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- [00:00]
A
Turns out there actually aren't 10 RG bombers in the world. So actually, it'd be a great war. It'd be a great war because it'd be one that even in our diminished state, we might actually have a pretty good chance of winning. Who now has anything to say about the deindustrialization of this country?
- [00:44]
B
Georgian townhouses on the moon, the highest
- [00:46]
A
GDP per capita in the Milky Way.
- [00:48]
B
Small modular reactors under every village green.
- [00:51]
A
This is Anglo Futur. Listeners. Hello and welcome to a solo episode from the King Charles III space station. Now, that's not quite true. Tom is patching in. I've had to sort of lower a.
- [01:19]
B
He's.
- [01:20]
A
He's currently on the continent spending some time with his nieces.
- [01:24]
B
I'm behind enemy lines.
- [01:25]
A
Behind enemy lines. So. So the only way that I've been able to hear you might have heard their little tinny voice is a lower. A tin can on the end of a string. So he will be speaking up us. But. But, you know, I want you to be.
- [01:39]
B
Make.
- [01:39]
A
Make sure that it's understood, Tom, that I'm currently in the. The captain's seat here and you are. You are merely a guest on the bridge. On the, on the bridge.
- [01:48]
B
How. How are you enjoying it? Are you spinning the chair? Having a good time?
- [01:52]
A
I'm spinning the chair. I've, you know, I haven't done any of. The washing up the. The pots and pots are piling up in the sink. No, I haven't. I haven't put on trousers once since you. Since you left, actually. That's kind of similar to what we normally like.
- [02:08]
B
This is not going to help the kind of gay fanfic stuff.
- [02:13]
A
Well, I did actually search Tom on Wattpad the other day whether any of our. Any of our listenership had yet penned any homoerotic odes, and I was shocked that there were not yet any.
- [02:26]
B
I'm not familiar with Wattpad.
- [02:31]
A
Oh, yeah, no, neither. Neither am I. Neither am I.
- [02:34]
B
No, no, I'm genuinely not. Is that where people. Is that where people write? What, like gay fanfic?
- [02:40]
A
Among other. Among other things. Among other things, yeah. Yeah, Wattpad is. And I thought Tom, as a writer, as a. As a. As a word wordsmith yourself, it's a. It's a sort of place where people write long, often homoerotic kind of fan fiction and ships and there's a whole sort of, you know, any sort of vocabulary that comes out of this. Things like a. You like, alternative universe, you know, self insert.
- [03:09]
B
Well, shipping itself. Turns out there's A. There's a rather sexier form of shipping than the global infrastructure that we normally think of.
- [03:19]
A
Yes, well, no, no, the, the second most sexy version of shipping after the Royal Navy is when you imagine various fictional characters actually getting together.
- [03:30]
B
Well, there's a, there's a lot of shipping going on with Jude Bellingham and Erling Harland.
- [03:35]
A
That is, yeah, like, like, like the Type 45 destroyer and the Prince of Wales aircraft carrier. That's that, that. It's a sort of imagining a relationship between the two of them.
- [03:48]
B
It's a perfect fit because they go back to the Borussia Dortmund days and they're very affectionate with each other throughout the game, England versus Norway. And then afterwards they spoke glowingly of each other's characters, all this kind of thing. And people have found celebrations where, like, one, I think is hard and lying on his back and then Bellingham, like leaps onto him. So it's like front on front. It's a kind of missionary position. Girl celebration. I assume, well, I assume this is what happened when you scored your, what, 40 odd runs at the weekend.
- [04:21]
A
Tom, it is incredible.
- [04:22]
B
I wasn't in France, so I could, I couldn't soar onto you in that fashion.
- [04:27]
A
I, it's very generous of you to, to bring up my epic sporting. Sporting.
- [04:33]
B
Callum's had to pay a very big bung for me to bring it up that early. Jesse, hope you're listening.
- [04:39]
A
Well, listeners, you know, I appreciate you are. I'm sure you're on the edge of your seats. I, I, Callum's big score has long been foretold and has never yet materialized. Usually I, usually I tell the skipper, no, I will go out at 8, play 2 cover drives, score 14 and then get myself caught.
- [04:57]
B
And, and what happened the last game we played together?
- [05:00]
A
Well, you're right. This is the breaking news that we do need to cover.
- [05:03]
B
Was it, was it not a golden duck?
- [05:06]
A
No, no, no. It was an epic 34 runs turned. And although I was, I was only the second highest, second top scorer, but I did turn the game around. So before we were 19, 19 overs into a 35 over match, we were, we only scored like 89 runs. We were seven wickets down. And I head on, I come on, you know, not feeling particularly confident and, and all the, all the, and I said, you know, they start bowling at me and I sort of missed the first few. Tom on our video call is sort of waving his hands to try and get him to speed up. Come on, listeners. I will not, I will not. And I missed the first few and all of the. And one of the wits out in the field says, come on, take five steps in, boys. Because they think they're going to get some small catch from me. And then I whack a four over their head and I sort of call out, give yourself five steps, boys. And from then on, it was just fours galore. And I did then get myself caught out, but it did change the match. And we won. We won. With one wicket and an over and a bit to go. So it was a great match. Great match.
- [06:25]
B
Greatest day of your life, Callum.
- [06:28]
A
Well, I think it's probably my second greatest cricket triumph after when I was 12 and I hit Jake Hennessy for 25 off and over.
- [06:37]
B
That will be a future episode.
- [06:40]
A
Well, that is. In which we discuss the story. That's a story that I have. Jay Hennessey was the best bowler at school. And that's a story that my family has heard so many times when I. When I trotted out to remind them of my cricketing.
- [06:53]
B
We'll put out a kind of anniversary DVD of it when the time comes.
