#090 - Dane Giraud

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Yeah. Because you know why? Look, I'm known as wearing quite colorful clothing and the reason why I wear colorful clothing is this is about 15, 20 years ago. It was a very tough year in the business, you know, cause I'm obviously in entertainment business, TV shows, film, whatever. And I had no job. I had no money. And I was like renting in Ponsonby, which was psychotic.

You know, you can't do that when you're broke, you know? But I was, and it was just insane for myself and my wife at the time. So I ended up lugging boxes at a suit, like a warehouse, like a suit importers and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Clothing suits and that. And I worked there and I was like, oh man, this is just, you know, I want to be riding again. What's going on here? And one of the people working there said, oh, do you like wearing suits and stuff? And I said, yeah, sure. And they were like, oh, well, you know, you work in the house, you go to the factory shop and you get a discount. And so I went up after work and I went up there and there was like a rack of clothing and there was some interesting jackets and shirts and pants and things. And you know, whatever fit me, I put on and then I said, oh, what's this worth? And I thought, ah, it's going to be a hundred bucks. $10 because it was a second. So the fabric inside might have a slight rip. Yeah. So no one's ever going to see that. Yeah. So it's not really a second. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was, but I'm not choosing the color or anything. It's like, whatever's there you can have, but it's $10. Yeah. So I'm like, I'll take that. I'll take that. I'll take that. Right? So I start wearing this stuff. But the thing is, here's the thing, especially for Kiwi men, who are quite conservative, most Kiwi men would own one suit, right? Yeah. So what are they going to buy? It's going to be navy blue or it's going to be gray. They're going to wear it to weddings. They're going to wear it on business. They're going to try to get a one, they're not going to take risks with it. So I had like cream and sky blue and everything. And I just never looked back. But I think I've always had that about me anyway, you know? Yeah, yeah. I'm a Southern European. A lot of my ancestry is Southern European. So we're the guys with the chains and the black shirts and the cowboy boots and yeah. Yeah, it's kind of fun to interact with New Zealanders who are not with like a Scottish and an English background, because you just get different flavors, right? It's not that there's something wrong with those type of groups, but it's, you know, you just, it's different flavor. It's great when you have different flavor, French, Mediterranean, Italian, Greek. I throw that at all the nationalists and the white supremacists online now. You know, like when I was a kid, you know, being something like, you know, Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, they were ethnic actors. Yeah. They were Southern European. Yeah. So they're still Europeans, but they're not Anglo -Saxon. They were ethnic actors. Yeah. And even before then, like John Garfield was John Garfunkel. He was like a method actor. A lot of them were Jews, but they had to change their names. You know? So these, I mean, they're white, I guess, but they weren't treated that way. It's like, I remember when the Rainbow Warrior was bombed, I knew he had this ancestry from France and Italy actually. And, you know, I was getting, I was young, you know, I was taking it personally. Cause they were like, you know, jumping on, I remember there was a news item where the reporter got all these school kids to jump on baguettes, you know, the French loaves, and like was crushing them. And I was going, that's kind of my people, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't feel good about it. So when people say, oh, you know, there should be more white people in here. Oh, what's, what about the French? What about the, oh no, what's the difference between a Scott and an English person and a French person, Lithuanian? Yeah. These are different tribes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Different people. And they fought like cat and cats and dogs. Yeah. I mean, they tore Europe apart less than a hundred years ago. Hmm. Yeah. It's interesting. Like I, I think the first thing I started watching was soccer. If I recall, I wasn't watching films, I was watching soccer. Everybody was soccer mad. You know, we're talking 1990, 1994, right? And I got my fashion sense from the Italian national soccer team. These guys would show up with very fancy hairstyle. They'll dye their hair and all that stuff. And they would like have their national team shirt very well designed, very well cut, right? Like, oh, I like these guys because they look cool. They actually care about how they appear. And Arabs have that too though, don't they? Like the Arabs with the nice hair. We do, we do. We spend a lot of time on grooming, which is something that I've - Nicer beard than what I've got. Well, you've got a Kiwi beard at the moment. You don't have an Arab beard at the moment. Something going on, I don't know. But, but yeah, like my hands, like I like to look after my hands. I, you know, I don't like to like all these, I don't want to get my hands messed up with all the plumber stuff and, you know. No, no. It's, yeah, Arabs are very big on grooming, which is a big part of it. And yeah, like the thing that I have the most issue with is the teeth. Like the English people that don't look after, there's no dental care. It's like, man, you're rich. Like what, you know? These are good teeth. French, American, German, they're like invest a lot in good dental care, right? They look nice and tidy. I put a lot of money into my teeth. And I always have this joke. And I always say to people, if you really want to know if a nation or a group of people or a tribe have moved away from their British colonial roots, just look at their teeth.

If the teeth are awful and ugly, then they're very British. You know, they might say that they're Kiwi or Australian, but they're actually very British because that's a very British thing to do. Just don't look after your teeth, you know? Yeah, I know. It's madness. I just don't understand that. Well, when my first wife and I separated, it was tough times as it always is, but I was looking after the children. I set them up. I got them all computers for their rooms. I was paying for everything, doing that. That's what my comedy sort of career had just taken off at that time. And I said, I'm going to do something for me. And it was my teeth. Yeah, nice. That was the gift I gave myself. I put thousands and thousands into my teeth, man. Yeah, yeah. And now you can smile. I can smile, man, you know? Yeah. I mean, it's expensive. It's tough. I get it, but you know, it's like... See, the other thing with teeth, like, I smell good, right? Yeah, yeah. And I will spend $450 on cologne or a scent or something like that, even if I've got nothing in the bank. Yeah, yeah. And I was at a cafe in Ponsonby in this young Polynesian way to come up to me, and he gave me the coffee and that, and he said, oh, you smell really good, sir. He couldn't help it. The smell was so good, he had to say something. You smell really good, sir. And I said, listen to me, young man. You're allowed to get in debt to smell good. Remember that. You must always smell good, and you're allowed to get into debt to smell good. If you've got no money, but you smell great, you know, people are going to like you. Women are going to like you. If you smell good, man, women, they love you. I learned that a long time ago. You've got to smell good. I have a recommendation for a cologne for you. I look at you and I'm like, you need to wear this cologne. And I'm going to write it down. Yeah, it's called Portrait of a Lady. Portrait of a Lady by Frederick Moll. Portrait of a Lady? Very expensive, but I think it's definitely you. It's sort of like an undertone of like rose type. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, Portrait of a Lady. I've got a friend, a gay friend, and he had this patchouli sort of, it wasn't even an aftershave. It was like a, not a cream either. It was weird. It was like a gel to put on your face, but the smell kept around for a while. But it was very patchouli flavored. Yeah. Very citrusy. And I love that. Yeah. And I've never found it again, but that was good. Yeah, like my thing with scents is try and find something that is the closest to your body odor, if that makes sense. You know, it doesn't, you don't want to feel like you're too, like chemical centy, like a maid in the lab. I'd always go for Aesop. I don't know if you've heard of Aesop, but Aesop is an Australian brand, very accessible in New Zealand. There is a store on High Street, Aesop Strut, in Auckland store. I'm writing down all these. Is that cool? I'm writing down all the names of these. Write it down. It's spelled A -E -S -O -P. Write it down. Aesop is an Aesop's fables. The Greek, was he Greek? Aesop's fables? He used to write the little short, you don't know who Aesop is? No. He'd write like page long, little moral fables about there was a bird that met a fox and then the fox said to the bird and the moral of the story is, but they're very, very old. Aesop might even be, I don't know if it's, it's a bit like Homer and the Iliad, you know, like whether these people existed or Homer was edited over many years and you know what I mean? So it's hard to know who these people really were, but yeah, that's what Aesop is. Yeah, yeah. No, Aesop is I think an Australian brand and they do very earthy type, very natural scent and products, which I like and they sit very well on the body. They do a lot of like wooden, like woody type, earthy type. Yeah, I do like that. There was a brand I used to love as a kid and it was called Mandate and it was advertised in Penthouse Magazine, you know, Mandate. Yeah. And it's fucking, it's Charles Bronson shit, you know, like you put it on and hair just goes poof out of your chest, you know, it's just insane, but so strong and so masculine. Yeah. Like wonderful. And of course I'd just go splash. I was probably like 17 when I was. Yeah. Didn't really work, but now, no, you've got to smell good, man. I mean, it just makes the difference. I, you know, there was a, when I was quite young, I read Errol Flynn's autobiography and he was like an Australian actor who was in Hollywood pretty early. Like, so he died in the fifties and he was about 50. So he was in films in the thirties. Like there's a very famous Robin Hood film that he did. And most of his book is him just broke, you know, and he's sort of a gigolo and all sorts of crazy things just to get, I mean, he stumbles basically into being a star in Hollywood. Yeah. But that's his whole thing is like, you've got to look a million dollars, you know, and you just feel better about yourself. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and it's important in the arts, man, because like our businesses, it's just up and down. You're never making the same amount of money every year. Yeah. Like every year, like the fluctuations are just madness. Yeah. But you know, I can have some fantastic years and then I'm like, whoa, you know, but I mean, I'm still writing. So that's the thing is because I'm doing it through writing. It's like, well, you know, I'm not digging holes. I'm not working retail. I'm not, I'm not nothing against any of those jobs, but I'm still doing what I love, you know? So that's the main thing. So I weather it, but I told my kids, that's the risk. That's a trade off. So when the money is good, you just go for a portrait of a lady, 600 bucks, you know, high fly, fly, you know. 600, that's all right. That's doable. Yeah, 600. It's not that bad. Portrait of a lady. No, it could get worse. You know, it could be worse. 600 would give you like a return ticket to Fiji, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what's more important, smelling nice or going to Fiji? I like Fiji. Maybe you can spend that money to get to Fiji and get some coke, rub some coconut on you and smell nice. You know, then you can get

A good deal. I like the coconut oil thing. Did you know I met Frank Piney Marama? No, no, I never mentioned that. Yeah, yeah. Well, I was making documentary many years ago. Yeah. And, oh, this was probably 2009 or something. Maybe 2010, something like that. And he'd been in power a few years. I think 2006 was his big coup. And, you know, I'm watching the news one night and, you know, he's on there and they're talking about what's going on in there. And it was like, you know, like most news items, they go for a minute, you know. And at the end of it, I'm like, it just occurred to me, well, I learned nothing out of that. And so I go, I don't know who he is. I don't know what he wants. I don't know anything like that. He looks scary. He's got a beret. He's got a military uniform. I guess he's a dictator. He's the bad guy, is he? He's the bad guy. And I spoke to the producer I was working with and said, I'd like to learn more about Fiji. I mean, it's so close to us. Everyone goes there for holidays. What the hell is going on over there? There's a military dictator over there. What's going on over there? I mean, in 87, Rambuka did the coup. You know, we got a little bit more information, but it was still, it was hard to sort of wade through what exactly was happening there, you know. And so I found a book written by a local Indian man and it was about indentured workers. So in like Canadian sugar companies and everything, like when they were, because they didn't settle Fiji, the English, the way they did New Zealand. And that's the interesting thing. Paul Moon will talk about this. There wasn't like a one size fits all for colonization. Like sometimes they'd look at places like Fiji and go, we're not gonna have a big presence here. It's gonna be a market garden. That's all we're interested in. So you can be a market garden. Oh, I guess we'll develop New Zealand. No, we won't do that here, you know. And so they brought a lot of indentured workers over who were essentially slaves by another name, you know. And they had the caste system over there, obviously in India. And these people were treated just terribly and were so ashamed that many of them didn't want to go home anyway, you know. It was just misery. So that's how Indians got there. So there's a lot of trauma and hurt at the beginning of that story, you know, of their story in Fiji. So I'm reading this going, well, this is fascinating. So I tracked the guy down and he was like, oh, he was a Christian guy. He goes, I've been praying to God and you've arrived. And I was like, oh, well, okay. And so we start gearing up and talking about it. And he says, I can get you a meeting with Frank Bunny Marama. And I'm like, oh, well,

