11 Burst results for "Oxford Union"
What Bitcoin Did
"oxford union" Discussed on What Bitcoin Did
"Okay, so the Clean Tech Fund was one you were working for or you started? I started. You started on your own or was there a group of you? With a couple of partners. Okay, the idea being? Well, the idea being I'd have been investing in technology companies for, well, at that point, 15 years. I wanted to invest in companies that had more impact. I've been an environmentalist for many decades and so I wanted to bring those two worlds together. Okay, so I know this is gonna sound like a dumb question, but what does it mean to be an environmentalist? Well, in my case- It's a loaded question. Yeah, that's right. It never really occurred to me not to be because my whole family were. So it was right from when I was four years old. Where I was born was in the West Coast. Actually, where I was born was in England, but where I spent my childhood was in the West Coast of a little rural community just outside Auckland in New Zealand. And when I was four years old, there was a landfill that was proposed in that area and the community got up in arms about it all. And I remember that time even as a four-year-old because it was a story about the community coming together and winning against a bigger oppressive power that was trying to impose an agenda without consulting the local community. And so there's a picture of me in a magazine age four with a little sign saying, don't trash the Waitakeres, which is the area I was from. So you were the first Grita. I was four. Yeah, I was four. Fucking old Grita, 16, come on. And then at age 10, I was on anti-apartheid marches with my mom's permission. And then at age 11, I was on an indigenous land rights march. And then throughout my teenage and 20s, I was on different anti-GE marches and climate change marches later on, protesting against deep sea oil drilling, writing letters to the editor in magazines and newspapers, trying to raise people's attention about climate change in the business community in the early and mid-2000s. So it's always been something I've done. And my role models around me, they were people who took direct action. My two close childhood friends, one of them's in Greenpeace, Aotearoa, New Zealand. The other one's in the Green Party and is probably gonna be elected into parliament this year. So they're my peers, my community. And so as an environmentalist right now, what would be your primary concerns? Right now? Right now. Right now, methane emissions. Methane emissions. Ahead of carbon emissions, are carbon emissions a concern of yours? Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. And again, these are loaded questions because in the world of Bitcoin, we have quite a lot of debates, discussions regarding climate change, what is real, what isn't. And it's a spectrum from people on one side completely dismissing it's even happening or claiming that climate change is natural cycles, yada, yada. To those who would maybe fall into the Epstein camp who admit that the climate is changing, but maybe we'll say, well, we need to burn fossil fuels, humans flourish with burning fossil fuels, that the best thing we can do to mitigate climate change is burn more fossil fuels so we can have the technologies for mitigation. He argues succinctly and strongly to we have groups of people who admit it's happening but think there's nothing we can do about it. And what's the point saying someone like the UK trying to do anything when we contribute something like 1% of global emissions and China's not making any difference to people all the way to the other end who, well, let's start saying someone like me who believes it's an issue we're causing it but I'm a massive fucking hypocrite because I fly around the world and drive a car and have done nothing or done very little to what I would say the crazy environmentalists who don't seem to have rational alternatives to ending things like oil. So there's this huge spectrum and me as somebody who does a job like this, who wants to understand everyone's position, therefore gets completely lost. I find it hard to hold one position because I'm like, well, apart from the people who are complete denialists, like, fuck them. But Epstein, I'm like, you make really good arguments and the people over here are like, yeah, no, we're gonna destroy the planet and we're all gonna die. It's like you make some really good arguments. So I get completely lost. Where do you fit in all of this? So where I fit is, in my mind, there's no question that climate change is happening, that it's caused by humans and that it's urgent that we address it. It's not only carbon dioxide emissions but it's also methane and other gases which cause global warming. And my response to that is, well, I can reduce my carbon footprint but that's only gonna cause so much good. So how can I use my time on this planet and the little bit that I know to make a difference beyond my own carbon footprint? So I'm a pragmatist. Why do we have difficulty convincing people that climate change is real and is caused by humans? Why is there such strong arguments against it? Surely, scientifically, this should be easy to prove. Yeah, scientifically, there's some great arguments right back to Carl Sagan enunciating very well decades ago. I've pulled up some old footage of Margaret Thatcher back in the 1990s when she was staunchly acknowledging the pressing need to address climate change early and urgently in the 1990s. So there was actually a time in history, recent history, where it was increasingly widely acknowledged across the political spectrum. And what seems to have happened since then is that certain vested interests have done a very good job of creating FUD, Fair Uncertainty and Doubt. So the same tactics that opponents may use of Bitcoin have been used to create Fair Uncertainty and Doubt around the legitimacy of climate change. There was that book, the guy we have on the show, The Decade We Could Have Saved. Yeah. Yeah, Nathaniel Rich? Yeah, Nathaniel Rich wrote a book. Can you take up the name of his book? He says a really good way. He's done a range of things. He even did the research into the Canadian exchange, didn't he? In Quadriga, yeah. In Quadriga. Did he do the article about... There's that film. Oh, God, why did my memory always froze me? There's this really great film, Dark Waters. Is it Dark Waters? That was the one, yeah, I don't know. Was that him? I think he wrote the article that led to that film. That was to do with one of the... I think his oil firms were leaking oil into the... God, I can't remember the details, but anyway. Yeah, he wrote something called The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's West Nightmare, which was part of it. DuPont, that's it, yeah. No, DuPont, the chemicals were leaking into the soil, the cows were dying, the local people were getting cancer. He wrote the article that became the film. Right. And he wrote a book, yeah, Losing Earth, The Decade, We Almost Stopped Climate Change. I'm pretty sure this book is about ExxonMobil. Yeah. Their scientists said and knew climate change was happening. They knew it was because of increases in carbon in the atmosphere. And they knew it was humans causing it. They knew what it is. They knew. They're in-house scientists, and then I'm pretty sure, was it the Bush administration? And it just, something happened during that period whereby when the focus changed from let's do something about it to PR campaigns. It seems big tobacco and everyone did to just destroy it. Absolutely, yeah. That's pretty much the story. But what, even so, even so that's happened, I still, if the scientific evidence is there, if it can be proven, why do we still struggle to convince some people? I just don't understand it, because I've read through the evidence. Yeah, it was interesting. I was chatting to Brad Mills actually the other day, and he gave me an insight into it. And he said, look, see what happens is once you've been lied to once by the government, or maybe twice, you start to disbelieve everything they say. And so he said, look, I'm kind of libertarian. I don't believe anything the state tells me. So if they tell me that climate change is an issue, I'm just not gonna believe them, because it's a state and I don't believe the state. He said, however, if you tell me, you're a guy who believes in sound money. If you tell me, Daniel, that we have methane emission problems, I'm gonna say, huh, really? Let me look at that. So it's less about the science, more about whether the person telling you you trust. And because we've lost so much trust in government, some would say with very good reason, unfortunately, we're not gonna trust them. Well, a lot of people aren't gonna trust them when they hear, look, climate change is real. And people say, no, it's all a big scam. It's all a big hoax. I'm sick of being lied to. This is just another lie. I can totally understand why people would form that reaction. Another tool of control. Yeah, it's another tool of control. Taxation. Yeah, it's just to create fear so that they can impose an engender on us. And look, those tactics have been used in other areas, so it's natural people would be suspicious and think that climate change is just another example of that. So I totally get why people would suspect that it's a hoax. There is a geographic point to this. So I don't know what it's like here in Australia, what it's like in New Zealand. It's not a debate we have. We don't have it in the UK. We don't have the debate at all. It's only in the States, in one or two other countries. There are a few people trying to have it, and they tend to be the people who show strong alignment with American conservatism. I could name them, the people on Twitter I follow in the UK who fall into that camp. But there is no debate in the UK. There is debate over what should be done and could be done. A Constantine Kisson, who was on my show recently, has put up some very strong arguments that in the UK our net zero targets are close to impossible and will make almost no difference to global emissions. So it isn't worth it. What we should be doing is therefore investing in technology solutions for mitigation. And I think it's the Oxford Union where he did this. Have you ever seen his? I haven't. Is it too long to show now? It's too long. It's a good five minutes, but it's really good. Yeah, it's well worth watching. We'll share it with you. We'll put it in your show next. Yeah. But it isn't a debate in the UK. Everyone is aligned and understands there is an issue. They're not aligned on the solutions. Just stop oil or pissing everybody off. Everyone hates them. People want to run them over when they block the roads. Look, I admire any protest, by the way. So like right to protest. And you cannot deny they've been effective. They've just not won hearts and minds. Come to the US. And it might be like, it might be because of the community I'm mixing with Bitcoin is slightly different, but come to the US, the debate seems a lot bigger. Yeah, I think it is a lot bigger. There's a lot of people who just don't believe it's happening in the US, and that's not representative of Europe or Australia or New Zealand, certainly. OK, firstly, so there will be people listening who are going to be like, fuck off, Pete. Fuck off, Daniel. Time changes are real. How would you appeal to them? What would you say to them? The first thing I'd say is I can completely understand why they've come to that conclusion, honestly. Just in the same way that I can completely understand why an environmentalist has come to the conclusion that Bitcoin is bad for the environment. Because in both cases, you trust certain sources who are in your tribe. And this is just the way that humans are designed. Maybe some other planet's different, and we listen to rationality much more. But we tend to listen to people we know, like, and trust. And so environmentalists will listen to other environmentalists and people in Greenpeace USA and Sierra Club. And if they're all saying Bitcoin's bad, then you're soaking in that environment. You'll take on the viewpoint of that tribe. And if you're mixing with people who all the time are saying climate change is a hoax, don't trust the state, then you can understand why you come to that viewpoint. And all I'd say is, look, I totally understand that. If you're interested in having your viewpoint changed, I'm happy to have a discussion with you. But I'm not interested in a debate. Yeah, that's quite an interesting one as well. Because I've noticed, like, Epstein, for example, has tried to get people to debate him. I have a kind of relationship with someone called Katherine Hayhoe. She's been on the podcast. And, you know, we discuss things. And I've asked her about these debates. And she said, I'm not debating people who I fundamentally know are wrong. It is a waste of my time. It's not happening. But I find Epstein an interesting character because he accepts climate change as real. He knows that's a dumb argument. So his argument is that let's not have that debate. The debate should be what we should do about it. And his belief is we should continue to burn oil. We should be encouraging and making oil available to the poorest communities in the world because energy leads to prosperity and innovation will lead to mitigation. I have a lot of sympathy for that argument, mainly because I think humans are trash as a group and we won't solve the problem. So even if everyone agreed, doesn't matter. It's like everyone in this room, everyone in Europe, Australasia, America all agree. Climate change is real. I don't think we have the will to make the changes to stop it. Yeah, it's real tough. It really is tough. And the reality is that some of the ways that we've gone about