The Political Earthquake That No One Is Ready For - Konstantin Kisin (4K)

Chris Williamson 0:00 So are you right-wing?

Konstantin Kisin 0:03 No, (laughs) I'm still not right-wing. I think you're referring to an article in- in a video I did saying, the title of which was Fine, Call Me Right-Wing. And it's basically just me saying I'm tired of, like, defending myself against this allegation. Uh, I'm still not right-wing but if- if it's- it's really important for people to frame me in that way, that's- that's fine, they can do it.

Chris Williamson 0:23 Why is right-wing a disparaging, uh, marker?

Konstantin Kisin 0:27 I think we, um, the political realm in which we operate is- is the framing is, I think deep down if people are honest, is like the- the caricature of the left is that they're wrong but well-meaning, and of the right is that they're, like, factually more correct but evil.

Chris Williamson 0:46 Callous.

Konstantin Kisin 0:46 Callous and evil and cruel and nasty.

Chris Williamson 0:48 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 0:49 Um, and so even if you're right, you're still wrong kind of. (laughs) That- that's kind of the- the way people seem to think-

Chris Williamson 0:54 Morally.

Konstantin Kisin 0:55 Morally wrong, exactly.

Chris Williamson 0:57 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 0:58 Um, and I think that- that's why, that's what I noticed, right? Because my journey into all of this world, as you know, was like, "Hey guys, maybe free speech is quite impor- oh, right-wing." I was like, "What?" And- and then I just gradually discovered that, you know, thinking that you should be allowed to speak freely makes you right-wing, which when I was in my early 20s, you know, George Carlin and Bill Hicks, these were my heroes when I was growing up, these great comedians who were getting arrested like George Carlin for routine, like, the seven words you can't say on TV or whatever, whatever it was. So, um, that flipped without me realizing that it happened. It was a left-wing thing or maybe universal thing.

Chris Williamson 1:35 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:36 Um, and then it became a right-wing thing. Then, you know, thinking your country's not all bad became right-wing. Uh, and we can go down the list of- of all of those things. So, it, I just, I think that it- it's basically what a lot of people call you if what they want to do is discredit the things that you're saying 'cause they don't actually have a counterargument to what it is that you're saying.

Chris Williamson 1:58 Mm, and we can't really be fully aware of somebody's intentions, so castigating, lambasting the, uh, moral foundation that it's based on and saying, "Oh, y- y- y- it's- it's coming from a place of judgment, or impoliteness, or uncouthness, or callousness, or whatever," is kind of a easy slime to throw at someone maybe.

Konstantin Kisin 2:21 Yeah, and- and I, uh, it- it makes people question people's motives. And we, a lot of people find people's motives more interesting than the results of the things that they're advocating. So if you go and, you know, try to create this beautiful utopia in which everyone's equal and you end up killing 50 million people in the process, well, you know, that wasn't real communism. You- you were just, you were well-intentioned but you didn't quite live up to the ideals of this great philosophy. Whereas if you actually do things that work but you have the wrong intentions or you're a bad person, then people don't seem as interested in that. And I find that quite an interesting thing because I was in Hungary earlier this year and they have a very actually right-wing government, uh, under Viktor Orbán. And one of the things that I- I found out is they were very keen to deal with abortion in some way. Uh, they wanted to reduce the number of abortions in Hungary. But they looked around the world and they realized that abortion as a political issue doesn't work. It's- it's an issue that actually loses votes for the right. Even if people tend to agree with the position, somehow it still ends up being a vote loser and it's a bad thing to do. So what they've been doing is, uh, you probably know, is pursuing very pro-family policies more generally. If you have X number of kids, you get this tax break, if you have this number of kids...

Chris Williamson 3:39 If you have three kids, the woman never pays income tax again-

Konstantin Kisin 3:42 Right.

Chris Williamson 3:42 ... for the rest of her life.

Konstantin Kisin 3:43 Exactly. And what they've found is without actually legislating much about abortion, they've reduced the number of abortions in half-

Chris Williamson 3:51 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 3:51 ... simply by pursuing policies that make families more appealing for people to have.

Chris Williamson 3:56 Isn't that interesting, uh, creating a positive vision for the thing you want as opposed to a negative vision against the thing you don't want?

Konstantin Kisin 4:04 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 4:04 That's like, well, that seems a very upside down sort of world. We've just come out of the, uh, US presidential, uh, election campaign. And in that, so many, you know, whatever the most effective political ad of the last few decades was, "We are not that." It was mostly about, "We are not that." Yeah, Donald Trump is for you.

Konstantin Kisin 4:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 4:23 But the entire thing was Kamala Harris is doing this, trans surgeries for immigrants and undocumented, et cetera, et cetera. "We are not that."

Konstantin Kisin 4:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 4:30 They identified the- the binding together of an in-group over the mutual othering of an out-group. And, um, I understand that it's effective, it may be even more salient to humans to go like, "Well, that's a threat, that's something that's not right, something to avoid." Maybe it even does bind us together more effectively, but it doesn't feel like a particularly hopeful view for the world. And, uh, yeah, I wonder if, I wonder if that can be adjusted a little bit and we can have a little bit more sort of upward vision as opposed to kind of backward defensiveness against other things.

Konstantin Kisin 5:01 Well, I think if you look at the two campaigns that we just saw, I actually thought that, you know, we went to the Na- Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden-

Chris Williamson 5:10 You're one of the Nazis.

Konstantin Kisin 5:11 Yeah. Uh, well, we were kind of there in the just like, "Let's f- see what's going on here" capacity rather than joining in with the- with the salutes. Um, (laughs) I would say, actually, if you l- di- dig down into the core of the- of the Trump campaign, its messa- message is actually very positive, I would argue. Uh, which what, the- the Make America Great Again thing, it, uh, and- and what we saw at the rally too, it was really about, um, people who love their country and want it to be successful. That's what I saw there. When I looked at the Harris campaign or the way that she conducted interviews or the way she responded to challenging questions, that was all entirely pivoting to how evil and wrong and bad Trump is. So by the end of the campaign, I don't think many people s- knew what she stood for.... whereas with Trump, at least, look, the- the political side of like, "These are the bad guys, we're not like them," that's always gonna be part of politics. But actually I did think, I came away from the, to my great surprise actually, very relieved that Trump did win, um, and very hopeful for the world as a result. Which, uh, is not a position I thought I would be in before the election, actually. But I think going to that rally really changed my mind about a lo- a lot of this.

Chris Williamson 6:30 You

Chris Williamson 6:31 introduced me a long time ago, not introduced me to Thomas Sowell, but certainly kind of, uh, re-popularized some of those ideas.

Konstantin Kisin 6:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:39 Uh, and one of the ones I wanted to, uh, bring up is something I heard you say recently, "We've replaced things that work with things that sound good."

Konstantin Kisin 6:45 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:46 Uh, the sort of optimizing for optics over outcomes, maybe you could say, something like that. Dig into that a little bit more for me. Why is that a- a salient quote in the modern world?

Konstantin Kisin 6:56 Well he, what his quote about that, Thomas Sowell's quote about that is that's the history of th- of the modern West over the last 30 or 40 years. And I think it's universally true. I mean, we're sitting here in London, for example, where the mantra is, you know, "Diversity is our strength." And- and the more it's evident that that has flaws in it, the more we (laughs) double down o- on- on the statement, right? So, um, a lot of this is, uh, sloganeering versus reality, and I think it's really been amplified by social media to a great extent because I think, um, things that are not possible in the real world are possible online. Online you're an avatar which can change its sex, it can change its, uh, everything about it. You can be effectively whoever you want to be online.

Chris Williamson 7:43 You can make statements that are never stress tested.

Konstantin Kisin 7:45 Correct. Uh, they're- they're- they're tested only by whether they get likes or they don't get likes. And you see this on the left and the right. There- there are things both the l- the far left and the far right will say that are absolutely not in any way related to the truth, but they're very appealing to people's, uh, feelings and so, uh, they'll do that. Uh, look, the- the reality is the truth is very unpopular and always has been because the truth is messy, unpleasant, complicated. The truth probably doesn't agree with you on a lot of things, uh, just necessarily because, um, it's not going to fit exactly to the worldview that you have. Uh, so it's very unpleasant, uh, and it's much easier to engage in sloganeering for e- for yourself as well as for society.

Chris Williamson 8:33 There's a H.L. Mencken quote, something about, uh, simple answers to complex problems are often wrong.

Konstantin Kisin 8:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 8:39 That it would be nice if we could constrain down a lot of the issues that we're seeing to something that kind of wrangles the chaos into order, but I don't know, uh, the chasing for simplicity, uh, to me just a lot of the time seems to be retrofitting a new problem to an old solution that you've had for a long time. Everything is because of... dot, dot, dot.

Konstantin Kisin 8:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 8:59 And this again happens on both sides.

Konstantin Kisin 9:01 Yeah. And I- and I think, um, usually the ve- uh, the easiest telltale sign of, uh, working out if someone's full of shit is if they have a simple, single explanation for all the problems that they identify, um, and they're not willing to recognize the trade-offs in- in- in these situations. So I think, um, in answer to your question why is this happening, even more so now, I just think we live in a world where we're much more governed by emotion and feeling than we are by the hard... I, you know, I'm reading, um, Churchill's diaries of World War II right now and it's funny to the extent to which the stuff that he clearly takes for granted in describing things, um, is now... (clears throat) would now be completely abhorrent to our-

Chris Williamson 9:47 What like?

