The Man Warning The West: Trump Is Changing The World Behind The Scenes!

0:00 There's mention of Greenland being invaded by the United States, there's the situation in Iran. Trump has snatched Maduro from Venezuela, there's talk of China taking back Taiwan. What the hell is going on? Well what you're seeing is the West becoming weaker and emboldening our enemies, and the final collapse of a shared myth. That we were living in a structured world where everything is done according to the rules, that is now gone, and Trump is acting in recognition of that reality, saying we are not going to play by the fake rules anymore that no one else is playing by anyway. Is there a risk with this strategy? Of course. And we can talk about the reasons for it, I think it's really important. The floor is yours. Constantine Kissin is one of the sharpest voices in political commentary right now. He's here to unpack the current geopolitical landscape and what could be done to salvage the West before it's too late. So Russia invading Ukraine was not an accident. It was a consequence of the fact that Food NFL dish was the moment to test the water. Can we now do the things we've always wanted to do? Because the West lost its focus and sense of purpose. So for example, I don't know if you know this, Europe is twelve percent of the world's population, twenty-five percent of the world's GDP, and sixty percent of the world's welfare spending. Germany destroyed its nuclear facilities, thereby making itself reliant on Russian gas. Britain, we've destroyed our manufacturing, which is now produced elsewhere. And we've run down our armed forces because we have felt so safe and so comfortable because there's been no consequence.

1:25 Well, the consequences are here. Per person. We have less money today than we did twenty years ago. We have the highest tax burden in peacetime history. We're driving out the entrepreneurs and we've already seen a decline in our power in the world and our influence in the world. That's the big danger. But there is an opportunity to turn things around if we can make these big decisions. Constantine. There is so much going on in the world right now that it is

2:00 Incredibly confusing to somebody like me who doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about geopolitics or the bigger picture. I'm very, very heads down, as I imagine a lot of people in my audience are. We kinda get on with our lives, but every time we look up at the news, there's Trump is snatch M Maduro from Venezuela. There's the war with Russia and Ukraine. There's something going on with Iran. There's mention of Greenland being invaded by the United States. There's talk of China taking back Taiwan. I wanted to speak to you today to understand your perspective On the bigger picture here.

2:33 What the hell is going on? Well, what you're seeing is the the final collapse of what people described as the post World War Two order, which then became the post Soviet collapse. Order. So if you think about nineteen forty five, World War Two finishes and the Cold War begins. So you go from

2:52 World War Two to two big major players in the world. Competing for dominance. And that lasts until nineteen ninety one when the Soviet Union collapses. At which point you get the unipolar world, in which there's only one hegemony, only one country that's really setting the terms of what's happening in the world. The West lost its focus and

3:13 Its sense of purpose. in nineteen ninety one because we were like well we we defeated our great rival, communism Soviet Russia, et cetera. And then we kind of didn't really know what to do. And we took eye off the ball.

3:26 And what's happening now is that entire framework that we have had since World War Two is disintegrating very rapidly. This is why, you know, i in the in light of recent events and the the Maduro situation you hear a lot of people talk about international law. International law was I don't know if you've if you've ever had n uh you will know Harari on your show. I have, yes. In which he talks about w the fact that almost everything that we live in, the world in in which we exist, is a kind of shared myth that we have. And laws and money and all these things, they are agreements that we have between us to make things real that are not real. Money isn't real.

4:07 That piece of paper has no value in your pocket, really. outside of the fact that other people have got together and agreed. That it's money. Right. Well international law really was that, but even weaker than that, because if you think about what a law is A law is something that has to be backed by not only the consent of the people who are involved, but also ultimately it's about the use of force, the legitimate use of force. Now for international law

4:32 There's never been Anything that could enforce that law. Other than the most powerful country in the world. Right. So if China invades Taiwan, no one's gonna do anything about it. Because there is no overarching authority with the military to be able to do anything about it. And so

4:49 That shared fiction that we had, which we were living in a structured world in which everything is done according to the rules, the rules based order, you might have heard that term being used, that is now gone and And Трам і актін. In recognition of that reality. And he's saying Well, given that it's sort of every man for himself now.

5:11 I'm gonna do what's in the interest of United States. Is it in the interest of the United States, for example, to have an openly hostile leader of a country close to the US? Which is so destabilized that seven million people have fled as refugees. Venezuela. Venezuela. Is it in our interest to have this person cozying up to Russia and China? Is it in our interest to allow him to have Hezbollah training camps? on the island of Margarita. Is it in our interest? It's it's going back to the Monroe Doctrine, the idea that America does not allow foreign nations to meddle in its backyard, so to speak. And so what he's doing now is going, Well look, this is the world we live in I'm gonna do what's best for my country.

5:50 And I think that's what you're seeing. Is there a risk? With this strategy. There's a risk with every strategy. Inevitably with the strategy.

6:02 You know, as I talked about in my book, the the West becoming weaker and emboldening our enemies, which is what we have done for a long time now. is creating an environment where we are opening ourselves up to challenge from other forces. Russia invading Ukraine was not an accident. It was not an accident. It was a consequence of the fact that Putin and Uh the

6:23 People in his leadership team felt this was the moment to test the waters. Can we now do the things we've always wanted to do? And they thought they could do that under Biden, in your view. Yes. But it see, I wouldn't personalize it down to that level. I think far too many people get carried away with, you know, Republican, Democrat, left, right, Biden, Trump. It's an ongoing process that's been going on for decades. And The culmination of it was First the invasion of Ukraine. Then October seventh. October seventh was not an accident either.

6:54 Hamas, backed by Iran, felt that this was their moment to act, because again, Is the West going to be able to respond morally, militarily, and in other ways? powerfully to that. They felt that they were able to test it. The fact that China now is openly talking about taking Taiwan is again another symptom of this same thing. So the risk is there, and of course the risk as well is that

7:17 You know, uh th the the crumbling Western Alliance that we can talk about the reasons for it, and I think it's really important too, particularly we're recording this in Britain and and in Europe more broadly, I think that's an important conversation. The Western Alliance is falling apart. Um, and that is always going to be a risk. It's particularly big risk for Europe, I feel. How much of this um before we go into the details and just catch up on a few things you said there, how much of this is linked to nuclear weapons? Because I was thinking I I can't really all of these superpowers are going for countries that aren't

7:47 Armed with nuclear. And it all it somewhat feels to me That the reason why the US wouldn't get involved if China took Taiwan is because they have nukes. And the reason why

7:58 U the US is a little bit intimidated by Russia's'cause they have nukes. So is it really the world is splitting into nuclear powers and anyone with nukes can do what the fuck they want because They can basically wipe our planet out if they get angry. And that has always been the case, except we've been constrained by the framework of the rules based order. But that got taken apart. And this is why I think the West and the United States including needs to take responsibility because the the war in Afghanistan And Iraq even more so completely undermined our moral

8:29 Credibility. You know, how can you say, Well, Russia isn't allowed to invade Ukraine if you go around invading countries on a whim? making up excuses and reasons to do that. So we have eroded our moral authority and we've also eroded our military strength and the potential that we have to inflict damage on people who misbehave, so to speak. So both of those things have come together. It seems so crazy to me that In my lifetime I'm I'm seeing'cause it's really never happened in the thirty three years

8:57 that I've been alive. I'm hearing a US president talk about Kidnapping another president and then going in and taking the oil. And then Do you know what we might take Greenland as well. We might have that big country over there as well, even though it belongs to a NATO ally ally in Denmark.

9:12 It has. And I'm scared of the presidents this is going to set. Because do we all then all just s get to start taking countries we want? Well this is what happens when there is a a a a shifting of the balance of power. This is why I always said maintaining the unipolar moment as it was and not allowing the West to weaken itself. was a really important thing because the moment you have a power vacuum you always have a power struggle. Mexico's a very good example of this. If you look at what's been happening, there's been a a gigantic drug war in Mexico for the last twenty years because there are different cartels vying for power.

9:50 And the moment you take out the leader of one cartel or something happens There's a bloodbath. Because this is what happens when the central authority, the central power, the the the current system breaks down, you inevitably end up in a much more violent, much more unstable, much more unpredictable place. And all Trump really is doing is reflecting the reality that has been already there for years. Except he's reflecting it in American foreign policy. He's saying, Well look, if Russia is going to do what it wants to do and we can't stop them.

10:21 And if China's gonna do what they wanna do and we can't stop them, well we've gotta do what we've gotta do. And no one's gonna stop us. And that's the world you've ended up in. Uh and by the way, just on the nuclear point, I think it's important to say You're a hundred percent right. And this is one of the things I've always said about not supporting Ukraine properly, which we haven't done. We have not supported them enough to be able to actually fully

10:42 repel the aggression from Russia is it would inevitably lead to lots of other small countries pursuing nuclear weapons, because it is the only guarantee of security in this world. It that is a huge danger for the world in terms of nuclear proliferation, because if the precedent is, like you say, the people with nuclear weapons can do what they want and they can never be attacked, and the people with no nuclear weapons are vulnerable and weak. What would be the most rational thing for you to do if you're a smaller country? That's the big danger. 'Cause y you know, you you were talking about a unipolar world and a multipolar world, but I wonder if the it's gonna be how many nuclear powers are there? There's like nine or or ten? If the world is actually gonna split into these ten nuclear powers and these ten nuclear powers can basically do what they want.