- [06:57]
A
Congratulations, Callum and Jake Hennessey, if you're listening, you know, tough luck, mate. Tough luck.
- [07:05]
B
I think your sporting achievements might still be in the shadow of a larger sporting contest.
- [07:10]
A
Callum.
- [07:11]
B
The World Cup.
- [07:13]
A
No, no, second story. Second story on the docket.
- [07:16]
B
Not that I want to distract from your feeds, but England's are in a World cup semi final.
- [07:23]
A
Did you watch it? Did you watch it out there?
- [07:25]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Even though we're an hour ahead here in.
- [07:28]
A
In France, it was even later for you?
- [07:32]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, the Mexico game was like, really middle of the night and it. I mean, it's so hot here when. We'll come back to that topic, but it's so hot that I just knew that at some point in the night, I was during the game, quite early in the game, probably I was going to wake up, so I just waited to naturally wake up because of the searing heat. It's been nearly 40 here and, yeah, caught most of the game. And then, of course, saw the Norway game as well, which is a slightly
- [08:00]
A
more salubrious hour, was I was. I came back, I was up in Tufnell park to watch it and then sort of came back on the night tubers of 2am and every single stop along the way, people were piling on, kind of banging the sides of the tub because they'd just seen the game. Because they'd just seen the game. And then we're heading home. It Was, it was an incredible, incredible moment.
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B
Well, I've been.
- [08:26]
A
Thoughts on the game? Thoughts on the game. Tom, is you, Are you as our sport, as our chief sports correspondent or only sports correspondent?
- [08:31]
B
I thought Norway did really well. I think they've done really well throughout the World cup and I think they could easily have won it. I don't quite know how England's kept Haaland quiet and I will miss Norway because they're entertaining to watch and they have this absolute beast of a striker, this guy Harland. And they also have that very fun rowing celebration where like the whole fans get really into it and so the players and they have this drum and it's kind of wonderful expression of, of a form of national identity. So I think we can, as a North European nation, we can feel a little jealous of that, I think.
- [09:10]
A
Yes. Yeah, exactly. A sort of a celebration that references rapine and pillage delivered sort of totally, totally with a clean conscience.
- [09:25]
B
Well, I don't know. It's known to also what happens once the rowing was complete. They're just celebrating the Vikings for their rowing prowess.
- [09:36]
A
Right, okay. I think there's quite a lot of, quite a lot of ways, Tom, that we could leverage this approach to come up with similar Anglo Saxon celebrations.
- [09:44]
B
Well, we could celebrate the Age of Sail endorsing what happens once people got off the boats.
- [09:53]
A
Okay, okay, so the next World cup we need to get a PR agency to come up with this elevation that involves sort of raising the mainsail or pulling on the sheets or reefing the topsail in a hurricane or I, I,
- [10:10]
B
perhaps we should have bring the redcoats back.
- [10:12]
A
I want something like volley, volley and
- [10:15]
B
fire or like very tight military formations or, or yeah, more, more maritime gear evoking the Battle of Trafalgar I think
- [10:26]
A
would, okay, okay, I like that.
- [10:29]
B
Like yet more crusader costumes.
- [10:31]
A
Oh, I quite like the crusader costumes. I, you know, we could do, we could do.
- [10:36]
B
Well, you're a trick fearing man.
- [10:37]
A
So of course we could do marching to Jerusalem instead of, well, just before the bit where they go and slaughter all the Muslims.
- [10:48]
B
Oh yeah. So getting all the way to Jerusalem as if they're on, on some, some
- [10:52]
A
lovely pilgrimage boys cruise. Yeah, in many ways, look, in many ways, in many ways. Tomorrow the, the Battle of Lepanto where the, where the, the combined forces of Christianity pushed back the Turks must be regarded as the biggest booze cruise that has ever taken place.
- [11:15]
B
Anyway, I think the, you know, the exciting upshot of the Norway game is that England are playing Argentina in what is known Universally as the Antarctic Peninsula Derby.
- [11:26]
A
Well, this is for Tom, for you, because we've spoken a little bit before about how, you know, we spoke a
- [11:34]
B
bit about the Antarctica.
- [11:35]
A
We spoke a little bit about Antarctica. It has come up once or twice. And this has also produced a lot of kind of excitement on Twitter with people putting out all the Falklands edits. But your point, right, is that actually our best days of fighting Argentina are yet to come.
- [11:58]
B
Yeah, I, I was arguing to you when we were discussing this earlier that perhaps Britain's principal adversary this century, and I'm kind of serious about this, could well be Argentina. So not only are they sort of gearing up the rhetoric around the Falklands again, I remember Argentina is the last country to declare war on us. They are also, they also retained this claim to a big chunk of the Antarctica, including the peninsula, which listeners to the show will know is the best bit of Antarctica because of all the exposed rock and exposed natural resources. And I think it's quite possible that, I mean, I think it's quite likely the US and China will, as it stands, carve up Antarctica between them. But Argentina had this long standing claim overlapping with ours. And I think it's quite possible that if the taboo over industrializing Antarctica starts to melt, and it could do from 2048 when the treaty systems come under review, then we'll be directly competing with Argentina for a possession which both countries think has been theirs for about 100 years.
- [13:02]
A
So, but, but I think what's quite nice about it, as, as potential wars go, you know, I, we've already had the Falklands, you know, with Maggie, Maggie saying the Falkland Islands are British and they will remain so.
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B
The Antarctic Peninsula is British and it shall remain British. I am sending a task force to Port Lockroy.
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A
The junta cannot be allowed to understand, to see that aggression will not be met with a firm British response.
- [13:39]
B
We shall uphold our commitment to the security of the oil rigs in the Weddell Sea.