Konstantin Kisin 9:47 ... to our sensibilities. Well, for example, one thing I actually didn't know was, you know, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk.

Chris Williamson 9:53 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 9:54 People would have seen the movie. That only was possible because, uh, there was a- a unit at Calais, which is further south of Dunkirk, um, which was basically ordered to stand to the death. So we were like, "We're gonna sacrifice all these people, they're gonna die so we can save these people."

Chris Williamson 10:09 And they did?

Konstantin Kisin 10:10 And they did.

Chris Williamson 10:11 Wow. Do you know how many people died?

Konstantin Kisin 10:12 I don't know, but it, uh, they- they fought almost to the death, then they pulled out the commanding officer, they gave him a direct order, "You have to get on this boat and leave and leave your men behind 'cause we're gonna need you later." Uh, and then they allowed the- the small remnants of the British unit to surrender, right? Um, if you look at the way we talk about many fo- uh, conflicts that are happening at the moment, there is no recognition that casualties are part of conflict, for example, right? Th- this has now become completely abnormal to our way of thinking. Uh, and so there are lots of things in which, uh, we've moved onto this illusory- illusory world that exists in our heads in which everything is supposed to be perfect.

Chris Williamson 10:54 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 10:55 Therefore it's, if it's not perfect, it's someone else's fault.

Chris Williamson 10:59 That's the, "There are no solutions, only trade-offs" insight...

Konstantin Kisin 11:02 Correct.

Chris Williamson 11:02 ... from Sowell again.

Konstantin Kisin 11:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:04 Why... I've been thinking, I've been pretty obsessed with that quote over the last couple of months actually. Why is this need, compulsion for perfection or hatred of, uh, small flaws, what's the driving force or dynamic behind that do you think? Is there something that's p- is it... So here's my theory, here's my pet theory, before maybe you give yours.

Konstantin Kisin 11:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:31 Um, if we can predict the weather in Venezuela tomorrow, uh, if we have been able to get planes to fly in the sky and put a man on the moon, why is it that I need to encounter traffic? Why is it that civilians need to be caught in the crossfire during war? Why is it that we can't fully control a global pandemic, etc., etc.?

Konstantin Kisin 11:48 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:48 Um, it seems like we have mastery in so many areas and yet not in all, which gives us a disproportionate impression of our ability of mastery over everything.That's my, like, bro science theory about it.

Konstantin Kisin 12:01 I totally agree with that. I think that-that-that is really it. And then if you drill down a little bit further into that, one other thing that's worth adding is that we're living through the era of mass customization. We have been for some time, especially if you live in America. And what that, what I mean by that is, um, if you go to a, a drinks machine or a vending machine in the US, right? You can have y- first of all, you've got eight choices. You can have Fanta, Ko... da, da, da. And then you can have each one of them in like eight different flavors. You can have lemon Fanta, orange Fanta, or raspberry Fanta.

Chris Williamson 12:33 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 12:34 All of that, right? So you can, not only do we control most of the things around us, we get to choose exactly how we want it. You can, at your fingertips, you have, I don't know, 100,000 pairs of different shoes that you could buy.

Chris Williamson 12:49 Yep.

Konstantin Kisin 12:49 Same with T-shirts, same... So everything that we now consume, we have a level of choice that's completely unprecedented, which gives us an illusion of really high levels of control over everything. It's not just that, like, we've really kind of got on top of infant mortality and all of these other things. We, not only that, like, you can design your baby. You can have your baby exactly the way you want, or you will be to, be able to very soon.

Chris Williamson 13:14 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 13:14 So in many ways, w- we are masters of our environment, so why can't we-

Chris Williamson 13:21 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 13:21 ... deal with this or with this or with that? And, and look, that, that's a, it's a noble and worthy thought. It just can't be taken to extremes when the reality is telling you this isn't working. Um, and also I think part of the other reason is, as I say, I think social media, um, I don't know if we, we've talked about this before. I think we haven't. Social media fundamentally changed the way politics is conducted in a profound way that I th- I don't think anyone's aware of, especially if they're on the younger side of things. Because, um, I remember, uh, a few months ago, maybe a year ago, I was s- uh, bored in the evening, sitting around, and I was on YouTube, and this debate popped up between two people most of your audience have never heard of. Uh, William Hague, who was the leader of the Conservative Party in the UK at the time, or the deputy leader perhaps, and John Prescott, who was the deputy leader of the Labor Party at the time. And John Prescott was this blue-collar working-class guy, couldn't put a proper sentence together to save his life and whatever.

Chris Williamson 14:20 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 14:20 And William Hague, who actually is also working class, but he, he went to like a, I think he went to a grammar school, so he had this very posh, well-spoken accent. And it was, um, the ultimate clash. But what happened was, because, um, there was no social media, they were not pandering to- to- to- to that. They were not trying to pander to their audience.

Chris Williamson 14:39 Clip farm and...

Konstantin Kisin 14:40 Yeah. They were in the room together. And the way that that whole, um, like, standoff, that debate was conducted is William Hague would make fun of John Prescott for not being able to talk basically. The late John Prescott, I should say. But John Prescott, to his great credit, he didn't feel like, "Oh, I'm going to get offended here and then I can get 10,000 retweets-"

Chris Williamson 15:04 Mm.

Konstantin Kisin 15:04 "... and talk about working-class people and the snobbery," la da da da da da. He was like, "Well, on this side of the house, we may get the words wrong, but we get the judgment right." Right? In other words, it was a fight conducted on a kind of gentlemanly understanding that there are certain things that we don't do. Like a boxing match, you don't punch the other guy in the balls. And p- politics, to a larger extent, until first, the 24-hour news cycle and then the social media environment, was really conducted in a, in a somewhat different way. I'm not saying it was not nasty occasionally or there wasn't that going on, but the incentive structure was different, and incentives are everything. The incentive structure now is to do whatever it is that gets you the most attention. That is not necessarily the thing that gets the most constructive progress be- being made.

Chris Williamson 15:54 Outcomes.

Konstantin Kisin 15:54 Outcomes at all. And that's one of the, uh, fascinating things. If you meet a lot of politicians, as I now do, you see them in an environment outside of the House of Commons or outside of Congress or whatever. They're not nearly as antagonistic towards each other as they pretend online.

Chris Williamson 16:10 So they're tuning that up in order to garner support, to get attention, to get

Konstantin Kisin 16:15 Look at how I own the libs or the- the- the- the right or whatever, you know, the... You can, you can insert your own thing there.

Chris Williamson 16:21 Even I suppose from an individual perspective, without how it impacts the other side, look at how passionately I fought for our own cause.

Konstantin Kisin 16:28 And look how much of a victim I am, which is increasingly a thing that's adopted across the political spectrum.

Chris Williamson 16:32 Mm. Yeah, I, uh, I read this great article by Guinder a couple of months ago-

Konstantin Kisin 16:39 Mm.

Chris Williamson 16:39 ... called The Rise of Neo-Toddlerism.

Konstantin Kisin 16:41 Mm.

Chris Williamson 16:41 Did you read this?

Konstantin Kisin 16:41 I haven't, no.

Chris Williamson 16:42 So I mean, it, it's kind of contained in the name that, um, he talks about modern social campaigns, uh, being like adult toddlers. And he says if every time that a toddler threw a tantrum, they got front page news and a ton of attention online, they would continue to do it.

Konstantin Kisin 17:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:00 You know, uh, even if a lot of the time, there being... Uh, I don't know many people that supported throwing paint over a van Gogh painting or whatever, throwing soup over a van Gogh painting. Uh, but they definitely generated a lot of headlines and attention is kind of akin to, "Oh, there's, something's going on. Like, they're paying attention to me."

Konstantin Kisin 17:19 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:19 "Maybe, uh, this could be good. This could, this could end up to people paying more, more care or to the problem that I think is very salient." And, uh, I kind of get the sense that our inability to distinguish good attention from bad attention and just be able to, like... Attention at all cost in an attention economy is always positive for the most part unless it's, like, unbelievably negative comments that you're getting back.

Konstantin Kisin 17:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:43 For the most part, people are just kinda like, "Yay, my side. Boo, the other side."

Konstantin Kisin 17:48 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:48 Uh, so yeah, I think it reinforces a focus on garnering drama, using drama to garner attention pretty much at all costs. Uh, and I think that's why a lot of the time, politics, to me, especially in the UK...When I listen to the debates that are going on, I just think, like, "What are you talking about? What- what- what is this discussion?" It's nothing.

Konstantin Kisin 18:08 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:08 It's nothing. It's- it's- there's no substance to it. There doesn't seem to be anything that's like a hardcore deliverable. It's always surface level issues. It's never actually getting to the root of anything. There's never any sort of definable, um, concrete, falsifiable, uh, statements, claims, um, uh, demands that are being made, even if it's not you that's in power or... I- I don't know. It just- i- i- it's- it's rhetoric. A lot of it is rhetoric.

Konstantin Kisin 18:32 It is.

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Chris Williamson 19:39 Trump victory.

Konstantin Kisin 19:40 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 19:41 Do you think that a Trump victory can inspire a broader movement across the world? I think places like the US and Argentina have got their mojo back a little bit. At least it feels like that. They've kind of got confidence back. Uh, is this- is- is that just the post-coital glow of a (laughs) uh, uh, election victory or is there something more going on?

