EMERGENCY DEBATE: What Trump’s Return REALLY Means For The World! Is The UK About To Collapse?

the world is absolutely crazy right now this is one of the most interesting moments of social cultural and economic transition that I have ever seen so I wanted to do something that I've never done before I called upon three of the leading voices on social cultural business and economic issues to give their unfiltered uncensored points of view so that we can all make sense of all of this craziness happening before our eyes they don't always agree on much but today they thrash it out to see if they can agree on something we go through the

economy Trump Elon Musk Dei censorship wokeism and why so many men are struggling why are tens of thousands of millionaires running away from the UK the terrifying truth and opportunity in Ai and I ask all of them what is the most important thing in 2025 that nobody is talking about with the aim of reaching Clarity agreement and having a laugh in the process this is the episode you probably didn't know you needed this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show

so could I ask you for a favor before we start if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the Subscribe button and my commitment to you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my power me and my team to make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to your feedback we'll find the guest that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do

what we do thank you so much you guys are three of the best commentators the most articulate people I know that also have the most interesting broad experience and also I think political background so I wanted to talk to you about everything that's going on in the world and I wanted to ask you guys some of the dumb questions that I Ponder alone with myself and with my dumb friends in my WhatsApp group it feels to me that the world is at a real moment of transition in many regards so like social transition cultural transition

economic transition and I think the US has been a catalyst for all of that so that's why I wanted to have this conversation today we've got an American here Scott I think Scott's the only American here um we've got Constantine we've got Daniel who are two Brits but spend a lot of time between America as well and so I I I want to come to Scott first and ask Scott a question which is a very big broad question which is from your perspective Scott you know when I talk about this feeling of transition that seems

to be like almost inside my chest that we're at a really historic moment what is your Anis on this what is the big picture here what what what's happened over the last 3 four five six seven months and how is that going to impact all of us around the world well if you if you think of the us as setting setting the tone economically and maybe even culturally for the West there's definitely a reversion away from people feel that quote unquote wokeism and I don't like to use that word but I'll use it here was

this sort of overcorrection to systemic racism and and then it begun to cause more damage than it was um or cause more problems than it was solving and I think there's been a serious kind of lurch back if you will whether it's executive actions declaring the Border a state of emergency you know stuff around saying that gender is a thing there's male and female uh and most of these issues the actually American public supports I would say on a more cynical level americ used to be a platform for Prosperity the protection of civil rights the

projection of women's rights and power and democracy abroad and I would argue that it feels like a pretty quick transition to almost like a you know I call it a kleptocracy but America's become a platform for um acquiring wealth and then leveraging that wealth uh as a means or appr proxy of power and the ultimate example of that was the launch of two meme coins the Trump and the Melania coin the day before the presidency such that this conversation could have already or might happen this week and I'll finish here president Trump it's Vlad uh

we're thinking about stabilizing our currency or trying to send the outflows of our of our Reserve so we're thinking about pulsing in about 600 billion rubles into the Trump coin which based on my Economist estimation would take the value of it to a 20 or 30 billion market cap making you one of the wealthiest men in the world Mr Trump and none of this would be disclosable or transparent also in unrelated news we'd really appreciate you seizing armed shipments to Ukraine so I think we've gone kind of full kleptocracy is the way I would I

would describe it are you optimistic Scott oh I'm a glass half empty kind of guy I don't I I don't know if I'm just getting older but no I don't I don't see a Man convicted of sexual abuse or found liable who inspired an Insurrection retaking the White House is a point of light for the American Experience Constantine I I I suspect you'd have a slightly different view on all of the above how are you feeling about everything that happened yesterday did you watch the inauguration what is your big picture 30,000 feet view yeah I

think it's incred incredibly unwise to make you know bold predictions about what's going to happen over the next six to seven months I do think uh what America had at the election and what the election of Donald Trump represents are something that we in the UK don't have which is Choice uh they had a very clear choice between two very different perspectives on the world between two very different approaches between two very different candidates and ultimately uh criticisms of President Trump uh are necessary and legitimate of course they are but at the end of the

day I I believe having spent quite a lot of time in America around election time and also just generally and traveling around real America not just in you know DC and and LA and New York um the the reason that he was elected was that the American people are not prepared to accept what Europeans have decided they're prepared to accept which is manag decline the American people do not want their country to become weaker they do not want it to become poorer they do not want to impoverish their fellow citizens through NetZero what they want

is their country to be great their country to be powerful their country to be influential um the economic realities for most Americans are not really reflected in the figures that we are told so when people talk about inflation uh the reality of people's lives on the ground is that their cost of living has gone up very very significantly over the last few years um and that's not always reflected directly in the in the overall inflation figure that we're shown because certain things are much more influential in people's lives than others um and so uh whether

the decision to elect President Trump ends up being um this positive uh thing for which the there should be lots of optimism is a matter of uh the next four years are we going to see um a presidency that really does everything it promises and by the way you know if you look at the things that Donald Trump is promising uh I think whether you're left or right you have to acknowledge that they are things that are worth doing uh having a secure border so that people don't come into your country country legally is a

basic duty of government uh economic Prosperity is a basic duty of government uh withdrawing America from uh a kind of simultaneously aggressive but weak posture around the world where America sort of says yeah yeah we're going to get involved in these foreign conflicts but we're not actually going to then practically help Ukraine win that war is is a kind of stupid position on both whichever side you're on um so on all of these things and and of course you know Scott mentioned wokness I think he's absolutely right that that there is a massive backlash happening

around the world because lots and lots of people who were completely apolitical uh until the last three or four years or meant to May until 2016 just feel like the world has gone crazy and suddenly they're supposed to pretend that men can change sex and become women and now they're entitled to be in female prisons and you know if your teenager says that they are the opposite sex you're supposed to chop their breasts off and all of this other stuff that order people just look at and go this is crazy like I am liberal but

this isn't liberal this is some kind of weird thing that's going on and I see I see the the the backlash against all of that all over the the the Western world and I think Donald Trump signifies that that people are fed up of that and uh I have been warning for a very long time that if the the the woke left continues to exercise this level of influence on our public debate there reaction will be the rise of the right and uh Donald Trump is one of the most uh diplomatic and pleasant versions of

what you're likely to get if the left keeps going crazy we will see what challenges the world throws at him over the next four years and whether he's capable of responding to them Scott has the left lost its way in your view and if so how did that happen and just to respond on some of Constantine's points about Trump being the best of a sort of right wi Collective are we going to see right-wing sort of ideology spread throughout the Western World over the coming years what's your take on all of the above um you

definitely you know we Democrats we get it right and then we just go too damn far and and so I I look at I'm a I'm a professor on a campus Dei 60 years ago there were 12 black people at Princeton yel and Harvard combined that was a problem race based affirmative action makes sense this this year more than half of Harvard's Freshman Class identifies as non-white but 70% of those non-whites come from Dual income homes in the upper quintile of income earning homes the academic gap between black and white used to be double what

it was between rich and poor it's now flipped so Dei was a good idea that quite frankly has gone insane and now just represents the same racism it was trying to uh do away with so and then we created two candidates who were the only C candidates who could make make each other viable vice president Harris given the hand she dealt with did the best she did I think President Biden should be buried in a crypted entitled narcissist who decided that it made sense for him to to go back on his pledge to be a

transition candidate and gave us a British style election timing on the Democratic side without in a in a marketplace where you need time and money uh so it was not we did not have a great candidate there is a a an understand able swing back from what is an overcorrection around some of these issues um you know parents we gave them a huge issue with transgender rights there's a there's more padel players in California than transgender people and yet the Democrats decided to conflate it with the civil rights movement and think that it was okay

for a woman who uh transitioned a transgender woman to enter a bicycle race and finish 5 minutes before everybody else and then we all bark up the same tree and decide that it's inspiring and parents all over the nation are saying what has you know we've literally gone crazy where I would disagree a little bit with Constantine is that America choosing economic growth and prosperity there are 190 Sovereign nations in the world 189 would change places with America over the last four years uh we had 71 new record highs in the markets 97% of all