11:26 Well nuclear powers are different. I don't I don't see Pakistan likely to be rampaging through its neighbours, not at least'cause uh they're all they're all nuclear powers themselves. I think you're you're talking about Russia, China, and the US primarily. I don't see Britain, you know, reinvading France, although something obviously I am in favour of. If Pakistan decided to take a neighboring country, though. Nobody can really come to them because economic having one nuke is not the same as having a gigantic nuclear arsenal. I think Pakistan is relatively constrained in its behavior, but the big superpowers are not so. By the way, m retaking France was a joke. I just want to make that clear. Um there's an eight there's nine nuclear powers. United States, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and

12:10 Israel, although I don't think they admit it. Israel's policy on nuclear weapons is very funny. Do you know what their official position is? We don't have nuclear weapons, but if the state of Israel is a risk of being destroyed, we will definitely use them. So how did we get here? What are what are the factors at play that brought us to this particular situation? You talked about the crumbling of the Western Alliance and other things. What what do we need to know about what happened for us to get to this state where it it seems like it's every Big power for themselves.

12:38 Well, partly we've already talked about it. So it's It's after ninety one in particular, the West loses its not only its sense of purpose, but it loses its w its uh sense of danger and sense of risk. So we get very comfortable. I don't know if you know this. Uh Europe is twelve percent of the world's population. twenty five percent of the world's GDP and sixty percent of the world's welfare spending. Mm. Wow.

13:01 So if you do that, that is a sign that you've got very comfortable. You've got very lazy. You have lost the ability to realize you live in a dangerous world. It's you know, this is a bit of a sidetrack, but it is an important addendum to this conversation. This is why European countries have pursued economic suicide that we call net zero as vigorously as we have. because we have felt so safe and so comfortable we've engaged in all this luxury uh obsessions to the point where, as you know, Germany destroyed its nuclear facilities. uh thereby making itself reliant on Russian gas so that when Russia invaded Ukraine the Germans opened their the first thing that they said is Oh we were gonna support Ukraine, we're gonna give them five thousand helmets.

13:43 Right. Because they were so dependent on Russian gas because they refused to produce their own energy. This is exactly the same thing we've done in Britain. Britain has the highest industrial electricity prices in the world. in the developed world, which means we basically destroyed all our manufacturing industry which is now produced. Elsewhere. We're getting to the point where we can't make our own virgin steel. Steel is kind of important if you want to have a military.

14:09 Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So F in Europe in particular this has happened because we've just felt so safe and so comfortable and also so rudderless that we've been able to engage in all these loony ideas because there's been no consequence. Well, the consequences are here. Where does Britain and Europe sit? In

14:30 The sort of rankings of importance in the world and power. It's plummeting. Y uh I mean look at the the the Trump's uh twelve day war. in Iran. destroying Iran's nuclear facilities.

14:41 No one even asked the British what we thought about anymore. And that's not because you know a lot of people like to say, oh, you know, the Americans they hate the British. Americans love Britain. As you know, you live in America now. I'm sure people come up to you all the time and talk to you about their connections with our country, the shared history, all of that stuff. The problem is we have made ourselves irrelevant. Because

15:03 Everything that Trump is looking at is strength, right? Is Britain strong now in the world? No. Is Europe strong now in the world? No. And so if you're not strong, you will not be taken seriously. And unfortunately, because of what our leaders have done over successive, and it's left, right, every political party that we have that's been in power, they have overseen A decline in our status in the world, in our power in the world, in our influence in the world, to the point now where the Americans are looking at Europe and they're going, Why would we be allied with people who are not useful to us? An alliance is kind of like a marriage. Both people have to bring something to the table. What do we bring to the table from an American perspective? This is a fairly new thing, isn't it? Because I remember growing up

15:45 I repeatedly hear the Prime Minister of the UK talking about how he'd spoken to his US counterpart. And they had made a decision. And then in even with the Venezuela situation, I think Keir Starmer came out the next day and said I had no idea this was happening. Of course. But why would you consult with people who don't matter? Why don't we matter? We don't matter because we have nothing to bring to the table. We don't despite the the extremely high level of professionalism, our technological superiority, the courage of our soldiers and our sailors and our airmen, uh despite the hu immense military tradition Britain has

16:18 We have c I mean our debt interest repayments. Annually. Uh one point five times heading towards being twice our defence budget. We spent more on paying off the debt, the national debt. every year than we spend on defense.

16:34 How did the UK get here? Well, our our debt to GDP is over a hundred percent. We keep borrowing money. And social spending and so on. We got here by forgetting that we live in the real world and engaging in lots of luxury beliefs about what we ought to do. So we have the highest tax burden in peacetime history in this country. And we do that not because we want to have a robust military or to do other things like that. We do it so that we can continue to pay ourselves money we don't have borrowing it from our children and our grandchildren. And this is the case across Europe, really. America

17:12 also has a high level of debt, but they have a growing economy unlike ours. Britain Uh, Britain's GDP per capita is lower today than it was in two thousand six. We have per capita, which is what matters per person, but it's not a very important thing. we m have less money today than we did

17:27 Twenty years ago. So our economy's declined, we've destroyed our manufacturing, we've run down our armed forces And also I mean look. President Trump

17:37 I think is fair to say is quite sensitive about what people say about him. We have a government now that very imprudently and unwisely spent the time they were in opposition shitting on him on a daily basis. David Lamy, if you take he's our foreign secretary, if you take some of his comments about President Trump. They were just deeply irresponsible. Whatever you think about the rights and wrong of what he said. A a someone who has the potential to be this country's foreign secretary in charge of our relationship with the United States cannot be

18:09 so imprudent as to make those kinds of comments. And then you're going, Well, you've just been calling this guy Every name under the sun. And now you wanna you wanna be relevant, you wanna be taken seriously, you wanna be engaged with as he makes huge decisions about geopolitics Actions have consequences.

18:27 And the actions we have been taken have produced the consequences that we've got. Now, look, I am not all doom and gloom about it. If we change our strategy And if we change our behavior, we can change the pro the the pr the end product of that. We can do that, but that's gonna require a massive readjustment. With the current direction of travel. Where does the UK end up? We're already there.

18:49 We're irrelevant. We are irrelevant. Like you said, Venezuela happens, no one cares about us. When Iran gets bombed, no one cares about us. Th th all the future big decisions about geopolitics are gonna be made without Britain even being considered. Because it's going to be made by the major powers, of which Britain is no longer one. You choose to live in the UK, despite your views that the UK is uh

19:14 A bit of a sinking ship, I guess. Because of my views. Actually. Because of your views. I'm I appreciate that. But as you can imagine, we get offers to do the same. in all sorts of different ways, and we could have done the same. I love this country. I'm very grateful to and I feel to stay and fight for it and to articulate my views and try and persuade people to my point of view so that we can have a British Renaissance, so that we can have a British recovery is my duty for as long as I can do that. And if at some point, you know, I feel it's completely futile, which I do not Um So you're hopeful.

19:50 I am not despondent to the point of giving up, is where I am. Are you hopeful? No. No. But But I'm also not at the point where I feel it's futile. I think there is

20:00 There is an opportunity to turn things around if if everything comes together and we're very fortunate. Uh and that's what I'm tr hopefully trying to contribute to. Through history, when companies pursue the strategy that the UK is currently pursuing. Where d where does it end up? Economically.

20:17 Well it's Stephen, you're the business guy. You tell you No, but I don't I'm not I don't have the greatest view of history and so I'm I'm wondering if there's'cause you know in in the UK if I've I was born thirty three years ago in Botswana and I moved to the UK when I was young. And um I've always known the UK to be important. And consequential. Should and the the economy to be, you know, much better than where I'm from in Botswana. So it it's it's almost inconceivable for a a British person of my age to s to think that the UK

20:43 can ever not be that it's always been in my lifetime. Yes. But that is in many ways and I'm not pinning the blame on you, obviously, but that is in many ways how we got here, because what we thought Well look. No matter what we do. We're always gonna be great Britain.

20:59 We're gonna have a great economy, we're gonna have strong military, we're gonna have a this, we're gonna have influence in the world. And then we started doing lots of stupid shit. And that's how we've ended up in the place that we've ended up. So this country has every potential to be great. The people are incredible, the level of education, uh the scientific and technological advances that this country's produced. The cultural look at the greatest bands in human history. Oh half of them are British. Comedians. I mean c stand up comedy is not a a a British invention. It was actually invented in America. But look at some of the greatest comedians in human history. Again, lots and lots of British people. So culturally, scientifically, technologically, economically, we have the potential We have to have the correct leadership and the right strategy and those two things have been lacking for a long time. That's how we've ended up here. Can we turn it around? It's going to be very, very, very difficult. But I but we've got to try. Why would these issues impact us on a individual level? So I'm thinking about the average person listening now, whether they are in the United States or here in Britain.

21:59 You know, this stuff happens kind of up above us. Mm-hmm and we get on with our lives, but What are the symptoms we'll begin to see? Well this multipolar world or the the fall of Britain. You're already poorer today than you were twenty years ago. Per capita. In the UK. In the UK. Yeah.

22:15 That seems to me quite important. And in fact many of our conversations about domestic issues, whether it's mass immigration and all of these other things, they're really proxies for that conversation. Cause if we if the economy was growing and people felt richer, all of the stuff would become less important. Right. Well I think we'd agree with that. So that's one aspect of it. The other aspect of it is as I talked about the multipolar world being by necessity more violent and unstable.

22:42 We are going you know, y we we I don't know when this will go out, but we're recording this in the middle of January. It's been like two weeks since the year started and we've already seen Crazy amounts of Instability geopolitically. Already, is that fair to say? So this will continue.