Konstantin Kisin 20:03 Well, what's interesting to me was that... So we were in the US before the election, during the election and after the election. And on the day of the election, we flew from Austin in Texas to LA. And all the people that we know in- in Austin were like, "What are you doing? You're going to LA for the riots, for when Trump wins. You know, there's gonna be..." And when we got to LA a- and we were there on the night of the election, and th- then we were there for a week after, there were literally... W- like there was nothing. N- nobody... Th- th- th- there was no reaction of any kind. And I think that was because the scale of the victory was very, very important. It's like nobody can pretend that America didn't vote in this direction anymore. It wasn't Russia collusion, it wasn't blah, blah, blah. It was like Americans looked at this and went, "On balance, we prefer this." I thought that was very important. Um, as for whether that has a chance to spread, well, look, th- Am- America is the place where we all download our memes, right? So wha- I- I always think of the example of during the summer of BLM when we had protestors in this country, in London, in front of police officers saying, "Hands up, don't shoot," in front of cops that don't carry guns. You just go, "Like, that's not a real thing. You've just downloaded the meme," yeah? And you're misapplying it here about something that really doesn't affect British people in anything like the same way. And I think th- that possibility is there. I hope it's there. And by the way, I'm not someone who- who's, um, who thinks that the Trump presidency is nailed on to be a positive thing for the world. It's not guaranteed. It's an opportunity, and it really fundamentally depends on whether he's able to govern and deliver the things that he promised to the American people. W- one of the fascinating things as well, and this is actually something Francis, my co-host on Trigonometry pointed out, is if you look at the- the- the kind of the lineup of the- of the Trump campaign, the people at the very top of that are all Democrats, former Democrats.

Chris Williamson 22:12 Ex, yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 22:12 Trump, Elon, Vivek, uh, Tulsi, RFK.

Chris Williamson 22:19 RFK.

Konstantin Kisin 22:19 They're all former Democrats. Um, and so what you're looking at is- is- is- is not a, uh, this super right wing coalition. Actually, it was really a broad movement that won people over on the promise of a number of things. Improving the economy, uh, cutting government waste, uh, closing the border, dealing with illegal immigration and, uh, sorting out the geopolitical situation. But none of those things are particularly right wing, actually. And, um, he stayed away on the campaign trail from a lot of the more controversial issues like abortion, for example. He was actually, uh, you know, very, um, centrist about that. Now, if he can deliver on those things, if he can close the border and deal with illegal immigration, if America's economy is booming, and if, you know, Elon and Vivek take an ax to the government bureaucracy and it's still standing and able to function in the same way that X is still standing after you fired 80% of the people, I don't see how that doesn't inspire people around the world. I don't see it. Because if you look at all of the Western world, the- I would say th- there are two problems. They're not unrelated entirely, but they're- they're very big problems in their own right. Uh, it's the demographic issue and the government debt issue, right? Uh, almost every country in the Western world, there are some exceptions, is running close to 100% of GDP levels of debt, all right? We are so indebted. We actually... I don't think there is a way to solve that problem w- without growing your way out of it.

Chris Williamson 23:51 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 23:51 You just can't inflict that much pain on the public-

Chris Williamson 23:54 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 23:54 ... and survive electorally.

Chris Williamson 23:56 It- there would be so many restrictions placed that it would be... there would be a social unrest to the point where the- the country gets destroyed.

Konstantin Kisin 24:02 Well, look at what happened in the UK. The Conservatives came in and said, "We needed some austerity." They cut the government like expenditure. I don't remember what the number was, but I think it was like 1% or something. And everyone, "The Tories are killing people."

Chris Williamson 24:14 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 24:14 So- so how do you cut it, you know?

Chris Williamson 24:16 I mean, we just saw this in France, right?

Konstantin Kisin 24:18 Right.

Chris Williamson 24:19 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 24:19 Um, so...The only way to probably to deal with it at this point, if you can deal with it, is to grow your way out of it, right? The UK economy, uh, on a per capita basis is smaller now than it was in 2007. People in this country are poorer per head of population than they were before the financial crisis. We still haven't recovered. The only reason our economy is actually "growing," I use inverted commas for people who are listening, is that we import lots of people who, they don't increase, they reduce our, uh, income per head, per head because they're low wage people. But the politicians can say, "Well, our economy has grown because look, we've added this person who earns at 12 grand a year or something," right? Um, so if Trump can actually unleash the talents and ingenuity of the American people and allow them to start businesses, to grow the economy, real growth of the economy, which I suspect he will because, um, all you really have to do is make energy cheap and an economy will grow.

Chris Williamson 25:24 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 25:24 That- I mean, this is what people don't understand about net zero and all of this other nonsense that we've got going on here, is energy is included in the price of everything. We put... Our electricity prices are way higher than most other countries. I think they're four times the, the, the ones in America.

Chris Williamson 25:41 I saw you tweet that. Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 25:43 Yeah. Uh, it's Bjorn Lomborg's tweet that I retweeted. So basically when you make energy more expensive, you make everything more expensive. That's why all manufacturings-

Chris Williamson 25:52 Everything needs energy.

Konstantin Kisin 25:53 Everything needs energy. So, um, uh, GDP is energy transformed is the, is the line, right? So if Trump's policy of drill, baby, drill means that energy in America is cheaper, that alone will make a big difference. Then you add to that cutting of government regulation and waste, if that can happen. Um, then you put those two things together and you've got real economic growth. Amazing. You close the border, or you... I'm not talking about like mass deportations or any of that because none of that I don't think is realistic or is going to happen, and you already see people close to the administration rolling all of that back. Uh, actually, you know, I heard an interview on Winston Marshall's show with the head of the Heritage Foundation saying, "Well, you know, we're going to be able to get rid of 100,000 criminal illegal aliens, but everyone else is going to be voluntary or something." And you're just going, "Okay, so we're talking more realistically now." But if you close the border, which is a big problem in all of the Western world, as we know, right? Illegal immigration on a large scale that nobody voted for. If you do that, you destroy DEI and all of this work crap in the institutions. Who wouldn't sign up for that when they're given the option? So it can inspire that sort of renaissance or revival in the Western world, and I hope that it does if he's able to govern properly. Um, and I hope that he does that. And one of the things that I really hope the Trump administration is able to do is not... Do... Not make the mistakes they had to perhaps make the first time, which was to actually consider the opinion of the mainstream media as important. Because what this election really showed that we just had, this was the first podcast election. Everyone's talked about this to death, right? But what I think that means is that this could be the first podcast administration.

Chris Williamson 27:38 (laughs) God.

Konstantin Kisin 27:40 Well, I'm not saying that's universally positive, by the way.

Chris Williamson 27:42 Yes.

Konstantin Kisin 27:42 But what I'm saying is if the New York Times writes yet another piece about how Trump is Hitler for improving relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia or something, right?

Chris Williamson 27:53 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 27:53 He doesn't actually have to give a shit. He could just govern. He's got the mandate. He's not going to run for another term. He's got the Congress, he's got the Senate, he's got the judiciary, he's got everything under his control. If he could just resist the natural inclination to go after people who go after him and just go a-

Chris Williamson 28:11 In the same way as... In the same way as you wouldn't necessarily go after an independent student newspaper that said it too because it's such small fry, uh, low impact that you probably... It's not worthy of a response.

Konstantin Kisin 28:22 We shouldn't overdo... We shouldn't like overpraise ourselves. The New York Times has a huge audience.

Chris Williamson 28:26 Of course, but if it's, um, from reputation perhaps-

Konstantin Kisin 28:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:31 ... or uh, relevance to the people that you care about. I remember... (laughs) This is funny. Um, I don't use TikTok, but stuff... Like clips and stuff get repurposed onto that. And, uh, I think I checked it after I hadn't been on the desktop thing for like six weeks.

Konstantin Kisin 28:46 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:47 And it turned out that five weeks ago, I'd been involved in some like brouhaha on some video. I remember looking at it and going, "Huh, how silly?" Like, you know, this platform that I don't use had a bit of drama around something that I said that I still stand by. Uh, like isn't, isn't that... And then, huh, I don't care about the potential impact and what people said because it's in a domain that I don't really care about.

Konstantin Kisin 29:15 Yes.

Chris Williamson 29:16 But then obviously the next step is, well, why do you care about what YouTube says or what Instagram says or what people-

Konstantin Kisin 29:23 Okay.

Chris Williamson 29:23 ... that reply to your newsletter say, what people on Twitter say. Like, you know, it... I'm aware it's a basic bitch insight, but sort of opened my eyes a little bit like that, and I wonder whether it's the same if legacy media has delegated its credibility so much that now most people just think, "I don't really care about what you say." Yeah, maybe it gets a lot of circulation, maybe even gets a lot of clicks, but it's kind of another... The media equivalent of the boy who cried wolf.

Konstantin Kisin 29:49 It is. I, I... Again, I try to caution people to... Against being too, um, convinced of this because the New York Times, I don't know the exact numbers, but I think it has like 10 thou- 10 million paying subscribers. Paying subscribers, right?

Chris Williamson 30:03 Sure.

Konstantin Kisin 30:03 So there's clearly a lot of people in America who read the New York Times and think it's good-

Chris Williamson 30:07 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 30:07 ... and believe it. What I... The point I'm making about Trump is, I think it's fair to say, I don't think I'm going out on a limb here to say that the New York Times doesn't like Donald Trump. I think it's fair to say that CNN and MSNBC do not like Donald Trump, right? So why would he...... care that they have said the same thing they've said about him 10,000 times already, instead of just governing? He's got the mandate, he's got everything he needs to actually govern. Just ignore those people. Just ignore them and govern and do the things... When I say ignore them, I don't mean do crazy shit just because you've got all the power.