AI we've created more market capitalization in a 7 mile radius of eso International Airport than Europe's created in the last 20 years we have the lowest inflation in the G7 we have the highest growth we've grown 10% since 2020 that's triple the rate of Europe Biden was unable to communicate any of that effectively because there's this psychological Dynamic that when your wages go up you credit your own grit and character and when the price of cereal goes up you blame the president now similar to the future or what how William Gibson described the future it's

here it's just not evenly distributed Prosperity is unprecedented in the US over the last four years it just wasn't it just wasn't evenly distributed now having said that in America you can stop working in August and you've produced more and made more money than you have in Europe the whole year and it has gotten better it's got it says things are less bad than anywhere in the world in the US Biden was unable to communicate it and then talking about how great the economy is when rents were skyrocketing tuition was going up it was an

ineffective strategy but I don't think it's fair to say Americans chose Prosperity we have Prosperity I would argue that quite frankly some of the Republican ideals around deficit spending which are nothing but taxes on future Generations pulled forward I mean we'll see how that works but the his signature policies a clamp down on immigration tariffs um these things are wildly inflationary so constant is right it's going to be difficult it's you don't know what's going to happen but it feels to me I would argue the the my favorite appointment in the Trump Administration in the

adult in the room is the 10-year bond which is going to say sorry girlfriend when uh I believe the president tries to implement some of these economic policies Constantine is that true because what I heard there is that effectively Trump had a better marketing campaign um and that reality is somewhat different from what the Americans were sold in the in the last election cycle well politics is about marketing and Trump is the marketer and chief he's very good at branding and selling ideas and partly that's what politics is about uh but in terms of the

economy I I think Scott is entirely right it's one of the reasons I admire America so much the sense of dynamism and economic growth and the desire to create things and build things it's an observation I've had every time I've been there you know if you if you have a successful restaurant in the UK you go well I've got a successful restaurant in America if you have a successful restaurant you open a second one and a third one and you create a chain right so their attitude to business more broadly is is is fantastic and

I love it but I think the difference is that I don't think Americans were comparing the American economy under Joe Biden to the European economies they were comparing the American economy under Joe Biden to the American economy under Donald Trump in his first term and also what they expect him to do for the future when they look at the fact that he's got real Business Leaders in government now like V ramaswami and Elon Musk talking about government efficiency we have to admit that all Western countries have a massively bloated Civil Service what we call civil

service in the UK and the administrative state in the US that wastes a huge amount of money uh that produces very little in terms of output in many cases and that needs to be slim down and people I think are very excited about that and when I talk to Business Leaders in America including ones that were never on the Trump train so to speak so many of them went over to his side in this election cycle because they just felt that he was going to uh continue to accelerate American growth uh and continue to deliver

prosperity for the American people now Scott's point about tariffs and all of these other things uh you know I I I am uh I've listened to Donald Trump enough now to know that you not necessarily should not necessarily be taking him literally uh I think many of the things he said says are negotiation tactics and signaling so when he says I'm going to build this or do that or do this you have to sort of read between the lines when he says you know this will be the worst thing that you just go he's saying

to people like you better work with me otherwise this is going to work out badly for you on all of these things um and so it remains to be seen whether he's successful in those tactics at getting what he wants look America is always going to be an unequal Society it's designed in a way that is going to make it that way in America the focus is how do we grow the pie in Europe the focus is how do we divide it up so everyone gets their Fair little share right so Americans are about expanding

the pie and then the people who bake the pie get as much of it as they possibly can um but the question is can there be a sense in America that the American dream is alive that you do not have to work three gig economy jobs to pay your rent that you're going to be able to buy a house that you're going to be able to afford to have children that you're going to be able to raise a family perhaps on a single income something that most people only dream about nowadays that's really what this

whole economic conversation is about and we will see over the next four years if Donald Trump is able to slightly even change the direction of travel towards those things that actually Americans of my generation and older used to take for granted as the promise of the country that they live in I've I've thought a lot about this over the last couple of weeks in particular because we're hearing these big headlines in National papers in the UK that millionaires are leaving the UK in historic numbers I think it's 10,800 millionaires left last year which is an

increase of about 160% versus the previous year and the general sentiment in terms of business confidence in the UK is at a a several year low so I think it's the lowest that's been since ju just post pandemic um there's this I think it's the Institute of accountants they call up a thousand accountants every year and they get they run a survey to see how much confidence they have in business in this country and it's Fallen 14 points to 0.2% confidence um in terms of business there's but there's this bigger narrative emerging amongst my entrepreneurial

friends that if you want to start a business right now the best place to be in the world is to be in America is to get over to America and to leave the UK now Dan how does that square I know you have an accelerator you speak to lots of entrepreneurs how does that sort of compare or contrast with what you're seeing at the moment yeah 100% the value proposition for the UK has dropped through the floor uh very very high tax the E uh the ecosystem of business is in Decline some of the smartest

people are now in Dubai um some incredible creators that I know have moved to Singapore Hong Kong Dubai um many are going to the USA um so if people are interested in bigger markets and bigger opportunities they're into the USA if they're interested in lower tax and more um Fringe opportunities there in the Middle East um and essentially you know the UK hasn't found a place in the world I think there are three business models the UK could go for um which is either the uh the head office of Europe which is what we were

when we were inside the EU and everyone used to come here uh to build a European business um we could be the back office of the USA um so the incubator for the USA a lot of a lot of Smart Companies uh get to their first 50 million of value here in the UK and then sell to a US private Equity Firm or us listed company um and a lot of us companies are now actually coming here to poach Talent OR to Outsource things to the UK uh more cheaply than they could do it in

the US um the the the wages in the U in the UK are through the floor compared to what you would pay in the US especially you know in Tech roles so very smart people in the UK are massively devalued um and then the third option would be to be an independent uh tax Haven and to go with the uh low crime low tax uh model of Dubai Singapore uh you know those kind of options so we haven't really picked one of those three yet we're still you know all these years after brexit and we

haven't said which of those three models we want to adopt SC you moved here a couple of years ago to the UK um and despite everything that's going on in the UK are you still bullish on this being a place for entrepreneurship and business um I I was looking at some stats before we started this conversation around the sort of key areas of concern for me business stats I've talked about there the drop in business confidence the entrepreneur exit that we're seeing but things like knife crime in the UK are up um 81% over the

last decade which I think is a symptom probably of something else um and one of the big things I think a lot about as an entrepreneur at the moment is artificial intelligence and our investment in artificial intelligence from a Global Perspective is is down about 2,000% versus a country like America so you've moved here you've brought your family here are you bullish on the UK versus the US from an entrepreneurs perspective so the the question I get most frequently when I speak here is to compare contrast the US with the UK and I use a

personal anecdote my parents immigrated to the US from Glasgow and London when they were 19 and22 they took enormous risk I've been an entrepreneur my whole life I'd like to think that a lot of my successes are my fault that I inherited sort of that risk-taking DNA and when I speak to people in the UK I say the primary difference is you're the ones that stayed and that is it kind of comes down to a risk appetite the US has five times per capita the number of entrepreneurs it has five times the dollar volume per

startup there's $5 million in Venture Capital waiting to be deployed for every startup in the US versus 1 million in Europe I Lov what Constantine said about a restaurant I went into this great little restaurant in so a few weeks ago called dig in and I loved it so much I said I left my card and said can you have the owner I'd like to fund the I'd like to open another one does he need money I would never I just would never do that here I thought that was a really interesting insight and the

and the the Collision of risk crazy ideas that occasionally become crazy genius um and technology and intellectual property and great universities results in a company that no one had heard of five years ago being worth more than the entire UK stock market Nvidia so there's just a an enormous difference the way I would summarize my impression of the UK economy I'll I'll just say London I have no experience in I I I I I don't go anywhere that's not walking distance from Marone so my bubble is pretty opaque but the way I would describe the

economy here is I love the term the butler economy and that is all the money I see being made here is people servicing wealth created somewhere else yeah you're either in financial services servicing with rich people you're either opening a restaurant or Hospitality servicing PE rich people but I don't see a lot of organic wealth creation I interviewed the two quote unquote inventors of AI when prestigious universities my first question is how the hell were you not able to make any money if you invented AI why haven't you be able to capture any money but

just for your listeners my summation of Europe versus the US after molesting the Earth for the last 35 years is us is still the best place to make money and Europe is still the best place to spend it is this a failing Nation Scott I think you have too much going for you to be described as a failing Nation you still have amazing universities it's the second London's still the second best city in the world premier league is an unbelievable export I know how ridiculous that sounds people want to be here there's still rule of

law rule of play you still produce amazing rock and roll I just don't I just don't see how you could say this is a failed you know I would argue that the second only to our entry into Iraq the greatest self-inflicted wound was brexit like just I an American can't understand why you decide to increase your prices while reducing productivity in one one Fell Swoop we kind it's difficult for us to wrap our heads around some of the economic decisions the UK has made but I think a lot of people are kind of betting or

hoping that the UK begins to grow again uh so I'm I I'm in a weird way I'm sort of I would call myself cautiously optimistic about the UK I think at some point it registers it begins to occupy the place it could it should command if you will Constantine uh I I would ask the same question as well do you think the UK is a failing nation and Scott describes self-inflicted wounds there I've heard you speak of self-inflicted wounds when you talk more broadly about the west and what the West needs to to do to

turn itself around um and also just layer a third point on top of that which is somewhat um linked to this is Elon Musk has t taken a particular interest in the UK over the last month in particular um and he's started to describe it online it seems as a failing Nation what's your view well I'm glad you asked me about Elon Musk because the thing that I love most about the media having this massive meltdown about oh no these Americans are interfering in our political these are the same media commentators who are constantly banging

on about American politics and saying Donald Trump needs to do this you need to vote for this like all of this stuff is ridiculous the reality is we download our culture our politics our music almost everything from America right they America has become what Britain used to be which is the center of Western civil civilization and my request and ask and begging of British people is if we're going to download American culture and politics let's at least take the good stuff instead of all this terrible woke [ __ ] that we downloaded from them the

