WBD332 Audio Transcription

COVID Lockdowns: One Year On with Zuby

Interview date: Friday 9th April

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Zuby. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

In this interview, I talk to rapper, podcaster and author Zuby. We discuss the government's response to COVID, the economic and social impact of lockdowns, libertarianism, and the state's role.

“I do really, really hope that things sort of snap back and people quite quickly go to normal just as quickly as they fell into this weird sort of madness and totalitarianism, but I think that it’s a real fight.”

— Zuby

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Zuby, how are you, brother?

Zuby: Always good, man, how are you?

Peter McCormack: I'm good, man, good to see you.

Zuby: Likewise.

Peter McCormack: We're nearly out of prison, man; we're kind of on day release right now!

Zuby: Yeah, it has been crazy, man.  I don't know what is going on in the UK, but it's been deeply uncomfortable.  I have not been a fan whatsoever, as anyone who follows me probably is aware.  Yeah, it's been really weird times, man; it's been very revealing, mostly in a negative way, but I think there are always positives to take away from these things still.

Peter McCormack: Well, we're going to get into all that, because I'm definitely more of a statist than you are.

Zuby: Most definitely.

Peter McCormack: I probably give the government too much forgiveness and sympathy, but I feel myself getting edged further and further away.

Zuby: Good!

Peter McCormack: So, we're going to get into that, but a few things to talk about.  Firstly, a couple of years ago, you were a UK rapper.  Now you're a UK rapper who's been on Joe Rogan, been retweeted by Donald Trump and had all kinds of crazy shit happen!

Zuby: It's been a weird ride.

Peter McCormack: How do you take it all in, dude; how do you take it all in?

Zuby: Man, I take it all in my stride.  I mean, I've been working for a really long time.  I put out my first album 15 years ago, so I've been grinding for way longer than most people realise and most people know.  By the time most people discovered me, I'd already put out eight albums, sold over 25,000 albums, totally independently, built up a following in multiple tens of thousands, primarily in the UK, but around the world.  I'd performed in eight different countries, etc, so I had a lot of achievements and a lot of accolades and things that I'd just done, right; a lot of hard work under my belt, by the time a lot of people discovered me. 

I'd say probably now that probably in the region of 98% of people who know me now probably discovered me in the last two and a little bit years.  So, it's been a real sort of exponential growth curve in that sense.  I mean, this next album that I'm going to be putting out, I think to a lot of people, it's almost going to be a lot of people's first introduction to my music, despite the fact that I've put out so much music already. 

So, it's been a little bit weird, but because I've been in the game for so long, to me, it's still kind of been gradual; it's been very gradual.  So, I've had a lot of time to adjust to it in every aspect and deal with both the love and the praise and also, the criticism and the hate; and just having people online of offline, who don't know you, talking about you, whether they're talking positively or negatively.  For well over a decade, I've been stopped in the street or in shopping malls, or whatever, in different cities around the UK; people wanting an autograph, people wanting pictures, whatever it is. 

So, for a long time, I've been in that weird position, which is where I still am, which is that a lot of people know me, but I can still go to the supermarket by myself and generally not be bothered, or whatever.  So, you're kind of in that weird stage between having millions of people know who you are, but you're not at that kind of crazy celebrity level where it's like, oh wow, it seems like everyone knows who you are.  And I think that's one of the weird things with the internet.

Then also, the fact that my audience has shifted from primarily being in the UK to primarily being in the USA now; so that's also been really interesting.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I have a similar thing with that.  50% to 55% of my listeners are US-based, which is weird.  But, you're a hustler, dude; I know the grind; I've worked my balls off; I get it.  And, it's like the iceberg, right.  People are only seeing the iceberg outside of the water; they're not seeing the hustle that's underneath that's gone on for years, like packing up your van, going to a -- we talked about this before.  You go up to the, you say "mall", because you know Americans are going to be listening to this, but the shopping centre, put up your stand and hustling away.  I know you've hustled and you've put the work in, right?

Zuby: Yeah, most definitely, man.  It's been a long grind.  I mean, I started selling my CDs on the street back in 2006 and all throughout university, my second and third year of university, whenever I had free time, pretty much every weekend, I was out there in Oxford on Cornmarket Street; or sometimes, I'd go to London and go to Leicester Square, and just be out there talking to strangers all day. 