Yeah, we'll see about that, you know. But sure enough, he's like, yeah, we can do it, you know. And it took a while, actually. It took quite a while to get the, like apparently there was a yes, but wait, wait, wait. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm at the synagogue and there's a guy there who had had business interests, older man. He had business interests in Fiji way back in the day. And he knew them. He knew Bunny Marama. And I said, this is what's happening. You know, I think I'm getting the run around. And he goes, no, no, no, no, no. That's not the way it works. You're gonna have this wait, wait, wait, wait, wait period. Then he's gonna go be here tomorrow. Right. I'm like, oh, okay. Sure enough, three months later, can you be here in two days? I'm like, whoa. So I go over there. I stay, I couldn't get anywhere in Suva. So I fly into Nandy and I'm there and I'm gonna get picked up at like three in the morning and drive right across to Suva. So I'm, you know, I get up at three and I'm like, oh, you know, have a coffee in my hotel room. And then these guys turn up in a car that was so rusted and fucked up. I don't even know how I was driving. It was like a Flintstones car. You know, you can see their feet underneath you. You wouldn't have been surprised, right? I'm like, can I drive across the country in that? So we do and I'm in the back. And I'm sort of driving in and we get to Suva and we're gonna meet him pretty early. So I get into the office. And the interesting thing about Fiji, like the Pacific islands are pretty poor. You know, like there's not a lot of development. So this is a government building that looks exactly like our government building circa 1977. Yeah, it looks exactly the same, you know. So I get in there and I'm waiting in the waiting room just outside his office. And I'm gonna meet him at 9 .30 or something like that. And so I'm waiting there and then it's like, oh, there's gonna be a bit of a delay. All these military guys, you know, soldiers who would just be here with guns. We're gonna have to wait a bit. You know, he's got some other stuff happening. And it's like, oh, okay, cool. So we waited like an hour passes and I'm like, you know, tired and everything. And then someone else comes in. You're gonna have to wait a little longer. And then he blows someone up, right? And like, he's in the next room. So I can just hear this guy, this military dictator blowing somebody up in the room. And I'm tired. This is happening all quickly. And I just, I just start to freak out, you know? Yeah. Cause I'm like, I'm here, I'm alone. There's no one with me. I don't know anyone. I'm gonna talk and pitch something to this military dictator. He's screaming at a guy in the next room. Yeah. And I can hear it right there. The fuck am I doing? You know, like almost at the rep. Yeah. But then it got to two o 'clock or something crazy like that. Yeah. And I've been there for hours, man. We can't leave. And this young soldier comes in and goes, would you like a coffee? And I said, yes, yes. Cause no one had really offered us anything. So he brings in black coffee and I just perked up. And he goes, right, he'll see you. And I went in and I just did the best pitch. And he was tough, right? He was tough. But the thing is that like my nephew was an all black back in around 2000, 99 through to about 2003. Right. And he was working, he was since retirement, he'd gone to play in cast, like in France. Yeah. And I said before, you know, months earlier, look, I might be seeing him. Can I have a jersey? You know, cause he's a rugby nut, this guy, you know, Donnie Marama. So he gives me one and then he's pretty tough. He's going, well, who's going to film it? Who's going to edit it? Do I, you know, and I had to say to him, I can't let you edit it. I can't let you approve any of the edits. I have to do that. No one, you know, people will think it's a stitch up if they know that you've been involved in the edit process. It'll, you know, for the betterment of both of us, I need to do the editing. Yeah. Okay, okay. And then it's like, great. Okay, the meeting went well. I said, oh, before we go, I got a, I got a gift for you. So I give him the jersey and he just absolutely changes. So he goes from this military tough guy to just slapping me on the back and hugging me and photographs and talking about rugby. And then he says to me, when are you going home? I said, I'm going home tomorrow. And he goes, change your ticket and sit with me for the, for the, and for the Suva Bowl, which is army versus police and rugby. Wow. I couldn't do it. I said, look, the offer is amazing, but I just can't do it. He goes, oh, it's a great day. You should do, I said, I can't do it. Stupidest thing I've ever done. Right. Cause I would have been right at his side watching this thing. Yeah. But you know, I go, I go home and I do this big pitch in front of all these, you know, local people. And I'm like, I want quarter of a million dollars to go over and make this thing. Yeah. And, and they're like, yeah, but he could throw you in prison on day two and then we lose all our money. And I'm like, I'm like, well, no, I've got a good relationship with him. Yeah, now, but you know, you piss him off. You ask him the wrong question. Yeah. He's not going to tolerate that. And I'm like, oh fuck. And they were like, go over on your own and start shooting, bring stuff back and get funding every 20 minutes.

Right. You know? Right. And I just had other commitments and just couldn't get that happening, but. Yeah. So it's the one that got away, but you know, in doing the research on Fiji, there's not even a million people on those islands. There's 750 ,000 or something. It's the most complex political situation I've ever encountered. And probably, you know, like the Middle East is complex. Yeah. I think Fiji might be more complex. Yeah. It's nuts. There's Melanesians. There's Polynesians who have been there for like hundreds of years. There's families that are sort of like, you know, it's, it's, it's got the tribal thing going on. It's got these sort of esteemed families. There's a nationalism aspect of it. What do we do with the Indians is it's just, it's just nuts. I mean, it would have been a, I mean, I read about a thousand pages of stuff and I had a sense of it now, but I mean, it was so complex. It was just nuts, but. Yeah. It's one of the ones that got away. Yeah. I got a story out of it. Didn't make the documentary, which was a real shame. Yeah. And that's sort of like the reality of working in this sort of world is that there's just constant ideas and pitches and meeting people and trying to come up with ideas. And, you know, 99 % of them never see the day of light, you know? Well, you know, I get quite self -conscious as a writer because I'll say things like, you know, I write feature films. I've had one produced of Ghost written on a few others. There's one on Netflix at the moment that I wrote on. So it's like my stuff, my feature films do get theatrical releases and they are out there. I've written a few though that haven't been made. So when people say, oh, what is it? Which one can I see it? It's like, well, none of those ones have been made. And you can't say that without feeling a little bit like a loser, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the truth of the matter is I got paid. I got paid well. Yeah. And, you know, they can throw 25 ,000 or 30 ,000 at you because this thing could cost $15 million. It makes sense to lose 30 grand to see if this thing's gonna work or they can get people to pick it up. Then, you know, then 15 million. So some of them are, you know, there's development spend they're prepared to lose. There's a certain amount of money they are prepared to invest. Yeah, and we talked about this a while ago about how millions are being invested into rewriting a lot of these TV shows that were written to be woke. And all of a sudden, woke is no longer a trend. And Elon's bought Twitter and he's turned it into X and he's fighting against the whole anti -woke movement thing and you're right. Writing is like, you know, so important. You can just go down a pathway of millions of dollars of losses because you've written something that is no longer, you know, the trend or people, the audience are not interested in that. There is pushback, there's blowback. So writing becomes such a very crucial part of everything. It's all about timing, yeah. Yeah. It's all about timing. It's very much so. The thing with woke work, like, you know, TV shows and that, because of the internet, because everything is so niche, maybe, you know, there are obviously still woke people. There might be enough of an audience for these shows anyway, just because of the niche nature of the internet and everything today. Because there was a time when a trend would change, everything would have to change with it. Yeah. Everything would kind of live alongside everything else today. Now, what I've found interesting is like, you know, when people say, oh, there's not a lot of good rock and roll anymore, rock and roll's kind of dead. Well, you know, well, my 17 year old, big AC DC fan, big Ice -T fan, he listens to things from, you know, Led Zeppelin and that. He's listening to stuff from the 70s and 80s and everything, because it's on Spotify. Yeah. So it's sort of living alongside contemporary releases. Yes. Do you know what I mean? So it's almost like everything is happening at once now. Yeah. And so you can sort of fit, you can find

Your tribe online, you know. Yeah. And serve your tastes. Yeah, I remember as a teenager, you know, I would listen to Backstreet Boys every day, right? And then I think when I was 20, I never heard of Backstreet Boys ever again. Yeah. And last year I was 38, all of a sudden I see Backstreet Boys performing, sold out arenas at the Sphere in Las Vegas. That, you know, this thing is like an $80 million production, right? And I'm like, these guys are still going. And yes, they are. They just don't exist in this world of like, how we see the top 100 billboards. They just exist in their own niche world and it's a huge world and they make a lot, still make a lot of money. And then I went into this whole research thing and I found out that, you know, these days you can have Grok, Chad, GPT and just give you the numbers very quickly. Backstreet Boys still make multimillion dollar revenue every year on just doing concerts and the royalties and everything. It's like, yeah, ACDC, Metallica, all these guys are still going. And Green Day, they're still going. They're still performing, they're still making money and they have their niche audience. Yeah, I was reading about a tour with Def Leppard and all these guys are pushing 70 now. Def Leppard and probably the best singer in rock. Is it Journey? Is it, Journey, what's the singer's name? Steve, Portuguese -American guy. Not sure, not really. I can't try to sing him, so you'll know. Not my niche. No, he's, what's one of his songs? His songs turn up in a lot of Adam Sandler films.

Ah.

Because Adam Sandler's a bit older than me, so he's sort of more, that's his hard rock. New kind of way. Oh, More Than a Feeling. More Than a, oh no, that's REO Speedwagon. I'm getting all fucked up. Well, anyway, I think it's, yeah, I think it's Journey, yeah. That's Boston, isn't it? Boston, Journey. And then there's Chicago and all these other, yeah, well, they did a tour together anyway. Def Leppard and this band. They made a billion dollars. Wow. Just going across the states, billion, billion dollars. Wow. I mean, they obviously have to pay people and all that kind of stuff out of it. But taking a billion dollars through the gate, man, that's some, that's some good shit, you know? Yeah, it is, it is. It's a fascinating world where you have so many people that spend all their life just on the struggle and people who are in these niches and they don't care about mainstream attention. They make good, they have a good life and they're happy with that life. And there's a lot of people that kind of like, you know, Teleswift. It's like, why the hell is Teleswift always number one on Spotify? This new age of like what mainstream is and what we value. It's like, oh, Teleswift. Oh, Teleswift. Oh, Lord's doing this. It's like, I don't care. Like, you know, go away. But that's sort of like the reality we live in now, that there are people that all of a sudden just explode and become this new mainstream. And, you know, Joe Rogan went through that. Everyone's like, oh, Joe Rogan's doing this. Oh, Joe Rogan had this. Oh, Joe Rogan said this. And that's died down now. And he's kind of gone back into his own niche and he's still got his audiences. Well, he's nowhere near as controversial as some of the other guys that are out there now. Yeah, well, he's quite interesting. He's kind of swung back to his liberal roots, where he's criticizing Trump for the attack on Iran. He's criticizing Israel. He's sort of like getting similar, you know, like Tucker Carlson kind of level. It's very interesting. And he's obviously a big Gaza supporter. He backs Gaza a lot. So it's very interesting how that cycle he's going into and you can't ignore it because he's very smart around the trends he picks and how he expresses his truth and what he's looking for. And he's, I think, breaking away from the danger of falling into this echo chamber of being a right winger and an extremist MAGA kind of thing because he had Trump on the show. So he's quite smart in not making himself put into these brackets. And he likes to kind of stay radically moderate and have a view of issues in a very unique way that's a Joe Rogan way, which kind of is what makes him Joe Rogan, I guess. The interesting thing about him and all the hysteria about him, you know, during COVID and that, everyone was like, we've got a ban and he talks to guys in the manosphere and all that kind of stuff. And Douglas Murray getting upset because he was like talking to neo -Nazis and all this kind of stuff. The whole idea of him radicalizing people, he just sounds like, these are the conversations any men have in a carriage. Yeah. With a big bottle of beer in their hand, you know? Yeah. It's like, this is what we're naturally gonna talk about. You know, that's what people are having these, people, that's why he blew up, that's the point. And you're right, it's

