Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Summary

Behind the Bastards: Part Two – What's New With Andrew Tate?
Release Date: April 24, 2025

In this compelling episode of Behind the Bastards, hosts Robert Evans, Ian Johnson, and Sophie delve deep into the controversial figure of Andrew Tate, unpacking the intricate and sinister operations that constitute his digital empire. Through a meticulous examination of leaked transcripts and investigative reporting, the hosts shed light on how Tate has leveraged online platforms to propagate his misogynistic ideology and facilitate human trafficking.

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1. Introduction to Andrew Tate’s Digital Empire

The episode opens with the hosts transitioning from light-hearted banter about the Los Angeles Lakers to the central topic: Andrew Tate. Robert Evans sets the stage by emphasizing the gravity of today's discussion:

Robert Evans [02:01]: “Because today we're gonna be talking yet again about our friend Andrew Tate, who is not our friend, but who is.”

The conversation swiftly moves into an analysis of Tate's business models, specifically his two main platforms: The Real World and The War Room.

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2. The Real World and The War Room: Structure and Purpose

The Real World serves as the more accessible arm of Tate’s operations, priced at approximately $50 per month. It acts as a gateway, funneling subscribers into the more exclusive and costly War Room, which demands an annual fee of around $8,000. Robert draws a clear parallel to luxury branding:

Robert Evans [04:06]: “The Real World is like Toyota, the War Room is Lexus. That's the premium brand.”

The Real World is depicted as an MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) scheme, focusing on "get rich quick" scams, including dropshipping and selling AI-generated books on platforms like Amazon. The primary goal is twofold: generate revenue and cultivate a dedicated user base that can be upsold into higher-tier memberships within The War Room.

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3. Exposed: Leaked Chat Logs and BBC Investigations

A significant portion of the episode discusses revelations from leaked chat logs that the BBC obtained in August 2023. These logs exposed the rampant trafficking of women facilitated by Tate and his cohorts, identifying 45 potential victims between March 2019 and April 2020:

Robert Evans [06:45]: “These logs identified 45 potential victims from just the period of March 2019 to April of 2020.”

Further exacerbating the situation, a Nov 2024 hack breached The Real World, revealing data of approximately 800,000 users. This monumental leak underscored the extensive reach and influence of Tate’s platforms, highlighting the vulnerability and exploitation of its vast subscriber base.

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4. The Real World: MLM Tactics and Scams

Robert provides a critical examination of The Real World, highlighting its reliance on MLM strategies to perpetuate its scam:

Robert Evans [09:37]: “It's all just like this forum type experience... and this allows Andrew to put in a lot less actual work in the system.”

Subscribers are enticed with promises of financial success and personal empowerment, while the reality is a high churn rate with minimal actual financial gains for the majority. The platform thrives on foundational MLM principles, where only a minuscule percentage of members—about 1%—achieve significant profit, mirroring the unsustainable models seen in companies like Amway.

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5. The War Room: A Cult-Like Operation and Human Trafficking

The War Room emerges as the elite subgroup within Tate’s empire, where deeper indoctrination and illicit activities take center stage. The hosts describe it as a cult, with members engaging in the coercion and trafficking of women to work in sex industries under Tate’s directives.

A pivotal moment in the discussion involves a quote from their analysis of leaked seminar content:

Robert Evans [16:14]: “It's the same thing with those like Nazi leaks from a while ago...”

Members are subjected to rigorous protocols that involve isolating women from their support networks and manipulating them into submissive roles. The tactics employed range from psychological manipulation to outright physical violence, as evidenced by a disturbing example discussed later in the episode.

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6. Leadership Behind the Scenes: Iggy Semmelweis and Miles Sonkin

A substantial revelation in the episode is the identification of Iggy Semmelweis (real name Miles Sonkin) as the true orchestrator behind The War Room. Contrary to Tate’s public persona, Semmelweis is portrayed as the ideological mastermind, heavily involved in crafting the manipulative curriculum and maintaining the cult-like environment within the platform.

Robert Evans [35:22]: “Semmelweis is actually an American named Miles Sonkin...”

Their collaboration marks a fusion of old-school pickup artist tactics with modern MLM structures, creating a potent and dangerous concoction that perpetuates abuse and exploitation under the guise of self-improvement.

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7. Curriculum and Tactics: From Seduction to Violence

The hosts delve into the dark curriculum of The War Room, which includes modules on mental domination and physical violence. A particularly chilling example is Tate’s endorsement of using a machete in domestic conflicts:

Robert Evans [31:07]: “What happens if she catches you cheating and she tries to attack you and he says, you know, hit her in the face with a machete.”

This extreme measure is presented as a part of the PhD (Pimpin’ Hoes Degree) program, emphasizing total control and submission over women, effectively endorsing abuse as a means of maintaining dominance.

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8. Member Experiences and Success Rates

Former members who escaped Tate's web provide harrowing accounts of their experiences. Mahmoud, a former subscriber, recounts the pervasive manipulation and the illusion of success:

Robert Evans [50:17]: “Mahmoud, a former member, told vice. There was nobody that was making any real money...”

Most members find themselves trapped in a cycle of paying for increasingly expensive courses and live events without any tangible return on their investments, highlighting the exploitative nature of Tate’s operations.

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9. The Current Status of Andrew Tate

As the episode progresses, the hosts speculate on Tate’s current maneuvers amidst legal battles. They suggest that his frequent returns to Romania stem from strategic positioning to evade prosecution, leveraging his established presence and connections within the country:

Robert Evans [65:58]: “He has found his place. And he's pretty confident that Romania will botch the prosecution against him enough that he could continue to live there.”

This tactic underscores Tate’s relentless pursuit of maintaining his empire despite mounting legal and ethical challenges.

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Conclusion: Unraveling the Web of Control

In wrapping up, the hosts underscore the insidious nature of Andrew Tate’s influence, likening his operations to modern-day Scientology with its own twisted version of self-improvement. The episode serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of charismatic leaders who exploit vulnerable individuals for profit and power.

Robert Evans [66:10]: “So that's our update on Andrew. That's where he is right now. Still a piece of shit.”

With meticulous research and a no-holds-barred approach, Behind the Bastards exposes the dark underbelly of Andrew Tate’s digital empire, shedding light on the pervasive exploitation and manipulation that defines his legacy.

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Notable Quotes:

• Robert Evans [04:06]: “The Real World is like Toyota, the War Room is Lexus. That's the premium brand.”
• Robert Evans [16:14]: “It's the same thing with those like Nazi leaks from a while ago..."
• Robert Evans [31:07]: “What happens if she catches you cheating and she tries to attack you and he says, you know, hit her in the face with a machete.”
• Robert Evans [35:22]: “Semmelweis is actually an American named Miles Sonkin...”
• Robert Evans [50:17]: “Mahmoud, a former member, told vice. There was nobody that was making any real money...”
• Robert Evans [65:58]: “He has found his place. And he's pretty confident that Romania will botch the prosecution against him enough that he could continue to live there.”
• Robert Evans [66:10]: “So that's our update on Andrew. That's where he is right now. Still a piece of shit.”

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This episode of Behind the Bastards offers a thorough and unsettling exploration of Andrew Tate's mechanisms of control and exploitation, providing listeners with a stark understanding of how such digital empires thrive on manipulation and abuse.

Transcript

[Robert Evans]

Oh, boy. Welcome to the behind the Bastards, a podcast where tired people talk about a guy they hate. In this case, Andrew Tate. How are we all doing today? Everybody full of energy, juiced up, as the kids say? I don't think the kids say that.

[Ian Johnson]

Ready to go? Playoffs are about to start. Lakers in fives.

[Sophie]

Lakers in five.

[Ian Johnson]

So we're good to go.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Well, that's good. Lakers in five. Sounds like a positive development.

[Ian Johnson]

Very.

[Sophie]

I had a really enjoyable experience of texting Robert late on Sunday when he was very intoxicated. A picture of the LaBarbie that I purchased, which is the LeBron James Ken doll. And Robert be like, call me and go, sophie, what is this?

