September 4, 2024 • 41 mins
The team discuss the government's new strategy of Maximum Gloom, Donald Trump's dipshit strategy, and why you should think twice before sending a Telegram.
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Episode Transcript
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Maisie (00:00):
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
Andy (00:03):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, andI'm here in the private eye office with
Helen Lewis, Matt Muir and Ian Hislop.
We are here to discuss the news, not onlyof the last week since the last edition
of the magazine came out, but also thenear future as well, because there's a
lot of exciting stuff about to happen.
We're all back to.
School back to term.
So we're starting with, a big speech madeby Ki Starer last week, and I've just
(00:27):
got a quiz for the room to kick us off.
Which of these was notsomething that Starer said.
All right.
On the day, we're in not just an economicblack hole, but a societal black hole.
There will be short-termpain for the long-term.
Good.
It's all going to be fine really soon.
Which of those was not a genuine quote?
pretty sure it was the last one thatwasn't Yeah, it was the last one.
(00:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.
The whole time of the speech was beatingswill continue until the morale improve.
Yeah.
Ian (00:55):
Yeah.
And I should point out we are,back at school 'cause if we
are not, we're gonna be fine.
So I'm very glad to see you allin attendance apart from MacQueen.
Yeah.
who I hope will be paying the
penalty.
Helen (01:07):
He's been having a holiday outside of term time and we should
make him pay 200 pounds for it.
Yeah.
Matt (01:11):
Yes.
At least.
Yes.
Things are worse than we ever imagined.
Oh, I've slipped into quoting again.
Sorry.
but this is the new, dominantnote of, the government.
Certainly in the short term atleast, is things are really awful.
We're gonna be honest.
This is disgusting.
Look at this mess.
Look at it.
Ian (01:31):
I'm enjoying it Hugely.
A, I just, I'm Doism, or Doomersas we all are now, Baby Doomers
for, those who are younger, you'regonna have to get used to this.
And it's a great strategy becauseessentially the press in particular want
to say things are terrible under Labour.
And Keir Starmer issaying, yeah, they are.
(01:52):
They really are.
But they won't be in the future.
I'm just happy, that we canhave a different note because we
had quite a lot of boosterism.
You, do you remember Boris?
Probably some of you, youremembered what it was like someone
telling you everything was fine.
you remember this trust.
(02:12):
You remember someone telling youit will be fine, very, quickly.
Having someone tell you that itwon't be fine for a bit is different.
Yes, it's new.
Matt (02:20):
And you are a, I think a contrarian on the domer line of
thought because everywhere I'veseen the argument that this is a
really counterproductive strategy.
yes.
But you think it mightactually work a bit.
Ian (02:31):
I'm not sure that, it's taken into account, the British love, the idea that
we're all going to hell in a hand cart.
and online everyone says, it'sall finished, the world's over.
and SEC's twist is, we're going to hellin a hand cart, but we're gonna turn the
corner and we're gonna come back again.
And I think this will, Ithink this will appeal.
(02:53):
Interesting.
So I refuse to be downbeat,which is, very contrary.
But I do think it's ing that he's decided.
He'll be, private Fraser from Dad's Army.
We're doomed.
We're do, but we're doomed for a bit.
and there will be a scrooge likefeel, a dickensian feel to him.
(03:14):
So he's not just boring here,he's full on, doomy here.
Matt (03:21):
It's quite Continuity Sunak in a way.
And that was a bit ofa message, wasn't it?
We, we've had a lot of tough times.
We're turning the corner now.
That was the Sunak message,whereas this is more
Yes.
That was tricky
Helen (03:32):
though, because the tough times were previous Tory Prime ministers.
Yeah.
So let's turn the page frommy predecessors in my party
and I was
Ian (03:38):
chancellor, which is a bit of a bad look.
And Rachel Reeves, they, mirror very well.
The full on gloom.
and I do think, it's part of a, obviouslyit's part of a strategy, but it is
a way of saying, everyone knows thatwhen you, promise too many things, And
(03:59):
then you don't deliver any of them.
Q previous government peoplestart hating Q hate us now.
and I think this is very innovative.
I love the fact that it was in theRose Garden and for those of our
readers who are of a certain age.
I beg your pardon?
I never promised you a rose garden
Andy (04:19):
right
Ian (04:19):
along with the sunshine, Andy.
There comes a little rain sometime and Ithink that particular song is perhaps more
thematic than any other Labour anthem.
Helen (04:31):
God dear, Thero, the roses have
Ian (04:33):
been deadheaded.
Helen (04:34):
Yeah.
And I know he should havehad, he should have a sort of
decaying Halloween backdrop.
Shouldn't he gothic, likewilted tulips or something?
I, the counter point to that is, soeveryone I think will obviously mention
Keynes's idea of animal spirits, right?
The idea that markets want to hear thiskind of story of, integration and growth.
I think you are right, Ian.
I think the thing they're worriedabout is everybody coming to them
with their handout stretched.
(04:55):
and they already feel they'vegot quite a big public sector
pay, pay deals to settle.
I'm really interested to know how theyfeel about the deal that they did with
Aslef, who are the trained drivers union.
'cause Louis Haigh, the transportsecretary, gave them the pay
claim that they wanted and it was.
All of the day they were happy about that.
And then they announced theywould still be going on strike
over working conditions.
Ian (05:14):
There's another pay increase coming along down block
Helen (05:17):
three.
Yeah, that was buses.
Hang on.
Yeah, but I just wonder if they, Ifelt that made them look like Muppets.
I wonder if they feel that too.
And, but then you've got, they'vegot some big, they've got the
Infected Blood scandal bill coming,for example, which is pretty large.
and they have got the juniordoctor settlement and they,
all of these things are coming.
Our cover last week was aboutthe taking away, the winter fuel
(05:38):
allowance from wealthier pensioners.
So they, go, they're gonna have tomake this case of it being miserable
in order to tell people why they'reeither taking some money away from
'em or they can't have any more money.
Yeah.
They really got to landthat argument of restraint.
Matt (05:50):
There was a bit of a debate about whether.
In the closing days of August, a winterfuel payments cover was the most topical,
but it was a really big story at the time.
Helen (05:59):
It was a lovely picture of a penguin.
My theory is always, you can't go wrongwith putting an animal on the cover.
Look, I
Ian (06:03):
was on the holiday in Greece and it was very warm there.
Andy (06:08):
There's a solution.
Yeah, just, global warming.
Move the elderly to Greece.
Yeah.
Matt (06:13):
I like the idea that this, the Starless doism is somehow an appeal
or an attempt to appeal to youngervoters who are, famously not wholly
enthused by the proposition of thelabel putting forward for them.
Because basically this is ageneration that lies in bed.
It bed rots, it doom crawls what ismore on brand than they know you.
You are, entirely right guys.
Everything is screwed.
Stay in bed.
Yep.
Yeah,
Helen (06:33):
Do you remember how we heard about Liam Burns "I'm sorry there's no money"
left note for 14 long years, and I thoughtthey're passing What, Labour have proposed
what they unofficially calling the LizTruss Bill, which is the idea that the
Office of Budget responsibility will haveto vet all, fiscal statements like 10
weeks beforehand, which is essentiallyto say Liz Trust's mini budget ruined
(06:54):
the country, which was a very appealingmessage to them, and I thought, we're
still gonna be hearing about Liz Trust.
In 14 long years time.
I, I do
Ian (07:01):
hope so.
And, I do hope
Helen (07:03):
you just love misery.
Ian (07:04):
I do hope we'll be hearing more from her.
Oh.
'cause it, in terms of comedy, it'svery important that, that keeps going.
But again, I, the other thing aboutthe doism is it's just there is
a narrative that everybody now.
Says on social media and papers to say,oh look, this argument that the national
budget is somehow like a household budgetand you can actually run outta money.
(07:26):
how naive and pathetic is that?
And I'm thinking to myself, look,countries do sometimes run outta money.
We don't have to go back to Weimar,but they're quite a lot of countries in
Latin America who, did run out of money.
and the idea that, it's a cynical ploy.
By care.
why would anyone pretendto be George Osborne?
(07:47):
The idea of that saying, look, he'sjust cosplaying, George Osborne.
No one wants to be George Osborne.
Not even Osborne wantsto be George Osborne.
Andy (07:56):
Robert Genrich is now doing a, a George Osborn, turnaround.
He's, looking and looking very,
Helen (08:02):
svelte.
Matt (08:03):
It's felt is a lovely way of putting it.
Yeah.
but he has taken Ozempic
Helen (08:07):
hasn't he?
Can he accuses me of being obsessedwith who it has and hasn't in politics.
Taken a emek.
It's, and my private running title,but Robert General is one of the
few who's admitted it certainly,
Matt (08:17):
I'd like to imagine.
That's why I was looking at.
Actually at the, tour leadershipcandidates political ad spend over the
course of the past month, because that'show I like to have fun in the morning.
And, turns out that, none of themreally spent anything apart from
Genrich who's chucked 12 grand,adverts over the course of the past
month promoting his leadership bid.
He's the only person to have spentsignificantly, and I like to think
that's because he's just so proud of hisnew slim down physique, that he wants
(08:38):
to show as many people as possible.
he can afford the vertical ads onwebsites and fit all of himself into it.
So it's very handy.
Ian (08:45):
is this more, less, is more from
Andy (08:47):
the Tories is you're gonna have to tighten your belt.
So there, there is a, thing about, sortof personal optimism, which I wonder
if, Labour have taken into account.
I'm just, I'm interested in this becausethere's something about the fact that
people tend to be optimistic abouttheir own personal lives if they're
polled about it and pessimistic aboutthe national, mood that people tend
(09:11):
to think their personal finance isgoing to improve in the next year.
But they say, oh yeah, thecountry's in a going to the
dogs and it's, in a bad state.
And this happens even with.
if you're asked about your relationshipor your health or whatever it is, you
think, oh yeah, I'm probably gonnastay married or whatever it is, or,
I'm not gonna get ill softly taking avery personal turn and on the couch.
Yeah.
People asked about theirown lives, basically.
(09:32):
All sorts of aspects think fine.
Yeah.
I think it'll be all right.
Yeah.
Happens a
Helen (09:35):
lot with crime.
People say, how do you think thecountry is riddled with crime?
They go, yes.
I hear it's terrible out there.
People, constantly and they say,what you about your neighborhood?
And they go, actually myneighbor's quite nice.
Yeah.
It just seems to be peoplemowing their lawn and Yeah.
It's a sort of negativity bias.
Ian (09:47):
Yeah.
In terms of the Doism, I think partof this is, we've talked about not
wanting to be Osborne, but it's, partof it is not wanting to be Blair.
I'm sure Seki would love to get awayfrom Blair, he's on the television
most of the time or in the papertelling you what to do, but.
I couldn't help thinking becauseI'm slightly older than some of you.
(10:07):
the rose colored spectacles, notpaid for by Wade, that are being
applied to 97 are extraordinary.
