well, the world kept changing. Two
Speaker 1: feels almost unrecognizable from the Biden slump right twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: this feeling of the eternal lib Rich, that the lid
Speaker 1: had been put back on and that this creeping global
Speaker 1: homo darkness would you know, take over the world. I
Speaker 1: collected what I thought. I have collected the ten biggest
Speaker 1: news stories from plus or minus the past four years,
Speaker 1: and there's some interesting trends in them. In my mind,
Speaker 1: the biggest story is the Russia Ukraine War. And when
Speaker 1: I say that, I don't mean it's the one I'm
Speaker 1: the most interested in. I don't mean it's the one
Speaker 1: that I follow the most closely day to day. But
Speaker 1: that's at least in my mind. The moment where history resumed.
Speaker 1: Francis Fukuyama eternally btfo'ed, and it felt as if finally
Speaker 1: we had ended the nothing ever happens, something materially had changed,
Speaker 1: something big had happened. Two countries, two real countries, were
Speaker 1: at war. Also, the sort of long running, simmering Cold
Speaker 1: War II with Russia that had been going on during
Speaker 1: the Obama year, certainly though arguably much before that, had
Speaker 1: then really heated up during the Trump administration or the
Speaker 1: first one finally come to the four. We also started
Speaker 1: to see the empire was perhaps weaker than we thought,
Speaker 1: there was something beyond its power. No matter how much
Speaker 1: money it dumped into this project, well, it couldn't win.
Speaker 1: I don't pretend to know exactly what's happening in that war.
Speaker 1: I don't follow it. It's not my beat, but it's
Speaker 1: still going on. I know that it seems as if
Speaker 1: Ukraine is sort of on the losing end of this
Speaker 1: Pirit campaign. Obviously they've bloodied Russia's nose to some degree,
Speaker 1: but the biggest, most powerful empire in the world couldn't
Speaker 1: get done what it wanted to get done. And this idea,
Speaker 1: that liberal, peaceful democracy, that McDonald's diplomacy, the idea, of
Speaker 1: course being that two nations with a McDonald's would never
Speaker 1: go to war. What was wrong? The eternal progress or
Speaker 1: Star Trek future was fake and we knew it was fake.
Speaker 1: But in the moment in the trenches, it feels as
Speaker 1: if it's going to go on forever. And look, I'm
Speaker 1: not a Slava Boo. I don't have really many opinions
Speaker 1: on Vladimir Putin at all. But we saw a man
Speaker 1: make a decision, a real decision, a decision with life
Speaker 1: and death consequences, something that hasn't happened the land war
Speaker 1: of this scale since World War II. It felt as
Speaker 1: if history moved again. Now, obviously the next story, and
Speaker 1: it's arguable which one is bigger in my mind, because
Speaker 1: you almost wonder if the second could have happened without
Speaker 1: the first. Is the Israel situation. Every element of that. First,
Speaker 1: of course, the October seventh unpleasantness, shall we say, which
Speaker 1: is into the resumption of the genocide and Gaza. She
Speaker 1: had explosive political consequences here. First, on the left we
Speaker 1: started to see this generational divide over the issue of
Speaker 1: Israel hit and hit hard college presidents replaced protests smashed
Speaker 1: with truncheons and horses, and all of a sudden, this
Speaker 1: went from a secondary issue for sparks, for weirdos, for
Speaker 1: politically minded leftist radicals to center stage. There was no
Speaker 1: way to get around it, and at least in my mind,
Speaker 1: it's the moment where public perception of the state of
Speaker 1: Israel really began to shift. Now, obviously, again, I don't
Speaker 1: think that conservatives, and not all, but more and more
Speaker 1: conservatives would have swung against Israel so cleanly and so
Speaker 1: quickly had it not been for the financial extortion of
Speaker 1: the Zelenski regime, demanding more and more money, constantly lecturing
Speaker 1: and hectoring other NATO powers to give them more, a
Speaker 1: sort of entitled mentality of I need your stuff and
Speaker 1: you're a monster if you won't give it to me.
Speaker 1: And well, that isn't exactly the same as how Benjamin
Speaker 1: net and Yahoo's talked to us, but it's the same pattern.
Speaker 1: You need to get me out of this situation I
Speaker 1: got myself into. It's your responsibility, it's your duty. Now.