When people - It's a man cave, it's a virtual man cave. Exactly, it's a simulated world that you have the same chats with your friends in your man cave over a beer and now you're on the internet, you wanna hear similar things, so you go to Joe Rogan. I mean, so there's people out there with nutty views I meet all the time, man. But there's a guy I know really well. And it's sort of a family connection. I don't see him very often, but you know, he's a businessman and he's doing really well and everything. And we're outside at some barbecue and he started talking about the mosque attack and said that they were all crisis actors and the bodies that you saw were dummies and things like that. And I was like, oh, I kinda look at him. And he's like, yeah, anyway. And then he changed the subject cause he was like, oh, Dane doesn't wanna talk about this. Cause I did not. I didn't wanna have a big fight at the table and go, you fucking nut. So he just moves on to something else. Hold on, he was talking about how the attack in the Christchurch mosque shootings in New England was completely fake and these people were actors. And it was special effects teams and things like that. And I was - And who paid for it? What was the argument? Well, he didn't get going. Ah, because you were like, nah. I didn't wanna go there, no. I was like, and it was someone else's party. I couldn't start screaming at the guy or anything like that. But my point is, this is a successful guy who has a family and a good business and everything. He wouldn't be talking like this to people all the time. He'd just be a very rational, here's your contract. Here's the invoice. Okay, I've got this job over here. He's just sort of getting on with his life. He's got hobbies. He's got all that. But there's this obviously 2 % or 1 % of what he believes is just completely batshit. It is. And that's very fascinating. And I was having a chat about this this morning with someone and the backstory was, how come all these successful normal people end up on the Epstein files? And what is the morality flow and how did we not see it happening? Why are these people like Bill Gates and all these guys are 1 % batshit crazy that they're Prince Andrew, the things that they're doing? And we sort of ended up in this conversation and it evolved into, you know what is it we don't do as a society? We don't measure people's spirituality health. So if you do DMT experiences and if you do mushroom experiences, if you do ayahuasca, what you're really trying to understand in someone's mind is what is the level of ego he has? Where are his morality flows? Now, what is the balance between suppressed ego and dissolution of the ego? Because there's too much ego. There are so many fascinating things you can actually understand about a person when you get them on some psychedelic mushrooms. But I used to take a lot of acid as a kid. I used to get it off by taking a lot of fucking acid. Which I think Joe Rogan has this argument that every fucking person in the world and every corporate guy should do psychedelics, whether it's LSD or whatever at one point, because what it does, it really awakens your own governance of, self -governance of your spiritual moral self. Well, George Harrison, one of the Beatles, he described it well. He said what LSD did for him was like all his knowledge is up on a blackboard that he's learned his entire life. Then he takes acid and someone wipes all the knowledge off, but then writes it all back up again in a slightly different script. Oh yes. Like that's what it did for him. I mean, I was taking it every week or two for a while when I was about 18 or 19. I got drugs out of my system very early actually. Yeah. Which I'm very grateful for. Yeah, I had the same experience. I think it was, I did my psychedelic experience with a shaman in 2021. And I did iboga, which is an African DMT activated root of a plant or a tree that you kind of shred and then have a spoon and you macrodose and you do it in the night and you work with a shaman to kind of break down everything that's written on that blackboard and then you have to go back in the world and live your life and you have to rewrite everything for the next 18 months. So that was my experience. Well, I've got a friend in LA who's done that kind of thing and it's very much a meet God type experience. But for me, there was no, nothing was controlled. It was just like, it was gang pads and shit, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, once

I took acid and I'm out on a front lawn just being an absolute clown and then this dude goes past in a massive car. Hey, Dane, do you want to come for a drive? And I was like, sure. And I just leap in the car without thinking about it and I'm between two gangsters in the back and I'm just muttering to myself and then they drive off and straight away I'm regretting it. I'm like, why did I do that, man? I was on a good trip. Now I'm sandwiched between two fucking gangsters. And then I get driven to the boss's house basically because this guy's doing a deal with him and I'm in there and I'm tripping like fuck. And the guy that took me there, he was a gangster but he was like an independent so he would muck around with everyone, like he'd sell and do stuff with everyone. He was like, oh, this young guy here is all fucking off his head. And the boss is just, I start sort of playing, hamming it up for him. And it's like I'm the court jester or something. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm making all these kind of crack up, sort of the LSD freak out things but I'm wanting to get the fuck out of there and we were there for so fucking long. We were probably there 10 minutes but it felt like four hours. Yeah. You know, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I finally got out of that one but I got, yeah, some of the acid that we took back then was very strong, man. Like I was being chased down the road by skeletons and fucking all sorts

Of crazy, crazy shit. I overdosed on Datura, man. Yeah. You know what Datura is? I think I've heard about it. It's a highly poisonous hallucinogenic. It's twice as powerful as any LSD. Yeah. And I took it with a friend and I went to the twilight zone, dude. Like I was in hospital. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like they couldn't pump my stomach. It had been in there so long. So they gave me this massive milkshake container of liquidized charcoal. Wow. And I had to drink that to absorb all the poisons and shit like that. I was freaking out for it. And I was freaking out for about two days. Wow. To be fair, I think that's kind of like probably the most impactful way of trying these experimental or psychedelic drugs. Because the thing that shamans, I think there was a phase in the world where there were just too many fucking coaches, life coaches and shamans. And the problem is that they take you through a system that they think that they can guide you. And when you get out of that, you feel like you don't have the permission to guide yourself. You feel like there's always a fucking method that you have to, and you have to always go back and they have this very toxic way of making money that they need to bring you back in because you need another unlocking to do. Whereas the 1970s hippies age, it was like someone drops it, gives it to you and you try it and you have it and then there's something happens and you have this crazy experience. And then you lead yourself out of whatever awakening that you experience. I'm sure a lot of people have very bad experience, people die and I'm not minimizing that. But I feel like a lot of those sort of shifts and change you can make in life is when you are in control, like when there's no fucking coaches around telling you, oh, you're doing good, you know. I think that would have happened for a long time. I think even the Beatles fell out with their Maharaja, who, is that what you'd call them? So they had a spiritual advisor there. They

Went to India and had this experience and the big guy with the beard and that. I think they, people were exploitative even in the 60s. They knew that Eastern culture had this sort of aura all of a sudden. They were like, let's make money out of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But for us, it was sort of more, it was just, we were kids, man. It was just like, let's do a freaky thing. Let's test ourselves. Let's push our bodies as far as we can go. Let's have experiences. And the other thing, very male thing, especially in South Auckland, let's be the crazier dude than the other dude. And I did that for a long time because I was a very timid boy, really. No, I was a creative, I was timid. Wasn't into cars, didn't know my way around an engine or anything like that. Couldn't fight, not really. I mean, you know, comparatively to people raised not in South Auckland, I'd probably be okay. But to people, my peers, no. So how did I get it? By being the craziest dude. By being the dude that would take anything, drink piss, run down the street naked, get into trouble with women. I mean, it was all of that. It was just, that became the currency for me. Like, how do I fit in here? When I probably didn't really fit in, man. That was a reality. I was a creative in waiting. A lot of my friends, some of them went to prison. Some of them developed really bad pee habits and got into trouble. But it was guitarring that got me out of it. I learned guitar, ended up having a passion for music, and that sort of broke me away from that crowd. And then I started my band and I was playing in Auckland and doing all that kind of stuff. So before I did anything else, I was a professional musician. And how did you end up being a writer for film and feature films and docos and everything else? So I was in my band and I was living in a band flat and everything for a couple of years. And we got a publishing deal with Sony Music, which was quite a big deal. And Virgin Records was still in the country at the time and they were considering investing in us. Now, this isn't to say that we were gonna be huge. We're a New Zealand band. We may have had one single that charted or didn't and then disappeared anyway. I'm not wanting to make it sound more romantic or larger than what it was. But we had an opportunity to go to Australia actually and really get into that light music scene, which would have been way, way bigger than our one at the time, early 90s. And the rubber was meeting the road and a couple of guys in the band just didn't have the bottle to do it. They were like, I got a day job. I don't know if I can leave my girlfriend. She doesn't wanna go. It was all of that. And we just completely imploded. And I was so bitter, man. I was like, I'm not gonna rely on four other drunks ever again for my creative expression. And so I started doing acting classes. Eventually, I'll give you the short version. I do acting classes, get into that. From there, I get into drama school. I train as an actor, classically trained. So like Shakespeare, all that stuff. So very good training. I work for about a year or two as an actor, but it's a part -time job. So I'm making money, blowing money, all of that stuff. Start having children. Meet the woman that would be the mother of three of my children on a film set. We get together. We're together 16 years. So it's like, I need more. I'd had a skill for creative writing when I was younger, but I sort of went back to it. Started working at a production company and really in that environment where I could write every day, my skills really developed super quickly. And then from there, I was like behind the scenes. I was a writer. I was creating pitch documents, getting shows for this production company. So I was a bit of a golden goose for those guys. Then I broke away with one of the producers and helped her start her company. And then I went out on my own and that was mainly documentary and stuff. When I went out on my own, I was like, I trained in drama. I want to do fiction. So I went back and I started with comedy. And that's where my star sort of rose really in the industry is doing the comedy and I'm into everything else that I've been doing. So that was how I became a professional writer anyway. That's amazing. What do you make of the comedy scene today in New Zealand? I mean, you kind of grew up in that sort of time of Billy T. James and that type of comedy that we miss a lot in New Zealand. It's a lot, it's a very woke or very conforming and set off comedy where we get people together and start descent. We now confirm and create these sort of like air groups where everybody kind of validates the other person. What do you make of the scene today? I mean, I've seen some live comedy that I like and stand ups and stuff. Billy T. James was good because he had jokes and we don't do jokes. Like, I don't know why, but New Zealanders just aren't very good joke writers. That's a big problem for me. Right. They think it's a bit naff, you know? Like I was, I didn't create this comedy, but I wrote, I rewrote a comedy, which they were, we call it punching up where it's like, okay, it's good, but needs more jokes. You come in, rewrite everything, add more jokes. Yeah. And I worked with Pac Society. Do you know Pac Society? No. Well, he's Pakistani Iranian. Right. And he's a standup and he was hot for a while doing TV shows and things like that. And I was there at the read throughs and he was reading some of the jokes that I'd done in that. And he was really struggling with them because he was like, oh, these are dad jokes. And it's like, what's a dad joke, man? A dad joke is a set up and a payoff, you know? Yeah. And that's what gets you to laugh out loud. That's what I've learned. New Zealanders do quirky a lot. So for the first four pages of a script, there was an American guy I know who was doing script reading here and assessments. And he was reading these New Zealand scripts and it was like, there's no jokes. There was a joke on the fifth page, but before then it was cutesy and quirky. But what they're doing with that cutesy and quirky is they're sort of trying to cover for the fact they don't have jokes. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's self -conscious. It's like, where are the jokes? I say that to people a lot, man. Where are the jokes? I want to laugh. You know, I want to laugh. Shock me. Every joke should be an electric shock of some description. Yeah. You should get a joke with the punchline. A dad joke can do that. It might be naff, but maybe that's part of it too. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Like the naffness is a laugh, you know? But a lot of people don't understand the science of it. Yeah. And how important timing is and all this kind of stuff. So, and the other thing is like, I have a problem with the pipeline in New Zealand. Right. Like if you look at a guy like Peck Society, he started to do it actually. Like he had some shows. He had one about being a refugee and everything, but didn't have enough jokes. You know, he'd worked with me. He should have called me in, you know? It's like, he's got a Jewish comedy writer there and he won't call them in, you know? That's a fuck up. It's bad business.