trying to address climate change have not worked that well. If you look at a whole lot of stranded energy, solar and wind development, which is in parts of the world without any consideration about building out the grid or about balancing that intermittency, there's been some big mistakes that have been made. Doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing something about it or we couldn't nuance that and take those considerations into play. But we've made some mistakes. So I guess part of what I've looked to do is said, well, that's a big challenge to solve. Where's some low-hanging fruit? And for me, with my technology hat, when you're a technology entrepreneur, you're always looking for the shortcuts. Where's the low-hanging fruit? Where's the thing that's easy or relatively easy to solve where I can make an impact? Where's the area which I have some knowledge about? It turned out I didn't have very much knowledge. I had to go and learn it or get some people on the team who did have some knowledge. But it was all methane. And that was the area that I found that while everyone was debating carbon dioxide and there's no question we need to mitigate that as well in my mind, and that's why we are investing in companies who do mitigate carbon dioxide, but there was a much more pressing concern and that was our methane levels, which were rising parabolically. And only 2 cent in every climate tech dollar was going into methane mitigation. The other 98 was going to carbon dioxide. But methane mitigation is the one that's, according to the UN, that's our biggest hope to actually reduce climate change in our generation. I definitely want to come back to methane, but I didn't want to pass on, because you mentioned Greenpeace. Yeah. Really interesting in that I've lost all respect for Greenpeace over the last year or so. Well, I've got to make a nuance. It's Greenpeace USA who are running that campaign. Fine. Yeah, but I understand what you're saying. I mean, I don't know the politics or the organizational structure globally. I used to be a donor to Greenpeace in my 20s. I don't even know why I stopped. But anyway, I was a donor to Greenpeace, always respected everything they did. And then the propaganda campaign they've run against Bitcoin, which is a paid propaganda campaign, which is based entirely on lies, whereby either they are knowingly lying to accept money or they're refusing to do the proper research to understand if they're disseminating truth or facts makes me completely distrust them as an organization now. And it's a bit like you said, once you've been lied to once, it's the same that's happened with the government, our UK government during COVID. Now we know we were fundamentally lied to. It's the same with the media, the corporate media in the UK, certainly the US, where we know we've been lied to. It was like Eric Weinstein just did this interview with Chris Williamson, and he was talking about we're in a post-truth world now, and nobody knows what the fuck anymore, how to find the truth. Exactly. And people are choosing a side on any issue and sticking with it rather than searching for the truth. So I've lost all trust in Greenpeace because of this. It's such a weird thing for them to do. Yeah, it seems like the latter rather than the former. I think they genuinely believe, from what I can make out, that Bitcoin is bad for the environment. I can understand why they believe that because of the other people who whisper in their ear and tell them that and reinforce that message. But my criticism is, just as you say, that they haven't backed up the truck and actually done the research. They just haven't. And it's been out there, and it's coming out there in increasing regularity now, but the message is still the same. This show is brought to you by Wasabi, who I am using to keep my Bitcoin private. Now, Wasabi is the easiest way to send and receive Bitcoin privately, and even for non-technical people like me, it is effortless and provides privacy by default. Now, with Wasabi, there is no minimum amount, so you can start coin joining straight away. And Wasabi makes coin join transactions together with BTCPay and Trezza users, and BTCPay server users can make payments in coin join, which saves on fees and is a privacy improvement. Also, Wasabi just dropped a badass new feature Now, Trezza Suite users can coin join directly on the hardware wallet, which obviously is very cool. Now, if you want to find out more, please head over to WasabiWallet.io, which is W-A-S-A-B-I-W-A-L-L-E-T dot io. Next up, we have BitCasino. Now, BitCasino was established in 2013, and is the world's first licensed Bitcoin casino. It is trusted by tens of thousands of players worldwide, and not only do they have cutting edge security, but they offer fast withdrawals and VOP experiences that money can't buy. BitCasino has over 2,800 games and tournaments for you to try out, and with their 24-7 live chat support, you can always get help if you need. Now, if you want to find out more about BitCasino, the first Bitcoin casino to win an EGR award, head over to BitCasino.io, which is B-I-T-C-A-S-I-N-O dot io. And please remember to gamble responsibly. Also, today, we have Unchained. Now, Bitcoiners, you'd be crazy to sell your Bitcoin right now, right? The halving is just over six months away, and we have seen before this can be the time which sees the price rise most as the new supply shrinks. Now, selling Bitcoin right now to cover unexpected expenses can end up costing you on missed opportunities. Credit card interest rates are at an average of 21% and increasing, so by borrowing against your Bitcoin, you can end up saving a lot. Do you know what the best part is? With Unchained, you get to hold your own keys and can always verify that your Bitcoin is secure. And also, Unchained's loan dashboard gives you a health status for your loan so you can easily manage collateral when the Bitcoin price moves quickly. So, don't be forced to sell the bottom and miss out on those potential gains. And if you want to find out more, please head over to Unchained.com, which is U-N-C-H-A-I-N-E-D dot com, and use the promo code WhatBitcoinDid to get $50 off concierge onboarding. There has been a shift in narrative. There has been a shift. There really has this year. In the last few months, actually. It's fascinating, like mainstream news sources. I mean, I've certainly seen Forbes do it. Who else has done it? We've seen a few, haven't we? It's all backtrack. Almost like just more positive news stories about people. KPMG wrote a piece that was pretty based. Financial Times, You Today, there's been a number. Who are doing it more consistently now. Do you, even Bloomberg, they had a... And that blew me away. Because they had a do not publish anything positive about Bitcoin policy. Oh, we didn't know they had that. Motherfuckers. We know this because one of the journalists for Cointelegraph used to work at Bloomberg. And he tried to get positive articles on Bitcoin published. And he was basically told by his editors, we will not publish anything positive about Bitcoin. So they've changed as well. Do people know what journalism is? It's crazy. But yeah, I've noticed this shift. And I wonder, is this just people getting wise to it? They've seen the good arguments, the solid arguments. I'll tell you what it is. Or is it BlackRock? No, it's not BlackRock. A lot of people have said that. It's not BlackRock. Because there's three big things that have happened. Cambridge have revised their reports downwards about Bitcoin's energy consumption. KPM's given it the tick for ESG. BlackRock's published a video which is mildly positive about Bitcoin. The first ever academic journal has come out which was positive about Bitcoin. MIT is publishing a working paper which had a balanced look. They looked at the negative and the positive externalities. First time ever. Now, this work started before the BlackRock ETF came on board. So people are looking and saying, it's all because of BlackRock. It's not. It was starting anyway. That just helps. It definitely helps. And it's important because there are a number of people, people like Troy Cross, people like Dennis Porter, who are working tirelessly and a whole number of other people in the background who are helping to do the work that leads to these transformations by talking to people, by bringing them on side. And they're working tirelessly and doing amazing work. And it's actually because of other people in the Bitcoin community who are making the effort to reach out that we're starting to see that narrative shift. Troy has been amazing. Yeah, we love Troy. Sorry, just to interrupt. Let's also give a solid shout out at the same time to Dennis Porter because Dennis Porter came into the Bitcoin scene like a train and did a bunch of things. And he's just suddenly found his space. And his work recently has been utterly fantastic. And I think he does a big credit for what he's done. Huge credit. And it's resulted in a shift in the media. It's resulted in a shift with politicians. And look at how many presidential candidates now are coming out and declaring their Bitcoin colors. So the work that these people... But hold on. It's the Bitcoin voting block, and let's not trust these ones. Yeah, of course. Still, you need people like Dennis Porter who shows that it is an election-worthy issue for people to even make that call. So what was the first one? Was Cambridge the trigger, the first one that triggered the rest? Cambridge have been quite good for a while, haven't they? They've been pretty good. I'm in touch with the people there. Look, they're a good, reputable institution. The only issue is they're resource-constrained. And so their data is accurate to a point, but it's got out of date. Did Cambridge originally... I'm just talking a few years ago, maybe four or five years ago, say eventually Bitcoin will use all the energy in the world. That wasn't Cambridge. That wasn't Cambridge. Were they the ones who then wrote the article that counted that? That wasn't Cambridge either. So Cambridge have always been kind of in the middle. Okay. Yeah, so there was a paper by Mora et al. that said that it's going to boil the oceans and... Didn't that have... They cited Alex de Vries. Yeah, Alex de Vries, who's full of shit. He's kind of behind everything. Yeah, he's full of shit. I think it was Digiconomist that wrote that. Was it Digiconomist? I think so. Yeah, there's some stuff from the World Economic Forum as well. But Cambridge, they were saying all along... No, it's about 32% sustainable energy. And that was actually true back before the China ban. It was. But what's happened since then is the world's totally changed. Totally changed. But their mining map and their data is still almost two years old. Oh, really? That's the issue. But what are they saying at the moment even with the two years old? What's the shift? You said they've really... So they've acknowledged, hey, we had a slightly older data set. We were overestimating. It's actually about 10% to 12% to 14% less than we thought. And the second part of the shift is they've also said, whilst we haven't updated our models for emissions, we can reasonably expect that when we factor in off-grid mining, methane mitigation, landfill gas methane mitigation, that it'll come down further. So they've publicly stated this. And KPMG's report? Was very positive. So they looked at all aspects of ESG, the environment, social, the governance, and they gave a tick in the box for all three. Is ESG still relevant? Because it got a bit of a hammer in, especially like Elon Musk actually gave it a hammer in. And if he takes up an issue, he can usually have some impact. It's a tool. It's a tool. You can use a tool for good, for evil, for neutral. And it has been used for all three. The thing that I say to Bitcoin is whether you think it's evil, whether you think it's neutral, whether you think it's good, it's a necessary rite of passage for Bitcoin. Because like it or not, there's a whole lot of institutional capital tied up in ESG funds, five trillion in the US alone. It's going to be 11 trillion in the next five years, tens of trillions globally, that cannot invest and deploy into Bitcoin until there is a change in the ESG narrative. Well, the ESG thing is interesting because a lot of Bitcoin is a very anti-ESG. And I totally understand why, because there's a lot of bullshit as well around it. I mean, some of the companies that are in the high-end ESG index, was it like ExxonMobil or somebody high-end ESG? It's like, oh, come on, fuck off. But actually, I always felt like we could use ESG as a tool in that we know the energy credentials. We certainly know the social and governance credentials. I felt like ESG is often focused on the E. That's really where people have been. But actually, Bitcoin ticks all through. I felt like that a long time. So we can turn it against them. Okay, so let's go into methane. Give me the science. Was it like 80 times more polluting than carbon? It depends how you measure it. There's not a simple answer because methane breaks down in the atmosphere quicker. Okay. So it has a life of between nine to 12 years, some say 14 in the atmosphere. So it's hard to do an apples for apples comparison. While it's in the atmosphere, it's actually 200 times more warming. Okay. But it only stays in the atmosphere for a short time. So what people do is they say, well, let's measure the average global warming potential over 100 years. And they'll say, well, it's only 28 times worse than carbon dioxide. But then more recently, people have been saying, well, hang on, we haven't got 100 years to sort out this thing called climate change. Yeah. We are working to a much shorter time horizon of more like 20 years. So we should look at its potential global