- [13:48]
A
This is the real, this is tragic that she's dead. No, we need people of, to speed up on bringing her back to life so that we could not, not something that has ever been said on this show before, that we need Margaret Thatcher to come back to life.
- [14:02]
B
That, that said, if I, God forbid we, we ever say anything unwoke on this podcast. And I, I, far be it for me to egg on a war between Britain and Argentina over the Falklands.
- [14:13]
A
Oh, I'm egging, but I'm egging.
- [14:14]
B
I'm egging. But, but can you imagine releasing a podcast Episode entitled Simply Gotcha.
- [14:21]
A
Yeah, yeah. Stick it up your hunter. This is this Tom, I do think, I do think you missed a trick when you went into serious journalism. I think if you, you know, rather than the Telegraph, you should have gotten, you should have gone and written for the son and the mail. I think what, what a total hoot.
- [14:40]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think tabloids are great fun. When I was in charge of a student newspaper in my masters and everyone got a week being, being the editor, I turned into a tabloid unilaterally to everyone's extreme irritation. So Erin was hard at work in the pun mines, having to learn how to write as tabloid journalists and I was having the time of my life for this week.
- [15:06]
A
That's such a funny thing, hacking the voicemails.
- [15:12]
B
I can't remember what I put on page three, but I hope it was something risque.
- [15:17]
A
Picture of Tom's close up of your nipple. That's really funny. Thinking of yes. At a journalism masters, everyone wants to be editor of the newspaper.
- [15:26]
B
Yeah, they all want. Well, I mean it was. Everyone had to have, I think, I don't know, most of the students had to go anyway. But like, obviously everyone wanted to like be the editor of the Guardian long term.
- [15:37]
A
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, yeah, phenomenal vibes and money for nothing comes on. We're sending the two air.
- [15:47]
B
Are you talking about the. The Antarctic war edits?
- [15:51]
A
Yeah, I'm thinking. I'm talking about the edits that will emerge when we go and beat Milley's chainsaw wielding troops back.
- [16:00]
B
Well, the single Argentine F35 and the surface to air missile takes that. We've just got to make sure there's footage.
- [16:11]
A
This was a point that was made, right, that actually because someone was thinking about singing 10 RG bombers in preparation for the match. Turns out there actually aren't 10 RG bombers in the world. So actually it'd be a great war. It'd be a great war because it'd be one that even in our diminished state, we might actually have a pretty good chance of winning.
- [16:32]
B
Nice quick war. Well, we want it to be big enough to sort of spur our industrial capacity back online. The Anglo Futurism podcast should be sending material to Argentina. So they gave us a bit more of a game.
- [16:47]
A
Okay. Yeah, we could sort of go around handing out white feathers to. Actually this is making out that we are the sort of suffragettes handing out white feathers to the cowards who haven't signed up.
- [17:00]
B
Well, yeah, the cowards who haven't fought in the great Antarctica Peninsula War.
- [17:05]
A
But this is suggesting, Tom. This is suggesting, Tom, that you and I would not sign up on day one.
- [17:10]
B
Would we be too old? Would I be too old? Obviously. Obviously, I'd sign up in a heartbeat and let it be known that you and I both intend to father large broods of children such that actually, here, there's a little village on the island where I'm called Loire. And in the church, there's. Well, of course, there's a plaque with the names of the young men who died in the First World War. And what's quite horrible about these lists in these small towns is how many. How many young men had the same name? So there was a family where. Well, there were seven young men with the same name and from this village, and they've all died. And the story is that the mother had one son left, and she wrote to the President of France and asked him to haul her eighth boy, her final boy, back from the front lines. And, you know, thank goodness he did. He did send the boy back. Sent the boy home. But by God, Callum, I hope that if we're in that situation, we'll say keep the boy.
- [18:17]
A
Yeah. Todd, Any. Any. Any future. Any future first lady of the Anglo Futurism podcast will have to understand that her offspring are going to be treated like those of a sort of Shia. Shia zealot who, you know, who sees their offspring as useful purely for the martyrdom that can be achieved as they charge into a Sunni Iraqi minefield to clear the way for the tanks.
- [18:46]
B
But, darling, there's 10 trillion pounds of oil there.
- [18:51]
A
What's the line? I can't remember who said this. If the choice should come whether I should betray my country or my family, I hope that I would have the confidence to betray my country. I hope I would have the strength to betray my country. Sorry, darling, Octavian's gonna have to go to the front.
- [19:11]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Check the wedding vows, check the small prints. I think you'll find that you're an officer. Manufacturing facility.
- [19:22]
A
Right, okay. But seriously, the problem as well, though, Tom, as has been noticed, is that our claim also overlaps with Chile.
- [19:32]
B
It does. But the Chileans have been quite sound regarding the Antarctica Slupa Classico that's coming up. The Chileans, I think, out of. I don't know, it's like when you're very spiteful towards one group, and yet there's another enemy to whom you have to be even more spiteful. And so it seems online that the Chileans are actually supporting us.
- [19:55]
A
So the Chileans are supporting us. But this doesn't mean that when 2048 rolls around and the Antarctic Peninsula conflict rapidly unfreezes, that we will not have to destroy all of their frigates in port.
- [20:13]
B
Well, it won't take long, will it? It'll take a pinch of their kind of inflatable dinghy and that'll be it.
- [20:22]
A
We've really fallen into jingoism here. This is really not our style.
- [20:27]
B
No, God forbid we relapse into, into xenophobia. If I can bring this back autistically to British territorial claims, I spoke to someone like relatively well placed, who knows, who knows a fair bit about the Falklands early this year. And I said, why aren't we building a big city on, on the Falklands to shore up our claim? And my interlocutor said that one problem, apart from the, you know, the fact the falcons is very much in the
- [20:56]
A
middle of the ocean, not many people actually want to live there. It's hard to get.
