Leighton Smith Podcast #326 - April 29th 2026 - Rodney Hide - The Leighton Smith Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news talks It b
follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
the information, all the debates of the US, now the
Leyton Smith podcast powered by news talks.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
It be Welcome to Podcasts three hundred and twenty six
for April twenty nine, twenty twenty six. Rodney Hyde needs
no introduction. He's appeared on this podcast many times, but
I was surprised. I have to say that the last
discussion we had when I checked was over a year ago,
which means that this one is overdue and it's good,

(00:51):
wide ranging. You might say something for everyone. You might
say we both enjoyed it, and I believe so were you.
But first, the Ashley Bloomfield COVID vaccine mystery. Why didn't
he change mandates for twelve to seventeen year olds? And
why won't he say? This was the headline for a
piece written, a very lengthy piece written by Derek Cheng

(01:13):
on the twenty sixth of April in the New Zealand Herald. A.
Cheng is a multi media journalist. He values holding those
in power to account. And shining a light on issues
kept in the dark. So a herald investigation a found
then COVID Response Minister Chris Hipkins was informed about the
potential risks of a second COVID nineteen vaccine dose for

(01:36):
teenagers at a time when tens of thousands of them
had yet to get a follow up jab more than
three months earlier. The same advice was received by Ashley Bloomfield,
the health official leading the pandemic response, who was later
knighted for his services. But after the too Royal Commission
of Inquiry reports and the release of interview transcripts with

(02:00):
key decision makers, New Zealanders still don't know how that
expert advice was assessed or why at wasn't made public
during the vaccine rollout. What was Bloomfield weighing up and
why won't he say are the two questions that Cheng
poses now. The then Labor government had good reason to

(02:21):
change COVID nineteen vaccine requirements for that age group at
the start of twenty twenty two, but that didn't happen
despite expert advice about the possibility of unnecessary risk of
heart inflammation after a second dose. Was this a deliberate
call from Ashley Bloomfield, then head of the Health Response

(02:42):
or was it a political one, or, perhaps, asks the author,
was it both. It was Bloomfield who received the advice
on December nine, twenty twenty one, from the COVID Vaccine
Technical Advisory Group known as cb TAG. His public silence
since the release of the Royal Commission Inquiry Phase two

(03:03):
report suggests at best that he has nothing to add
beyond what he's or already told the Commission. At worst,
it fuels speculation that he had something to hide from
a community who are already angry. The advice was not
implemented or made public at the time. The Commission, after all,
did not ask him specifically about the advice, so his

(03:27):
views are not in the transcripts of his interviews. So
that was a fail and not the only one. Of course,
that was a fail on the part of the Commission. Now,
this is not meant to be a lengthy commentary. I
just wanted to draw attention to a couple of things
we are all familiar with. The one source of truth,

(03:49):
the refusal to entertain any other explanations and opinions. Absolute
refusal wouldn't touch them wouldn't go near them. The arrogance.
You couldn't describe it any other way. From the beehive.
When there were people protesting and camping in the ground,
all they wanted was to talk to the PM, she

(04:11):
wouldn't go near them. Now that brings me to this book,
Cause Unknown, the Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in twenty one
and twenty two. And it's about a third of a
size of a coffee table book. And it's filled with names,
a lot of them with pictures, and I'm just going

(04:33):
to run through a few of them on page one
sixty five. I'll leave the names out because many of
them are in foreign well not foreign languages, their foreign names,
and I don't want to miss them up. So five
years old died in sleep, eight days post vaccination. Five
years old. They put them in, They put them in

(04:55):
ages and listed them down the book, right across the page,
name on the left about the death, and then the
date on the right hand side. So second one, five
years cardiac event. Mayo Kardite six years old died unexpectedly
in her sleep. Eight year old died unexpectedly in her sleep.

(05:15):
Nine years old, sudden death at home in front of parents.
Ten year old sudden death, another ten year old sudden death,
cardiac event for a ten year old, and the list
goes on and on for pages. So we get into
the thirty year olds cardiac event during game, sudden death

(05:36):
during game, sudden death, sudden death, stroke days post vaccination,
blood clot twenty days post vaccination, sudden death, died unexpectedly
in her sleep, sudden death, cardiac event during canoe race.
Cardiac events all over, blood clots all over, and you
get the picture. So the book was written by Edward Dowd,

(06:00):
a brilliant Wall Street careerist, joined a financial titan, Black Rock,
in two thousand and two. The coincidence here is really interesting,
if not incredible. He was promoted to managing director in
two thousand and four. Now, during his ten years there,
he added twelve billion dollars to the growth fund he managed,

(06:20):
and he built a reputation for a keen ability to
understand markets, pick stocks, analyze statistics, and identified trends. Early
in twenty twenty one, he found himself withdrawing from Wall
Street to study an entirely new kind of trend, the
expanding and tragic epidemic of sudden deaths among healthy young people.

(06:43):
Dowd has now brought international attention to the alarming excess
deaths among healthy, working age Americans. Now the coincidences, of
course is well. One of them is Jasindra Durn's connection
with Blackrock my Due. It wasn't at the same time,
but nevertheless I find it well fascinating. Coups unknown, the

(07:04):
epidemic of sudden deaths. I wouldn't buy it again because
it wasn't what I expect, But I've kept it. Why
wouldn't I? And it covers lots more than I've just
made mention of. One chapter is called four Children a
Smoking Gun. And there were people all over America, some

(07:25):
scientists and medicos, who were questioning all that was going on,
and they were rebutted pretty much, every one of them,
rebutted at every turn. Certainly that's what happened in this
part of the world. There were two in Australia who
I interviewed, one in the very early days of this
and because of the experience that he'd had prior to this,

(07:48):
and no one was interested in hearing from him. And
the other one, the other doctor, who was a breakthrough artist,
shall we say, is still talking about it and still
releasing articles and information, and none of them, none of
them had any access to the powers that be because

(08:10):
the powers that be didn't want to know because they
thought they were let's just put it another way, they
were arrogant. Now, the article is well worth it. It's
nine a four pages if you print it out, so
it makes it lengthy, but it's well worth reading in
the Herald on the twenty sixth of April, written by

(08:32):
Derek Cheng, and I congratulate him on the job that
he's done now in a moment. Rodney Hyde Buccerlan is
a natural oral vaccine in a tablet form called bacterial.
I say it. It'll boost your natural protection against bacterial

(08:55):
infections in your chest and throat. A three day course
of seven Buckolan tablets will help your body build up
to three months of immunity against bugs which cause bacterial
cold symptoms. So who can take buccolan well, whole family
from two years of age and upwards. A course of
Buckoland tablets offers cost effective and safe protection from colds

(09:15):
and chills. Protection becomes effective a few days after you
take buccolan and lasts for up to three months. Following
the three day course. Buckolan can be taken throughout the
cold season, over winter, or all year round. And remember
Buckelan is not intended as an alternative to influenza vaccination,
but may be used along with the flu vaccination for

(09:36):
added protection. And keep in mind that millions of doses
have been taken by Kiwi's for over fifty years. Only
available from your pharmacist. Always read the label and users directed,
and see your doctor if systems persist. Farmer Broker Aucklums
Layton Smith Rodney Hyde is a former New Zealand politician

(10:03):
of the ACT Party Act New Zealand. He was the
leader of the party for a a period of time
from two thousand and four to two thousand and eleven.
He represented the Epsom constituency from two thousand and five
to twenty eleven, and there are other aspects to Rodney
Hyde's career in politics. I always thought he was very good,

(10:26):
except that we did have one particular disagreement, which I'm
not going to raise again because we've done it too
many times. Besides, it's a long time ago, but had
to do with traffic. The reason that I wanted to
talk with Rodney this week in this podcast was because
I suddenly realized, so I went and checked online. The
last time we spoke was in Podcasts two seventy five

(10:50):
on March twelve last year. Here we are in April,
thirteen months later, and it's been a long time, so
I thought it was about time. Rodney. It's great to
have you back.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
What's a great pleasure, and honored to be with you later.
And I can't tell you how much I enjoy you
conversations because it's never a conversation that you just deliver
your message. It's like a deep conversation of back and
forth and which you learn, which is the best conversation
of war. And one of the things that amazes me

(11:23):
is how we've lost the art of conversation. And what
I love about podcasts is I think they're bringing it back.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
Well, you may well be right. The other thing I
didn't mention was, of course that you when you were
in Parliament, you were the only politicians who were any
sort of degree in science, the only one who had
the legitimate right to make scientific commentary. Has that changed,
do you know?