22:57 And that will bleed through to domestic politics because if you s have to spend more of your resources worrying about things abroad, it means you can do less at home. and so on and so on and so on. So the the ramifications of this will be very impactful on everybody around the world. More on non Western countries. 'Cause they are a lot of them are gonna be in the front line of this, in w in the way that I I I doubt we will be. Uh but still the consequences for us will be very significant. And we're seeing it.

23:24 Adjacent to this, this rise in socialism. Yeah. the conversation around socialism. Obviously Mendani has been elected mayor. But do you think this is at all linked to the bigger picture, this rise in socialism? Yeah, in fact I I think you know, I wrote an article uh a long time ago called Why I Fear the Future.

23:40 And I did a video based on it. I did a live show um here in London just before Christmas. And I did a book signing and one of the guys came up to me and he said, I've got two kids, they're both teenagers daughter and the son and I'm trying to pull the daughter in from the far left and I'm trying to pull the son in from the far right. That's gonna be the big challenge going forward because Um

24:02 the amount of chaos and instability and cultural kind of cultural upheaval that we've seen has produced A craving for order. And on the socialist side. You know we must

24:15 And on the other side, it's produced a sense of injustice and the pursuit of inequality. That's why you hear people talk so much about the rich, the rich, the rich, the rich. And you know, we eat the rich, we've got to redistribute all of this stuff. particularly in the big cities, young people rightly feel that they can they can't really get on the housing ladder, they can't establish a family. Life is more difficult. So they reach for these very uh dis disproven, discredited, and completely unworkable solutions of the kind Mam Dani uh will of course deliver. But it's because their sense of Their sense is that the future's been taken away from them.

24:52 And in many ways they're correct. Because as I said earlier, we have been borrowing from our children and our grandchildren, we've been saddling with crippling debts on entire economy. That will come to an end. And it's gonna be them that is left to foot the bill and it's gonna be very painful. And th partly they see that and already they see that they just can't afford the life that they want. I do think in the United States it's a much more contained phenomenon. I think Mamdanian y if you look at s sort of the American socialists, they all tend to cluster around New York and one or two other big cities. It's not like the entirety of America is going uh socialist. But I think the housing unaffordability is one. Another explanation which I think is also powerful is what's called elite overproduction, which is if you have, as Tony Blair did, this idea that fifty percent of the public should should go to university.

25:41 Well they do and then it turns out there's not enough jobs for them, particularly in the age of AI, where they are the jobs that are being eliminated very rapidly. You then get a lot of people whose entitlement is up here. And his prospects are down here. that produces a tremendous amount of social disease as well. I think this is a really important connected point.

26:01 On the subject of socialism and the rise of socialism that we will see is this Point of AI. And when I listen to very, very smart people who are considered to be the godfathers of AI or CEOs who are building these technology companies, there seems to be a consensus that socialism will only increase because the job losses associated with AI are gonna be pretty Quick and pretty extreme.

26:22 And um I mean one of them that most Brits won't understand is something we understand now living in America, which is my car drivers itself. Yes. And I've said this a few times'cause I'm really trying to it's like the first moment, Eureka moment I think you have is in America when I get in my car, I don't touch the steering wheel or the pedals, and it can drive me to Joshua Tree, which is like two and a half, three hours away. uninterrupted. And I say this because driving is like one of the biggest employees in the world. I think it is the biggest profession in the world. And London just announced that Waymo's are here and soon sh surely Tesla will be allowed to do full self driving here as well. And in such a world, delivery drivers, taxi drivers, uber drivers

26:59 are gonna be without jobs and we're seeing this um huge rise in Autonomous humanoid robots as well. And Elon's pay pack it says that he he will make a million of these autonomous robots and get them out into the world. And Jason Kalakanakas, who just visited Elon's factory, said there'll be a billion of these and he he thinks that we won't even r even remember Tesla for making cars, we'll only remember them for the robots they're made because these Optimus robots, which are coming. are gonna be so consequential. And the last point here is a very good friend of mine who runs this big sort of innovation accelerator in San Francisco. I visited it the the accelerator a couple of weeks back.

27:35 And he um he's I said to him, Why why is everybody here, all these young founders, these forty, fifty young founders in your building called Effink, all all working on robotics? And he goes, Well, you know, we've had all the parts for like twenty, thirty years But the expensive part was the intelligence. The brain. Yeah, the brain. He goes now we have the brain. He said it used to he showed me this arm, this robotic arm that had a frying pan on it that would cook for you. A in a box, it just cooks whatever you want in a box. And he goes, We've had all these parts for the last thirty years. That they were cheap. He goes the the intelligence part, the brain.

28:04 would cost twenty or thirty thousand dollars just for this little robot arm. He goes now It's like Two cents. Yeah. And he says you're seeing this huge explosion in robotics. I don't think people understand what's coming. No. Going to San Francisco is eye opening on two levels. Number one is like a quarter to a third of the cars on the road don't have drivers. And just visually seeing that is so striking.

28:26 Um but the other thing is talking to some of the people involved. There is a There are some people who are fairly sensible about fairly responsible among the founders, although they will still say, and I think they are right that like if we don't do this, China will, and so we've got to do this. But there's also a lot, and I I'm sure you've encountered there's a kind of You know, that famous Facebook mantra of move fast and break things. There's a lot of that going on in the AI space. And so it's gonna be hugely impactful. I don't claim to know

28:54 the the all the little details of how that will play out other than to say it's gonna be very Disruptive. Uh and disruptiveness has happened throughout human history. It's always produced a backlash. It's always caused a lot of disease but then humanity has managed to recover. This is different level.

29:10 And we will see how it plays out. But yeah, of course it's gonna be and yeah, i a world in which millions of people in which millions of people no longer have jobs. And most of them are disproportionately young people. who are more prone to extremism anyway. Yeah, that's not a pretty picture.

29:26 And one would assume that the wealth will accrue to a few. Yes. And what's funny is I have said really only half jokingly, I mean I wrote a whole book about my opposition to communism and socialism based on experience, but in a world in which no one has a job, I'm like a hundred percent on board with communism. Do you think that's the world we're heading towards? Possibly. Yeah. But it makes sense. I mean like y if you think about it from the perspective of

29:54 fifty people in the world have all the money in the world and everyone else has no job. I think a little bit of wealth redistribution is gonna be unavoidable in that situation and it can either happen voluntarily or it's gonna happen at the end of bayonets. That's the choice. When you say communism would be the only choice in such a scenario, what what does that mean? Paid for existing. Right.

30:17 Well, I mean what else is there? You're gonna create fake jobs for people, that's not gonna work. Right. So if if all the wealth in the world is gonna be created by robots, th a world in which th the products of their labor it only accrues to fifty people who had the idea or did the work

30:35 twenty years ago. That's not going to sustain itself. And So Uh it would be very

30:42 very unwise of those people to attempt to hold on to all that wealth. Uh it would not end well for them, in my opinion. On a personal level, you know, this disruption's gonna happen in your lifetime. Yeah. Are you thinking much about it or planning for it at all? Did has it changed any of the decisions you you make on a Day to day basis or month to month basis. I am probably a little harder to replace with a robot just because people don't really want to hear robots' opinions, I would imagine. We might get to that point, but I think it's unlikely. So on my my own level

31:12 I'm probably you know, the time scale I'm working to in the next ten years, I imagine I'll I'll get to myself to a point where I'm gonna be reasonably comfortable no matter what happens. For my children. That was us cutting forward ten years and what I've been doing. Mate, uh I can't believe what happened. For my children It's a very different conversation. Uh so a lot of people are like, well, you know, what should I teach my children? And people are Oh yeah, this should be a plumber.

31:38 I don't think you're gonna need plumbers fifteen, twenty years from now either. So I d I honestly don't know what that future looks like. And In many ways that's always been the reality of life for most people. We are living through one of those great transitions in human history. In which All you can do is equip your children with the basic skill sets of life. as opposed to what might have been done twenty, thirty years ago where like you you you get you go to school to develop a skill, to go to university to build a career. Now you're gonna have to show a lot of flex in this modern world. So you're gonna have to be

32:09 personable, you're gonna have to be resourceful, you're gonna have to be creative, you're gonna have to go have a a positive, go get a mindset. You're gonna have to have those basics nailed down as opposed to here's the career that you've been predetermined to have. Unless of course you go into AI and robotics, in which case You probably won't be replaced for at least five years. I think there's something to the fact that there's an angst with AI. And when you know, people listen to podcasts all the time. They Everyone who has a job in a big corporate environment now is being told by their CEO that you better learn AI or it's gonna replace you. So we're we're living in this moment of

32:42 There's like aliens coming over the horizon and we've spotted them. They're not quite here yet. But it's it's like saying to the general public, look, there's aliens coming and they're coming for your job and everything you value. That angst in and of itself I think can drive people towards Ideas like socialism, understandably. Yeah. Because you you know it's it's a it's a deep

33:04 Existential Angst. And also a lot of the AI people, not all of them, a lot of them are being but a lot of them are being deeply irresponsible and very unwise with their messaging. Last time I was in New York, I was walking through Times Square, there was this giant billboard which said it was the name of the company which I don't remember Stop hiring humans.

33:24 The age of the AI employees here. I'm going have you really thought about this? Have you thought about putting your company's name on this poster? Do you understand the impact this is gonna have on a normal person looking at that? Um but

33:37 They're so the thing is with AI is the the positive upsides of it are limitless. Literally limitless. And so a lot of the people who are in that space that's what they focus on. And they're like, We can solve Cancer, we can solve medical problems. We can have AI that's better than any physicist that can ever that's ever lived, that can give us the you know, the eternal engine or or or or whatever. We don't need energy anymore. Like there are all sorts of crazy things that come out of AI.