warming factor over 20 years. And over 20 years, it's between 80 to 86 times more warming than carbon dioxide. And that's the factor that I use. Right. And so, but it does break down. It does break down into carbon dioxide. Okay. Into carbon dioxide. Okay. And that's just a natural process. Yeah. There's these little particles in the atmosphere that will break it down. There's some issues there as well because of wildfires. They're not breaking it down as fast anymore. So it's actually staying in the air for longer. Okay. But carbon dioxide itself doesn't break down. It just gets recycled by plants. It can break down over like a hundred year plus period. And to those people who say no, having lots more carbon in the atmosphere is great because we get greening. What do you say to that? Well, you get the wrong sort of greening. I don't have a garden shed anymore because the neighbor's tree fell on it. The reason the neighbor's tree fell on it, I know because I talked to the arborists and the other people close to the action. They're the ones who see the impact of climate change. And they said, I can tell you why that tree fell over. Number one, there was a flash flood and we're having more extreme weather conditions. Number two, that tree there, because of extra carbon in the air, is 50% bigger than it was ever designed to be. And so its weight is huge and it doesn't have the root structure to support it. That's why it fell over on your garden shed. So yes, it was bigger, but that's actually causing more problems. So it's not a good thing. That feels like a very niche argument, a tree in your back garden. That's an example of, so what I'm saying here is, and I looked at the research, the research says that yes, there's more carbon. Yes, it makes plants grow faster, but it doesn't actually increase their nutritional qualities. They don't have the, it's kind of like if you give a child growth hormones, yeah, they might grow taller, but there's going to be some consequences. And so with methane, what are the primary sources of methane emissions? Where's it coming from? Obviously I know Cal-Pho, that's why it's burps actually, isn't it? Boobs, yes. I know that's one. Three main sources. Yeah, so fossil fuel industry, so oil, gas, and coal extraction, it's a byproduct of that because when you hit coal or gas, you also hit methane. And often that's just fled or sometimes it's just freely vented. Second is yes, agriculture, what comes out of both ends of a cow or an animal. And then the third is landfills or waste generally. There's some other areas as well, rice fermentation, but they're the big three. And are you saying they're about a third each? Well, officially landfills is a distant third, but unofficially because of the NASA satellite footage, which said we underestimated our landfill emissions by a factor of between two and three. Unofficially based on that, it's our number two source of methane. And if you look over the next 10 years, it's on course to become number one because it's growing at twice the rate of agriculture emissions. And that's just basically in the landfill, all us crap breaking down and, okay. Stuff that rots without air. And so when you're considering climate change and what can be done, how much of an impact can we have by dealing with the issue of methane and how much of the methane issue itself can be dealt with? So the answer to the first question, it's absolutely huge, absolutely huge. The good news about methane is because it stays in the atmosphere for a shorter period of time. If you stop it going into the atmosphere, you have an immediate impact on climate change. So whilst it hasn't been proven yet, I suspect that a lot of the reasons we're having these extreme weather events much more commonly than we thought wasn't supposed to happen for another 20 years is of course methane levels have gone parabolic. So if we can do anything to reduce that, the impact's gonna be felt immediately in terms of fewer extreme climate events. Sorry, just to interrupt. These extreme climate events, is that provable that we've got more of them or is the media just reporting on more of them? If you look at what's happened, they've basically doubled since the 1970s. There has been analysis done on that. Okay. Yes. And that was about five years old since, if you update it to now, I don't know if a study's been done, but even five years ago, it's doubled since the 1970s. Yeah, it's not scientific, but it certainly feels like there's more events. It feels like when you put the news on, there's more big fires. We had the big fires in Greece, we've had the big fire in Hawaii, the massive fires that seem to happen every year in Canada. We have massive flash flood events. I think Greece has just gone from fires to floods. They have. Yeah. And where I grew up, that was flooded. That looks completely different to how it did. Bridges washed away, a surf club deck washed away people's houses, huge amounts of sand inundated them, roads cut off, roads destroyed. So I've seen it in my own neighborhood where I grew up and it just never used to happen ever in that volume. It wasn't like a third of Pakistan underwater as well. Yeah. Yeah. Which also sounds insane. I would say, if anything, the media isn't reporting enough because you don't hear after the first couple of days. But yeah, a third of Pakistan underwater. Yeah, which is insane, really. It's a third of a whole country underwater. Okay, so those are listening. Danny's brought up some data. Number of recorded natural disaster events, 1970 to 22. Okay, so it's more than doubled. Yeah, so in the 70s, it was about 80, 62, 71, 50, and then up to 467. So that's a, what, 1,000% increase? And then it's kind of like, that looks like the Bitcoin price from, it does, doesn't it? It looks like the Bitcoin chart. And so the trend, after it spiked in early 2000, it looks like there's a downtrend.
What Bitcoin Did
"oxford union" Discussed on What Bitcoin Did
"Yes, freedom has trade-offs. Freedom will mean you're less safe, and freedom will mean that some people say things you don't like. I'm okay with that, because I don't want to live in totalitarian China, and I don't want to live in Soviet Russia. If you do, that's fine. Go there and live there. Hello there. How are you all? I am on my final day of my holiday in Ibiza. It's been nice to have a break. It's been very sunny, but it's been eventful. I've lost my passport and it's stolen from my car, which has been an absolute nightmare. I've had to go to the consulate to get a temporary one. Now I've got to head up to Peterborough tomorrow to get an emergency passport ready for me to head out to Australia in a week. Speaking of which, are you coming? Are you in Australia? We've got our event on September the 9th. We've got Nick Bartier, Willy Woo, Checkmate, Russell Russell, and Dan Roberts all on stage. If you want to get a ticket to come to that, please head over to WhatBitcoinDid.com and click on WBD Live. Anyway, welcome to the WhatBitcoinDid podcast, which is brought to you by the legends of Iris Energy, the largest NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner using 100% renewable energy. I'm your host, Peter McCormack, and today I've got a show I've been trying to make for a long time. Konstantin Kissin is a British Russian satirist and one of the best commentators we have over here in England. You may have seen him online. He did a very, very cool speech. I think it was at the Oxford Union. I may have that wrong, but definitely worth checking out. Now, Konstantin likes to challenge narratives and talks a lot about wokeism, climate change, politics, and any kind of societal issue, really, and I've wanted to talk to him. Although this isn't strictly a Bitcoin show, it does cover a number of the topics which I feel are kind of siddle alongside the things that Bitcoins worry or think about. So, yeah, we had this chance to sit down for an hour and shoot the shit, and we got into all kinds of things this interview, and honestly, I feel like we only just scratched the surface, so I will definitely try and sit down with Konstantin again in the future. Now, if you've got any questions about this or anything else, please do drop me an email. It's hello at whatbitcoindid.com. Good to see you, Konstantin. Good to be with you. Yeah, thanks for letting us use your studio for this. Oh, it's a pleasure, man. Thanks for coming over. No, beautiful drive. I've been really keen to talk to you for a while, firstly because I mainly talk to Americans. But I'm Russian, so it's a bit different. You've gone to the other end. Yeah, I know you're Russian, but you're basically in the UK. You understand? Yeah, I'm British as well, yeah. But I'm going to praise you a little bit here. You've become kind of one of my favorite commentators in the UK, because I think, one, you recognize the issues. Two, you're not a crazy right wing. Three, I don't feel like you are trying to stoke a culture war to grift people, and I think your observations are excellent. I thought you were great on Rogan. I really enjoyed your interview there at Weinstein recently. And so I've just been keen to talk to you for a while. If we don't bring up Bitcoin, that doesn't matter. OK, well, that's a relief, because I know very little about Bitcoin. I always tell the story whenever people ask me about Bitcoin that I bought, you know, everyone's banging on about Bitcoin. This would have been probably 15 years ago or something. And I was like, you know what, let's put some money into it, see what happens. So I think I bought about $400 worth of Bitcoin. And when the value doubled, you know, with any investment, if like the value doubles on something as volatile as a cryptocurrency, you're going, well, you know, I've done well here. So I sold it 400. I had half a Bitcoin, half a Bitcoin for $400, and I sold it for $800. Well, so the point of that story is I know fuck all about Bitcoin. Well, I sold a lot of Bitcoin for a lot less than that at different times. Yeah, it's everyone's got a Bitcoin storyline. Yeah, we might get into it. But you know, it's interesting you mentioned that I'm not crazy right wing. I actually don't think of myself as right wing at all. And I'll tell you why. Because all of the things that people might now say make you right wing. I don't know how old you are. I suspect we're probably similar age. I think a bit older. I'm 44. I'm 40. So when I was growing up, and in fact, when I was a young man and a young adult, you know, thinking that there's a difference between men and words, or that countries, of course, should welcome immigrants like me, but we should have borders that are enforced. Right? These were all things that Barack Obama and I agreed on, you know what I mean? And so unless Barack Obama has become right wing, I don't really think of myself right wing as right wing. And of course, the issue that I principally started talking about when I used to be a stand up comedian was freedom of expression. And I always thought of that as an extremely liberal value that is what we protect in the West. And that's kind of one of the things that makes the West unique and special. So I don't think of myself as right wing because none of my views are right wing. It's just what's happened is a bunch of crazy people have taken the left off the deep end. Whereas I've stayed exactly where I've been. Do you know what I mean? So I'm very relieved because to hear you say you don't think of me that way, because quite a lot of people would like to think of me as on that side of the political spectrum. And many of them are on that side. Conservatives want, they keep thinking that I am one of them. And look, I've got wonderful conservative friends, but I always kind of have to put that disclaimer in because I really believe in creative destruction quite a lot. Conservatives often want to keep things exactly as they are. I think creative destruction is important. Coming from a comedy background, I think having a sense of humor is important and conservatives can do, but not always. So I'm relieved about that because that's a big frustration of mine, the way that the political climate's changed, where like having some very normal common sense opinions has become controversial. So in many ways, it's not that I'm grifting, it's that the world around me has put me in a position where it's like saying some really obvious and normal things makes you controversial. Well, if that's the situation we're in, fine, I'll say those controversial things. Yeah, but I also think you're framing things in a rational and reasonable way. And I don't think you're trying to inflame situations where some people are discussing the same issues that you're discussing. I think they are trying to inflame the issues and they're being provocative. And I don't think you are being provocative. And I think that's why I've enjoyed following you and regularly just having to look through your feed on Twitter, see what you're, I mean, I look today, I forgot the comedian, the Scottish comedian's name, but in relation to Rosanna? Yeah, Graham Linham, he's Irish, but he's one of the best comedy writers we've had. He wrote The IT Crowd, Father Ted, all sorts of things. And yeah, the show that he was part of has been canceled in Edinburgh, that's what we've been. But you wrote a long and very kind and well-structured response to her. And that's what I think has been missing in the discourse is that I don't think anyone who's done that has actually managed to break through. All that's managed to break through is people who maybe are inflammatory, who are overly provocative, who are trying to stoke a culture war. And you may say it exists, but it's, you go to America law, I go to America law. It's certainly not like it is in America. I would hate that to come here. Well, I think