what is it that's so alluring about that cynical mindset

i i don't i don't know what i hate more than cynicism you know maybe like you know literal totalitarianism but in terms of personality i don't know what i hate more and what i'm more against because it's such an absurd premise that's so easily disprovable uh cynicism as i understand it not in the you know uh you know greek philosophical sense but this idea that like everything sucks or you know don't get your hopes up it's not going to work out as long as you have one counter example the thesis is disproven You're telling me that if people are like, I agree that most comedians suck.

I agree that most movies suck.

I agree that most books suck.

I agree that most podcasts suck, especially mine.

None of them, not one.

There's no book that you read that you're a better person having read it.

And

2,000 years ago.

Yeah.

So, this whole conversation is very, very odd to me, and, uh, after my Oxford speech went viral, I, I had a lot of invitations to go and speak to different people, and I, I was talking to this guy, he works for the Indian government at a high level.

And he told me when, when India became independent in 1947, average life expectancy was 37 years old in India, and today it's, I think, 82.

And that's because they burn fossil fuels.

Now, are we saying to a billion plus Indian people they're not allowed to do that anymore? Do you know what I mean? Like, the way we talk about this issue just...

It, it's, it, it's a cult.

You got any theories?

I mean, we've

had feminists on the show who are feminists, like Louise Perry, for example.

They're a different type of feminist to the idiots that you'd be spending your time arguing with, but the people who have a very sensible view of these things.

There's lots of people like that.

By the way, coming back, not to change the subject, but coming back to your point, I mean, one of the things that doesn't make a lot of sense to me is, for example, yes, it's true, men serve in combat roles and women don't, but women bear children and men don't.

And there's a huge disadvantage in all sorts of societal outcomes from a materialistic career perspective to spending the time to bear the child and then to nurture that child, right? What?

Those are the routes that I would be more apt to move towards.

Well, yeah, to be honest with you, man, this is the thing is like, actually a lot of this discourse I think is misguided because the vast majority of women actually do want to have kids, but there are circumstances in their life which make them less likely to do so.

one.

Yeah.

The feeling for me was, well, at least there's choice.

Like in the UK, you don't have choice.

On the issues that I care about, right, which is our country being prosperous, immigration being beneficial to the country.

I'm pro lots and lots of immigration.

As an immigrant.

I

Agreed.

But the real reason is that I think the real shift is less about that, actually.

And I think a lot of it is to do with the economics of how media works.

If you think about what a news channel is or a newspaper is, it's basically they are buying... individual creators, packaging them together and offering it to people as a package.

You no longer need to do that because algorithms exist and you're able to curate your own stuff.

And it also doesn't really make financial sense for the content creators.

Nobody could put you on TV now and it's not because because you think TV is discredited is because they don't have the audience to offer you or the money to offer you or whatever, because it makes more sense for you to cut out the middleman and go straight to your audience.

What are the implications of not only people being within their own echo chambers on the same platform, but being within their own echo chambers now that are entire universes apart?

2,000 years ago.

Yeah.

So, this whole conversation is very, very odd to me, and, uh, after my Oxford speech went viral, I, I had a lot of invitations to go and speak to different people, and I, I was talking to this guy, he works for the Indian government at a high level, and he told me when, when India became independent in 1947, average life expectancy was 37 years old in India, and today it's, I think, 82.

And that's because they burn fossil fuels.

Now, are we saying to a billion plus Indian people they're not allowed to do that anymore? Do you know what I mean? Like, the way we talk about this issue just...

It, it's i- it's a cult.

It doesn't make any sense.

You got any theories?

Yeah

...

in a way that America is not.

Okay? Now, in terms of climate change, I don't want to get bogged down in how impactful this is, who's doing this, who's doing that.

The hard reality is Britain can literally do absolutely nothing about climate change.

Britain produces 1% of global carbon emissions, right? And the narrative was, well, it doesn't really matter that we only produce 1% of global carbon emissions because Britain has moral leadership in the world.

And so if we reduce our energy consumption and if we increase our energy prices and we, uh, slightly repackage and we use slightly more wind and slightly more solar, uh, then other countries will follow suit.

So would you drill in the North Sea?

That's a shock.

So you go from hay, which you put into horses and cows and other animals, to coal, to wood, to coal, to oil, to gas, to nuclear.

You get denser, denser, denser.

You're creating more energy and you convert that energy into wealth, into prosperity, into hospitals, into schools, into money, into everything, right? Yeah.

So any society which creates a structure where energy is expensive and not abundant is going to get poorer.

It's one of the main reasons we are stagnating in Europe in a way that America is not.

Okay.

What is your perspective on what's going on in the Middle East at the moment, Konstantin? Why has this happened?

But you need leaders who will own it and say it.