34:07 And that is exciting. But the angst that you talk about I think is there, and I think it's also quite rational. You just reminded me of a a video that came out this week from Elon where he says this I'll play it for you.

34:22 So he's talking about Elon's talking about the the robots that are about to be released from Tesla, which are called Optimus, and someone's asking. How good they will be at surgery. Do you think Optimist would be a better surgeon?

34:35 Then it The best surgeons. I wanted for that. Three years. Three years. Okay. Yeah. And by the way, I say three years. At scale. Yes.

34:46 Oh, there'll be more there'll probably be more optimist robots that are great surgeons. And there are Sure. And the cost of that. But that's an important statement in three years' time. Yeah. Um because Yeah, absolutely. If it's four or five years, who cares? Extreme precision. Yeah.

35:08 Yes. Better than any I mean probably I said if you like A little marginal expensive than any human in four years. By five years is anything close. Medicine.

35:22 is gonna be effectively free. The best menace in the world. Medical care that is better. Then What the president receives right now. So don't go into medical school. Yes, wireless. Yeah.

35:36 Pointless going to medical school. Look, he knows way more about this than I do. I would also say that I think both the incentive structure and his personal temperament lean towards a kind of Optimism and There's a sales dimension to this as well, obviously, because he's one of the people producing this stuff. So his optimism may be a product of the incentive structure that he's subject to. But Even if it's not three years. I I don't think it's more than ten years.

36:03 So that's the time frame, and given how long it takes to train to become a doctor. Yeah. I wanna talk about the situation in Iran. We're seeing. what one might call an uprising at the moment where protesters are are on the street in a country where it is very, very dangerous, um and also very brave to protest against the leadership there.

36:23 Where does this fit in the broader context? Wha what what the hell is going on? I am not an expert on Iran, but uh effectively what's happening in Iran is an attempt at counter revolution. So they had a revolution in nineteen seventy nine, they overthrew the ruler the Shah and they replaced him with the i an Islamic dictatorship, which is what you've had since nineteen seventy nine. And the people of Iran have attempted to Overthrow this.

36:48 Islamic dictatorship repeatedly, they've always been brutally suppressed, and that's basically what's happening now again. And is does this fit somewhere into the broader conflict of geopolitics and the US the multipoly. doing anything about it. Yeah, on a on a kind of kinetic level. And that's partly be for the reasons that we talked about earlier, which is the United States is deeply, deeply f the United States public are deeply, deeply skeptical about foreign interventions.

37:24 And so the idea that we w that we the West would support a a regime change in Iran Is not something that you can sell to the American right now. And so he has to be he has to be much more careful about what he might otherwise have done. in Iran. And so because of that, the leaders of Iran probably feel like they're in a better position to crack down and survive. versus what might have happened in the past.

37:51 I mean Trump's been quite vocal in what he might do in his threats. He said that he the US would come to the protesters' rescue, that we are locked, loaded and ready to go. He announced that countries doing business with Iran faced a twenty five percent tariff on their trade with the US, ramping up pressure. And he called for Iranians to keep protesting. Um and then more recently he said I've cancelled all meetings with Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protest stops.

38:15 Help is on the way. Mag Mega? Make it run great again. Well, Iran, you know, uh I mean one thing that should be said is the Persian Empire and the Persian people are a great people with a very rich history. And what's interesting is in attempting to overth I don't know if you've ever seen pictures from Tehran from before nineteen seventy nine, it's like women walking around in mini skirts and and and all the rest of it. So they have a a very long history of freedom in a way that we don't tend to think of the Middle East as having today. And that's that's uh

38:47 That's an example of how it's perhaps different from other parts of the Middle East. But th you can see the the reluctance to actually do anything about it because the question is, well, let's say you do remove the current leadership. Let's say you bring back the son of the former Shah Reza Pahlawi. He oversees it. a transition to some kind of democratic thing. Who is there

39:09 protecting that process from being disrupted by the remnants of the old regime. Who's gonna do that? Is there American boots on the ground?'Cause there's literally zero appetite for that. That's the challenge that I think he faces, which is probably why he hasn't done anything. And how do you think the story plays out?

39:27 No idea, mate. No idea. I I I have no idea what what's gonna happen here. I fear, unfortunately, that what the regime will do I I'm not saying this is what will happen, but my fear is, and it's one of the reasons that I am

39:42 Huh. I sympathize so deeply with the Iranian people that are rising up against their oppression, but I am wary of unless we are willing to back them fully. This is exactly in the w in the way that what happened with Ukraine. There was a lot of rah rah rah

39:59 And there was not nearly enough support to actually help them. Defend their country. And my fear is that There will be a lot of rah rah rah. We support the Ukrainian people, we stand with them, blah blah you know, blah blah blah. But ultimately the regime will kill more of them and it will kill enough of them for this to go away.

40:17 That's my warrior. Well, I hope the world does come to the support of the Iranians. I really do. Me too. Because for all the reasons you've said, beautiful country, beautiful people, and um It's it's horrific to see what's going on this varying estimates. It's unfortunately we we don't have accurate numbers because

40:34 I mean the internet is down and it it's always hard to get accurate numbers in this situation, but I've heard estimates ranging from two thousand to eighteen thousand people being killed. And uh It's inconceivable, I think, for Westerners like us to understand what it is to live in an environment like that. I just hope that the geopolitical realities are

40:56 allow us to support them in the way that we keep saying we would. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, of course, yeah. And this is yeah and this is my big worry. We have we have done a lot of this. We stand with you, we support you. And then when push comes to shove. the realities of the thing come into play and suddenly we're a lot more

41:16 Trump seems to walk the walk more so than others. And he seems to it's funny because I think B it was Biden that said to China that if they took back Taiwan he would get involved. Trump didn't say that. He's kind of I was looking at some quotes from Trump and it seems like he's basically like, Well, if they take Taiwan back, I gotta get involved. But in other instances where he warns countries that he'll bomb them or take action. Like Venezuela or like Iran with the the the nuclear weapon situation.

41:44 He does seem to follow through. And I've Marco Rubio. And Hegsteth was saying the other day in the interview I was watching that listen When a when is the world gonna land? If Trump says something, he's gonna do it. And you know, him saying that we will come to your rescue Well, hopefully they come through on that, but also hopefully they have a plan.

42:03 For what happens after that. And this is the mistake we've obviously made. In a number of countries. Libya Iraq.

42:12 Afghanistan. Syria, which is now basically headed by a jihadi. Yeah. Right. Where we go, Oh yeah, we've got to remove this terrible guy. And yeah, d he's a terrible guy and we're right to remove him.

42:24 But then what do you end up with afterwards? So if they do help the Iranian people, which I hope they have that they have the plans to do, then I hope they have a plan for what happens after that and how you get Iran to a position where the people of Iran get to choose their own leaders and those leaders stay in power. And those leaders are the sorts of people that you might want to see in charge because You know, this happened in Egypt.

42:47 They they they have the Arab Spring, they overthrow the the evil dictator, and what do they do? They elect the Muslim Brotherhood. And then the people go, No, no, no we need the military back, et cetera. So these are not easy problems to solve, which is why people are being careful about it. So I hope they have a a plan and a solution for what comes after. If they in fact act. And Trump's also talking about taking Greenland. Which is w the first time I heard him say that I thought he was joking. I thought this is just a funny Trump you know, when he was talking about taking Canada. Yeah.

43:15 It was he was calling it the great state of Canada. I thought this was him just joking. But in more recent times in the last week, I heard him say in an interview, we're gonna do it the easy way or the hard way, words to that effect. Well we talked about they're trying to protect their sphere of influence in North America and South America and they they want they want they want to have the military basis there that they want to have there. They want to have the resources and access to that. Are we returning to empires? We never left them, but this is the this is the great thing that Th we we've been living in the dream world where we've been pretending these h things haven't been going on the entire time.

43:52 They have. The world's always been like this. There was a brief moment. after World War Two when it wasn't like this, because we were fighting the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union the battle in the Cold War was very similar. There was proxy wars all over the place between those two great powers. Right.

44:09 Now This Two different great powers and a third smaller power in Russia. And India is rising as well, who are all trying to make their moves. And all Trump is doing is saying, Well we are not going to play by the fake rules anymore that no one else is playing by

44:24 Anyway. And so is Trump Endeavoring to take that part of the world, take control of that part. Take control, yeah. In many ways it's what every great power seeks to do, is to control its neighbours so that they don't have foreign influence in their backyard, so that they have the strategic advantage in that area. Um it's it's the way of the world.

44:46 I mean I didn't hear this rhetoric. For the other Thirty years of my life. Yeah. As explicitly.

44:51 Yeah. And when you say multipolar What are the polls? Well, it's the US and China. Yeah.

44:59 Other two. Russia Wants to claim it's a third one? And then you will see the rise of India, I think, over time as well. India's a lot more sensible about these things, about the way that they're developing.

45:11 And is the is the multipolar world a good thing or a bad thing, or is it just indifferent? For whom? for Let's do people living in Europe. I think it's likely to be a very bad thing for people living in Europe.

45:26 Because we become less powerful, less wealthy, less relevant. uh for for the reasons we've already discussed. We could change it. If we wanted to. No.

45:36 we could uh abandon our suicidal economic policy. So we could have economic growth again, which would increase our share of GDP, we will make our people more prosperous. It would help to quell domestic unease. Mm-hmm. part of which has been created by mass immigration.