it has come here, unfortunately. I think that we are in a place, I always say this when I'm in America, whatever you guys flush down the toilet in the UK, we get served for breakfast the next day. And I do feel that that's happened. I mean, obviously you mentioned Graham Linham is controversial because of his views about transgender ideology and various things to do with that. And we've had that issue. Now I actually think on that particular issue, we're doing much better now because the Tavistock clinic where a lot of these surgeries were happening has been shut down as a result of various investigations into it. We have an interview with Hannah Barnes coming out, who's a Newsnight journalist who wrote a book about what was happening there. Um, so in, in many ways, I don't think we can avoid the reality that we now live in a kind of almost shared media space with the U S and we inevitably get caught up in many of the conversations. I don't know if you've noticed, but abortion, for example, I think when you and I would have been growing up here, it wasn't really an issue that anyone debated or talked about. It was kind of a settled issue. Um, it's increasingly not. And I think that's partly because we're downloading a lot of our sort of memes from America. Yeah. I don't think people fully understood though that we, we have pretty established abortion laws here in the UK. And so I'm, I've not seen that becoming a, an issue of debate. Am I missing something? Yeah, it will definitely, you will see that coming through increasingly. Yeah, for sure. Interesting. Well, um, well let's like say, I mean, it is great to talk to you. Um, I know you focus a lot on the issues of woke ism, um, and the kind of pervasive effect it has been having on society. Um, but my hope is here in the UK, we can be a bit more civilized, rational, reasonable about dealing with these issues because my, my thoughts on when I see everything in America is everything seems to be a binary argument and that nuance middle ground where issues are discussed tend to be missed. And I think I found that that's where even if you hold a firm position, you are also diving into the nuance a bit and having a rational argument. Yeah. Well, look, I believe in persuading people. I think that's how you change the culture. Um, you, you have to meet people where they are and persuade them. And one of the great things about trigonometry over the last five and a half years, we've had people on the show who've persuaded us and have changed our minds about issues. So I know from personal experience that people when exposed to rational argument that's made without cruelty or without malice, uh, many people, if they give it the time to actually think it through will change their perspective if they're presented with a coherent argument. Um, you know, and so I've always tried to combine that with a bit of humor and a bit of levity, um, and some facts, you know, which I think is important. And that to me is the way that if there is such a thing as a culture war, which in my opinion we are in, uh, then the way that gets one is by persuading most people who've got, you know, people have got families and jobs and sick parents and kids that need to be taken to football or whatever. Most people don't have time to delve deeply into some obscure issue that affects, you know, 1% of the public. However, I think there are some issues on which it becomes important to win the debate, to win, to win the argument. And in my opinion, the way to do that is by coming across as reasonable and rational. But look, I understand as well, you know, on some of the stuff that we talk about, you know, for me, for example, uh, my family, uh, fled the Soviet Union because they were punished for speaking their mind. I have a bit of a sensitivity when it comes to seeing people shut down for expressing opinions that some people don't like. To me that I, do you see what I mean? That's like a bit of a trauma spot almost for me. Well, I'm in a five year lawsuit for a number of tweets. Oh yeah. Yeah. So, uh, you know, I, I, that's my biggest envy of America is their first amendment protection. I'm the same. So when I see stuff like that, it sends me up the wall. And so I do understand people who are outraged about things. My feeling though, is that that is an unproductive way of being for you as an individual, first and foremost, it doesn't make you feel good. It doesn't make you a constructive person in the world. It doesn't make you a good parent or a good husband or a good anything. And so more than anything, my journey personally has been to kind of, uh, be more, more relaxed and more understanding of different perspectives and whatever. And then I think you're much more able to persuade people who don't already agree with you. So for example, after my, uh, speech at the Oxford union, which did very well, I had, you know, Hollywood love is reaching out to me going, you know what? I really liked what you said about this people that you, you know, no one listening or watching to this, uh, listen to this or watching this would have thought would have anything to do with me or what I'm saying. Um, and that to me is really gratifying because look, sometimes you have to rile up your base and there are people who will do that very well. For me, I think we have to win the argument. We have to remind people how valuable it is that we have what we have in the West and that in our desire to perfect our society, we don't throw the baby away with the bathwater. So when you mentioned early, you've had some people on who've changed your mind on things like what stands out for you? So we had a very controversial, um, women's rights campaigner called Posey Parker, uh, early on in the history of show, this is 2018. Uh, I know it feels like we're banging on about trans all episodes, but since you asked me, I'm just telling you one of the most, it's also one, it's probably the most of one of the most watched into, I think it is the most watched interview on our channel as well, because what you see is Francis and I, my cohost, two comedians wading into an issue, which at the time nobody was really talking about. And we are coming at it with a set of, you know, ideas about being compassionate and not offending people and whatever. And you see this woman come on and be very clear and basically win the argument against us on our own show and change our minds. And what was her argument? What was the competing argument? Well, I think people should go and watch the interview. Uh, but her argument, the title of the episode is trans women aren't women. Okay. Which for us two comedians at the time operating on an extremely progressive comedy circuit was like, I remember we were like strategizing is like, what happens? I mean, I'm guessing that we were thinking, well, you know, this video will probably get taken down. Our channel might get taken down. What are we going to do? And we were thinking about that ahead of time. Cause we knew it was controversial, but we also felt a duty to the truth. And the truth was that she made sense. And most of the arguments that we put forward to her as devil's advocate or counterarguments didn't stack up to the reality of what she was saying. Right. Uh, and I think that is it. And that is probably why it's one of our most, most watched of episodes because you're seeing good faith engagement between people trying to get to the truth in which they actually get closer to the truth, you know, and you don't see a lot of that happening because in most of our public discourse, public conversations, it's like, you've got two people with rigid positions coming together to have a bitch fight. And it wasn't that at all. And, and, you know, for that reason, I think it was very transformative, but then, you know, you, you talked to all sorts of people, um, uh, many of our guests have really opened our eyes to different things. So, uh, that's really one example that I would give. Yeah. And it's interesting because you say there, you were worried about, uh, on the comedy circuit, the, uh, reactions to people you're worried about your channel. And so there's almost that, that, that fear that puts you in a position to, we need to self-censor. Yes. Which itself is a horrible form of censorship, uh, censorship. I self-censor, uh, self-censor all the time on Twitter. I always think I, you know, I think I'll probably just discuss that in private with my friends. There's certain discussions, debates that you want to have that you just aren't willing to have in public because it's not that I don't believe my points of view. It's almost like I don't, I haven't fully formed them. You have to almost debate them to get to the point where you formed them, but if you can't debate them in public, you have to debate them privately. And this is why I think free speech is so important. And I think it's, it's such a, it's so sad that we don't have it here because we're not allowing people to, to find that truth. That is such a profound point. And I'm really glad you made it. I actually have a whole chapter in my, in my book about language. And this is one of the things that people are not willing to recognize quite often, particularly the people who are more on the side of preventing certain conversations from being had, which is you have to speak to think, and therefore not everything you're going to say is going to come out as a fully formed, perfectly phrased, exactly carefully calibrated thing, particularly in text where you miss most of the communication that's happening between human beings, which is visual and your tone of voice and the way your face looks when you say it and all of that. And it's condensed into a very short message for which for any nuanced issue is not enough characters. Um, but I agree with you, man. We have to be able to have conversations, particularly about contentious issues because they're contentious for a reason, which is that people do not agree, right? And so how do you get to a position where everyone's views are properly formed and taken into account when it comes to making government policy or public opinion about things and whatever. The only way that happens really is if you have honest discussion and conversation. Now, social media is not the best platform for it necessarily in the sense that it's conducted in public and that creates a set of perverse incentives for people to look good at the expense of others. Uh, but I, I think we're in the early stages of social media. We as human beings haven't really, it's kind of like cars, but without seat belts yet, you know, uh, I think over time we will hopefully work out ways of communicating online that are more conducive to healthy conversation. And part of that comes from, uh, you know, all of us working out, well, what is it that I really want to say? You know, mentioned it was kind of you to say that reply I had to Rosanna this morning. I have to be honest and say that three years ago, I would have phrased that very differently. I would have just been like, look, how do I make her look stupid? Blah, blah, blah. Cause that's how, that's how you get attention online. And then it's the perverse incentives that it creates. But I think as you will know, as your audience grows and your platform grows, you do feel a sense of, you know, it's important to say the truth, but it's also important to be responsible with what you're saying, which makes it easier for people to hear. Well, I sometimes feel like that, um, making someone look stupid on online, it's a bit like smoking. Yeah. It might feel good instantly, but after you feel that kind of dirtiness afterwards and you know, I'm a hypocrite. I do it sometimes. Yeah. Other times I, you know, try and do a, uh, uh, you know, more like you try and have a constructive discussion with somebody, but just back to that point of fully forming your arguments is it makes me think to my children, right? I mean, mine have been older than yours. I've got a 19 year old and 13 year old, but I still consider the 19 year old a child. And even though he's an adult legally, you know, we don't cancel our children from a very young age. I mean, the first time your child swears is hilarious. And then you teach them not to swear and, you know, they start to form ideas about the world and you help shape them. If you think they're going in the wrong direction, I don't think that should stop when we become an adult. I think that should carry through the entirety of your life is trying to figure these things out. And I think one of my biggest problems we have in the UK is we don't have enough high quality public debate. This can happen. It can happen on your show, but it's still kind of in the shadows. I, you know, I could watch something like question time on newsnight and I still feel like people are holding back. Yeah. Well, they are holding back as someone who's done those shows. I can tell you. Well, look, I also think, you know, um, I'm increasingly moving away from the perspective on this that I had probably for the first three to four years of us doing trigonometry, which was about, look, all the mainstream institutions are corrupt and captured by this worldview, whether you want to call it radical progressivism or whatever. And I'm not saying that as someone as an outsider, I used to go into the BBC and still do. I used to do, and this was before I had any profile, which made it easier. So, you know, I've got dark skin, first-generation immigrant, foreign name, blah, blah, blah. And they would automatically assume that I was one of them. I thought like them, you know, diversity, inclusion, and equity. Right. And when they speak openly behind the scenes about how they see the world, you're going, this institution is completely captured, right? It is riddled with a particular mindset.