I should call you in to write my standup comedy book. I've been writing for six months because I'm sort of adapting my satire writing into comedy. And then I'm using my podcast as a baseline to understand the way that I speak and the way I set up things and figure out my timing and my punchlines and do I want to be a storyteller type comedian on stage? Do I want to be observational? Do I want to do like offensive stuff or, you know, like - Yeah, there's all sorts of different ways to go. Experience and explore and try and figure out. So I definitely have to bring you in and then see what do you think of my jokes? You might say, you suck. I'm honest. You know, I am honest. Yeah, you have to be. Yeah, you have to be in the arts, you know? Because it's not, you want to reach people. Like there was a, I love the story. There was a great black comedian called Red Fox. Yeah. And he passed away a while ago. Older guy at the time, but in the nineties. But he went through like a black militant stage, right? So he's going through his black militant stage in the late sixties, early seventies. And he's got this variety show that he's doing because they were doing lots of variety shows in the States. So he fires all the writers and brings in the brothers. So all the brothers are there, they're writing everything. And one of the producers was Jewish. He was still there. Yeah. And he tells a story how he said, okay, let's do the read -through. And they did the read -through together of the new scripts. Yeah. And then he had a meeting with the producer afterwards. Didn't say a word, just sat there like this and then went, bring me back my Jews. Yeah. It just wasn't funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not saying we're the only people that can be funny, but like it's, yeah. I mean, I don't know, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because of, you know, tragedy plus time equals comedies. So we're sort of used to processing that. Or it's the fact we're sort of wordsmiths because we're constantly religiously looking at documents and sort of looking at the words and trying to find hidden meanings and things like that. And just the chaotic life that Jews live. Like if you like, you know, the whole culture and the religion and the conflict between tradition versus modern lifestyle, Jews in America, all that conflict is fun. Like, you know, I didn't go to fucking comedy school. I started writing satire comedy on X as posts and then I kind of evolved and I felt like I had the capacity to get more professional about it. And then, you know, I was doing six, seven stories a day and they were all getting laughs. And I just, you know, and I've been doing it for three years every day, right? And I have the odd week off where I'm like, I'm not feeling it and that's cool. But I think I learned comedy from home and my parents did comedy, my siblings did comedy. We made fun of each other. And I think the kitchen table is where you learn your like real roots to comedy and the conflict of all that chaos that goes on in life is where I think you build a lot of it. And Billy T. James is where I feel like he had that sort of life, right? Where there was this like stereotypical casual racism. There was a lot going on in that day and age that he really capitalized on. And today, you know, it's like, oh, you know, I was talking to a guy in Auckland and won't mention names and he does like, he's a manager, he manages comedians and blah, and I was talking to him and trying to, you know, because I wanna do it my way and this day of internet, I don't wanna like look for a community that can accept me and then I'm a comedian. I wanna sort of have my own little pocket and niche and I wanna just do comedy for that niche. I have a plan. And he was like, oh, those kinds of jokes won't go anymore and you can't make those kinds of jokes and people won't laugh. And I'm like, oh, you're actually trying to gatekeep what comedy should be. And, you know, and you don't need to do that. You know, you just, you need to, are you funny? Can you, you know, can you do jokes? And that's it. When I did find me a Maori bride, like if I took a lot of my jokes to a guy like that, he, yeah, he would have said, you can't do that. You're not Maori, you can't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This kind of stuff. I'm just going back to what you were saying before about the Jewish thing and comedy and that, and even yourself, you know, if you're an outsider, you know, there's a lot of fantastic gay comedy because they're outsiders or that, well, they have been outside. Yes, yes. And being an outsider means that you have a perspective on society, which is slightly removed. Yes. So you can observe a little bit more, you know, like if you're inside the whole Anglo -Saxon soup, you know, it's like, it's the whole thing of the, you know, does the, does the fish know that it's in water? No, it's like, cause it's everywhere. You know what I mean? Yeah, I feel like a lot of, yeah, yeah. Distance is really important for comedy, I think. And that's why a lot of the minorities have written some of the best comedy because they're not, they're nonconforming. Yeah, that's the smart thing that I did when I started writing my comedy, I said to myself, my way in would be observational comedy. That would be my way in to have the crowd accept me as, oh, this guy's an outsider. Okay, so he has all these views about, we can laugh at ourselves and he's an outsider. And then you kind of evolve into a storytelling type of comedy. And then you kind of evolve into, you know, someone that's crazy and wild. And, you know, so I feel like there's a journey somewhere and observational comedy is a very good way to get into it. And I've been successful with my podcast doing similar things. Like I talk a lot about New Zealand and I've been living here for 17 years. So I feel like I've earned some kind of authority to have and observe how things happen, compare them to the UAE where I grew up, very similar. You know, there's indigenous people, a million of them, there's 8 million expats. So you kind of have a lot of similarities, tribal similarities, the difference between, you know, indigenous tribes and Western groups of tribes and how they kind of work together and their views about the world. And you're right, you know, those kind of comedians is always like, they have a kind of unique, if they can get the timing right. Yeah, you kind of have talent. I mean, it's not just gonna naturally happen, but like, you know, having sex with a woman and she starts giving you antisemitic slurs while you're having sex with it. I mean, it's like, and I'm like, I don't want to stop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, and if I say something, I'm really killing the moment here, but what the fuck is she doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, Joe Schmoe doesn't have to put up with that. That's funny. Joe Schmoe doesn't have to put up with that. So that's a joke

And everything. It's like, yeah, it's just, yeah. There are experiences that are just so unique, but it's that outsider thing. See, that's the thing, and people give me shit for this, but it's like, you know, I think gays need to be careful, man, because it's like, we just want to, because gay means good as you. That was a whole purpose of that. And it's like, you know, be careful integrating that you don't lose that special source. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, once you become just another boring member of the larger conformist sort of masses, you're gonna lose something. And I think some gay people are aware of that. It's like, as tough as it can be for Jews, there are things I don't want to lose. Yeah, and it's the same, it goes opposite for anyone like myself, who, you know, I guess describes himself as masculine, if I use that word. Not in like a macho, but, you know, it would be silly for me to do jokes by saying, oh, you know, I'm equal to gays, or someone that's masculine. For me, what would be funny to maintain, and that would give me durability and longevity in that business is, I'm cool with gays, everybody can be whatever they want to be, but I don't want to be friends with gay, because every time I hang out with gays, they just want to have sex with me, right? And so that was kind of, that's not my joke, but that's kind of like the main point of my joke, and I stick to that, right? And it's a nice way of saying, we're cool if you serve me in a restaurant, or you're trans or whatever, it's cool, you work in a public place, we respect everybody in the public space, but, you know, we can't be friends, because every time you want to be friends, you want to put your penis up my bum, and I'm not cool with that, right? But see, there's something interesting about that kind of joke, and this is where a lot of people get

Offensive jokes wrong. Right, yeah. When you are telling a joke, you're playing a character for the moment you're telling the joke. Yeah. So, like, I love racist jokes. Yeah. I love them. They're funny, they're shocking, all of that kind of stuff, but when you're telling a racist joke, you're, and the punchline is racist, you are acting as the racist character, or the homophobic character, say, like your joke, but you're kind of talking about the, it's a comment on the absurdity of racism and homophobia. Yeah. That's what people don't get. They get, he said a, he said a homophobic joke, or a racist joke. It's like, listen to it. Yes. This is about the absurdity. This guy's so deluded, he thinks everyone wants him, or this guy doesn't realize he's racist. Yes. He's, you know, he thinks he's being, you know, so these are layers of irony. Yes. And you know who doesn't get irony? Authoritarian types. Yeah. Well, the target of the joke is not necessarily the subject of the joke. They're two things. No, that's right. It's you. It's the joke teller most of the time. And the cool thing that I love about like racist or offensive jokes is that there is something about human psychology is that if you can deliver something racist in a very, very creative way, or something offensive in a very, very creative way, you as the recipient of that joke can try your hardest to take it personally, but you can't, because the creativity of humor doesn't allow you to go there. Like, you know, Eminem was really good at doing, like he would have these battles, these rap battles, and he will call black people the N word in his rap battles, but he will do it so smartly and the black people like, I want to get angry with you because you gave me the N word, but I can't because you're so bloody good at this. You know? So I think that gives me the rush. Like, I want to go there, but I want to go so smartly that you can try your hardest to be pissed off at me, but you can't. Yeah. Look, I will say we wouldn't try this stuff if there wasn't a risk. Yeah. So there is a risk to it. Yeah. And it's kind of similar to, you know, a guy can go up to a woman at a bar and say, hey, how are you doing? Would you like a drink? Yeah. She might call security on that guy. Another guy comes over, he says exactly the same thing, but she's not threatened or offended by it. Sometimes it's about your persona. Like a big part of comedy is who are you? And, you know, What's your background and what's your, yeah. There's a lot of persona things that are sort of tied up in it. It's like some people can get away with it and it's almost like there's a spiritual element. It's hard to even describe, I don't know why he can get away with it, but he just can get away with it. So there is that. That's why you gotta test this stuff out. I was at a comedy table once. And, you know, comedy tables are fantastic for your viewers who may not know. It's like you get the script, you sit around with the actors or other comedians, pardon me, at a comedy table. And what you're doing is you're punching up the script. So you're looking to see if it's funny enough, whether there are jokes that you can add a button on to, like you can cap, you can sort of, hey, this joke would be even funny if we added this or it's a bit long, can we like, you know, bring this down? Yeah.

And so I'm going around the table. Everyone there is Maori, right? So I'm the only non -Maori there. And then it comes to, and everyone's having a great time. Then it comes to one joke and the joke is so racist. Right. It doesn't even sound like a joke. It sounds like an old guy turned around at a bar and just fucking gave someone an earful of hate, right? And the actor says it and I'm like, whoa, okay. And then everyone just went silent, right? Yeah. And then I go, I'll be putting a line through that one, shall I? And everyone just fucking lost it at that point. But you know, but they weren't professional comedians. You know, no one was offended by that. Yeah. They laughed. Like it was a release when they laughed. Yeah. But you know, they knew as professional comics that, you know, it would have worked in Dane's head. It would have been edgy, but it would have worked in Dane's head. But until it's spoken aloud in a room with an audience, we don't know. Yeah. We don't know if it's gonna work or not. Yes. And that's what had to happen. Now the wrong motherfucker in that room is recording me with a cell phone and they're fucking going out and they're trying to destroy my career. But you know, and I do worry about that today. I can see the wrong people coming in to these, these are actually safe spaces where you can express yourself, try things. You know sometimes you're going too far, but you know that you can pull it back. Yes. That's what that exercise is about. But yeah, man, we're gonna be sexist. We're gonna be, I mean, I'll tell you who's amazing is Cohen Holloway. Now he's a great actor, great comedian. He's been ill lately, like quite a worrying illness and it just breaks my heart. I hear he's doing well though, but he was in Find Me a Māori Bride with me. He's in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Just a fantastic guy, but the most irreverent guy, right? Yeah. And he'll come into that comedy table. He knows what we're there for. He comes in on fire and he's just giving you all the most absolutely, just, you know, a progressive, their hair turns white. That's why my hair is white. Yeah. From this guy's jokes, it's just like, he said that, right? He does that shit, while we're having coffee, before we've even sat down, just basically he's saying, you got permission to go anywhere. You know, there is no line here. Yeah. Because we need, we need that freedom. You know, we need that freedom to go there. So I mean, so that's a concern. I think there are, yeah, the wrong person in that room would just completely fuck the whole thing. Yeah. I mean, you know, if I translate what you're saying in terms of my personal experience of getting into this world of comedy and testing things out publicly on social media, on Twitter and X, it's a whole different ball game because you know, you're just putting it out there and you're getting this response. And you know, I just still sometimes find myself shocked that so many people have blocked me, so many comedians and like kiwis, they just blocked me because you know, my comedy is offensive to them, right? And it's very interesting, experimenting with my base audience, writing stuff, you know. The thing with satire news, you're covering everyday events, you have to write every day and you have to write at least, you know, one or two or three and some good days you're writing seven. And it's a lot of writing and you have to be on point and you have to, you get to a point where I think, you know, like someone like Ricky Gervais, yes, he works on his materials, he's doing material nights right now in London and you can go and enjoy them. But people know that those are material nights and they'll push boundaries, this and that. And... Yeah, he's trying things out. He's trying things out. And there could be, a lot of it's gonna fall flat and he's gonna drop it, yeah. And in my world now, it's like, you know, who is my group that I can sit down with and actually shoot the shit? It's actually a lot of it is artificial intelligence. It's like, you have to use these kind of tools and go, hey, is this funny? How would you score it? What's the good, what's not good? Where's offensive? Where is my risk here? Not that you're fully trusting it, but you're at least just sparring with them in some shape or form. And you have to be aware how woke these tools are at the same time because you ask GPT one thing, they say, whoa, I wouldn't do that. And then you go ask Gro. Gro would be like, yep, push that out, right? So you get that sort of contrast as well. I experimented a little bit with AI and humor. Not much though. I just did it basically just to try it out and see what it would be like. I didn't find the results very good. Yeah, so here's the thing, right? You have to know what you're writing for or what platform you're writing for. If you are going in a club and you're doing it to the audience, you have to make sure you're not using AI and using a lot of human groups and working groups and friends and figuring it out. The problem, the thing, not problem, but the thing with writing jokes that go on X, X's timeline is fully generated by what artificial intelligence thinks that you should see. They have dumped the entire human designed algorithm. They use Grok to figure out what is it that Dane wants to see. So if Grok thinks that my comedy is funny, it's gonna feed it to you, right? So that's the interesting thing about these platforms and niches is that you become a comedian where the AI is kind of the judge of what's funny, what's not funny and what you should be seeing in some shape or form. Or yes, the AI is influenced by the total collective data that's out on that platform. So it kind of works back and forth, but I would not try that kind of way of writing if I was going and doing it to an audience that actually are physically there. I would be interesting in, you know, working my jokes with the right process to make money to that people that are in front of me. So it's very interesting. Cause it can come down to, there's this one word too many a joke. Yeah. Like I made a show called Takes a Village and I wrote that. Initially I was writing for two Maori, wahine Maori comedians that I found online and thought I could make a show for them. They're really good. So Maori TV were keen. They gave me a producer who wasn't a comedy producer. So that sort of things went a bit sour pretty quickly. Great guy, but just professionally it didn't quite work. Right. Wrong person. Right. But I wrote a lot of, I wrote it, the read through was good. It was, I was happy enough with it. I was meant to be editing it as well cause I've edited Find Me a Maori Bride. That was a big part of it. I was doing, I was, the timing of the jokes was in my hands cause I was actually editing it for everyone as well. They wanted me there in the suite, which is kind of rare for the comedy writer to be in the suite, but it really worked. So I said, let me be in the suite. And he said, you can be in the suite. But then he paid me for it, but then said, look, cause he started directing a bit. He was like a frustrated director. Yeah. And he said, look, I'll edit it, man. Don't come in. I said, you sure, man? Cause you know, the timing and that, and he goes, don't come in. Okay, he doesn't want me there. So I went away and I didn't see the show for a while. Not because I was bitter, but it's kind of interesting. It's like, when I was younger, it was like all these people say, oh, you know, I never see my shows. I think that's bullshit, but you kind of don't. Like I don't really sit down and watch a whole season of something I've written. I don't really do that. I can't really tell you why. I just didn't get interested. It's like, I've been through the process, I guess. It's like, yeah, I'll watch it once, you know? Yeah. What do you think of this whole like rise of, did I cut you off? Do you want to finish? Oh yeah, I'll just get to the ending. All right, yeah. So it's like, yeah, hold that thought, hold that thought. So I ended up watching it one night. I'm like, oh, well, it's all on Maori TV, the whole eight episodes, it was some good game. So I have a look and I'm watching it and I'm going, that's a good joke. Oh, right. Oh, that's another good joke. Good joke, good joke. But if there was like a camera on me watching, I'll be like this, no belly laugh. Right. And it was instructive. I thought, why no belly laugh? Timing. Yeah. Timing. It was edited by a guy that did no comedy.