- [21:03]
B
Well, one problem is that it's difficult to trade with South America because Argentina absolutely does not want us building there. And apparently there's also some diplomatic pressure on Argentina's neighbors to, to refuse to trace. You know, I think maybe they'll run into problems if they would like, if they were to send us shitloads and shitloads of building materials, let alone weaponry. Right. So it's very hard to actually expand. Another problem is that, well, a problem if you look at it from this perspective, is that the Falklands are pretty close to autonomous self governance, so they would have to decide, I mean, and they're their own community. Right. Perhaps we can sympathize with them not wanting to bring over millions of foreigners.
- [21:48]
A
So you think the, the probability of the Goose Green Casino complex and holiday resort is looking unlikely?
- [22:00]
B
I think it sounds like a wonderful idea when you hear it first. But perhaps, as with a few of the things that we enthuse about on this podcast, the barriers are greater and higher than we might initially assume.
- [22:15]
A
I thought there was something about because they have all these reserves and because they're basically self governing, they were able to be less considerate of things like net zero. So they were going ahead with exploiting these resources.
- [22:28]
B
Oh yeah. So Rock Copper is the exploration company, the oil and gas company is about to make a killing because they don't have milibands. Being like, oh, sorry, you can't have a license.
- [22:43]
A
But surely that will mean that will require a whole lot of workers. Like, I mean, I remember my, my mother was, was writing a book that was set, it was a sort of semi fictional account of a woman who had grown up somewhat. Unfortunately, she was the only mixed race black woman growing up on the Scottish town of Nig on the east coast, where there had been a sort of total backwater until North Sea oil was discovered. And then it was one of these places that was used for the building of rigs and it just sort of exploded and suddenly you had sort of, I think something like 40, 000 workers needed. So they just built row after row after row after row of sort of tenement. Not tenement, what I mean, terrorist worker houses. And surely the Falklands would need something similar. So that would be the, that would be the beginning of a, of a city, I think.
- [23:43]
B
With regard to the Falklands, it's also worth noting that the Argentina, the current Argentina football team has this song they sing apparently when, you know, when they win. And one of the final rousing lines is about how they're going to take Las Malvinas as, as they perfidiously call them. And I. Can you, can you imagine an England team that sings about the next colonial conquest that we're going to make?
- [24:07]
A
So someone said, don't threaten me with a good time.
- [24:10]
B
I mean, you and I only get excited about like keeping stuff that we already own, like the Chagos Islands. Like, can you imagine the level of like patriotic fun that would be unlocked if we could just be singing about like taking other countries stuff.
- [24:27]
A
Think about how hard it would be it would have been for Herma and Starmer to try and get the Chagos deal through if every time that Harry Kane scored a goal, he turned to the camera and went, the Chagos Islands are British and they will remain so,
- [24:43]
B
you know, and if like tattooed football fans, like, you know, camera pans to them, turn around, undies his trousers, lowers
- [24:50]
A
them there, there on his butt cheek
- [24:53]
B
is the outline of Diego Garcia. And on the other butt cheek is Diego Garcia shall remain British. This is the kind of soft power that we need to retain.
- [25:04]
A
But tomorrow you could go even further back. You know, like the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is being unfairly pressured by the Chinese. No, there's so much, there's so many home opportunities. Maybe actually the way we should do it, rather than, rather than hoping that, that fans will do it themselves, we should do it ourselves. So we should sort of join all of, you know, the barmy army and just go to every single England game.
- [25:34]
B
Well, Barbie army is cricket.
- [25:35]
A
No, I know, yeah, I know. But of every sport, of every sport, I'M I'm ignorant, but not that ignorant.
- [25:42]
B
Well, you find a way to. Anthony Gordon, who famously has the most Anglo Saxon physio. Well, people say, people say he has the most Anglo Saxon physiognomy of the squad. I think it might actually be Dan Byrne. But anyway, you find one of these guys, get them enthusiastic, so that when there's a post match interview, they start like complaining about how China has not stuck to the terms of the agreement regarding Hong Kong. And like, I know 1997 was a few years before I was born, but like many players of my generation, I find myself getting quite agitated about the incursions they've made into civil liberties.
- [26:14]
A
There you go, there you go. I mean, I was imagining we'd have to do it more directly ourselves. We'd have to buy tickets in the front row and every time the camera came past we sort of rip off our Velcro trousers.
- [26:25]
B
No, no, much better than that would be. We actually find some attractive women to whom the camera kind of naturally swings.
- [26:35]
A
Are you suggesting, Tom, that you and I would not naturally attract the camera?
- [26:39]
B
I. Well, famously we have voices for podcasting, faces for podcasting. So we need to, we need to find some very attractive women who would be willing to go to football matches to make territorial claims on behalf of the country, to whip up the country.
- [27:00]
A
Well, as given that we have this, this significant platform, you know, we, we would like to call out to our large female listenership. Surging, surging, those of you who would like to get the tattoo of Diego Garcia on your bum cheeks. And then, and then, and then we
- [27:22]
B
also need some volunteers to do that for the Falklands and the Antarctic Peninsula in South Georgia.
- [27:31]
A
Yeah, okay. Anywhere else? The Orkneys, they're getting a bit uppity.
- [27:36]
B
Oh yeah, yeah, the Orkneys, probably Rockall as well.
- [27:43]
A
Calais, The Duchy of Aquitaine.
- [27:50]
B
Well, yeah, you know, unceded British territory.
- [27:55]
A
Look, the power, the power of a beautiful woman at a football game with a jingoistic tattoo really cannot be underestimated. So. Well, what, there are what, about 207 countries in the world? So we need about 207 women, all of whom are willing to get individual tattoos of every other nation on earth.