Dei and all this other nonsense and actually take the entrepreneurial spirit and all this all these other things that are really great about America the optimism the positivity the willingness to to have a go to take a risk as Scott Scott was talking about um so so I I wish we took more of that and and it speaks to your question about are we a failing Nation look uh I think it's it's a deliberately inflammatory question which I don't want to U kind of actually accept in in that way but what I think we should

acknowledge is are we trending up or are we trending down and when you talk about over 10,000 millionaires of left I hear that through a normal British person's ear and I worry that there's quite a lot of British people who will hear that and say oh good all of these rich parasites have left because that's our attitude in the UK to a very large extent we see wealthy people not as what they are which is for the most part not everybody but for the most part people who've created a tremendous amount of value for their

fellow human beings and as a result of that have been rewarded we see them because we you know we have this history of the landed gentry and so to us a millionaire is someone who has these ill-gotten gains that they don't deserve right that is not really the world we live in when I talk to wealthy people in this country and pretty much everywhere else for the most part especially in the Western World these are people who've created something that has fundamentally helped other human beings do something better do something easier buy products cheaper whatever

it is that's who the successful people really are and we just need an attitude shift that's what we should be downloading from America what we should be saying inside our heads is this person is successful because they've helped other people great we want how do we get more of those people into our country and I'm afraid I'm telling you something that you know better than anyone Stephen if you don't have entrepreneurs in your country creating businesses and creating jobs the economy is going to stagnate for the rest of Eternity we have to get smart talented

driven people into our country instead of chasing them out Dan I know this is a subject that you're very passionate about and um Constantine's articulated it really really well I've seen lots of your posts about this subject Dan what are you saying and is it true that the British attitude is a form of self harm that's holding us back from our potential there are definitely attitudinal factors but you'll also get the most incredibly entrepreneurial people here in London London is a Melting Pot for creativity you've got sitting in one city you've got people who are

phenomenal at media Finance uh technology ology entertainment politics defense like all of this like if you take the best of LA and Washington and New York and Miami and kind of start moving it into one city you know you get elements of that in London um it's a very diverse City from that point of view and it creates an entrepreneurial Melting Pot the issue is taxes um nobody wants to pay 60% of their income in taxes uh and as soon as you hit you know in in the US you don't hit the top tax rate

until you are six times the average wage here in the UK it's 2 and 1 half times so as soon as you're 2 and 1 half times the average wage you are you're in real trouble um there are so many people in the UK who deliberately hold their income at £50,000 because after 50,000 you get taxed 40% of your income so people just give up and they say I'm not going I know some really smart really talented people who could be earning a lot more and they refuse to pay the 40% rate so like keep

everything small because they don't want to go from 20 to 40% at the 50 Grand rate which is crazy um and I've employed people who have said can I have a day off a week rather than going over that threshold uh so uh you know that's that's a huge issue the tax issue um the company rate tax is high the the corporate uh capital gains rate is tax tax very high the vat is high the council tax is high all of these additional taxes just keep piling up um and then the other cost at the

moment if we want to have an AI economy we need cheap electricity one thing that Trump has committed to is is really really cheap energy there is no such thing as a fast growth High you know high octane economy that has expensive energy uh cheap energy equals fast growth um and we have the most expensive energy in the world we can't run data centers here uh because the energy cost is going to be too high so if we want to have an AI driven economy you know we can't do it with windmills and solar panels

that have got frost all over them Scott you look um like a lot lot of thoughts are going through your head following those two comments what are you thinking well with respect to energy Trump issued an executive order calling it an energy crisis gasoline in the US on an inflation adjusted basis is less expensive than it was 50 years ago we are now the largest oil producer in the world I would argue I would argue that we have um a housing crisis and that the executive order should have been around that just going back to

the US and I'm curious at the same Dynamics and whether Constantine and Daniel agree with this I believe this the election in the US was supposed to be a referendum on women's rights women's rights did not show up this was a referendum on young men in my view and that is if you look at the two cohorts that swung most from Blue to Red versus 2020 two of the three cohorts other than Latinos was people under the age of 30 who in the US are 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago people over

the age of 70 or 72% wealthier our tax code is basically an attempt to shove money from The Young to the old and two 45 to 64-year-old women who I would affectionately describe as their mother and that is when your son's in the basement vaping and playing video games and I think a lot about struggling young men you don't give a flying [ __ ] about territorial sovereignty in the Ukraine or Ukraine excuse me or transgender rights all you know is your kid isn't doing well and 210 times a day your kid's getting a notification

that somebody he knows is on a GF stream or partying in St Barts and it's not him or her and so we not only have young people not doing as well this pornographic wealth is just shoved in their face and you end up with in my opinion kind of a young struggling young men no group has fallen further faster in the world I would argue than young men in America they are if you go into a morg in the United States and there's five people who died by Suicide four of them are men one and

three men under thee of 30 has a girlfriend two and three women under the age of 30 has a boyfriend why you think that's mathematically impossible because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men there's one in five men live at home at the age of 30 one and three under the age of 25 they're not having sex they're more obese they're more depressed when women don't have a relationship they oftentimes channel that energy into their professional lives more women own single women own homes in the US and single men

women in urban areas under the age of 30 are making more money than men when men don't have the guardrails of a relationship or a job or being in school they pour that energy sometimes into unproductive things misogyny nationalism or extreme nationalism conspiracy theory in some they become really shitty citizens they become sequestered from society so I'm worried in the US our biggest threat is a new species of asexual asocial young men who are incredibly dangerous have lost have opted out of America 60% of 30-y olds used to have one child in America now it's

27% so people I think in the US and I'm I just a genuine question I don't know if it's the same problem here our tax policies have taken money from The Young stuffed them in the pockets of old people so Nana and popop can upgrade from Carnival to Crystal Cruises meanwhile young people can't afford education they can't afford housing and we we especially see this really acute emerging crisis among young men who are just oping out of America who don't even want to try and date don't even want to enroll in school don't want to

even try and get a job just stick in their basements and go on Reddit or Discord or why go try and shower a work out and get a relationship when you have youorn why get a job when you can trade stocks or crypto on coinbase or Robinhood I think this is in my opinion this is the most dangerous Trend in America right now it it's almost like demonizing men for decades has consequences uh I mean this this is what's been happening men are the root of all evil the root of all evil the root of

all evil every advert is about you know the woman is strong and capable the guy's pathetic uh in every movie the woman's kicking ass and the the man is pathetic this has been going on for decades it's a cultural thing as well as an economic thing um and many of us have been saying that when you take meaning uh and opportunity away from men if you create an education system that punishes boys for being boys uh if you create a society in which traditional masculine virtues become vices uh then you will create exactly the sort

of thing that Scott is talking about it's a terrible thing that's been done uh having said that my message is always the same to young men who who I hope are listening which is the answer to your problems is never going to be as Scots as porn and this and that the answer to your problems is going to take responsibility go out and get a job or create a business and and actually make your life better no one's coming to save you no one's coming to help you there is no uh you the the the

sort of programs that we have for women where we sort of go well you know let's give them an opportunity here n none of that's happening for men it's not going to happen because for evolutionary reasons we just don't feel sorry for men the way that we do for women that's a reality I know it sucks but the answer for men is going to be the the answer that's always been the answer for man which is for you to get off the sofa to get off the couch and go out and actually do and create

and build and find your own way through it even if you have to acknowledge that the society you live in has been conditioned for quite a long time to think that you're a piece of [ __ ] because because you happen to have the genitalia that you do now that I I think is is the harsh reality of it and I think Scott is right to point this out as a problem and I hope that we start to have uh both in terms of Economic Policy but in terms of also just the cultural conversations and

the way we talk about these issues we come back to something that human beings have known through the entire history of the our species which is men and women are both good and need to work together in order to thrive and succeed together in order to have families in order to have children and in order for us to have healthy communities and healthy societies you need healthy femininity and you need healthy masculinity and they need to come to together and work together that's what we're supposed to do and these stupid gender Wars and this idea

that men as a group are this and women as a group are that all of that just needs to end I was watching last night as Trump sat there signing all of those executive orders and I also watched his inauguration speak where he said we will Forge a society that is colorblind and Merit based and he signed a bunch of executive orders last night to eliminate eliminate a variety of different Dei programs in the federal government directing agencies to dismantle these practices within 60 days and then over the last couple of months we've seen meta