So it was edited like a drama. It had gaps, it had spaces, it had

That, you know, often it's not even what you're saying. It's the cadence of it all. It's the timing of it all, it's a musicality of it all. And if anyone wants to get into comedy, I would tell them to watch two people, Rodney Dangerfield and Groucho Marx. Now Groucho Marx, you know, his films are 1931 and things like that, but he is the master of time. Yeah. And so was Rodney Dangerfield. He's got jokes like, hey, I went and tried one of these new Neil Frills massage parlors. It was self -service, you know. But you know, that is timed. Yeah. To the millisecond. Yeah. And it was self -service, you know, like it was boom, boom. You know, it's a drum beat, you know. And you're laughing as much about, you know, the performance of it, the timing of it is anything else. But Groucho Marx as well, it's just absolutely perfect. I told my son how to edit by watching Groucho Marx. I just said, just watch Groucho Marx. Yeah. He'll teach you how to edit comedy. You know, that's, he's the guy to, anyone who's interested in comedy, go to Groucho Marx. Groucho Marx, Rodney Dangerfield. Yeah, timing. Timing, timing, timing. Timing is so amazing. And one of my favorite timing kind of jokes is from Theo Vaughn. And he does this joke about his cousin getting bit by a gay guy. I don't know if you've ever seen that piece. No, no, no, no, no. He's on stage and he's like, he's got this very like Texan or Southern accent, you know. He's walking around and he goes, so my cousin got bitten by a gay guy. And then he has this big pause and he's pausing and he's looking around and then he goes, so we'll see. And then he just walks off, right? So the whole joke is just that pause. Yeah. That's it. And because you're thinking what's coming, you're doing a lot of work. Yeah, you're like fucking hell, he got bitten by a gay guy. What's coming next? And also, and see, this is actually interesting too. There's a provocation in there. Cause what he's, there's a bit of trolling in there. Cause he's saying, what's the first thing that comes to your mind audience when I say that? Yeah. And so they have to sit with it and go, I'm thinking about AIDS. Am I a bigot? You know, like that's a very clever joke. It is. And you know what's the other thing that I love about the joke? If you do some stats and work it out, if you like, you know, do some maths, you will find out one in five or one in three guys have been bitten by a gay guy in a nightclub. I got bitten by a gay guy on K road. He just came behind me and bit me on my neck. It was like, what the fuck are you doing? I haven't had that. I don't want anyone to bite me, randomly. I don't want a woman to bite me. Yes, but I think part of the joke for me was like, yes, you're right. This is a funny joke because I've been bitten by a big gay guy. I'm sure a lot of people have been bitten by a gay guy. It's a thing that gay guys do. And so there's that layer of the joke in there too. I found very, very funny. I was like, yeah, fuck, yes, we'll see, shit. All right, what's happened to me? I got bitten, fuck, fuck, you know. Well, Jake should work on a few different levels. I was gonna say something else too about the whole comedy thing. Oh, here's another tip. This is a pro tip. It's quite funny because I learned early on, I wanted edgy stuff to slip through. And on Maori TV, I had way more chance of getting it through because the editorial team sort of trusts you a lot more.

Yeah, but I think Maori people would have more capacity for humor. I find that very interesting. Well, that's the thing. The Maori people have more, it's the white people that are always have a, you know, they're pushing content, you know. It's the white people, wokeness is white people. Yeah, it's just like, stop it. You know, Maori people are very cool with most of the things and their humor. They love fucking dirty shit. Yeah, yeah. They love it. It's

Like, so what I do is I'd write a fucked up joke that had no business being in a TV fucking script. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there would be another joke at the bottom, which was still a little fucked up, but they're not even gonna see that because it's almost like I'm a military general and I'm going, okay, let's drive a whole lot of troops over there. Then we're gonna sneak attack at the side. That's what I'm doing. They're going, oh my God, this is a fucked up joke. So they head to it and then meanwhile, the other one, which is still pretty fucked up, they forget about. So one time I had this whole gag and this was gonna be on Maori TV at like seven o 'clock or eight o 'clock. Like a guy, a woman was putting a cucumber up the Maori guy's ass. Right, right. And I'm like, there's no way this is gonna survive. Yeah. And then we had a meeting and I'm just waiting for them to get to this. And I'm like, okay, oh, that's cool, I'll take it out. Because I knew I had another joke I wanted to get through. And they were like, oh, this joke here. And I was like, oh yeah. Don't use asshole, use sphincter. Right. Sphinx is a funny word. So I put it in, so it survived. Yeah, I was watching, I was on Netflix the other day and I would just randomly, and the thing that I don't like about Netflix is there's not enough New Zealand or local kinda stuff. No, it is a shame. But randomly this Kiwi show pops up, comedy show pops up, it's called Madam. I don't know if you've heard of it. I have heard of it, yeah. Madam. And it's about this woman who catches her husband visiting an escort and then - It's Rachel Griffith, isn't it? She was in Mary's Wedding. She's an Australian actress. Yes, yes, it's her. It's her, I don't remember her name, but Australian, yes. Yeah, Rachel Griffith. Perfect,

Yeah. And then she kinda starts her own escort business from that experience because she actually goes to the escort and wants to have a chat with the escort about what is it about you that my husband wants that I can't give it to him? So then she becomes like, I'm friends with these guys and she starts an escort. And in that show, there's a lot of jokes about guy comes in, wants something shoved up his ass and gets stuck and they have to like, shit, how do we pull this out? Do we call the ambulance? So those kind of jokes work really well if you do them really well. I highly recommend you to watch that show, Madam. It's just QE humor at its finest. And one of the things that I love is that when that stuff comes, when I find stuff like that that I love,

I just send it to all my friends. I'm like, this is the shit that we talk about here. You want to know comedy? Watch this, you know, or Billy T. James videos or whatever I send to people around the world. But yeah, those kinds of jokes work. And there needs to be room for that stuff because if you can pull it off, it's actually funny. It's just funny. Comedy has to be irreverent. Even Jerry Lewis said that a pie in the face is vulgar. You know, like even a pie in the face is vulgar. Comedy is vulgar. Yeah, it is. When I was in South Auckland, I was 15, 16. I left school very early. 14 I was when I left school. So I left school, I was digging holes. I was working on crews. You know, I was fucking useless pot smoking little kid but long hair, you know, and I'm digging holes. I'm doing all this shit. And all these work crews were very multicultural. So, and that's just been my reality right from the beginning. It's like, there's Maori, there's Bangladeshi, there's Indian guys, there's Samoans, there's Tongans. They're all there, right? They're all there. And on those crews would all meet in the morning, get to work. Now these guys were working together all the time and they would joke all the time. Yeah. And some of the jokes were so freaking racist towards each other. Like the Indian guys got fucking hammered, man. Yeah, yeah. They got their asses handed to them and they were laughing their fucking heads off. Yeah. They just, they loved it, you know? Yeah. I mean, they were saying things like, you know, open your mouth, man. I can't fucking see you against that wall. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All of that stuff. Constantly. Yeah. And they'd call me the weller woman, you know, which is like the hair product. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a song. You can tell the weller woman. I'd come back from lunch and they'd all sing it together. You can tell the weller woman by the way she wears her hair. I'll be like, oh fuck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, and say, oh, you know, if one of us gets bored, we're going to bend you over. You know, we're going to bend the weller woman over and all that stuff. So it was just absolutely vulgar, racist, homophobic, all that shit. But these guys loved each other. Yep. And that was my experience in South Auckland. I did a comedy album with some kids out South. Yeah. Nguyen, girl, Tongan, boy, you know, and some others, some are Tongans and that. They, I got them to play themselves, you know, like not literally in the comedy when they were writing, because it took them a while to get going. You know, I was like, oh, come up with a joke, come up with a joke. It's like, if you say to someone in experience, come up with a joke, you know, they're probably not going to do it. They're going to get a bit of stage fright. Yeah. And I said, look, all these stories should just come from your life. Yeah. Your life's funny. So, you know, it's just do that. So they were doing that. But a lot of the humor was subtle digs at the new end towards the Samoan, the Tongan towards the, oh, you guys eat horse and all of that stuff. It was like, oh, there was a lot of ribbing like that. That's actually the lubricant that helps the multicultural society work. Yeah. Yeah. Like I worry that all these woke white people who want like hate speech laws and all this stuff, they want to put walls between us. They don't believe fundamentally that we can get on unless we have a police state sort of making sure that no one's sort of being disrespectful. No, be disrespectful. Be irreverent. You know, tease each other. Yeah. You know, that's what people, that's what friends do to one another. Yeah, I mean, the whole, like before I get into this whole comedy that's been going on with Iran and whatnot, my son yesterday, and he was like trying to get me to do something for him that he wanted to do after school, right? And this happened yesterday and I found it very funny, but I was like, I just gotta be the dad here and try and like talk some sense into him, right? You know? And I'm like ignoring him, like, no, no, we're not doing that. He's like, no, no, dad, we need to go do this and we need to go do that. And I'm like, no, no, we're doing this, we're doing this. And I'm like, I'm not looking at him and I'm distracted because I've got two other girls. I've got two younger daughters, right? And I'm busy, there's traffic everywhere. And he grabs me by my shirt and he goes, look at me boy. And I'm like, whoa, where did this come from? It was funny, but it was also like, you know, it's kind of - How do I feel about that? Yeah, how do I feel about this? You're calling me boy? Like, well, what is this like the 1850s in America and I'm not afraid or something? And he goes, look at me boy. And I'm like, whoa, where'd you learn this? But it's, so I had to like balance the funny thing because you know, with kids, like if you're an eight year old you like laugh at that and you're like, that's good. They'll go and do it to a hundred other kids, you know? So I had to like balance that out. But I mean, how good comedy has been with this whole like Ayatollah dying and the cardboard Ayatollah. I don't know if it's cardboard. I love that stuff. Yeah, the humor in that is just brilliant, right? And this whole like Persians on the Persian rug chasing the American jets and shooting with guns. I mean, you know, how, where will we be if there was no humor and you're not laughing at dark stuff, you know? Well, we sort of, a feature film I acted in actually 20, 25 years ago now, one of my first things I did. It was dark as fuck. Like there was a rape in the film. It was dark as fuck, right? Yeah. It was the funniest set I've ever been on to this day. And that goes back to my point about the racist jokes and with the crew, this was shitty work. We had to entertain ourselves some way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, but this was like, you know, it was so dark that once the cameras stopped rolling, everyone was just almost drunk on silly offensive humor because that was a coping mechanism. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's kind of kind of going back to what you're saying about Jews and trauma and things. Maybe that element would definitely have to be there. It's more than one thing. Has to be, has to be. But it has to be there. But it's, yeah, I find that I think in a war time, and you know what, where I get mad at myself on X sometimes is I lose my shit. I go full South Auckland sometimes. I don't think I come out looking very good when I go there. I should be using humor a lot more because ridicule and humor is really the way to puncture the enemy. You know, to take the air out of the enemy, all the best. That's the critique of power, you know? It's that critique of power, which comedy is so good for. That doesn't mean only punch up, only punch down. It doesn't mean that. Yeah. But you know, but it is like free speech itself. It's like a taking on power. There's no better way to do it than with a joke. You know? It's just