Speaker 1: The Israel issue is also what has created a split
Speaker 1: on the right, a split that runs right through the
Speaker 1: heart of maga. You saw this in well, the defeat
Speaker 1: of Thomas Massey, which is basically an aftershock of the
Speaker 1: Israel issue, the IQ, if you will. But that split,
Speaker 1: which runs up to about age fifty five in the
Speaker 1: Republican Party and round about the same depending on who
Speaker 1: you ask in the Democratic Party, Well, it's completely changed
Speaker 1: how politics are done. The old order. It's creaking. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily able to answer these questions. It's not able
Speaker 1: to form coalitions in the same way. It's fundamentally changed
Speaker 1: American politics another way in which this feeling of the
Speaker 1: system groaning under its own weight with no end in sight. Well,
Speaker 1: there's light at the end of the tunnel now. And
Speaker 1: of course, as the old aphorism goes, when you see
Speaker 1: light in a tunnel, you don't know if it's daylight
Speaker 1: or a train coming your way. I don't want to
Speaker 1: be a Pollyanna. I don't want to be overly romantic
Speaker 1: about this, but it's a huge thing. I mean, the
Speaker 1: Holocaust World War two is the central organizing myth of
Speaker 1: the American Empire, right of the post World War two world,
Speaker 1: and we're watching in real time as it is desacralized.
Speaker 1: As many people both left and right are saying, well,
Speaker 1: whatever happened to you? That doesn't give your grandchildren licensed
Speaker 1: to bomb churches, to kill women and children, and demand
Speaker 1: that we pay for it. To jump when we say jump,
Speaker 1: to strike an alleged nuclear facility in a mountain in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere, Iran that we've been assured was
Speaker 1: two weeks away from plunging the world into nuclear fire
Speaker 1: for longer than I've been alive. That realization is huge.
Speaker 1: It strikes at the very core of the current moral order.
Speaker 1: The next big story, of course, is Trump two point zero.
Speaker 1: Regardless of your opinions on the man, he ran a
Speaker 1: very successful campaign, built a wide, highly disparate coalition, pulling
Speaker 1: in the podcast circuit young men men under forty swung
Speaker 1: hard for Trump. Under thirty did to an even more
Speaker 1: significant degree, And of course there are still unanswered questions.
Speaker 1: The iconic image Fight Fight Fight at Butler that this
Speaker 1: near disaster of a political assassination. It felt as if
Speaker 1: it was a moment where history happened again. Where were
Speaker 1: you when you found out? I remember, I bet that
Speaker 1: you do too, And at that moment it felt as
Speaker 1: if Trump had the mandate of Heaven. All eyes were
Speaker 1: on him. He passed the test, and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say that was the sole factor. Kamala Harris was
Speaker 1: an absolutely horrible candidate. There was this new group of
Speaker 1: tech elites coming out to play politics. Of course, Elon
Speaker 1: Musk buying Twitter a huge part of that, which is,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, also shaped our perception of the Israel
Speaker 1: issue and many others. But we were seeing, at least
Speaker 1: for a moment, a new political coalition. Now check my
Speaker 1: last episode with Stormy Waters for exactly how that's going.
Speaker 1: But it was undoubtedly seismic. Something felt dramatic. One of
Speaker 1: the other I won't even say this is a story,
Speaker 1: but trends things that have dramatically changed since I started.
Speaker 1: This is the AI revolution. I'll be honest. I hate
Speaker 1: talking about AI and dating discourse or things that I
Speaker 1: sort of feel like it's a wet paint sign. I
Speaker 1: know exactly what's going to happen, but I can't stop
Speaker 1: myself from doing it. Regardless of your opinions on it,
Speaker 1: if you're an AI optimist, a doomer, or a nothing
Speaker 1: ever happens type, Clearly it has changed the information landscape,
Speaker 1: not only for the ability to create look at things
Speaker 1: like the Will Stancil Show or the proliferation of early
Speaker 1: memes about smoke detectors. Right, but even down to the
Speaker 1: point of what is real, people are much less trusting
Speaker 1: because almost anyone anywhere can make something very convincing. This
Speaker 1: desert of the real that has been remarked upon for
Speaker 1: thirty years, well it's getting drier. There is less and
Speaker 1: less reality. It's more and more created something. I think
Speaker 1: that even if it's not my favorite topic to appine on,
Speaker 1: it has changed many aspects of our personal lives, but
Speaker 1: also our political reality. On the stupid level, you have
Speaker 1: I ran making lego edits of Donald Trump crying, which
Speaker 1: is okay stupid, but uh, you know, my grandma is
Speaker 1: worried about getting phone calls from someone who sounds like me,
Speaker 1: worried about, you know, even the kind of her own grandchildren,
Speaker 1: their voices being stolen used to get money out of her.