45:53 People care about that more because they're poorer. Right. If we were growing then everybody's a little bit happier. It's like you move to LA, the sunshine is nice, everybody's a little bit happier. When you're getting richer, everybody's a little bit happier. So that's one of them. The second one is you've got to recognize that the huge waves of immigration we have had uh have brought some positives. They've also brought a tremendous amount of cultural instability. People feel like their country is changing. They never voted for it. In fact they repeatedly voted against it. So you have to arrest the sense That

46:27 our country ceasing to be one place and instead we're becoming different communities, right? The this community, the that community. Instead we've got to go to a place where we're all British, or we're all American, or we're all French, or whatever it is. We've got to integrate fully the people who've already arrived, and to do that, you have to make sure you don't continue to have the same scale of inflows that we've had. You have to deal with illegal immigration. You have to stop that from happening because that that really affects how people feel about sense of fairness and a commitment and loyalty to their country. One of the reasons if you talk to young people that they'll say they're disillusioned, they won't fight for their country, et cetera, is they feel like well The country doesn't care about them. is bringing in people that it's paying to have a house and and so all the rest of it while they can't get on the property ladder. So you've got to deal with immigration as a whole package. Then you have to rebuild your military, you have to rebuild your military capacity.

47:20 And then you have to understand the new world in which we live and really pick a team and say Which alliances are we gonna nurture? In my opinion, the best thing Britain could do is to nurture the alliance with the United States. to make itself relevant within that alliance for w in the ways that I've already talked about, and then join forces with the US.

47:41 And recognize that we have very similar interests in a lot of things, and if we were prepared to act like it, then we'd be in a much better place. And also. You gotta have more kids. A lot more kids. Why?

47:55 Uh if you if you look at forget about the moral kind of sensibilities and politically correct stuff about it. The more people you have, the more powerful you are. Compared to all other things being equal. Right. A country with more people is more powerful than a country with fewer people. Just if everything else is the same. But more importantly, w uh our demo we're in the demographic death spiral. Politicians won't tell you the honest truth of it, but the real reason is they keep br bring in

48:23 hundreds of thousands of people is if they don't, we will see the reality, which is that we're getting poorer all the time. But if they bring in Yeah. a a mass of people from outside, they can say that the economy is growing. Not because it's growing on a per capita basis, but because you've simply added more people

48:41 to the population. And if if if this is seems abstract, think about it like this. Let's say you have Uh You have a family. You your girlfriend and you've got two kids, right? And your total household income is a hundred thousand pounds a year, let's say for the four of you. Now let's say you bring in your in laws, they live in the same house. Right, they don't earn anything. Let's say they own ten grand a year each. So now your household income is one hundred and twenty thousand.

49:06 So you've got Richard, haven't you? Hm. No You've now got six people to spread that money over, and now you're per person a lot poorer. That's what British and European leaders have done. So that

49:19 they could pretend that we're not getting poorer all the time. That's why they've done it. Uh this is what they say, we need people to come and do the jobs. That that's what they mean. They mean we need to bring in more people so we can tell you the economy's grown by no point three percent.

49:34 while you've been getting poorer. So you've got to address the economic side of this as well. of the demographic thing. And the third thing, actually, is societies with lots of kids kids are just much more dynamic than societies without them. You know, you get very stale when you've got too many older people. You need that young energy, that young blood, you need young people, you need children around. Uh and then they will of course be the next generation that drive things forward. So you've got to have loads more loads more kids. New Year always has a strange energy to it because people start talking about their goals, fresh starts, and new habits, but the reality is that most people carry the same ideas they had last year into the new year. I'm guilty of that too. And they still don't end up doing anything with them. And I get why. Starting something new, especially if it's a business or a project, is overwhelming. Before you start, you're looking for the perfect moment and to be the perfect version of yourself when really what matters most is taking that first step. If you had an idea for a while, a product, a store, something you've been sitting on.

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52:04 And the way he's leaving the UK. It's very tempting always. We come back to the Biden, Trump, left, right thing to put the blame on one specific person. Uh I don't think he's doing a good job, for the reasons that I told you. We've we've got the highest tax burden in peacetime history. So he's driving business through the floor. I know that you will We you and I have never spoken about this, but I bet you could name

52:27 fifty people off the top of your head who've left the UK to go to other places, who run businesses, you're nodding, right? People listening. Well why is that happening? 'Cause the business climate here is not good. Mm-hmm. The taxes here are very high. And also the quality of life here is declined.

52:43 And generally you know, I think maybe the first point you said about climate There's a pessimism. Why is that? Why is that?

52:52 It's self-down. Fulfilling. Yes. It's like a self fulfilling pessimism where founders who are in my portfolio that I've invested in will come to me and say, Hi, we you know, we've just sold uh Ten percent of the business for twenty million. Yeah. And then the next sentence will be their escape plan.

53:06 Mm-hmm. And that didn't used to happen ten years ago. And that's because of government policy. That's the only way that this happens, right? Because if the government A, keeps taxing you up to your eyeballs and B keeps telling you that you are evil Which is what it does, right? If you're rich in Britain, you are evil.

53:25 That's the that's the algorithm we have. And we treat successful people We immediately assume that they're privileged people. My pet theory is that this goes back to the landed gentry. the idea that in this country if you were rich There was a time when that was almost certainly because your dad was rich, or at least people thought that. And so This sense that if someone is successful economically, financially, it's probably because they've benefited from some sort of ill gotten privilege. It permeates everything.

53:56 In America, people don't feel that way. They go, You've been successful'cause you've worked really hard and you've had a great idea I'd love to learn from you. I'd love to be more like you. In Britain we go, you've been successful, uh You know, we gotta tax you. So if the government keeps taxing you and then telling you you're a bad person while you pay the overwhelming share of the taxes in the country, It's no great place to be. You know, if I come home tonight and my wife says, Yeah, you own all the money, but you're a dick and I don't like you and

54:25 After a while you sort of go, Well, if this isn't working, I'll go somewhere where I'm wanted. Do you know what I mean? And I think that's what's happening to a lot of the most driven, the most talented, the most successful, the most creative people. And so we're driving out the business, we're driving out the entrepreneurs. Then on the industrial side of it, we talked about it before. Net zero basically means that any energy intensive business is completely unviable in Britain. And I'm sure you've seen this with AI and lots of other things. You go to where you can do your business. Then on top of that you add regulation.

54:57 Particularly in in Europe. Which restrict your ability to do things. Again. So there's this um You and it didn't didn't that didn't doesn't have to be like that. It wasn't like that uh in the nineties in this country. Right. There was a positive go get a business climate. And you can do that again.

55:15 You just have to have a leader who is willing to do that. And Sama is the opposite of that. And part of the reason is that they simply can't do anything about the fact that we are spending huge amounts of money. Uh keeping lots and lots of people trapped. In welfare.

55:32 Against in many ways against their interest and actually in some ways I would argue even against their will. Because and I've made this point before. If you said to you're a very driven person I'm a very driven person. But when I was In my early twenties?

55:47 If you'd said to me You don't need to work. You know, I know you're feeling a bit depressed, as I was in my early twenties. I wasn't sure where I was doing with life. You're a bit depressed, you're a bit anxious. I remember going to apply for a job and just sweating buckets because I was so anxious, right Well, you've got anxiety, you've got depression, you can't work. We'll give you twenty grand a year. And you can just you know, we'll write you off and you just sit at home play on the play station and smoke weed.

56:12 I would have taken that. Most people would have taken that. And that's the position we have put a lot of our young people in. Uh we just ride them off, we give them benefits, and we forget about them. And that welfare bill has become A unsustainable, but it's also uncuttable. They tried the the Liberal government tried to cut it. They tried to reform welfare and their own backbenches revolted and they caved.

56:33 And they said, No, no, no, we're not going to reform welfare, we're going to tax the rich because the rich, you know, don't pay enough tax. When in the reality I think the top you maybe look the sub ten per the top ten percent of taxpayers in this country pay I think more than half of all attacks. Probably significantly more than half of all the tax. But look it up. I think the top one percent pay thirty three percent of all the tax. Fact check me on this.

56:57 Okay, so The top ten percent of taxpayers Pay sixty percent of all income tax. And also um what's the other one, the co uh capital gains as well. If you look up capital gains, it's basically the same. So if you put those two together, which is basically what we pay on earning.

57:15 The top ten percent pay sixty percent of it. So what happens when you chase out those people, which is what we're doing. What happens to your tax base? You get less and less tax That means you have to tax the people who haven't left yet more and more. In order to pay people who are not Who and that.

57:33 Consumers of Tax revenues. According to H M Revenue and Customs data, in the UK the top one percent pay Thirty percent of all income. I said thirty three, so thirty, yeah. Yeah.

57:46 So what happens when you say that one percent Uh evil. And they must pay more. One percent pay thirty percent of all the tax. It's funny, I'm quite a torn person uh on this subject'cause I th I represent kind of two sides of this argument. The first side of the argument, I just have this v sort of visceral memory of being sat at my desk in Mosside with these like bailiff letters on my right, the smashed up laptop on my left, knowing that I had no way of eating that day.