Chris Williamson 30:45 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 30:45 I mean deliver the things you promised to the American people. And that was the thing that irritated me about his first presidency was like, you can dislike Donald Trump, you can dislike the policies that he advocates, but if he's been elected, it is his duty to implement the policies that he ran for because that's what people voted on, and you are now criticizing him for doing that. That doesn't make any sense to me. In the same way, like, if Keir Starmer in this country, who's a left-wing leader, implements the policies on which he was elected, I don't know what they are 'cause he didn't articulate any during the campaign, but if that were to happen, then I'd be like, well, I can't complain. I can say I don't like these policies, but I can't criticize him for doing it because that's what people elected him to do. So my point with Trump, just to finish, uh, you- the answer to your question is, if he can govern well and deliver the things that he promised, which is a strong economy, closure of the border, dealing with the woke shit, et cetera, I don't see how that wouldn't be inspirational. However, there are two factors that I would say that make me less optimistic about the UK in particular than, than, than the US. So we can download the meme, but we have a parliamentary system which means that, you know, Donald Trump really, he, he had to win primaries as one man, and then he could build his team after that. And none of them had to get elected. Elon Musk, Vivek, Tu- Tulsi, RFK, they didn't have to get elected with him, right?

Chris Williamson 32:13 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 32:13 In this country, you know, the closest thing we have to Trump is Nigel Farage. Nigel Farage has a party which has five MPs and has a lot of the popular vote in this country. But in order to win, you know, there's 650 seats in the House of Commons, you're probably gonna need 300-plus seats to actually win outright. That means you have to have 300 people who get elected in the local area as the local MP. So that means you kind of need 300 little Nigel Farages, if, if that's th- the metaphor. That's very difficult. The other thing is for all the talk about, you know, the American election being the podcast election, I don't know that the podcasting breakdown in this country is necessarily favorable to the center-right or the center or the w-

Chris Williamson 32:59 Well, who do we know in this country? Uh, Boris went on Stephen's show.

Konstantin Kisin 33:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:06 Uh...

Konstantin Kisin 33:07 But Stephen isn't... He's not a political operator.

Chris Williamson 33:09 Correct.

Konstantin Kisin 33:09 He's the diary of a CEO.

Chris Williamson 33:10 Correct.

Konstantin Kisin 33:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:11 Uh, who else have we seen? You had, um, the lady that did that budget and was briefly PM.

Konstantin Kisin 33:17 Uh, Liz Truss?

Chris Williamson 33:18 Yes. You had Liz Truss. You did. Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 33:20 Yeah. We had her on.

Chris Williamson 33:21 Um-

Konstantin Kisin 33:22 And we had Suella Braverman on.

Chris Williamson 33:23 Yep. I mean, e- except for, except for you guy... I imagine James O'Brien probably has some people on every so often.

Konstantin Kisin 33:29 Well, there's a couple that you're missing.

Chris Williamson 33:31 Rory?

Konstantin Kisin 33:31 So Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell. We've had b- uh, Rory on the show. I like Rory as a person.

Chris Williamson 33:36 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 33:37 I don't know if you followed their coverage pre-election.

Chris Williamson 33:39 I followed it, uh, with great interest, yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 33:42 Yeah. So they were... I, I, and again, I, I, this is not an attack on them as individuals, but they were wrong about everything. And not only were they wrong about everything, they massively doubled down after being wrong about everything. So in the, in the days before the election, Rory Stewart was saying, um, "Well, you know, these polls showing that it's neck and neck, they're completely wrong. People are afraid to say the truth, which is that Kamala is going to smash this." And on the night of the election when he was clearly proven completely wrong, he was like, "Well, I was wrong on the facts, but I was not wrong to be optimistic," or whatever it was. And you're just going, okay, we'll just take all that aside. These people have no idea what's going on in reality in America. They were just completely wrong. They are probably the most popular podcast when it comes to politics in this country.

Chris Williamson 34:31 I think... It- It's Goal Hanger that does, uh... Th- that's the network that that's a part of.

Konstantin Kisin 34:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:36 I think in, in the top 10, for the Americans listening, the top 10 podcasts on Apple Podcasts, which skews a little bit older, um, in the UK, Rory Stewart is in maybe two or three of them regularly.

Konstantin Kisin 34:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:49 Uh, and Goal Hanger has maybe four or five.

Konstantin Kisin 34:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:52 That one network.

Konstantin Kisin 34:53 And again, I like Rory as a person. He's a lovely man, genuinely.

Chris Williamson 34:56 He's been on the show. I've found him, I've found him very interesting.

Konstantin Kisin 34:57 And he's been on our show, and we'll happily have him back, and I'd happily have Alastair back, although I, I, I rate him less. But, um, not back. I'd rather have Alastair. I'd happily have Alastair on. My point though is that quite a lot of people in Britain l- are living in a, in this imaginary world which is reinforced for them by people that they instinctively lean towards. Um, and they're not as aware as you are because you live in the US or as I am because I get a chance to travel there of actually what's going on. And I, I only realized this, you know, this year because this year is the f- I've been to America loads of times before, but this year was the year that I actually went to, like, real America. I've been in Utah, uh, and, you know, Oklahoma City-

Chris Williamson 35:42 Fuck me, that's real America. Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 35:43 ... and, and Tulsa and El Paso in Texas and Fort Worth and Sugar Land and all, all these other places. Um, as well as your, your DCs and your New Yorks-

Chris Williamson 35:53 Nashvilles and Blah blah blah.

Konstantin Kisin 35:54 ... and Nashvilles and all of that. I really had a chance. Colorado I was in and I traveled around it. So I got a chance to actually meet, like, real American human beings. And I realized that the reason that p- people in the West, uh, in, in Western Europe don't understand what's happening in America is 'cause they've never been there. So if you are a BBC journalist, what, what is America to you? Well, America is what people like you, i.e. the media elite, tell you that it is, right? And then if you go to America, you go to New York, DC-... or LA. These are all places that are massively Democrat. They're super dominated. You know, I think Washington DC voted like 92% for Kamala Harris in this election, something like that. So you end up in these places that are not r- whether you think, you know, Democrats are the best or the worst or whatever, it doesn't really matter. My point is, they spend a lot of time among people and in places whose views are not representative of the country. And so when you are a British citizen watching the news, you're really watching people who are deeply embedded into an echo chamber, whose echo chamber also tells them that their opinions are the virtuous ones to have.

Chris Williamson 37:11 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 37:11 And so that to me, it's therefore not- not surprising to me that you even have prominent Tories in this country who- who- who are saying they're pro Kamala. Right?

Chris Williamson 37:20 Mm. Very difficult to stress test that.

Chris Williamson 37:22 You- you mentioned sort of Trump has the opportunity-

Konstantin Kisin 37:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 37:25 ... very clear set of objectives. Uh, also, I- I can't even remember what it is, the House, the Senate, the popular vote, the blah, blah, the blah, blah, the money, the technology, the talent.

Konstantin Kisin 37:34 Mm.

Chris Williamson 37:35 What happens if Trump fails to deliver change?

Konstantin Kisin 37:41 That's an interesting question. Uh, I- I think, uh, all of the things that many of us have been saying about the decline of the West (laughs) are gonna come back 100 times because what you, what you then see is there's literally no way out of this.

Chris Williamson 37:56 It's unfixable.

Konstantin Kisin 37:57 There's no way out. There's no way out. So the- the reason I think a lot of people were relieved as I was, was at least in this election-

Chris Williamson 38:06 The Trump one.

Konstantin Kisin 38:06 Yeah. The- the- the- the feeling for me was, well, at least there's choice. Like, in the UK you don't have choice in, on- on the issues that I care about, right? Which is our country being prosperous, uh, immigration being, uh, beneficial to the country. I- I'm pro lots and lots of immigration if it's-

Chris Williamson 38:26 As an immigrant.

Konstantin Kisin 38:27 ... if it's beneficial to the country. I am 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. W- we haven't had a choice for 14 years. The- the- the conservative government that's just left is virtually indistinguishable from the Labor Pa- party that's just come in to the point where the Labor leader is attacking the Conservatives for their failure on mass immigration and everyone's going, "Well, you know, he's got a point. I mean, he's gonna make it worse, but he's got a point." Do you know what I mean? So in America at least the feeling was, well, okay, they actually have choice. The- they can choose. If like, if you don't want this continued slime into, slide into managed decline-

Chris Williamson 39:15 Mm.

Konstantin Kisin 39:16 ... you can vote for something else.

Chris Williamson 39:17 Pivot.

Konstantin Kisin 39:18 If you vote for that something else and you don't actually end up having that choice, then you're in deep trouble.

Chris Williamson 39:26 Holy fuck.

Konstantin Kisin 39:26 And as you probably know, you know, in the fringes of- of right-wing discourse, the Curtis Yarvis of the world-

Chris Williamson 39:34 Not super fami- I've met Curtis, but I'm not super familiar with his-

Konstantin Kisin 39:36 Yeah. He's an interesting guy, but- but it's not even about him specifically. There are a lot of people who up until this point were- were increasing in profile because they were saying something that I don't necessarily agree with, but I see the logic of, and that is, what good is democracy if you can't vote for the things that you want? If you can't vote your way out of this, is that democracy or is that a fake democracy? And therefore if it's a fake democracy, then you're not living in a place of choice, you're living in a place where there's a tyrannical authoritarian structure that's telling you, "You must have net zero. You must have woke. You must have DEI."