What Bitcoin Did
A highlight from The Growing Culture War with Konstantin Kisin
"Yes, freedom has trade -offs. Freedom will mean you're less safe, and freedom will mean that some people say things you don't like. I'm okay with that, because I don't want to live in totalitarian China, and I don't want to live in Soviet Russia. If you do, that's fine. Go there and live there. Hello there. How are you all? I am on my final day of my holiday in Ibiza. It's been nice to have a break. It's been very sunny, but it's been eventful. I've lost my passport and it's stolen from my car, which has been an absolute nightmare. I've had to go to the consulate to get a temporary one. Now I've got to head up to Peterborough tomorrow to get an emergency passport ready for me to head out to Australia in a week. Speaking of which, are you coming? Are you in Australia? We've got our event on September the 9th. We've got Nick Bartier, Willy Woo, Checkmate, Russell Russell, and Dan Roberts all on stage. If you want to get a ticket to come to that, please head over to WhatBitcoinDid .com and click on WBD Live. Anyway, welcome to the WhatBitcoinDid podcast, which is brought to you by the legends of Iris Energy, the largest NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner using 100 % renewable energy. I'm your host, Peter McCormack, and today I've got a show I've been trying to make for a long time. Konstantin Kissin is a British Russian satirist and one of the best commentators we have over here in England. You may have seen him online. He did a very, very cool speech. I think it was at the Oxford Union. I may have that wrong, but definitely worth checking out. Now, Konstantin likes to challenge narratives and talks a lot about wokeism, climate change, politics, and any kind of societal issue, really, and I've wanted to talk to him. Although this isn't strictly a Bitcoin show, it does cover a number of the topics which I feel are kind of siddle alongside the things that Bitcoins worry or think about. So, yeah, we had this chance to sit down for an hour and shoot the shit, and we got into all kinds of things this interview, and honestly, I feel like we only just scratched the surface, so I will definitely try and sit down with Konstantin again in the future. Now, if you've got any questions about this or anything else, please do drop me an email. It's hello at whatbitcoindid .com. Good to see you, Konstantin. Good to be with you. Yeah, thanks for letting us use your studio for this. Oh, it's a pleasure, man. Thanks for coming over. No, beautiful drive. I've been really keen to talk to you for a while, firstly because I mainly talk to Americans. But I'm Russian, so it's a bit different. You've gone to the other end. Yeah, I know you're Russian, but you're basically in the UK. You understand? Yeah, I'm British as well, yeah. But I'm going to praise you a little bit here. You've become kind of one of my favorite commentators in the UK, because I think, one, you recognize the issues. Two, you're not a crazy right wing. Three, I don't feel like you are trying to stoke a culture war to grift people, and I think your observations are excellent. I thought you were great on Rogan. I really enjoyed your interview there at Weinstein recently. And so I've just been keen to talk to you for a while. If we don't bring up Bitcoin, that doesn't matter. OK, well, that's a relief, because I know very little about Bitcoin. I always tell the story whenever people ask me about Bitcoin that I bought, you know, everyone's banging on about Bitcoin. This would have been probably 15 years ago or something. And I was like, you know what, let's put some money into it, see what happens. So I think I bought about $400 worth of Bitcoin. And when the value doubled, you know, with any investment, if like the value doubles on something as volatile as a cryptocurrency, you're going, well, you know, I've done well here. So I sold it 400. I had half a Bitcoin, half a Bitcoin for $400, and I sold it for $800. Well, so the point of that story is I know fuck all about Bitcoin. Well, I sold a lot of Bitcoin for a lot less than that at different times. Yeah, it's everyone's got a Bitcoin storyline. Yeah, we might get into it. But you know, it's interesting you mentioned that I'm not crazy right wing. I actually don't think of myself as right wing at all. And I'll tell you why. Because all of the things that people might now say make you right wing. I don't know how old you are. I suspect we're probably similar age. I think a bit older. I'm 44. I'm 40. So when I was growing up, and in fact, when I was a young man and a young adult, you know, thinking that there's a difference between men and words, or that countries, of course, should welcome immigrants like me, but we should have borders that are enforced. Right? These were all things that Barack Obama and I agreed on, you know what I mean? And so unless Barack Obama has become right wing, I don't really think of myself right wing as right wing. And of course, the issue that I principally started talking about when I used to be a stand up comedian was freedom of expression. And I always thought of that as an extremely liberal value that is what we protect in the West. And that's kind of one of the things that makes the West unique and special. So I don't think of myself as right wing because none of my views are right wing. It's just what's happened is a bunch of crazy people have taken the left off the deep end. Whereas I've stayed exactly where I've been. Do you know what I mean? So I'm very relieved because to hear you say you don't think of me that way, because quite a lot of people would like to think of me as on that side of the political spectrum. And many of them are on that side. Conservatives want, they keep thinking that I am one of them. And look, I've got wonderful conservative friends, but I always kind of have to put that disclaimer in because I really believe in creative destruction quite a lot. Conservatives often want to keep things exactly as they are. I think creative destruction is important. Coming from a comedy background, I think having a sense of humor is important and conservatives can do, but not always. So I'm relieved about that because that's a big frustration of mine, the way that the political climate's changed, where like having some very normal common sense opinions has become controversial. So in many ways, it's not that I'm grifting, it's that the world around me has put me in a position where it's like saying some really obvious and normal things makes you controversial. Well, if that's the situation we're in, fine, I'll say those controversial things. Yeah, but I also think you're framing things in a rational and reasonable way. And I don't think you're trying to inflame situations where some people are discussing the same issues that you're discussing. I think they are trying to inflame the issues and they're being provocative. And I don't think you are being provocative. And I think that's why I've enjoyed following you and regularly just having to look through your feed on Twitter, see what you're, I mean, I look today, I forgot the comedian, the Scottish comedian's name, but in relation to Rosanna? Yeah, Graham Linham, he's Irish, but he's one of the best comedy writers we've had. He wrote The IT Crowd, Father Ted, all sorts of things. And yeah, the show that he was part of has been canceled in Edinburgh, that's what we've been. But you wrote a long and very kind and well -structured response to her. And that's what I think has been missing in the discourse is that I don't think anyone who's done that has actually managed to break through. All that's managed to break through is people who maybe are inflammatory, who are overly provocative, who are trying to stoke a culture war. And you may say it exists, but it's, you go to America law, I go to America law. It's certainly not like it is in America. I would hate that to come here. Well, I think it has come here, unfortunately. I think that we are in a place, I always say this when I'm in America, whatever you guys flush down the toilet in the UK, we get served for breakfast the next day. And I do feel that that's happened. I mean, obviously you mentioned Graham Linham is controversial because of his views about transgender ideology and various things to do with that. And we've had that issue. Now I actually think on that particular issue, we're doing much better now because the Tavistock clinic where a lot of these surgeries were happening has been shut down as a result of various investigations into it. We have an interview with Hannah Barnes coming out, who's a Newsnight journalist who wrote a book about what was happening there. Um, so in, in many ways, I don't think we can avoid the reality that we now live in a kind of almost shared media space with the U S and we inevitably get caught up in many of the conversations. I don't know if you've noticed, but abortion, for example, I think when you and I would have been growing up here, it wasn't really an issue that anyone debated or talked about. It was kind of a settled issue. Um, it's increasingly not. And I think that's partly because we're downloading a lot of our sort of memes from America. Yeah. I don't think people fully understood though that we, we have pretty established abortion laws here in the UK. And so I'm, I've not seen that becoming a, an issue of debate. Am I missing something? Yeah, it will definitely, you will see that coming through increasingly. Yeah, for sure. Interesting. Well, um, well let's like say, I mean, it is great to talk to you. Um, I know you focus a lot on the issues of woke ism, um, and the kind of pervasive effect it has been having on society. Um, but my hope is here in the UK, we can be a bit more civilized, rational, reasonable about dealing with these issues because my, my thoughts on when I see everything in America is everything seems to be a binary argument and that nuance middle ground where issues are discussed tend to be missed. And I think I found that that's where even if you hold a firm position, you are also diving into the nuance a bit and having a rational argument. Yeah. Well, look, I believe in persuading people. I think that's how you change the culture. Um, you, you have to meet people where they are and persuade them. And one of the great things about trigonometry over the last five and a half years, we've had people on the show who've persuaded us and have changed our minds about issues. So I know from personal experience that people when exposed to rational argument that's made without cruelty or without malice, uh, many people, if they give it the time to actually think it through will change their perspective if they're presented with a coherent argument. Um, you know, and so I've always tried to combine that with a bit of humor and a bit of levity, um, and some facts, you know, which I think is important. And that to me is the way that if there is such a thing as a culture war, which in my opinion we are in, uh, then the way that gets one is by persuading most people who've got, you know, people have got families and jobs and sick parents and kids that need to be taken to football or whatever. Most people don't have time to delve deeply into obscure some issue that affects, you know, 1 % of the public. However, I think there are some issues on which it becomes important to win the debate, to win, to win the argument. And in my opinion, the way to do that is by coming across as reasonable and rational. But look, I understand as well, you know, on some of the stuff that we talk about, you know, for me, for example, uh, my family, uh, fled the Soviet Union because they were punished for speaking their mind. I have a bit of a sensitivity when it comes to seeing people shut down for expressing opinions that some people don't like. To me that I, do you see what I mean? That's like a bit of a trauma spot almost for me. Well, I'm in a five year lawsuit for a number of tweets. Oh yeah. Yeah. So, uh, you know, I, I, that's my biggest envy of America is their first amendment protection. I'm the same. So when I see stuff like that, it sends me up the wall. And so I do understand people who are outraged about things. My feeling though, is that that is an unproductive way of being for you as an individual, first and foremost, it doesn't make you feel good. It doesn't make you a constructive person in the world. It doesn't make you a good parent or a good husband or a good anything. And so more than anything, my journey personally has been to kind of, uh, be more, more relaxed and more understanding of different perspectives and whatever. And then I think you're much more able to persuade people who don't already agree with you. So for example, after my, uh, speech at the Oxford union, which did very well, I had, you know, Hollywood love is reaching out to me going, you know what? I really liked what you said about this people that you, you know, no one listening or watching to this, uh, listen to this or watching this would have thought would have anything to do with me or what I'm saying. Um, and that to me is really gratifying because look, sometimes you have to rile up your base and there are people who will do that very well. For me, I think we have to win the argument. We have to remind people how valuable it is that we have what we have in the West and that in our desire to perfect our society, we don't throw the baby away with the