[Ian Johnson]

It's just beautiful, is what it is.

[Sophie]

And I. And I was like, it makes me happy. That's what it is.

[Ian Johnson]

The amount of grown men, like, standing in line trying to get this doll is just.

[Robert Evans]

It's.

[Ian Johnson]

You can't make it up.

[Robert Evans]

They made, like, a GI Joe A him, or is it a. Is it a Barbie brand?

[Sophie]

No, it's a Kendall.

[Robert Evans]

I made a LeBron Kendall. Well, he's really, finally arrived, I guess.

[Ian Johnson]

Yeah.

[Sophie]

It sold out so fast. But I was. Well, I was there. I did it.

[Robert Evans]

I'm gonna guess that's the lowest percentage of Barbie dolls that have ever been bought by little girls.

[Sophie]

Probably. Probably true. Probably true. But it's. You know what? It made me happy for, like, 45 minutes. And when I look at it, I'll feel joy and, like, the world sucks. So.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yeah, joy sounds nice.

[Ian Johnson]

Take the wins where we can get them.

[Robert Evans]

I remember joy that's been replaced with occasional sleep. Yeah. Speaking of things that bring me joy, this is not one of them. Because today we're gonna be talking yet again about our friend Andrew Tate, who is not our friend, but who is.

[Sophie]

Our friend is supervising producer Ian Johnson, who's here once again.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ian Johnson]

Howdy. Thanks for having me back. Can't wait to hear more about the horrors.

[Robert Evans]

Ian Johnson.

[Ian Johnson]

Don't do that. Don't do that. No, no, Robert, I've had 35 years of that.

[Robert Evans]

Please don't contribute none of that, man. I've been. I had a good. I always love it when there's, like, really, really, like, stereotypically cheesy names in an action movie. And I just watched that very good movie, Novocaine, starring the guy from the Boys, about a dude who can't feel pain. And it does a good job with it, portraying it both as, like, a disability and realistically showing how he could use it, like, to his advantage in a fight. And it's, like, very cringy because you're constantly watching this guy, like, permanently damage his body, but it's a hoot. But they made the real character's name, Nathan Cain, which is like, okay, guys. Oh, that's a little.

[Ian Johnson]

Did we need that?

[Robert Evans]

Was that necessary? Did you have to. I know that's gonna come out in a pitch meeting. Like, oh, what if we called him this? But you didn't need to. You didn't need to. Most of the movie's pretty grounded, which is kind of what works about it. And then that happens, and you're like, I don't know, guys. Come on.

[Ian Johnson]

You were so close.

[Robert Evans]

There's also a scene where a bunch of bank robbers come out with, like, a hostage, and the cops, like, put their guns down. And I'm like, no, this is. This. This is the San Diego Police Department. You're telling me they don't just empty their fucking rifles into that? Fucking people? Those people? Yeah.

[Ian Johnson]

We'll deal with the lawsuit later.

[Robert Evans]

We all watch the LAPD shoot up a traitor. Joe's over a hostage situation, killing himself.

[Sophie]

Oh, my God, I remember.

[Robert Evans]

We don't need that shit here.

[Sophie]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Anyway, speaking of shit nobody needs. We're talking about Andrew Tate and his digital empire, how it works, things. Today's episodes are gonna be based on a bunch of subsequent reporting that was not available when we did our first episodes about how the War Room, which is his very expensive premium service that costs about eight grand a year to join, although that's actually the low end for what this fucking thing costs to be a member of. And the real world, which is, like, cost 50 bucks a month. And the real world is, you know, if it's Toyota, the War Room is Lexus. That's the premium brand. And the real world is, you know, the normal brand that actually makes them the bulk of their money. So we're going to talk about how these work, how Tate has weaponized them over the years, and what some of these released chat logs have made clear about the operating culture. But first, that's the cold open. We're done.

[Unknown]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley season one.

Every time I hear about my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

We're back and Sophie and I are commenting on our same colored drinks.

[Sophie]

What's yours? Mine's electrolyte water.

[Robert Evans]

Mine's some mix of BCAAs and water. Cause this is ostensibly a workout day that has been a little bit of a shit show, but might as well get whatever those chemicals are. People say they do something sensational. Yeah, yeah. So the doctors say, speaking of things that do something. The war room. And so the real world is kind of the core of Tate's business because it's got between 150 and 200,000 subscribers at any given time. I think 170k is the estimate you'll hear the most often. And you've got that many people paying 50 bucks a month, you're talking some serious money. Now. There's, there's wide turnover that because 50 bucks a month isn't a massive upfront investment. Right. People can afford to pay that and then back out later. There's a lot of people who are kind of interested in for a little while, who will be. And so there's a lot of churn over the, the, the overall use of this. Right. And the goal of the real world, broadly, is both to make money and to funnel users upward into the war room, which is much more expensive, you know, and as a result harder to get into, but also lower turnover once people make that kind of financial commitment. So both of these places we've known about for a while, the real world was originally Hustlers University, which is kind of Tate's first big web platform that kind of taught people how to pick up women and run cam hoarding businesses, so to speak. And, yeah, so we've known these places existed, but they were kind of black boxes until In August of 2023, a disgruntled. I think this is a person who would describe themselves as a rival of Tate's. Like someone who saw dislikes what he's doing and wanted to get into them. It's not clear to me how they got access to the chat logs, but they get access to internal chat logs from the war room, which is his digital inner circle, and they give them to the BBC. And the BBC uses these to put together a documentary and several articles. Their primary interest as reporters was in laying out how the Tate brothers and their cohorts traffic women. And These logs identified 45 potential victims from just the period of March 2019 to April of 2020.

[Ian Johnson]

Now, wow, that was just from one year.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's crazy. And this is again, there's maybe 500 people in the war room. And these are the people, though, who are much more successful at actually doing the thing Tate is trying to train people how to do. Right. The real world is filled with young men who have ambitions to be small scale digital pimps, but don't really have the skill or the commitment. So they primarily contribute by paying classes that are supposed to teach them how to do that shit. Whereas the war room is full of people who are actually doing the kind of Andrew Tate stuff. So that's why they were able to like, there's photos posted of texts, people post pictures of the women that they're trying to bring in and traffic. So you kind of see it's possible to actually collect data on specific potential victims. Right through that. Now, the next year, November of 2024, a group of anonymous hacktivists managed to breach the real world, which is, you know, the larger platform. And the cyber attack exposed the data of some 800,000 people who have used it at some point or another, which is during a time when there were about 170,000 people were active. So you get an idea of like the scale of this. And it's also every time, every time these pieces of shit, it's the same thing with those like, Nazi leaks from a while ago. Every time those pieces of shit create something like this, it gets just absolutely blown up. And then everybody's data gets leaked and you find out how many of them work for the federal government or whatever.

[Sophie]

Right, right. Familiar. Yep.

[Robert Evans]

So both leaks are interesting for different reasons. But I wanna start with the real world. Cause that again, is kind of what funnels peoples up. The site's ad copy claims it as the world's most advanced financial education platform, but it' geared towards helping young men escape the Matrix and avoid wasting their lives as a Brokie, which, thanks to Tate, has become one of the more common adolescent slang terms for young boys in the uk. And it means you don't have much money, right? You get this fucking. You hear this a lot with like the way these kids talk to their teachers and their parents, where they're like, well, you're just a brokey. Like, why would I listen to anything you have to say about life or the world? You don't have as much money as, for example, this guy that I'm paying 50 bucks a month for my mom's credit card to learn how to mostly make AI scam books and stuff to sell on Amazon. That's honestly, the biggest thing that the real world does right now.

[Ian Johnson]

That's the grift.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Sophie]

This is originally the Hustler's University thing. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, yes. And so it's all just like scams.