58:12 And thinking, Oh, I need do you know what I need to do? There's this thing called job seekers allowance. And I was like messing with the ide do I join it'cause like right now I'm like scavenging for pound coins to see if I can buy some ch Chinese from Young Dar takeaway. And I printed off the forms. And the forms were there in front of me on the desk to apply for job seekers allowance when I was maybe eighteen years old, roughly that age, eighteen, nineteen years old. And because I got so close, I have this huge amount of empathy for people that get to that point. And then on the other side, because I'm now in a different world and I I'm around entrepreneurs so much who are

58:47 so f so frequently telling me their escape plan from the UK that I feel the need to let the average the the normal person that's listening to this podcast that doesn't maybe doesn't have the access to entrepreneurs or the inside conversations that on that I have with entrepreneurs know That when people come on the show and tell you that Rich people will leave. It is my experience. That rich people leave.

59:10 And like because there's there is an argument, ongoing argument. No, they won't leave. And the people point at different things. No no they they leave. They mean we just saw Revolute, which is one of the the most successful companies emerge from the UK in recent times, it's probably gonna be worth a hundred billion. The founder left. Yeah. I think it's debio somebody's gone to and people say well Britain can't compete with a zero tax

59:32 environment. We don't need to compete with the zero tax environment. People want to live in Britain, still. You just have to stop clubbering over the them over the head and calling them evil. Right. Yeah. Now, look, uh you know, I can give you a sub story as well. Like when I was uh at university, I I had no I I had to stop university because I couldn't pay for it, I slept on the street in a park, blah blah blah blah blah.

59:53 Empathy for days for people who are in that position. Th and there are lots of people, by the way, and this is important to say, Stephen. who are not in your position, they're not super talented, they're not predisposed to success, they're not as hard working and motivated as you. For whatever reason many people are disabled, many people have all sorts of other issues. And of course we've got to help them. But what we have done is Is trapped.

1:00:15 now hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who could be working And have meaning and purpose in their life. on welfare and we're not helping them get off it because it's much easier to give them a payout and forget about them. That's what's happening. And so You know, I've had these views since before I was in any way successful. I just looked at what works.

1:00:36 And when we talk about rich people leaving, the thing is I don't care about rich people leaving. People who have a lot of money leaving is not really an issue for me. What's an issue for me is people who are going to create wealth leaving. So on that point, the founder of Revoluted. leaving the UK, Nick Strinsky, I think his name is

1:00:57 Um estimates say credible reports say That because he's leaving That is gonna be a three billion pounds. Potential loss of capital gains tax.

1:01:07 That he would have paid had he not. Yeah. Now to put this into more stark terms what that means. I then um did some research and I was looking at how many people it would take to pay that three billion, how many average taxpayers it would take to pay that three billion that we l that we lose by him leaving. And it says roughly four hundred and fifty thousand average UK taxpayers because the average UK taxpayer

1:01:31 pays about seven thousand to seven thousand five hundred pounds a year. So very simple math, three billion divided by seven thousand equals four hundred and thirty thousand people. So in plain English That billionaire's potential tax bill is equal to the entire income tax of a mid sized UK city for one year. Because that person decided to leave. Congratulations, you taxed the rich.

1:01:56 Congratulations. Now half a million people have to pay more tax. Well done. That's what we do. And Because it's become a moral argument because the rich are evil.

1:02:10 in our mentality. People don't hear this point at all. it just totally goes over their head. They go, you know, but but the rich are evil, they must pay more tax. And you go Even if I agree with you. It still doesn't work in practice.

1:02:26 So if something is not working in practice, why would you keep doing it? Think as well, you know, y one of your other points was around what the UK has to offer them. And I think if the UK was really growth focused and you know the energy point you made, energy was cheaper here, then that equation that these founders are making, whether to stay or to leave, would tilt a little bit further in our direction. So it's super it's so difficult. And no d no disrespect to Dubai, but Most people don't want to have to live in Dubai.

1:02:57 I think the UK is a lovely plant, I'm not sure. And I say this with there's lots of great appealing things about Dubai, but if you dealt with Prime in the UK? And you had a growth focused mindset. You had a tax climate that encouraged people to start businesses and employ people. We wouldn't be losing these people.

1:03:15 And we shouldn't be losing these people. They are they are the people who will create the wealth of the future and they should be doing it here. They should be founding and keeping their businesses here. And if you did that. Then you start to turn h the whole thing we've been talking about around.'Cause ultimately everything's about economics. in in this sense. Mm the military is about economics. It's about do you have the resources to have a strong military.

1:03:38 We don't. So we don't. So which leader do we need? Again, I don't like getting into the personality s uh side of things, but what you need is someone who understands how The economy works. Why don't you like getting into the personality side of things? Because what happens when I if I give you a name.

1:03:55 Yeah. Then immediately people say, Oh, he's one of them. Okay. I am not one of them, of any them. I'm just telling you what the policies are that I think would work for our country. If Keastarmer tomorrow came on your show and said, Stephen, I'm here to announce a great British transformation. We're gonna cut business taxes. We're gonna get rid of net zero. We're gonna make sure that we have the cheapest energy in the world for our businesses to grow and thrive. We're gonna have a strong capable military

1:04:24 And by the way, I've just hired fifty thousand new police officers to deal with all the ridiculous amounts of street crime we've got in London. Sign me up, I'm all Kastama. Right or die. Right. But

1:04:37 That's probably not gonna happen. That's probably not going to happen with any of the other leaders that we have. So I'm here telling you what I think the right policies are. And if there's a leader who advocates for those policies, that's the sort of leader that I will support. Only eighteen percent of Britons view Keir Starmer positively.

1:04:53 Yeah. With around sixty five to seventy two percent holding an unfavorable opinion. You're desperate for me to slag off Keir Starmer. I'm happy to do it. No, I'm actually not. I'm actually not. Do you know what do you know what my opinion of Keir Starmer probably a really nice person. Probably. Probably a really nice person. I don't really care how nice he is, and that's my attitude to all politicians. I care about whether they're going to do things that are good for our country. Uh from what I know, he's probably a he strikes me as a very Uh well intentioned.

1:05:22 probably fairly competent. The only reason I don't like to go in on him is I I think it I I think he's useless. I do. I also don't think it's fair to lay the blame for everything that's happening at his feet. The conservatives were useless before that. The Lib Dems and the Conservatives were useless before that. The Labour Party under Blair were actually not useless. They were really, really good at terr doing terrible things to the country. They were very competent at doing that. So what we have had for now

1:05:54 On to three decades. is terrible leadership that's taken us in completely the wrong direction. The statistics around his favorability or popularity because it puts everything you're saying in context, which is these ideas aren't popular. No. polling has shown that Starmer's approval among the British public is the weakest of any recent UK prime minister, with dissatisfaction levels on some trackers showing him to be below

1:06:19 most predecessors um in even in the Labour government. So that's the the the weird part because it's n it's doesn't seem to be working To drive favorability in it. But but this is why I'm saying focusing on him individually isn't helpful actually. And this is not to argue with you unnecessarily. If you put Kemi Badenok in his place, you'd have the same favorability ratings. Really even though she has different ideas. Tchau.

1:06:44 I don't know. He told me. She has some different ideas. I mean the Conservative Party's gone a long way to changing their policy on things like Net Zero. Right. But while they were in power. They were doing all the same stuff. They were arresting people for tweets.

1:06:58 They were driving the economy into the ground with this green lunacy. They were the ones that oversaw the decline of our military. So uh in in in some ways, the personality conversation is really not that important here. What's important is a gigantic paradigm shift needs to happen. to our attitude to everything. And and one of them is dealing with w unaffordable welfare. The Tories didn't do that. Labour aren't doing it. I actually thought had the better shot,'cause at least People wouldn't say labour or evil and they hey poor people.

1:07:26 That's what they say when the Tories tried to cut welfare. When Labour tried to cut welfare, I didn't think that would happen, but they just cave to the run backbench. And maybe they had to for political reasons. But you you you just have to the the shift that needs to happen in Britain is not political, it's cultural. We have to change the mindset that we have as a country around these things. Cultural transitions are very, very, very hard. And I say that from the perspective as a business owner. Yeah. If you try to get me to change when I had a lot of people, so say I remember in my German office back in the day, in social change German office, we had a hundred, hundred and fifty people, very, very different culture to the UK. So I thought naively as a twenty three, twenty four year old, I could fly there. Yeah. And change the culture of the Berlin office. Yeah. How dumb was I. This is not how we do things. I could not change I could not change the culture of the Berlin office. So I think about a country changing the culture of a country. That's why I'm what I call an accelerationist.

1:08:22 What does that mean? It means that I believe that the only thing the only way that these things will truly fundamentally get better is when they get really, really bad first. The only way to change the culture is for people to understand what's actually happening. Uh so that they can't pretend the things that are happening are not happening. And that's what's happening at the moment. Most people don't yet quite know that they're poorer today than they were twenty years ago. Most people still think that we are saving the planet. when we reduce Britain's carbon emissions from two percent to one point nine percent.

1:08:57 of global carbon emissions. While in fact we're not even doing that. We're taking our carbon emissions and we're sending them to India and China and then shipping back the stuff they make for us in a dirtier way on big tankers which actually consume more dirty fuel and we're actually ending up increasing our CO two. output, not reducing it. Most people don't know that. But when they feel it in their pocket. when they feel like the that we are having a fiscal crisis, when they feel like they really can't afford their life anymore, that's when they're gonna start to ask some of these questions. It's one of the reasons actually the narrative on net zero is shifting. Like Almost nobody other than the government in this country still believes in the idea of net zero.