Speaker 3 (11:49):
I don't know, but that's not quite true. There was,
for example, that amazing in p. Lockwood Smith. He was
an astonishing a member of Parliament, astonishing person, and he
had a PhD in science. What I was at the
time was and it was often drawn upon. I never
did but because I'm not into qualifications. But I was

(12:11):
the only one with a degree in environmental science and
in fact two master's degrees in environmental science.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Okay, so everything I've said is now applicable only to
what you just said and not my all encompassing comments.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
Yes, yes, I didn't mean to greet you.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
I think one should be corrected.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
Well. And so when I was in an argument with
Greens or with journalists, it was often pointed out by
others that I had a degree mainly Richard Prebble in
environmental science advanced degrees, and not that I felt that
should make a difference to the argument. But I couldn't
believe it that. Back in like two thousand, I was

(12:56):
arguing about global warming, and I particularly remember Guy in
Espiner from TVMZ just chadding to me in the hall
one saying, I just can't believe that you took this nonsense.
Do you just think there are votes in it? And
it was like, no, it's because it's not true. And
I can remember campaigning in Ipsum and having lovely ladies

(13:22):
come up to me, elderly ladies come up to me
and say, look, they really enjoyed me, but they couldn't
vote for me because I didn't care for the environment.
And I said, well, how is that so? And it
would always be because I opposed the attack on fossil
fuels because it was going to destroy the planet. So

(13:45):
that's the background to that environmental science came.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Well, I see this morning that the aforementioned journalist and
one other are defending themselves in a manner with regard
to yes, so someone who I have a great deal
of time for, and that's very sober.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
Yes, And and I can well picture it. And I
can also picture it that they wouldn't be aware of
how nasty they were being to someone else. They would
be unaware of it, and so they defend themselves. They
not know. It's just a bit of back and forth.
But as you get older later and you become I
think you and I would agree maybe that you become

(14:30):
a lot more aware of other people and how what
you think is okay isn't okay. So I can imagine
them thinking that it was just a bit of robust bender,
but it can still be quite hurtful, and that's how
I would have seen it.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Now. I don't want to surprise you, but I'm going
to mention the fact that we were having a conversation
before the recording and you were telling me a story
about Carl Popper, and I've decided that that's what I
want to lead with. Why don't you start at the
beginning of that and just work your way through it,

(15:07):
because I think it's I think it's very interesting.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
One of my great intellectual heroes is KYL. Popper. He
was a philosopher. He actually wrote one of his great
books called The Open Society's Enemies here in New Zealand,
or he was came here because he was escaped Vienna
and it was his first job actually as a university

(15:32):
lecturer in an agricultural college. Had a great impact at
Kennerby University on students and his philosophy. I was working
at University iron environmental science only enough modeling with computers,
and even was so excited by computers modeling things, and
we in particular were modeling the depletion of coal in

(15:53):
New Zealand and when it would run out and what
we should do. And I was troubled by how could
you tell whether a model was true or not? And
people looked at me a bit odd because they were
just building more and more complicated models. And I thought, well,
maybe I can find this out if I look at
philosophy of science. So I did what I always used
to do back then, before I came across Carl Poper.

(16:15):
Was just read the latest textbooks on philosophy of science
and they were all dismissive of Carl Popper, and I
just took on the criticism of him and why he
was wrong. But I was left with nothing and nowhere
to guide. And I was in the University of Canterbury Library,
the James Hype Building late one night and just certaintipity,
isn't it amazing? I looked across the table that I

(16:38):
was sitting at and here was Carl Popper's great book,
written in nineteen thirty six in German and published in
English in nineteen fifty nine. Ah, gosh, this name, it's
going to come to me. Oh, isn't that terrible? Anyway?
It was his great work on epistemology. And I started
reading occasionally and it was very clearly and very beautifully written.

(17:02):
He wrote it, and he wrote to copy himself in
English with the help of Bill Bartley, and in the
first thirty or so pages that I just started reading,
he responded to every criticism that I had come across,
and he did that in nineteen thirty six and explained
why they were wrong. They had a profound effect on me,
and from that moment on I never took anything for granted.

(17:24):
I'd go back to the historical text, never rely on
a second hand account. Anyway, I read his great work
and I thought it was amazing and had profound significance.
It's what took me from being an intellectual socialist to
being a free marketeer, although I think it's in my
nature to like entrepreneurship and free market ideas. But it

(17:49):
explained science to me. Is this idea that we have
these universal statements, these theories that can come from anywhere.
They can come from our dreams, they can come from
our wild imaginings, doesn't matter where they come from, and
we use them to organize the world. And the critical
thing about sciences is that we go out of our
way to test them and test into destruction, and in

(18:14):
particular we test them against competing ideas of how the
world works. And we can't know for sure whether a
theory is true, but we can certainly know if it's false,
and in that way, by eliminating false theories, our knowledge
of the world can grow, even though we can't have
certitude about how the world works. And the great example,

(18:37):
of course that he would draw upon, which affected him
when he was aged just seventeen, was the testing of
Einstein's theory of general theory general theory of relativity by Edington,
and Einstein himself had written an article, I think, in
the Times newspaper and English newspaper, a letter saying if
you watch the if you watch the sol of eclipse

(18:59):
in the star moved by this amount, it'll support my theory.
If it doesn't move by that amount, my theory is wrong.
And that had a big impact on Kyle Popper, the
young Chilpopper, because he was then a Marxist, and he
said everything in the newspaper confirmed Marxism to be true,

(19:20):
and even what wasn't in the newspaper confirmed that Marxism
is true. And here was this great signist saying, well,
if this happens, I'm wrong, and that was the basis
of his epistemology, and of course it has a great
ramification for how you think about policy and politics, because
he says, a great thing about a democracy isn't that

(19:43):
you get the right policy, but that you can eliminate
the really bad ones over time, and therefore society can progress.
And of course the great thing about a free market
is it has this multiplicity of competing ideas of how
to employ resources, and the market eliminates the bad ones,

(20:04):
and so that's why a free market prospers. It's actually
about the use of knowledge. And so that was Carl Bob.
But the star and the story we got through was
this was all happening to me. I had a huge
impact on me. It meant that I left realized the
environmental science was wrong, that you know, what we were,
what I'd been taught was wrong. So I wrote him
are we note, thanking him because he'd had a profound

(20:26):
influence on me, and here he was still alive, and
I wrote him a note thanking him that it had
this big impact, and amazing that he sent me a
handritten note back and founded pen. I couldn't believe it.
If I got a letter from Adam Smith. I couldn't
have been more surprised. And he included, he said, this
is my latest book. He said, I don't know what

(20:48):
the world will make of it, but I think it's
quite good. I'm quite proud of it. And it's and
I wrote it in my I think, he said, eighty
nineth and ninetieth year. And it was a little book
based on lectures he'd given called A World of Propensities,
and all his life, like Einstein, he had been trying
to solve the problem in physics, which was the problem

(21:09):
of indeterminism, the idea that we can't be certain about
particles because the way light interacts with them, and the
Eisenberg's uncertainty principle. And I read this book most carefully
because he'd send it to me. And I couldn't understand it.
I couldn't understand it at all because I didn't know
enough about physics. Pretty embarrassing to be reading a book

(21:31):
by a guy in his ninety ninth decade, and he
was mere young, a young young whippersnapp And I couldn't
follow it at all, and so I put it aside.
And I've never met anyone who's read the book or
studied the book, even Popper fans who could explain it
to me, because a lot of Popper fans are philosophers

(21:53):
or not physicists. Anyway, last summer, I'm a great fan
of AI. I love AI just I think it's amazing.
I just think we're living in the most glorious age
in so many ways, and AI is one of the
things that's making it glory. And I had nothing to
do it. Summer. I was away with the family and
I just started on my phone texting, Oh have you

(22:16):
read this book? Oh yes, AI see to read that book.
And I said, well, could you explain it to me?
And we had a one hour conversation. I wasn't talking.
I tended type on my phone and explained the book
to me, but explained the book to me in a
way like I had Sir Carl Popper talking to me.