bathwater. So when you mentioned early, you've had some people on who've changed your mind on things like what stands out for you? So we had a very controversial, um, women's rights campaigner called Posey Parker, uh, early on in the history of show, this is 2018. Uh, I know it feels like we're banging on about trans all episodes, but since you asked me, I'm just telling you one of the most, it's also one, it's probably the most of one of the most watched into, I think it is the most watched interview on our channel as well, because what you see is Francis and I, my cohost, two comedians wading into an issue, which at the time nobody was really talking about. And we are coming at it with a set of, you know, ideas about being compassionate and not offending people and whatever. And you see this woman come on and be very clear and basically win the argument against us on our own show and change our minds. And what was her argument? What was the competing argument? Well, I think people should go and watch the interview. Uh, but her argument, the title of the episode is trans women aren't women. Okay. Which for us two comedians at the time operating on an extremely progressive comedy circuit was like, I remember we were like strategizing is like, what happens? I mean, I'm guessing that we were thinking, well, you know, this video will probably get taken down. Our channel might get taken down. What are we going to do? And we were thinking about that ahead of time. Cause we knew it was controversial, but we also felt a duty to the truth. And the truth was that she made sense. And most of the arguments that we put forward to her as devil's advocate or counterarguments didn't stack up to the reality of what she was saying. Right. Uh, and I think that is it. And that is probably why it's one of our most, most watched of episodes because you're seeing good faith engagement between people trying to get to the truth in which they actually get closer to the truth, you know, and you don't see a lot of that happening because in most of our public discourse, public conversations, it's like, you've got two people with rigid positions coming together to have a bitch fight. And it wasn't that at all. And, and, you know, for that reason, I think it was very transformative, but then, you know, you, you talked to all sorts of people, um, uh, many of our guests have really opened our eyes to different things. So, uh, that's really one example that I would give. Yeah. And it's interesting because you say there, you were worried about, uh, on the comedy circuit, the, uh, reactions to people you're worried about your channel. And so there's almost that, that, that fear that puts you in a position to, we need to self -censor. Yes. Which itself is a horrible form of censorship, uh, censorship. I self -censor, uh, self -censor all the time on Twitter. I always think I, you know, I think I'll probably just discuss that in private with my friends. There's certain discussions, debates that you want to have that you just aren't willing to have in public because it's not that I don't believe my points of view. It's almost like I don't, I haven't fully formed them. You have to almost debate them to get to the point where you formed them, but if you can't debate them in public, you have to debate them privately. And this is why I think free speech is so important. And I think it's, it's such a, it's so sad that we don't have it here because we're not allowing people to, to find that truth. That is such a profound point. And I'm really glad you made it. I actually have a whole chapter in my, in my book about language. And this is one of the things that people are not willing to recognize quite often, particularly the people who are more on the side of preventing certain conversations from being had, which is you have to speak to think, and therefore not everything you're going to say is going to come out as a fully formed, perfectly phrased, exactly carefully calibrated thing, particularly in text where you miss most of the communication that's happening between human beings, which is visual and your tone of voice and the way your face looks when you say it and all of that. And it's condensed into a very short message for which for any nuanced issue is not enough characters. Um, but I agree with you, man. We have to be able to have conversations, particularly about contentious issues because they're contentious for a reason, which is that people do not agree, right? And so how do you get to a position where everyone's views are properly formed and taken into account when it comes to making government policy or public opinion about things and whatever. The only way that happens really is if you have honest discussion and conversation. Now, social media is not the best platform for it necessarily in the sense that it's conducted in public and that creates a set of perverse incentives for people to look good at the expense of others. Uh, but I, I think we're in the early stages of social media. We as human beings haven't really, it's kind of like cars, but without seat belts yet, you know, uh, I think over time we will hopefully work out ways of communicating online that are more conducive to healthy conversation. And part of that comes from, uh, you know, all of us working out, well, what is it that I really want to say? You know, mentioned it was kind of you to say that reply I had to Rosanna this morning. I have to be honest and say that three years ago, I would have phrased that very differently. I would have just been like, look, how do I make her look stupid? Blah, blah, blah. Cause that's how, that's how you get attention online. And then it's the perverse incentives that it creates. But I think as you will know, as your audience grows and your platform grows, you do feel a sense of, you know, it's important to say the truth, but it's also important to be responsible with what you're saying, which makes it easier for people to hear. Well, I sometimes feel like that, um, making someone look stupid on online, it's a bit like smoking. Yeah. It might feel good instantly, but after you feel that kind of dirtiness afterwards and you know, I'm a hypocrite. I do it sometimes. Yeah. Other times I, you know, try and do a, uh, uh, you know, more like you try and have a constructive discussion with somebody, but just back to that point of fully forming your arguments is it makes me think to my children, right? I mean, mine have been older than yours. I've got a 19 year old and 13 year old, but I still consider the 19 year old a child. And even though he's an adult legally, you know, we don't cancel our children from a very young age. I mean, the first time your child swears is hilarious. And then you teach them not to swear and, you know, they start to form ideas about the world and you help shape them. If you think they're going in the wrong direction, I don't think that should stop when we become an adult. I think that should carry through the entirety of your life is trying to figure these things out. And I think one of my biggest problems we have in the UK is we don't have enough high quality public debate. This can happen. It can happen on your show, but it's still kind of in the shadows. I, you know, I could watch something like question time on newsnight and I still feel like people are holding back. Yeah. Well, they are holding back as someone who's done those shows. I can tell you. Well, look, I also think, you know, um, I'm increasingly moving away from the perspective on this that I had probably for the first three to four years of us doing trigonometry, which was about, look, all the mainstream institutions are corrupt and captured by this worldview, whether you want to call it radical progressivism or whatever. And I'm not saying that as someone as an outsider, I used to go into the BBC and still do. I used to do, and this was before I had any profile, which made it easier. So, you know, I've got dark skin, first -generation immigrant, foreign name, blah, blah, blah. And they would automatically assume that I was one of them. I thought like them, you know, diversity, inclusion, and equity. Right. And when they speak openly behind the scenes about how they see the world, you're going, this institution is completely captured, right? It is riddled with a particular mindset.
Nudge
"oxford union" Discussed on Nudge
"Protests demonstrated what disabled Americans have had to do to get access to the same privilege as ordinary citizens. Rather than debate the topic they visually showed the effort and risk they had to incur in their everyday lives. Shortly after they the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law and now every bus train plane restaurant and shop has to offer disabled access. Churchill never feared skin in the game and unlike his colleagues he embraced it. He was always keen to personally experience visit or read to understand the situation better. One example shows this more clearly than most. In 1933 Adolf Hitler rose to in Germany intending to dismantle the Treaty of Versailles and establish Germany as the world's most dominant power. Unlike most of Churchill's peers in Westminster, Churchill read Mein Kampf, Hitler's book and believed it represented Hitler's plane intentions and so of course did Hitler. He was later quoted saying my program was first to abolish the Treaty of Versailles. I've written about it a thousand times no human being has ever declared or recorded what he wanted more often than me. He was very honest about what he wanted to do and was all plainly laid out in his book Mein Kampf and yet there was no British response to Hitler's arrival and power. Despite Hitler clearly declaring his views in his book published seven years before he was even elected most politicians in Westminster chose to ignore the book and didn't bother reading it. Churchill however he had read it. Paul Johnson writes that in government -read circles Hitler was seen as a deluded adventurer who would soon be discarded. The mood of the country was highlighted in a provocative debate at the Oxford Union in which undergraduates voted 275 to 153 for the motion that this house refuses in any circumstances to fight for king and country in a war against Hitler. Churchill called this unwillingness to consider Hitler a threat abject squalid and shameless. Unlike his peers, Churchill didn't rely on the prevailing views to mold his opinion. He opted for first -hand experience whether that's heading to Ireland to deliver a speech despite threats to his life or reading Mein Kampf whilst others chose to ignore it.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"oxford union" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Where which sectors or which areas then are you focusing in to make those returns and also have that twin goal of impact? Our focus we really are focusing on like six core areas right now one of which is renewable energy one of which is battery storage. A third is what we call clean vehicles so hydrogen -propelled or electric vehicles, clean water, clean agriculture and circular consumer products. Okay so that's the focus. In terms of starting your own business and you're also based in Canada and starting the business in the UK. I suppose why the focus on those two markets in particular and what kind of impact are you hoping to make for UK investors? Yeah it's a fabulous question. I'm actually I spend a lot of time in the UK I've worked there for years London's my second home and I continue to go back and forth regularly. The reality is you know with some capital want to focus on game -changing technologies, game -changing products and services regardless of boundaries and geographies and so one of the things that I've seen within the industry is often this kind of restriction to specific countries or areas. Our focus was really try to transcend that via our operations. So we're active in the US, Canada and the UK. I wonder making when the decision to expand into the UK whether the divisive nature of the debate around trans rights in this country affected your decision. We've been talking, there's been an awful lot of talk in the media this week about an academic, Kathleen Stock, and a speech that she was making at the Oxford Union. I wonder does that affect your perception of the UK as a place to do business or how you operate your business? I'm honestly not necessarily. The reality is me being trans doesn't impact our ability to deliver a impact for our portfolio companies and also returns for investors. So I try to stay a little bit clear of that if I can, certainly want to make as much of a positive impact in that space as I can. I think being visible as someone in finance, as someone that is within this world of investment banking and portfolio management is my way of doing that. Okay, your way of having an impact in the industry. I suppose in terms of the goal, you've also got quite a lofty goal, ambitious goal in terms of the growth of its own capital. I don't know. I've advised on just over a billion dollars of transactions in my career. I think the number that we're reaching for is lofty. If we hit 20, 30, 40, 50 % of that, it's well worth our while to do so. But I do think we can move quickly. We are delivering a lot of really strong traction. Rhys, thank you so much for joining us. Rhys Tomlinson, CEO and founder of Sown Capital joining us there. We'll have a check on the markets for you next. Thank you so