You do, but I also think with all respect to the British public, they're not remotely prepared to hear the truth from which you could make all those conclusions.

People in this country don't realize that we are poor and getting poorer.

And this explains largely the appeal of the far left, for example.

So there was some recent polling done which shows that the vast majority of people in Britain think that we are as rich as Switzerland, as rich as Singapore, as rich as the United States, as rich as Australia on a per capita basis.

And we're not remotely as rich as any of those countries, but they think that we are.

And so what I think is happening is a lot of ordinary people clearly experience that they are getting poorer, and at the same time they think that we are like other countries and they go, "Well, we've got the sixth-largest economy in the world." Well, not on a per capita basis.

Yes.

As an immigrant

...

if, if it's beneficial to the country.

I'm against even small levels of immigration that are detrimental to the country, and I'm completely against illegal immigration for that reason.

Um, and as you know, again, the woke shit, you know, grinds my gears.

So, uh, on all of that stuff, we don't have a choice in this country.

We, we haven't had a choice for 14 years.

What happens if it goes well? You mentioned about Trump has the opportunity to, to hard reset sort of the, the Western world.

Agreed.

Um, but the real reason is that w- I think the real shift is less about that, actually, and I think a lot of it is to do with the economics of how media works.

Um, what is hap- If you think about what a news channel is or a newspaper is, it's basically they are buying individual creators, packaging them together, and offering it to people as a package.

You no longer need to do that because algorithms exist, and you are able to curate your own stuff.

Uh, and it also doesn't really make financial sense for the content creators.

Nobody could put you on TV now, and it's not because, um, of, of the, because you think TV's discredited.

It's 'cause they don't have [chuckles] the audience to offer you or the money to offer you or whatever 'cause it makes more sense for you-

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Our GDP per capita is lower today than it was in 2008.

In other words, people's living standards are being eroded for reasons we can get into.

So addressing that requires quite a lot of difficult challenges.

We've got a, you know, a bloated welfare sector, so you're gonna have to deal with the fact that far too many people are not working and being paid not to work.

You're gonna have to deal with the national debt, which is way too high, the deficit.

You've got, like, big, big challenges, right? And those challenges are quite easy to overcome comparatively speaking when we all feel like we are, ultimately, at the end of the day, this is our country, and we're gonna sort it out.

Are Britain's core values at risk of disappearing? Is that a, a real concern?

Right.

Um, and, uh, to your point about truth, well, you don't even have to be saying something true.

At this point now they've passed a bill which means that comedians could be investigated for jokes they make.

Now, that is a level of detachment from context and reality that is even s- a level above simply, "Oh, someone made a, a true comment." What if I said something sarcastically-

Mm-hmm

... on stage as a comedian? And what's interesting is, uh, comedy seems to be being very particularly targeted, but nobody goes to Macbeth at the theater and says, "Oh, y- I went to the theater and then this guy went crazy a- and stabbed his friend." No one, no one says that.

But with comedy, for some reason, the character on stage is increasingly being perceived as having the opinions that he's jokingly saying.

That's true.

Do you know that technically, this, this is not funny, but actually interesting.

That's actually not true.

So the, the colonies preserved the English language much more authentically to what it was because the language tends to ...

In the country that's created it, it continues to evolve.

Yeah?

Yeah, I loved it.

It, it was kinda scary though, because when he came out, uh, they p- the s- um, he was either in there for two...

In an increasingly censored Britain, how can young creatives in the arts navigate the hard left-run industry, such as standing up to forceful pronoun implementation, arts council agendas, and a general uninclusive ideology within theatre?

I think the only choice you have is to find some way of using your talent online and proving it through that and then bringing it back.

That may not mean, I mean, I appreciate you can't do a play on YouTube, but nonetheless, that is the route you have.

The other route is you can try and fight it within your own industry, but I think that's much more of a challenge.

So the only thing I can say, and obviously I'm not an expert in that industry, is that within every other industry where we have been successful, it's been by effectively becoming undeniable.

And I think that's the only route that I really see.

I mean, I think Barry Weiss is the perfect summation of this.

Well, it means the other 990- What

the rise of cultural Christianity in UK politics, how do we avoid alienating non-religious people while also preventing it from turning into another form of fundamentalism?

Well, I think in the UK, we just got to stay away from the American way of doing religious politics, which is very over the head, super expressive.

But I also think we shouldn't be afraid of acknowledging some basic realities.

I mean, I go to church every now and again.

I don't go around telling people to be Christian.

But I can tell you that I found a lot of things of value to me that are different to other things that other people find of value in that.

And for me, it's just about just knowing that something else is available that fills voids that other things can't fill.

you walked around London?

What do you, how do you envision that scenario?