(22:37):
It was breathtaking, absolutely breathtaking, and it's just one of
those many examples where people of usday I and realized
that the whole world is now different. Because I had
sitting at a family do disengaged from the conversation, I
was sitting chatting in my mind's eye with to Carl Popper,

(23:02):
about the last book where he published, and he was
explaining it to me.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
How long ago was that that? You this summer AI,
last summer.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
Oh. I had AI before that, but it was that's
when that was like to me a drum. Before that,
I was using it doing silly things, nothing profound, nothing
that had troubled me. And this had troubled me for
thirty years, not knowing or understanding this book. And in

(23:36):
an hour I could grasp it. Don't expect me to
explain it, but I grasped.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
I was about to ask you, but I did it.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
At the moment, I thought, this is like I used
to think libraries were amazing. I used to think encyclopedias
were amazing because you could go and then find stuff out.
But imagine being able to effectively talk to the author.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
I think it's brilliant what you've just told us, Absolutely
a brilliant story. Now AI. I think we'll come back
to AI a little later if it suits our purposes.
But talking of books, atlases and dictionaries and what have you,

(24:22):
they're not used anymore. If they are, it's it's so
little that it's almost irrelevant.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
Now.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
At one stage of my life, I was I was.
I tried selling them a door to door. I can
only take so many doors being slammed in the face.
But it intrigued me, and I did have a collection
at home. I talked my parents into, when I was younger,
into buying me some some of these books. They did,

(24:51):
they did? They get my full attention, worthy of the
money that my parents paid. No, they didn't, but having
them made me feel well. I was I was close
to an answer if I needed it. Yes, Now, let
me get you to turn your attention to to the
New Zealand economy at this point, and we're going we're

(25:13):
heading toward an election. I have fears about this election.
They don't matter. Tell me what's wrong with New Zealand,
and then I'm going to ask you to tell me
what's right with New Zealand.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yes, the trouble worth New Zealand is just government. We
have government throttling everything that we do an attempt to do,
and we don't appreciate it the extent of it. We
for a normal person, government deserves them. It's not destructive

(25:51):
because you don't see what otherwise would have been created
in the absence of government, and we would be rich
beyond our dreams if we hadn't had government explode what
it did in the post the nineteen sixties. So the
big thing that's wrong with with New Zealanders the government.
And of course it's the politicians that run it, and

(26:14):
we vote for them and the other ones promising always
to fix the economy, and yet it's the very government
that is front and center of it. My father got
married in nineteen forty seven. They didn't have any money.

(26:34):
My father was able to scrap together enough to buy
a block of land, and he and his brother and
his father in law cut trees down on that land
and pit sawed them, which for listeners who are younger,
that means digging a trench and having two men saw

(26:55):
one man standing in the bottom of the trench and
one man standing above it. And you take a log
and you manually saw it down its length to make
a four but two extraordinary extraordinary hard work. And so
they pit swored for batoos and built a house. How

(27:16):
long did it takes still, I don't know. I think
it was nine months. He had none note for work
or so I got that in my head. I don't know.
Took time off work. The builder, his father in law
helped him with the building, and he built a house
and sheds. That house is still there to this day. Now,
my father he wouldn't have asked anyone's permission. He would

(27:38):
never have got a consent. It would never have occurred
to him. And he took a big chunk of land,
it was like sixty acres, sixty five acres that had
just been let loose, and turned it into a small
farm and a house that stands to this day. Never
looked And that was how it was done. And he
wasn't the building. He wasn't actually a very good craftsman.

(27:59):
His father in law helped him, and he himself wasn't
a qualified builder. And you think my father's error. You
can't even paint your house without getting permission.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
Now, No, But there's a difference. There's a difference that
I've picked up. So I'm going to semi challenge you.
Is sixty acres. It's a lot of land. I've built
on forty acres, but I didn't have anything to do
with putting it together. All I'm saying is that you've
got a sixty acre piece of land. So it's out

(28:34):
in the country somewhere, and it's yours would Why would
you need anybody's permission to be able to build a
house on it? Why would you? But with the change
of time and the change in population numbers and the
expansion of cities and all that goes with it, including

(28:56):
the services that are provided, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Is it not appropriate that you have some rules and regulations?

Speaker 3 (29:03):
Of course, But the issue is less who is deciding
those rules and regulations. So, for example, absent government, if
you lived cheek by jail in inner city, of course
you'd have rules. And of course there were always common
law rules about how you could interfere with your neighbor's property.
You couldn't block the sun and things like that, right,

(29:26):
and they were well established, and that also be established
at the formation of the subdivision. But you don't need
government setting up a rule that says, if you would
like to do anything on your land, you need to
come and get us get our permission. You certainly don't

(29:47):
need that. You need you need rules, But the rules
can be voluntary and can be decided by the community,
the group the neighbors are based around common law principles,
just as it was done for yolks. We tend to
look to the past, and so it was all terrible.

(30:08):
They were just putting their poop out on the street,
and we think that was because government didn't stop them.
And it all changed when government came along and said
you can no longer put your poop in the street. No,
it changed because of technology and wealth. That's what changed it.
Government never forced those changes. Technology and wealth did. And

(30:33):
now you don't need government to be telling you those things.
And think of it like this. The most intricate things
that we are doing now are occurring in the most
unregulated part of the economy, which is say, the manufacture
of silicon chips and software development in AI totally unregulated.
The reason that we've had this explosion in the Internet

(30:56):
over the last thirty years forty years is because governments
have never got around to properly regulating it like they
have every other industry, and so it's been unpair of
our progress and wealth creation because you can't No one
thought that you could block someone from developing a computer
program until recently, but we've throttled everything else.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
By the ways that blocking. And I presume you're talking
about kids under sixteen year.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
Old, not just kids. But like we've had huge, huge,
and huge in positions on software development and particular AI development,
with governments regulating even their financing.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
You say, do you see this government.

Speaker 3 (31:43):
No, I'm saying because of securing in the United States,
the development securing in the United States. But it was
amazing that under the Bided administration has come out that
you know, your funding would be threatened by the federal government.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
And yet and yet, only this morning we went for
a quick walk around the block to wake us up,
and we passed the site that we've been watching for
some time being cleared. It's a fairly large piece of
land being cleared and developed, and all of a sudden
they've made a rush on it, and it's now obvious

(32:19):
exactly how it's going to be. It's got two rows
of housing and down the middle of that. Down the
middle of those two rows is one driveway that is
only wide enough for one car to get from A
to B from the beginning to the end or the
other way or whatever it is.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
It is.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
It is a ghetto in the making, of course. And
there's another one that's a couple of miles away or
a couple of kilometers away that we gave up on
ages ago, got something like thirty six houses on it
on an ordinary block of land. How can that happen?

Speaker 3 (32:57):
Why is it one?

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Why would it be that, even though there's been a
fur roor over this lately, why would it be that
this place is being constructed the way that it is.
It's a ghetto. I've got more emphasis on it. It's
a damn ghetto.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
It's appalling. But again, the funny thing is we look
at that and we think, oh, that shouldn't be about
to happen. We need to regulate that the actual development
is an exact consequence of the regulations, because what we
have is this extraordinary rule based system overseen by architects. No,

(33:38):
when I say architects, not architects and the design scenes.
Architects in the sense of making the rules, who want
us to live a certain way, to satisfy their dreams
and aspirations of utopia, which is a hellhole, which is
to dram us all up in apartments next door to
a train station, so we don't have our cars and

(34:01):
our freedom, and developers come along and to make money,
they just make the cheapest thing that will fit within
the rules. There's no beauty or architecture allowed, because as
soon as you make something slightly different, you have to
go and get a consent, you have to go and
get a permit, you have to go and consult with everyone.

(34:23):
So it's just become a cookie cutter because of the
rules and regulations. There was a reason why in olden
times we could build beautiful buildings, beautiful cathedrals, even our
houses would be constructed with such care and beauty that
it was breathtaking. And there's a reason why in Soviet

(34:47):
Russia the buildings were all appalling. It's because of central
control and trying to build things rules based from the center,
and of course those that are in the center always
have their tyrannical view of how things should go, and
they're always third rate people. And the people that ordinarily

(35:08):
to create and produce and design a first rate people
who can't operate within that system. That's what we've lost.
If you actually stripped away all rules on a piece
of land and said no, you can make what you like,
you'd see beauty emerge.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Is there a political party now that could convey that.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
No, And I don't think there ever has been, because
it requires a deep philosophical shift because people struggle. I struggle,
you struggle. We struggle to imagine what the world would
look like under a completely different set of what you

(35:55):
might call institutional arrangements or completely different philosophical approach. We
just accept the way it is. We accept house prices
being totally unaffordable for the next generation. We totally accept
that if I want to improve my house, I have

(36:16):
to to tough go to the government for consent, and
in that process have to consult with local ev and
pay them money in order to do a law improvement
to my property. We just accept which is nowhere else
in the world to my knowledge, acc which is a
terrifically corrupt and corrupting system, the Irima totally corrupt and

(36:38):
corrupting system. The level of text that we play totally
corrupt and corrupting. And when I say corrupting, I don't
mean corrupting in a criminal sense, because Parliament makes it
all lawful, but I mean corrupting of the people that
are running it and corrupting of the citizens that are

(36:58):
having to endure it. And it's got to the point
now where I feel as though we're, like, you know,
living in a Soviet system. We're literally people accept os
sols and Knitsen pointed out that we know they're lying,
they know they're lying, and they know that we know
they're lying till they lie. And examples of that now

(37:21):
with the New Zealand and indeed every Western country abound
where we just go along with the lies, and on
your podcast you're confronting them on a wiki basis.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
Then you've mentioned governments. You've mentioned governments, but what is
the check on governments?