The way it's always really been. Yeah. And it's also interesting with comedians and screenwriters and creative people is sometimes they can be very serious people too, you know? Peter Sellers was dark as fuck. He's not, I'm not. Yeah, because when I learned that you were doing the whole free speech thing and you had these very, you know, very solid, intelligent, strong views about what was going on in the Middle East, and I was surprised to learn your background of being like a screenwriter and doing comedy and music and stuff like that. And I'm surprised myself that, you know, getting close to 40, that I've spent my life working in this world of technology that I've ended up doing comedy, you know? So it's very interesting how people have these different layers to them, right? How did you discover that, you know, you wanted to get involved with free speech union and you wanted to, you know, fight for free speech law? Right, and you're Jewish, right? We haven't been pointed that out while you're wearing your - Magin David, yeah. Yes, you are. And so how do you get into all that? You're very political on it, so just give us like, how did you get into all of that? Free speech has been a constant for me. I have always, like, I loved film, so very much, very passionate about film. Filmophile, is that what you call it? Cinephile, cinephile. So I would, but I was always interested in, oh, fly, I was always interested in horror, you know, and dark stuff, and of course it was rated, I couldn't get it, and videos were just coming out. Clockwork Orange was a film, you know, I'd read about it in library books and I'd see all these images from the film and really, really want to see it, but I couldn't see it, I had no access to it. I remember in our local cinema there was a massive poster of this thing, Clockwork Orange, massive, I mean, that thing would be worth thousands now, but it would have been like eight feet by five feet or something, this thing, and there was a massive R20 on it, R20, and that was just an incentive to me. It's like, what the fuck, what secrets does this motherfucker hold? So I was into that. When I got into music, I again wanted to shock people, so we'd do nudity on stage, we'd do all sorts of fucked up things, because we found that the more outrageous we were, the bigger our following next time. You know, if we had a fight on stage or threw someone off the stage or someone got fucking their dick out or something like that, more people would want to watch us next time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And everything, and more girls like us, they thought we were crazy guys, so they liked us. Yeah. That was a big incentive. So I was always into it, and I guess, you know, artistic expression for me has always been about as going as far as you can go. Can I go further, can I go further? And also, you know, growing up working class, I think has been a really big part of this. I've been in union halls when I was like a little kid. My dad would take me to these union meetings. Where these suits on the stage were saying, you're not getting a pay rise, and all these poor, desperate men were screaming back at them, and it's like, that's all they fucking had was their voice. They had no other power. And it's interesting that when we do polls at the free speech union, it's like, oh, they're right wing. It's the working class communities that support us the most in terms of, well, I don't know about support us the most, but the value free speech the most. Which makes total sense. Yeah. Your power is your words, your right, and the comedy you do. You don't have nuclear bombs. You don't have an army. You're not... Well, they don't even have money to pay for lawyers or do anything like that. A working class guy can't get a lawyer. Yeah, exactly, yeah. One could be given to him through the state, but he can't hand pick that person. So the voice is all they really have. So that was a big deal for me. And when the Stefan Molyneux -Lauren Southern thing happened, I know David Kuman, who I knew through the Jewish community, he was a founding member of the Free Speech Coalition at the time. And I'm sort of there on the sidelines, getting excited, going, you know, say this and say that, and annoying him, calling him up and going, have you done this? And have you done that? I know what to do here. I want to get involved. Yeah. And then I don't know, I'm a bit sort of dicey on the sequence of events, but I think I just said in the end, hey man, can you get me in the union or the coalition? And he goes, okay, I'll speak to Jordan. So he speaks to Jordan Williams and Jordan Williams goes, okay. If he's your friend, he's probably a good guy and he'll be a good addition. And then I turn up there, this comedy writer with all these lawyers and all these people, like, you know, and it's kind of bizarre. Yeah. But I think I've been useful to them because I am a very different voice. Right. But the interesting thing is, like I've been quite far away from South Auckland at that point. And you know, this goes back to that whole thing of like, oh, they're far right, and Atlas Network and everything. You know, getting into free speech again, well, getting into the advocacy part of it and having to sort of write narratives and think up narratives and think up arguments and everything pushed me further back to the left again. Right. Because I remembered my roots. I remembered those people. I remembered, you know. Yeah. How those multicultural communities. Yeah. You know, are not listened to at the best of times. No one's harvesting their opinions. Yeah. No one's interested. They're just at the bottom rung. So yeah, and I started seeing wokeness as this upper middle class project that was about creating a culture that was impenetrable for people below. Yeah. If you don't have a certain view of the treaty, if you don't have a certain view of transgenderism, you know, plenty of transgender people out South, it was never really an issue. They were just part of the community. But if you don't use the right words, we're gonna police you using words, then you can't be a part of this club. So they're trying to silo off their class, actually. That's what it was about. I was like, these people are trying to silo off their class. This is a left wing battle. Right. This is a class war. Yeah. So that's how I got into it and what I learned doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I feel exactly the same way. I did a panel two days ago, and multicultural panel about social cohesion. And this is interesting, our buddy William McGimsey might like this. There was people from the Sikh community and Maori at this thing. And we started talking about migration, immigration. And I said, people have to be able to talk about immigration or other causes. If they feel they can't talk about it, they think we're robbing them of their voice. You know, the minorities are the ones robbing them of their voice. All the minorities on that panel were nodding along with me. Yeah. So they understand. You know, they'll wear it. Yeah. If people can't talk about migration or immigration. So

As difficult as it is, sometimes these discussions, we've got to talk. Only dialogue is gonna get us through this. Yeah. You know, and you sit across a table from someone from the Sikh community and all that kind of stuff, and hash it out. You're gonna have more respect for that person when you leave. Yeah, yeah. You know, nine times out of 10. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, one, yeah, yeah. I couldn't agree more. Yeah, it's an interesting one, this whole immigration thing. There's, you know, there's, I think what the far left has done, they've created this sort of a class system where Maori people are very, very special. So they get all these extra benefits. Some Maori people, not all. Yeah. It's a class thing. And then there are the white people who are sort of the Western, you know, they've built the country, and so they get some kind of respect. And then there's all the immigrants, they kind of, you know, they come at the end, and there's a lot of the groups that we don't want to like, and there's a lot of groups that they, you know, if they blend in, then we can, we maybe will give, you know. For example, you know, the recruitment industry in New Zealand is very, very racist and very, very like, they'll look at your name in a CV, and they go, nah, you're out, you know, you don't fit in. There's a lot of, you know, that's human behavior in many ways, right? Candy, people can say that, you know, this might just be, I mean, to be generous to them, they might be like, there could be unforeseen issues down the track. There's an unknown quality here. I'm busy enough, I don't want to have to deal with it. That's where I wonder about trans people, actually. I think that there could be a lot of very, well, there would be a lot of very talented trans people, but because of the censorship stuff, a boss may go, well, this trans person is super qualified. This other person is almost as qualified, but what if that trans person becomes a headache for me? What if they, you know, go to HR? What if they complain about the wrong use of words, not with the headache? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what people don't understand, and I'm not saying that's right, so I don't want people to think I'm saying that's right. I'm saying, put in that situation that's like, is this gonna be hard for me? Yeah. If you're at work, you're gonna go, if it's gonna be hard for me, I'm gonna go the other way. Yeah, you have to think about, you know, compatibility and non -compatibility, and you can use different. Or just worst case scenarios. People don't know, they don't know the person, could be the sweetest person in the world, but they're seeing

All these angry activists, so they're thinking, what if it's one of them? Yeah. That'll be just a nightmare for me. I don't wanna risk it. Yeah. And so they say goodbye to a wonderful person that would have really enriched their company. Yep. So that's my problem with a lot of the censorship stuff as well. It's like, you're not making life better for us minorities. Yeah. And you're not making life better for trans people, actually. Yeah. You're creating a lot of suspicion. Yeah. And that's, but a lot of people don't grasp it, especially the people in the woke bubble. You know, they, because it's like, because they feel so morally right. Yeah. They think because we're morally right, all that other stuff is immoral and we're not gonna account for that. Yeah. Because it's wrong. Yeah. But no, people are nuanced. Yeah, I find this whole like white people now that are all about, oh, we treat Maori people equally. We founded this nation equally. They don't though. We wanna call this country Aotearoa, you know? And what they do is they just transfer their racist kind of tendencies towards immigrants, right? It's like, oh, yeah. Well, they can. You guys, you know? But these guys are cool. But you guys, you know? Sam Stubbs is another interesting character, right? He came out, Sam Stubbs. He's the guy who runs Simplicity, the KiwiSaver company. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I know of him, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He came out and caused a big ruckus by saying, oh, I'm glad Charlie Kirk got shot because all of his views about trans and blah, blah, blah, off of, and then all of a sudden, everybody just pulled out their money from the KiwiSaver, Simplicity. I think there's quite a big poll. I think he lost millions from his funds for saying that. And then he's all about censorship. And he was celebrating the other day about how New Zealand parliament has pulled out from posting on X. And so he's like, yeah, that platform is blah, blah, blah. You know, it's like, come on, guys. Well, see, that's a good example of someone that wants to be offensive and thinks they have a right to be offensive but no one else has. You know, the sensor never points the finger inward. But just to go back to the Aotearoa thing, I wanna make, I think, a very good point on this. If, I mean, you know, arguing about whether New Zealand should be called Aotearoa or not, and the woke would, you know, and the right deserve a lot of criticism for that too, but the woke would say that they're doing this for Māori. Right. Māori need housing. Māori need a good health system. Yeah, yeah. Māori need, many Māori, many Pākehā, need high paying unschooled jobs. They're not doing anything about that. We're gonna change the name of the country. That's how offered to you. It's fucking breadcrumbs. It's crumbs off the table. Yeah. That people are eating off the floor. It's the people who - Here, have my crumbs. Yeah, it's the people who brag about cardboard, paper straws, that they're saving the planet, you know? But even the right shouldn't get pulled into that. No one should get pulled into that. Yeah. Why get pulled into it? Don't feed it. Yeah. I mean, I don't care. You know, you're gonna, we're always gonna, you know, sometimes I use Aotearoa, sometimes I don't. You know, sometimes I use it to practice my Māori, whatever. But you know, it's not the most pressing issue. Let these things die. I tell you what, if they started using it and people didn't get angry about it, they'd probably forget and use New Zealand anyway. A lot of this stuff is purely a provocation. It is, yeah. And they go, oh, because the right doesn't like it, it was the right thing to do. You know? Same thing with Morina. They say, Morina, white people, they always say, you know, in the emails they put it, and I always reply back, morning. Just to piss them off. I do it with the teachers who help with the school traffic thing with the kids. So every time I walk my kids to school and all these like white teachers out there going, Morina, and I always reply morning. And I've been doing it for like 12 weeks and now they say morning to me. No, you should say, salaam alaikum. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shalom alaikum. Scream and do hand gestures. But that's an all. I think those are like, I used to do those jokes when I first came to New Zealand, because a lot of people were like, ooh, Arabic guy, terrorist. So they'll be like, you know, indulge in that comedy. And I'm like, cool. I don't do it anymore. But I find this whole thing like very funny when you can like correct people gently by responding to what you think is you want to be, you know, greeted with, or you want to greet somebody else with, right? It's the Maori people have never come to me and tried to force me to say any Maori words in terms of greeting them or talking to them. You know? Yeah, I know. White people are like very like, hmm. And a certain type of white person, a very upper middle class white person. Well, I was asked recently a year or so ago, about to start work on a project. And the bosses were like, how are you with the treaty? Are you about implementing the treaty? And I was like, yes, because I want the job and I'm gonna do it, even though I knew that this isn't gonna come up ever again. Yeah. So there's no stakes. I just say, yes. I say, no, I don't get the job. I say, yes, everything's cool. I never see it again. I go in there on the Monday, not one Maori. I didn't see one Maori face. Yeah. It was all just, you know, middle class white women. It's like, you know, motherfucker, you're asking me? Yeah. What about you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where are the Maori? Yeah, yeah. There are no Maori taking advantage of this government funded organization and getting good paychecks. Yeah. But there's all these other people here. I didn't see any. And there's so many organizations that want you to commit to the Maori version of the treaty, but they will not ask you to commit to the English version of the treaty. It's like, well, if it's a 50 -50 deal here, you've done a partnership. Why am I just signing up to that one thing? As an immigrant, it's fun to play with that question because you're kind of a bit ignorant and you're observing and you're an outsider, right? You're like, what is that? They're like, oh, this is the Maori version. I'm like, but what about the English version? Do I, why are we doing this version, not that version? So you can see their face go, oh, how do we answer this, you know? Well, do you know what that's probably about? It's like I said before, it's about signaling that you are agreeing with the group thing. You're going to be on the same page. You're worthy of being in this class. I probably would align from what I know. I'd probably be more in agreement with the Maori version myself. If people disagree with that, that should not be a barrier to getting a job, especially when that company would not really do anything for Maori people. Most, they're not doing anything for Maori people. What they're doing for Maori people is saying, is that question. That's the extent of it half the time, you know? It's just like, are you in my political tribe? You are, great, you can work here. And a lot of it comes from normalization through the oppressor and oppressed framework, right? And so they want to bump up the oppressed into a balance of equality and the other group has had too much attention the last 150 years. So let's dump that version and use this version. Just out of curiosity, why do you align more with the Maori version of the treaty? Because I'm friends with Paul Moon, the historian, and he made a really good case for it. Okay. He made a really good case for it. I think you've interviewed him, haven't you? I did, it's my number one watched podcast of all time. Well, that's encouraging, that's good. It might've been, I think it was before, well, I think I watched that episode actually. Yeah, you did. You had good feedback about it. Yeah, he's very good talent in a podcast. It's great to talk to him. He's one of those guys where you don't need to talk too much. You just ask him questions and he will shoot back and he will integrate. You wind him up and he just, yeah. He's got a great sense of humor. He's a lovely guy and just a workaholic, man. He's written like 18 books. Yeah. He's a treasure. But some Maori push back on things he says, which is good. Historians need to be tested. I think that's great, but no, I found him compelling. But see, again, I didn't get a lot of, I'm of a generation where we didn't get taught a lot of that stuff at school. We did broadly, but we didn't, it wasn't really a political thing. It was like, this is a settled thing. A treaty was signed. Here's the picture of everyone happy around the table, a painting, and then back to class. It was there. That's the extent of it really. The thing that I got from Paul Moon that's become my reality is I don't recognize the treaty as a founding document. It's a thing that was used at that time that was needed for the problems they were solving at that time. Paul talks about this on my show and I'm not gonna try and repeat what he said to me because I'm not him and I can't give the specifics. But it was something that was reactivated in 1975 by activists and then these principles were created. And now there's a treaty principles bill to try and get rid of some of the principles. And so in reality, the parliament has the whole power, which is where the 1954 democratic parliament system and everything was created, giving them 100 % power. The treaty has never involved in it. And so it's like, and I'm more leaning towards like an American model that we can move into as a governance of New Zealand is where you have a Senate and you have states and the regions are actually their own states. Like I live in Taranaki, right? And with this whole central government system we have, all of our natural resources have been sucked out of the region in terms of oil and gas and other people got rich from it, but the region is not rich from it, right? So when you have much more wealthier regions like Taranaki. You can make a lot, yeah, no, I like it up here. And in Texas, there is no income tax in Texas, why? Because they're good at managing the resources and that revenue goes towards the budget for running the state. So they don't have to take your money, right? I guess there'd be partnerships between those regions and iwi, which will be quite specific too. Sometimes there's multiple iwi in the area. So that would be quite tricky. But I mean, look, I hear what you're saying about, and a lot of people