[Ian Johnson]

To get rich quick, essentially, right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, scams to get rich quick. And it's all this. This very much like it's the same cons that you encounter if you're on YouTube and you get a bunch of like con ads for, oh, here's a video of a guy in his fucking garage with a sports car and a bunch of shitty business books and him walking you through how he makes $20,000 a month or whatever on Amazon, dropshipping or, you know, making Kindle AI books again. That's now kind of the big one. And while initially Hustlers University was more focused just on getting women to work in your cam business, the real world is a mix of very standard, like pickup artist stuff. Like here are the different tips and tricks for getting women interested in you and how to like, you know, mentally abuse them so they don't leave you. And then the next set of them is, or the next set of things on it is like, here's a bunch of different scams for how you can get rich. And they're all, again, they're all these like dropshipping scams and AI scams and stuff. So none of it is for as much as he talks about like being this jet setter who's got all of these innovative ideas, like his primary money. It's an mlm, right? Like this is a thing that most people who do this will never make a dime, really doing it. His money is in selling them and selling subscriptions, right? Yeah. Well, the platform provides courses on common like passive income schemes. That's another term you'll hear a lot. Its primary service for Tate is both to milk money out of the these kids in the hope that they'll believe for a time that they're going to get rich, but also to utilize them for free labor to keep his name trending. Again. The way this guy went from a nobody to being at least the most well known name on social media is by gathering this group of young men together and handing them, once they're paying for access to the site, they get access to this archive of all of Tate's videos and interviews and they can cut up clips from that to edit into YouTube and TikTok content. Right. And this content doesn't get them viewers. Like that's kind of what its build is doing is like, you can use Andrew's fame in order to build your own platform. That doesn't really work. But what does work is if you've got thousands of people constantly posting this shit to different social media, you turn them into a content you. Right, yeah. And the algorithm will continue to prioritize your name and stuff related to you, you know, and that's really how all this stuff works.

[Ian Johnson]

It's just free propaganda for him.

[Robert Evans]

It's free propaganda. And that's the actual, the real insight that he had. Like, all of these cons are just stuff he rips off from elsewhere in the Internet. Taking the MLM structure and adapting it to. Instead of having them try to sell his products, having them try to keep his name going viral so that the algorithm rewards his content. That's a unique and creative move that he's made, and it's gotten him quite, quite a bit of what he has right now. Now, one of these BBC articles I came across interviews a former member of the Real world, Mahmoud, who was pulled into Tate's orbit when he started coming across some of these videos that were just like, being spread across, across his. His different social media timelines. He fell for the con. He believed that, like, okay, this guy can probably teach me how to get rich. I want to get rich. You know, life's hard in the UK as a young man. Like, I need to figure out some way that I can make a bunch of money. So he pays 50 bucks and he joins, quote. Before long, he was completely immersed in Tate's universe. Isolating himself from friends and family, Mahmoud would regularly spend 10 to 12 hours a day, sometimes as many as 16 at his computer, editing and publishing social media videos, promoting Tate daily as part of the required coursework. He'd become a cog in the same sophisticated PR machine that had initially drawn him to the influencer's web. God.

[Ian Johnson]

So he's giving these kids homework to just, like, make as many TikTok videos of him as possible.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, if you want to stay in, if you want to keep getting access to these different instructors that I've had, if you don't want to be kicked out or you want a chance of getting into this. He has an affiliate marketing program. You have to post a certain number of videos a day. And they're really. They're just trying to keep these kids on as often as they can, pumping out like 16 hours a day. Four. I mean, not. Not even for free. They're paying for the privilege.

[Ian Johnson]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And again, there's not any one specific thing that's unique about the real world outside of this. All of the money making scams they teach people are the same stuff you'll come across in these like YouTube ads. There's this basically like this forum type experience. I think it's mostly conducted through Telegram, so there's different private channels where users can talk to each other about their business ideas or about how to pick up women. And this allows Andrew to put in a lot less actual work in the system. Right. He doesn't have to teach people directly and he doesn't actually have manage this. He just has to put out his own content and it'll all get kind of fed into the churn. Andrew has promoted coaches in order to handle the day to day task of managing this place. These are members of the war room who are also paying him. He'll call them his general sometimes too. And in addition to, you know, subscriptions to the real world, he sells classes and tickets to live events around the world where he will travel and, you know, travel alongside other men who are kind of in the Tate universe. And they'll give a Vince for these just unbelievably sad young men who desperately want to know how to pick up women and get rich enough to not just rent their Maserati at a day rate. The centerpiece of his whole platform, the main thing that he is geared towards selling through the real world is his PhD, which stands of course for pimpin hoes degree. Right. We talked about this last time. No, it's always, it's always just the worst thing when I have to tell people that.

[Sophie]

Yeah, every time it hurts.

[Robert Evans]

It's just again, there's nothing at all that is unique or creative about this. What's actually happening here is all these warmed over techniques from the game and the first couple of years of the pickup artist community are being repackaged into a degree and then that is being made into number one. It's a prerequisite to join the war room. And the goal here is not to just seduce women to have sex with them, which is kind of what the pickup artists were doing. It was all about adding notches to your belt or whatever. In this case, the goal is to coerce women, make them fall for you, isolate them from their loved ones and then get them working for you on camera as a sex worker. Right. And convincing them to hand over all of the money they make doing so.

[Sophie]

That's.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's just the business.

[Ian Johnson]

This is pure evil.

[Sophie]

Hard to even process. It's so gross.

[Robert Evans]

It's Such an interesting evolution of this is about how to. If you were kind of paying attention to the early days of the pickup artist community, it was always very toxic, but it was less, like, outwardly evil. Like, a lot more of it was framed as, like, well, this is just teaching young awkward men how to be charming and how to, like, yeah, you know, get, get. And that turned into. There's a reason why this fed so much into the far right and to the alt right. Why there were guys like Roosh V and whatnot who were initially big in, who tried to become right wing influencers, but nearly all of them failed in part because this was a creature of the older Internet, right, this pickup artistry stuff. And it didn't really age well into the kind of late social media period. And the other thing that was going on with this is that it's not the kind of thing that self selects for people who are culture warriors. It self selects for people who are like almost throwbacks at this point to like the old Hugh Hefner Playboy era. And Andrew Tate is. I don't know if I'd say he's the first, but he's the most successful at merging the whole right wing culture warrior narrative where you're fighting against the Matrix and you're fighting for traditional values with a lot of this pickup artistry stuff.

[Sophie]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Which, you know, that's kind of the. That's the position that he occupies. Now, this used to be the PhD. Used to be something he advertised on his major website, but because of all of the lawsuits against him, you can't find the degree being advertised normally. So it's pushed entirely in private through the real world. And the BBC got access to a number of these internal ads. These are like slideshows where Andrew's trying to convince these young men who are already locked into like the most basic stage of his platform that they should join the war room and pay it eight grand a month. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna share here. It's eight grand a month or eight grand a year? Sorry, eight grand a year. Yeah. Either way. That's insane. So much money. Yeah. So this first slide just says, will the PhD system change your life? And it's above four pictures of a mix of. It's like Andrew usually sitting and sipping a drink or wearing a fucking short sleeved shirt next to different various young women. Right. Will the PhD system change your life? Do you have a girl who completely trusts your decisions, will do anything you say, and loves you deeply? Yes or no? If your Answer is yes. I guarantee 90% of you are lying to yourselves. Read the question again. Understand what I mean when I say anything. And ask yourself if you've ever tested that your belief. If your answer is no, you're missing out on one of life's greatest pleasures. Doesn't matter your age. You should have a loving girlfriend. If you're too busy to get one. Good. The PhD system was made for you. If you're happy touching your own dick, this power is not for you. Oh my gosh. So you see who he's advertising for here, right? Is these. Yeah. These guys are like, well, I could spend 16 hours at a computer, but like, I don't want to go out and like, actually make a connection with somebody. Right, right. And there's little bits of NoFap in there. There's so many different little corners of the creep Internet that come together. In making Andrew Tate final thoughts, I will be teaching you every step to building a girl who is submissive, loyal and in love with you. From your first message to testing if you want to keep her to as long as you want the relationship to go on. I am the most capable man in the world to teach you this power. And I am 100% confident in my program. I have a warning. There's responsibility when you have someone completely loyal to you. I've had some girls for over a decade. When someone gives themselves to you completely, their life path is in your hands. Be wise. And then there's a little box at the bottom that says, join the PhD program.