Chris Williamson 40:18 It's just got a much more sophisticated delivery mechanism that makes you feel like you're playing the game.

Konstantin Kisin 40:22 You're living in the matrix, right? You're being given this soma, whatever you wanna call it, you're being given this drug that makes you feel like you're living in some kind of-

Chris Williamson 40:31 On a piece of ballot paper.

Konstantin Kisin 40:33 Yes. But actually you're living in hell in which you're stuck with the things that you hate. And even if the majority of you get together and vote against this, it will still happen.

Chris Williamson 40:43 The same outcome occurs.

Konstantin Kisin 40:45 So their argument is d- democracy's not working, why don't we look at alternatives? And alternatives are, you know, that's why, that explains the- the fascination that, as I say, fringes of the right increasingly have with the Putins of the world.

Chris Williamson 41:01 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 41:01 Because it's like, "Well, this is like a strong man who'll actually fix this country." You know? Um, and if Trump fails, I don't see why those voices wouldn't get louder.

Chris Williamson 41:12 That's very interesting.

Konstantin Kisin 41:14 I- I can't see a logical reason why that wouldn't be the case. Do you?

Chris Williamson 41:20 No, I mean, I... (sighs) You can continue to sort of play the game. I'm sure that, uh, uh, people that don't like Trump would say, "Well, yeah, but that's, he was inefficient. He was unable to do this thing. It's because the policies were pointing in the wrong direction. We can fix it through a different pathway." Et cetera, et cetera. But given that there was a majority of people that voted for him, uh, it not being disheartening and disenchanting to the democratic process, especially with all of the power of the smartest guy in- in the world, the companies and the rockets and the fucking dance moves on stage and stuff, what else did you want? But yeah, I- I- I'm fascinated by that question, what happens in four years time if- if change hasn't been delivered?

Konstantin Kisin 42:02 If you can't fix it when you've got the Senate, the Congress, the popular vote, the tech bro oligarchs-

Chris Williamson 42:09 David Sacks now.

Konstantin Kisin 42:10 ... David Sacks, you've got a- a lot of the new media on your side, which is so powerful now in America, you- you've got literally everything you could possibly have, you as president are independently wealthy, it's your last term, you don't have to pander to anybody. If- if-

Chris Williamson 42:25 Mm-hmm. A good successor sat in the same organization already.

Konstantin Kisin 42:28 Yeah. If you can't fix it then, well...How do you fix it? That's- that will be the question a lot of people ask in that situation. So Trump must not fail because if he does, you know, that in many ways was the last chance that- that- that the West had of turning things around.

Chris Williamson 42:48 What happens if it goes well? You mentioned about Trump has the opportunity to- to hard reset, sort of the- the Western world.

Konstantin Kisin 42:56 I think if he- if he does well, if he- if the economy grows rapidly and sustainably, uh, if he closes the border and deals with, uh, illegal immigration and crime, i- if he ends DEI and all of this neo-racism in the institutions, um, if he, uh, makes energy cheap, if he ends the foreign conflicts that he promised to end, um, I think that is something that is an undeni- that's undeniable proof that what- that that movement offers is better than what we had. The- the- that's why people voted for him the way that they did. And that means that will give massive inspiration to people around the world, especially the Western world. I- I think that's undeniably the case.

Chris Williamson 43:43 Do you think it would give inspiration to the UK?

Konstantin Kisin 43:45 I think it will. That does not mean for the reasons that we already discussed that- that will necessarily- that does not mean that that will necessarily result in a political victory, uh, but that will give inspiration to- to people around

Konstantin Kisin 44:00 the world for sure.

Chris Williamson 44:01 Something that I was- ... I actually thought about this, uh, I was in Brisbane on the day of the election, so I was moving seamlessly from my workout playlist to the Daily Wire's live stream.

Konstantin Kisin 44:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 44:11 Like just switching between these two, you know, it's 1:00 in the afternoon or something on a Wednesday for me as I'm watching results come in slowly and- and as it became increasingly likely that it seemed like a Republican victory was afoot, uh, I actually thought about, uh, you and your position, uh, your particular distaste for right-wing snowflakes.

Konstantin Kisin 44:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 44:29 Uh, and I wondered being on the outside for the last four years or so, um, allows you to have this sort of anarchistic, rebellious, sort of sexy problem identifying but not needing to be solution proposing sort of group. I wondered whether you thought there's an opportunity for that right-wing snowflakeism energy to appear more or less now that that side is in power? I wondered if you considered that?

Konstantin Kisin 44:58 Yeah, I think actually what- what- what Trump's election will do, uh, and I s- I really realized this particularly when we went to- to the Trump rally, uh, in Madison Square Garden, is I think it, uh, if he's successful in particular, it has the power to entirely deflate that fringe of the right that has become very much like the woke left in the way that it operates. The cancel culture, the identity politics, the grievance, um, mongering. I- the- Trump, uh, one of the things that those people are obsessed about is Israel and Jews.

Chris Williamson 45:31 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 45:31 And Trump is the most phallosymmetric president the United States has had for decades. So, um, e- Tr- and he doesn't need them, and I- I- I don't think he's- he's ever really particularly...

Chris Williamson 45:43 Well, interesting on October 7th, he was with Ben.

Konstantin Kisin 45:46 Was he?

Chris Williamson 45:47 Yes. Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 45:48 I didn't know that.

Chris Williamson 45:48 He was- I can't remember where they went, Ben and him, some sort of ceremony type memorial thing.

Konstantin Kisin 45:54 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 45:54 And I remember thinking at the time, "Fuck, like I see a lot of loud voices on Twitter that have a problem, a big problem on the right, from the right."

Konstantin Kisin 46:02 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 46:02 And it was like Fuentes adjacent type-

Konstantin Kisin 46:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 46:05 ... sort of type people and, uh, I thought, "Holy f- like that might have damaged part of the- the campaign. Maybe that's lost a significant number of votes or whatever."

Konstantin Kisin 46:13 Yeah, I know, that's what happened when I went to the mad- the rally in Madison Square Garden because full of Jews, full of Israel flags, um, and every time anyone mentioned Israel or like, I mean one guy was on stage and he just went, "We're gonna crush jihad." And I was all, "Fff..." And- and ever- and everyone was just loving it. So I think one of the reasons I actually talk less about that fringe of the right now even though I just find them intellectually very irritating because they're not very bright is that I don't think they're relevant truthfully. And- and so I don't really talk about it too much. I- you know, James Lindsay is trolling them and I enjoy that and I like trolling these idiots. But generally speaking, I- what I saw in America was they have no purchase in the Trump movement whatsoever.

Chris Williamson 46:59 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 46:59 Um, and if Trump is successful, these people will become utterly irrelevant. Uh, and, uh, you- and by the way, quite a lot of those people, you know, I don't know if you remember the Lauren Chen situation, but there was the revelation that some of these people were being funded from Russia.

Chris Williamson 47:16 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 47:17 Um, and, you- now when you see that some of these people like a week before the election saying, "Trump's not my guy," or whatever, you go, "Mm, uh, are all those likes on Twitter really organic? Are they really..."

Chris Williamson 47:29 Everyone's had these-

Konstantin Kisin 47:30 Are they really? I don't- because I don't see this reflected in real life.

Chris Williamson 47:34 No.

Konstantin Kisin 47:34 You know, I- I think there's- wha- when it comes to social media, our reality is being distorted in 100 different ways and one of them is undoubtedly foreign operations.

Chris Williamson 47:43 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 47:43 Undoubtedly.

Chris Williamson 47:44 Yeah. I, uh... In other news, this episode is brought to you by Function. Did you know that your annual physical only screens for around 20 biomarkers? That leaves a lot of gaps when it comes to understanding your health, which is why I partnered with Function. They run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one. They've got a team of expert physicians that takes that data, puts it into a simple dashboard, and gives you actionable recommendations to improve your health and lifespan. They track everything from your heart health to your hormone levels, thyroid function. Plus Dr. Andrew Huban is their scientific adviser and Dr. Mark Hyman is their chief medical officer, so you can trust that the data and insights you receive are scientifically sound and practical. Getting your blood work analyzed like this would usually cost thousands but with Function it's only $500. And right now you can get the exact same panels I get plus bypass their 400,000 person wait list by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. That's functionhealth.com-... slash modern wisdom. So, o- okay, the opposite side of this, like, it's almost kind of done to death, but I wonder if there's something novel to talk about here around Trump's victory being a- a death blow for overreaching progressivism and stuff like that. W- w- we've been saying, in one form or another, "Peak woke," there was, it was, it was-

Konstantin Kisin 49:05 Mm.

Chris Williamson 49:05 ... summer of 2020 or whatever it might be.

Konstantin Kisin 49:08 Mm.

Chris Williamson 49:08 Uh, I, again, bro science theory, I have this idea that, uh, you have this sort of conceptual inertia that maybe even if things on the internet have moved on, if these ideas have caught hold in the real world, there's this momentum, this big juggernaut, this lumbering behemoth, which is like boomers and my parents.

Konstantin Kisin 49:30 Mm.