Will say something similar and it does make sense. Paul Moon saying that and I've listened to him and I go, Paul, you make sense, I'm gonna run with that. That's all I'm saying. Okay, yeah. Paul Moon saying that. Yeah, okay, okay, okay. Yeah, I mean, I guess that because we do, I mean, you're saying it's not a founding document. I probably would see it still as a founding document, even though, you know, I'm just not an expert in this. So anything I say here is just a guy talking in a park. Yeah, I'm shit talking now, I really don't know. We get paid to talk shit. That's right, I'm talking

Absolute shit right now. But my sense, and I can tie this to Israel a bit too, is like there's a very particular narrative for New Zealand. We're not America, you know, it's different. We can't just take that system. We did make some commitments to a bicultural reality that America did not make. I mean, America's treatment of Native American Indians is fucking horrendous. So, you know, Australia's treatment of Aboriginals is fucking horrendous. So, you know, there's just a different expectation because of that founding narrative. Israel's a bit the same, right? Now, a lot of the activists will say, we need one state, democratic and everything. That's actually a white supremacist view, even though they don't get it. Yeah, it's like, that's not the Middle East. Yes. It's like, let's just get this, because it works, but that's rationalism. You know, the guy, well, it works for me. It's like, yeah, but you are not, you don't have, you know, 11th century religious ideas in your mind, you know? So that means that, you know, Hamas is gonna take over at that point. So what's the answer? It's two states. Like ideally, Jordan should probably be, look after Palestine as a, what do you call it? They were talking about it in Syria with the Kurds. I've lost the word for it. But like autonomous, but sort of, but federation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a state, you know? A state of Jordan with a lot more autonomy. Yes, yeah. Maybe that ship would have sailed, so we can't do that. Yeah. But I would still say that that's the way to do it. You know, you're not going to, it's a very white view that, you know, we can have this single democratic state. I mean, that's not gonna work. They'd have to be, well, if it did, there'd have to be a, no, it wouldn't work. You'd have to have at least a Mubarak in charge of that. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the Egyptian strongman who was, or a Sadat, or probably a Mubarak, you know? Yes. Who's just got his hands up, so that ain't gonna work. So they've got a different founding narrative. We all want these democratic states that are that, you know, that are that sort of open and that. I think, you know, in a perfect world, every, they're all democracies, but you know, it's not quite, they can still be democracies, but it's just, it's that the demographics are gonna make something like that impossible. In a way, in New Zealand, no one's gonna really have that problem. No one's gonna have that concern. Yeah. What do you make of Operation Epic Fury from Trump and Israel to go after Iran? What are your take on it? My take on it is that I'm reminded that there are a lot of people out there that think that no war equals peace. So they think if there's not a war happening, there's peace. But what they're not factoring in is Iran has destroyed Lebanon by being, you know, having a parasitic terror group attached to it and, you know, completely undermine it, draw, you know, attention from Israel and all that kind of stuff. Saudi is harassed constantly by the Houthi and the Yemenite war. I mean, so many people have died in that war. 370 ,000, like 370 ,000 have died of famine in that war. People talk about the Gaza famine, which was a bit of a hoax. Like, close to a quarter of a million died of famine in the Yemeni war, which is recent. So, you know, Iran or the Islamic Republic has a very clear hegemonic agenda that it's, you know, the original Ayatollah, how would you say his name, Khamenei? Khamenei. Khamenei is the guy that just got blown up, but the one before, the first guy. They're similar, Khamenei. I think they're all - Khamenei. Khamenei, yeah. I think they're all called Khamenei. They get that name, it's some kind of - Oh, is that what it is? I think they're - Khamenei. Well, they spell Khamenei a bit different. I think it might be different. Yeah. But he - Or is it the Ayatollah is the name that they get everybody - Yeah, Ayatollah, yeah, Khamenei, Khamenei. A Persian friend is gonna go, you're a fucking idiot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, go on. But anyway, but you know, they were very clear, we're gonna go to the Mediterranean. Right. You know, this is like, who gets to, who runs the House of Islam? Is it the Sunni or Shia? You know, you'd understand all this. Yes, yeah. So the thing is, that's what it is. So they're thinking, hey, if you're not bombing them, there's peace. Yeah. But it's like, that's not the way it is. Yeah. Arab development has been completely undermined in so many countries in the Middle East for close to 50 years. Yeah. These people can't get going. Yeah. Look at Lebanon. Lebanon could be quite, relatively speaking, progressive and very forward, you know, like if they didn't have any of that bullshit, I mean, it would be a jewel of a country, but they just can't get going. You know? Because of all this destabilization. So I understand why this war is happening. And the other thing is, like with the nuclear deal and things like that, here's what a lot of people are not telling you. This is what Helen Clark is not telling you. She wants a strong Iran. She's anti -American and anti -Israel. She doesn't want them to win. She doesn't care about Arab people. They can all get fucked as far as she's concerned. Yeah, if she cared about Arab people, she wouldn't block me on Twitter, bitch. She was blocking local Iranian dissidents who were respectful, saying, I've got a question for you, Ms. Clark. But, but, but, block them? Yeah. She could not give two shits how many protesters are killed. Yeah, it's not about the Arabs. No, no. Doesn't like, doesn't care. Yeah, the other problem, I'll let you finish. But the other problem I find with this whole thing is that there's a lot of these kind of people that live in the Western world who've lived in this post World War II era of prosperity. I've got food, I've got safety, I've bought my house. I've done my, like I've become the prime minister. I've done this and blah, blah, blah. And now it's almost like they're at that point where what is my, we need more and let's get into virtue signaling. Let's get into this whole virtuousness, this whole like kindness, oh, we gotta be kind and we're gonna look after each other. Oh, it's, we have to follow the international rule of rules -based order. Like, shut the fuck up. Shut up, you have no idea how the world works and how, you know, like, just because, as you said, if there's, you know, oh, there's no war. Oh, that's because there's peace. Oh, there's no peace. And this is the inflection point for the Middle East because there is this conflict between prosperous, Gulf regions where they've built, they've maintained their Muslim religious. They're showing them how it can be done. But they've also modernized, commercialized their tolerance, their tolerate other people to come and live and yes, there's a lot of issues. Don't get me wrong, why I left. But it's better than this whole radical way of being and killing people and creating this whole, like, famine and so much destruction. Well, what is the benefit of this? And Iran is so rich, but the people, 93 million people, they still live in very low standard living life. It's a failed state, you know? These guys can't because the thing is that if you're in a state like that, you don't advance in the system because you're competent. You advance because of how strong you are with the ideology. You know, and like wokeness, like wokeness, you can be kind of shit. There's quite a billion Muslims in the world and Iran wants to control the narrative of what Islam is and what it should be. And that's, I think that's a big, that's a big pinch. Well, the thing with the nuclear deal, right? People say, oh, but there was a deal and all that kind of stuff. What they're not sort of accepting, and even Helen Clark, we've got to go back to the deal. Well, that entrenches the regime so that they're never peaceful again. You know, there's never freedom again. Not deal, not deal, sorry, no. But the thing is, where the fuck should they get a deal? Nowhere does it say there's an obligation to give them any fucking nuclear deal. Yeah. I mean, this is a criminal state that exports terror. The only reason they want to give them a deal is because they're like, well, if we're kind to them and give them a deal, maybe they won't be so bad. But where does it say in international law, if a terror state wants a nuclear deal, give it to them? That's not international law. Yeah. They have shown why they should not have a nuclear program

At all in any way, shape, or form. So what she's saying, so she's not even with an international order, ironically. She's saying we should be rewarding this country by giving them the special privilege of a deal despite what they've done. Yeah. So she's got this demented, let's kill them with kindness thing. Even though that's not what it is, she wants China to have entry into the Middle East to cause chaos, to be a balance to Israel and the US. She hates both the US and Israel, and she wants a strong Iran to menace all those other countries. Yes, that's what it is. That's what it is for most of them. Yeah. The thing that I find very messed up with this whole inconsistencies of what Trump has done in the Middle East is that they went after Bashar al -Assad for a very long time and for lots of good reasons and whatnot and similar kind of things. He's killed all the protesters, similar kind of narratives, right? But who does he replace him with? He replaces him with a former al -Qaeda member who is now the president of Syria. And all of a sudden, all of the sanctions Trump has removed on Syria, so Syria can be rebuilt, and he is killing all the minority people, the Christians and all sorts of people he's killing. Druze, kids. Yeah, Druze and the kills. He's killing all of these people. And he is celebrated as a hero at the United Nations and everybody's clapping at them. You know, it's like, this is really, really bizarre. This guy is a terrorist. That's the international order. The international order is let's normalize all these crime states and pretend that anyone that has a problem with what we're doing is the problem. So I feel Trump kind of comes off a bit off. Trump's comes a bit off with the fact that he's the one who's allowed America to remove the sanctions on this Syrian terrorist guy who is the president now, Jelani. And