Speaker 1: And that's a silly example. It's not the most impactful thing,
Speaker 1: but in much the same way that social media, the
Speaker 1: algorithm changed how people interact, changed how people were their
Speaker 1: day Waye's done the same thing, and if projections are
Speaker 1: to be believed, this isn't stopping soon, the economy may
Speaker 1: well change. We may have a large population effectively useless people.
Speaker 1: Not useless on a personal level, but someone for whom
Speaker 1: there is nothing to do. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: going to happen. Smart people seem to think it might.
Speaker 1: But if we're looking at trends forward, we both have
Speaker 1: the resumption of history. We're no longer in the interminable
Speaker 1: twentieth century. It's still lingering on. It's not dead yet,
Speaker 1: but it feels as if finally something new is happening.
Speaker 1: A different angle on this when I talked earlier in
Speaker 1: this podcast about the political order becoming sort of moreribunt,
Speaker 1: becoming ossified, losing its vitality. A big part of that,
Speaker 1: and this is something you saw happen before the US
Speaker 1: Civil War, is that the number of issues, well, it
Speaker 1: really narrowed. There was really only one thing to argue about.
Speaker 1: These kind of secondary issues which had organized politics were solved,
Speaker 1: they fell by the wayside. And in my mind, the
Speaker 1: two issues we are seeing exactly that is on abortion
Speaker 1: and the Second Amendment. I don't want to bore you
Speaker 1: guys with my rant on the Second Amendment, so I'll
Speaker 1: stick to abortion. Roe versus weight being struck down. This
Speaker 1: is a huge story. If you're from read America, you
Speaker 1: grew up in a religious community, goal forever. My dad
Speaker 1: was at the March for Life when he was a kid.
Speaker 1: I haven't been to it. I probably should. But this
Speaker 1: has been a central focus of American politics, on both
Speaker 1: the pro and against side, a defining issue. And Okay,
Speaker 1: kicking it back down to the state didn't exactly make
Speaker 1: people with the feelings I have towards abortion happy whatever
Speaker 1: camp you think I'm in, but it kind of solved
Speaker 1: the issue, at least for a time. It went from
Speaker 1: being top line politics to well, something that doesn't bite
Speaker 1: as much. You can live in New York and sacrifice
Speaker 1: as many infants as you want to Moloch, We're in Alabama.
Speaker 1: It simply isn't happening. This has had effects on demography,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily the ones people expected. For instance, fewer
Speaker 1: black children are being aborted, but also fewer of them
Speaker 1: are being born, which I think is something that almost
Speaker 1: none of us expected. Interesting. You know, I'm again firmly
Speaker 1: anti abortion. I think that that is a good thing
Speaker 1: that it is not happening. But yeah, the results of
Speaker 1: which are still kind of percolating. But I think everyone
Speaker 1: was surprised by that, both that it happened, and it
Speaker 1: seemed to be this sort of Solomon moment, ironically enough,
Speaker 1: cutting the baby in half, solving the issue by hook
Speaker 1: or by crook. And let's be honest, I've been pretty
Speaker 1: harsh to the Trump administration, and I think fairly so,
Speaker 1: but I have to be honest, killing Roe versus weight
Speaker 1: automatically puts him in the top. I probably twenty percent
Speaker 1: just off that alone. That's something I never thought would
Speaker 1: be done. That's something I never thought we would get,
Speaker 1: something sorely needed. And so if nothing else, it's sort
Speaker 1: of like, well, every other politician was screwing me too,
Speaker 1: so that kind of nets out, and you know, we
Speaker 1: got Row, and that's important. Both on a moral level,
Speaker 1: I viewed as one of the grave sins of the
Speaker 1: American Empire, the murder of you know, millions and millions
Speaker 1: of children, both directly and indirectly, depending on how much
Speaker 1: of a peacenick you are, but also in the sense
Speaker 1: that it felt like we were driving to a conclusion
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, we were driving towards a new
Speaker 1: political order that guns and abortion, the two issues that
Speaker 1: had really defined the culture War. Well, all of a
Speaker 1: sudden we could talk about something else, We could push
Speaker 1: towards something else. And sure there are still fierce debates
Speaker 1: over abortion and over the Second Amendment, but finally there
Speaker 1: was at least a sign of some sort of resolution
Speaker 1: to that, some way to talk about something else. Another one,
Speaker 1: which is if we're talking about finally the end of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. The death of Queen Elizabeth was sort
Speaker 1: of symbolic. Ruled for seventy years, presided over the absolute
Speaker 1: disillusion of the British Empire. And Okay, sure, an old
Speaker 1: woman died. She was not a powerful monarch. Clearly, she
Speaker 1: spent her entire career deferring, and many of the time
Speaker 1: she chose to take an active chance or active stance were,
Speaker 1: in my mind wrong. I don't agree with her position.