come out and dismantle in Reverse some of their Dei programs we've seen MacDonald's Walmart Ford Harley-Davidson Boeing Amazon Toyota it feels like there's a real shift happening in both how you know sort of um identity politics but also in the sort of corporate environment that those identity politics have really emerged from are you supportive of Trump's move to roll back Dei measures so I I I think there's a lot of nuance here I would argue in universities we've Dei is used as a giant misdirect from people such as myself were enforcers of the cast system

and wake up every morning and look in the mirror and ask ourselves the same question how do I increase my compensation while decreasing my accountability and what I found is the ultimate strategy is to create an lvma trajection is [ __ ] elitist strategy where Dartmouth sits on a endowment of8 billion do and less than 500 kids so the conversation around who gets in is a misdirect from the important question that is how many if you are not growing your endowment or your freshman class faster than population you should lose your taxfree status we should

be letting in more gay kids more trans kids more white Republicans some rural State you know who doesn't talk about Dei junior colleges because there's no admissions they don't have a problem with Dei so I think Dei on campus has ended up eating its own tail started out with the right idea now it's nothing and I would I would argue the same is somewhat true the Democratic party I went to the the the Democratic National Convention on the dnc.org website it lists 17 special inter scripts and it says explicitly who we serve asian-pacific Islanders seniors

veterans black Americans the disabled it basically lists I added this up 76% of the population and when you say you're actively advocating for 76% of the population you're not advocating for 76% of the population you're discriminating against the 24% it's gone too far I would argue in the workplace having served on seven public company boards and I'm going to do a lot of boasting here because I'm desperate for all of your affirmation and 12 private company boards there's still work to be done in the private sector there still is a cycle 40% of all venture

capitalists and probably 70 or 80% of all venture capital deployed are white guys from just two universities Stanford and Harvard so I would argue universities it's gotten out of control I'd love to see the Dei apparatus disassembled as along with the ethics Department the sustainability Department the leadership Department these are all [ __ ] where we hire formerly important people with no standards they never get fired it just translates to more student debt in the boardroom in corporations in certain sectors I do think there is a need to be thoughtful about broadening the aperture of

the lens and bringing in people who are underrepresented there's still a dir of women raising Venture cap so I I think it's nuanced based on sector um but to just say all Dei is bad I want to move to where the University of California did in 1997 they don't have race-based affirmative action they have adversity based affirmative action I'm a beneficiary of affirmative action I had something called pel grants I was raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died a secretary so I got grants I had unfair Advantage because I came from a

household that was lowincome and I think that there should be affirmative action and I think it should be based on color but that color is green the poor need our help the moment you start advocating for special Advantage based on any external factors I think at this point in our society it probably causes more problems than it solves that's exactly right that's exactly right Stephen and I think uh if we take a step back and look at why di become such a big part of the conversation it's precisely because instead of addressing the reality uh

of people's lives which is some people are disadvantaged and some people are advantaged uh actually what we've mainly done and and Scott alluded to at the very beginning of our discussion is we've given a leg up to very wealthy ethnic minority people from successful families and they now their children now get into prestigious universities uh which they probably would have done anyway uh some of them because they come from very Advantage backgrounds and the kids that are growing up in poverty black and white have no shot whatsoever but the reason that it's become such a

big issue around the Western World actually I don't think it's it's the nuances that we've delved in into here but actually something else which is we have created the most ethnically diverse Societies in history and what I mean by that is not that we've created Societies in which there are large groups of people who are different from each other but for the first time probably in human history we've created Societies in which there is a lot of ethnic diversity and there is no overt discrimination against some groups of people in the sense of you know

the Imperial Societies in the past would have had one dominant ethnic group which is you know the Russians in the Soviet Union or the the Turks in the Ottoman Empire or the Brits in the British Empire whatever that was the ethnic group that was like the dominant one and everybody else was a kind second class Citizen and everybody knew it right we don't have that anymore we have highly diverse societies where people of every single background exist in which we have this idea U that we're all supposed to be equal and when we have programs

that explicitly discriminate against people there were times when the Discrimination was explicit against black people well we've got we've gone full circle now where the Discrimination was going the other way in University admissions in hiring in all sorts in Corporate America in government in all sorts of things you know in this country the BBC has internships that aren't available to white people Etc when you get to that point as Scott said earlier on everyone just goes look I know I'm not supposed to say this but the reality is this is racism this is a form

of racism and I thought we were trying to get away from the racism so to the extent that the the the elimination of Dei is about creating a merit-based Society uh in which people are given an opportunity because they're skilled and talented and they have the potential to actually achieve things and create wealth you know we all know this we all employ people right uh how many of us are thinking about the races of the people we hire I don't think we think about that at all what we're thinking about is I run a business

I need the very best person very best possible person for this job at the price I'm willing to pay I don't care if they are purple green blue white what whatever it doesn't matter what matters is are we getting the best person for the job and my concern about identity politics has always been that if we do not adopt that worldview then what we will do is create a worldview in which we have different racial groups competing with each other on the basis of race and that is a very very dangerous mix for a multi-ethnic

society like ours which is why I've been begging in people to let go of this stupid idea of identity politics and to say first and foremost we are all Brits or we are all Americans we have this umbrella identity under which we all operate and our personal ethnicity or sex or or whatever is secondary to that and actually for the purposes of employment for the purposes of College admission Etc is irrelevant yes if there is disadvantage if we grow up in a single parent home with a low income we may need some extra support there

if we had terrible schooling or our education was not good we may need extra support if there's certain things that make it easier for us because of of the disadvantages we've had to fulfill our talent and potential I'm all for that but what we've created so far and that's why I'm delighted it's being eliminated is an anti- meritocratic system which says we don't care what you bring to the workplace we don't care whether you deserve this place or not we don't care about the potential you have actually we just needed a insert category tick boox

to fill this slot uh and you filled it doesn't really matter that you're not doing your job very well because now we can say you know we're a diverse company I don't care about that and we shouldn't care about that as a society and thank God that's now gone yeah I think the worst part about it too is that it um calls into question when someone does succeed um and they're from a diverse background you know it calls into question why they got that job in the first place which I think is horrible um you

know the I I just hired from two candidates the final two candidates um was a was a guy and and a woman um I would hate if the woman felt that she got the job because she's a woman and not because she's best she turns out she was by far the best in the process and I would love for her to know that there was absolutely nothing that changed our view we weren't trying to fill a a position with a woman we were trying to fill the position with the best and she should know she

was the best um I think the contrast that was really fascinating was between Trump's website and um the democrat's website so in the in the Democrats website it was who we're for which was what Scott was saying but the Trump's Trump's website was the 20 things we're going to do and it was just a list of 20 these are the 20 action points this is what we're going to we're going to do this we're going to do this we're going to do this we're going to do this so it was a to-do list as opposed

to the identities where help that we want to Advantage list um and I think that was the choice you know at the beginning Constantine you said you know America had a choice and for me when I looked at those two websites I saw this choice between the identities being the main thing or the to-do list uh being the main thing and a very different approaches Scott I amum when I was listening to that zerug interview talking about um masculinity and identity issues one of the lines he said in there sounded like something you've said on

my show before where he said I think having a culture that celebrates that aggression a little bit more talking about masculinity has its own merits that are really positive now Mark Zuckerberg isn't necessarily someone that I saw closely aligning to your world view am I right in thinking that that's something you agree with because I remember you saying to me you you think people should be able to walk in a room and kick everyone's ass what I've said on your show is that I think the male form especially under the age of 30 with its

bone structure incredible double twitch muscle and then this amazing amazing chemical called testosterone you're going to look back at your 25-year-old self and think why wasn't I a [ __ ] monster like Steve barle because and also there there is I I you know some masculinity when Russian soldiers pour over the Border in Ukraine you want some of that big dick energy that Daniel was was talking about in the case of Zuckerberg I I don't think I don't think he really understands an aspirational view of masculinity I think when he couches is immediately kind of

trying to kiss Trump's ass because Trump threatened to put him in prison and what he used to call moderation he's now calling censorship and when you have an algorithm that elevates incendiary hateful content I would not describe that as masculinity for me masculinity comes down to protection providing and procreation and I don't think it's a I think to talk about gendering a workplace in the context of trying to excuse um uh a a total elimination of what I would think is probably healthy moderation I imagine Daniel and Conan might have a different view I don't