1:09:35 Right. because it's moving quite quickly in that direction. And on lots of other things, it will happen when things get much more difficult for ordinary people. Sadly. I don't want that to happen, but I think it's the only way things get better. But on the subject of global warming, it's scientific fact that the climate is changing. Well if the

1:09:58 you know, scientists talk about the poles melting and how that will have big impact on th you know, third world nations and Um how that would be a net net negative for the planet, because then you'll see more migration, you'll see more Uh sort of natural disasters and those kinds of things. Well let's f let's not argue about that because neither of us is a climate scientist, but let's accept that for the sake of argument. How

1:10:20 is outsourcing our carbon emissions to other countries. While destroying our economy. Making that better. It's not. It's not, right? And that's all I'm saying. All I'm saying is we are pretending to be saving the planet when we're not saving the planet, while also destroying our economy.

1:10:41 While also making sure that pensioners in this country die every winter 'Cause they can't afford to pay the heating bills that they need to pay to stay warm. In in what is a first world country. That's what's happening, and it's happening because of government policy. So we are not saving the planet.

1:11:02 By killing pensioners. I I'm not in favour of killing pensioners. Have you ever thought about going into politics? Are you eligible for Eligible, yes. Uh have I ever thought about it? No. I I people offer me to go into politics regularly, but it it's just it's not my game.

1:11:18 Why? You know, you m you when you talked about your mission, yeah, it seems very aligned with going into politics. I feel I have way more influence doing what I do now. Than being I'm near Prime Minister? Well that's extremely unlikely. Than being the the MP for the whatever on C who who gets one chance to ask a question of Prime Minister. No. No.

1:11:37 No. I get to speak to way more people and to persuade more people and to articulate Ideas in a much more unfiltered sense. And I think that's really important in the modern climate. What happens when you become a politician is you start having to s talk the party line and then you suddenly

1:11:54 Don't quite follow what you actually believe. Now you have to adjust and you have to say, Well, you know, the party believes this. I'm not interested in speaking for the party. I'm interested in for describing things in reality as I see them. And then if there are politicians who want to take that on, that's their job, not mine. I just don't have the temperament for it either. I just

1:12:13 I'm much more interested about in getting along with people Coalition building, caring about potholes, you know, all of this other stuff. In this multipolar world, this is how we got to the subject. I asked you who would benefit and is it a good thing? Yeah. And then I asked you is is it a good thing for Europe? And you said no. Yeah. Who is it a good thing for? China. Because they get to do what they want.

1:12:39 Whatever that is. They're much less restrained. Bye. the US. It's good for India. Same reasons.

1:12:46 Uh Is it good for Russia? We'll find out. Yes and no. I think it's g that that is more complicated. I think America will be able to get what it wants in that world, but it's probably going to find itself in a lot more confrontations internationally, and that will obviously be a drain on its resources and and its energy. If you've ever worked in a startup, you already know it's chaos. It's speed and it is survival. And now with AI accelerating everything, that speed has only increased. Startups are landing enterprise deals even earlier than before, but what comes with those deals is regulatory requirements, something a lot of early stage businesses aren't equipped to handle.

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1:14:07 Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself. I'm inviting ten thousand of you to come even deeper into the diary of a sea. Welcome to my inner circle. This is a brand new private community that I'm launching to the world. We have so many incredible things that happen that you are never shown. We have the briefs that are on my pad when I'm recording the conversation. We have clips we've never released. We have behind the scenes conversations with the guests, and also the episodes that we've never ever released. And so much more. In the circle, you'll have direct access to me. You can tell us what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview, and the types of conversations you would love us to have. But remember for now we're only inviting the first ten thousand people that join before it closes. So if you want to join our private closed community, head to the link in the description below or go to DOACCircle.com

1:14:58 I will speak to you then. Have we ever been in a multipolar world? Through history. Well yeah, loads of times. No uh a friend of mine, a very good friend of mine gave me uh the the

1:15:11 Uh History of the English Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill. And it talks about the history of this country, of England in particular. And basically you go from Strong ruler? And then he has

1:15:21 No, no air. you have a period of weakness and what happens there's a big power struggle. over the throne, over over power. This is this is what's gonna happen. Th you're going to see more instability, more violence, more attempts to fight for dominance in the world. It's gonna be a much more unstable period of time, unfortunately.

1:15:41 Passionate about trying to Say let's not Let's not allow this to happen. Instability. No

1:15:50 In terms of war, in terms of conflict, in terms of people to trying to redraw maps uh in terms of people trying to get access to resources that otherwise would have been considered unchallengeable, et cetera. Yeah. I was looking back through history and I was asking. the question, has there been a multipolar world before? And there's these moments through history fifth century B C with ancient Greece

1:16:15 um nineteenth century nineteenth century Europe between the eighteen fifteen fifteen and nineteen fourteen's the wearing states of China and four four hundred and seventy five B C And then my next question was what happens next? And the short answer. Is

1:16:31 More friction. Less restraint. Higher risk. Realistically, the first thing that happens is rules weaken. Which I guess is kind of what we're seeing at the moment with this whole idea of international law.

1:16:43 Regional wars begin. Not one big war. Arms races accelerate. Some alliances hardened. Economic fragmentation.

1:16:51 domestic pressure rises, so higher defense spending, higher, et cetera. Um lower growth. And the three end games history keeps showing. That we have management. Chaos.

1:17:03 Major war. A reset. And then a new Had you Hegemon emerges? Yes.

1:17:10 What the fuck does that mean? Hegemon is th the one dominant power that c that that sort of can in the same way that the US had that moment between ninety one and recently. when it was the only undisputed power in the world. Trevor Burrus Do you agree with that pattern of events? Well I was gonna say you sort of make it look like I've got all my ideas from AI. Yeah. But the see s this is the thing is like before we started, I said to you, Steven, do me one favor, don't present me as an expert because I'm just a guy thinking from first principles and explaining the basics as I understand them. All of this is common sense.

1:17:42 Because ultimately it comes back to human nature. Right. A tribal competitive species. That's what we are. So when there isn't a

1:17:51 Dominant force. that everyone respects and accepts as the leader. What happens? Every single time. When you have a power vacuum, you have a power struggle.

1:18:02 That's what we are seeing and that's what you're going to see. It's human nature. It's not about knowing geopolitics and having studied international theory for forty years. It's just basic human nature. When there when there is a dispute about who the leader is That always creates

1:18:20 The thing that AI just told you. Well, the next step in that is a power struggle. Yeah. But that's what you're seeing now. Right. And nuclear weapons have been the great force for peace. We had the the great historian from the rest of history, Dominic Sandbrook, on the show and I asked him about this. And he said, Yeah, I mean nuclear weapons is why we haven't had a major war.

1:18:41 And it's maybe the one thing that will constrain our ability to have a major war. For one possibility. It's also the great risk.

1:18:54 Maybe this is where the cycle ends, because of nuclear weapons, is what you're saying. Maybe this is Um yeah, I'm I'm I am hopeful on that front, actually. I I am hopeful that human beings ultimately the instinct for self preservation is so strong that we do not go there. I think that's that's by far and away the most likely scenario. But of course it is something that humans have to reckon with and we have to be very, very careful as things more. And by the way, nuclear weapons

1:19:19 may not be the most powerful weapons that exist in the world twenty years from now. In such a world and I know you don't like it being about individuals, but But Trump is a certain type of leader. You know, quite unapologetic in what he says. I think he's got even more unapologetic because he only has a couple of years left and he can't be reelected because of the laws.

1:19:41 Are you concerned that if a different type of leader arrived into power in the US. Maybe someone who China and Russia. Thought was

1:19:52 less likely to send the the the jets in o at night time and bomb nuclear bunkers or snatch a president from their house. Would that be a risk for the West, in your view? Massive. But that's how we got here. This is why that withdrawal from Afghanistan

1:20:08 embarrassing as it was. is exactly how you get everything else. Th it's just one symptom. of people thinking we talked about October seventh, we talked about the invasion of Ukraine. Right.

1:20:19 That's what happens when they see weakness. What happens. I remember, you know, um the it's kinda funny, it shows the cultural differences between the Russian mindset and the Western mindset,'cause the jungle book that we had in the Soviet Union is very different to the one That you see that you guys had here. Did you see Jung you know, the original Jungle Book? The Disney one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's all heavy the you know uh context you should probably say where you come from because I'm from from uh from the Soviet Union, I was born there. Um Your your father you've got mother and father that are Ukrainian and Russian. Yeah. Basically, yeah. Um so the Soviet jungle book adaptation, very different. And there's this the one of the opening scenes is Akela, who is the lead wolf, he's the the wolf, the leader of the wolf pack. They're on a hunt.

1:21:03 And he They're hunting and he misses the he's supposed to grab the animal and he misses. And suddenly the cry goes around the jungle. A Kellow Mist. And everybody knows what that means.

1:21:15 Everybody knows when the leader Shows weakness. And fails. That's the moment when Everything goes to shit and there's a power struggle for his role because he's no longer top dog.

1:21:28 It's it's really as simple as that. So do you think Trump's a good thing for the West? Trump is a good thing for America. Mm-hmm. I I think what he's done, by virtue of his behavior, is he's exposed the weakness of Europe and

1:21:43 there is a a cleave now happening between Europe and America. And to that extent, I think It could be a good thing for Europe if Europe gets its act together and says, Actually we've got to wake up. From the nightmare that we've created for ourselves and start acting differently. If that happens, it will also be a good thing for the West. That is not what's happening right now. It's going in the exact opposite direction. What would it take for you to leave the UK? Um You well look I

1:22:12 Like yeah, you know, everybody gets job opportunities and stuff, um goes for a year or two somewhere. That th that that could happen in any circumstance. If you mean like for me to say I'm leaving Britain, never coming back. Um I think it would have to be clear at the next election. that

1:22:30 Britain is actually going further down the path that we're on. So two or three years from now. I'd have to conclude that there's actually no There's no way we're coming back. It's over. And that's happened to great

1:22:41 countries and great civilizations and history. If that's what happens, then I I don't see why I should do my children to living here. If We can rescue it. Uh and make this kind sounding like trump make Britain great again, but you know what I mean. Um, then I I w I would love to fight for that and I'd love to to have my children be part of that.