Speaker 3 (37:40):
Well, ultimately, as you get to vote them out, this
is the car pop upon. So the great thing about
living in a democracy isn't that you get the government
that you want because you and I could never agree
on that. Two people couldn't agree on that, three people
that couldn't agree on it. But we know that if
a government got really, really bad, we could chuck them
out if they started shooting people in the street, which

(38:02):
is what tyrannical government does.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Eventually, you mean like in Iran.

Speaker 3 (38:09):
Or pop Pot. If you have democracy, you say, well,
actually I wasn't keen on this other government, but unless
they didn't shoot people in the street, you know what
I mean, So you can vote that out. But of course,
and that's the virtue of democracy. But what democracy doesn't
prevent as a slow slide, and that's what we've had
as a slow slide. And of course that's what's interested

(38:31):
me in my year's post parliament is what has been
What is the thing that you need to stop that slide?
Because the greatest political document ever written, in my mind
is the American Declaration of Independence, followed by the American Constitution,

(38:55):
and they serve to reign in government, but only well,
almost immediately they were being used by politics, and of
course now they're totally usurped by politics. And I thought, wow,
if the American Constitution can be diminished and you end

(39:15):
up with this humongous government like you have in America
that is uncontrollable and ungovernable, what hope is there? And
that's been the puzzle, all right.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
So, like you, I've said for a long long time,
the greatest, the greatest document ever written was the American
Constitution when it comes to governments. I mean, yes, with
the American Constitution, and anybody who's who's read the history
of its formation understands how difficult it was, how they

(39:50):
how they fought it out, how they sought for it.
And then here we are that brings us on if
I can launch a further afield to the current administration.
Is Trump any better than anybody else or worse than
any body else?

Speaker 3 (40:09):
I genuinely love him to me. He's exciting and unique
and absolutely astonishing. We've never seen a political figure like
him in our lifetime. And Victor Davis Hanson describes them

(40:31):
as like the unnamed Gunslinger in those Hollywood westerns, which
of course are based on Greek stories themselves, but they
speak to us deeply. And you have a town out
on the frontier that has become lawless, and there are
these bandits that basically run the town. They might be

(40:52):
the big Raja, and the sheriff is too scared to
do anything because of these bad men. And then we
have John Wayne or Clint Eastwood figure come into town,
and he's a killer, doesn't care, doesn't he not scared
of death, He's not scared of anything. We know he's
got a trouble past. And he comes into town and

(41:14):
he sees the frightened men and the frightened woman and children,
and the sheriff too scared to move, and he goes
to work. It's not pretty and he shoots up the
bad men and restores the town. But he's the thing.
He always rides off, and he has to ride off
because he's not a man fit for civilized living. That's

(41:36):
the nature of the story, because the man capable of
taking out the bad guys is not civilized. And that's
how Victor Davis Hanson views Trump, and I follow that
that Trump is this person who doesn't fit any of
the rules or ways of doing things, but he's ridden

(42:00):
into politics, into Washington, and he's attempting to clean it up,
and he does things that when they occur, I think
that's terrible's I can't believe he said that. I can't
believe he did that. But as I dwell and I think, well,
and then I see it for oftentimes the brilliance that

(42:21):
it is, I am in awe of him and what
he's created. I mean, he's recreated the Republican Party. And
I think, whether Western civilization or Christian civilization, which is
a better way of saying it, because Western civilization is

(42:42):
really Christian civilization. We just struggled to say christ If
Christian civilization, which we all aspire to, I believe survives,
it hinges a little bit on. I think it hinges
a lot on Donald Trump's success and his successes.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
Here's an interesting question at the function the other night.
If that's murderer had succeeded and taken Trump out, what
do you think the result might have been.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Well, I think it would be catastrophic. And I wouldn't
have thought that until Charlie Kirk was taken out, because
I thought I followed Charlie Kirk and he had a
big impact on me and the even bigger impact on
my wife. When I say followed him, we'd listened to
him when he was in debate and university, he listened

(43:36):
to him being interviewed, listened to his podcasts when we could,
and then he was assassinated at a university debating people.
We were mortified, of course, but we thought there's this
great outflowing. It was extraordinary, and we thought his legacy
will continue and grow stronger. No one can fill his shoes,

(43:59):
and so you can see we do have these amazing people,
and shooting them works because they're not is, They're not replaceable,
and I can't imagine at this stage someone stepping into
Donald Trump's shoes. There are great men in history and

(44:19):
I'm hoping that Donald Trump sufficiently changes the direction of
the US's travel that a JD. Vance or Marco Rubio
can come along and continue and build on the legacy.
But I think if he was taken out, it would stop.
There's a reason that the left are so repeatedly attacking

(44:42):
him and calling them hitler. It's because they do want
them taken out es unquestionably, and they want them taken
out because they know it works.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
Did you hear his comments since that attempt? One of
the interviews he did and he was asked why, Yes,
I did. Why do you think they target you? I
thought it was a very fascinating response. Was because he
was great, and he drew attention to a bunch of

(45:14):
other American presidents who fell into the same or similar
category because he was because he is changing America for
the better. Can you hear the screams of objection now?
Because he's changing American for the better, therefore he's undermining
those who have the worst in mind for the future.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
Yes, he has taken on the entire apparatus we have
never seen. We have never seen anything like it. But
here's the thing, we had never seen anything like it
of what was before him, and our worst conspiracy theories
never got deep enough or evil enough to uncover actually

(45:57):
what was going on. Who would have believed that the
government was controlling Facebook and Twitter and what could be said?
Who would believe that federal agents and the organization from
the top down would tell lies and orchestrate lies in

(46:19):
order to destroy a presidency with the Russian hoax or
the fine people hopes.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Well, not just not just tell lies, but tell lies
under under oath.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Who would have believed that the Southern Poverty Law Center
as is if you said this, if you and I
were having a conversation a year ago and said, oh,
that Southern Poverty Law Center, you know it's got a
budget of one hundred plus million and it's you know,
rooting our evil Who would have believed if you'd said

(46:52):
it was funding the ku Klux Klan, you would? I
would look at you sideways. I think Leyden's lost it.
It's now federal charge.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Well, I've got to tell you that I may not
have believed it, but it wouldn't have surprised me.

Speaker 3 (47:08):
No, I guess that's true. But what this is extraordinary stuff.
And I've got my friends and people who hate Donald
Trump and dislike me because I like them and love them,
and that always telling They're always telling me. I say why,

(47:29):
and then they tell me a story that has been
in the media over and over and over again and
they believe it. Oh, he doesn't like democracy because he
was never going to concede. He is never going to
concede the race. No, he wanted to ensure the count

(47:51):
and there was enough doubt about that election that a
proper checking should have been done. We would never allow
such a system to occur with the New Zealand and
consider it a safe election. But you can't even have
that conversation why, Because propaganda works, and that's what our

(48:12):
news has become. If it wasn't always.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Well, when I ask you the question of who is
responsible for it as you were as we were speaking
back then a few minutes ago, I had in mind
the media. The media because it's filled with people who
aren't thinkers, aren't prepared to be proven wrong, that that

(48:40):
wants a certain result, the same as it might be
for the New York Times of the Washington Paste or whatever. Yes,
And if you want the greatest example of all, it's
climate change. And they're now they're now being you told
me if I'm wrong. But we've reached a point now
where they are being shown up as fools totally.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
And of course they were shown up as fools from
day one. The whole thing was alive from the beginning.
They made you know, the whole thing was an orchestrated
the orchestrated lie and the ozone hole. They were so
successful at getting rid of chloroflorocarbons for no reason, for

(49:24):
a completely spurious reason. And then they went for the
big canuna, which was CO two. And just like we
had to have an international framework to destroy refrigeration, they said,
let's go for the big one. Go after fossil fuels
through CO two, make it a virtue, and we will
destroy Christian civilization. It will crumble. They hate it. They

(49:48):
hate these people that we're dealing with, these ruling elites
that we're dealing with, Not the politicians, not the media,
but they're ruling elites who chiefly the un They hate
us with a passion. They must hate themselves, and they
want to destroy everything is great and good and so