much. This is Bloomberg Daybreak Europe. Global regulated banks have risen the capital levels trending to 6 trillion. So we're in a very strong position, banks are resilient. The UK in itself is quite a challenged economy at the moment. There is no financial centre in the world that is as broad and deep as London. We have huge potential as an economy in the UK. So many opportunities to invest and grow. Bloomberg Daybreak Europe on Bloomberg Radio. It's 7 .31 in London. Good morning, I'm Stephen Carroll. And I'm Caroline Hepker. Welcome to Bloomberg Daybreak Europe. On the markets, European stock futures looking positive as we're half an hour away from the start of cash equities trading. So we've got Eurostock's 50 futures up by eight tenths of 1%, the FTSE 100 futures up by a quarter of 1 % this morning. Wall Street futures are now also turning positive. S &P E -minis up by a tenth. NASDAQ futures flat to the upside at the moment. That's reflecting some positive sentiment we've had in Asia as well. After the Caixin PMI surveys for China showing some more optimism around the manufacturing sector. The MSCI -specific index is up by half of 1%. We've also had the debt ceiling deal which is helping to give markets some optimism to your treasury yield up three basis points this morning 4 3%. Now to our top stories the US House of Representatives has passed bipartisan legislation to suspend its debt limit to 2025. Lawmakers from both parties joined to approve the bill 314 to 117 with a majority of both Democrats and Republicans voting for it. The bill now goes from the House to the Democrat controlled Senate where Majority did. There's been a very good vote in the House of Representatives. I hope we can move the bill quickly here in the Senate and bring it to the president's desk as soon as possible Democrat Chuck Schumer speaking in the Senate where the bill's passage is near certain although it will create some tough spending changes for government services. More consistently economists estimate that the entire package will have a negligible impact on the overall US economy. The fashionable new word among Fed policy makers is not us but skip Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker says the Fed doesn't have to hike at every meeting. We're getting close to a point where we can sit for a little bit in terms of policy. I don't think we're exactly there yet but I am in the camp increasingly coming into this meeting thinking that we really should skip not pause. I don't like the word pause but skip and increase. Despite Harker's view, hooks on the Fed are eyeing Labour data nervously. US job vacancies unexpectedly surged in April to the highest level in three months. It means June's Fed meeting could be a debate between which is the greater threat, inflation or financial strain. Now the former Bank of England policymaker Michael Saunders says that the UK economy still has not weathered the worst of the storm. Now a senior economic advisor at Oxford Economics, he says that fixed rate mortgages have slowed Harker also rates said that will have to go even higher and fast. I think they'll probably have to raise rates again. Inflation in April was higher than they expected, significantly higher than outside costs as expected and pay growth in the UK is still running well above a target consistent pace. Services inflation is quite strong, core goods inflation also has been stronger than expected. I think likely they're to have to raise rates again probably more than once. I think now we've got a bank rate of 4 .5%. I think we should be thinking of five over the next couple of meetings as a likely destination. That was the former Bank of England policymaker these days. Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching. The spokesman says they are suing over the write down of so -called contingent capital awards. The bonuses were based on 81 bonds which were wiped out in the emergency rescue of Credit Suisse. Those are a few of our top stories for you this morning. Coming up next on Bloomberg Daybreak Europe, Anna Sapnitska whose global macroeconomist at Fidelity International be will joining us. Her view essentially is that recession is coming and coming soon in the US, UK and Europe. we will So unpack that and the path for rate setters. This is Bloomberg. Thanks for watching. A go getter like you never stops learning. ODU Global offers online undergraduate classes with around the
America First with Sebastian Gorka Podcast
"oxford union" Discussed on America First with Sebastian Gorka Podcast
"So you launched a trigonometry and then there was a moment where with your bloody mindedness constantin, you made big news nationally. What was that triggering moment that got attention to you in the podcast? Well, what happened was shortly after we started the show, I was invited to do a comedy gig at a college, a small college in London, and they said that in order to perform. By the way, they asked me to raise money for charity. And they sent me a contract saying, we have a zero tolerance policy on racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, xenophobia islamophobia, anti religion. No, this is no skit. It became a skit pretty much. But these are the things they listed. Anti atheism, and it also said that all jokes must be respectful and kind. This was in writing. This is in writing. And you can't perform a comedy act unless you acquiesce. Unless you sign this. What did you do? And I just turned it down. I tweeted about it to what was about a thousand people at the time. And I think people were so shocked by what happened that it went super viral, and it went viral on the day in the our country when the prime minister of the leader of the country was nearly removed from office by her own party. That would be the equivalent of the Democrats impeaching nearly impeaching Joe Biden right now, and the second biggest story on CNN and Fox. About a comedian. Is this some media comedian no one's ever heard of from some tiny little college not doing the gig. So it showed us at the time that massive numbers of people now are concerned about what they can and can't say in the public space. And I talk about it in the book, all the research shows. How do you see that? The book. All right, let's put it up here. He is a so good. He's the most American smoot. It's constantin kissing, an amazing book. I was given the hard copy issue. It is an immigrant's love letter to the west just out in paperback, highly, highly recommend it. For the same reason the Oxford union debate was so useful that it kind of talks to those who don't need to be convinced that we're on the right side, it's not for the choir. It's those who are in the middle. Okay, sorry, I was interrupting you. This thing goes viral, the same day that the prime minister is also removed. And I'm going to jump straight forward because we've been talking for, I don't know, like 30 hours already. You arrived a few days ago, Blake dinners, chats over cigars. And it seemed as if even the name of the podcast indicates that this is about anti woke. This idea of triggered, however I get the sense that you've been doing this now for 5 years and it's more than just the woke problem or you're tired of the woke problem. Well, that was never actually our intention. I can see why people think. Well, the name would indicate it. But this is where the misunderstanding comes in because for us, you've got to remember we were working in a very progressive comedy industry. And the name is actually a trigger warning in itself. What we're trying to say is you may find this offensive. You may find our discussions difficult, but that is the point of the show. So rather than this being about triggering the libs or the snowflakes, we never use those terms. We try to create space where we can discuss very difficult things to discuss. The people find genuinely challenging and they can't, you know, we live in a world now where people struggle to hear arguments they don't agree, but that was always the intention behind it. I understand why people misunderstand it as we see it. But we were always, of course, look, let's be clear, wokeness is dangerous. It's damaging. It's stupid. It's counterproductive. It doesn't help the very people it claims to help, including minorities and immigrants like me. I'm a first generation immigrant into the UK. It is bad. But I also think the reaction can go too far as well. And that's why we try to bring people together by talking about difficult and controversial issues in a way that people can hear..
America First with Sebastian Gorka Podcast
"oxford union" Discussed on America First with Sebastian Gorka Podcast
"And the only thing that wokeness has to offer in exchange is to brainwash bright young minds like you to believe that your victims to believe that you have no agency to believe that what you must do to improve the world is to complain. Is to protest is to throw soup on paintings. And we, on this side of the house, are not on this side of the house because we do not wish to improve the world. We sit on this side of the house because we know that the way to improve the world is to work, is to create. It is to build, and the problem with woke culture is that it's trained too many young minds like yours. I remember the debate club, I missed the debate club at school, and I think tuxedo should be brought back into style. One man who has done his most for exactly that purpose is the person you just heard at the Oxford union in a speech a short speech that actually they talk a lot about viral clips this one became viral. And he is half of an amazing duo of podcasters, the best podcast. Outside of America. It's called trigonometry, constituting kissing Francis foster. Welcome back in studio. Thank you back. It's good to be back. Thank you for having us. This is like the U.S. tour return. This is a return of trigonometry, right? We're back and better than ever. Back in more dangerous than ever. All right, so much to discuss. I don't know how we're going to squeeze it into the next hour. First things first, that viral video where you took on woke, how many views does it have by now? It's hard to say somewhere between a 102 100 million views, I think, across all platforms. Why? Because I think we are not used to hearing adults tell children or young people the truth. And we've become a society. It's very uncomfortable with that. I also think we've become a society that we chastise each other and we talk at each other. I was talking to them and trying to engage them in thinking about these things rationally and logically instead of having a meltdown and screaming and shouting and just being outraged. And again, I don't think we see a lot of that. So I think the attempt to persuade is what made people interested in seeing that. All right, you can find the full speech at the top of my Twitter Facebook feeds. Please watch it if you haven't. We'll discuss more of what constitutes done recently, especially the payback version of his first book. But for those who are not familiar with my buddies, it really is a superb podcast. The likes of which you won't find anywhere else, and maybe it has to do with your background because you're not the average TV radio podcasting hosts. Talk to us a little bit about your background. What did you do before you were a podcaster, Francis? So I was on the comedy circuit for 12 years. I was also a school teacher. I taught secondary theater and then I retrained and became a primary school teacher for 6 years. So that gave me a real grounding and a real insight into real life. You know, because most comedians, they don't experience real life. They go into comedy and then they're in the world of club comedy, the comedy circuit, where it's awash with progressive ultra liberal politics, which has nothing really to do with real life or the ordinary lives of most people. So why did you decide to leave that? I mean, that is a career track. And most people work for decades with minimal success. But it's a lifestyle driving from gig to gig to gig the clubs. You guys tore off that, decided to have a YouTube show with an interesting name, trigonometry with two gs. How did that come about? Because well, number one is that comedy ceased to be a meritocracy. I remember in 2016, I went to the Edinburgh festival now 2016 in the end of professor which is a huge cultural festival. One of the biggest in the world. Yeah, absolutely. It is the biggest in the world. And it was post Brexit post Trump. And I remember just walking around it and watching shows. And then reading the reviews to the shows and going, this doesn't correspond. The people who are being talked about as an big thing, it doesn't make any sense. You were seeing the shows and then what you were reading in the reviews did not gel. Yeah, it did not gel. It did not correspond and then that the point where I understood that we weren't living in a meritocracy in the comedy industry. It was far more important your identity and your political views than the content of your content shall we just say. And to follow the prescribed menu. Yes. And you had to follow the prescribed opinions and you had to espouse the correct view of the world. And if you didn't, then you simply wouldn't progress. You would be doing fine on the club circuit, but if you wanted to break through to TV to radio to make a name for yourself to have your own audience through the mainstream industry, that simply wasn't going to happen..