Chris Williamson 49:30 I had this idea that, uh, (laughs) a- a news story hasn't reached full mainstream significance when

Chris Williamson 49:35 it's on the front page of the New York Times or when it trends on Twitter but when your dad messages you about it on Facebook Messenger.

Konstantin Kisin 49:40 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 49:40 Like, that's when.

Konstantin Kisin 49:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 49:41 You know, it's happened two or three times, I think, over the last few years, one being, uh, Rogan's CNN debacle during COVID, where he messaged me and said, "I see your friend Mr. Rogan is in the news again." I'm like, "Wow." Like, that's hit a-

Konstantin Kisin 49:56 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:56 ... you know, 60s-year-old northeast of the UK father. And then, uh, mid '22, where he messaged and said that Andrew Tate's a nasty piece of work, isn't he? T-A-I-T.

Konstantin Kisin 50:07 Mm.

Chris Williamson 50:07 I was like, "Tate, you have reached full mainstream significance because my dad is talking about you."

Konstantin Kisin 50:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:13 Um, but all of that together to say there are many worlds that you inhabit and if you're an agile, online, degener- ex user, power user type thing, uh, I think you have a skewed perspective of how sort of nimbly, uh, things are moving along. So what's, how, how have you come to sort of conceptualize this and the trajectory of, of this sort of progressive overreach and stuff?

Konstantin Kisin 50:34 Well, I think the g- geography is very important here. So, uh, I don't think in, in the UK or Australia or in Canada we've remotely reached peak woke because DEI and all of this other stuff is so deeply embedded in the institutions, uh, and in politics. Uh, you look, I mean look at London. London is run by a guy who, who's, who's painted the, the crossings rainbow colors and the police rainbow co- and all of this stuff, right? Um, and that, that, uh, I know those are trivial things but they're symbolic of very strong underlying things where people are being hired or fired based on their demographic characteristics and so on. Uh, in the US, yes, uh, Trump and people like Chris Rufo and Elon and Vivek, they have an opportunity to absolutely dismantle from the ground up, uh, all of these, um, ideological introductions that have occurred over the last 10, 20 years.

Chris Williamson 51:30 Even if structurally they can't get into Yale or into Harvard-

Konstantin Kisin 51:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:33 ... or into Netflix or whatever.

Konstantin Kisin 51:35 Yes.

Chris Williamson 51:35 They can, uh, go a little bit more upstream from that.

Konstantin Kisin 51:38 But most of this stuff is in government. So if you can strip affirmative action hiring from the government institutions, uh, then everything else will naturally follow. The corporations never wanted to be woke, they just felt they had to.

Chris Williamson 51:53 Yeah, that's interesting. Incentives as opposed to, like, ideology.

Konstantin Kisin 51:57 Yeah. And, you know, the Jaguars of this world, they're not gonna benefit from, from, from that and from what's coming. So I think that there's a big opportunity for a reset in America, but even so, it's like you've got the virus and it's infected you and you're still sick but you have the potential to start recovering. That's kind of how I see it. Um, in, in, in, in the rest of the Western world, I don't think we're, uh, I think woke is gonna run and run for a long time. Uh-

Chris Williamson 52:25 Given that you're downstream hopefully from the US though, if that is...

Konstantin Kisin 52:30 Y- But I, I really don't, until the political leadership changes, I don't see how it changes.

Chris Williamson 52:35 Mm.

Konstantin Kisin 52:35 Because if, even if, you know, you, you could tell me, "Well look, Gen Z men are, are not woke." Great, wh- what are they ruling? What are they deciding?

Chris Williamson 52:43 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 52:43 What, who, who gives a shit what they think, you know what I mean, um, uh, other than me and you? So, uh, the- the political power to change the things that are embedded in the institutions, uh, that's what this is about. That's why Trump has a chance to reset it in the US. Then hopefully it's inspirational to the rest of us.

Chris Williamson 53:03 What's your assessment on the state of the UK at the moment?

Konstantin Kisin 53:08 Um, at the moment, I think it's fucked. I really do. Um, I, (laughs) you know, I, I love this country, I really do, but at the moment I feel like, uh, have you ever heard that Micky Flanagan joke about going to Brighton? So Micky Flanagan's a very famous, very successful British comedian, um, and I remember he did a show in Brighton and, um, he talked about, you know, kind of the contrast between London, the big city, and Brighton, the seaside town that he comes. And he went, "You know, you, you get on the train in London, you're really stressed and you just, you get on the train, it's full, it's packed, it's uncomfortable, and then you just, you get off at the station in Brighton, you, you smell the sea air and you can feel the ambition just draining out of you."

Chris Williamson 53:52 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 53:52 (laughs) It's kind of how

Konstantin Kisin 53:54 I feel about the UK. And I know that y- And the reason I say that is that all the bright and talented people that I know are leaving. Anyone who can, is. Uh, all the rich people are leaving. W- This country has lost more millionaires than any other country except China. Now if you compare the populations, that tells you-

Chris Williamson 54:13 3%.

Konstantin Kisin 54:14 Right. So, we're losing the people who have created the jobs, who are going t- who are creating the jobs and who are going to create the jobs, and one of the reasons is they look at the environment that we're operating in and we've talked about high energy prices but this government has decided that the people who it needs to tax are the businesses basically, particularly the smaller side businesses, which is where so much creativity really happens, um, uh-And then there's all sorts of other things about infrastructure, housing, uh, demographics, uh, that are going on. That I, I don't, you know, we talk about net immigration figures, and what no one really talks about is the fact that what we're actually doing is we're chasing out all the people who create wealth and have wealth, who pay the taxes, and we're replacing them with people coming in towards the bottom of the jobs market at best-

Chris Williamson 55:10 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 55:10 ... if they're actually working at all. Uh, and so you, your net immigration figure of 900,000, that includes you having lost some of your best people and replaced them with people who are not contributing.

Chris Williamson 55:20 Oh, that's, that's very interesting. Yeah, net doesn't account for the cohorts that have gone and the cohorts that have come in, and it's probably not like-for-like.

Konstantin Kisin 55:27 Yeah, and so everyone I know who, who actually had a, a successful business that, that's portable, they're moving to Dubai, they're moving to America, they're moving to all sorts of other places. Uh, because, and what they say is very simple, "Well, look. I want my kids to go to a school where they're not taught that they're trans. I want to pay reasonable taxes," which in some places is like 0%. Um, "I, I want, uh, clean, safe streets, which you do not have."

Chris Williamson 55:56 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 55:57 You know, I went, um, I don't go on the Tube very much these days just from a, you know, um, and I'm not in London that often actually. Uh, and I went on the Tube the other day. During daytime, it was like, I don't know, 5:00, 6:00, and there was kids running absolutely rampant all over it, jumping over barriers, not paying, pushing each other on, on the escalators, smashing the stop button. Like really causing genuine nuisance.

Chris Williamson 56:23 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 56:23 And I, I watched the staff watch them jump over barriers and do nothing. 2023-

Chris Williamson 56:29 Mm-hmm. I got some data. Recent data reveals a 56% increase in Tube crime with thefts up by 83% and robberies doubling in '23, '24.

Konstantin Kisin 56:39 And this extends more broadly. I saw the, the Labor government's talking about, you know, they're gonna reduce crime. Um, well, c- street crime is up very significantly, and one of the reasons it's up is that it's not really being dealt with by the police. I mean, anyone who... I had my car broken into a few years ago. Uh, window smashed, there was a CCTV camera right above it. I called the police, you can't call, I had to email the police 'cause they don't answer the phone unless it's like, you know, someone's-

Chris Williamson 57:06 No, no, no.

Konstantin Kisin 57:07 ... someone's been misgendered or something-

Chris Williamson 57:08 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 57:08 ... you know. Um, and they, they emailed me back saying, "We've investigated. We can't find anything right under the CCTV camera. Here's your crime reference number." There was a viral video, uh, that you probably would've been seen of a guy who deliberately left a bike on the street with, with a, uh, geolocator in-

Chris Williamson 57:28 Directly outside of Scotland Yard?

Konstantin Kisin 57:30 Yeah. He got nicked, uh, they tracked it down to the house where it was being stored. They gave the police the information, and the police said, "We've looked into it, here's your crime reference number. We can't do anything." So-

Chris Williamson 57:41 And then once the video caught sufficient fire, they got an email back from the police saying, "We've reopened your case."

Konstantin Kisin 57:47 Yes.

Chris Williamson 57:47 "Great news."

Konstantin Kisin 57:48 Exactly. Now, by the way, the, the, I, I don't want this to s- come across as if I'm criticizing police officers because f- I know police officers and I know that a lot of them really are working very, very hard. Uh, but the priorities and the resources they have for, set from above don't seem to man- manifest themselves in this kind of low-level crime being addressed. Now, you might say, "Well, you know, there's some kids not paying for the Tube. Who cares?" Well, actually, the, the broken window series is entirely correct. If you are observing people engage in low-level criminal behavior, um, it makes people feel much less safe about their, their, their overall experience because they know that, well, if they're not gonna enforce this, well, what reason do I have to think that if my phone gets stolen, I, you know?

Chris Williamson 58:30 Yeah, the subtext is that more serious things also won't be looked at with care.

Konstantin Kisin 58:34 And they aren't, and they aren't. Uh, I know people who've left because of simp- single incidents. I know a really wealthy guy who left the UK, uh, because he was walking out of a restaurant in Mayfair with a nice watch on his wrist and his pregnant wife. Uh, three guys jumped out of a van with balaclavas on, smashed him to the floor, uh, punched him a few times, pushed his pregnant wife aside, got the watch off him, got back in the van. Police don't give a shit. No, no real investigation, nothing.