(50:09):
by our entire progress is powered by cheap energy, and
that's the industrial revolution, is harnessing energy. It's our next
revolution is being going to be harnessing at even greater level.
So what do they go after. They go after it
totally spurious, but just keep promoting it and promoting it

(50:32):
in problem with lie after lie after lie, with doom,
prediction after protection after prediction, not one ounce of humility,
not one ounce of when the evidence proved totally wrong.
And of course they win because as you say, the
media are unwitting fools or maybe witting fools, I don't
know what. They go along with it, and anyone who

(50:55):
questions it is immediately destroyed. And you look at that
and you say, I've got a mortgage to pay, family
to feed. We know they're lying, and they know we
know their lie.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
Well, I can't let that go until we include the
last few years, which is a different ballgame altogether. But
there is a connection, and the connection is obvious, I think,
But if you need it, it's to do with the
administration and the way that it destroyed this country over

(51:34):
the COVID period, and I can't put it any other way.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
They destroyed it, totally changed us forever and used that
time to institute a coup over New Zealand. With the
many changes unrelated to COVID that were pushed through at
that traumatic time for people like full term abortion, radical

(51:59):
reordering of education, radical reordering of government institutions, all of
them who willingly jump for it because they're primed to
do this, and the nature of the people that live
within government intellectually and on paper, very very clever people,

(52:20):
but at the same time totally lacking in any wisdom
and therefore stupid, and they went along with all of
this nonsense. And of course nowadays there's also been this
wonderful thing of we quickly learned under the COVID administration
just since to return her lot, that objection was futile

(52:45):
and debate was not to be had, and that's gone
right through our public life. You could be a plumber
later and you could be destroyed and you lose your
license because you speak your minder about COVID or the treaty,
and you will be paraded. Your head will be chopped

(53:07):
off on a pike, and you'll be paraded through the
national news and you think, WHOA. So there's people working
in every corporate New Zealand they just go along with
the nonsense. Oh you we do a karake and now
we do this, and oh, yes, we're worry about climate change.
Oh used to be worry about diversity. All this and total,

(53:30):
all the elements of success which built Christian civilization are undermined.
One of the great insights of World War two was
the weast one because they had a superior economy over time,
but also on the battlefield, they would listen to individual

(53:51):
initiative and ideas sort of flow on from living in
a free society and a democratic society. It's why free
societies can fight well. So you could be a sergeant
and make a suggestion, you would travel up the chain,
if you know what I mean, And until it wasn't
all top down. Napoleon was the same. He allowed for that.

(54:13):
And this is what we don't have now. We have
these corporate governance boards in our companies who make wolves
and everyone else just wancely heed. And this is how
it's done. The stupidest one that ever got me, And
I'm amazed, amazed, and everyone I knew that it was
the most wonderful thing. Too. Stupid things, paper, bloody straws, yes,

(54:35):
and no plastic bags in a supermarket.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
I knew you were going to say that.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
That infuriated me if you know what, I just live
with it now, or you don't have a choice, don't
have a choice.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
Just insane, all right, So it would it not be
justified if I said to you, well, one of the
problems with plastic bags was that they were everywhere in
the gutters and flying around because people treated them like rubbish.
Is they could just throw out of the car window.

(55:07):
You don't see that more so? Is that not a
suitable argument for its introduction?

Speaker 3 (55:15):
No, because we shouldn't letter, of course. And I don't
think it's true that littering has gone down in many ways.
People dumping rubbish has gone up again because they pretend
that landfills are a scarce resource and charge you a
huge amount of money to dump rubbish, so people get

(55:38):
around it by just dumping it anywhere, becoming a huge problem.
And again that's entirely manufactured, the idea that you know,
New Zealand or any country has a shortage full space,
but we could have Yeah, there's no excuse about Donald
Trump bought plastic stores back and don't see there being

(56:01):
a problem. But it's a manufactured problem, and it's sort
of almost like and we saw this I think in
COVID years, it became apparent because it was so rapid,
and they sort of hit for many of us, which
was an overreach. So we'd been like the frog cooking
in the pot. That's how I would think of myself.

(56:23):
And then suddenly the pot got community degrees hotter and
I noticed. And that's what happened with COVID, where you
suddenly realized these rules were insane, and these rules were
dramatic and traumatic on people individually, on families, on society,
on production, and they had no rhyme nor reason, and

(56:44):
the media were writing up stories that were clearly false,
clearly false. You know, a respiratory virus got into New
Zealand on a frozen bit of chicken. Oh, there's been
a problem in a supermarket. We have to do a
deep clean. It was supposedly a respiratory virus. There wasn't

(57:04):
one thing said about COVID that was true, not one thing.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
They can't think of it.

Speaker 3 (57:10):
I started off sort of listing the lines, and then
I started looking for the truth, and they turned New
Zealand into what you couldn't have managed. Guys. I hate
doing these analogies, but I'll just say you couldn't have
imagined in the most totalitarian system, you know, the idea
that you would have to cheek in to go for
a cafe.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
Let me transfer attention to what we're just what we've
just been through, and that's the ANZAC weekend, Anzac Day.
And we went down to the we went down to
the dawn service, lovely. I was given no choice, but
I went willingly and it was hugely delightful. The number

(57:54):
of people was countless. And that's that's in Brown's Bay now.
The reason I'm raising it is that there was much
to be said about the past and those who died
for it, but not much was said about the future.
And don't you think there is a sound argument for

(58:16):
on Anzact Day to take part of that time to
warn about the future.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
Yes, I don't think we should do it on ANZAC Day,
Oh I do.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
The time. It's the time that you've got people together
thanking those who have done something that they died for,
but then walking away thinking well, that'll ever happen again
or whatever runs through independent and individual minds. But there
is so much that needs to be held in check,

(58:51):
so much that needs to be forewarned for.

Speaker 3 (58:53):
I think, well, I would do it every other day.
And the reason I wouldn't do it an anzact days,
I would get so irritated at every inject breade I
went to with whoever was Prime minister, because suddenly that
always make a point. And I was there for one
reason only, and the reason I was there was to

(59:14):
remember the dead and those who served. And as soon
as you try and give a warning, Helen Clark would
give a warning, Jimmy Ships, you would give a warning,
Jim Bolge, you would give a warning or try and
draw a message from that great loss. In my mind,
I'd say, oh, I don't agree with that, and suddenly
I'm not there paying my respects. I agree with your

(59:39):
sentiment one hundred percent. And I find it deeply ironic.
I always found it very ironic. Helen Clark would go
along Dangact day and pontificated about the loss and talk
about it as though we had suddenly arrived in a
new nirvana. We would never again have the song, and

(59:59):
back then it was just that we were stupid and
the leaders were stupid and we didn't have the un
and you know that's bump. But she would deliver that
messa and so to me, I don't want a message
delivered on Anzac Day. To me, it's a memory. And
there's three hundred and sixty four and a half days.

(01:00:19):
We can deliver that message half a day.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
I shall, I shall terminate it there.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
No, they'd be sorry. It's all about it's all about
the discussion.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
Yes, And I agree with you because I take the
ANZAC message very seriously. And we think we're so smart,
don't we. And you know, to sender invented kindness and
if we just had kindness back in nineteen fourteen, the
world would have been a different place. What a mad, crazy, deceitful,
tyrannical woman. That is.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Well, speaking of which, the gun laws was introduced. Everybody
went along with it, didn't they.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
Yeah, why to speak ah cal Popa said, he said
about New Zealand and people regarded it as a compliment.
He said he regarded New Zealand in the forties as
the best governed country in the world and the most
easily governed, and everyone regarded it as a compliment. But

(01:01:28):
we know that that's a serious dick because you shouldn't
be easily governed and you don't want the best government.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
They got very well said.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
But we go along with it because we're high on agreement.
Even me, when I disagreed with you, I felt a twinge.
And we've been conditioned not to disagree. And it's very
very hard now to disagree. And men have been totally

(01:01:59):
shut up for years until they won't even have free thoughts,
And so you sit there, dutifully suffering through nonsense. I
go along to our local school and there's assembly for
a function for celebrating the students, and they all dutifully

(01:02:20):
get up and say a karak here, which is thanking
and praising. I think it's the wind that God's or
the God of the wind for being kind. I looked
it up. I looked it up on my phone while
it was going on, and it told me that's what
was happening. And I wanted to throw all the trestles over.

(01:02:42):
I wanted to at least walk out what's stopped you.
I wanted to write a letter of complaint.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
You've done that before, yes.

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
But I didn't because socially, you have to get along
with people, and we've made it that it's socially unacceptable
to disagree, and no one can handle disagreement. You see,
you can, I can. I think I don't like personally
use but we can disagree, and you go in and
think we'll lead into smart guy. So they'll think about that.