I I think he's just couching his his his supplicant obsequious kiss ass Behavior under the opes of masculinity it just doesn't ring true for me and I'm not sure we need to man up or fem up organizations and companies right now when I talk about masculinity you know there's if I say at a conf confence oh women are better managers everyone goes yes that's right that's right right that's okay if I say men are more risk aggressive and make better entrepreneurs you're a misogynist you you're out and the reality is men and women bring different

attributes but the masculinity and femininity I think masculinity is a wonderful thing I think we you get a different image of it I think people born as male have an easier time leaning into those things having said that I work out a CrossFit with a bunch of lesbian firefighters they bring great masculine energy and they could carry my ass out of a fire so a lot of men demonstrate wonderful feminine qualities a lot of women demonstrate wonderful masculine qualities I don't think these things are sequestered to anyone born as a specific a specific gender what

I think what I talk about masculinity I don't talk about it in the RO of Corporations I think that I I think that's just Frau with risk and not worth talking about it should be about shareholder value or stakeholder value I think young men need a code we're going to church L we have few relationships so what's the code you hold in on to in terms of creating behaviors that are productive for you yourself society and I think masculinity needs to be redefined is something more aspirational where you're celebrated for being really [ __ ]

strong you're celebrated for not complaining you're celebrated for creating Surplus value create more tax revenue than you absorb you're celebrated for being aggressive you're celebrated for breaking up fights at bars not not not starting them you're celebrated for protecting your country not shitposting it you know there's you're you're celebrated for approaching strange women and expressing romantic interest that's that's not a crime and if she's not interested and you're rejected you're both going to be fine uh you know you're celebrated for getting out of the house you're celebrated for working you're celebrated for making money and

liking money I think there just needs to be a redefinition of masculinity in the context of helping young men find a code that they used to get from the armed services or from Dual dual parent households and I I feel like they're struggling so I like the idea of something that they feel in their bones and in their in their body and in their DNA that they can lean into that we celebrate and the conversation has flipped entirely five years ago I was called a misogynist for talking about masculinity now the conversation is being led

and advocated by one group and it's mothers who are like I my son is not doing well I got three kids two daughters daughters in PR with the other ones at pen and my son is in in the basement vaping and playing video games he needs something to latch on to he needs a code anyways but I apologize word salad Zuckerberg and masculinity give me a [ __ ] break he looks like a chch and Molly dealer sorry back to you Stephen well it's it's interesting when you speak Scott because your views on masculinity um

appear to me to be most better represented by the right side of politics than the left side of politics they both have the own vision of masculinity and yours seems to be a republican view of masculinity they flew to Trump's credit he he saw the opportunity and he flew right into the manosphere Rockets crypto Joe Rogan uh Theo vaugh he said no I'm I'm I'm not going to run from this I'm G to fly right into it now I would argue that his vision of masculinity has too much coarseness too much cruelty too much bullying

I don't think that's masculinity I think when we talk about Elon Musk taking risk sending rockets that are captured by scissors coming down inspiring the EV race taking an enormous risk making a [ __ ] ton of money yeah that's a great form of masculinity accusing men trying to save Thai soccer players calling them pedophiles calling your employees a sex criminal such that they have to leave their house having 13 kids by five women or three women none of which you live with living next to sleeping next to a loaded gun losing control of your

of your your your your self-control because of addiction I don't think that's a great role model I I think it's an amazing role model for boys I don't think it's a great role model from man in terms of energy there are so many reasons why I'm a big matcha fan if you don't already know by now and so much so that I actually invested in the UK's leading matcha company called perfect Ted and one of my favorite perfect Ted products is these delicious matcha pouches that come in every flavor from salted caramel to Peach flavor

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used there by um Scott we've seen this reversal in meta's Attitude Facebook's attitude that had been built up over a decade where it it almost felt like if you had sort of right leaning views or really any unaccepted views and you posted those on Facebook you would face maybe having the post deleted or your account suspended this new world of um of speech of free speech and as it pertains to masculinity do you think Elon musk's decision to buy X which I noted got youd left X you no longer post or tweet on X anymore

do you think elon's decision to buy X is a net positive for society uh net yes but I think what people hear when you say that is there's no problems with this system than you know compared to the ones we had before uh there are definitely disadvantages to a free platform like uh X now and one of them is inevitably when you remove censorship one of the things the censorship was doing was keeping all all the deeply unpleasant uh people uh away from being able to shove things in your face and that happens quite a

lot on egg so I don't enjoy that aspect of it uh but I've always said that would be the price we would pay for Freedom uh freedom freedom always has a price and that's what we're seeing as for Zuckerberg his miraculous transformation into a free speech Warrior is just wonderful and I I'm delighted to welcome him I'm sure it's entirely genuine and not anything to do with the election results we've just seen in any way whatsoever and the fact that the culture shifted and those of us who were being censored by people like him for

years actually winning the argument well what it shows you is we've won the argument on Free Speech when it comes to the big Tech platforms um and it's going to be messy uh and I always said it was going to be messy because inevitably when you create these large platforms that are algorithmically driven uh where the truth and the moderate reasonable take is not what usually gets attention you're going to see a lot of unpleasantness I value the ability to hear and communicate truthful uh ideas and facts over my own subjective feelings oh someone said

a thing I don't like or someone was racist or someone was misogynistic I don't enjoy the fact that that happens but I would rather that happened and also we were not being censored from saying you know Co probably came from a lab in China which we were uh you know the the the the hunter Biden laptop story isn't Russian disinformation actually it's an important piece of information that American voters need to hear when they're making their decision about the election and all of these other things that were being suppressed and censored across social media for

years um they're not anymore and I think that's a good thing and I think that's helpful and if you look at you know to bring it back to the UK for a moment Stephen uh as you know on trigonometry we've tried to cover the grooming gangs uh Scandal and is an outrage what happened in this country over decades we've we've been covering that for years since about 2019 2020 to very little purchase and one of the reasons is it was just something that the media sort of covered and then moved on when it actually should

have been something we talked about on the daily basis until serious action was taken and we saw real real change real change in policing real change in social work real change in government real change in the way that these racially aggravated hate crimes were treated um well none of that was really being talked about seriously until Elon kicked up a fuss Amplified the voices of survivors Amplified the voices of campaigners onx which he bought and now the British government is forced to to do whatever it can to actually address those issues uh to to to

the extent that it will you know a lot of people will say it still doesn't go far enough well if it doesn't go far enough we now have a platform from which we can continue to have that conversation until there is the sort of inquiry and the sort of outcomes that people want to actually deliver real change so is that a positive God yes God yes we needed that those women who were raped on a mass scale needed their voices to be Amplified by someone like Elon Musk on a platform like X which is now

free to the point where K is forced into defensive action that I wish that was around 30 years ago because a hell of a lot of young girls and women wouldn't have suffered the way they did if we had the opportunity to get that message out so God yes it's a net positive just to pick up on that Constantine I I've had a question on my mind for a while um regarding the Scandal which is horrific I think something we all definitely agree on is why has Elon chosen now and why has he chosen K

starma as the sort of central Target of this flurry of tweets Around The Grooming scandals because there's clearly you elon's I think an individual which you can kind of see thinking in real time like if you go back through his tweets because there's so many of them and they kind of come in these spurts you can almost see what he's getting at is there an underlying reason why he's made this a central issue over the last couple of weeks I I think there are several reasons one of the reasons that it's happening now is actually

most Americans were completely unaware of this issue until recently I remember a year ago being speaking at a private event in New York and somebody said to me well you know what is the consequence of political correctness why why are you so against it why are you so against censorship and I talked about the grooming gangs and and people were horrified they hadn't even and these are well-informed educated people who are media Savvy and whatever so one of the reasons is I think to a lot of Americans this issue is only coming to the for

now in front of their mind uh the second issue I think is that Elon Musk understands what I said earlier which is we have a global Western culture now uh and so what happens in Britain matters just as much as what happens in America because we are we are symbiotic with each other now when there's a a restriction of speech in the UK when we have laws about what people are and AR allowed to say that has an impact across the world when you see the European Union trying to pass legisl about online censorship that

has an impact because if something exists in the UK and in many European countries it's only a matter of time before people in America are going to say well look they've got this in Europe why don't we bring it over here and vice versa so what happens in America affects us in Europe and in the UK and what happens in Europe and the UK affects America so what Elon I think is trying to do is to say we care about our civilization Elon doesn't really talk that much about the United States he talk talk us

about our civilization as I do because I believe that we are now one thing to a very significant extent now from our civilizational point of view is it a good thing that mass rape gangs in the UK are being insufficiently investigated and treated in properly by the police and the government no it's not it's a very bad thing so how do we address that well we address that by putting pressure on the government of the day now I don't see the grooming gangs as a party political issue the Tories didn't really do anything about it

properly either although there were individual members of of the cabinet that tried to to do something like so braan um but he's put in pressure on the government of the day you can see him going after Nigel farage of all people and saying Nigel farage is not the right leader for reform so he's he's in he's attempting to shape British politics in the direction that he feels is the right way what does he want what out does he want I look I don't know what Elon must want I don't know him personally I haven't even