1:23:03 What is the most important thing that we didn't talk about that we should have talked about? We can't live in a world in which we care more about how things make us feel. than about the consequences of the actions that we take. So much.

1:23:21 This is the Thomas Soule and I last time you had me on, I mentioned to you what a great writer and thinker Thomas Soule is. I don't know if you've had a chance to check out any of his work, but I recommend it thoroughly to everyone watching and listening. He he talks about the fact that the last several decades have been spent replacing what works. With what feels good. That's the one thing we're not talking about. All of the policies you and I have been talking about are all about what makes us feel good. as opposed to what actually works in practice. And I got our conversation about chasing out

1:23:52 Entrepreneurs. It's exactly about that. Exactly what it's about. It's about fulfilling your ideological emotional needs. As opposed to doing things that practically work. If we can make that adjustment and get back to reality,

1:24:07 The world's our oyster. An immigrant's love letter to the West The book that you wrote. There was a smash here. Sunday Times bestseller. Yeah, unfortunately it gets more accurate every day, which is really worrying because I I was very pessimistic about a lot of the things I said. That is absolutely right. You wrote this book was it twenty twenty two? Twenty twenty two it came out.

1:24:29 And it it appears to be a a prediction. as the days go on, a prediction that is being validated, unfortunately. I highly recommend everybody reads this book. I'm gonna link it below for anyone that hasn't read it. What's unique about you is you do appear to be very wedded to Objective truth.

1:24:46 As you see it. versus being ideologically capt captured by either side. And I've seen you I've seen you both attack the right at times and I've also seen you t attack the left at times, which is It's a unique position to be in in a world with algorithms that try and push you into particular echo chamber. I guess on that point.

1:25:05 What is it about the the right? But you Take most issue with at the moment. Oh there's a thing that I've Uh other people have at a similar time, so I'm not claiming authorship of it, but there's something that I call the woke right.

1:25:19 uh which is essentially an identitarian resentment victimhood based movement on the right represented by the sort of extreme characters like Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens in the United States. You know, their world view is that they they've been oppressed. The work narrative was we are oppressed. Well now they say we we've been oppressed. Uh and uh it's all the fault of various groups, the Jews, the whoever's. So it's a kind of um there's almost you know, I think it's fair to say that there are elements of it that are just openly fascistic and and and reminiscent of the Nazis that we saw in the nineteen thirties, ideologically speaking.

1:25:56 Um and the mainstream right has utterly rejected these people. Which I think is really reassuring. But there are some people who who say, Well actually no, no, we need to include them. And we shouldn't divide the conservative movement. Which I think is a huge mistake for m for conservatives to make, because their movement and their reputation with normal people will be very, very badly polluted in the eyes of independent and moderate people who actually represent the overwhelming majority of the public. Even in America which is so divided and so partisan, the normal average person

1:26:31 We'll vote for this party or for that party, depending on what they see. And in Britain that's even more the case. And so to the extent that the right thing is. The basically There's a risk of the right repeating the mistakes of the left. What happened on the left? Woke people came along And they said, We are the left.

1:26:49 Our crazy work ideas is actually the left. And the sensible people on the left were terrified of challenging them, and so over time Most people began to associate the left with blue haired, nose piercing, you know, Greta Thunberg kind of ideology and they went, Oh, I don't want any of that. Well, on the right, if the right allows its extremist fringe To do the same thing.

1:27:11 Then lots of people are gonna distance themselves from that. The right has a tremendous opportunity to You know, we've had this great tension. I know you've had Jordan Peterson on uh your show t and I'm sure he talked about chaos and order. And that relationship is a very fragile thing in in society. We have had so much chaos

1:27:30 That there is a lot of craving for order now. There's a craving to deal with crime, there's a craving to deal with illegal immigration, there's a craving to deal with Cultural. uh disruption that we've had, right? There's a craving for that sense of order to come back. And if the right is reasonable and sensible about addressing those issues, they could be in charge for a very long time and have an opportunity to put some of their views into public policy, which is they haven't had uh the opportunity to do for a long time. If they allow the extremists to take over, they will be painted, the entire movement will be painted as the extremists, or

1:28:03 And then they will not have the opportunity to actually implement their agenda. Are you happy? Very. What makes you happy? My family.

1:28:14 What about your family makes you happy? Having children is a blessing. It's the best thing. Ever I d you know, I I banged on about this to you last time, but it is Why? Why are children the best thing ever? Yeah. Can't explain it. Like, I can find some words to give you, but it it's just one of those things it's like you you don't know it until you have that experience.

1:28:35 Uh I could give you some nice sound bites. You know, one of the things I've said in the past is that The future is no longer an abstraction. What does that mean? In the past I cared about

1:28:48 this country or this civilization. fairly theoretical perspective. now the future of this country is one person and maybe other people coming along. Right.

1:29:00 little people that I have. They are the future, in my mind, right? So I'm much more attached. I'm much more attached to the people who came before me. I have much more understanding of my p when you have kids you have a much better understanding of your parents. 'Cause you go Oh Wow, so the reason they did this stupid thing is A

1:29:18 I'm also doing it now for some reason. And also they were really dealing with all of all the things that I'm now dealing. I've got a job and I've got a relationship and I've got a this and I've got a that. So of course they sometimes behaved in ways that I didn't understand or like or whatever. So you have more empathy for your parents. You also have much, much more concern about where your country's going, your nation's going, your community's going, your immediate environment,'cause that's where your children live. And then they're just joy. I mean it's Um there's nothing like it. There's really, really nothing like it. It's the most wonderful thing

1:29:50 It's fucking hard. Mm. It y you don't sleep a lot and it's stressful at times, but I it's the best. It's absolutely the best. And you've got two kids? I've got one, uh but maybe more on the way.

1:30:01 Oh okay, congratulations. Thank you. And uh what what is your primary concern for the world they're coming into? Uh well we've talked about all of this, right? I think my primary concern for my kids Is that Uh, my wife and I do the best job we can in raising them well. And then ultimately they're gonna be their own people and they're gonna have to deal with the world in front of them in exactly the same way that others before have done. My grandfather

1:30:25 Uh my great grandfather. He was younger than me. Now, the When he was sent to the eastern front While he had a baby son at home and he never came back.

1:30:36 Human beings have had to deal with all of this throughout history. We always have to deal with the reality of the terrible world that we face at that moment in time. They're gonna have to do the same. I can't protect them from that. What I can do is set them up in the best possible way. And that's the only thing I can do as a parent, is what I'm trying to do. We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next. Yep. The question that's been left for you. Is who was the biggest non family member influence in your life and how did they make you a better person?

1:31:06 Yeah, not fair to boil it down to one, I think. Um I I had a teacher once who um basically made me realise that

1:31:18 It's very, very important. to give people an opportunity to prove themselves. And he did that by giving me an opportunity. When I really didn't deserve it. But he gave it to me and I took it. I've also just intellectually Thomas Sall I I've I mentioned him reading his books is just completely transformational for me and it really helped me think about the world. I think on a On a

1:31:39 On a kind of personal behavioral level, I got a the uh a huge opportunity uh to to tour with Jordan Peterson for three weeks a couple of years back. Uh and that was completely transformational, seeing him up close, spending time with him, seeing that this is a man who The way he is

1:31:57 in public is exactly the way that he is in in private. And so he really one of those very, very rare people who preaches what he practices. I remember We uh I think it was El Paso, we arrived right on the south on the on the on the border. And we arrived, we were late from the airport. Starving.

1:32:15 Starving. And one of the things that tends to happen is Everyone who goes to his live shows works out that he might be at the best steak restaurant in town. on the day. So we turn up to the steak restaurant,'cause the only eat steak. We're starving. We sit down.

1:32:33 Um The the waiter brings the menus. Well the moment we start looking at the menus, this group of Guys comes out guy w guys and girls comes over. He stands up. Forgets about the menu, we're starving.

1:32:45 gives them, you know, all the attention in the world. Selfies had a little chat, asked them what they do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Sits down. Places the order, another group of people come over. gives them the same amount of attention. And by this point we're dying of hunger. Finally our steaks arrive. And you know they do in America they say please check that it's been cooked properly. So he cuts in

1:33:05 He cuts off a piece, he puts it on a fork, and as he's about to place it in his mouth A group of literally twenty people shows up. He puts the fork down. Stands up

1:33:19 And gives them all the exact same amount of attention that he'd given the previous people. And just in everyone that he interacted with, that's what I saw. A guy who talks about living in a certain way actually practices it. And that was, you know, incredibly inspiring for me, really educational. Gave me a lot of thoughts about my relationships, how I live my life. Um he's a he's a grey man. Constantine, thank you.

1:33:43 Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Staying in the pursuit of truth and I highly recommend people check out Tigonometry, your podcast, I'm going to link it below. Um And also The book is gonna be linked below. Is there anything else? Yes, Stephen. When are you coming on trigonometry? That's the question. I've just finished my book. Oh it comes out in uh UK exclusive is what I'm hearing.

1:34:03 Deal. Signed. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks, man. Thank you. I appreciate you having me.

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