Then, that eventually started becoming the whole country, so whether I was in Manchester or Norwich or Newcastle or Glasgow; even the flipping Isle of Wight!  I went everywhere, just literally talking to strangers, passing out flyers, selling my CDs, between £5 and £10 a pop; and just grinding, you know, talking literally to -- I met probably half a million people in real life and people can really vouch for that, because I still get messages or YouTube comments like, "Man, I remember meeting you back in Bristol eight years ago" or, "I remember meeting you in Bournemouth seven years ago.  I bought your CD" all that kind of stuff.  So actually, it's really cool having so many who did support me really early, being able to see what's going on.

Before all this lockdown stuff really kicked in hard early last year, I actually went to just a café or something, a random café in Bournemouth and two of the people working there had both seen me on Joe Rogan and they were just, "Yeah, we watched that together and it's really cool having you here" and stuff like that.  When I was in the States in 2019, it was the same thing.  In every single city, I got recognised by people and these were places I'd never been to in my life. 

So, it's kind of trippy, but I think it shows, as you know, any entrepreneur, any creative person, you know how much work you've put in and how much goes in behind the scenes, right?  So, whether it's music or it's a podcast, or whatever it is, a piece of art, people generally just see the finished product; they don't see us recording this right now; they're not going to see the editing process; they're not going to see all of this stuff.  They just see the final finished product.

When you make an album and you release a song, people are like, "Okay, I hear this song and I like it [or] I don't like it", but they don't see the writing process and going to the studio and recording it and then mastering it to get the sound perfect.  And, a single song putting in, man, I mean multiple days can go into a single song; let alone an entire album; and people just don't see any of that.  Then, they'll just see you pop up.

It's the same with social media.  People will see, "Oh, wow, this guy has a million subscribers on YouTube [or] 100,000 followers on Twitter [or] 100,000 on Instagram", or whatever, and they imagine that you just sort of jumped there; like it was just kind of lucky, or one thing happened!  I mean, to this day, I still get -- like, obviously I'm massively grateful for everyone who's invited me onto their shows and their podcasts and everyone who's helped me and stuff; but, there are still people who think that I have my whole Twitter following just because of the Joe Rogan experience.  If I say, "Yeah, awesome, I just hit 370,000 followers", someone will be, "Yeah, thanks to Joe Rogan".

When I went on Joe Rogan, I had -- I mean, I think directly from that, I probably gained a good number.  I probably gained about 10,000 to 15,000 followers across the board, maybe 10,000 to 20,000 directly from that.  But, man, there are a lot of people who've been on Joe Rogan three, four, five, six times and they don't have the following I have; it's not as simple as that.  Also, how do you even get on Joe Rogan?  You don't just email him and say, "I want to be on your show", and walk in there tomorrow.

So, I think people are funny.  People like to imagine that success -- people like to downplay other people's success; not everyone does, but there are certain people who, they won't kind of -- in my view, you get different types of haters, right.  You get the haters that are very direct.  You get different types of haters.  You get ones who are very direct and they'll just constantly be going at you or writing negative comments, or whatever it is.  But then, you also get the ones who will sort of make these comments that are a bit more annoying in a way, because they never want to give you credit.  It's like, they can't just give you credit and say, "You know what, mate; well done; props".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, "Fair play".

Zuby: Yeah, "Fair play".  It's always like, "Oh well, you wouldn't have done it if it wasn't for this [or] it's only because of that [or] it's because of this" and I'm like, "Come on, man; can't you just say, 'Well done'?"  It would be like something seeing your success with your Bitcoin and someone would say, "Oh, you know, well you're just lucky you got it at the right time [or] you're just lucky you got this guest", or whatever.  I'm like, "Come on, man.  You can be quiet, or you can say, 'Well done, congrats'; it's not that painful to say".

Peter McCormack: Well, I get it man.  I know early on, when I had a group with ten people on Facebook and I had 100 Twitter followers, and I remember the times I would get on a flight to New York and then I would get there and I would have to do some work.  I'd go to sleep, I'd get up, I'd do three interviews, I'd go back to the hotel, I'd edit and publish one, I'd go to bed.  I'd get up, I'd go and get a flight to Ohio, go and do another one, go to bed, get up.  I'd then fly to Portland, go to bed, get up.  I would do that for three weeks, right, and I would get, I don't know; 30 or 40 interviews, come back, publish them.  I fucking grinded; I get the grind.  They don't want to see it, dude.

It's not just that.  They don't want you to make a single mistake.  Like, I can be a fucking moron on Twitter, right.  You make one mistake; they hold that forever.  It's like, you've worked so hard, you've done four, five, whatever years, but they keep bringing up that one mistake, like you're meant to be infallible.