yet had chance to interview him which I really look forward to doing because I think he's one of the the great Visionaries of our time whether you like him or not I think that's undeniably true um but my sense is he's trying to uh talk about all the things that we've been discussing freedom of expression the end of identity politics and the pursuit of meritocracy a ping pioneering inspiring vision of the future which is why he's talking about Mars and and a vision for our civilization that goes beyond the narrow squabbling that that we do

here on Earth um a and and the the the understanding that human beings are are meant we we left the cave we're not supposed to stay in a place with the walls closing in on us and feel like we're in Decline we're not supposed to be a civilization that has 1.5 children per woman and that is simply just leaving the planet Earth because we can't reproduce we're supposed to look at the future with hope and optimism we're going to we're supposed to say I want things to be better I want things to be better for

my children I want to have children I want the vision of our society be being one of positivity and optimism and a sense of a pioneering vision and inspiration that's what I think he wants and um I don't really see any of that in the current government in the UK and I think he's right to go after them and say you are destroying your country's economy you're destroying its culture you destroying its sense of cohesiveness by allowing illegal immigration you are destroying uh that sense of optimism and vision and you're not saying to people let's

build something better you're saying uh let's stay small let's play small let's not rise above our station and I think uh we need people like that imperfect as they may be and all sorts of different ways to drive our civilization forward to say to us there is an inspiring vision to which we're all moving as opposed to just sitting there and waiting to die which is what we've been doing for far too long yeah I think I think Elon is um Tak him at his word you know he said a year ago that he was

going to absolutely dismantle the woke M virus globally and he was going to ensure meritocracy and free speech um and he when he sets his mind on something he has the ability to stay focused on it for a very long time to a degree most people can't fathom um you know and he's and he's absolutely willing to endure pain he loves a fight he he obviously has the kind of mind that can't relax unless he's kind of grinding up against some gear um as well like the way he the way he works he needs stress

in his life he needs a big enemy he needs a big fight to to engage with um and I think K dama just ticked all of his boxes as someone to go up against um I think I think it's interesting is we talk about these big Tech I love that Scott has previously talked about breaking up big Tech and I think there's potential for that in the next four years all of these guys like Trump and JD Vance and all of them have have uh locked horns with big Tech and they've come you know this

is their chance to get revenge on big Tech in the next four years they could do a little you know you might see Google have to you know spin off YouTube or you might see AWS have to come away from Amazon or something like that who knows but um it's interesting that that a lot of these big Tech guys they're probably cozying up to Trump um because you know that could be on the cards as well there's been a lot of um Trump butt kick butt kissing over the last couple of weeks I think Trump's

almost bragged about the fact that everybody's flown down to Mar Lago to kiss his butt and to Cozy up with him and there's now headlines saying that there's this Tech oligarchy forming in the United States where Bezos and Elon and zck are all now friends and they're stood behind Trump as this unifying force just to just to touch on a few points of that but also on Constantine's message that Elon is doing this for the betterment of humanity to further Humanity his involvement with the UK but his broader involvement in politics now Scott does that

square with how you think about Elon and I am quite um curious to ask you why you made the decision to leave X and to go to Blue Sky and threads and things like that yeah I can't speculate on what motivates Elon Musk I I just I quite frankly just don't get the guy and I don't also I don't I don't have the domain expertise to comment on the rape gangs it's such a serious upsetting issue I I don't know it well enough to speak intelligently to it the just a topic of of censorship though

as it relates to meta a Hallmark of a free Society in a democracy is that pretty much anyone can say pretty much anything about pretty much anybody I I believe that the question is do machines and Bots have free speech rights because if I say something I I believe and I may be paranoid but it doesn't mean I'm wrong I believe VCS who uh whose portfolio companies I've said have overvalued have enlisted thousands of bots to basically just shitpost me over and over on X to diminish my credibility I I think because I've been critical

of Putin that the gru has hired troll Farms to create lists of thousands of people to weaponize bots to say disparaging things about them do those Bots have free speech rights in addition when Fox News distributes information to its anchors saying Dominion voting machines were weaponized by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela despite the fact they knew that was not true but they tell their broadcasters to do it anyways and then Dominion says this hurt our business and you knew it was false and you decided to communicate It Anyways their courts find them liable they have to

pay three4 of a billion dollars what happened at Fox News was a dumpster fire compared to the nuclear mushroom cloud on meta so a lot of what we're talking about here if you want to say that mRNA vaccines alter your DNA I think you you should have the right to say that the denters voice is important because occasionally the conspiracy theorist ends up being correct the question is when you have a business model that elevates the most incendiary ugly content Beyond its organic reach should you then be exonerated from all liability and slander that traditional

media companies are liable to if we were to say the donon musk is a pedophile and state start stating facts and evidence of it and he could show that it's hurt his ability to raise money for Tesla and he filed legal action against this podcast I think we would be in a world of hurt and and and it would that that legal liability is warranted but the most powerful media companies in the world have section 230 protection so they can they have a business model where conspiracy theory or novel content which is Latin for [

__ ] and lies and the more Angry it is it gets elevated Beyond its organic reach so while I'm kind of down with the notion that we should have free speech and anybody should be able to say pretty much whatever they want there's something wrong when we have algorithms that have a profit incentive around rage conspiracy theory and lies and two-thirds of Republicans believe that the election was stolen and when one one in five Americans think that 911 was an inside job I mean we are let's be honest they thought that before the internet I

remember watching all the 911 truth movies and all of that but your point overall is right I I totally agree and by the way Elon agrees with you when he bought X he talked about the bot problem he talked about the amplification of our R he hasn't done as much as I I hoped he would have done so far but I I hope that they do address that because that isn't an Elon or an ex problem it's a technology problem of the modern world the reality is that the more we live our lives online the

more you're going to have a the problem of the ability of foreign governments of individual people to create fa fake accounts bot Farms Etc uh to influence the way we look at all of these things um and uh we are going to have to come to terms with that reality because it's a it's a technological issue that we're going to have to solve for and we haven't yet it's also very easy for people to get caught in their own Bubbles as well which is a new phenomenon there was a time where if you believed crazy

things you still had to sit next to someone else in church and talk to them about their life and what they believe and you encountered dissenting voice you you encountered San rational people who had very different views to you that you had to be friends with long term uh whereas where we are right now is if you've got some sort of crazy view you can find yourself only talking to people who who share those views um and only sharing content that reinforces those views until such time that you become extremely radicalized I think that's such

an important point because I think it's a real shame that AI llms aren't crawling the real world I was at Grangers yesterday someone comes up to me love your content let's take a picture they're so nice another person comes up to me and say I disagree with your view on this but we have a civil conversation and then I come home to 40 Bots telling me I'm Professor genocide I mean people in the real world generally speaking I don't know if it's because it's a threat of physical violence or they want to have sex with

you or maybe they think some some point you'll hire their kid or generally just a comedy of man but people in real life I find are just lovely and wonderful and it's a shame that these l LS aren't crawling this cuz the trfe and some of the vile [ __ ] they're they're crawling online which I don't even think reflects our species I think it reflects technology that has a profit motive around promoting the most incendiary hateful content so there's got to be some sort of medium speed here and also I got off X Steve

because you don't like Chick-fil-A don't eat a Chick-fil-A I I I if musk wants to pay $44 billion in tur it into a Nazi porn bar that's his right I don't think there's I don't think it's illegal I don't think the government should step in but I don't have to paint his fence and I can go to another platform that's my right too and everyone says oh you're against Free Speech I'm like no I'm not I'm against being on a platform that makes me feel bad so he has the right and all this notion around

meta Free Speech it's a little different because they control so much the media but these are media companies and they should be liable for slander or defamation the same way tradition media companies are involved I think we could solve a lot of this problem by just removing 230 protections for algorithmically elevated content if you decide to elevate content Beyond its organic reach then you are making an editorial decision and you should be liable if that in fact is slanderous or defamatory I think that's really fascinating uh as a way of handling it and also we're

living in a world where as of this year some of the most phenomenal content you will read will be algorithmically generated um and some of the most compelling content so this idea that Scott's talking about of should Bots have free speech it sounds like a kind of you know intellectual kind of pseudo intellectual topic but it's absolutely a very practical Topic in the sense that uh Bots now can generate conversations very easily and some of the you you could spend all day talking to a bot and not know it's funny this is this subject has

come up because in the last week I had a flurry of messages on Whatsapp from Friends actually had two tweets yesterday which you could probably see if you just search my name because on X at the moment there's multiple ads running that are fake articles with fake BBC headlines with my face in so it says things like the bank of England is suing Steve bartler and this is running as a sponsored ad on X and people are tweeting me these things my friend says every time he refreshes the feed he sees a new sponsored ad