The idea, ki is not, he's not nearlyas exciting as Blair and Blair had this
long honeymoon, he didn't really, hehad the Bernie Eckelston, scandal with
the cigarettes straight away, right?
And had to tell people, I'm apretty straight kind of guy.
(10:29):
Kia's cronyism Row is pretty much bangon time, for the first 97 lookalike.
So I am.
I am concerned that people arenostalgic and you think, oh
God wasn't nine seven great.
And the music and, brick pop andthe sheer excitement of Gordon
Brown being chancellor, really.
Helen (10:52):
I think things were better when I was young, generally, but I think that may
be a, and it turns out from the massiveinterest in Oasis tickets that everyone
in my generation also agrees with this asthey spend 300 pounds to watch a man who
can't sing, so extra a man who hates him.
There we go.
Matt (11:07):
but basically it sounds like Ian, you are very pro doom and it sounds like
you are going to get lots more of it.
So good news for you.
Ian (11:13):
I'm pro doom 'cause I've had enough of, birdie boosterism, to last me forever.
I'm interested where being,pro Doom turns into Puritanism.
and I think the anti cigarettething is quite interesting.
and telling people.
If they're going to have a toughtime is slightly different from
telling people they're not goingto enjoy anything ever again.
(11:34):
and that, that might be a bit of a gift.
Yes.
So I do think it'll beinteresting to watch that.
and the idea that it, AngelaRainey goes dancing once,
half the Tory Press has a fit.
Is that appropriate behavior?
Nadine, Doris, Nadine, Doris of allpeople who failed to criticize Boris
Johnson during the whole of PartyGate now says it's not appropriate for
(11:59):
Angela Rainier to dance during what?
Some holiday before the budget.
this, is Puritanism on a massive scale.
Helen (12:06):
Tom Watson did a great tweet about that, which was you ate an ostrich
anus during the parliamentary term,which is a fairly unanswerable charge.
I tell was anybody who's
Matt (12:14):
been paying attention to politics for the past 14, 15 years, we've seen
a selection of horrendous videos ofTori's dancing at their party conference
to a selection of terror, I'm sorry.
Yes, equal opportunities forterrible political dancing.
Helen (12:26):
one of the people he defended there was Michael Gave, who said, I
strongly believe in community safety.
He's being allowed toterribly dance in public.
So what
Ian (12:31):
about Pretty Patel and Nigel Farage?
No.
There we go.
I wanna
Matt (12:35):
know.
you're all puritans at heart, butthink this podcast is pro dancing.
I think we can say that.
Yeah.
Helen (12:40):
Okay, good.
But the weird thing is that the Torieswill now, as you say, criticize that idea
of smoking ban in pub Gardens, having notthree months ago, had a policy that was
under 18, should never be allowed to smokeever in their lives anywhere at any point.
So it's really interestingto watch them try and balance
those libertarian instincts.
depends on them.
We get your fav, your Caesar head,Faye Rob Genrich as Tori leader,
Ian (13:02):
And will he be, telling us all to take Ozempic?
Will he be putting thaton the health service?
I read a report saying pic.
Enhances your mental capacities.
it's time then.
just
Matt (13:13):
on
the Ozempic point, if you ever wantto cast iron bits of proof about the
power of, well-funded public relationsby the pharmaceutical industry the past
six months have headlines about ozempicare an excellent, example of that.
Ian (13:24):
I will have more on this piece in the magazine.
Thank you, pat.
Matt (13:30):
so we now turn to, What Helen did on her summer holidays, which was go
to the Democratic National Convention.
Yes.
Because, Helen, you've been, writinga bit, about, American politics
and there's been a developmentsince the end of the DNC, which is
from the other side of the aisle.
Donald Trump's, great bigpodcast tour of the USA.
Helen (13:50):
Yeah, he's having a, lovely time.
Actually, it's funny, we talked aboutDuma Tism here because the big theme
of the Democratic convention was joy.
You had Oprah saying,only Kamala can bring Joy.
Everything will be joy.
but at the same time it came toprogramming to the Democratic
convention was that Trump went onthe podcast of a Louisiana former,
standup comedian called Theo Von.
(14:11):
Whose name actually stands for TheoVon Something Quite Long 'cause
his family are Polish aristocracyin way back in the midst of time.
and in which they discussed in themost interested that I've ever seen.
Trump being another person.
Theo Von's, previous alcoholand cocaine addiction.
In which Trump was like, what is it?
What's it like?
Cocaine.
Is it better?
Is it better up than alcohol?
Because he's completely teetotal.
(14:32):
His older brother was an alcoholic.
And his dad was obviously who was amean authoritarian controlling type
of person, was always very awfulto Trump's older brother, which I
think tells you a bit maybe aboutwhere his psychology was formed.
But he had a genuinely veryinteresting question about,
just about what cocaine's like.
And this guy said, it'll haveyou like a damn owl homie.
(14:53):
You'll be out in your own frontporch, you'll be your own streetlight.
And Trump went.
Yeah.
yeah, I hear it.
I hear it.
I hear it's good.
And then Theo Von started complainingthat the Coke you could get
these days wasn't very good.
And he didn't know wherethey were getting them from.
And Trump had this sort of look on hisface, like he might appoint some sort of
federal commission to look into this...
terrible!
So everything's getting somuch worse these days, but
(15:13):
this is part of a much broader.
, a tour of young male podcasters andpodcasts that appeal to young men.
he had, for example, Logan Paul,who was a former YouTuber turned
professional fighter, come to Mar Largo.
Andy (15:27):
when you describe him as a professional fighter, you mean someone
who actually physically fights asopposed to the Kemi Beja knock model
of professional fighter of this.
Okay.
Helen (15:36):
there's a very funny thing if you ever look at any of these
people, the best thing to do islooked at their Wikipedia entries
and look at the controversy section.
'cause there's always the maddeststuff you've ever seen, right?
Logan Paul's one says.
Japanese suicide forest controversy.
That's all I'm gonna say about that.
Ian (15:51):
has a small boy wants to know, what's it like taking Coke?
Yeah.
Is it great?
What's it like hitting people?
Andy (15:56):
Is
Ian (15:56):
that good?
Or, I'd like to hit people.
I'd like to and take Coke.
Is are we saying he's in fact a13-year-old trying to appeal to
slightly older boys who've got the vote?
Matt (16:06):
there's an interesting question about the demographics of these things.
So Theo V's.
Podcast has, I think it's 3million subscribers, thereabouts.
Logan Paul's has.
significantly more, if I'm not mistaken.
However, if you dig into the numbers,it does seem significantly likely that
a large proportion of those listenersare going to be 13-year-old boys.
And one, one does wonder exactly whatelectoral impact this is gonna have at
(16:26):
the ballot box come the 4th of November.
'cause Yeah, that's interesting.
Helen (16:29):
It is also a, way of looking at it is, and whole new alternative ecosystem
has been melded together of a couple ofdifferent things in commercial and sports.
So lots of these people are linkedby, Dana White, who is the president,
USC, ultimate Fighting Champion.
Which Trump goes to a lot, right?
Because he's the kind of guy whogrew up with casinos and hotels, and
then all of this kind of fightingindustries that you go and watch these.
(16:50):
Then they are now megapay-per-view events because they
sell millions of pounds, right?
So there's all of that.
Then there's the other weird thing,which is that every time they do these
interviews, there's always an energydrink on the table or behind them.
They've all got their own energy drinks,so it is also they've got their own.
Yeah, Prime is the onethat, Logan Paul has got,
Ian (17:08):
can I just say the I Energy Drink
Helen (17:11):
and a J Yeah.
Is
Ian (17:12):
incredibly effective and it's available.
quite soon.
Absolutely.
Herbert Gassett swears by it, itkeeps him feeling just 94 years old.
Helen (17:20):
Definitely
Matt (17:21):
doesn't contain cocaine.
Helen (17:23):
yeah.
But they do, they all, the DailyWire, which is behind a big ultra
conservative culture war site in theUS has its own range of vitamins that
are called, I think Responsible Man.
And it says, because you need.
To be No, because you need to beready, like fighting ready for
the cultural battles we face.
We now have anti wokevitamins, is where we now are.
Matt (17:44):
But cultural battles, they're not muscle pills.
They're,
Helen (17:47):
they're are.
'cause you have to be fighting for,to make arguments on the internet.
Matt (17:50):
I
Ian (17:50):
see, But
Helen (17:52):
All of this kind of stuff that a particular tendency of kind of men's not
Ian (17:55):
going to storm itself.
Matt (17:57):
And you need fit bodies there.
Yeah.
But there's, something interestingabout the strategy as well to.
Pick up on what Helen was saying.
So if you look at, if you look atthe amount of money that's currently
being spent on digital advertisingin the us elections right over the
past month, the Harris campaign sincebasically she was, or since Biden's
resignation, at which point it becameobvious that she was the defacto pick.
(18:18):
the Harris campaign has outspent the Trumpcampaign by a factor of about five six.
there's a, real disparityin terms, and this is across
meta and Google's platforms.
And just in terms of the amount ofeyeballs that you're gonna reach,
Trump is lagging significantly, andthis podcast stuff is like it's free.
You don't pay to go on these things.
(18:38):
It's a great boost for them becauseyou've got Donald Trump on, so
they'll get a boost to their audience,which means ad revenues go up.
Trump gets access to an audience of 3million, 5 million children possibly.
But nonetheless, he gets access to themand this is the way, this is the new
way of disseminating political content.
you must have seen when you'reat the D nnc that they had.
I think, was it 200 TikTok asinfluencers and things like that, doing
broadcast directly to kids throughTikTok, all about what was going
(19:01):
down at the convention rather than,or as an adjunct to the Press Corps.
this is standard, practice Now, what'salso interesting about the Trump
campaign is that his social mediastrategy is being driven apparently to
all intents and purposes by, his son.
Baron, who you may remember from beinga very tall sort of, how old must he?
A 10-year-old He 19 now.
Yeah.
And yeah, he's 18, 19.
(19:22):
And so he's in charge of Trump'ssocial media strategy, being advised
by his good friend who's a 17-year-oldinfluencer, called Bo Loudin.
So, basically, and if you,I've never felt older.
I've never felt olderthan discussing these.
If you, read these things, some of thetranscripts of Trump going on these
podcasts, he, he'll literally say thingslike, yeah, my son really likes you.
so I think a lot of the strategy isthis is basically Barron Trump going,
(19:46):
so I like this, do you wanna go on this?
And Trump going, yeah, okay fine.
Helen (19:49):
But that does remind me of Bo, there was a thing where Boris Johnson,
remember that election campaign wherehe just used to dress up and someone
said this as what an 8-year-oldboy thinks grown up jobs are like.
Like here I am, I'm a builder.
I'm in a hard hat.
Like they were all like littlebut, and but, and I think this
is a sort of slightly more.
Coked out version of that really.
But you are right.
The Harris campaign has taken acompletely different media approach.
(20:11):
It's paying for it all.
She only sat down for her firstinterview and it was a joint
interview since becoming the nominee.