[Sophie]

Wow.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ian Johnson]

Well, at least he's teaching them to be responsible with that kind of power.

[Robert Evans]

Sure, sure. You gotta be responsible when you come to own a woman via using Andrew Tate's Mind domination program. And then the last slide here is. What exactly do you get with the PhD programs? This is a big ad slide. Hours of video content. Well, I will teach you how to text women. How to build your social medias to pick up women. Best first dates. To bring women on best follow up dates. How to approach women. The framework that all male female interactions are based on. How to see if a woman is high quality. My opening lines, how to get women in bed. The critical mistakes most men make. How to stay on her mind without interaction.

[Sophie]

How to see if a woman is high quality.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. Now, if you've watched Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the degree to which all of this mirrors the dentist system, which is one of the characters is a creepy sex criminal and has like a flirtate. Like it's, it's one for One. Like there's absolutely literally one for one.

[Sophie]

Jesus Christ. You know what else is one for one, Robert?

[Robert Evans]

Speaking of one for one, I'll give you one ad break in exchange for one chunk of listening to my podcast.

[Unknown]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley season one.

[Robert Evans]

I just knew him as a kid.

[Unknown]

Long, silent voices from his past came.

[F]

Forward, and he was just staring at me.

[Unknown]

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Gilbert King. I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott.

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Every time I hear about my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

If the cops and everything would have done their job properly, my dad would have been in jail. I would have never existed.

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now I need to tell you how I got here.

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

Bone Valley Season 2 Jeremy.

Jeremy, I want to tell you something.

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad free with exclusive content. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on.

[F]

Apple Podcasts, I'm Soledad O'Brien, and on my podcast, Murder on the Towpath, I'm taking you back to the 1960s. Mary Pinchot Meyer was a painter who lived in Georgetown in Washington, D.C. every day, she took a daily walk along a towpath near the E and O Canal. So when she was killed in a.

[Robert Evans]

Wealthy neighborhood, she had been shot twice.

[Unknown]

In the head and in the back, behind the heart.

[F]

The police arrived in a heartbeat. Within 40 minutes, a man named Raymond Crump Jr. Was arrested. He was found nearby, soaking wet, and he was black. Only one woman dared defend him. Civil rights lawyer Dovey. Round trip. Join me as we unravel this story with a crazy twist, because what most people didn't know is that Mary was connected to a very powerful man.

[Robert Evans]

I pledge you that we shall neither commit nor provoke aggression.

[F]

John F. Kennedy. Listen to Murder on the towpath with Soledad O'Brien on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Robert Evans]

And we're back. Ah, so we're talking about Andrew Tate, mind control wizard.

[Sophie]

Ew.

[Robert Evans]

Who's. He's just like, you know, this is again, like, I bring up the Dennis system But this is all what's kind of interesting to me is he clearly to put this together, he and the people who made this spent a great deal of time combing the Internet for the last 20 years of different get rich quick and like flirt with like flirting with women, like pickup artists scams and all that stuff. Like there's a whole generation of like creepy dude kind of right wing adjacent content. And he's just an aggregator. It's like somebody put the last 20 years of like dudes being assholes on the Internet that led us directly to Trump and like use ChatGPT to remix it into a guy with bad tattoos. So I find that, I find that very interesting. Yeah, yeah. Now the stuff I read, these kind of, these clips advertising the PhD system, like the way in which he describes it in this advertisement is disgusting. But in other interviews he's dropped additional hints about some of the curriculum which does include physical violence. So I played that clip earlier about Tate talking about using a machete on a woman who caught him cheating. Right? About like, you know, what happens if she catches you cheating and she tries to attack you and he says, you know, hit her in the face with a machete. Right. This is something he talks about a lot. And it's this mix of stuff like that, this extreme violence and then these tactics that are almost like quaint. Right. One thing he'll tell people to do is to start your relationship by ordering the woman in question to bring you a box of chocolates. And at first I was like, oh, this is just very basic, almost 50s era stuff. But no, it turns out it's more related to this neuro linguistic programming technique where you get someone doing you favors and you use that to ask them to do other favors. And Tate, clearly he doesn't even really seem to grasp much of the underlying logic here because this male BBC journalist who tries to interview him for this documentary on this leaked stuff wants to interview Tate. And Tate does the same thing, tries to get him to bring a box of chocolates and hand them directly to Andrew. And the journalist has to talk to his editors to see there's this whole weird, weird. It's what he's trying to do is he's trying to establish a pattern of obedience because he thinks that lets him manipulate people, that it's like this hack to get into someone's brain. If you get them doing one favor to you, they'll do other favors to you. This is very old power of positive thinking, salesmanship kind of stuff. You'll get this in Stuff going back to the 1950s, including a lot of like the Norman Vincent Peale that Donald Trump was being raised on as a kid. I've seen versions of this that go back decades. And the thing you're supposed to do as time goes on, you're supposed to give the subject of your focus more tasks and you let your language get increasingly strict. You start by asking like, hey, would you do this for me? And you end by giving them commands, right? We're like, this is what we're doing today. This is your job for the day. This is what you have to do for the day. And at the same time, and this is the thing that I think actually makes much more of an impact effectively. You're also supposed to be isolating your target from their family and social support network. So you're getting them in the habit of doing things that you say. And you're also cutting them off from their friends and family so they don't have anyone else in their life but you.

[Ian Johnson]

I want people who would ostensibly be like, hey, what are you doing? This is kind of fucking weird.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, you're doing everything this guy tells you. Are you working 16 hours a day? Like on doing an only fans that he gets the money from? Like, that seems kind of fucked up. Now, I want to play you a clip leaked from one of these in person seminars he gives on mentally dominating women. The question he's asked right before giving this answer is, can you say more about the restrictions and boundaries that you put on a woman in terms of who she can talk to?

[Sophie]

Trigger warning Andrew Tate's voice.

[G]

But if you really want to truly soul walk a chick, she's yours. When I say she's yours, I mean she's basically you, her family and your family. That's basically it, right? If she has like a really strong social circle and she really insists on seeing them her to have a bigger. And it is in your best interest to get her away from that. So not a soul walker, right? You don't want her out. Whoever Saying whoever. And then women can't shut the up either. They'll talk your business, they'll give their side of the story. Only you're a bad guy now. My elder would do that. Even though the fish lying just to try and flex it gets in their head.

[Robert Evans]

Right?

[G]

So you have to try and isolate that. And the things we talked about Asaris and the adding excitement, her never catching you slipping. All these things tie into isolating her and taking her away from the outside influences, every outside influence, all of Them.

[Sophie]

Yeah. I hate this guy so much. He's the smallest little man in the world.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Sophie]

Because women won't shut the up.

[Robert Evans]

It's like, well, I mean, it's. It's taking this very basic misogyny because you're. Again, his audience is not. It's framed as like, we're an alliance of powerful men, you know, making each other more powerful. But his audience is all guys who have never, like. I mean, it's not even guys. It's children, right? It's kids. Have a friend out in the world.

[Sophie]

Are you really powerful if you can't handle your partner having checks, notes. A friend.