Zuby: Yeah, I mean it's a weird one.  This is something that I learned early.  I started in my music in my late teens and I learned pretty quickly that people are going to really judge you and criticise you and misinterpret you and mischaracterise you and all of that.  I mean, I had one experience which always sticks in my mind.

This is about a year after I really started making music and there was a local music magazine in Oxford, Nightshift; I think it's still going.  They gave my demo, this is before my album even came out, they gave me Demo of the Month, right.  And they were saying, "This Zuby guy's promising.  He's a very promising artist" and generally, people showed love and whatever.

Then, there was this online hip hop forum which was quite popular at the time, and I was a member of it.  I wasn't really active, but I remember going on there and it was weird.  There was a whole thread on me, right; like, I was the thread topic and there was this whole thread with dozens and dozens and pages of replies all about me!  So, this was my first time, and this was before social media was kind of in the state it's in as well.

So, I'm just there reading all of these anonymous people, who were actually based primarily in my city, just talking about me; talking about me, talking about my music, and it was really odd.  There were some people saying positive things.  And also remember, I'm at Oxford University.  So, that in itself creates hate from certain people, right?

Peter McCormack: That isn't gangster?!

Zuby: Yeah, some people are like, "Who's this Oxford posh boy who thinks he can be a rapper?"  It's very judgemental; it's not even about my music; it's just, "Oh, this guy is not 'street'" and I never claimed to be.

Peter McCormack: You're street; you got no blunts!

Zuby: So, it was just really bizarre.  So, I'm reading all this stuff and there was one guy who was really aggressive.  He was really, really -- he wasn't just talking about my music, but he was talking as if I'd hurt him, do you know what I mean; like I'd done something to him personally.  I was like, "Why is this guy going so hard at me?" or whatever. 

I actually responded in the thread, because I'm just like, "Yo, why are you saying --", because he was actually saying stuff that was borderline slanderous, you know what I mean; that's about me as a person and a character.  I literally said I wasn't even angry; I was just, "Look, man, I've never met you; we've never spoken; I don't actually even know who you are; so, I'd appreciate it if you didn't just start talking all this stuff about me, right?"  I was as magnanimous as I could be.

Then, he responded just saying, "Yeah, you know, well it's a free world; I'll say whatever the hell I want and I think your music is crap and I think you are whatever" and I'm like, woah, okay.  It turns out this guy was actually a local DJ, right.  And so, the following night, he had an event in Oxford.  So I'm like, "You know what; I'm going to show up".

So, I show up to this event and I'm like, I know his name and I see him on stage and I kind of work out who and I'm like, "Okay, I see who this guy is".  And it was really funny, because I saw he could see I was there and he was avoiding eye contact and trying to kind of, whatever.  Then eventually, of course, he had to come offstage and come down, or whatever, and I just approached him at the bar and I was like, "Are you --" I won't say his name, "But, are you [such-and-such]?" and he was like, "Zuby, mate, so good to meet you in person".  He played the whole friendly thing.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, of course he would!

Zuby: I was like, "Dude, I'm not going to hurt you or something here, but I didn't appreciate all that stuff you were saying", and he was like, "Yeah, you know, I was just mucking around; it was just a joke".  I was like, "Dude, just don't"!  I was like, I've lost even more respect now, because I would have at least liked you to backup what you were saying, but it was just one of those things.  That was something that just struck me as, "Okay, the internet is where people will talk a lot of crap, talk a big game; but actually, if you confront them directly, 99% of the time, they will back down", or whatever it was.

So, that was quite revealing to me.  I had a lot of these experiences, obviously, when I was out in the streets selling my music.  Most people would be cool, as you know; most people are decent.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, especially in person, right?

Zuby: Yeah.  But, when you talk to hundreds and thousands of people, you're going to have some very, very negative interactions.  So, I just kind of got used to that and honestly, a lot of people ask me how I deal with the negativity online, mostly on Twitter or YouTube or whatever; and I'm like, "Dude, you don't understand how much -- I've dealt with this in the real world", so there's literally nothing anybody can say that a) I haven't already heard; and that b) is going to cut me that deep, because I'm so assured and confident in who I actually am that whatever they say, it doesn't matter.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but dude, you know when you have one of those days, right, and you've done something, you've put something out and there's 100 really, really good comments like, "Well done, respect, love it", and then you get that one person come in and say, "Fuck you, fuck this, you're this"; why is that one we get drawn to!  We're like, "You motherfucker".  You feel like you have to come up with the best reply.  Really, just block that motherfucker and move on, but I do it; I do it, dude.  Why is that?