of a fake article of me and sometimes it's like can't believe this happened to Steve and it's a BBC article you click on it you get scammed I think it's a crypto scam I don't want to click I'll send the link to you guys so you can click on it for me but um I just it really has because that is a bot there's multiple of them multiple accounts that have been spun up they're all verified accounts and it's AI generated imagery with a paid ad behind it that's the bit that really gets me I

get people can post [ __ ] but but sponsoring sponsoring it is a new a new level of a new level of uh like defamation um one of the big macro things I've been thinking a lot about that I haven't shared yet is just the the amount of social networks that have emerged in the last 10 years there's been a 50% increase so far in new social networks that have emerged and we're seeing this splintering now of the rumbles the blue skies the threads and it almost seems talking about Echo chambers that social networks are

becoming sort of political environments and you're choosing your social network now based on your politics this doesn't seem like a net positive thing for society no no I I think we're living through an era of the fragmentation of our reality and it it comes you know Scott's point about uh people behaving better in person is true although I would say uh there is the wind screen effect or the windshield effect which is if you someone cuts you up in traffic and you feel that there's some kind of physical separation between the two of you most

people behave slightly differently in that context than they would if they were sitting next to somebody face to face in the bar so it's it's there's something about being physically present with other people that changes it which is one of the reasons you know I know you have pretty much all your interviews face to face and we do as well because I generally speaking it's very difficult to connect authentically with people obviously we've managed to do it in the course of this conversation but beyond that is difficult um and so we're going to have to

work on that but I just what the point I'm trying to make is this isn't a political issue it's not an X issue it's not an Elon Musk issue it's a technological iCal issue we're living through uh probably already have lived through most of of the digital Revolution and I used to as a kid love Isaac azimov science fiction books and one of the reasons I did enjoy reading them so much is it was a world in which there was an exploration of what does the creation of robots which is what we're living through mean

for Morality what does it mean for philosophy what does it mean for Humanity what does it mean for uh what how do we build rules in a world in which you have these machines that take every rule literally and suddenly you find that uh you know the desire to protect Humanity results in the end of humanity how do you how do you navigate all of this and that is what we're living through we are also living through a period when our realities are being fragmented and so uh we we we we believe a very small

set of things that other people like us somewhere in a very different part of the world as Daniel was saying earlier also believe and we now live in this not we don't live in in England or in Scotland or in America we live almost like in a world of people who think like us in the west and then other people live right next door to us who live in a whole different world because they consume a whole different set of information um that is the reality uh we can complain about it that is not going

to change and and I the the only thing I I really want to uh raise where I disagree with what with Scott U about this idea that Facebook and X Etc are uh they are Publishers and not platforms I don't think you can apply the same media organization section to to them it it just I I don't think it's appropriate they are Platforms in which people publish information the the artificial amplification is a fair point um we need to deal with that we need to deal with the bot problem uh that's a very difficult one

because uh one of the challenges is the only way to really deal that I can see with the bot problem is to get people to verify their identity online that obviously has a lot of questions around that because once you start forcing people to give their identity over to some Anonymous blob online who's collecting that data what are they doing with it and you know if you don't like Elon Musk or if you don't like the previous Twitter regime as I didn't then the question for you is well you know let's say right now I

look at Twitter and I'm like yeah I'm happy to verify my identity I'm happy to confirm who I am well what if you know George Soros buys X off Elon at some point are you still happy that that information is being held are you still happy that the anonymous account you've now now made confirmed you know what happens to the anonymous activist speaking about uh the ayatollah's regime and the Iran what happens to them when they've had to verify their identity and the wrong person buys out platform or someone hacks it Etc so it's a

conversation that's uh that's not if there were easy solutions on these issues they would have been solved by now this is a very difficult thing for Humanity to navigate and we're going to have to find a way to do it uh and incrementally so I I just want to respond to that I think you're guilty the same illusion of complexity that protects these companies from acting like actors such that they can do anything regardless of the damage to the Commonwealth to add shareholder value if you implemented we have first off this notion that you don't

want to give up your identity trust me they know everything about you Constantine already and I could go get a ton of information on you from the dark web fairly easily with a credit card so the notion that it somehow we shouldn't have some sort of you could have we need age verification for social media there's no reason anyone in the age of 16 should be on a social media platform form and regarding the the the Civil Rights activist or the women's right activist that needs an anonymity you could create a number of accounts and

use blockchain or some sort of third party Anonymous to have a certain number of accounts that says look if you want an anonymous parody account you want to make fun of people fine if you want a an account talking about issues that you feel are sensitive from uh other markets fine we could we could absolutely figure that out and then figure out okay this account is doing nothing it has no base it has no soul it has no values it has 72 followers all it's doing is trying to start fights online all it's doing is

trying to make people feel shitty about Britain or shitty about America and the reality is these companies use that illusion of complexity such that they can have more Bots creating more fake clicks more Nissan ads and more shareholder value I I think there's a middle ground here I think we could figure this out I agree well that's what I'm saying I think some of the ideas that you're putting forward uh right or wrong I don't know but these are the conversations we should be having how do we make sure I I mean uh my son

is two and a half years old and if my my my wife has become a complete screen Nazi so he's probably not going to get a phone until he's about 40 um but but but I think your point about people shouldn't be on social media people shouldn't be on social media until they're 16 absolutely correct what that's doing to the minds of well or everybody but particularly young people who are really susceptible to it you're completely right the verification Dimension is difficult as I say we're going to have to Hash this all out as as

Humanity uh we're just going to have to work this all out how do we live in this new world that we now live in it's going to take some time and I hope it's not as bad as the last time the the information space was revolutionized which was the printing press that caused about two centuries of religious War hopefully we can avoid that and part of the way to do that is to to create environments which are uncensored where people can express different ideas we can have these battles and eventually come to some sort of

mutual understanding I hope that happens what I wanted to ask you all um to really close out this conversation was these conversations tend to be a bit of a reflection of what's in the news cycle and what's in the news cycle tends to be a reflection of what people are clicking and a lot of that's driven by fear and the sort of narrative of the time whether it's immigration or the Trump inal gration but what is the What is the big important idea that we're not talking about what's the most important thing that we should

be talking about that isn't getting enough attention right now as it relates to the future of the West and that's a big broad question I'll start with you Daniel uh for me it's the schooling system um I think the schooling system is not Preparing People for a world that exists um and that we're teaching you know we haven't grasped the fact that uh AI is going to be the biggest most disruptive technology in the lives of our children and that the jobs that we think they might be able to go into probably won't exist um

we need to take have a radical look at this idea that uh children should go to school with the same age groups or uh study a certain set of topics or that it should be topic based at all um we need to explore you know are there better models for the schooling system that prepare people for the world that we're going to be in our current schooling system goes back to the early 1800s it was essentially based on a military schooling system in Prussia um and that's kind of where it evolved from uh I think

what we need to do is think about um what what are the SK you know what are the skills that our kids are going to need I see to and I can only I don't feel if I I can wrap my arms around UK's issues but in terms of the US political extremism I would put it number two you know at -400 Celsius and Fahrenheit meet and because of our electoral system and citizens united people from the far left who are crazy and people from the far right who are crazy are just over represented and

they come together to meet on Reckless spending deficit spending they come together to agree on anti-Semitism and there's just too many people on the far left and the far right and the people in the middle uh it's minority role they're just not represented however I think the biggest threat that people aren't talking about and I'm I've actually spent some time talking with the administration around this or the former Administration I should say is loneliness and that is you have the deepest pocketed most well-resourced companies and people in the world trying to convince people especially young

men that they kind have a reasonable fact simil of life on a screen with an algorithm and I think they literally go crazy I think they wake up and they're obese and lonely and have no skills um we talked about this I think young people I say this jokingly but half seriously I think young people need to get out of the house more drink more make a series of bad decisions that might pay off I think we need I think we need to I think we need more sex I think we need more uh people

in people in third spaces I mean more church more religious more more institutions national service were mamals and I worry that we're one in seven men doesn't have a single friend one in four men can't name a best friend so this loneliness epidemic where people get into a bubble and start engaging in conspiracy theory not trusting each other uh blaming women blaming the nation self harm I just I worry about you know what I say to young men I coach a lot of young men romantic comedies are two hours not 15 minutes for a reason

this [ __ ] is hard and it's worth it but I worry that we're raising like I said this new species of asocial asexual being called the Young American male that is obese anxious and just a shitty citizen Constantine the most important thing in 2025 that's not getting enough attention uh in the UK and in most of Europe it's an issue that Daniel raised earlier which is in the UK Energy prices are four times what they are in the United States that is an ideological decision it's done because we're saving the planet that's what we