(01:03:14):
And I always grow in my understanding through disagreement, because
I'll either, as John Stuart Miller observes, strengthen my own
argument for hearing a counterargument, or grow stronger in it,
or modify it or replace it. Disagreement is so important.
That's why, by the way, the tyrannical left which rule

(01:03:39):
won't allow it. They won't allow it because they know
that their system won't survive if you can disagree. They
won't even allow our kids to learn history or criticism,
or debate or alternate views. They indoctrinate them. And of
course the ultimate example of that is the violence, because

(01:04:04):
what do you do with someone who's got the wrong ideas?
You kill them. So the most prophetic book ever written,
I think, outside the Bible is nineteen eighty four.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
Pretty much so. But how many times have you read
it once?

Speaker 3 (01:04:22):
I have a good memory. I keep telling myself I
should read it again because I read it. I read
it as a school board and I thought, huh, it's
a great book. But it's bank goodness? Is it?

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
Is it? Do you think it's Do you think it's
a book that still would be worthy of being on
the reading list of high school?

Speaker 3 (01:04:46):
Absolutely? Might? It would be the number one book that
should be on the reading list of high school.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Why do you think it's not?

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
Because it's a revolutionary time and these times I'll be
surprised soon. If you can find it in the library,
you should ask. You should ask a graduate, a clever
graduate of high school who did well, what good book
they read at school?

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Blank?

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
Blank? Never happens?

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Now? Can I? Sorry?

Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
You know, I'm trying to get my kids, one girl
to read Wuthering Heights and one hour to read Pride
and Prejudice. It's a struggle because they are both good students,
but that would require a discipline that's not been instilled
in them at school. And you do your best at home.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
What about you reading it to them?

Speaker 3 (01:05:39):
I have thought of that, and I've tried it, but
it doesn't. They don't last long, by the way, but
they're getting there. And the thing is what I've noticed.
I have an older boy, so I'm a second I've
got two families, yes, and my older boy with things
that I would be pushing on home. We're pressing him
to do he wouldn't do for years later he would.

(01:05:59):
And so I bought them a copy of these books,
and I know they will read them, and because they'll think, oh,
I'm my always that is to read this book. Because
I just think even reading one great book would be
a good thing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
By the way, planting a seed.

Speaker 3 (01:06:13):
Yes, Normally, when I've been on your show in the past,
I've been terribly pessimistic. I've never been more optimistic than
I am now.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
Ah, outline it for us if you would.

Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
I think we're living in a golden age, the start
of a golden age. I think the world is amazing.
I thank God literally every day, obviously for creation, but
to be alive now, precisely because we're beating them. Your
podcast is possible. This was so close to being lost

(01:06:48):
when they were regulating Twitter and Facebook and YouTube. Do
you think that was where it was going to stop?
If things had continued on that trajectory, your podcast would
be shut down. And it was a unique individual the
likes of which we've never seen. I don't think we've
necessarily seen even in history, maybe a Julius Caesar or

(01:07:11):
a Napoleon or even a Rockefeller doesn't come close. Elon
Musk bought Twitter and blew the dammer. And once you
had one medium that was free, the others had to
open up. And so your podcast of ice, and that's
multiplied millions of times over around the world. And so

(01:07:35):
we're seeing this much greater debate than we've ever seen before.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
Stop right there if you would, Yes, I'm going to
introduce something that I think fits. Nobel Prize winning physicist
David Gross has provided a sobering timeline for the potential
end of modern civilization, citing the escalating risks of nuclear war.
The two thousand and four Nobel Laureate estimates that humanity

(01:08:00):
may have roughly thirty five years remaining before facing existential
catastrophe from nuclear conflict. In an interview, Gross detailed his
assessment based on probability calculations similar to radioactive half life models.
He noted that after the Cold War, estimates put the

(01:08:20):
annual chance of nuclear war at one percent. However, he
believes the figure is now closer to two percent. It
still sounds pretty low to me. Even after the Cold
War ended, when we had strategic arms controlled treaties all
of which have disappeared. There were estimates that there was
a one percent chance of nuclear war every year, he said,

(01:08:40):
and he continued, I feel it's not a rigorous estimate
that the chances are more likely two percent. So that's
a one in fifty chants every year. The expected lifetime,
or the expected lifetime in the case of a two
percent per year, is about thirty five years, now one more.

(01:09:02):
He pointed to deteriorating global conditions as justification for his
higher estimate. Quote, things have gotten so much worse in
the last thirty years, as you can see every time
you read the newspaper. I'll stop there goes for another
twice that long, but I'll stop there. What's your reaction
after everything that has been discussed today?

Speaker 3 (01:09:24):
The guys are full and he's a dangerous fool because
brilliant physicist got the Nobel price, but that doesn't help him,
and he knows it make prophecy or predictions about the
future political and world events. He's no expert in that.
He's got no more expertise in that than your eyes.

(01:09:46):
But he uses it. And that's why he's a dangerous
for he's trading in on his Nobel price. Status to
make a dramatic story. He might believe it, but it's
not science. And of course the media love this doomsday stuff.
Paul Juliktus died and I mean he would just endlessly
from the sixties on. You know, he hated humanity, and

(01:10:11):
people would breathlessly report him even in the face of
every prediction being wrong. This is a Fellows on you.
I don't know this guy. I'd never heard of it before.
He's just a new incantation of that so brilliant physicist,
dangerous fool. Has he got a has he got a
purpose of them just getting in the media. I don't know.
Intellectuals are funny people because by virtue of being an intellectual,

(01:10:36):
they think they're smarter than everyone else. But by their
nature they have a very narrow range of expertise in understanding.
But they'll literally look at a peasant farmer and they go,
I could tell that peasant farmer had to run that
subsistence farm better. But they have no clue because the
peasant subsistence farmer and his four bears have been doing

(01:11:01):
it for centuries. And there are a few things, but
the intellectual doesn't have the humility to think I should
go along and find out why he's doing it. That way,
he recurs to them, and they literally think from the
basis of their mind they can reorder society and make
a whole new world, change everything. Man, that's arrogance. They're

(01:11:24):
shupers from their intellectualism. Is amazing. I know this so
well because I suffered it. You did, and yes, well,
I was an environmentalist, so of course they did. I
studied a college, and I knew exactly how the world
should be organized. I followed these people, and I was

(01:11:44):
one of them. But I always had a nagging, a
nagging sense, and that's what I think is something in
my DNA and egging sense that we weren't certain. This
led me to cal Popper. But always had an egging
sense that I used to go truck driving in my
high school holidays. My father was a truck driver and
at university, and I was always useless at it. I

(01:12:06):
could drive a truck, drive a trucks, so I can walk,
but not well. And you'd go to the farm to
get something, and you'd get your truck stuck and have
to get pulled out, and every other truck driver would
look at you with division and abuse you because they
knew you didn't drive through the center of that product.
And this was Frederic Kayak's great thing about a free economy.

(01:12:29):
There's this information, this knowledge of circumstance and place that
individuals have in their life and their job. They do
because everyday knowledge that can't be centralized, and ecologist doesn't
know it, the physicist doesn't know it, but they think
they can reorder society without knowing it. So yes, I
was one of those. And the older you get, wonderfully,

(01:12:51):
the more humble you get, and you do have this
great humility, and so yes, of course it's possible that
we could destroy ourselves. We have that ability always head
and it's not to discover the possibility. I don't believe
that human civilization will always have if you'd be it
but foolish to think that, and you'd actually have to

(01:13:12):
think it could end this afternoon to possibility. But the
idea that a noble prize winning physicist can put a
probability on it and then attached a date to our
life is absurd and it distracts from well, how do
we make the world a safer place? Well, jump onto
one of our topics. Just thought, I ran.

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
Out, Well, that was a brilliant response and I can't
disagree with it at all. Why don't we conclude with
I asked you about the negatives, what was wrong with
New Zealand. So let's take a look at the other side.
Give me a short list of what's good and right

(01:13:54):
about New Zealand.

Speaker 3 (01:13:56):
Well, New Zealand's a wonderful country. Obviously we're taken by beauty,
but we also have a great history, albeit not well
taught and understood. But a history of the Marry history
is wonderful because these were a great people who traveled

(01:14:19):
across the Pacific and survived right at the limits of
living in terms of temperature, in terms of food, but
they survived and they developed something like greatly Admi, which
was a great warrior culture, second to none. We go
on about the Samurai of American Indians, man oh Man.