Speaker 1: She screwed over the Rhodesions people that I have a
Speaker 1: great deal of sympathy for. Actually, it's funny, I literally
Speaker 1: have at whatever and I'm going to show you we
Speaker 1: have some Rhodesian equipment in the in the recording studio.
Speaker 1: The point is, this is another way in which it
Speaker 1: felt like the twentieth century was done. A woman who
Speaker 1: had been on the throne for most of it, through
Speaker 1: effectively the entire post war era, the era of the
Speaker 1: American Empire. She wasn't around anymore, and it felt as
Speaker 1: if the last connection to that world went with her.
Speaker 1: Also symbolically, the funeral was incredibly poignant, and I think
Speaker 1: for many people we saw a sort of spark an
Speaker 1: ember in the Ashes, a culture we assumed to be
Speaker 1: dead that was still there. And were there embarrassing things
Speaker 1: about it? Sure, were there things that were cringe, were
Speaker 1: there things that you or I would not have done,
Speaker 1: But it felt as if we saw the English spirit
Speaker 1: dimly but still there. The fire is still burning, even
Speaker 1: if it's only a few glowing coals, a sign up
Speaker 1: for hope. I think, and look, the Anglos, the Brits,
Speaker 1: they have it worse than us in some ways, but
Speaker 1: I've been impressed with them, very impressed with them. Recording
Speaker 1: this as the riot's rage across Spelfast. I realize they're
Speaker 1: Northern Irish, but they're loyalists all the same. And when
Speaker 1: you look at that, when you look at the rise
Speaker 1: of restore Britain, to me, I see hope there and
Speaker 1: four years ago I didn't see much at all, really,
Speaker 1: And look, you guys know me. I don't tend to
Speaker 1: be overly optimistic. Look at my profile picture. The man
Speaker 1: with the head in his hands, that's me. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, when we're talking about the end of
Speaker 1: the Empire of lies, the end of the post war consensus,
Speaker 1: when I say the lie can't last forever, that is
Speaker 1: what I am talking about, at least part of it.
Speaker 1: There are others, of course, But this moment we find
Speaker 1: ourselves in feels as if, it's sort of, to use
Speaker 1: an overused millennial phrase, a liminal space one and the
Speaker 1: other the realm of Janus, the two faced god of
Speaker 1: ending and beginnings. We're not quite there yet, but it
Speaker 1: seems as if everyone feels it. And this moment when
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth died, much like Land War in Europe, much
Speaker 1: like Row Versus weighed well, it felt like things were moving,
Speaker 1: things were changing. It was not eternal. To take things
Speaker 1: into a slightly more mundane direction, we really can't talk
Speaker 1: about the last two years, or bikes four years held
Speaker 1: the last six without talking about the cost of living crisis.
Speaker 1: This explosive mix of skyrocketing asset prices, whether you look
Speaker 1: at homes, used cars, as I certainly want to do
Speaker 1: new cars, food, groceries, energy, anything, it's getting more expensive.
Speaker 1: It feels as if the merry go round is well,
Speaker 1: it's sort of finding to a halt the idea that
Speaker 1: things always got better, that you could sort of just
Speaker 1: park your money and ride your way to prosperity on
Speaker 1: this sort of general upward trend, Well, it's not there.
Speaker 1: This sense of dispossession has built up an incredible amount
Speaker 1: of political animosity on again both the right and the left.