[Robert Evans]

A friend, right. No, but like, this is. These people, most of these people have never had partners, right? And the Tate and kind of the older men who are running things, they've got. They're all jacked. They're all generally on gear. They all have nice tailored clothes. They all either have or rent sports cars. And these little kids minds are just putty in their hands. They see the physical symbols of wealth that these people have and they're like, well, then they must know what they're doing. This must all be the path to get what I want. And this is pretty classic cult leader behavior, both from Tate influencing these young people and the stuff he's telling them to do to women. Right? And he frames this as saying, like, there's no perfect girl for you. You have to make her. You have to make her using these techniques, right? And per a quote from the Daily Dot, which originally published a lot of these leaked war room videos, in another clip from the same meeting, Tate explains why the woman his members want to date should not have normal jobs. If she has a normal job, she's got a social circle, she's got a support network. Tate bemoans she's having a bunch of conversations you don't know about. She knows a bunch of dudes who are trying to get in her ear. She has no. She has concerns which aren't involving you. Right. And that's a problem. Tate says her brain power is dedicated to things that have nothing to do with you. It's a massive influence. And there is this, like, deep insecurity, right, that if your woman has anything else in your. Because you're going to be. You're going to make her miserable. Right. You have no desire or intention to actually, like, be in a relationship with someone or provide them with anything they need. You're pretty clearly trying to take things from them. And it's obvious that's not going to make anyone happy, I wanted to run through another section of this curriculum from Tate's PhD. So this is from that same clip that gets played around a lot of Andrew Tate talking about hitting women with a machete. What's not usually played in the context when people discuss this, because I've seen like all of the big interviews that he's done recently. He gets asked about this. What's not played is that this is him talking about, like, one of the physical tests that you have to pass in order to get this PhD degree. And I really wish people would talk about this because this is kind of one of the more like fucked up things I've heard about in relation to what Tate is actually trying to teach the people who take his classes. When I got my PhD, we had to practice. If a girl comes at you, you cheated, you cheating, it's bang out the.

[Unknown]

Mache, boom, in her face.

[Robert Evans]

This is the actual full context is like, this is part of a test. You have to, like, in order to pass this degree, you have to take a physical test on how you would defend yourself against one of these women you're trafficking, catching you cheating. That's the actual context of all of this.

[Ian Johnson]

Insane.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. It's pretty nuts. Yeah. Just the fact that you're building in. Well, obviously people are going to get attacked because the stuff that they're doing is so incredibly gross. We have to try and train them to fight these women that were also teaching them to try and mentally dominate, which is simultaneously this admission that, like, the tactics don't work that well, so.

[Ian Johnson]

You'Re gonna need to be able to fight.

[Sophie]

Yeah. His stance there, if I'm understanding correctly, is if woman speaks in a way you don't like, you slice them.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly. Shitty machete. You have to train people to slice them. Yeah.

[Sophie]

With shitty machete.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. With your terrible machete. And that's why you have it. It's not because you're being targeted by the deep state and the matrix. It' because your girlfriends are going to get angry at you and you have to be able to hit them.

[Ian Johnson]

It's insane.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ian Johnson]

Oh, my God.

[Robert Evans]

So giving speeches like this, and this is like part of the curriculum for this PhD program sold in the real world and operated as a prerequisite for getting into the war room. Making stuff like this is how Tate makes his money now. Right. He is not primarily in the pimping business anymore because that doesn't make nearly as. It's an MLM thing. Right. It's An MLM that sells being a pimp, right? This is the same as like Doterra or whatever, but your business is like coercing women into working on camera for you. And Tate's at the top now, so he doesn't have to actually have to do that. There's much more money in making content like this. Now the purpose of all of these programs is to get people to buy other classes, right? That's what's really sold. The real world's 50 bucks a month. But if you want to get this degree, it's another $400. The war room's eight grand a year. But there are access to additional secret chat rooms that cost thousands additional dollars a year, Right. And there's access to classes that cost thousands more. And there's all these in person gatherings that cost money. And one of Tate's mottos is that no great man ever got there on his own, right? So he says, like, you need these, you need to be part of this network. And it's all so familiar to the standard MLM schema when you really look at it like that. And that's what's really changed my understanding of Tate from this is an influencer who is mobilizing his fan base to make himself more famous to this is a guy who, whatever his initial goal was, he's now Amway. He's now the Amway of hitting women, right? Like that's, that's what Andrew Tate's business is.

[Sophie]

He says he's got Keith Ranieri energy.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, we'll talk a little bit about Keith Ranieri because there's a lot of Keith Ranieri to Andrew Tate. And I think to some extent it's maybe if Tate had come up in an earlier era, before all the anti woke stuff got as big as it was before the far right was ascendant, he would have tried more for the culturally kind of like left wing image that a guy like Ranieri cultivated. Where like, no, no, no. I'm part of like this progressive movement empowering women. I think Andrew might have gone in that direction.

[Sophie]

Sure.

[Robert Evans]

He probably wouldn't have been as successful. Cause I think he's just kind of inherently also a dick, but he's certainly shaped by the tides of history around him. Now, former members of the War Room, not only are they being kind of taught to groom these women that they're trafficking in a culty way, they also describe the War Room as a cult itself. And the basis of that BBC report is that the leader of the actual cult inside the War Room isn't even Tate. He's just the figurehead. The individual responsible for most of this content and curriculum and for the culture of the platform is a completely different guy who goes by the pseudonym Iggy Semmelweis in the War Room. Right. And I'm not 100% in agreement with the BBC on how much this guy is actually running things behind the scenes. Is he a real person? He's certainly a major figure. He is a real person. We'll give his real name. His nickname is odd to me. When I first heard Iggy Semmelweis, I was like, that sounds familiar. And me being me, whenever I'm like, well, that guy's name sounds familiar. My assumption is like, so he's some sort of Nazi, right? Like, this is some sort of guy, like. But I look him up and I remembered where I read about him from, because he's someone. I've intended to tell his story on Bastards for a while. He's actually not a bastard, but there's a lot of awful stuff in his story. Ignat Semmelweis was a real guy and a really. The precise opposite of a bad guy. He was a Hungarian, German doctor, and he's the guy who was basically first in, like, an organized way, making the scientific case for, like, hey, we should use antiseptics. You know, people always die when we give surgery or we cut off their limbs. What if we, like, cleaned things first? What if we cleaned the soil?

[Sophie]

What a great. What a great idea. My guy.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, as somebody sounds like a good guy. He was a good guy. Yeah.

[Sophie]

As somebody who really, really, really, really, really likes hand sanitizer.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Sophie]

Well done.

[Robert Evans]

Iggy Semmelweis is the father of hand san. He's also the father. He was the first major figure who was like, a respected Western scientist to be like, surgeons and doctors should probably wash their fucking hands, right?

[Ian Johnson]

Just clean some shit.

[Sophie]

Thank. As somebody who unfortunately had surgery this year. Thank you, my guy.

[Robert Evans]

Wow, you say that, Sophie, but it turns out that, no, he was fine. But at a certain period of time, telling doctors that they needed to wash their hands was very dangerous. Because if you're telling doctors, hey, before you reach your hand into someone's chest cavity, you should wash it with soap and stuff. You're telling doctors your hands are covered in germs that get people sick. And doctors are better than regular people, right? They are educated gentlemen. And if you're telling an educated gentleman you're dirty, and you might get a poor person sick by touching inside of their body, that is deeply offensive. And it really pissed off a lot of people. So many that Semmelweis was hounded into a. Like, hounded into, like, having a mental break. And then forced into a mental asylum where he was beaten by guards and died of an infected injury.

[Ian Johnson]

Because they weren't washing their hands.

[Robert Evans]

Because they weren't washing their fucking hands.

[Sophie]

I mean, oh, my God, I do get a lot of joy when I know something that my doctor brother doesn't.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Sophie]

Like he Similar ways.

[Robert Evans]

The father of being, like, wash your fucking hands, people.

[Sophie]

God, now is everybody just so tiny? Just so tiny? Wash your hands.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, they do it now. They gotta round do it, for fuck's sake. We just had to lose a luminary first. Now, again, the real.

[Sophie]

Why would he pick this name? I don't understand that.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know. Cause he has nothing to do with this guy. Right.

[Ian Johnson]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Other than maybe he feels like. I guess I could make a case that, like, oh, he probably sees the world he's in is filled with germs, which is other people having rights. And maybe he's the persecuted doctor who sees the way things should be.

[Sophie]

Step away from the computer screen. Touch grass. Go to therapy.

[Robert Evans]

No, I don't want this guy to go do anything.

[Sophie]

That's fair.

[Robert Evans]

The real dude is an American named Miles Sonkin. Right. That's the actual guy who used to name it.

[Sophie]

The name. All right.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know.

[Sophie]

Weird little guy.