(01:14:42):
The Mari were fantastic warrior culture and when they let rip,
they did so with great ferocity and cleverness. And when
the Europeans arrived, obviously it was traumatic, but the Europeans
in the main were amazing because they came with a

(01:15:05):
Christian ethic to save people. Oh, that's terribly arrogant didn't
prove to be because the Mary leaped at it. The
fastest adoption I would suspective Christianity as ever occurred or
been documented in the world. Mary would convert Mary within
days because a missionary would turn up at a par

(01:15:27):
not knowing whether they were to be killed and eaten
or greeted, and they had spread the good news, and
that power would release their slaves, and their slaves would
run home, and they'd arrive at their home to the
shock of their kith and kin. And that explained what
had happened. They'd explained the good news, and by the

(01:15:48):
time the missionary got to that par they'd already be
worshiping Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God. And so we
have this wonderful sheared tradition between Marion Parpiar which culminated
in the Treaty, which meant a lot at the time,
but shouldn't now, shouldn't mean anything now other than the

(01:16:09):
historical winds. So that's amazing. And if we want to
get back to it, we've got to get back to
what we shared. And then you look at New Zealand
and what New Zealand is built. Man, you've got to
be proud of that, the speed at which New Zealand
was built, the care and the love with which New
Zealand was built, the toughness, the absolute toughness, and we

(01:16:33):
are the inheritors of that. And we're so blessed because
wide thanto Us is a Christian belief. Deep down were
swimming it, as Tom Holland would observe. But also this,
no one is Jack is as good as his master man.
I love that, and that you can grow up literally

(01:16:54):
in New Zealand knowing that you can do anything and
achieve anything. With that sense of freedom and ability to
fix things. We have a skill level amongst our people
which I've never observed anywhere else in the world. So
for some reason New Zealanders have still got this that
they will attempt things and do things and fix things.

(01:17:16):
Men will fix cars, men will fix a fence. I'll
climb up and do the roof. Women will do that
as well. Men will show that sow their shorts and
cook dinner, and women will be tremendous of it. They'll
do things, they will take things on. You go to
elsewhere in the world and they tend to say, oh,
I can't do that, or it's not my job or

(01:17:36):
I don't know how keep you just get on and
do it. That number eight vrenching thing, that half gallant.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
Do you reckon that? Why it is still alive? Yes?

Speaker 3 (01:17:45):
I do because I see it. I'm fascinated because I
see it around me, and I see it in the young people.
Not all, but some. Some of them are even more
even have this greater ability. I've got a fifteen year
old daughter. I noticed the makes of friends. They have
enormous ability. You know, they're building jetboats and welding them
in their garage. I can't believe it. You know why

(01:18:07):
they can do that because they can google it, they
can see it on YouTube, and they're so across these things.
These are the go getters. And I'm in or of
it because you and I were hoping that our parents
would buying encyclopedia. These kids have the Internet and AI
at their fingertips, and because they're young and enthusiastic, they're

(01:18:28):
lapping it up and they're doing things. I've got a
young boy who goes out and literally uses a burn
arrow that he made to shoot a goat and then
guts it and cooks it. And he learned all of
that on the internet. Man, I would have loved to
do that. And then he stays out overnight in a
bivouet where he learned how to do on the internet.
So yes, we still have it, we're still creating it.

(01:18:49):
Is it a becoming? So I see it in many
ways more so, and I see actually this young people rebelling,
rebelling against this wokeness that they're getting at their school.
Just like we rebelled at our school and we let
our socks drift down our hair going there a collar.
These ones are rebelling's genderism and Trump is a bad man,

(01:19:11):
and they're rebelling against diversities, our strength. And you've got
to love a guy that's walking around in a skirt
thinking he's a girl. No, they've got it. Now what
we have to do is build on it. But we
can because I think we're going to be challenged in
the coming days, weeks and months like never before through

(01:19:33):
the Trump administration and the changes that are occurring here.
And we should be asking, well, if he can fix
crime in the cities in America, why can't we If
he can put America first, why can't we put New
Zealand first? Not to support a political party. But to
make a point, if he can, you know, sort out
the Olympics so that girl boys can't compete in girl sports,

(01:19:54):
why can't we We can do all those things. And
here's the other great thing led by Elon Musk amazingly gosh,
I don't know where he gets his ability from. We've
got AI coming, which is going to unleash a teach
you all like we've never seen before. I thought the
printing press was big or the steam engine. AI is

(01:20:15):
going to dramatically change it, but it's going to do
something else too. It's going to challenge us to what
is it to be a human being? What is different
between you and me and AI agent that we're working with.

Speaker 2 (01:20:29):
Well, I said that, I said at the beginning that
we would come back to AI ah and we don't
really have the time to give it. I apologize, not
apologies unacceptable. I have to. I have to tell you

(01:20:49):
that I have some considerable concern about aim hm, so
you should I am. I am a feared of it
for I think very sound reasons, which which I have
expressed before. And we're not I've got enough time up
our sleep today, so it'll have to wait.

Speaker 3 (01:21:11):
Well, I think you're right to be fearful because government
will want to use it in abuse it, and that's
why we have to put it, put a clamp on government.
But I think the interesting thing is about what it
is to be have a conscience, and a soul comes
to the comes to the top when you're working with

(01:21:33):
AI and you realize that a human isn't just a
material thing a computer something else. People, you could have
an AI girlfriend or wife who's beautiful and amazing, but
you want a real wife and girlfriend, don't.

Speaker 2 (01:21:53):
You If you can find one.

Speaker 3 (01:21:56):
If you can find one, But there is one there
for all of us.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
That's the question that we'll leave hanging Rodney. It's been
great and I look forward to the next one.

Speaker 3 (01:22:09):
Anytime, like I say, I'll go away, and I've have
gone this for literally days and weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:22:15):
I think you've got better things.

Speaker 3 (01:22:17):
No, can I tell you a good book to read?
Or don't you? I have never read it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:22):
It's just what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:22:24):
No, you don't need to read it, just ask Ai
to summarize it for you. It's called Alistair McIntyre, who
was a Marxiston Trotsk has wrote a book called After
Virtue and It truly shocked me and it explains why
we struggled to debate. And it's a simple book in
a way, but very complex to read. McIntire McIntyre Alistair

(01:22:46):
with a d. Mcintiem ac. It's a tremendous book. I
haven't read it and it looks a bit dense, but
the point that he makes amazing. You'll never go into
an argument or view arguments the same again, Ethans, is
this with the Enlightenment where we thought we could build

(01:23:07):
up and if system without a purpose for humans has failed?
And simply put, when you ask is that a good knife,
you've got to have a purpose for the knife to
work as a screwdriver, that's one thing. If it's to
cut met something else. But you can only define good
if you think there's a purpose, which is obvious for

(01:23:29):
humans forever since Aristotle, humans always considered themselves to have
a purpose, and of course Christianity has a purpose. And
when you say is this a good idea or not?
Or is this a good thing to do or not,
you've got to relate it back to a purpose. And
if you don't have a purpose, you just fall back
into what he calls emotivism or what feels good for

(01:23:51):
me or what suits me. So you can't have a debate,
say about abortion or euthanasia, because it's just what suits me.
But if you think that humans have a purpose, then
you can have a debate.

Speaker 2 (01:24:04):
Well, I have fulfilled my purpose this morning. There you go,
and I trust that you feel the same I do.

Speaker 3 (01:24:12):
I love it. Look, I'm talking to you as a tonic.
I hope your listeners enjoy it too.

Speaker 2 (01:24:18):
Rodnie Hyde, he will be back because neither of us
can help it. Thank you. Well, here we go for

(01:24:44):
Podcast three twenty six into the mailroom and missus producer,
good to see you later.

Speaker 4 (01:24:49):
How are you.

Speaker 2 (01:24:50):
I'm extremely well.

Speaker 3 (01:24:52):
Good. I haven't seen you all day.

Speaker 2 (01:24:54):
Well, sometimes you can get lucky. Why did you write?
Did you go?

Speaker 4 (01:25:00):
Leighton Jin says, you read a powerful quote from Germany's
energy minister Katerina Reischer, who said an energy transition that
ignores system costs will ruin the country it claims to save.
I immediately cast my mind to New Zealand's most ignorant
energy transitionists, Chloe s Warbrick and Marima Davidson, who called

(01:25:21):
for a national electrification plan with zero consideration of system costs.
Thomas Sole calls this stage one thinking, which refers to
the appeal of performative short term thinking at the cost
of effective long term impact. It's the inability to think
beyond the emotionalism of the tyranny of now. As Guy

(01:25:45):
Hatchard said, the elites have castrated the three hours of writing,
reading and arithmetic from children, and this turns them into
easy slaves of stage one thinking. While extensive use of
social media has accelerated this phenomenon, Wait till we see
what AI can do. Thomas Sole recently lamented in The

(01:26:06):
Wall Street Journal that AI was us by frauds to
quickly perpetuate things that he and Victor Davis Hanson never said,
easily deceiving those stuck in stage one thinking emotionalism. Germany's
Katerina Reisch continued in her article that we will look
back in ten years either to a country that has

(01:26:26):
lost its industry or to a country that combines climate
protection and prosperity. The decision is now being made, and
Jing goes on to say the question I have to
my fellow New Zealanders is this what decision will you
make this election?