And that's it.
There's massive grump in the US PressCorps about the fact they're not
submitting themselves to interviews.
Trump is similarly.
Swerving big set piece interviewsbecause he can go on a, like one of
these, max Reed called them the DipShit podcast circuit, which is sums
(20:32):
up the appeal of them and just havethese weird vibey conversations.
Like the Logan Paul, they did talk abit about Iran, but they also end up
just talking about in the Theo Von.
But they took about why don'tpeople have heart attacks out, have
excitement at sporting events anymore.
When we were growing up, thatused to happen all the time.
So just weird flights of fancy,
Matt (20:50):
which,
is the Trump.
Trumpy model of conversation isthis, to that, to this, to that.
in terms of the audience who are watchingthese things, assuming that they're not
all 13-year-old boys, as Matt points out,assuming a good chunk of them at least
do have the vote, is it likely to work?
there's a
Helen (21:07):
huge split in gender terms in the us.
Traditionally, there hasn't been thatmassive agenda split in voting norms,
but in the US at the moment, it is reallybig, particularly among young people.
Young women are really inthe tank for the Democrats.
And young men are really in the tonguefor the Republicans, and that is
also correlated with a load of otheropinions, like young men being more
like to say that feminism has gone toofar, or that actually it's harder now
to be a man than it is to be a woman.
(21:28):
And there's, and that feeds into thecold, whatever you want to call it, anti
woke discourse of people like Elon Musk.
Which is you go to work in a companyand it's all run by women in HR who
tell you can't say anything anymore.
this sort of Jordan Pizza ideathat it was better when men were
in charge of stuff 'cause they wereaggressive and they had fights.
Whereas women are passive aggressiveand so they just plot and scheme
and bicker among each other.
(21:48):
This is all a very male.
Sort of world that appeals to these,as you say, ma, like quite a particular
type of masculinity that is a veryanxious young man's masculinity.
it's,
Ian (22:00):
is this the incel tour really?
Matt (22:03):
it, I'd say it's, incel adjacent.
There was, an excellent piece of writingby a guy called Ryan Broderick, about
this, who basically posited that, theentire appeal of the Trump campaign over
the past eight years is pretty much beinglike going after people who really just
don't like themselves very much and feelquite uncomfortable with who they are.
And appealing to those veryspecific vulnerabilities.
And this feels like a sort ofend point manifestation of that
(22:25):
because a lot of these podcastsare being consumed by young men.
Men who don't feel verycomfortable about themselves.
They often don't feel theireconomic prospects are great.
They don't feel that their, positionin what they would very much consider
the sexual marketplace is advantageous.
And they don't necessarily feelthat they have a lot to hope
for and go for, and this is.
Basically appealing to them andtelling them, it's not your fault.
(22:46):
It's and it's
Helen (22:47):
presented in very racial terms, but it's not just young white men either.
Joe Rogan's audience, I thinkis about a quarter, of that,
of the young male demographic.
Listen to it is Hispanic or black.
And there is a sort of sense of likesolidarity between the races in America.
For young men is, that is a big,you have more in common than you do
with women of the same race as you,which again, is very different to
how politics has traditionally workedin kind of voting blocks in America.
Matt (23:11):
so one of the interesting things about the targeting of this is that,
it's not just the demography in termsof age and gender split, that's peculiar
and skew's quite young and very male,but it's also the fact that many of
these podcasts are very international.
Joe Rogan, for example, is a trulyglobal proposition, and whilst obviously
it's an English language thing, it getstranslated and clipped into lots and
lots of other an anchors worldwide.
So this is, in many respects,something that you might.
(23:33):
Term as an using advertisingparlance as wasted inventory.
you are buying presents or gainingpresents somewhere that can't
actually materially impact the goalthat you are trying to achieve.
Andy (23:42):
and it must be tricky.
I presume that a lot of Theo Von viewersor listeners also watch Logan Paul and
also watch Adam Ross and also watch blah.
But that's, unavoidable.
Matt (23:52):
there's an argument to suggest that, as, we, noticed during the
election campaign over here, Kier kepton saying his dad was a tool maker.
Because unless you say something 3million times, the average voter will
not retain it, which means that you are
Ian (24:03):
kidding.
Matt (24:05):
He was a tool maker.
That's all I've heard.
Helen (24:07):
There is an interesting thing though, which is it creates an
intellectual climate and a kind ofcurrent, so even in our, politics, you
will see the way that the Tory partyis struggling to not bend towards
some of the opinions of these peoplestruggling not to bend towards the
opinions of the American right, whichare very minority opinions here.
And people wrestling with that onGB news when the latest kind of woke
(24:27):
controversy is often an American oneor a Kind of slightly more provincial
British version of something that'sbecome made as a big theme by Americans.
There is definitely, we do catch thekind of backdraft of a lot of this stuff.
Ian (24:40):
but Trump's was the ultimate booster essentially.
And he got into powerby saying, I'm great.
It'll be great.
Things will be great.
And I get the feeling.
He's now without an act, because,he's got to say things are gonna be
terrible, particularly under, thisnew joyful and happy Democratic party.
(25:04):
So what, can he do?
' do as far as I, I gather it.
that group of people that he'sgoing through on the podcast want
to hear that everything's awful.
Helen (25:14):
yes and no.
So one of the big blocks of Trump'ssupport last time was people
who are quite wealthy in Americabut don't have a college degree.
So one of the ways that this was describedas a kind of demographic was like boat
people, like people who are wealthyenough to own a boat, but they don't feel
like they're part of a cultural elite.
Isn't here, isn't it?
I don't feel
Ian (25:31):
Trump's going
Matt (25:32):
for the boat people landing in Kent.
Helen (25:35):
People who would have a kind of, miniature yacht that'd be
called something like, box and bell.
And they'd more it in Florida, and wherethey'd come have their winters, but they
would feel that the kind of snooty bike,coastal elites looked down on them.
And there's a very telling momentin the Theo Von Podcast where.
he says, under me, we hadthe greatest economy ever.
The economy was amazing.
(25:55):
And Theon says, yeah,my cousin bought a boat.
And it was that thing of, his taxcuts for the rich and upper middle
did make a lot of people feel better.
The covid stimulus stuff did make a lotof people feel economically better in the
way that it did very briefly here, right?
Suddenly when everybody was going tothe pub for free, people briefly about
things were quite good, but the billhas come, due for all that stuff.
(26:16):
And I'd like to end by saying ifDonald Trump would like to come on
this podcast and be interviewed byDipshit, I am available at short notice.
I don't have an energy drink,but I will get one in time.
I have a few kind of redBoulogne in the background.
Matt (26:29):
Now I have another quiz question for you all.
Who here has an app calledTelegram on their phone?
I do.
You are nicked Helen,and you are nicked Matt.
Mine's the Daily Telegram.
Helen (26:43):
Got an actual telegram every day.
Andy (26:48):
Matt, can you tell us a little bit about not only, telegram itself,
but also about its founder pov whohas recently been arrested in Paris?
Matt (26:58):
telegram is a slightly difficult app to describe.
it's part messaging app andit's part social media platform.
And effectively the way it works islike all of these things, you can share
messages with people, either one toone or with multiple people in groups.
Or you can have groupsof up to 200,000 people.
All of which can communicate witheach other, which can be subdivided
(27:19):
into different channels that canbroadcast different types of things.
And this can be writtenvideo, images, et cetera.
Can I just say that's a nightmare?
I didn't even like WhatsApp groups withmore than about four people in them.
It's just too much.
Okay.
or you can have, channels which areeffectively one, two potentially
infinite broadcast streams that anybodycan sign up to follow and gives you a.
Platform to then saythings to your followers.
(27:41):
the thing that's curious about plaabout Telegram as a platform is that
it is the most maximally free speechof all of the platforms that exist.
it's founder Pura, is Russian, and he madea violent amount of money from setting up.
What was basically the Russian versionof Facebook called Vicon Act in the
two thousands, which he then gotout of in 2013, 14, I think, partly
(28:06):
because he was feeling intense pressurefrom the Russian states to hand over
user data, and all the rest of it.
So this prompted him to createTelegram, which he always said
would be maximally free speech.
And what that means is that basicallythey commit to and say on their FAQs that
they will never, ever, hand over any dataor any information to law enforcement
(28:28):
anywhere in the world, regardless.
So there are things that youcan't do on Telegram, right?
You definitely can't.
Post child sexual abuse material inpublic channels that is explicitly stated.
What is not explicitly stated is thatyou can't do that in private channels,
which as we can all understand, is atacit admission that you definitely, can.
(28:51):
similarly, Telegram has for a long timebeen the preferred messaging and broadcast
and information dissemination platformof isis, of Hamas, of Islamic Jihad.
it is been linked to operations conductedby people like the Proud Boys in the US
and various other Far rights, extremeorganizations, but also plenty of far
left extreme organizations as well.
without wishing to give anyone any ideashere, if anyone ever does want to buy
(29:14):
drugs really quickly and easily, searchingon Telegram is not a terrible first step.
Trump could give it a go.
Should Donald be interested in, tryingsome of that exciting marching power?
I've been trying to get hold of someresponsible man pills, and so this
Helen (29:29):
Anti weight vitamins are only a click away.
but the, the persistent question, isn'tit about telegram, is to what extent
it really is at arms length from theRussian state, as you say, power dur of.
Went into exile in Dubai.
he obviously recently arrested in France.
He's got a number of different passports.
Hasn't he's got one from St.
Kits.
Nevis.
He's got a French one.
He's got a Russian one I believe, if
Matt (29:49):
I'm not mistaken, UAE.
'cause telegram is currently basedin Dubai for legal reasons, although
interestingly, it's server architectureis spread all around the world,
which makes it incredibly evil.
Not incredibly easy, but it makes itvery hard for specific domestic legal
setups to prosecute them meaningfullybecause the data is so distributed that
the jurisdiction for overseeing theuse of that data is very, fragmented
(30:12):
and hard to effectively track.
but the reason he was arrested, is,in France a couple of weeks ago, there
were a variety of charges, 12 in total.
The majority of them relate to what theFrench authorities refer to as complicity
in criminal acts, which effectively means.
You know this stuff is happening.
it's illegal and yet you arenot doing anything to stop it.
Andy (30:33):
And presumably it's a national border thing that's
happening in France on Telegram.
Therefore, they've arrested him.
Matt (30:39):
There is one charge which pertains to running unlicensed encryption tools.
Within France, and it's this that isgetting people's culture war backs up.
as you can imagine, the arrest ofthis man who runs, what is in part
an encrypted messaging service,it's not entirely encrypted.
You have to opt into the encryption,which is one of the other reasons why
it's in a very interesting position.
(30:59):
because not everything on its encrypted.
Unlike WhatsApp, where literally noone, not even meta, can see the contents
of your messages, stuff on Telegramif you don't automatically encrypt it.
It's not encrypted, whichmeans that anyone at Telegram
can see your messages, right?