- [28:21]
B
But I mean, this, you know, what can we learn from Argentina? Perhaps not many economic lessons, but in, you know, in, in, in some ways it's probably the, the nicest country to live in. In South America, we not learn from
- [28:37]
A
their sort of ticky tacker style of football.
- [28:41]
B
Well, I mean, they certainly produce better attacking players than we do. Even if you discount Lionel Messi, who's this kind of gift from the footballing gods. But I think they have this cohesive national glue of really hating the English and really wanting the Falklands back.
- [29:01]
A
I was going to say that we don't have enough. We don't have any people that we uniquely dislike that could animate us in that same way.
- [29:09]
B
I don't think it needs to be a person. It can be a people.
- [29:12]
A
That's what I mean. We don't have a people that we dislike like us. Getting really angry at the Argentinians would be sort of somewhat tragic, you know, cheering every time they get another IMF bailout.
- [29:24]
B
Well, it's like that famous Don Draper meme where some pipsqueak is having a go at him in the lift, saying, like, I think you're a scumbag or something. And he just says loftily, I don't think about you at all.
- [29:39]
A
Yeah, unfortunately. Unfortunately, Argentina's continued success on the football pitch means that maybe we should think a little bit more about them.
- [29:50]
B
I don't think we have anything more to say on the Antarctic Peninsula. Classico.
- [29:55]
A
What about the football, Tom, do you have a prediction? Do you. Do you have a view? What should. What should Tuchel be. Tuchel be doing?
- [30:04]
B
I don't know how you deal with Messi, but there's no reliable way of doing it. His. You could try and starve him of the ball. He doesn't run very much. So. England could use athletic players to ensure that they. They outnumber Argentina in midfield and kind of cut off the supply and maybe try to keep a high line, a high defensive line if they don't want Messi getting close to goal. But that also means that some Argentina speedy attackers will be able to have a go at our right back. Whoever's. Whoever's trying to fill the kind of problem right back slot. So I think it's going to be that.
- [30:46]
A
Is that Jed Spence?
- [30:49]
B
Yeah, I think he. I think he came on a left back, but he is a right back, so it might be Jet Spencer. Rhys James might be back and I think Rhys James would be a good candidate because he's very quick, but his fitness is quite fragile. I don't know if he'll be flying at full speed, so I don't. I. I don't think Argentina that strong defensively. So I think Kane and Bellingham have a good chance of scoring another goal or two, but I can't see us keeping a clean sheet. I think it's going to be Quite a feisty game, like perhaps quite horrid at times.
- [31:29]
A
And you're going to be in France. So we're not going to be able to watch it together.
- [31:33]
B
No. Unless I'll be in France.
- [31:36]
A
Well, whether we win or not, listeners, potentially you will hear this after the answers come out, but it'll be an exciting time. Should we move on?
- [31:50]
B
Yeah, let's, let's move on. I want to talk about. This is of course a podcast about world changing technology and futuristic things that we can hardly imagine. And so in this kind of continental size armpit, I would like to talk about aircon. So it's this technology that you might not have heard of because you're in Western Europe, but. Well, I was writing about it recently. I had to like learn how, learn how it works. And so you get your refrigerant and it's very high pressure and when you really. And then it sucks in heat depending on the level of pressure you're applying to it. And so you shuttle this refrigerant around and that's how you, you expel the hot water, the hot water, hot air out of your house. And the environmentalists, huh.
- [32:43]
A
Wow, that sounds incredible. When was it developed, Tom?
- [32:46]
B
Well, it was, it's about 100 years. And the environmentalists really dislike it for basically two reasons. One is that uses quite a lot of power when you're shunting this refrigerant around and applying pressure to it. And the other is that if the refrigerant leaks, that means you're letting a greenhouse gas or greenhouse gases into the air. And so that has a kind of non.
- [33:09]
A
That was the ozone layer. Right? The ozone layer was destroyed by these CFCs.
- [33:14]
B
I think they also help the atmosphere retain heat as well.
- [33:18]
A
No, no, no, no. The problem was it was like, it was. CFCs were chlorofluorocarbons.
- [33:22]
B
Yeah, yeah, CFCs were. Yeah, yeah. I'm saying this, that is what at the hole, which has since closed. But nevertheless, generally kind of environmentalists, environmental, generally the environmentalist lobby despises aircon for this reason. And it's very difficult to install aircon in a new build in the uk. You have to go through lots of kind of stupid rules to prove that you've, I don't know, you've tried having really high ceilings and like all this kind of thing and like you've tried having like plants on your roof. And occasionally people are kind of ordered by courts to remove their aircon, which it does.
- [34:03]
A
When I came across that, it did strike me as the Sort of thing you would read in the most lurid and kind of angry right wing Americans dream or vision of Europe. I was, I'm stunned that this applied in London.
- [34:19]
B
I would expect to read that in the sun for it not to be true, but it actually is true. And I mean here, here in France there's an even more intense culture war over it insofar as Marie Le Pen has said, like there'll be aircon for all, like we'll put it in the hospitals, which. And it's often not in hospitals, right. Or only in operating theaters. And like we'll put it in homes and it'll be great. And who cares about the emissions. And then Jean Luc Melanchon, who's the leader of La France, in sumise, this big left wing party is like totally scandalized by this and just saying non, non, non to the idea of this air conditioning. And so my, my view articulated and unheard recently, is that this is the most retarded excrescence of the culture war to date. Because modern air con Systems don't release CFCs the way they used to. And it shouldn't necessarily be the case. They use fossil fuels to power them anyway. In fact, when the sun is out, that's when the most solar power is available.