Speaker 2 (01:26:43):
Now? That's interesting in the light of what we well
what Rodney Hi drew attention to in some of today's discussion. Now,
Nicky proffers, thank you for the interview with Guy Hatchet,
a good refresh of the serious threats to the health
of New Zealanders brought by dangerous mRNA shots, secret gene

(01:27:05):
tech and the closed, predetermined nature of the COVID injury.
I just want to ask you where you got the
number three hundred from. For the people the Prime Minister
poured water on at the protests, I took up the
unenviable task of following up tv I reports and police
reports that there were five hundred. My husband was there

(01:27:28):
at the time and through the deluge that followed, and
we are very aware of the tactic of underreporting which
plagued the news of the time. Perhaps you meant three
hundred tenths. In any case, can I please put in
a plug for the recent book release from mcgalen Barnes
and Sherborne Clement called Heart of the Protest, River of Freedom,

(01:27:52):
an excellent deposition of all the interviews collected in a
timeline of the COVID years, the year of the vaccine
and the Parliament's protest and the No jab no mandates
that wrought so much harm an important reader in an
election year, and a reminder who not to vote for

(01:28:12):
based on the rubbish restrictions a certain political party imposed.
As always, thank you for your excellent interviews. Longtime follower, Nikki,
I appreciate that Where did the three hundred come from?
Canel's the top of my head because I was talking
randomly and I know that there was the three Well,
I'm positive there was three hundred mentioned somewhere in the

(01:28:33):
coverage of those but I mean, that's the best I
can do. It wasn't an official figure, it wasn't one
that I'd recently plucked out of a report. So beat me.

Speaker 4 (01:28:44):
Laden Alan says, Iran has been voted on to the
UN Economic and Social Council, which shapes policy on women's rights,
human rights, disarmament and terrorism prevention.

Speaker 2 (01:28:56):
Is that bad enough?

Speaker 4 (01:28:58):
No, What's worse is that Canada, France, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia,
the UK, Finland, Switzerland and Austria voted in favor. Meanwhile,
the IRGC of Iran continue to execute young Iranians who
dared to protest against their vile tyranny.

Speaker 3 (01:29:17):
That's from Allen.

Speaker 2 (01:29:18):
Allen, I just don't know how these things work. I
don't know how on earth that could go through. It
leaves it leaves me cold. Now. I have thrown caution
to the wind this week and signed up to a
few emails from this slot to see what they're saying.
I won't be able to cope with the extra emails

(01:29:39):
for long, but we'll give it a go. Please note
the answer re New Zealand first slash Labor in the
subject line. I haven't finished reading it after that bit yet.
He said he would not work with Hipkins and left
the question open hanging to working with labor. Last I
heard about it. People are counting a lot of chickens,

(01:29:59):
I see Repoles. There is six months to run yet,
and it's a bit early, isn't it to be getting
all flustered about how it turns. We haven't gotten to
election day yet or the after match. Six months is
a long time and the lot to happen, and I've
already had enough of it myself. It may not be
a genteel affair to come. There is a lot of

(01:30:22):
mud to go around, that's a good way to put it.
The only thing of note is the two smaller parties
have not yet been suck dry by National at this stage,
which is unusual but understandable. And New Zealand first is trending.
It is the other end of play read this election
that will tell the tale and New Zealand's fortunes. We

(01:30:42):
also do not know the state of the world events
come October November. Well, that's the most probably the most
important of all. Have a good one from Brett Laden.

Speaker 4 (01:30:53):
Robin is talking to you about your discussion with Guy
on insurance and he or Robin he or she says,
not the same issue exactly, however, reagreed value on current assurance.
My mother ninety six has been with AMI for many years.
Unbeknown to her, the value of her car had been

(01:31:16):
written down to fifty percent of its market value, meaning
she can now not replace it with a similar car
after a traffic accident. Checking my own policy, I found
my car had been written down to thirty percent of
its replacement value. It's over to us to dispute to
the write down value. That is wrong blatantly. They are

(01:31:36):
the subject matter experts and exploit their customers trust. It
needs investigation, as do the issues Guy raised with you.

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
That's from Robert Robin. I agree with you completely. We've
got a couple of cars that I ensure every year,
and I won't say they make it difficult, but they
do to make a decision in particular not good enough.
But here's the quid pro quo, how are they going

(01:32:05):
to make a living if they don't? Now, finally, from Liz,
the election circus and re emergence of the person who
created the current miss this country is in has finally
shaken me awake. Every form of fuel is in short
supply worldwide. In spite of this, Adirn continues to travel

(01:32:27):
the world, sharing her special type of lunacy, disguised for
her deluded sycophants as a special type of leadership. As always,
she's a stunning example of do as I say, not
as I do. It sickn me to hear highly intelligent
friends who had waited ours to listen to her expound
in Wellington tell me how worthwhile that weight had been.

(01:32:51):
It seems the age old story the Emperor has no
clothes continues to prevail. I just wondering what you mean
in Wellington? Was she in Wellington recently? Any may shape
or form, always a hypocrite and never accountable for the
mess she created for generations of museum that is a
Dern clearly feels it is safe to come home after

(01:33:13):
all that other liar Chippy needs her support to lure
the faithful. Let's hope very few take the bait and
fall into the trap that's being laid to ensnare them
and their votes. A labor alliance of any sort. God
help us all, as the recovery the current government has
tried so hard to achieve won't be an option after

(01:33:34):
another three years of labor, as there will be nothing
left to work with. Best, which is Liz Ladon.

Speaker 4 (01:33:42):
I've got one more, and this is from Judy, She says,
well done, late, and yes, congratulations the best broadcaster and
radio man. So pleased for you, a broadcaster you want
to listen to and as you learn, understand more about
the events in a world that is in crisis. Thank you, Layton.

(01:34:02):
I was once a receptionist for the radio network and
that was us at newstalk s d B. The best then, too,
says Judy. Judy is so nice to hear from you.
I remember you so well. They were good times, then,
weren't they good times?

Speaker 2 (01:34:19):
The best of the best of the best and the
best of people. Missus producer, thank you, Thanks Laton for
you next week. Layton Smith. Buccerlan is a natural oral
vaccine in a tablet form called Bacterial Nice say it
It'll boost your natural protection against bacterial infections in your
chest and throat. A three day course of seven Buckland

(01:34:41):
tablets will help your body build up to three months
of immunity against bugs which cause bacterial cold symptoms. So
who can take buccolan well, the whole family from two
years of age and upwards. A course of Buckelan tablets
offers cost effective and safe protection from colds and chills.
Protection becomes effective a few days after you take buccolan

(01:35:02):
and lasts for up to three months following the three
day course. Buccolan can be taken throughout the cold season,
over winter or all the year round. And remember Buckelan
is not intended as an alternative to influenza vaccination, but
may be used along with the flu vaccination for added protection.
And keep in mind that millions of doses have been
taken by Kiwi's for over fifty years. Only available from

(01:35:25):
your pharmacist, always read the label and users directed and
see your doctor if systems persist Farmer Broker Auckland. So

(01:35:50):
that brings us to the end of podcast number three
hundred and twenty six. It's a bit frustrating because there
was so much else that I could have included in
this week and gone on for hours, and I mean
literally starting with the attempt at assassination the third one,
and then there's numerous other stories of interest, but they

(01:36:12):
will they'll wait until next week or the week after.
I just have this feeling that it's going to be
compounding every week. There will be more and more stories
and issues that need attendance, or at least that we'd
like to pay attention to. So if you'd like to
write to us Latent at newstalksb dot co dot nz

(01:36:33):
or Carolyn at newstalksb dot co dot nz, we appreciate
your emails, so don't hesitate whatever it is that you
would like to correspond about. So only thing left to
do is to say, as always, thank you for listening
and we'll be back soon.

Speaker 1 (01:36:59):
Thank you for more from Newstalks EDB. Listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio,

All Episodes

Leighton Smith Podcast #326 - April 29th 2026 - Rodney Hide

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Bleep! with Ana Navarro

Hey Jonas!

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Leighton Smith Podcast #326 - April 29th 2026 - Rodney Hide