[Robert Evans]

Okay. When the BBC got access to a bunch of leaked chats for its documentary, the man who Groomed the World, the journalist behind it, Matt Shea, came away with the opinion. Opinion that Sonken is the brains and the ideological weight behind Tate's whole War Room operation. And he makes a pretty good case. Again, I disagree with aspects of it, but Shay has put more time into this than I have. And he spent a lot of time around Tate. He's met Sunken in person. He's met a number of key figures here. So I'm going to yield to his expertise, even though I'm not sure I agree with him entirely. And we'll talk about who this guy is. But first, let's talk about who our advertisers are, other than great people, which they are.

[Unknown]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season one.

[Robert Evans]

I just knew him as a kid.

[Unknown]

Long, silent voices from his past came.

[F]

Forward, and he was just staring at me.

[Unknown]

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Gilbert King. I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott.

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

If the cops and everything would have done their job properly, my dad would have been in jail. I would have never existed.

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now I need to tell you how I got here.

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

Bone Valley Season 2 Jeremy.

Jeremy, I want to tell you something.

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to hear the entire new season ad free with exclusive content. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[F]

I'm Soledad O'Brien, and on my podcast Murder on the Towpath, I'm taking you back to the 1960s. Mary Pinchot Meyer was a painter who lived in Georgetown, in Washington, D.C. every day she took a daily walk along a tow path near the E and O Canal. So when she was killed in a.

[Robert Evans]

Wealthy neighborhood, she had been shot twice.

[Unknown]

In the head and in the back behind the heart.

[F]

The police arrived in a heartbeat. Within 40 minutes, a man named Raymond Crump Jr. Was arrested. He was found nearby, soaking wet, and he was black. Only one woman dared defend him, civil rights lawyer Dovey Roundtree. Join me and as we unravel this story with a crazy twist, because what most people didn't know is that Mary was connected to a very powerful man.

[Robert Evans]

I pledge you that we shall neither commit nor provoke aggression.

[F]

John F. Kennedy. Listen to Murder on the towpath with Soledad O'Brien on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Robert Evans]

Sonken was born in Chicago, 1961, and he's been described in interviews by family members as a smart kid. And here's the most dangerous word we ever use on the show. He was also an autodidact. Right. So he's this kid who learns a lot on his own and doesn't really go to high school, but educates himself. Now, unfortunately, when you do that, there tend to be holes in your education.

[Ian Johnson]

I feel like you can get pretty siloed into some weird shit.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ian Johnson]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

This is one of our great problems, is that if the things you're interested in wind up being worth a lot of money, you can get by never learning about anything else and also convincing yourself that you understand the world because you've made a lot of money. And I think that's kind of what's gonna happen to Sonken. And he pays an initial. He pays initially some like, consequences for it because he immediately gets sucked into different.

[Sophie]

I just sent Ian a picture of the guy. That's why his face is doing that.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah, no, he does. He does look like wizard, right? He looks like an evil wizard. Yes.

[Ian Johnson]

It's so bad. This beard is terrible.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. No, I'll believe he's using the dentist system to get his. Get himself a harem.

[Sophie]

Yeah, yeah. Malcolm, please insert a picture here, please. There's. There's a. There's a good one. You'll know which one. Yeah, Wizard.

[Robert Evans]

So his self education makes him kind of vulnerable to getting taken advantage of as a young man. And as a result, he joins two different cults. Right. When he's a young person, or I should say two different organizations widely regarded as cults. And the second is the Rajneesh movement, who was the focus of the Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country. So he gets sucked into that for a while as a young man and I think like the 80s, late 80s or 90s. Now, the details of his specific involvement in either cult are not available at this time. But over the years, Sonkin evolved from a spiritual seeker into someone who believed that he in fact had the answers. During the early age of the social Internet, he became a pickup artist and was one of the first prominent ones online starting like the late 90s, early 2000s. He's like on the ground floor of pickup artistry as like an online subculture. He gets really interested in hypnosis and neuro linguistic programming alongside this. And he began to become an advocate of mind controlling women by repeating certain words and phrases. You might recognize this as Pavlovian training applied to dating. And he seems to be the origin of Tate's, you know, get him to bring you chocolate, you know, establish a pattern of obedience in order to break their ability to think separately from you. Now, Sonken is also a self described wizard. He believes he's literally casting spells on people. He does that to this journalist when he tries to like, interview Andrew Tate.

[Ian Johnson]

Well, the look matches.

[Robert Evans]

He does have like a little bit of a Saruman. If Saruman got his hair done behind a 711 look. Sonken is a self described wizard and as he got into magic, he got more interested in the more esoteric segments of the far right through the early aughts, the like, weird Hitlerism shit. And this is all growing up kind of for the most part, before people become super aware of it. And then Gamergate helps flood a lot of it. And then the alt right, Sanken is kind of right in the middle of that. He and Tate seem to have started working together in 2018, and at this point, Andrew Tate is basically a late undergrowth of the pickup artist community, focused on camera, sex work type stuff. It's unclear how Miles is involved with him, but I think he probably helps to write and formulate a lot of the courses that Andrew was selling during this period. A former member of the War Room, which was established in 2019, describes Iggy as at the top and the real leader of the platform. And it's, you know, I don't know if I, if I, if I like taking away credit from Tate for being, you know, a puppet master, but these guys are both definitely partners, you know, and the kind of things Tate's teaching, a lot of these are not things he came up with himself or wrote himself. The things Semmelweis kind of had on deck that Tate decided to slap his name on. And even this has layers, right? One former member described the War Room as a bunch of telegram chats, some for business or girls or money. But there are more prestigious rooms that users who have already put in thousands of dollars are expected to shill out thousands more to join. In messages on the War Room telegram, we can see Sanken posting a Semmelweiss and giving the same advice Tate gives from that speech we listened to earlier. And this is a message from him to War Room. Isolating her from her family, friends, past is the kindest thing you can do for her if you are taking responsibility for having sole authority over her. And then in another post, we deliberately reduce attention and note if she chases. Then we set up a coffee date and execute a move to find if she's willing to pay for our coffee and serve us. After that, it becomes a series of gradual steps to remove her entire support structure from her life. Then we punish her for a transgression, real or imagined, by having her get our name tattooed on her, leaving her family's home, apartment, town, country, webcamming and stripping, walking the track for us, getting us girls. Escalade, Escalade, Escalate. So this is really Keith Ranieri stuff. They're doing the branding thing, right, where you have to get tattoos or scarify yourself with the name of this guy. Yeah, it's pretty gross. It's pretty gross. Now, I think it'd be wise, if you wanted to do so, to view the War Room and the real world as kind of a modern day answer to the Church of Scientology.

[Sophie]

Yeah, okay.

[Ian Johnson]

Yeah. There's so many parallels.

[Robert Evans]

I was thinking that this entire time, ton of parallels. And obviously Hubbard is a reflection of the big self help culture of his time. The Scientology starts off as an offshoot of the self improvement movement with a book called Dianetics, which instructed readers on a series of exercises that would clear them of trauma and bad habits and make them superhuman. One of the dominant subcultures of the early Internet age, as I've said, was the pickup artist scene. And the inherent scamminess of a lot of this culture influenced the growth of the modern YouTube scam economy, as well as the ecosystem of far right content creators who helped birth the Trump administration. So it does make sense that Tate and Sonken would form a cult. What is at its around what is at its essence. Rebranded pickup artistry. The BBC documentary makes it sound like this was all Sunken's plan from the beginning. And it quotes former members who described his ultimate goal as world domination through the spread of his ideology. Right. He wants to get this to everybody. He wants to take over the world with this. And I. But also, how is anyone going to make money with their cam businesses in that future?

[Sophie]

Sure.

[Robert Evans]

It's like if you wanted to take over the world by building a bunch of tire shops. Well, at a certain point, your tire shops aren't going to be worth any money. There's two. Do you not understand supply and demand? I don't know. Not the most logical movement.

[Sophie]

Math not adding up at all here.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, the math's not really adding up. So. Samuel Quinones was interviewed for a Vice article. He is a founding member of the War Room, but says that he quit about six months in because, quote, I recognize the upselling of useless courses and events, much like an mlm.

[Sophie]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Okay.