- [35:20]
A
I thought there was a point made about how there was also the risk. And again, I think this has been. I was about to say debunked, but I just had a friend shout at me over the weekend about how the word debunked was the most insidious in the English language.
- [35:37]
B
Yeah, it does make an epistemic assumption, doesn't it?
- [35:39]
A
It makes a total epistemic assumption. And I have presented no information to support this. But I'm just going to say debunked and invite the listeners, just believe it. But that one of the other reasons was that it had the potential to create this sort of heat island effect where if refrigeration works by moving heat from one place to another, I.e. you remove the heat from inside the house, you have to emit it outside. And also no system is 100% efficient, so you're also generating heat as work. So you're adding heat to the system and pumping it outside. And if all houses have a doing this, you are just creating more and more and more heat. Did your article cover this?
- [36:27]
B
Well, I only had about, I think I wrote about 1500 words, so I didn't really have space to go into it. But I think it's, it's quite right. This has been debunked. You're basically redistributing heat.
- [36:38]
A
Right?
- [36:39]
B
That. That's the whole uncontested idea of. Yeah, no, sure, sure, sure.
- [36:43]
A
But, but, but the problem with thermodynamics is that if you.
- [36:47]
B
Is that you don't lose heat. Sure, but.
- [36:49]
A
No, no, shut up. Let me talk about thermodynamics rather than you jumping in with your, you know, only knows the second law. What I mean is that it.
- [37:00]
B
The work required scientist is speaking, the
- [37:04]
A
work required to move the heat, it becomes a lot harder to do if, if the outside is even hotter because you're relying on basically putting heat from your machine into a less cool place.
- [37:20]
B
Right.
- [37:21]
A
So heat moves from the emitter of your. Of your unit outside into the environment. If the whole environment is hot, the machines become less efficient, like for everyone, and you then have to use more and more and more power, was the suggestion.
- [37:40]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, this is why we choose spaces to air condition rather than trying to air condition whole cities. Like you want oases of cool. And I think there was a review of this and it found that like, it found that, you know, the streets where there are something along the lines of the streets where there are lots of AC units are maybe a degree warmer than they would be without them, but this is an acceptable price to pay for having livable. Livable, you know, flats and offices.
- [38:13]
A
Yeah, this is what I've just, I've just googled it and it does look like about one degree. Yeah. Okay. Can increase local nighttime temperatures by more than one degree. But yeah, you're probably right. Worth it. Worth it to. Worth it to balance out the effect of like not being able to think and not being able to function.
- [38:38]
B
You would want to. You wouldn't want to. Sorry, I just completely forgot a word. You wouldn't want to contradict Lee Kuan Yu, would you? So famously said that the most important thing he did was to bring AC to Singapore Civil service.
- [38:50]
A
Yeah. It's a civilization technology. Your brain doesn't work above 28 degrees. It is astonishing. I, I mean, I live. When I lived in Senegal for a year, like, you just, you just, you just walk around not really functioning. You just sort of think, oh, total lassitude. Just not, not really able to do anything.
- [39:12]
B
I wanted to bring up the fact that there's an even better technological magic bullet than simply conventional aircon, and that is a startup that spun out of Cambridge called Baracal. In this kind of roasting heat in France. I was just like desperately looking up new ways of doing aircon and tada, Britain invented one. And so this company, Baracal uses. I don't really understand the, the material, but it's, it's basically like a, a more economic form of refrigerant made from kind of byproducts of industrial processes. And the contention of this company, Barakal, which has just got, just received 10 million euros in a, in a seed round, is that they can save. How much can they save? They think that they can deliver two to three times the energy efficiency of commercial H vac units. So hugely true. Right. Not least because there are no Dodge refrigerants being released into the air.
- [40:24]
A
Well, I mean, it was kind of. When you sent me to this, I sent me this. I was, I was kind of blown away by it because it's. These are, these are organic solid materials. So they're solid, so they're not liquid. So there's much less of a chance of leakages. And what it seems to be is if you put them under pressure, they, well, any, any system put, you know, put under pressure, increases in heat, but that you don't have a, it's not a, a linear effect. There's a sort of hysteresis, I. E. You have to put them under more pressure when they, Sorry, you put them under pressure and they heat up more and then when they relax, their cooling is greater than the work put in to heat them. Is that right?
- [41:16]
B
I wouldn't press too hard on any of the buildings in this Potemkin village of swiftly whipped up scientific knowledge, but if what you're saying is germane to my argument that we should have more of this, then yes, I agree.
- [41:31]
A
Well, it's kind of like, I mean, the closest, the closest understanding I have of this is there's a type of material called piezoelectrics. Like, you know those, you know those clicker lighters that you use, like a fire lighter, you know, when you, you know, you sort of click it and then the, the it, like it creates a spark. Like that is done with a sort of similar crystal thing that if you put pressure on it, it generates a voltage. So it seems to be that.
- [41:59]
B
Oh, I see, I see, yeah.
- [42:01]
A
So that's why they work without needing a battery. And these. So these things will be. Be a sort of similar thing. It's a crystal that you put pressure on and then when you release the pressure, they cool more. That is remarkable. Yeah.
- [42:24]
B
Material science sounds hella fun. Well, I suspect is a horrible slog for like 99.99% of it, actually. But then sometimes you come up with something remarkable. So, you know, the current anglofuturism manifesto, peace in Antarctica and cool homes and offices in Europe.
- [42:43]
A
A melting of Antarctica and a freezing of Britain.
- [42:45]
B
A hot war in Antarctica and freezing aircon at home and.
- [42:51]
A
And cold offices at home. Yeah, I think that's all right. Final item, final item is, you know, for, for a podcast that has been accused of running, try, you know, sort of self congratulatory, self congratulatory victory laps. This one to me feels like, feels like.