Bloomberg Radio New York
"oxford union" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister. But it gets more complicated from there. As Johnson stays at ten downing and plans to stay for several more months while his successor is chosen, but Bloomberg is now reporting the ruling Conservative Party is urgently drawing up plans for an accelerated contest to name a new prime minister by the end of summer, so it might be worth pulling out the bags now. Reaction from the business community, Bloomberg spoke today with Mike fries, the CEO of liberty global freeze forgive me, Mike freeze, the telecom company that owns virgin media O2 in a joint ventures in a lot of work there. We caught up with him at the sun valley conference in Idaho. Freeze on working with Boris Johnson's team. You know, his government was very supportive of what we're doing, as you know, we're building fiber throughout the UK. We're investing in 5G, we're leveling up and upgrading the market in a way that it deserves and requires and we're spending billions doing it. So I felt that his government was quite supportive of that investment and giving us a shot at getting a great return on that investment. So let's hope that continues. That's the main focus for us. Everyone's asking what might change here from business to politics, White House press secretary karine Jean Pierre. Our alliance with the United Kingdom continues to be strong. Our special relationship with the people in the country will continue to endure. None of that changes. And I will remind you a week ago just a week ago today when the president was in NATO in Madrid for a historic natal summit as you heard him speak at the press conference. And you saw what happened. You saw a reassurance affirmation of NATO countries saying, again, what they are going to continue to do continue to support Ukraine. But no one quite knows what the timeline will be, and of course, who will follow. Tony Gardner was U.S. ambassador to the European Union from 2014 to 2017, he's now senior adviser at Brunswick group, and he joins us now. Tony, you tweeted this morning. I've known the man for 35 years. Hasn't changed one bit since our time at baliol. So you guys went to college together. Did you not expect him to resign? Not this fast. No, I got to meet him in 1986. We were at Baylor college Oxford together. We debated together at the Oxford union debating society, state and touch in Brussels. I was the European Commission. He was a journalist, writing fiction about the European Union. He was the spectator magazine that mayor and then foreign secretary and introduced him John Kerry. So I've known him for a long time. His writing fiction did he ever start writing nonfiction? Well, he is written nonfiction, but certainly as a journalist, he was writing stuff about the EU that was mostly half invented because he understood very early on his career that it was a smart way of getting ahead into the news people, it kind of scratched the itch of a lot of readers of The Daily Telegraph who thought that the European Union was kind of the enemy. So he's been very smart and kind of figuring out how to use people and to promote themselves. The tweet that I mentioned, you included the front page of this new edition of The Economist that comes complete with the headline clown fall. Britain after Boris and there he is looking like a clown with a couple of flags. He's got the helmet on and he's falling off of a zipline. Is that the goofball image that you have in your head having known him for so long? Well, look, he ran for the presidency of the Oxford union debating society back in 86. We were obviously young at that time. And he was very clever in that he realized that in order to become president of the union he wouldn't win on the image of someone from very privileged background had been to all the right schools and so forth which he definitely had. He went to Eaton, which is a very costed environment. So he developed this image of kind of while the humorous guy who never did much work who is kind of would show up kind of unprepared and unscripted and people, people loved it. As we are reporting ambassador the morning meeting with number ten staff discussion of his resignation statement and whether he could remain for a period as a caretaker leader. Some were in tears in the meeting, others knew the time had come. How long does he have as a caretaker? Well, it's a long period of time to stay in that post. Other some people are urging him, John Major, former prime minister urging him to make that a shorter period of time. To find another leader and I think. It would be wiser for the country to move on right now because look, the UK has so much going for it. I'm a huge fan of the country. I've lived in the UK for 24 years of my life actually. And regardless of the leader of this country, we'll continue to thrive in my view even not as a member of the EU, but it needs to now move on from a period that's been very turbulent, shall we say. What happened overnight, this time yesterday we were talking about his refusal to resign, how long he could hold out, people were placing bets on the timeline on the whole thing, was it, was it his conversation with family, staff, did somebody get to him? Was it the resignation ambassador what happened in the last 24 hours? Well, I think we had nearly 50 resignations, which is, I think, more than either his historic levels are close to historic levels. And I think many of his closest aides had gone down and said, look, if you're not going to resign, are you going to hold on? There's going to be a rule change in this parliamentary group that typically once he won the leadership contest vote and typically you would have been protected for a year, but they could have changed the rules and had another vote, which he would have lost. And I think people urged him to say, look, this is not the way to leave. Your premiership is a probably urged him to say, look, you can be remembered for getting Brexit done quote unquote. You should do that. You're going to have another career. So don't do that. Don't hang on to the bitter end. We're talking with Tony Gardner, former U.S. ambassador to the European Union and a former classmate of Boris Johnson's in college. A lot of people are talking shortlist ambassador. Is it too soon to do that? It's not like forecasting a presidential election in the United States. This could take a lot of different turns now. Yeah, I could take a lot of different turns. I mean, the bookmakers are making their odds. The fact of the
This American President
"oxford union" Discussed on This American President
"In nineteen sixty eight richard. Nixon pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in american political history winning the presidency but from nineteen seventy two to nineteen seventy four. He suffered one of the greatest collapses in american political history. He had won reelection. In nineteen seventy two with one of the greatest landslides ever winning forty nine states but as more tapes came out it became clear that he had worked to cover up. The burglars ties to the white house. He fought the supreme court to keep the tapes from being released publicly but he lost on july twenty seven nineteen seventy four. The house judiciary committee approved articles of impeachment by august. It was clear not only would the impeachment trial begin but that conviction and removal from office was almost certain on august. Eighth nineteen seventy four richard. Nixon went before the american people in a televised address. This is the thirty seventh time. I have spoken to you from this office. Where so many decisions have been made that shaped the history of this nation. Each time i have done so to discuss with you. Some matter that i believe affected the national interest in all the decisions. I have made in my public life. I have always tried to do what was best for the nation throughout the long and difficult period of watergate. I have felt that was my duty to persevere to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to what you elected in the past few days however it has become evident to me that i no longer have a strong enough political base in the congress to justify continuing that effort as long as there was such a base. I felt strongly that it was necessary to see the constitutional process through to its conclusion that to do otherwise would be unfaithful to the spirit of that deliberately. Difficult process and a dangerously be stabilizing precedent for the future but with the disappearance of that base. I know believe that the constitutional purpose has been served and there is no longer a need for the process to be prolonged. I would have preferred to carry through to the finish. Whatever the personal agony would've been involved and my family unanimously urge me to do so but the interest of the nation must always come before any personal considerations from the discussions. I've had with congressional and other leaders. I have concluded that. Because of the watergate matter i might not have the support of the congress that i would consider necessary to back the very difficult decisions and carry out the duties of this office and the way the interests of the nation require. I have never been a quitter. Leave office before. My term is completed as a horn to every instinct in my body but as president. I must put the interests of america first. America needs a full time president and a fulltime congress particularly at this time with problems. We face at home and abroad to continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorbed time and attention of both the president and the congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home therefore i shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow vice president for will be sworn in as president at that hour in this office in that speech. Nixon had portrayed himself as doing what was in the nation's interest that had been his theme all along in his attempt to reorient american foreign policy. He wanted to ground that policy. On american interest and to build a world where every nation's interests were checked in a global balance of power but his cover up in the watergate scandal largely the result of his own demons his distrust of others and his vindictiveness ended any hopes of further implementing his vision. He told the american people that he was leaving because of his concerns for their interest. But the american people in the felt betrayed. It was a historical tragedy of epic proportion. This would be peacemaker. Who wished so very much to change the world who remade the relationships between america and its communist adversaries would find himself leaving office in disgrace. The most vilified president in modern history throughout the watergate scandal many of nixon's counterparts. In the kremlin and in beijing didn't know what to make of what was happening. They had gone to know nixon the statesman. They saw him win. Re election in a landslide. They knew that as president he was the most powerful man in the world and yet here. He was in trouble for burglary. Something that wouldn't have made headlines in china or the soviet union in the communist world political opponents were routinely imprisoned or executed moscow and beijing wondered. How could such a powerful man get in trouble for burglary. They wondered if watergate was some sort of right wing plot to destroy nixon because he reached out to them but for many americans nixon's political downfall was justified. They believe that no one was above the law especially the president of the united states the individual tasked with upholding the lot self america had gone through unprecedented turmoil. Faith in american institutions was at an all time low. But when nixon departed there was for many also the sense that something good happened. People believed that the system the entire constitutional process had worked the people in their representatives. Wouldn't stand for a president who they believed felt. He was above the law. It was a tragic in devastating end to an epic career soon after his resignation. The new president. Gerald ford pardoned him for whatever crimes he partook. In during the watergate scandal it led to a firestorm of controversy undermining ford's popularity in contributing to his by jimmy carter in nineteen seventy six. Some people wondered if there had been some corrupt bargain in which nixon resigned leaving the presidency ford with the agreement that ford would pardon him. Later in nineteen seventy eight four years after resigning in disgrace. Nixon spoke at the oxford union in the uk. It was one of his first public appearances since leaving office. He spoken a number of issues mostly focused on foreign policy during the entire talk loud group of protesters were chanting outside the building. One member of the audience asked him how important he felt. Honor was in the career of a politician. His answer was the closest he came to publicly. Repenting for watergate. The question was that Considering all the factors that we have mentioned with africa and so forth.
Heartland Newsfeed Radio Network
"oxford union" Discussed on Heartland Newsfeed Radio Network
"Was there was An insurrection don't you michael. Thank you very much. Indeed for the call. Samuel is in new york. Go ahead sam hill. Hello george it's an honor to speak to you. i started. I hearing you add on. Wbai here in new york amazon. Called the mother of all talk shows well remembered yes and I've been on a follow follower. Ever since i also was listening to Your speech and a couple of your speeches at the oxford union. The one that the one. That's where that's on youtube. The excuse me student asks you. Are you a racist and then you give them a great answer. You said that you would never debate Supporter of israeli apartheid. How how does that relate your mind to what. We've just seen that horrible incidents in i in gaza today and recently well i- i discuss with israelis all the time in fact gideon levy. Who am i call. The greatest living israeli is a regular guest on the show a journalist from haaretz who supports justice and humanity in israel but having been an activist in the anti-apartheid struggle in south africa feud asked me back when mandela was in jail and apartheid was standing on the necks of the majority population in south africa. To have a gentlemanly scholarly student union debate with a supporter of that system. I would have refused. And if so how can. I justify a scholarly student debate with a supporter of apartheid in israel palestine. I can't but that's not to say. I don't talk to israel. Is i do all the time. Some of my best friends as they say are as railly's but there are not supporters of what is happening to the palestinian people. That's the difference. Some yes i really really appreciate your answer. george and I just hope that. I could follow in your footsteps in the future. God bless you thank you for the call gerard in kill. Winning is definitely the the last call. Go ahead and it's shows listen if you chill. Celtic monitor jobs. Go to the guy for that. Oh god i don't know georgia power. Some guy who's in japan and australia. I must say. I've never had a big on australian coaches working in japan. But it doesn't seem me doesn't fill me with excitement bit. Maybe we should have killed donald. Show georgia don't think he can do much because he's doing you know i wouldn't wish that on eighty football team celtic As a terrible mess labor and celtic it really does and the thing of its dominance. I'm going who have misspoken. Simple everson schools. You you mentioned you all the guys like you in the lake. The golden cook stood up in. Say new to this monstrosity. This took place. you buy the even jamie cobra. The he go and the door the plates the right for campaigning against trying to stop them in the by immediately on the country saw this and the people saw as if you know even stunned by your own bitter who the puffy. The people of populated ryan. God's name are you going to stand up with us. Trust the wave. If i know and they don't see the deleted elites do it understand the weedy truth. Jeremy corbyn your input along to come yes. That's right jeremy. Corbyn of course himself also made many mistakes but is important to remember that. Notwithstanding two whole years of insurrection against their own leader carbon got the best labor vote the biggest increase in the lib our vote since one thousand nine hundred forty five at the general election in twenty seventeen carbon bought for less than three and a half thousand votes would have been the prime minister of britain. Exactly and he was actually the antithesis of twenty on david milliband and yet a mandelson's county those who went leap of the leader for the energy and stamina must go the australian coach. I don't know what to say. I don't to be disloyal. I've got a. He'll he'll eighty times to you. John in co winning inertia in scotland. I only one scottish call today. Time was when all the calls were scottish but we have to the american continent from brazil to canada. And.
Dateable Podcast
"oxford union" Discussed on Dateable Podcast
"It could be whatever it is. But that's how you bond to people is when you have a shared experience and when you just go on these dates and there is no shared experience. That's when it's mac. Right jackson to add something inspired this other thing. I you have something you said was so just resonated with me so thank you so much no reminds me of there. Was this talk from sheila booth and you know. He was at oxford union and he was talking about when people oneself selvi and he. He knows when people want to take win. They're like just asking questions to build them for the selfie so they can ask the selfie question and he knows when they are giving where where there's an exchange and it's just like. Hey we're hanging out or connecting and then all of a sudden we decide. Hey you know. Let's take a selfie. Maybe we'll maybe won't right. And i think we have to be aware even with ourselves when we're in dates. What are we are we are. We just thinking about one thing or rethinking about what we can give you know. And how even if this day doesn't end up to be the love of your life how you could also impact that person right now in that conversation. There's something that you might spark with them so that they actually realized that thing that makes them come mostly live like again. That's part of the adventure. That's art of of being in the moment instead of being like when we're in the take mode we're like okay. How much giving. What is your four one k. Sound like we can. We can sell it. We can feel when the person is taking. Neil it and that is what it like like. What do you want some in having or shared humanity. Which really hoping we have in the post pandemic worlds we see more people as like human beings and not as just something that is filling a role from you just triggered my last takeaway is lake not just looking at dates as an adventure but your whole dating journey as an adventure i think if you can reframe it and think about like i think that's like sochi like instead of like date not working out it's like okay who's next. What's right around the corner like that curiosity of not just the dates of the people but your own dating life and look at it as like a play experience in itself what better mindset than being like. Oh person ghosted me like how is that going to really help you right and simply asking the question when someone does go through something like that asking. How can it get any this. You're about it and see what happens.