[Sophie]

So dumb enough to join, smart enough to leave.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ian Johnson]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. There's another guy who's like, yeah, I was working on their socials for a while. I didn't realize they were trafficking women. And the interviewer asked like, do you feel bad for that? And he's like, well, no, I didn't really know what was going on. Okay. Man. I don't know. There were still some unknowns, such as how much financial advantage is taken of in the War Room inner circle members. Right. We don't know if Andrew's getting money from each of these guys in the War Room a cut of their profits from, you know, trafficking women. But we do know that about 1% of the people who join actually get a lot of money, which is not super different from Amway, right?

[Ian Johnson]

Yeah. I was gonna ask, like, were there any, like, success stories or people who actually did get rich from this? And it sounds like no.

[Robert Evans]

It's hard to really tell. But, I mean, I'm sure there are definitely people making money from having women do this for them, but anyone who winds up net in the black is fairly rare. Mahmoud, a former member, told vice. There was nobody that was making any real money, he said, citing conversations he had with other students in the platform's chat rooms and the empty Win section on most users profiles that tracked a lack of earnings. These people inside there that are reliving, that are leaving their schools, their units to pursue this, he said, adding that one of his friends on the platform told him that he had abandoned his university studies to go all in on the program.

[Sophie]

No, no, I don't know.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know, like, if you could be convinced not to go to university because you're hoping that, like, you could become the next Andrew. Andrew Tate, maybe you shouldn't be getting whatever degree you were getting, right?

[Sophie]

There's this. There's this, like, trend on TikTok right now that's like, needed. I. I just needed a hug thing. It's like, yeah, did something. Did something like, crazy, but really just needed a hug. And it's just so many of these things. I'm like, you just need, like, one person, like, awareness. Needed, like, one person being aware of what was going on in your life to be like, hey, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's an mlm. Or like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Manosphere, Manosphere, or no, no, no, no, no, no, we don't abuse women.

[Robert Evans]

And the thing that you're being kind of continually pushed to do in the real world is put out more videos that will get more people to subscribe to Tate services. And if you get out enough, you have a certain number of people watching you, you get affiliate status, right? Which is where you get a cut of people who join. And so top war room generals act as social enforcers, using humiliation to force young men to go into war mode, where they would labor for days, often 16 to 20 hours at a time with very little sleep. In order to make Tate content go viral, states were required to post four to six videos a day and harassed with their Met if their metrics weren't good enough. And, you know, I would make more about how horrible this is, but a lot of this just sounds out how like working at Facebook is right now. So I don't know, could be a better boss, could be worse both. In the war room itself, discussion tended to focus around sharing clips of text with messages from different women members who were from different women that members were pursuing or trying to converse into. What we would call trafficking. The most granular write up of how people converse in the war room documentary in the war room come from the substack of a guy called Crabman who is the source for the NBC's documentary. Right. He brings them to some of these leaked documents and he takes great pains to break down what's going in the onage of these discussions. In one chat in the great hall, which seems to be a general discussion area, Tristan described how well trained Andrew's girls are and that girls who don't play ball are expelled. Crabman writes, here's the thing, it's all a game to Andrew. He tells our war room members, you have to risk it all by losing to get to the next bet. Sometimes you lose. I've lost girls doesn't always work, but that's why you gotta find new ones. And the ones that it does work for, those are the ones you keep. That's just how you build a good harem of girls, you know, because. Because some girls, it just like it. Some girls, the system works, but if we have another guy they kind of half like or whatever outside influences. Sometimes you do lose them when you play hardball. But I play hardball anyway because it's all I'm interested in. I want the 100, I don't give want the 5, so I'll gamble it. That's the basic premise. Romantic.

[Ian Johnson]

Yeah.

[Sophie]

Prick.

[Robert Evans]

Now Andrew blames that this PhD test alone being able to defend himself from angry women was fundamental to becoming a millionaire. Right. A little further down though, in text within the war room, he complains that nothing he tries works as well since he got famous. Right. Quote, girls are too defensive. They instantly assume you message every hot girl. It destroys PhD success rate. Seriously. Unless you want to be a sugar daddy, which I don't. So even he's like, yeah, now that people know my face, nobody wants anything to do with me.

[Sophie]

Yeah, it's your face, asshole.

[Robert Evans]

That's what it is.

[Sophie]

It's your face, it's not your.

[Ian Johnson]

So he's just like basically admitting that like none of this shit really works, but you just gotta keep trying and keep giving me money and maybe you'll get lucky.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, exactly. So he's bragging that his old techniques don't work since he's been verified on social media. Girls are too defensive. They instantly assume you message Every hot girl destroys PhD success rates. Seriously, Unless you want to be a sugar daddy, which I don't. Other members post pictures of cars that they purportedly bought with funds earned by their harems and give blow by blow accounts of their own flirtation journeys. A popular thing to post are messages from women that the poster has ignored as part of Andrew's strategy hinges on denying attention in order to build interest. So there's just like clips of women being like, when are you coming? Hi. Why are you ignoring me? And like, see, look at this wind. I'm not responding to this woman that I like. And it's just. It's both this so dope. Yeah, it's such, like, pickup artist incel stuff. And also such, again, it's the dentist system negging shit from, like, pickup artists. It's negging. None of it's new. It's just been repackaged in a way that it's been repackaged to sell an mlm. Right. It doesn't matter if this works. Some number of men will always. I don't know if it's because of the individual people they're going after or something about their personal characteristic will be successful enough with this to convince themselves that it's worth worthwhile and 99% will have nothing happen, but they'll pay for long enough that it makes it worthwhile. Right. It's the same thing with, like, yes, some people sell Amway products, or at least sell a few Amway products and then get a lot of people to sign up for Amway. And so they do make money. That's just about 1% of Amway. Everyone else has kind of taken a bath Now. There's also kind of in the Ranieri vibe within these kind of like the elite war room chats, there's a lot of discussion on how to permanently mark women, which is considered the ultimate sign of success. That, like, you have gotten this person so in your spell that you've gotten them to tattoo your name on their body. This seems to be a core aspect of Semmelweis teachings. I think he's the main person who introduced this. It's kind of unclear to me, but all these guys are constantly posting either them attempting to convince women to do this. And, you know, there's this mix of, like, people saying no and getting dumped. So this message here is between Tate, she's showing him a tattoo that she's got, and he's saying, I want you to get my name tattooed on you. I don't want this other tattoo. And she's asking him, when will we get married? And he says, now, as soon as you get the tattoo. And she's like, okay, but then if you leave me, I'll still have your name on my body. And that's kind of fucked up. And he's like, why would I leave? Are you saying, you're not gonna be good to me? And then there's kind of the most telling thing at the end here is she eventually he says, yes, it'll make me happy if you get this tattoo. And she says, okay, I'll do it. I cannot write great. My dad does not have to see. So I don't know how old this girl is. Too young. It sounds very young. Again, these are the people that are being reached out towards, right? These are not adults. These are not people who are like, have mature brains.

[Sophie]

The whole thing has been, show me with your fingers how big. I'm very uncomfortable.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it's gross. Now, the messages posted here are from back in 2019. So this is an older era of the War Room and it's hard to say where things are now with the culture there. Since the beginning of the litigation against Andrew, when he was initially incarcerated, he made a lot of claims that his War Room friends would watch out for his interests and even take care of his stuff while he was away. There is an extent to which this seems to be true. And what we know of the network suggests an intricate community and a number of people who do have resources and this kind of cult like devotion to Andrew and to the group. Now there's been some good work done to kind of lay out who is involved in this community. The BBC documentary did a lot of it. Bellingcat did an article on it. One of these guys, you know, these people who are like, these are both, both folks who are presumably paying Andrew thousands or tens of thousands a year, but are also like working and getting money of their own. You might call them the high level Amway distributors of the War Room and the real world. One of them is a guy who has a YouTube channel called Sartorial Shooter. He's a former Australian soldier and a current Dubai resident. A lot of Dubai residencies here who claims to have gone into the intelligence world and worked all around the planet. He claims they have weapons and tactics training facilities everywhere. Now, as is always the case with these guys, that's a bit of an exaggeration. His real name is Joel Sullivan. He's, you know, one of the leading lights of the war room. Bellingcat revealed that he was a former director of international security for a global healthcare company, which is not a nothing job, but it's not exactly James Bond.