Which means that Telegram literallyknows that people are using its
platform to share messages containingchild sexual abuse material, or
to sell guns or drugs or people.
(31:21):
however, upon dur, Rob's arrest, allof the people that you can imagine
getting very exercised about perceivedcrackdown on freedom of speech and the
ability to send encrypted messages,got very upset about this Elon Musk.
as you can imagine, a variety ofother charming people from across
the right wing political sphere.
that's
Helen (31:39):
part the more interesting one, I would say is.
Is Tucker Carlson, if you remember oflately, of having traveled to Moscow
to hear from Vladimir Putin aboutvarious incidents and grievances from
many centuries of Russian history.
And this has always been one of thebig question marks about Telegram.
It was, it is the, as well asyou say, Hamas, isis, others.
It is the defacto communicationsystem for the Russian Army.
(31:59):
And you, it was verypopular in Ukraine as well.
To the extent that theUkrainian authorities have said,
please do not use Telegram.
We absolutely are very worriedthat this stuff is ending up.
Being looked at by peopleand it is insecure.
And as Matt says, it's not, it'ssold as a secure encrypted app.
And it's really not.
Unless, you're in a one-to-one channel,unless you've explicitly opted in.
But the interesting thing to me aboutthe learning from this is that these
(32:22):
social media platforms that startedoff as a fun way to stay in touch with
your friends have essentially become.
Giant national security problems becausenot only is this huge amount of traffic
going through them, this huge amount ofillegal material, there are also very good
ways of mapping who is talking to who.
So if you are a dissident, for example,every, everybody that you are talking to
will now be held on these platforms, whichis why the Ukrainians are so worried about
(32:44):
the way about any potential connectionsbetween Paval, Joof and, the Kremlin,
Matt (32:48):
and
Helen (32:48):
which he denies, I should say.
Matt (32:50):
He does deny, but I was.
Reading something interesting in the keyof independent about the fact that he's
traveled back to Russia approximately60 times during his supposed exile.
Ian (33:01):
and he's never fallen outta a window once.
No, I, rest my case, possibly
Matt (33:07):
coincidentally, when he flew into France and was arrested,
he flew in from Azerbaijan wherehe'd just been for a few days.
Coincidentally, VladimirPutin had also been in as I'm,
Helen (33:18):
it's lovely this time of year.
That's what they alwayssay about as correlation,
Matt (33:21):
of course, not equal and causation, but yes.
Andy (33:23):
it does remind me of something of the covers a great deal, which is the.
The trickiness of pinning downinternational and offshore money,
except this is international andoffshore information and country.
If until all 193 countries agree tocrack down on offshore money, then
it's going to exist in an enormous way.
And this is exactly the samething happening all over again.
(33:44):
And it's about whichcountries will and won't.
Do something.
And as long as there are a few countrieswhich won't, this can thrive there.
And if the, Helen, you weresaying something interesting
about this enormous pile of coma,basically being in Dubai now.
Helen (33:56):
and as Matt says all over the place, but you are right, there is a form
of digital nationalism that's emerging.
So China has, from thestart of this era, said.
We're having our ownsocial media networks.
We're not letting other people's in.
We want to be entirely in chargeof, Baidu and WeChat and all
the kind of stuff that's there.
And there are certain thingsyou can't say on those things.
We are, we are not gonna pretendthis is about free speech at all.
(34:16):
No.
You use our controlled apps.
And we're in charge of them, which iswhy Donald Trump was very cautious about
TikTok, which is, its own at the time,bite Dance is a Chinese company because
it was saying, do we really want youngAmericans on a Chinese own platform that
could be used as an influence operation byChina if they want, if they say wanted to.
And that, there's a version of, telegramcalled Signal that is based in the
(34:38):
US and I think the US would be muchhappier if US citizens were on that.
they feel quite smug about thefact that so many of the big social
networking companies are based.
In America, and therefore you canget Mark Zuckerberg in, in front of
Congress and quiz him about what stuffhe, what covid stuff he's allowing
on the platform and stuff like that.
But for any smaller country, it'sa really difficult question to do.
(34:58):
Do you really want your citizens on theseplatforms that are in some external jury
extinction you have no access to at all?
Yeah.
Ian (35:06):
But the same arguments as with banking apply with, information.
And as soon as.
Anybody begins to take the mildest form ofaction, which we're all told is hopeless
and couldn't possibly work, they allstart screaming, this man gets arrested.
and all the Freedom Warriors aresaying this is the most worrying
thing that's ever happened, inthe entire history of the world.
(35:26):
Yeah.
And you think, maybe it is possibleto take action against these people
and maybe some of these actions work?
Yeah,
Matt (35:35):
I think it's, important to, to make the very clear point that.
It is very hard to conceive of thisrationally as a freedom of speech issue.
nobody is saying that you shouldn't beallowed to have encrypted messaging.
That is not what the Frenchgovernment appears to be saying.
That is not indeed whatthey've taken issue with.
What they've taken issue with isthe fact that you shouldn't, they
posit be able to run a platformthat serves nearly a billion people.
(35:58):
900 million users, telegramglobally, a billion people, and
have a hundred staff globally.
A hundred staff in total globally andliterally not comply with police requests
to remove child sexual abuse material,or people trafficking people or guns.
Drugs.
that doesn't strike me asa reason of speech issue.
The second point to note is that thereason it's become a cultural war
(36:18):
Shibboleth is because Signal, whichHelen mentioned, which is the sort of
peer, encrypted app, which is franklybetter encrypted in a better and more
robust piece of software, happensto have as one of its board members,
a woman who is also on the board ofAmerican Liberal News Outlet, NPR.
And as a result of this, a lot of it very,
Helen (36:37):
basically the signal is run by a bunch of woke hippies.
Exactly.
and therefore, and you will seeall the time now, people talking
about how amazing Elon Musk.
Exes because now it's allowed backon all these people like Tommy
Robinson who were banned before.
It's the only place that freedom ofspeech still exists on the internet.
His AI is, will allow you to do,pictures of Mickey Mouse smoking crack.
there's a big kind of, we don'thave to obey any rules and laws.
(36:59):
Whereas, as you say, signal,it's Catherine Mayer, isn't it?
Yes.
Who, she once did something likeshe put her pronouns in her bio
and they, this is evidence that sheshouldn't be in charge of a, network.
Matt (37:08):
So can I check, does Signal comply with requests from law enforcement
agencies or anything like that?
Helen (37:13):
not aggressively in the sense none of these companies do.
Even Facebook, which is probably,fairly well established is quite
hard to extract information out of.
Matt (37:21):
to give you an example, in WhatsApp, in Signal, in almost all of these
platforms, in fact, apart from Telegram,there is an easy option within the app.
To be able to report content thatyou see that is illegal, breaks,
the terms and conditions, et cetera.
Telegram doesn't provideyou with that functionality.
Which I presume is why they can getaway with having a hundred staff.
Helen (37:39):
Yeah, it's, philosophically opposed to any kind of government intervention,
it's beyond libertarianism into thekind of amazing Wild West, but there is
a big current within the online right,and within the tech sphere of that hyper
libertarianism that, governments onlyexist to get in the way of innovation.
And part of that is they also onlyget in the way of censoring, the
real ideas that people need to hear.
Ian (38:01):
ideas like globalization, taking over everything and, individuals
in countries no longer having anypower to change their own lives.
do their heads never blow up?
Helen (38:12):
once you've been to the NatCon, which is the international
gathering of nationalists, likeyou just have to accept that.
No, don't expect it to make any sense.
Victor Ban has traveled over toAmerica to tell, how terrible it
is for other countries to lectureyou on how to run your country.
What, yeah.
None of it makes sense,
Ian (38:28):
but Matt, , I keep reading in your column that, Platforms and
channels, and these organizationssay it's absolutely impossible.
we don't have the numberof staff to interfere.
We can't possibly moderate that stuff.
And then one of theiradvertisers complains, and
within about 38 milliseconds,all content has been removed.
That defended the advertiserand the entire process seems
to be incredibly possible.
Matt (38:50):
what is interesting about Telegram is that it has occasionally been
really good at complying with take downrequests for copyrights of material.
so yeah, it turns out, that paring afilm terrible, posting, posting terribly
offensive pictures, not terrible at all.
One of the reasons is that largerplatforms, can operate automated systems
whereby copyrighted material gets uploadedsomewhere by the copyright owner, and
their automated systems can basicallyfind anything that matches that and take
(39:12):
it down entirely, which is significantlyeasier to do for copyrighted material
than it is for new, fresh content,which is one small justification,
possibly not wishing to protect
Ian (39:22):
So if ISIS branded their material better, it would be easier to take down.
Matt (39:27):
Yeah.
What they, really need is a niceidentifiable logo watermark in the top
right hand corner of all of their stuffso we can just nix it immediately.
Ian (39:33):
And that's very helpful, man.
Matt (39:36):
OV has nearly enough children to fill one of his own telegram groups.
he's got a hundred children, I think.
Is this Helen?
Is this right?
You've got Chap.
He claims to
Helen (39:44):
be an avid, sperm donator.
Yes.
yeah, I'm thorough.
Eni encourage you to check out hisInstagram feed, which features lots of
photos of him topless in the desert.
He doesn't drink caffeine,he doesn't eat meat.
he's one of these people who lives a veryacetic lifestyle, but part of that is the
intense natal wisdom that characterizesa lot of that kind of on what you call
Ian (40:03):
natal.
Helen (40:04):
Tech Elite?
so Elon Musk resemble, has 10 children,maybe more, but that we know of.
and there is, there are consistentreports that he is, he's very
keen on the idea that high IQpeople should be overrepresented.
a lot of this is a returnof a soft form of eugenics.
The idea that smart peoplearen't having enough.
Kids,
Ian (40:23):
And is it true that none of Musk's children actually talk to him?
Matt (40:26):
he
Helen (40:26):
has a transgender daughter who's now called Vivian, and she's got a
very interesting account on threads.
I think this is probably the thingthat's most hurtful to him, which is
the platform owned by Meta, a Facebook,which she uses just to talk about
what a terrible father she thinkshe is, how he never accepted her.
He said in his interview withJordan Peterson, she had been
captured by the woke mind virus.
and a social contagion, but several ofhis other, he's got, ex a dark cerial
(40:50):
and, the ones, the newer children,there is a feud between his, most recent
ex-wife and the executive of his companywho had two of his chil children.
As Matt says, there is a differencesometimes between these people wanting
to father children and what might somemight call parent children, right?
Sure.
In an ongoing basis,
Andy (41:09):
it does sound like Boris Johnson and.
Ruper Murdoch are both part of thetech elite, which I didn't suspect.
It turns out that the great men of ourtime have a surprising amount in common.
That's it for this episode of page 94.
if you have enjoyed it, thenwhy not buy the magazine,
private-eye.co.uk, get a subscription.
It's a fantastic magazine.
(41:30):
That's all I need to say on the matter.
thank you very much to Helen, toIan, and to Matt and to you for
listening and to Matt Hill from RethinkAudio, who has always produced it.