Well, so if, if they're able to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, and you don't have this energy problems that we've got now, um, you know, y- Venezuela, Cuba, he's basically resetting the region, and he's basically saying to all the people that want to align themselves with China and Russia, like, "We're not fucking about here.

Do, don't cross these lines," that is an opportunity to, to, to address the slide that the Western world has had vis-a-vis China and Russia for a very long time.

That could be a very positive thing.

My...

The thing is, what happens in Iran, like, that is the thing that I don't really see how that goes well.

Might, might do.

[laughs]

Given, I assume, both you and Andrew can get your nutrients from non-animal sources and are against animal cruelty, what justification is there to continue killing animals for our food, even if they're treated nicely?

This is a question that Andrew submitted himself.

Because we had a big debate backstage in which I explained that my wife has become vegetarian, which I consider to be far worse than cheating.

Adultery would be far more acceptable to me.

I'm not saying she should do both.

I mean, she's picked one, so she should stick with that one.

Look, here's what I will say about this.

Unfortunately, that suffering I'm talking about, there's a huge level of suffering in nature.

I feel like he wanted you to sort of go further into that.

I don't feel like he did.

With all respect, I feel like what he's trying to say is this problem is going to get worse in the way that he identifies it.

And this is why I was talking about the importance of rooting out extremism, ensuring integration, breaking up ghettos, et cetera.

We have to recognize that the problem is what it is.

And then deal with that problem.

And I think the problem that you're talking about is a subset of the population that has done less to integrate than others, to put it diplomatically, right? So that's the problem we've got to address.

But integration being, I suppose, bringing your culture and making it part of the country you've moved to, whereas assimilation is saying you are now going to be part of the host culture.

We

won.

The problem is it's going to take a lot of time to get the toxin out of the blood system.

So lots of people we spoke to today at the book signing, I'm sure some of them mentioned it to you.

They were like, well, in my industry, we've still got fucking lanyards and pronouns and all this other crap, right? That's going to take some time to get out.

But there's, you know, JP Morgan, they dropped their pronoun policy.

A lot of this stuff is going away.

Faster growth.

[laughs]

That's gonna take some time to get out.

But there's, you know, JPMorgan, they dropped their pronoun policy.

A lot of this stuff is going away, is going away because we won, but it's gonna take some time, so we just gotta keep making the arguments, keep putting the pressure on.

Uh, and we...

The thing is, the reality is you, us at Trigonometry, lots of other people, we're undeniable now.

You can't argue, you can't say to me that I'm a fringe person when we've got two million subscribers.

Mm.

I share your concerns on ideology-driven education, but don't you think kids should learn also the other side, while understanding that their families may think differently from their teachers and appreciate the nuances?

I have no doubt that my son will be exposed to plenty of ideas that I don't agree with over the course of his life, but I'm not sure that he needs to be given the opportunity to choose his gender at four.

So, nor do I have any intention of indoctrinating my son into my worldview.

I have the intention of educating him into the basic tenets of how to think about things and how to analyze things and how to understand the systems that drive certain ideas.

Um, that is not the same as what happens in school, which is you effectively waste a huge amount of time learning things that are of no value whatsoever in a classroom of other kids who are mostly there not to learn anything either, et cetera, et cetera.

So, um, there's some downsides to homeschooling.

I don't think it's them.

Islam to send to then send your kids to a school that turns out to be predominantly full of Muslim children Particularly as they become teenagers and things like that I think it puts them in a very very difficult position and I'm not sure really apart from faith schools How we get away from that?

The Jews.

Same thing, really.

I mean...

economy? No,

our debt is greater than our GDP.

Our GDP per capita is lower today than it was in 2008.

It's one of the reasons people are so angry.

It's one of the reasons that, I mean, street crime in London, it's just unreal.

See terms.

objectively speaking, this is not the most terrible time to have ever lived.

Young people are not facing the worst time young people have ever faced.

And so you're still going to have to, you can be annoyed about the direction of travel of the country, as I think we all are, and I certainly am, but also realize you have to live in this real world and have a positive vision for your own life.

And that might mean making decisions that ultimately you probably wouldn't want to make in the same way that my grandfather, my great-grandfather didn't want to go and fight on the Eastern Front and die before the age that I'm at now, right? But he did.

And that's kind of life, right? So you're kind of going to have to strap on a pair and face those realities eventually.

And we're saying, unfortunately, sometimes tough decisions have to be made.

Well, I mean, one of the terrible things about wokeness is it got people addicted to victimhood.

Do you?

And it's something that we've seen in the UAE, for example.

Right.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, where I was earlier this year with my dad, they've all cracked the problem of Islamist terrorism because they don't have political correctness.

So they don't pretend.

They go, these are Islamists.

They want to kill all of us.

But who is able to say it, prominent figures, Suella Braverman.