[Sophie]

He wants you to think he's like out here being he's some sort of.

[Robert Evans]

Like mercenary special operator spy, and he's like, no, you worked for like a healthc company directing security. And again, there's not nothing there. But it's not quite what you're claiming it is.

[Ian Johnson]

Exactly.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Another key general of Andrews goes by the Twitter title First Prince of Wudan, which you'll remember is he's got this sort of pretend mythic story about how he learned to be a martial arts master. The actual guy behind this account is a current Delta pilot and a former US Air Force major who the BBC detailed posting about his use of Tate's techniques to try and coerce women into doing sex work for his financial benefit.

[Sophie]

Oh, God.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. It's all just like the grossest dudes, like some of them do have money. So it is like, it's not like these are like the people at the top. Number one, they're generally people who have had a degree of success before getting involved in Andrew Tate's thing. So number one, they have some money of their own, so they're able to like bootstrap themselves until they can make money getting affiliates basically pulling people in and selling them on subscriptions, which they seem to get a cut of. And they're also just people who have been more successful, they're older, so they can kind of replicate some degree of the scams that Andrew has carried out. And I really think, like, that's all that's going on here with these guys. None of them are. Andrew wants them to look like they're like the secret bastards of the world. And they're not that they're guys who are probably making like mid to low six figure salaries. Like they're doing well, they've got positions that afford them a decent degree of income and they want to be more. And so I think a lot of this for them and why it's worth because, you know, a pilot, that kind of income, you can afford to throw eight grand at some shit like this, especially if you're making some of it back through whatever the affiliate scheme pays you. And maybe the fantasy of being part of this like elite group of men is worth more to you than whatever amount of money that you kind of burn.

[Ian Johnson]

And going it speaks to a larger issue it's not about the money for them or trying to get rich. It's a deeper issue. The control of women and manipulating people and everything.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now there's a lot that I could really get into. Like, more stuff about all this here. One of the more difficult parts of doing this was knowing what to cut out and what to include. I do want to note one thing, which is that that some of the. One of my favorite. One of my favorite side facts of this is there's some messages that Tristan Tate posts to the war room about how a guy named Ivan Throne is crashing on their couch in Romania. Have either of you heard of Ivan Throne? No, not familiar. He's a really low grade manfluencer hack. He's like a big bearded dude who always poses in a suit or he's got kind of like a fucking goatee. He always poses in a suit. He wrote this book about, like, the dark Triad man, which is like, oh, this guy.

[Sophie]

I know.

[Robert Evans]

It's using the power of sociopathy in order to, like, make yourself a better business leader or whatnot. And he used to do. He did. He had a Tate style grift that just didn't do well, called Throne Dynamics, where, like, men would pay to go to these summits where they'd eat steak and smoke cigars and talk about, you know, make connections about their great businesses, which are again, mostly like pickup artistry, like, right wings. Like low grade, right wing propaganda bullshit. And the reason I bring up Ivan is that he was part of my favorite moment in the history of Twitter, so I'm gonna share that with you. So he posts a picture of. There's this, like, very photorealistic statue of, like, a beautiful young white lady with long flowing hair. The fabric work on the statue is really nice. Like, you can see she's got this sheer shirt. It's like a sexy sculpture, right? Like, it's definitely meant to be. And I even posted She's Got Nipples.

[Ian Johnson]

It's provocative.

[Robert Evans]

It's provocative. And Ivan posts this to his Twitter account and says, this is called art. This is the legacy and heritage of the West. This is what the men of the west fight, sacrifice, and die for. This is victory deusvolt. And one of his followers asks him, is there an example of a female sculptor who committed himself to the same level of detail that a man does with a woman? And Ivan responds, none that come to mind. That sculpture's an act of worship before heaven. And it shows. And someone just responds with a picture of the artist next to its sculptor and says, the sculptor is a Chinese woman. You dorkass losers. Fucking knocked it. And he just, like, that was it for Ivan. Like, I understand why he's crashing on Andrew Tate's couch for a while, because that just fucking nukes him as a human being and learning that. True. Tristan Tate's his buddy, and he was, like, bumming, like, couch surfing with the Tates in 2019, 20. Extremely fucking funny to me. Now, one of the other things that's kind of missed the great mysteries that's answered from these leaks is why Andrew keeps coming back to Romania. Which I have to admit, as I kept looking through, like, what he's doing, what's going on with him. This was like a constant thing for me. Like, why in the fuck is this guy not. He does have money. He's not poor. He's got. Got millions, at least that they still didn't have access to. They didn't get everything. He has friends in Dubai. He is able to. He could get a permanent residency in Dubai. And if you think you might go to prison for all of your sex crimes and you're this guy, Dubai is where you want to wind up. And the fact that he, like, visited and then came back, that he went back to Romania, I didn't know why until I found this post of his on the war room that I think kind of explains it, right? I've been everywhere, and let me tell you a few things. The world is basically the same. Temples and churches are bullshit. And you're better off finding best spot you can in becoming a local force, then float around all day like a digital nomad dork. There's no club on earth better than the club here in Romania. I have 20 girls at the table. Security knows me. No one fucks with me. Why leave? And I think that really gets right down to it is he's like. He's found his place. And he's pretty confident that Romania will botch the prosecution against him enough that he could continue to live there. And I think he doesn't really want to live in Dubai because. Because as much of a stereotypical place as it is for guys like him, it doesn't have the same kind of opportunities for the sort of debauchery that he's into, right? It's a stricter culture in some ways than that, even for some guys with money. And if he was posting the kind of videos that he tends to post, he could get in trouble at some point. And I think he's just convinced of the fact that he can make this work for himself. That's really what I'm saying. Yeah.

[Ian Johnson]

And it's like they treat him like a God in Romania. He's like, why would I go anywhere else? Like, I'm pretty good here. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And he might get away, you know?

[Ian Johnson]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

All right. That's what I got. That's the Andrew Tate update. That's where he is right now.

[Ian Johnson]

So. Sounds like he's still a piece of shit. Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Still a piece of shit.

[Sophie]

Update. Ew.

[Robert Evans]

Yep. Update. Ew. Gross, guy. We're done with him for a while again. Probably don't have to go back to Andrew Tate for a minute until. Until some of these court cases get more adjudicated, right?

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Ian Johnson]

Yeah, I guess.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sophie]

Gross.

[Robert Evans]

So that's it. That's our update on Andrew.

[Sophie]

Ian, you have anything you want to plug?

[Ian Johnson]

I just want to plug the Los Angeles Lakers and my glorious king LeBron James. Playoffs are about to start. Lakers in five. That's all I gotta say. And listen to hood politics. It's a good show.

[Robert Evans]

Listen to hood politics. It's a good show. Don't subscribe to the war room, Sophie. We should have a place. People can give us $8,000 a year if they want to. Wouldn't that be nice?

[Ian Johnson]

The coolest zone media.

[Sophie]

We're not that desperate.

[Robert Evans]

Give me $8,000 zone media.

[Sophie]

If we're ever asking you for $8,000, it's not us. It's a scam.

[Ian Johnson]

Something's gone terribly wrong.

[Robert Evans]

Unless I say it's definitely me. Yeah. You know, in which case it's definitely me. I would never lie to you. Unless someone cloned my. My voice with AI. In which case I would definitely lie to you. Oh, God.

[Sophie]

You know, Andrew Tate isn't great. Andrew Tate, my mate.

[Robert Evans]

Lakers and vibe. Sophie's gonna go watch the Lakers. I'm gonna, like, stand outside in the sun or some.

[Sophie]

Yeah, they don't even play today.

[Robert Evans]

I'm just excited. Yeah. Great.

[Sophie]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.com behindthebastards.

[Robert Evans]

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[Unknown]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Scoff in Bone Valley Season one.

Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.