- [43:13]
B
I think this one is deserved.
- [43:15]
A
The first, first among among many.
- [43:20]
B
Well, there's this big new economics paper co authored by Darren Acemoglu, one of the biggest labor economists in the world, right? And he's saying what Tom Jones said on our pod, Tom Jones and David Cowan wrote a couple of years ago in a paper with Adam Smith Institute. And what Tom Jones said on our pod two years ago, which is that that the conventional wisdom that mass immigration is good for economies is wrong. And the reason Jones and Karen argued and Asimoglu is now arguing is that it suppresses innovation. You know, so instead of having a kind of automated car wash, you have like a bunch of surly Romanians standing around and like only taking cash.
- [44:02]
A
Yeah, I mean, I mean it's, it's. And what's.
- [44:05]
B
When I was a lad, Callum, there'd be hair cutting machines that would go down onto your hairs, give you a kind of perfect short back and sides, and now they're just like Kurds milling around asking for cash in hand. It was never like that in the golden days.
- [44:18]
A
Wow. The 50s must have been a wonderful place. But it is rather remarkable, isn't it? Because it's sort of, it's the thing that seems so obvious to us. I mean, so, you know, I was sort of looking through the paper and they have this really, really clever. He uses a really clever trick where they, where they look at World war, World War II deaths and they basically show that if your civilian population shrinks, that's bad because you have fewer people and it means that your GDP growth will. GDP per capita growth, I think you're probably got, will be lower. But strangely, a 1% loss of mil in military deaths, I. E. Just workers, produces 9.1% higher GDP per capita 50 years later. And they do all sorts of these things with like different parts of American compute commuter areas. So, you know, some that are. Have an aging work population, some that have a more youthful. The places that have the more aging population are actually producing more patents than they are in the sort of the, the places where you can always just get a young body to do the work. But it means what we've been saying, right? We've been saying about the Black Death, we've been saying about the Industrial Revolution. These things emerged because labor was scarce and you were forced to innovate.
- [45:59]
B
I think we are now entering a very interesting case study in the shifting of elite opinion. And it wasn't long ago that it was pretty much universally agreed that mass immigration was great for economies in almost every way. Like I remember, like I believe some of this when I was younger. But if you pay attention to the numbers and if you actually use your eyes, then you notice some things that are contrary to that narrative. And now we might be be in that period where the, where the opinion of the herd starts to shift and there'll be some, some memory holding of the rationale for 80 years of mass immigration into this country.
- [46:42]
A
Yeah. And the really, the interesting thing will be how, how and who opinion shift. So who, whose opinion shifts and how it happens. Because, you know, people love to talk about like memory holding, I. E. Yeah, I suppose.
- [46:55]
B
I don't, I don't want to kind of give people a hard time for changing their view. I don't, I don't think we, we should be in the business of disincentivizing people.
- [47:04]
A
No, no, no, no, Totally, totally. It's it. People's, people's views change and that's fine. And actually it's incredibly unhelpful to crow about it. The reality is, the reality is really that a lot of this stuff is sort of incredibly politically motivated and we actually do a lot better by not making a big deal out of it. Because really the numbers, though I suppose the numbers that were on our side and what sort of seems obvious to us has been shown to be true, you know, maybe we just have to say, right, well, people make mistakes.
- [47:42]
B
It's interesting thinking about the, you know, where, where we could be technologically if we'd taken a different path, like in, you know, what kind of automation, concretely, what kind of automation would be enjoying that we aren't currently. I mean, obviously kind of one of the great sites of kind of UK Britain is, you know, these sort of third world is zipping around on like a delivery bike, Right. Like there's a world in which we had more kind of trundling pavement robots delivering food, which obviously you have in other parts of the world. World. But there's no economic need because labor is so cheap in this country. Maybe we would have rolled out self driving taxis as well. And again, the technology exists, but there are regulatory barriers, they're quite high that maybe wouldn't exist in the same way here. If they're a great need. You know, think of all the young people who, who don't have, who don't have jobs. Maybe they, they would be the one, the ones putting pints at the moment for, you know, pouring your coffee in a coffee shop.
- [48:46]
A
Yeah, there was a, on that, there was a, a bit of a white pill that I got recently. I was speaking to a lawyer at the Civil Aviation Authority who was talking about their Future of Flight program. So listeners, I run a, I run a drone club where I teach. I teach people who, you know, sort of lawyers and consultants and whatever, you know, humanities bluffers. And you know what, Tom has not yet turned up so
- [49:18]
B
I certainly will to the next round. I'm very excited, Tom.
- [49:23]
A
I went to the humanity Bluffers club and everyone there knew you.
- [49:30]
B
I would never deny being a humanities
- [49:31]
A
bluffer, but I was talking to this guy because we were sort of trying to work out whether we could do a drone tt. So it was, you know, in the same way that the Isle of Man TT turned like motorbike racing, which, you know, apparently I was talking to a friend of us apparently. How, okay, Tom, when the, when the, when the Isle of Van TT started, how fast do you think the average speed of the motorbikes was?
- [49:58]
B
Was this the 60s when it started?
- [50:00]
A
Nope. The Isle of Man TT, the first, first started in. 1904.
- [50:12]
B
Oh, 1904.
- [50:14]
A
Yeah.
- [50:16]
B
Maybe they were going, could they get to 70 miles per hour,
- [50:22]
A
30 miles an hour. That was the average speed of the motorbikes. This was, this was like a race. This was a race and they were doing it sort of 30 and now, and now, I mean you see the videos, it's just like the countryside, just a blur. But you know, it's under considered how much of a role this Isle of Man TT had on popularizing and like promoting basically a high tech industry. Right.