We'll be back again in twoweeks with another one of these
and we'll see you next time.
Goodbye.
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
Andy (00:03):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, andI'm here in the private eye office with
Helen Lewis, Matt Muir and Ian Hislop.
We are here to discuss the news, not onlyof the last week since the last edition
of the magazine came out, but also thenear future as well, because there's a
lot of exciting stuff about to happen.
We're all back to.
School back to term.
So we're starting with, a big speech madeby Ki Starer last week, and I've just
(00:27):
got a quiz for the room to kick us off.
Which of these was notsomething that Starer said.
All right.
On the day, we're in not just an economicblack hole, but a societal black hole.
There will be short-termpain for the long-term.
Good.
It's all going to be fine really soon.
Which of those was not a genuine quote?
pretty sure it was the last one thatwasn't Yeah, it was the last one.
(00:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.
The whole time of the speech was beatingswill continue until the morale improve.
Yeah.
Ian (00:55):
Yeah.
And I should point out we are,back at school 'cause if we
are not, we're gonna be fine.
So I'm very glad to see you allin attendance apart from MacQueen.
Yeah.
who I hope will be paying the
penalty.
Helen (01:07):
He's been having a holiday outside of term time and we should
make him pay 200 pounds for it.
Yeah.
Matt (01:11):
Yes.
At least.
Yes.
Things are worse than we ever imagined.
Oh, I've slipped into quoting again.
Sorry.
but this is the new, dominantnote of, the government.
Certainly in the short term atleast, is things are really awful.
We're gonna be honest.
This is disgusting.
Look at this mess.
Look at it.
Ian (01:31):
I'm enjoying it Hugely.
A, I just, I'm Doism, or Doomersas we all are now, Baby Doomers
for, those who are younger, you'regonna have to get used to this.
And it's a great strategy becauseessentially the press in particular want
to say things are terrible under Labour.
And Keir Starmer issaying, yeah, they are.
(01:52):
They really are.
But they won't be in the future.
I'm just happy, that we canhave a different note because we
had quite a lot of boosterism.
You, do you remember Boris?
Probably some of you, youremembered what it was like someone
telling you everything was fine.
you remember this trust.
(02:12):
You remember someone telling youit will be fine, very, quickly.
Having someone tell you that itwon't be fine for a bit is different.
Yes, it's new.
Matt (02:20):
And you are a, I think a contrarian on the domer line of
thought because everywhere I'veseen the argument that this is a
really counterproductive strategy.
yes.
But you think it mightactually work a bit.
Ian (02:31):
I'm not sure that, it's taken into account, the British love, the idea that
we're all going to hell in a hand cart.
and online everyone says, it'sall finished, the world's over.
and SEC's twist is, we're going to hellin a hand cart, but we're gonna turn the
corner and we're gonna come back again.
And I think this will, Ithink this will appeal.
(02:53):
Interesting.
So I refuse to be downbeat,which is, very contrary.
But I do think it's ing that he's decided.
He'll be, private Fraser from Dad's Army.
We're doomed.
We're do, but we're doomed for a bit.
and there will be a scrooge likefeel, a dickensian feel to him.
(03:14):
So he's not just boring here,he's full on, doomy here.
Matt (03:21):
It's quite Continuity Sunak in a way.
And that was a bit ofa message, wasn't it?
We, we've had a lot of tough times.
We're turning the corner now.
That was the Sunak message,whereas this is more
Yes.
That was tricky
Helen (03:32):
though, because the tough times were previous Tory Prime ministers.
Yeah.
So let's turn the page frommy predecessors in my party
and I was
Ian (03:38):
chancellor, which is a bit of a bad look.
And Rachel Reeves, they, mirror very well.
The full on gloom.
and I do think, it's part of a, obviouslyit's part of a strategy, but it is
a way of saying, everyone knows thatwhen you, promise too many things, And
(03:59):
then you don't deliver any of them.
Q previous government peoplestart hating Q hate us now.
and I think this is very innovative.
I love the fact that it was in theRose Garden and for those of our
readers who are of a certain age.
I beg your pardon?
I never promised you a rose garden
Andy (04:19):
right
Ian (04:19):
along with the sunshine, Andy.
There comes a little rain sometime and Ithink that particular song is perhaps more
thematic than any other Labour anthem.
Helen (04:31):
God dear, Thero, the roses have
Ian (04:33):
been deadheaded.
Helen (04:34):
Yeah.
And I know he should havehad, he should have a sort of
decaying Halloween backdrop.
Shouldn't he gothic, likewilted tulips or something?
I, the counter point to that is, soeveryone I think will obviously mention
Keynes's idea of animal spirits, right?
The idea that markets want to hear thiskind of story of, integration and growth.
I think you are right, Ian.
I think the thing they're worriedabout is everybody coming to them
with their handout stretched.
(04:55):
and they already feel they'vegot quite a big public sector
pay, pay deals to settle.
I'm really interested to know how theyfeel about the deal that they did with
Aslef, who are the trained drivers union.
'cause Louis Haigh, the transportsecretary, gave them the pay
claim that they wanted and it was.
All of the day they were happy about that.
And then they announced theywould still be going on strike
over working conditions.
Ian (05:14):
There's another pay increase coming along down block
Helen (05:17):
three.
Yeah, that was buses.
Hang on.
Yeah, but I just wonder if they, Ifelt that made them look like Muppets.
I wonder if they feel that too.
And, but then you've got, they'vegot some big, they've got the
Infected Blood scandal bill coming,for example, which is pretty large.
and they have got the juniordoctor settlement and they,
all of these things are coming.
Our cover last week was aboutthe taking away, the winter fuel
(05:38):
allowance from wealthier pensioners.
So they, go, they're gonna have tomake this case of it being miserable
in order to tell people why they'reeither taking some money away from
'em or they can't have any more money.
Yeah.
They really got to landthat argument of restraint.
Matt (05:50):
There was a bit of a debate about whether.
In the closing days of August, a winterfuel payments cover was the most topical,
but it was a really big story at the time.
Helen (05:59):
It was a lovely picture of a penguin.
My theory is always, you can't go wrongwith putting an animal on the cover.
Look, I
Ian (06:03):
was on the holiday in Greece and it was very warm there.
Andy (06:08):
There's a solution.
Yeah, just, global warming.
Move the elderly to Greece.
Yeah.
Matt (06:13):
I like the idea that this, the Starless doism is somehow an appeal
or an attempt to appeal to youngervoters who are, famously not wholly
enthused by the proposition of thelabel putting forward for them.
Because basically this is ageneration that lies in bed.
It bed rots, it doom crawls what ismore on brand than they know you.
You are, entirely right guys.
Everything is screwed.
Stay in bed.
Yep.
Yeah,
Helen (06:33):
Do you remember how we heard about Liam Burns "I'm sorry there's no money"
left note for 14 long years, and I thoughtthey're passing What, Labour have proposed
what they unofficially calling the LizTruss Bill, which is the idea that the
Office of Budget responsibility will haveto vet all, fiscal statements like 10
weeks beforehand, which is essentiallyto say Liz Trust's mini budget ruined
(06:54):
the country, which was a very appealingmessage to them, and I thought, we're
still gonna be hearing about Liz Trust.
In 14 long years time.
I, I do
Ian (07:01):
hope so.
And, I do hope
Helen (07:03):
you just love misery.
Ian (07:04):
I do hope we'll be hearing more from her.
Oh.
'cause it, in terms of comedy, it'svery important that, that keeps going.
But again, I, the other thing aboutthe doism is it's just there is
a narrative that everybody now.
Says on social media and papers to say,oh look, this argument that the national
budget is somehow like a household budgetand you can actually run outta money.
(07:26):
how naive and pathetic is that?
And I'm thinking to myself, look,countries do sometimes run outta money.
We don't have to go back to Weimar,but they're quite a lot of countries in
Latin America who, did run out of money.
and the idea that, it's a cynical ploy.
By care.
why would anyone pretendto be George Osborne?
(07:47):
The idea of that saying, look, he'sjust cosplaying, George Osborne.
No one wants to be George Osborne.
Not even Osborne wantsto be George Osborne.
Andy (07:56):
Robert Genrich is now doing a, a George Osborn, turnaround.
He's, looking and looking very,
Helen (08:02):
svelte.
Matt (08:03):
It's felt is a lovely way of putting it.
Yeah.
but he has taken Ozempic
Helen (08:07):
hasn't he?
Can he accuses me of being obsessedwith who it has and hasn't in politics.
Taken a emek.
It's, and my private running title,but Robert General is one of the
few who's admitted it certainly,
Matt (08:17):
I'd like to imagine.
That's why I was looking at.
Actually at the, tour leadershipcandidates political ad spend over the
course of the past month, because that'show I like to have fun in the morning.
And, turns out that, none of themreally spent anything apart from
Genrich who's chucked 12 grand,adverts over the course of the past
month promoting his leadership bid.
He's the only person to have spentsignificantly, and I like to think
that's because he's just so proud of hisnew slim down physique, that he wants
(08:38):
to show as many people as possible.
he can afford the vertical ads onwebsites and fit all of himself into it.
So it's very handy.
Ian (08:45):
is this more, less, is more from
Andy (08:47):
the Tories is you're gonna have to tighten your belt.
So there, there is a, thing about, sortof personal optimism, which I wonder
if, Labour have taken into account.
I'm just, I'm interested in this becausethere's something about the fact that
people tend to be optimistic abouttheir own personal lives if they're
polled about it and pessimistic aboutthe national, mood that people tend
(09:11):
to think their personal finance isgoing to improve in the next year.
But they say, oh yeah, thecountry's in a going to the
dogs and it's, in a bad state.
And this happens even with.
if you're asked about your relationshipor your health or whatever it is, you
think, oh yeah, I'm probably gonnastay married or whatever it is, or,
I'm not gonna get ill softly taking avery personal turn and on the couch.
Yeah.
People asked about theirown lives, basically.
(09:32):
All sorts of aspects think fine.
Yeah.
I think it'll be all right.
Yeah.
Happens a
Helen (09:35):
lot with crime.
People say, how do you think thecountry is riddled with crime?
They go, yes.
I hear it's terrible out there.
People, constantly and they say,what you about your neighborhood?
And they go, actually myneighbor's quite nice.
Yeah.
It just seems to be peoplemowing their lawn and Yeah.
It's a sort of negativity bias.
Ian (09:47):
Yeah.
In terms of the Doism, I think partof this is, we've talked about not
wanting to be Osborne, but it's, partof it is not wanting to be Blair.
I'm sure Seki would love to get awayfrom Blair, he's on the television
most of the time or in the papertelling you what to do, but.
I couldn't help thinking becauseI'm slightly older than some of you.
(10:07):
the rose colored spectacles, notpaid for by Wade, that are being
applied to 97 are extraordinary.
The idea, ki is not, he's not nearlyas exciting as Blair and Blair had this
long honeymoon, he didn't really, hehad the Bernie Eckelston, scandal with
the cigarettes straight away, right?