It's like, well, why are you doing that for? A lot of it doesn't make sense. My, I know, you know, quite a few Iranian dissidents, local ones, and they're lovely people. It pains me to say it, but I actually think what they're trying to do here is, is it gonna be regime change? Maybe, but it'll be in 10 years. I think what they're doing now is they're just going to make it, they're normalizing bombing Iran. That's what this is about. So they may pull back in a month or so. Why, again, I just want to go back to my main question, not in a way to try and press you, but in us exploring what the fuck is going on, because there's a lot of inconsistencies. If Trump thinks these guys are a terrorist state, why is he then friendly with Syria, for example, right? So if, I mean, I'm a big fan of getting this regime off. I think we're on the same page with that stuff, right? He's giving him a chance. He's saying, oh, we'll bomb, oh, he's, oh, okay. So why can't he give this new cardboard Ayatollah a chance? You know, but it's, what about the oil? Is it, is this about oil? I think in a perfect world, he'd like the oil production. Like, I don't think he can really guarantee, he'd know that he can't really sort of bank on that. I think what it is. Is he, you know, people can bomb Iran now. They're gonna end this war with absolutely no military, right? You think so? You think that's gonna happen? Well, they're gonna have next to nothing. They're not gonna be serious. They're not gonna get back into Lebanon in a hurry, because what'll happen now is as soon as they go, and this should have happened ahead of World War II, by the way, what's gonna happen is, you know, this is what Churchill wanted. Hitler would make, you know, a factory would pop up. Oh, that's an armament factory. And Churchill would say, let's bomb it. Oh, you're war monger. No, I don't want a war, so let's bomb it. This, you know, that's the other thing. Wars are fought in preparation for the next war. Right. That's why wars are fought. So, and Orwell said that. So what Churchill was saying is, as soon as these armament factories pop up in Germany, let's just fucking bomb the shit out of them, so he'll never get a good army. But they didn't. And so he got a massive fucking army. He got tanks up the wazoo, he got all sorts of shit. Oh yeah. So what's gonna happen now is, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not gonna own a boat. China's gonna deliver them a new boat, and America or Israel will just blow the fucking boat up straight away. I'm with you, I'm with you. Yes, you're right. I think that's what Trump is doing. It's about just take a little bit of the heat, the capacity off. Trust them up, like keep them in their borders with no weapons, with no toys. And the thing is that, what will that mean for the Iranian people? Sadly, it's not raging change, but they may crumble after 10 or 15 years of this, because they're gonna be a pointless state. You know, their whole MO is imperialism, and they're not gonna be able to do it. The other thing is also fair to point out, is that given the incredible job Israel has been doing in killing all these terrorists, you know, we go from the pager bombs to, you know, we go back 18 months that they've been sorting these terrorists out, the proxy network. And now we've kind of got to the core of the problem, right, from the proxy to the core, right, which is Iran. And there are about 1500 drones and missiles just the UAE has put down themselves with their different technology. And the US wanting to sort out China in terms of the world domination for the rest of century. Influences. You know, they're in the South China Sea, and that's why New Zealand is moving towards AUKUS, which is a little bit concerning, because we don't have a lot of Iron Dome technology if China decides to fucking, you know, dump the drone. We've got nothing. We've got nothing. So that's a bit concerning that we are next, you know, in 30, 40, 50 years that we're gonna be the next fucking Middle East, because America is here and China fucking shoot rockets at China. Anyway, that's a next topic. And it almost feel like Israel and the Gulf States will have to kind of do, have to, you know, become the guardians of protecting the Middle East and the region and have America take a back step from that. And they have shown a lot of capability that if once America does, finishes the job of like reducing that threat and getting all, you know, letting them fire all their stockpiles of rockets and all that stuff and bomb all the nuclear sites and all the equipment sites and all the sort of infrastructure, the military infrastructure, then, you know, Israel and the UAE and Saudi Arabia, you know, the prince from Saudi Arabia said, well, if Iran gets a nuke, we getting a

Nuke, you know? And I feel like it's time for them to take up that security, have a nuke, you know, why does India and Pakistan have a nuke? Because they fucking hate each other. The best way to behave is. Which is crazy, you know? Because they're basically the same people. Yeah, but if they didn't have a nuke, it would be a war. It would, they would. It would be open conflict. Yeah, it would be like, yeah, you know, let's have a go at each other. I think what we need in that region is, you know, epic fury is about getting ahead. I think you've nailed it on the head. It's about getting ahead for that next war. And before that next war comes on, get these guys a nuke and just, you know, like guys sort it out, you know? Or hold that power and be like, hey, if you mess around and start creating these proxies and kill your people, we got the nuke and we can come and sort you out. Where I'm a little concerned and where my idea may not quite work is like, look at what happened in Iraq. Like Saddam Hussein was badly beaten a couple of times. Then they put in a sanctions regime and no fly zones. Right. And they were shooting down an Iraqi plane a day. I mean, like that kind of thing. Like he was still belligerent. Right. But he couldn't do anything. So the Kurds,

He didn't have a lot of control over the, he couldn't fuck around with the Kurds as much as he used to and everything. Right. So that was happening. But a lot of people died under the sanctions. Probably more than died from the invasion. Yeah. People don't talk about that, but he still did okay. But it was sort of almost a zombie state because, but you get to 10 or 15 years, what happens? France, let's trade again with them. All these countries go, let's break down the, you know what I mean? So if they can hang in there 10 or 15 years, and these are motherfuckers that think dynasties ahead. So they'll wait 15 years. They've got no problem with that. You know, like, so the thing is that the, you know, we could trust them up like a Turkey and it could work, but then you get someone in the White House who's like, I'm going to be Obama and kill them with kindness again and give them that deal they wanted. Then everything comes down and they celebrate themselves and then they just go straight back into production and then we're on again. So there's no positive, there's no positive Islamic Republic of Iran. Yeah, yeah, there isn't. And Helen Clark is never pressed by reporters. They're all a bit afraid of her. But you know, if I was having a talk with her, I would fucking tear her a new one because there's so many holes in her argument and there's so much that she just won't answer. Yeah, yeah. Which is why she blocks so much. That's why you censor. If you can't fight back with better arguments, you censor. And yeah, I mean, the whole regime change thing that Trump keeps throwing up and it's, you know, you can challenge that as well because, you know, if you go back and when, you know, the Iranian people selected Mohammad Mossadegh as the most popular Iranian president, I think he was. And for some reason, you know, the Americans got involved and they kicked that guy out and they reinstated - The British too, I think. Was it the British? Yeah, don't quote me on that. I think there was British involvement. And then they installed the Shah, which led to this radical sort of terrorism and this whole view now exists that if the regime is defeated and they would kind of get pushed back into these underground networks and they become terrorists again and they'll fight their way again. So we're going to have more terrorism. Well, again, you need a Mubarak or someone, a very tough guy at the top. And that was a Shah, to be honest. Like a lot of people say he was brutal and everything. That gets overstated a lot by propagandists. Like he was trying to keep out people like the Republic we have now. Yeah. He was tasked with that. If I was in power in Iran. Yeah. And I'd have a very beautiful wife. Because they are very beautiful people. But I like the thought of that. Yeah. But anyway,

You'd be tough. You'd be tough. Yeah. You'd have to be. Yeah. You know, you'd be putting a lot of these Islamists in jail. You'd be doing that. You'd be just like Mubarak. Mubarak had to put down the Muslim Brotherhood. You know, as soon as he got deposed, the Brotherhood came in and el -Sisi was like, fuck this. Yeah. You know. We just need Iranian leaders and people who sort of create a system that is interested in their own people and the betterment of their own people. And enough of the nonsense of debt to America. It's like, what is that? You know, like focus like America first. The whole simple idea is worry about your people. Look after your people. They pay you taxes. But if you're ideological, that's, you know, I mean, it's, I think Iran to me feels like it's like Turkey in a way. Like Turkey. Turkey is, Turkey is the

Dark horse that no one calls. It's a dark horse here. They're the ones who sort of use the Kurds to push into Syria and chase Bashar al -Assad out. You know, that these guys are very, that they're Turkey. And Turkey, you know, they're not big fans of Israel. They're there. No, no, they're not. They're the one, there's a no. But the thing with the Turks. They've been very quiet with this whole... Yeah. Well, what can they do? Yeah. They can't do much, but the thing with Turkey, like Iran, I imagine, I could be wrong, is that there's a broad range of, like an incredibly diverse range of people in these countries. More diverse than in New Zealand. So in Turkey, you're gonna have Islamists who are at the cut your head off level of Islamism. Yeah. And then you're gonna have porn producers on the other side. You know what I mean? They're all there. They're gonna, you know what I mean? And you're gonna have moderates and you're gonna have that, like they're all living in that country. And I think Iran's the same. That's what it feels like to me. You've got people who would be the most progressive people you'd ever find on the planet. Yeah. On one side. And absolute butcher Islamists on the other side. Yeah. And they're all there together. Yeah. And they all gotta make it work somehow together. How do you do that? Yeah, it's funny, I read the story about how I did my satire for the day. And I woke up to this news about how Pete Hegseth, who's the Secretary of War, spent about $30 million on buying lobsters and ribeye steaks for the Defense Department. And I did the satire saying that the U .S. Navy on the Strait of Hormuz have gone on strike and they will not be patrolling the strait and guiding the ships through those dangerous waters unless Pete Hegseth sends them a fresh delivery of lobsters and ribeye steaks. It would be, this has been a fun chat, my friend. And I feel like it will be interesting to see where this ends up. But you're right, I love a lot of the things you've said today and I really appreciate it because I think you have to sit and confront and have those chats. And if you can't go through painful moments, you actually are not gonna get into a peaceful state. And if you are gonna virtue signal and be virtuous and think like Helen Clark that we can solve these issues by peace and sanctions and deals, I think you're very much misguided and you end up having more, making the problem bigger and bigger, which is how we ended up with Iran becoming this very proxy funding state and which is how we ended up having 1 ,200 people killed on October the 7th in Israel, October 2023, the year 2023. All these, the Lebanon, they've actually not only created this whole terrorism group, they've actually used propaganda to convert a lot of the people to become terrorist sympathizers. So the whole public is now in bed with the terrorists who run the whole thing. What it says to me, man, and this is the most unfortunate part about it, is like I understand the anti -Semitism aspect and the distrust of Jews or whatever, but the thing is this has really exposed that they never cared about Arabs and they don't care about Persians. You know, the woke don't care about Arab lives. You know, I still believe it. If they did, they would understand that Hezbollah being in Lebanon is terrible for Arab people, they'd understand it, but they don't. Yeah, I mean, it's the whole like, Jacinda did, sorry to interrupt, Jacinda did the whole like Christchurch call thing, which was like, you know, oh, we need to fight hate online is why this guy went and killed all these Muslims in the Christchurch and while they were praying. And she probably did less for them and she did more for her own virtuous signaling and her own ideology around the world, creating Christchurch call and organization with multimultimillion dollar donations and 220 countries signed up that accelerated misinformation bills, hate crime bills, you know, just went on and on and on. Now they wanna ban social media for the under 16s and you know, it just never stops, right? So you can look at those scenarios and say, well, you've done less for people who are the victims and you've done more for yourself because you wanna virtuous signal like, you know, you're doing these things. Well, that's the thing. We beat the hate speech laws because they threw so many at them. If they'd just gone, we're just gonna do one thing. We're gonna make it a crime to incite against religion. It would have been hard for us to attack that one idea. Right, right. But she had disabilities like there's hate speech against disabilities, people running around online hate against, I've never understood that. Who's out there saying, fuck you wheelchair fucking motherfuckers. No one to look at that motherfucker with a crutch. I think they would, who is out there doing that shit? Ricky Gervais has a really good joke about that. It's like, you know, doing a joke about beating up a disabled person is different to grabbing a disabled person, bring him on stage and beat him up, you know? They were there, yeah, you're right. It's two simple things. It was fucking bullshit. I hate speech against fucking disabled people. Let's throw all the woke menagerie in there and it was just fucking dumb, it was dumb. And we beat the men because they were fucking, you know, they just weren't smart, man. Yeah. They weren't smart about it. It would have been very hard. We would have been directly up against the Muslim community at a very tough moment if it had only been that one thing. Yeah. But they broadened it to the point where it was like, everyone was like, they're fucking using these people. Yeah. This is ghoulish. They're using the Muslim community to put all sorts of shit out there. You know, they're tragedy, they're using it. So like, that's why we won. But no, I better get going, man, but it's been fantastic talking. Just quickly, where can people find your links and your socials so people can follow you? Okay, well I'm at Dane. Twitter maybe, just drop your Twitter. Yeah, Twitter, Twitter will do. I've got other links there. So Dane, I think it's underscore Juro. Does it? I don't even know my own handle. But Juro is a French name, so it's G -I -R -A -U -D. But you know, it'll all be written in the breakdown for the episode, but yeah. Awesome, man, thanks a lot. Thanks for coming on. It's been fun. You're welcome. No worries. It's been pretty cool. Bye, everyone.