- [50:49]
B
Yeah, yeah. James Kingston has written very well on this. Was it.
- [50:53]
A
And yeah, it was him that told me about this.
- [50:56]
B
Yeah.
- [50:57]
A
And it was. And so we're actually going to see if we can do it on the Isle of Man because.
- [51:01]
B
Incredible.
- [51:02]
A
Yeah, the actual story of it is that the, the Motorcar act of 1903 put a speed restriction of 20 miles an hour on all cars in, in the UK. And so it was then that the Isle of Man basically agreed to let them race on public highways because they have this independence. So in some ways, even though. So this lawyer from the Civil Aviation Authority was saying that their future of flight program is actually really going to be quite innovative. So rather than saying that there are only sort of some areas that drones can fly, they're working out a legal framework that will allow basically drones to operate in all areas. It's sort of an integrated airspace where you know, by, by sending out various like signals you can tell people what your flight path is and then be given a, you know, given airspace to move through, not just like through some restricted zones, but have total freedom to operate. So it's quite exciting.
- [51:59]
B
Are you conjuring a vision of drones delivering packages to homes?
- [52:05]
A
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe. That's where I was read as my.
- [52:10]
B
I've been on Plucking us from the ground and taking us to work.
- [52:14]
A
Well, I've been on listeners on what could be politely described as a four day bender. So my short term memory is somewhat shock. But yeah, yeah, we could, we. That is a world that, that could well could well be be on the, on the verge of arriving and it could, you know, all of the, all of the Uber driving, all of the package delivery could very well be done by drones. And it's, it's an innovation that would allow it, as we have long argued comes through population crisis, labor squeeze producing this kind of innovation.
- [52:55]
B
At the same time, the position of the Anglo Futurism podcast is that there should be a baby boom. Tough, tough.
- [53:02]
A
Yeah, quite right, quite right.
- [53:04]
B
We want to be exporting Brits.
- [53:07]
A
Well, to be fair, in Acemoglu's paper, he does make the point that things like China, which seem like perfect case studies of like labor shortage, might like sit so far outside of historical precedents that actually you potentially can't extrapolate this stuff forward.
- [53:29]
B
I also think it's worth pointing out that we have a case study in this country, in many countries in the west, of a place where we're not matching, where TFR is below replacement rate rate of 2.1. And that has very unfortunate consequences of the way we run these societies. So they become gerontocracies. The gray vote tends to win out, so pensions start to eat the finances. Governments are less willing to take risks. Perhaps there's less entrepreneurialism. Edward Luttwak writes about the end of the heroic generation where countries like the US no longer want to go to war in an adventurous way. Because this brings us back to this church near here because families don't want to send a single son, if they have one son only to war and lose him. So politics and geopolitics are all downstream of tfr and we shouldn't necessarily be wishing for an even lower birth rate. Even if we think that means that there'll be kind of automatic pieces, deliveries.
- [54:35]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [54:37]
B
And also.
- [54:37]
A
Right, you know, there's only so many generations. You can have a lower, a lower population before you, your, your nation just vanishes. Vanishes down the down the down the down. The pan of history.
- [54:51]
B
Well, yeah, you know, at some point there'll be some left wing government that just opens the floodgates and then, and then your culture is over.
- [55:00]
A
Yeah, I suppose the. Well, I mean, you say left wing.
- [55:04]
B
I mean this is what could happen.
- [55:05]
A
I would actually, I would actually push back on you because I was, I was having quite. I was quite, having quite a vigorous row with vigorous. A robust conversation with. With a. A sort of staunch remainer who was saying that it was the. The only stupid people voted for Brexit it and you know, better educated people voted against it. And you know, I was trying to make the case that the interests of the wealthy, I. E. Having loads of cheap labor to work for them and do the jobs that they want,
- [55:44]
B
there
- [55:45]
A
is this bad case of them people then like extrapolating this out and using their superior like position in society, be that social or economic, to then presume that their interests are those of the interests of the country. I think it's a really pernicious effect that people who are sort of a little bit cleverer are repeatedly able to like trick themselves into. Into, into believing.
- [56:12]
B
Yeah, I think it's a pretty fundamental problem in Western politics. The midwit problem.
- [56:20]
A
The midwit problem. We wouldn't know about that, would we, Tom?
- [56:23]
B
Well, you know, we are right at the top of the bell curve, I fear.
- [56:27]
A
Windy up here, isn't it? All right. Well, Tom, when can I expect you back from the continent?
- [56:35]
B
I will be back on Saturday, which I note is the day before the World cup final.
- [56:44]
A
Wait, this coming Saturday? Sunday.
- [56:47]
B
The day after Saturday is Sunday.
- [56:49]
A
Oh, Sunday. Yeah. Okay. Okay, okay. I almost. That's lucky. I almost. I almost scheduled a trip to go and see Women of the Surrealist Movement with a friend. So I'll lucky that I didn't. I didn't have to choose between my two great passions.
- [57:06]
B
Which way? Effete cosmopolitan man?
- [57:12]
A
Look, when you date art hoes, you know, you've just gotta. You've just gotta keep doing the work it's like. It's like going to the gym for most mental. You know, you might not like it, but you've just got to keep lifting. Lifting the weights.
- [57:24]
B
Well, I will see you on Sunday then. And listeners, viewers, we'll see you pretty soon because we're putting out an interview with the CEO of Aaron Diet, the defense team company that should be out in the next few days.
- [57:40]
A
A great hoot, that one.
- [57:42]
B
It is. It is.
- [57:44]
A
With. With an old school friend of mine through. Through a funny coincidence.
- [57:49]
B
Well, thanks again, paid subscribers. We hope you've enjoyed this. We'll be back soon.
- [58:07]
A
Sam.