we're being told the reality is uh our contribution to Global uh carbon emissions is we're responsible for 2% of global carbon emissions uh in the world uh making British pensioners freeze to death every winter because they can't afford fuel bills is not the solution to climate change and if you amplify that further uh M Driving businesses out of business making our economy uncompetitive making Britain unable to generate wealth for itself and for its future is not the moral position Net Zero uh which is the impoverishment of our society for ideological reasons has been positioned as

the moral cause we're we're saving the planet we're ending climate change we're not we we're not doing any of that all we're doing is virtue signaling and making our fellow citizens suffer so what we should be talking about about is how do we make energy cheap again so that we can have a prosperous economy and guess what when people are prosperous that's when they actually start being responsible about pollution about throwing away things they don't need and also when you have money that's when you can invest money in scientific research which allows you to find

cleaner better forms of energy that's what we should be doing we should be making sure that we generate as much wealth for our fellow citizens as possible because a lot of people are struggling and I think it's deeply deeply immoral to impoverish already poor pensioners in this country and to prevent businesses from hiring people and giving them jobs and opportunities including the young men that Scott is talking about because we are saving the planet and we're trying to keep little Greta happy we're not doing any of that we're not successful in that we should stop

pretending and we should do what Donald Trump said he plans to do which is drill baby drill we should be exploring in and exploiting all the energy reserves we have in this country in order to create clean energy and better forms of energy for the future as well as to improve the well-being of our fellow citizens that's what we should be talking about a hell of a lot more than we are you need cheap energy you're right it's what I would argue I I think it's going to be liquid natural gas and nuclear we haven't

talked about ai ai requires 10 times the energy at gay query is a Google query the choke point is energy would argue in the US I think we benefit more from as opposed to drill baby drill build baby build I think young people have seen housing prices just go crazy there's a psychological benefit to household formation Force savings so I I don't I'm going to take you at your word because you're a very smart guy that Britain has implemented a series of policies that I that energy stat you rolled at was incredible but in the

US like I said we're we're I don't want to say we're drowning in oil we've we're we've there were more drilling permits issued under Biden than than the previous Trump admin I mean just a call Biden anti-energy or that somehow we're have this this massively overinflated Energy prices it's just not that hasn't happened in the US um uh I would like we need we need more homes in the US and in the UK too and Stephen let me just before you wrap up fill the stats out a little bit more obviously everyone understands that geopolitically

we're in a pretty tense time and there's conflicts happening Britain is in a position now where we would struggle the you got to remember British history Britain is britania rules the waves right the way that Britain has become a great nation throughout history is by having a powerful Fleet we would struggle to build warships now because we've closed down all our steel works because we're green right it's insanity and and on every other issue to do with with energy and Industry We have basically deliberately moved our production facilities to other countries okay great idea globalization

make things cheaper ship things but wonderful okay what happened during covid what happened when suddenly the the entire chains of production weren't quite operating the way that they normally do oh China's suddenly holding all the masks interesting so what do you think is going to happen when there's a war or they're just going to keep shipping the steel to us to make the battleships and the war planes that we need to fight them that's what you think is going to happen this whole thing this whole agenda is ideological insanity and what Ed millerand is about

to do to this country when it comes to this issue needs to talk about way more and it is about economic Prosperity it is about housing because one of the reasons we don't build as much housing as we need to is again we you know building housing produces emissions and we don't want to be we don't want to be not green so that's why people in their 30s and 40s and now living in flat shares for four people right we have got to let go of this OB session with NetZero we have got to build

we have got to drill we have got to produce energy and we have got to stop thinking that the moral thing to do is to make our poor citizens suffer in order that we feel good about saving the planet which we're not even remotely saving by doing this guys thank you so much for all of your perspectives one of the things I I realized as you guys were talking is that you're all fathers and you're all fathers of boys although you're fathers of boys at different ages so I wanted to just give you all 30

seconds if you could and this is maybe me asking for myself for this advice but based on everything that's happening in the world which can feel incredibly confusing especially to young people where we're getting a lot of our information from different Echo Chambers what is the advice that you would all give to your young boys that would best prepare them for the future and the the next couple of years starting with you Don yeah so I've got a a six-year-old daughter a seven-year-old son and a 10-year-old son um it's an incredibly confusing time because preparing

them for a world that's fast changing uh is difficult uh we're taking the approach of um a a lot of general knowledge across a lot of things so that uh you can use AI to run deep in different topics um we're encouraging the kids to interact with um supervised AI conversations and and have like letting them know that that technolog is available um uh we're also just focusing on some manual skills like how to fix a boiler and how to you know how to um s through some wood and uh you know th those kind

of things and also um we're doing things like uh acting classes uh being up on a stage and Performing um so all all of those kind of typical things but uh to be to be honest um it is a point of anxiety in my life just thinking about what um you know what the world looks like for you know 10 10 or 15 years from now that they're going to be going into so if if you get clear answers on this I'm I'm I'm really open to learning for me my son's two and a half

so it's a little bit early for this pep talk but my message to to to him is when he's old enough to hear it is going to be this your grandfather my your great-grandfather my grandfather was taken as a slave laborer from Soviet Ukraine to Nazi Germany your great grandfather was born uh your great grandmother rather was born in the Soviet gag uh your great-grandmother lived through the German occupation and is now living through Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine you are not living in the worst time ever you're surrounded by [ __ ] if you

are a man and if you do your job and if you learn the skills that you need to do and if you pursue the things that you want to do with your life to the best of your ability if you believe in yourself if you believe that you're talented if you actually achieve the things that you set your mind to there's never been a better time in the history of humanity than now you're surrounded mostly by people who feel sorry for themselves if you're not one of them you're going to clean up young women are

looking for a young man like you who's actually going to stand up for himself who's actually going to go out there and Achieve and be confident be that and you're going to clean up when it comes to to finding the right partner for yourself you're going to clean up when it comes to making money you're going to clean up to your when it comes to your career you're going to clean up on every front because the bar has never been lower the bar has never been lower so just go out and be a man and

life is going to be great I I'm I'm older I have 14 and 17y old boys and my observation is you can't tell them anything the best you can do is you can try and Model Behavior for them so I'm trying to be really kind to their mother I'm trying to show them that yeah you know if you're serious about having a good family you got to be a generous loving partner um I'm trying to be in great physical shape and which is getting harder and harder I'm trying to be aggressive around them in terms

of business and um trying to be kind and what I do I do talk to them about the the concept of surplus value I'm like you're takers right now you know the UK school system which is amazing is investing a lot in you and you're giving almost nothing back me and your your mother are loving you a lot more than you're loving us you're just taking resources everywhere you're a net negative and your Crossing to manhood isn't sex or some religious ceremony or crossing the manhood is when you are start creating Surplus value you're you're

you're you're loving more people than you're absorbing you're listening to more complaints than you are complaining you're creating more Revenue than you're absorbing that's the notion it's Surplus value and I have this trick uh called what a man does and I've been doing this when they're kids I'm like guest show up a man goes and gets their luggage and puts it in their room a man constantly scanning the table for empty water glass glasses and I mean the proud one of the proudest moments I ever had was when like my six-year-old boy who was all

like 30 lbs got up and went over this gigantic picture of water at this table and like started like trying to pour other people's water and everyone had no idea what was going on here you know I do these things called what a man does a man goes up to a man asks a woman out for coffee a man pays for women I'm I'm a sexist that way I still have told my man my my son gave me this on oh Dad you're so establishment I'm like do you ever want have sex I'm like then

you need to pay I mean that's the bottom line anyways but what I would say is I'm trying to model I'm trying to model good behavior or or be a good a good role model but I agree with Constantine and and Daniel I I think I think every day they have more potential to lead the most amazing life in history I'm not a nihilist I'm not a catastrophist I think got big problems but given the blessings of the sons born to these men and future you know future sons that you'll have Stephen Jesus it's good

to be them there's just they have no excuse they should they should they should rock on they should have a wonderful life Constantine Scott Daniel thank you so much for taking the time um at sort of short notice to talk about all these subjects it's incredibly wide- ranging conversation and you'll bring such an interesting hilarious Nuance perspective to these issues and I'm glad that we can have these conversations and disag in a respectful way that hopefully clarifies a lot of the confusion that I experience and a lot of people are experiencing at the moment so

thank you to all of you I'm going to link all of your work on the screen I know Scott you've got a book coming on masculinity which we're all very very excited about we've been waiting it's long overdue please hurry up um Constantine you've got an incredible podcast with trigonometry which I'm going to link on the screen and I suggest everybody goes and listens to and subscribes to if they're looking for more of this stuff and Daniel you've just been on my show already but your endless amount of books and I think the best place

to get more from you is your website of course uh your Daniel Priestly website where you can find all of your books and all of your work and everything you're doing there thank you everybody really really appreciative and Incredibly grateful for taking part in our first little of experiment of this kind so yeah thank you [Music] oh [Music]