And had to tell people, I'm apretty straight kind of guy.
(10:29):
Kia's cronyism Row is pretty much bangon time, for the first 97 lookalike.
So I am.
I am concerned that people arenostalgic and you think, oh
God wasn't nine seven great.
And the music and, brick pop andthe sheer excitement of Gordon
Brown being chancellor, really.
Helen (10:52):
I think things were better when I was young, generally, but I think that may
be a, and it turns out from the massiveinterest in Oasis tickets that everyone
in my generation also agrees with this asthey spend 300 pounds to watch a man who
can't sing, so extra a man who hates him.
There we go.
Matt (11:07):
but basically it sounds like Ian, you are very pro doom and it sounds like
you are going to get lots more of it.
So good news for you.
Ian (11:13):
I'm pro doom 'cause I've had enough of, birdie boosterism, to last me forever.
I'm interested where being,pro Doom turns into Puritanism.
and I think the anti cigarettething is quite interesting.
and telling people.
If they're going to have a toughtime is slightly different from
telling people they're not goingto enjoy anything ever again.
(11:34):
and that, that might be a bit of a gift.
Yes.
So I do think it'll beinteresting to watch that.
and the idea that it, AngelaRainey goes dancing once,
half the Tory Press has a fit.
Is that appropriate behavior?
Nadine, Doris, Nadine, Doris of allpeople who failed to criticize Boris
Johnson during the whole of PartyGate now says it's not appropriate for
(11:59):
Angela Rainier to dance during what?
Some holiday before the budget.
this, is Puritanism on a massive scale.
Helen (12:06):
Tom Watson did a great tweet about that, which was you ate an ostrich
anus during the parliamentary term,which is a fairly unanswerable charge.
I tell was anybody who's
Matt (12:14):
been paying attention to politics for the past 14, 15 years, we've seen
a selection of horrendous videos ofTori's dancing at their party conference
to a selection of terror, I'm sorry.
Yes, equal opportunities forterrible political dancing.
Helen (12:26):
one of the people he defended there was Michael Gave, who said, I
strongly believe in community safety.
He's being allowed toterribly dance in public.
So what
Ian (12:31):
about Pretty Patel and Nigel Farage?
No.
There we go.
I wanna
Matt (12:35):
know.
you're all puritans at heart, butthink this podcast is pro dancing.
I think we can say that.
Yeah.
Helen (12:40):
Okay, good.
But the weird thing is that the Torieswill now, as you say, criticize that idea
of smoking ban in pub Gardens, having notthree months ago, had a policy that was
under 18, should never be allowed to smokeever in their lives anywhere at any point.
So it's really interestingto watch them try and balance
those libertarian instincts.
depends on them.
We get your fav, your Caesar head,Faye Rob Genrich as Tori leader,
Ian (13:02):
And will he be, telling us all to take Ozempic?
Will he be putting thaton the health service?
I read a report saying pic.
Enhances your mental capacities.
it's time then.
just
Matt (13:13):
on
the Ozempic point, if you ever wantto cast iron bits of proof about the
power of, well-funded public relationsby the pharmaceutical industry the past
six months have headlines about ozempicare an excellent, example of that.
Ian (13:24):
I will have more on this piece in the magazine.
Thank you, pat.
Matt (13:30):
so we now turn to, What Helen did on her summer holidays, which was go
to the Democratic National Convention.
Yes.
Because, Helen, you've been, writinga bit, about, American politics
and there's been a developmentsince the end of the DNC, which is
from the other side of the aisle.
Donald Trump's, great bigpodcast tour of the USA.
Helen (13:50):
Yeah, he's having a, lovely time.
Actually, it's funny, we talked aboutDuma Tism here because the big theme
of the Democratic convention was joy.
You had Oprah saying,only Kamala can bring Joy.
Everything will be joy.
but at the same time it came toprogramming to the Democratic
convention was that Trump went onthe podcast of a Louisiana former,
standup comedian called Theo Von.
(14:11):
Whose name actually stands for TheoVon Something Quite Long 'cause
his family are Polish aristocracyin way back in the midst of time.
and in which they discussed in themost interested that I've ever seen.
Trump being another person.
Theo Von's, previous alcoholand cocaine addiction.
In which Trump was like, what is it?
What's it like?
Cocaine.
Is it better?
Is it better up than alcohol?
Because he's completely teetotal.
(14:32):
His older brother was an alcoholic.
And his dad was obviously who was amean authoritarian controlling type
of person, was always very awfulto Trump's older brother, which I
think tells you a bit maybe aboutwhere his psychology was formed.
But he had a genuinely veryinteresting question about,
just about what cocaine's like.
And this guy said, it'll haveyou like a damn owl homie.
(14:53):
You'll be out in your own frontporch, you'll be your own streetlight.
And Trump went.
Yeah.
yeah, I hear it.
I hear it.
I hear it's good.
And then Theo Von started complainingthat the Coke you could get
these days wasn't very good.
And he didn't know wherethey were getting them from.
And Trump had this sort of look on hisface, like he might appoint some sort of
federal commission to look into this...
terrible!
So everything's getting somuch worse these days, but
(15:13):
this is part of a much broader.
, a tour of young male podcasters andpodcasts that appeal to young men.
he had, for example, Logan Paul,who was a former YouTuber turned
professional fighter, come to Mar Largo.
Andy (15:27):
when you describe him as a professional fighter, you mean someone
who actually physically fights asopposed to the Kemi Beja knock model
of professional fighter of this.
Okay.
Helen (15:36):
there's a very funny thing if you ever look at any of these
people, the best thing to do islooked at their Wikipedia entries
and look at the controversy section.
'cause there's always the maddeststuff you've ever seen, right?
Logan Paul's one says.
Japanese suicide forest controversy.
That's all I'm gonna say about that.
Ian (15:51):
has a small boy wants to know, what's it like taking Coke?
Yeah.
Is it great?
What's it like hitting people?
Andy (15:56):
Is
Ian (15:56):
that good?
Or, I'd like to hit people.
I'd like to and take Coke.
Is are we saying he's in fact a13-year-old trying to appeal to
slightly older boys who've got the vote?
Matt (16:06):
there's an interesting question about the demographics of these things.
So Theo V's.
Podcast has, I think it's 3million subscribers, thereabouts.
Logan Paul's has.
significantly more, if I'm not mistaken.
However, if you dig into the numbers,it does seem significantly likely that
a large proportion of those listenersare going to be 13-year-old boys.
And one, one does wonder exactly whatelectoral impact this is gonna have at
(16:26):
the ballot box come the 4th of November.
'cause Yeah, that's interesting.
Helen (16:29):
It is also a, way of looking at it is, and whole new alternative ecosystem
has been melded together of a couple ofdifferent things in commercial and sports.
So lots of these people are linkedby, Dana White, who is the president,
USC, ultimate Fighting Champion.
Which Trump goes to a lot, right?
Because he's the kind of guy whogrew up with casinos and hotels, and
then all of this kind of fightingindustries that you go and watch these.
(16:50):
Then they are now megapay-per-view events because they
sell millions of pounds, right?
So there's all of that.
Then there's the other weird thing,which is that every time they do these
interviews, there's always an energydrink on the table or behind them.
They've all got their own energy drinks,so it is also they've got their own.
Yeah, Prime is the onethat, Logan Paul has got,
Ian (17:08):
can I just say the I Energy Drink
Helen (17:11):
and a J Yeah.
Is
Ian (17:12):
incredibly effective and it's available.
quite soon.
Absolutely.
Herbert Gassett swears by it, itkeeps him feeling just 94 years old.
Helen (17:20):
Definitely
Matt (17:21):
doesn't contain cocaine.
Helen (17:23):
yeah.
But they do, they all, the DailyWire, which is behind a big ultra
conservative culture war site in theUS has its own range of vitamins that
are called, I think Responsible Man.
And it says, because you need.
To be No, because you need to beready, like fighting ready for
the cultural battles we face.
We now have anti wokevitamins, is where we now are.
Matt (17:44):
But cultural battles, they're not muscle pills.
They're,
Helen (17:47):
they're are.
'cause you have to be fighting for,to make arguments on the internet.
Matt (17:50):
I
Ian (17:50):
see, But
Helen (17:52):
All of this kind of stuff that a particular tendency of kind of men's not
Ian (17:55):
going to storm itself.
Matt (17:57):
And you need fit bodies there.
Yeah.
But there's, something interestingabout the strategy as well to.
Pick up on what Helen was saying.
So if you look at, if you look atthe amount of money that's currently
being spent on digital advertisingin the us elections right over the
past month, the Harris campaign sincebasically she was, or since Biden's
resignation, at which point it becameobvious that she was the defacto pick.
(18:18):
the Harris campaign has outspent the Trumpcampaign by a factor of about five six.
there's a, real disparityin terms, and this is across
meta and Google's platforms.
And just in terms of the amount ofeyeballs that you're gonna reach,
Trump is lagging significantly, andthis podcast stuff is like it's free.
You don't pay to go on these things.
(18:38):
It's a great boost for them becauseyou've got Donald Trump on, so
they'll get a boost to their audience,which means ad revenues go up.
Trump gets access to an audience of 3million, 5 million children possibly.
But nonetheless, he gets access to themand this is the way, this is the new
way of disseminating political content.
you must have seen when you'reat the D nnc that they had.
I think, was it 200 TikTok asinfluencers and things like that, doing
broadcast directly to kids throughTikTok, all about what was going
(19:01):
down at the convention rather than,or as an adjunct to the Press Corps.
this is standard, practice Now, what'salso interesting about the Trump
campaign is that his social mediastrategy is being driven apparently to
all intents and purposes by, his son.
Baron, who you may remember from beinga very tall sort of, how old must he?
A 10-year-old He 19 now.
Yeah.
And yeah, he's 18, 19.
(19:22):
And so he's in charge of Trump'ssocial media strategy, being advised
by his good friend who's a 17-year-oldinfluencer, called Bo Loudin.
So, basically, and if you,I've never felt older.
I've never felt olderthan discussing these.
If you, read these things, some of thetranscripts of Trump going on these
podcasts, he, he'll literally say thingslike, yeah, my son really likes you.
so I think a lot of the strategy isthis is basically Barron Trump going,
(19:46):
so I like this, do you wanna go on this?
And Trump going, yeah, okay fine.
Helen (19:49):
But that does remind me of Bo, there was a thing where Boris Johnson,
remember that election campaign wherehe just used to dress up and someone
said this as what an 8-year-oldboy thinks grown up jobs are like.
Like here I am, I'm a builder.
I'm in a hard hat.
Like they were all like littlebut, and but, and I think this
is a sort of slightly more.
Coked out version of that really.
But you are right.
The Harris campaign has taken acompletely different media approach.
(20:11):
It's paying for it all.
She only sat down for her firstinterview and it was a joint
interview since becoming the nominee.
And that's it.
There's massive grump in the US PressCorps about the fact they're not
submitting themselves to interviews.