Speaker 1: How many people are involved in left wing politics because
Speaker 1: they are hyper educated and cannot find gainful employment. The
Speaker 1: stereotype of the PhD at Starbucks is certainly a stereotype,
Speaker 1: but there's some truth to it. This boomer zoomer divide
Speaker 1: is certainly felt hottest over the issue of Israel, but
Speaker 1: a big part of it a sort of secondary theater
Speaker 1: the Pacific to the European theater, if you will, is
Speaker 1: cost of living. This is an area where the Trump
Speaker 1: administration has gotten really wrong footed, focusing on protecting luxury
Speaker 1: boomer communism, social programs, Medicare, social Security, while effectively letting
Speaker 1: guys like you and me rot crushed under the weight
Speaker 1: of inflation, crushed under stagnating wages, crushed under mass migration,
Speaker 1: people competing for the rules we were assured were good
Speaker 1: paying jobs. This also ties into, albeit indirectly, the sexual
Speaker 1: crisis men and women. It's been going on for a while,
Speaker 1: but it feels as if it's getting worse and worse.
Speaker 1: The inability of people to pair off and have children. Now, look,
Speaker 1: it's not all bad. The white birth rate in America's
Speaker 1: gone up under Trump, something again I think we need
Speaker 1: to thank him for. But a large part of this
Speaker 1: is economic. Young men as a class are suffering. They're
Speaker 1: suffering in education, they're suffering in the job market. The
Speaker 1: amount of men who have dropped out, who are neat
Speaker 1: doing nothing, no friends, no pros, no girls, no ambition,
Speaker 1: what's never been higher. And it feels as if it's
Speaker 1: a hopeless situation. It feels as if you will never
Speaker 1: own a house. It feels as if you will never
Speaker 1: be able to afford the quality of life that your parents,
Speaker 1: let alone your grandparents had at your stage. At least anecdotally,
Speaker 1: everyone bar one or two examples in my peer group
Speaker 1: is downwardly socially mobile, doing worse, maybe breaking even but
Speaker 1: doing it in a different way, working harder, both parents
Speaker 1: in the workforce. We're getting squeezed, We're getting screwed, and
Speaker 1: it's bad in America, it's worse in Europe. The sky
Speaker 1: high youth unemployment, crushing pension plans, somehow worse than what
Speaker 1: we've got. This story cannot be overstated. It's a huge
Speaker 1: trend and shows no signs of improving. This is a
Speaker 1: minor one one that's stuck out in my head. The
Speaker 1: capture of Maduro, a moment that I didn't really care
Speaker 1: about as much as others did. It's sort of a
Speaker 1: part of being a regional hedgemon. That you mess with
Speaker 1: the ban of republics around you, that you mess with
Speaker 1: the smaller countries. It's human behavior. But I will say
Speaker 1: the US military came out of it looking much better
Speaker 1: than they have in Iran. You have to give them that.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people, myself included, were
Speaker 1: hoping that that was a sign of a pivot to
Speaker 1: our sphere of influence away from forever wars. Unfortunately it wasn't,
Speaker 1: but it seems to have been an opportunity, right we
Speaker 1: could have been that instead of trying to be the
Speaker 1: world's policeman all over again, failing to learn the lessons
Speaker 1: of yesteryear. But it was a daring raid. A little
Speaker 1: bit of information on it. I can't reveal my sources
Speaker 1: or what I know, but I will say, like cool,
Speaker 1: you have to give him that, parading a captured enemy
Speaker 1: through the streets of New York like a Roman triumph.
Speaker 1: As the kids say, it's got aura give him again.
Speaker 1: If nothing else props for that. And the last story
Speaker 1: one that runs through all of these are the Epstein files,
Speaker 1: which have really grabbed onto the public imagination Watergate for
Speaker 1: a decade now. We saw it, of course, really flare
Speaker 1: up initially when the man died, coleting into the Pizzagate stuff,
Speaker 1: but it never stopped developing, the slow drip of information,
Speaker 1: each file more monstrous than the last, the realization and
Speaker 1: how many people were connected to this man, both in
Speaker 1: our politics and also in foreign politics. Members of the
Speaker 1: Norwegian government, prominent British politician Pete mandelssoon any number of
Speaker 1: figures tied into this ethnic blackmail money laundering network, and
Speaker 1: of course this ties into both the growing dissatisfaction with
Speaker 1: the economy the realization that the game is rigged, and
Speaker 1: of course ongoing foreign policy disagreements. Of course, the idea
Speaker 1: that you know to quote you know the investigator. I
Speaker 1: think he was the prosecutor from Palm Beach, right, he's intelligence.