Chris Williamson 59:02 Why? Why are these crimes in the UK, why is this sort of social fabric disintegrating like that?

Konstantin Kisin 59:09 Uh, I think it's partly 'cause the economy isn't growing and so there's not a lot of money to be put into policing. Um, and when you think that net zero is the way to prosperity, i.e. driving up energy prices 'cause you wanna feel green or whatever, you wanna reduce Britain's contribution to global climate change from 2% to 1%.

Chris Williamson 59:28 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 59:28 You know, that's the great ambition. Well, then you're not gonna have money. And when you don't have money, you can't pay police officers, and when you don't have p- police officers, people engage in crime. Um, I-

Chris Williamson 59:39 I mean, this is just to add additional context for the northerner in the room.

Konstantin Kisin 59:43 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:44 Uh, this is in London.

Konstantin Kisin 59:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:47 The, I think the UK has the sixth-biggest economy in the world. And I heard this really phenomenal explanation, which is the UK is not the sixth-biggest economy in the world. The UK is a very poor country attached to a very rich city. London has the sixth-bigest economy in the world. No one gives a fuck about Newcastle. No one cares about Carlisle or Wrexham except for Ryan Reynolds.

Konstantin Kisin 1:00:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:06 Manchester. Manchester like a li- a little bit, like a tiny, teeny tiny little bit.

Konstantin Kisin 1:00:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:10 Birmingham a teeny tiny little bit. Everywhere else can go and get fucked.

Konstantin Kisin 1:00:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:14 Like, anything basically north of Birmingham can just fall off a map.

Konstantin Kisin 1:00:19 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:19 And, you know, f- I wrote this thing after the, uh, riots that occurred a few months ago, uh-

Konstantin Kisin 1:00:26 I read it.

Chris Williamson 1:00:27 Yeah. If you can remember that, I basically, uh, my thesis was I saw some videos of my old hometown, Middlesbrough, and there were street marches. These people hadn't joined... It looked like they were maybe walking to the place where the main march was going to go on, but it's kind of classic sort of British-... lairy, louty behavior. Um, these people weren't carrying slogans, they weren't chanting anything, it didn't seem like they were there for a particular purpose, and there were houses that looked like they'd been recently built. A classic working class British street, you know, terrace, terrace, terrace, terrace, terrace, all the way along. This was a house that had those pieces of, um, stickers still on the windows that looked like they were, they were sort of freshly created, and you see one of the people pick up a big brick, just throw it through the window of this house that doesn't have anybody in, it's not like it's the house of an immigrant or the house of a, an enemy, or the house of somebody from the other political party, and it's very difficult to describe this to somebody that didn't spend half of their life, 18 years, in a northern working class town at a state primary, state secondary, state sixth form college. That was me. I spent 11 years, no 13 years, in full-time education, right, around these people. I know these people.

Konstantin Kisin 1:01:35 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:35 I know the way that they feel and it's this ambient malevolence, they're disgruntled, they're unhappy, they feel stuck, and they don't know why, and they're mean. They're mean about it.

Konstantin Kisin 1:01:46 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:47 And the synopsis that I came up with was that, uh, immigration wasn't the reason, it was the excuse-

Konstantin Kisin 1:01:54 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:54 ... for this kind of antisocial behavior, and we don't t- remember ASBOs? I haven't fucking heard ASBOs in ages. Antisocial Behavior Order for the Americans, and it was the- the youths on street corners that would sort of, you know, push and jumble granny as she tries to go to the corner shop to get milk and stuff like that, they'd be issued with an antisocial behavior order which meant they sort of couldn't leave the house and they shouldn't go to certain areas, kind of like a weird-

Konstantin Kisin 1:02:14 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:14 ... sort of curfew type thing. And, um, that culture in the UK, and I'm sure it's everywhere, I'm sure the working class towns and all the rest of it, people don't necessarily have much i- in the way of upward mobility, they don't have much to distract them, maybe they're a little bit despondent, maybe they haven't had the right role models, fatherless homes, all of these things, I understand. But that culture in the UK is so fucking self-defeating-

Konstantin Kisin 1:02:38 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:38 ... because it is a gravitational well that keeps people stuck to the floor as much as possible, that this is as good as things are going to be, and the best use of your agency and self-authorship is to break things, not to build things.

Konstantin Kisin 1:02:52 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:52 And I know that intimately well. This ambient malevolence, it's like the air before a thunderstorm starts-

Konstantin Kisin 1:02:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:59 ... and that was what I saw in that video. It really got to me. It's the first time that I've seen something on the internet that really got to me and that really fucking got to me. So yeah, I, uh-

Konstantin Kisin 1:03:06 Well, I know what you mean, and I think the answer to that, and I know I keep banging on about net zero in this conversation, but the answer to that is to scrap net zero because, um, what those people need is meaning and purpose, and for the vast majority of working class men, the primary source of meaning and purpose is gonna be a job. And when you have a job that is a meaningful job, that you're making something, you're building something, that you're making good money, that you're providing for your family, that you feel like you have upward mobility, and upward mobility doesn't have to look like I grew up in Newcastle and then I started a YouTube channel and now I live in Austin, Texas. Upward mobility might be, you know, I made 30 grand a year for 10 years and now I'm making 35-

Chris Williamson 1:03:48 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:03:48 ... and now I've got a promotion at work-

Chris Williamson 1:03:50 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:03:50 ... and now I-

Chris Williamson 1:03:51 I own a home.

Konstantin Kisin 1:03:51 I own a home. Right? Most people really don't need very much to be happy, to be honest, and i- it's a tragedy that in most of, uh, the Western world and especially in the UK, the thing that we used to consider, like then what is the American Dream? The American Dream is you arrive with nothing but the shirt on your back and your kids go to university, you have a house, uh, maybe a small business, you pass it onto them, and their children are, you know-

Chris Williamson 1:04:20 Better off.

Konstantin Kisin 1:04:20 ... b- really better off. Well, if those people that you're talking about where I agree with you, there's an underlying malevolence, um, and it's not malevolence, it's anger really.

Chris Williamson 1:04:30 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 1:04:30 Um-

Chris Williamson 1:04:30 It's frustration.

Konstantin Kisin 1:04:31 It's frustration and anger, and what is that anger about? Well, it's, the anger is about the feeling that, um, you're not going to be able to do the things that you thought you would.

Chris Williamson 1:04:42 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 1:04:42 And what are they? Well, you get a job, you get a house, you- you have some kids, uh, they're gonna be slightly better off than you.

Chris Williamson 1:04:49 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:04:49 You're gonna have dignity, you're gonna have community, you're gonna be respected-

Chris Williamson 1:04:53 Meaning, mastery.

Konstantin Kisin 1:04:54 ... meaning. Right. Now, if you have a society which has effectively said, "We're going to do a green accounting trick. We're going to take your jobs, we're gonna put them in India, we're gonna put them in China where they're gonna make the same steel or the same cars or the same whatever that you used to make, they're gonna do it dirtier," w- of course they are 'cause it's a, it's a much less developed country, "and then we're gonna import that steel and we're gonna import those cars back into the UK so we can pretend that we're green." Well, you combine that with this person no longer having a job-

Chris Williamson 1:05:29 Mm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:05:30 ... and our economy, as I said, we're poorer now than we were in 2007-

Chris Williamson 1:05:34 Mm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:05:35 ... what did you expect?

Chris Williamson 1:05:36 Yeah. Disgruntled. It, there's this feeling, there was always this feeling but I could never put my finger on it, of kind of being forgotten-

Konstantin Kisin 1:05:42 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:42 ... in the Northeast of the UK. It's like, uh, like on the outside a little bit, even within a- a community, on the outside of culture.

Konstantin Kisin 1:05:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:53 Um, even- even little things like, um, the way that you were represented in media, like a story about Newcastle that hit the national press-

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:01 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:01 ... was like a- a, um, a whimsical fucking cottage industry piece-

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:07 ... or something like that. Uh, I said I was gonna show you, uh, this video.

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:10 Can we, can we do one more thing on just that?

Chris Williamson 1:06:12 Absolutely.

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:12 Um, so one of the- the things that we've talked about in the UK is like, "Well, we need to build infrastructure, we need to build transport links." And it's like, why do you need a better train line to nowhere?

Chris Williamson 1:06:22 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:23 Um, and- and so what you really have to do is you have to, and that's why, you know, I was talking to Mary Harrington, who I know y- you're a fan of too-

Chris Williamson 1:06:30 She's great.

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:30 ... at- at our Christmas party actually, and she was saying something I really have been thinking about as well which is, I think if we are in the offering solutions space, the solution for the UK is to accept the reality, that's always part, the first bit of the solution is to accept the reality that, you know, the slogan of Make Britain Great Again isn't gonna work 'cause we're not gonna-

Chris Williamson 1:06:50 (laughs)

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:50 ... we're not gonna recolonize India.

Chris Williamson 1:06:52 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 1:06:52 Do you know what I mean? We're not gonna rebuild the British Empire. What I think we could do if we really wanted to, but this would require both a political and a cultural shift on a, on a level that would be extremely significant, would be-... to recognize that over the 20th century, th- Britain went from being the center of Western civilization to being the provincial part of it. We're on the periphery now.

Chris Williamson 1:07:15 Yep.