Trump is similarly.
Swerving big set piece interviewsbecause he can go on a, like one of
these, max Reed called them the DipShit podcast circuit, which is sums
(20:32):
up the appeal of them and just havethese weird vibey conversations.
Like the Logan Paul, they did talk abit about Iran, but they also end up
just talking about in the Theo Von.
But they took about why don'tpeople have heart attacks out, have
excitement at sporting events anymore.
When we were growing up, thatused to happen all the time.
So just weird flights of fancy,
Matt (20:50):
which,
is the Trump.
Trumpy model of conversation isthis, to that, to this, to that.
in terms of the audience who are watchingthese things, assuming that they're not
all 13-year-old boys, as Matt points out,assuming a good chunk of them at least
do have the vote, is it likely to work?
there's a
Helen (21:07):
huge split in gender terms in the us.
Traditionally, there hasn't been thatmassive agenda split in voting norms,
but in the US at the moment, it is reallybig, particularly among young people.
Young women are really inthe tank for the Democrats.
And young men are really in the tonguefor the Republicans, and that is
also correlated with a load of otheropinions, like young men being more
like to say that feminism has gone toofar, or that actually it's harder now
to be a man than it is to be a woman.
(21:28):
And there's, and that feeds into thecold, whatever you want to call it, anti
woke discourse of people like Elon Musk.
Which is you go to work in a companyand it's all run by women in HR who
tell you can't say anything anymore.
this sort of Jordan Pizza ideathat it was better when men were
in charge of stuff 'cause they wereaggressive and they had fights.
Whereas women are passive aggressiveand so they just plot and scheme
and bicker among each other.
(21:48):
This is all a very male.
Sort of world that appeals to these,as you say, ma, like quite a particular
type of masculinity that is a veryanxious young man's masculinity.
it's,
Ian (22:00):
is this the incel tour really?
Matt (22:03):
it, I'd say it's, incel adjacent.
There was, an excellent piece of writingby a guy called Ryan Broderick, about
this, who basically posited that, theentire appeal of the Trump campaign over
the past eight years is pretty much beinglike going after people who really just
don't like themselves very much and feelquite uncomfortable with who they are.
And appealing to those veryspecific vulnerabilities.
And this feels like a sort ofend point manifestation of that
(22:25):
because a lot of these podcastsare being consumed by young men.
Men who don't feel verycomfortable about themselves.
They often don't feel theireconomic prospects are great.
They don't feel that their, positionin what they would very much consider
the sexual marketplace is advantageous.
And they don't necessarily feelthat they have a lot to hope
for and go for, and this is.
Basically appealing to them andtelling them, it's not your fault.
(22:46):
It's and it's
Helen (22:47):
presented in very racial terms, but it's not just young white men either.
Joe Rogan's audience, I thinkis about a quarter, of that,
of the young male demographic.
Listen to it is Hispanic or black.
And there is a sort of sense of likesolidarity between the races in America.
For young men is, that is a big,you have more in common than you do
with women of the same race as you,which again, is very different to
how politics has traditionally workedin kind of voting blocks in America.
Matt (23:11):
so one of the interesting things about the targeting of this is that,
it's not just the demography in termsof age and gender split, that's peculiar
and skew's quite young and very male,but it's also the fact that many of
these podcasts are very international.
Joe Rogan, for example, is a trulyglobal proposition, and whilst obviously
it's an English language thing, it getstranslated and clipped into lots and
lots of other an anchors worldwide.
So this is, in many respects,something that you might.
(23:33):
Term as an using advertisingparlance as wasted inventory.
you are buying presents or gainingpresents somewhere that can't
actually materially impact the goalthat you are trying to achieve.
Andy (23:42):
and it must be tricky.
I presume that a lot of Theo Von viewersor listeners also watch Logan Paul and
also watch Adam Ross and also watch blah.
But that's, unavoidable.
Matt (23:52):
there's an argument to suggest that, as, we, noticed during the
election campaign over here, Kier kepton saying his dad was a tool maker.
Because unless you say something 3million times, the average voter will
not retain it, which means that you are
Ian (24:03):
kidding.
Matt (24:05):
He was a tool maker.
That's all I've heard.
Helen (24:07):
There is an interesting thing though, which is it creates an
intellectual climate and a kind ofcurrent, so even in our, politics, you
will see the way that the Tory partyis struggling to not bend towards
some of the opinions of these peoplestruggling not to bend towards the
opinions of the American right, whichare very minority opinions here.
And people wrestling with that onGB news when the latest kind of woke
(24:27):
controversy is often an American oneor a Kind of slightly more provincial
British version of something that'sbecome made as a big theme by Americans.
There is definitely, we do catch thekind of backdraft of a lot of this stuff.
Ian (24:40):
but Trump's was the ultimate booster essentially.
And he got into powerby saying, I'm great.
It'll be great.
Things will be great.
And I get the feeling.
He's now without an act, because,he's got to say things are gonna be
terrible, particularly under, thisnew joyful and happy Democratic party.
(25:04):
So what, can he do?
' do as far as I, I gather it.
that group of people that he'sgoing through on the podcast want
to hear that everything's awful.
Helen (25:14):
yes and no.
So one of the big blocks of Trump'ssupport last time was people
who are quite wealthy in Americabut don't have a college degree.
So one of the ways that this was describedas a kind of demographic was like boat
people, like people who are wealthyenough to own a boat, but they don't feel
like they're part of a cultural elite.
Isn't here, isn't it?
I don't feel
Ian (25:31):
Trump's going
Matt (25:32):
for the boat people landing in Kent.
Helen (25:35):
People who would have a kind of, miniature yacht that'd be
called something like, box and bell.
And they'd more it in Florida, and wherethey'd come have their winters, but they
would feel that the kind of snooty bike,coastal elites looked down on them.
And there's a very telling momentin the Theo Von Podcast where.
he says, under me, we hadthe greatest economy ever.
The economy was amazing.
(25:55):
And Theon says, yeah,my cousin bought a boat.
And it was that thing of, his taxcuts for the rich and upper middle
did make a lot of people feel better.
The covid stimulus stuff did make a lotof people feel economically better in the
way that it did very briefly here, right?
Suddenly when everybody was going tothe pub for free, people briefly about
things were quite good, but the billhas come, due for all that stuff.
(26:16):
And I'd like to end by saying ifDonald Trump would like to come on
this podcast and be interviewed byDipshit, I am available at short notice.
I don't have an energy drink,but I will get one in time.
I have a few kind of redBoulogne in the background.
Matt (26:29):
Now I have another quiz question for you all.
Who here has an app calledTelegram on their phone?
I do.
You are nicked Helen,and you are nicked Matt.
Mine's the Daily Telegram.
Helen (26:43):
Got an actual telegram every day.
Andy (26:48):
Matt, can you tell us a little bit about not only, telegram itself,
but also about its founder pov whohas recently been arrested in Paris?
Matt (26:58):
telegram is a slightly difficult app to describe.
it's part messaging app andit's part social media platform.
And effectively the way it works islike all of these things, you can share
messages with people, either one toone or with multiple people in groups.
Or you can have groupsof up to 200,000 people.
All of which can communicate witheach other, which can be subdivided
(27:19):
into different channels that canbroadcast different types of things.
And this can be writtenvideo, images, et cetera.
Can I just say that's a nightmare?
I didn't even like WhatsApp groups withmore than about four people in them.
It's just too much.
Okay.
or you can have, channels which areeffectively one, two potentially
infinite broadcast streams that anybodycan sign up to follow and gives you a.
Platform to then saythings to your followers.
(27:41):
the thing that's curious about plaabout Telegram as a platform is that
it is the most maximally free speechof all of the platforms that exist.
it's founder Pura, is Russian, and he madea violent amount of money from setting up.
What was basically the Russian versionof Facebook called Vicon Act in the
two thousands, which he then gotout of in 2013, 14, I think, partly
(28:06):
because he was feeling intense pressurefrom the Russian states to hand over
user data, and all the rest of it.
So this prompted him to createTelegram, which he always said
would be maximally free speech.
And what that means is that basicallythey commit to and say on their FAQs that
they will never, ever, hand over any dataor any information to law enforcement
(28:28):
anywhere in the world, regardless.
So there are things that youcan't do on Telegram, right?
You definitely can't.
Post child sexual abuse material inpublic channels that is explicitly stated.
What is not explicitly stated is thatyou can't do that in private channels,
which as we can all understand, is atacit admission that you definitely, can.
(28:51):
similarly, Telegram has for a long timebeen the preferred messaging and broadcast
and information dissemination platformof isis, of Hamas, of Islamic Jihad.
it is been linked to operations conductedby people like the Proud Boys in the US
and various other Far rights, extremeorganizations, but also plenty of far
left extreme organizations as well.
without wishing to give anyone any ideashere, if anyone ever does want to buy
(29:14):
drugs really quickly and easily, searchingon Telegram is not a terrible first step.
Trump could give it a go.
Should Donald be interested in, tryingsome of that exciting marching power?
I've been trying to get hold of someresponsible man pills, and so this
Helen (29:29):
Anti weight vitamins are only a click away.
but the, the persistent question, isn'tit about telegram, is to what extent
it really is at arms length from theRussian state, as you say, power dur of.
Went into exile in Dubai.
he obviously recently arrested in France.
He's got a number of different passports.
Hasn't he's got one from St.
Kits.
Nevis.
He's got a French one.
He's got a Russian one I believe, if
Matt (29:49):
I'm not mistaken, UAE.
'cause telegram is currently basedin Dubai for legal reasons, although
interestingly, it's server architectureis spread all around the world,
which makes it incredibly evil.
Not incredibly easy, but it makes itvery hard for specific domestic legal
setups to prosecute them meaningfullybecause the data is so distributed that
the jurisdiction for overseeing theuse of that data is very, fragmented
(30:12):
and hard to effectively track.
but the reason he was arrested, is,in France a couple of weeks ago, there
were a variety of charges, 12 in total.
The majority of them relate to what theFrench authorities refer to as complicity
in criminal acts, which effectively means.
You know this stuff is happening.
it's illegal and yet you arenot doing anything to stop it.
Andy (30:33):
And presumably it's a national border thing that's
happening in France on Telegram.
Therefore, they've arrested him.
Matt (30:39):
There is one charge which pertains to running unlicensed encryption tools.
Within France, and it's this that isgetting people's culture war backs up.
as you can imagine, the arrest ofthis man who runs, what is in part
an encrypted messaging service,it's not entirely encrypted.
You have to opt into the encryption,which is one of the other reasons why
it's in a very interesting position.
(30:59):
because not everything on its encrypted.
Unlike WhatsApp, where literally noone, not even meta, can see the contents
of your messages, stuff on Telegramif you don't automatically encrypt it.
It's not encrypted, whichmeans that anyone at Telegram
can see your messages, right?
Which means that Telegram literallyknows that people are using its
platform to share messages containingchild sexual abuse material, or
to sell guns or drugs or people.