Speaker 1: You can't touch him. Well, who's intelligence? I have a
Speaker 1: feeling you and I know. But we saw both in
Speaker 1: the actual files himself and then the cover up, the
Speaker 1: snake ining, if you will, from the Trump administration. Well
Speaker 1: how far this went? And if we're talking about seismic changes,
Speaker 1: people were, particularly on the right, done with the government
Speaker 1: after COVID Steine files have thrown gasoline on that fire.
Speaker 1: Both the right and the left have their own Epstein narrative.
Speaker 1: You can look at the kind of blue and on
Speaker 1: types to see what they're saying. It's mostly about Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Of course the right has a different narrative. But this
Speaker 1: is foundational American lore. It really has taken the place
Speaker 1: of Watergate in the American mindset. It is the scandal
Speaker 1: to end all scandals, and people aren't letting it go again.
Speaker 1: The stupid White House two fifty event. On social media,
Speaker 1: if you look under the announcements from the UFC right,
Speaker 1: a sports organization, it's comments about Israel and it's comments
Speaker 1: about Epstein fairly obvious reasons. This has taken a place
Speaker 1: in the national psyche. It's not going away. And with
Speaker 1: that we can also talk about the of conspiracy slop.
Speaker 1: It has to do with changing algorithms, right, kind of
Speaker 1: the COVID restrictions loosening. But there has been a massive
Speaker 1: boom in kind of Alex Jones without Alex Jones, the
Speaker 1: kind of in my mind limited hangout conspiracy nonsense. It's
Speaker 1: big business and some of it's laughable, some of it's embarrassing.
Speaker 1: Some it's obviously wrong, but it is a symptom of
Speaker 1: widespread distrust of institutions. Really, nobody who's anybody believes the
Speaker 1: line anymore right or left. Now, the left has a
Speaker 1: different relationship that you and I do. You know, they
Speaker 1: become wetted to big pharma and other things. But uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a weird moment. This kind of aging empire, this
Speaker 1: aging collection of civic beliefs, well long ago it lost
Speaker 1: the ability to pull the rabbit out and had to
Speaker 1: achieve the political miracle to do the needful, as an
Speaker 1: Indian fellow once said, and it took a while for
Speaker 1: people to realize it took a while for that knowledge
Speaker 1: to promulgate. It's not one hundred percent yet, and it's
Speaker 1: not even consistently applied knowledge. But there's a hunger for
Speaker 1: the real story. There's a hunger for the truth, oftentimes
Speaker 1: met again by slop. But the idea that your elites
Speaker 1: are satanic pedophiles, let's caught on like rabbit or a wildfire. Right.
Speaker 1: You can't get away from it. I think ultimately a
Speaker 1: positive development, both because it's seemingly true and I don't
Speaker 1: want these people to have any credibility. They don't deserve it.
Speaker 1: Just some thoughts there. So thank you, guys, really thank
Speaker 1: you for the last four years. It's been a ton
Speaker 1: of fun, genuinely, and yeah, I'm might keep doing it.
Speaker 1: I mean for the foreseeable future, at least. I'm young ish.
Speaker 1: I like this. That's what I'm good at least, I
Speaker 1: hope so. And I appreciate you guys for placing your
Speaker 1: faith in me. I'll be traveling a lot this month.
Speaker 1: This is really the first time in a long time
Speaker 1: that I've taken a day off. As you guys are aware,
Speaker 1: I from a content perspective, I don't all right, something
Speaker 1: comes out no matter what, and I'm gonna keep that up,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna take some time. Finally before so before
Speaker 1: April of this year, where I dropped my last couple
Speaker 1: of side contracts, I hadn't had a day off Christmas
Speaker 1: included since twenty twenty four. And I don't say that
Speaker 1: to brag. I just mean to say that I appreciate
Speaker 1: you guys giving me the opportunity to go somewhere without
Speaker 1: a laptop over a weekend. Write nothing crazy, nothing extravagant,
Speaker 1: but thanks, genuinely. I mean that. Looking forward, right, what
Speaker 1: do you want to do? Well, more of this, keep recording,
Speaker 1: keep writing articles or maybe something long form in the future,
Speaker 1: still working on ideas, might have a book, but uh yeah, sincerely,
Speaker 1: I just want to thank you guys and wish you
Speaker 1: a happy five hundredth anniversary.