Konstantin Kisin 1:07:15 The center of Western civilization after World War II, during World War II I would say, shifted from Britain to America.

Chris Williamson 1:07:23 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:07:23 We are now effectively a- a- the European outpost of American civilization.

Chris Williamson 1:07:31 That's a great point.

Konstantin Kisin 1:07:31 That's what we are.

Chris Williamson 1:07:32 Yep.

Konstantin Kisin 1:07:32 Now, what does that mean? Well, what that means is we have to lean in to that. That means we have to download the right memes from America. Instead of downloading the hands up, don't shoot meme, what we should be downloading is, okay, we want economic growth memes. How do you do that? Well, you're gonna have to make energy cheap, you know, slash regulation, et cetera. You're gonna have to do the right trade deals with that world, right? Uh, what... That means all sorts of other things that we borrow from them and apply to ourselves, as opposed to thinking that we know best.

Chris Williamson 1:08:05 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:08:05 We clearly don't. Otherwise, our society wouldn't be as screwed up as it is. Um, and part of that is you're gonna have to give people in, uh, deprived parts of the country work.

Chris Williamson 1:08:17 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 1:08:17 And they... You're gonna have to find ways of employing them and actually creating things that are of value. And that means, yes, uh, we in the UK may end up paying more for some of the things that they make, but that money is going to go to your neighbor instead of a perfectly nice guy in India doing the same job, right?

Chris Williamson 1:08:35 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 1:08:36 But if we want our society to hold cohesively together, some of the extremes of the globalization process, that is the reason why those people in Newcastle are angry and malevolent-

Chris Williamson 1:08:46 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:08:46 ... and mean and nasty-

Chris Williamson 1:08:47 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:08:48 ... uh, we're gonna have to find ways to actually give them jobs and employment. And that means not chasing out the people who are job creators, and that means not pricing them out-

Chris Williamson 1:08:58 Yeah, yep.

Konstantin Kisin 1:08:58 ... of the country by making business impossible.

Chris Williamson 1:09:01 I think, uh, those of us in Podcastistan maybe overindex on what nice words and inspirational memes can do-

Konstantin Kisin 1:09:11 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:12 ... that I'm not convinced you can self-development mantra your way out of structural problems.

Konstantin Kisin 1:09:17 You can't.

Chris Williamson 1:09:18 Um, you know, it's all well and good, uh, trying to give people some upward aiming sense of hope and all the rest of it, but when there's really sort of structural problems, the physics of the system that this- these people are sort of involved in, uh, is very difficult. I don't... I'm not convinced that that reframing, "Oh, you just need to sort of think more positively or do whatever."

Konstantin Kisin 1:09:36 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:36 Like, that's... Fuck off, mate.

Konstantin Kisin 1:09:37 Well, they're both true in the sense that if you are a teenager in Newcastle listening to this conversation, the world is your oyster.

Chris Williamson 1:09:44 Correct.

Konstantin Kisin 1:09:45 Look at Chris, right? Look at Chris, look at other people who inspire you. You have the opportunity. You have access to the global economy with the internet and everything. You can make it, you can do that. But at- at a structural level, at the level of society, not everyone who's... who went to your school-

Chris Williamson 1:10:02 Yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 1:10:02 ... had the ability to become Chris Williamson. A lot of them just needed to have a great job in the local factory.

Chris Williamson 1:10:08 Yep.

Konstantin Kisin 1:10:08 That would have been the right solution.

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Konstantin Kisin 1:11:36 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:11:36 ... for their family-

Konstantin Kisin 1:11:37 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:11:37 ... because it was the first, like, new blood relative maybe that he'd ever held, something like that. And we came up with this idea, and I think that it's true, uh, that kind of relates to declining birth rates, that there's a- a memetic sense to motherhood, like a memetic desire for motherhood. If there's fewer mothers, it begets less people being mothers around you, which makes you less likely to see the beauty of motherhood, which makes you less likely to want to be a mother. And the same thing goes for sort of this- this situation that he had. And I wonder whether there's something similar with this talent exit. Uh, you know, the most agentic people, the most peop- uh, self-authoring people, uh,

Chris Williamson 1:12:11 the ones who would break the mold, that would, uh, push back against the tall poppy syndrome, you are losing ever more of pre- s- uh, there is a dearth of precisely the countervailing force that you want to the worst parts of some of British culture, the bottom-up stuff, not the top-down stuff. And, um, it seems like a recursive cycle, and I appreciate that I have perhaps contributed to that. After 15 years of coaching maybe 1,000 18 to 25-year-olds in a desperate attempt to try and move culture, I'm like, "Pull the rip cord." Mm-hmm. Like, "I'm gonna go somewhere else." Uh, anyway, I was gonna show you this video. So this is a, uh, a TikTok of- of an American guy who, uh, spent six months in the UK, in London, and he's describing his experience. I've cut a little bit into this, but he's basically said his grandparents were British. He sees himself a little bit as British, and this isn't meant to be as a dig at- at British people. So, we'll have a- we'll have a watch of this.

1:13:02 The people there don't seem like they're having fun. They seem like they're constantly trying to escape misery.They seem like their work is just so depressing, and that the joke is that everything is depressing and bad. And, like, that's the entire sense of humor, is like, "This all sucks. Um, let's just make jokes about it." The class system is so obvious and weird. Like, there are just upper-class people, lower-class people, and you're just born into it. And the accents, you can tell based on people's accents, and that's weird. In America, it's pretty much, like, you have to give it to us, or to America, that you just earn your way. And I know there's lots of, you know, people, you- you get born into things, if you're lucky. But if you get rich, if you g- move up in your class, you're just able to. In England, it's like you're never gonna really be upper class if you're born lower class. They'll always know that you're not 'cause it's about culture. It's not just about money. It's about, like, the way you act. And there's a lot of, like, inner- or inter-class, um, like, anger and, like, weird feelings. And also, I just wanna say, there's a lot of anger in the culture. I was, uh, at a lot of games, soccer games, Premier League games, things like that. Um, and the fans are so angry. Like, it's not like America where people get mad or whatever, and, you know, but it's, like, normal. It's like a- they're a little mad. In England, they're, like, so pissed the whole time. They're just looking for- for, like, reasons to let their anger out, and there's so much anger. There's so much swearing. There'll be a six-year-old just yelling the C-word. It's like, "What the hell? What's going on here?" It's like borderline... I'm- I'm looking around thinking like, "This is uncivilized."

Konstantin Kisin 1:15:00 Six-year-old yelling the C-word, that's what makes Britain great. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:15:04 (laughs) Make Britain great again. Uh, but-

Konstantin Kisin 1:15:06 No, he's bang on, man. He's bang on. Um, uh, look, I- I do think part of it is the weather, to be honest.

Chris Williamson 1:15:12 Dude, it's huge. It's a huge, massive influence. You know what it's like. You come out to Austin, Texas, and when was the first time you t- came out this year, February, something like that? In February, March, maybe?

Konstantin Kisin 1:15:21 March, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:15:21 March time?

Konstantin Kisin 1:15:22 I actually don't like the weather in Austin, to be honest.

Chris Williamson 1:15:24 March is fine.

Konstantin Kisin 1:15:25 Ma- March is fine.

Chris Williamson 1:15:26 Oh, yeah.

Konstantin Kisin 1:15:26 But the rest... Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:15:27 Well, you only came in March, and then you fucking-

Konstantin Kisin 1:15:29 Between- between-

Chris Williamson 1:15:29 ... came back in October.

Konstantin Kisin 1:15:30 Yeah, between November and March, the weather in Austin is fine.

Chris Williamson 1:15:33 Beautiful.

Konstantin Kisin 1:15:34 But if you go, if you spend a week in LA and you just look around, "Oh, I can see why these people are happy," 'cause the weather is really nice. So, that's... I think it's part of it.

Chris Williamson 1:15:40 But that is the country, okay? With the... When d- unless we're gonna get to the stage where we can terraform the ozone layer above-

Konstantin Kisin 1:15:47 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:15:48 ... the UK, this isn't gonna change. So, what do you need to do?

Konstantin Kisin 1:15:51 Well-

Chris Williamson 1:15:51 Compensate.

Konstantin Kisin 1:15:52 Yes, exactly. You have to compensate for it, and the compensation for it is... Like, if you go to Central London, the nice parts of it, it's a beautiful place. It's a beautiful place, and when, uh, on those three days a year when Britain is sunny, it's the most beautiful country in the world.

Chris Williamson 1:16:10 Mm-hmm.

Konstantin Kisin 1:16:10 You know? Um, but what you have to do is make the other things in this country so good that it- it trumps- it trumps that. Um, and that means people have to have a better quality of life than they otherwise do.

Chris Williamson 1:16:26 Correct.

Konstantin Kisin 1:16:26 And that means they have to be able to afford a home. That means they have to be able to raise their kids and all the rest of it. You know, I- I- I was very persuaded by a book, uh, by a guy called Desmond Morris called The Human Zoo, uh, in which he talked about the fact that essentially all the, uh, problems that we see in modern human society are exactly the problems you get if you put animals into those exact conditions. So, in a zoo, the animals that are there, they have much less space than they need. Uh, they may be surrounded by other animals that they don't necessarily wanna be surrounded by, uh, and all sorts of other things. And they have the exact same outcomes in terms of interpersonal violence, mental health, failure to reproduce, and on and on and on. So partly, this is just a problem of the fact