(31:21):
however, upon dur, Rob's arrest, allof the people that you can imagine
getting very exercised about perceivedcrackdown on freedom of speech and the
ability to send encrypted messages,got very upset about this Elon Musk.
as you can imagine, a variety ofother charming people from across
the right wing political sphere.
that's
Helen (31:39):
part the more interesting one, I would say is.
Is Tucker Carlson, if you remember oflately, of having traveled to Moscow
to hear from Vladimir Putin aboutvarious incidents and grievances from
many centuries of Russian history.
And this has always been one of thebig question marks about Telegram.
It was, it is the, as well asyou say, Hamas, isis, others.
It is the defacto communicationsystem for the Russian Army.
(31:59):
And you, it was verypopular in Ukraine as well.
To the extent that theUkrainian authorities have said,
please do not use Telegram.
We absolutely are very worriedthat this stuff is ending up.
Being looked at by peopleand it is insecure.
And as Matt says, it's not, it'ssold as a secure encrypted app.
And it's really not.
Unless, you're in a one-to-one channel,unless you've explicitly opted in.
But the interesting thing to me aboutthe learning from this is that these
(32:22):
social media platforms that startedoff as a fun way to stay in touch with
your friends have essentially become.
Giant national security problems becausenot only is this huge amount of traffic
going through them, this huge amount ofillegal material, there are also very good
ways of mapping who is talking to who.
So if you are a dissident, for example,every, everybody that you are talking to
will now be held on these platforms, whichis why the Ukrainians are so worried about
(32:44):
the way about any potential connectionsbetween Paval, Joof and, the Kremlin,
Matt (32:48):
and
Helen (32:48):
which he denies, I should say.
Matt (32:50):
He does deny, but I was.
Reading something interesting in the keyof independent about the fact that he's
traveled back to Russia approximately60 times during his supposed exile.
Ian (33:01):
and he's never fallen outta a window once.
No, I, rest my case, possibly
Matt (33:07):
coincidentally, when he flew into France and was arrested,
he flew in from Azerbaijan wherehe'd just been for a few days.
Coincidentally, VladimirPutin had also been in as I'm,
Helen (33:18):
it's lovely this time of year.
That's what they alwayssay about as correlation,
Matt (33:21):
of course, not equal and causation, but yes.
Andy (33:23):
it does remind me of something of the covers a great deal, which is the.
The trickiness of pinning downinternational and offshore money,
except this is international andoffshore information and country.
If until all 193 countries agree tocrack down on offshore money, then
it's going to exist in an enormous way.
And this is exactly the samething happening all over again.
(33:44):
And it's about whichcountries will and won't.
Do something.
And as long as there are a few countrieswhich won't, this can thrive there.
And if the, Helen, you weresaying something interesting
about this enormous pile of coma,basically being in Dubai now.
Helen (33:56):
and as Matt says all over the place, but you are right, there is a form
of digital nationalism that's emerging.
So China has, from thestart of this era, said.
We're having our ownsocial media networks.
We're not letting other people's in.
We want to be entirely in chargeof, Baidu and WeChat and all
the kind of stuff that's there.
And there are certain thingsyou can't say on those things.
We are, we are not gonna pretendthis is about free speech at all.
(34:16):
No.
You use our controlled apps.
And we're in charge of them, which iswhy Donald Trump was very cautious about
TikTok, which is, its own at the time,bite Dance is a Chinese company because
it was saying, do we really want youngAmericans on a Chinese own platform that
could be used as an influence operation byChina if they want, if they say wanted to.
And that, there's a version of, telegramcalled Signal that is based in the
(34:38):
US and I think the US would be muchhappier if US citizens were on that.
they feel quite smug about thefact that so many of the big social
networking companies are based.
In America, and therefore you canget Mark Zuckerberg in, in front of
Congress and quiz him about what stuffhe, what covid stuff he's allowing
on the platform and stuff like that.
But for any smaller country, it'sa really difficult question to do.
(34:58):
Do you really want your citizens on theseplatforms that are in some external jury
extinction you have no access to at all?
Yeah.
Ian (35:06):
But the same arguments as with banking apply with, information.
And as soon as.
Anybody begins to take the mildest form ofaction, which we're all told is hopeless
and couldn't possibly work, they allstart screaming, this man gets arrested.
and all the Freedom Warriors aresaying this is the most worrying
thing that's ever happened, inthe entire history of the world.
(35:26):
Yeah.
And you think, maybe it is possibleto take action against these people
and maybe some of these actions work?
Yeah,
Matt (35:35):
I think it's, important to, to make the very clear point that.
It is very hard to conceive of thisrationally as a freedom of speech issue.
nobody is saying that you shouldn't beallowed to have encrypted messaging.
That is not what the Frenchgovernment appears to be saying.
That is not indeed whatthey've taken issue with.
What they've taken issue with isthe fact that you shouldn't, they
posit be able to run a platformthat serves nearly a billion people.
(35:58):
900 million users, telegramglobally, a billion people, and
have a hundred staff globally.
A hundred staff in total globally andliterally not comply with police requests
to remove child sexual abuse material,or people trafficking people or guns.
Drugs.
that doesn't strike me asa reason of speech issue.
The second point to note is that thereason it's become a cultural war
(36:18):
Shibboleth is because Signal, whichHelen mentioned, which is the sort of
peer, encrypted app, which is franklybetter encrypted in a better and more
robust piece of software, happensto have as one of its board members,
a woman who is also on the board ofAmerican Liberal News Outlet, NPR.
And as a result of this, a lot of it very,
Helen (36:37):
basically the signal is run by a bunch of woke hippies.
Exactly.
and therefore, and you will seeall the time now, people talking
about how amazing Elon Musk.
Exes because now it's allowed backon all these people like Tommy
Robinson who were banned before.
It's the only place that freedom ofspeech still exists on the internet.
His AI is, will allow you to do,pictures of Mickey Mouse smoking crack.
there's a big kind of, we don'thave to obey any rules and laws.
(36:59):
Whereas, as you say, signal,it's Catherine Mayer, isn't it?
Yes.
Who, she once did something likeshe put her pronouns in her bio
and they, this is evidence that sheshouldn't be in charge of a, network.
Matt (37:08):
So can I check, does Signal comply with requests from law enforcement
agencies or anything like that?
Helen (37:13):
not aggressively in the sense none of these companies do.
Even Facebook, which is probably,fairly well established is quite
hard to extract information out of.
Matt (37:21):
to give you an example, in WhatsApp, in Signal, in almost all of these
platforms, in fact, apart from Telegram,there is an easy option within the app.
To be able to report content thatyou see that is illegal, breaks,
the terms and conditions, et cetera.
Telegram doesn't provideyou with that functionality.
Which I presume is why they can getaway with having a hundred staff.
Helen (37:39):
Yeah, it's, philosophically opposed to any kind of government intervention,
it's beyond libertarianism into thekind of amazing Wild West, but there is
a big current within the online right,and within the tech sphere of that hyper
libertarianism that, governments onlyexist to get in the way of innovation.
And part of that is they also onlyget in the way of censoring, the
real ideas that people need to hear.
Ian (38:01):
ideas like globalization, taking over everything and, individuals
in countries no longer having anypower to change their own lives.
do their heads never blow up?
Helen (38:12):
once you've been to the NatCon, which is the international
gathering of nationalists, likeyou just have to accept that.
No, don't expect it to make any sense.
Victor Ban has traveled over toAmerica to tell, how terrible it
is for other countries to lectureyou on how to run your country.
What, yeah.
None of it makes sense,
Ian (38:28):
but Matt, , I keep reading in your column that, Platforms and
channels, and these organizationssay it's absolutely impossible.
we don't have the numberof staff to interfere.
We can't possibly moderate that stuff.
And then one of theiradvertisers complains, and
within about 38 milliseconds,all content has been removed.
That defended the advertiserand the entire process seems
to be incredibly possible.
Matt (38:50):
what is interesting about Telegram is that it has occasionally been
really good at complying with take downrequests for copyrights of material.
so yeah, it turns out, that paring afilm terrible, posting, posting terribly
offensive pictures, not terrible at all.
One of the reasons is that largerplatforms, can operate automated systems
whereby copyrighted material gets uploadedsomewhere by the copyright owner, and
their automated systems can basicallyfind anything that matches that and take
(39:12):
it down entirely, which is significantlyeasier to do for copyrighted material
than it is for new, fresh content,which is one small justification,
possibly not wishing to protect
Ian (39:22):
So if ISIS branded their material better, it would be easier to take down.
Matt (39:27):
Yeah.
What they, really need is a niceidentifiable logo watermark in the top
right hand corner of all of their stuffso we can just nix it immediately.
Ian (39:33):
And that's very helpful, man.
Matt (39:36):
OV has nearly enough children to fill one of his own telegram groups.
he's got a hundred children, I think.
Is this Helen?
Is this right?
You've got Chap.
He claims to
Helen (39:44):
be an avid, sperm donator.
Yes.
yeah, I'm thorough.
Eni encourage you to check out hisInstagram feed, which features lots of
photos of him topless in the desert.
He doesn't drink caffeine,he doesn't eat meat.
he's one of these people who lives a veryacetic lifestyle, but part of that is the
intense natal wisdom that characterizesa lot of that kind of on what you call
Ian (40:03):
natal.
Helen (40:04):
Tech Elite?
so Elon Musk resemble, has 10 children,maybe more, but that we know of.
and there is, there are consistentreports that he is, he's very
keen on the idea that high IQpeople should be overrepresented.
a lot of this is a returnof a soft form of eugenics.
The idea that smart peoplearen't having enough.
Kids,
Ian (40:23):
And is it true that none of Musk's children actually talk to him?
Matt (40:26):
he
Helen (40:26):
has a transgender daughter who's now called Vivian, and she's got a
very interesting account on threads.
I think this is probably the thingthat's most hurtful to him, which is
the platform owned by Meta, a Facebook,which she uses just to talk about
what a terrible father she thinkshe is, how he never accepted her.
He said in his interview withJordan Peterson, she had been
captured by the woke mind virus.
and a social contagion, but several ofhis other, he's got, ex a dark cerial
(40:50):
and, the ones, the newer children,there is a feud between his, most recent
ex-wife and the executive of his companywho had two of his chil children.
As Matt says, there is a differencesometimes between these people wanting
to father children and what might somemight call parent children, right?
Sure.
In an ongoing basis,
Andy (41:09):
it does sound like Boris Johnson and.
Ruper Murdoch are both part of thetech elite, which I didn't suspect.
It turns out that the great men of ourtime have a surprising amount in common.
That's it for this episode of page 94.
if you have enjoyed it, thenwhy not buy the magazine,
private-eye.co.uk, get a subscription.
It's a fantastic magazine.
(41:30):
That's all I need to say on the matter.
thank you very much to Helen, toIan, and to Matt and to you for
listening and to Matt Hill from RethinkAudio, who has always produced it.
We'll be back again in twoweeks with another one of these
and we'll see you next time.
Goodbye.
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