Zuby: It's hard, man.  I think it's something wired in us.  I mean, I think we all know it and this has been studied, in that human beings are more sensitive to negative emotions than to positive ones.  So, for example, losing £100 hurts you more than gaining £100 feels good for you.  The sense of loss hurts, the sense of fear; I think fear is literally the most powerful emotion and we're always being manipulated by it, especially by governments and media; but the negative just stands out.

I think also, we just have egos, right?  So, there is the confirmation if someone is like, "Yeah, Zuby, I like your music" or, "Hey, Peter, I like your podcast", then it's kind of an affirmation of what you already sort of feel about yourself and what the general consensus is; because, of course, most people who follow you do like you, right; they generally follow you because they like you!  So, it's kind of confirmation, confirmation, confirmation and then someone just going, "Oh, okay".

Then I think also, you're trying to decipher, is this a legitimate criticism; or is this someone just trying to troll and get a reaction; or is this a hater; is this a threat?  I think it sets off the threat detector.  It's like, wait, hang on, what is this?  In the same way, to give a weird analogy, but I guess it's relevant; if you were out on a walk and you see 20 different animals and 19 of them are harmless and then you see a snake, then you respond more to the snake.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I get what you're saying.

Zuby: Yeah, you respond to the snake, because it's like, "Okay, that's a potential threat".  I mean, it might even be a harmless threat, but it sets off something in your brain that goes, "Oh, that's a potential threat".  So, you don't notice the birds, you don't notice the squirrels, you don't notice even a cat or a dog; you barely notice them.  Then it's like, "Oh, this thing stands out to me".  So, I think it's just something innate in human beings that anything negative pierces through that armour.

Peter McCormack: But, there are different types of negative stuff as well, right; I don't know if you have this.  You can get the comment which is like, "Fuck you, I hate your face, everything about you.  I hope you die!"  But then you get one that's like, "Yeah, I listened to your latest show and I just don't think you did a very good job", and it's like, "Oh, God, that one really hurt", because that's a valid criticism; that's somebody who actually probably likes what you do and they're disappointed and it's like, "Shit, what did I get wrong here?"  Whereas, the real hatey people, you're just like, "Yeah, go fuck yourself back!"

It's almost like, the other day I was -- I get the chartable update, five hot podcasts; it shows all the latest reviews and it's like "5-star, beats the best", etc; and then there's this 2-star one that's just saying, whatever it was, "He's not a very good interviewer, doesn't research well", and I was just, "Oh" and it just ruined my day; that one review.

Zuby: I'm blessed in that I'm just not a particularly sensitive person.

Peter McCormack: Everything's 5-star!

Zuby: Well, no, I'm less sensitive than the average person; considerably less sensitive actually, but just based on my personality type, which is very healthy for me because I think a lot of people would go psychotic if they dealt with a fraction of what I do!  But, yeah, with stuff like that, I view it as…  Look, the truth is, the real truth is, it doesn't matter what you do; nobody likes negative feedback; nobody likes negative criticism.  And, we know actually it hurts more from someone who is closer to you.

If your parents, or one of your siblings, or if you're a parent and your child -- if someone close to you, a friend, gives you negative feedback, it hurts a lot more because you value their opinion more.  But, the way I frame it anyway is, okay, that's kind of my ego protection, but let me take this on board.  Whether or not I agree with the feedback, that's kind of irrelevant, but let me take it on board, because I think intention matters.

If someone is saying something because they're a regular listener to your podcast and they think, okay that particular episode, you could have done this better or that better, it's like, "Okay, that kind of hurts my ego a bit; but I can do something useful with that.  Cool, okay".  And, I think that's kind of the way I frame it.  And feedback like that is also how you get good.  Beyond practice, it's also how you get good, especially if there's a pattern; because if there's one anomaly, you can normally dismiss it, but if you've got ten people who are like, "Oh, that episode, the sound quality was bad [or] you talked too much and you didn't let your guest speak enough", or whatever it is, then that's "Okay, cool, all right, for next time I know what to do", and then ultimately you become better.

So, I think, as creators, we want to embrace anything that can make us better, regardless of how it makes us feel in that moment.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Okay, so tell me about the record, man.  I've ordered my copy; I don't know when I get it.

Zuby: Awesome, thank you.

Peter McCormack: Tell me, what's fed into this one; is it this past year; is it just everything you've been through; is it all personal; is it a mix of personal and all the fucking crazy shit in the world; is it blunts and bitches?

Zuby: I don't smoke blunts and well, you know, the honeys; that's another one!  But honestly, for me, every single album is a snapshot of the period of my life leading up to it; what's going on for me internally, personally, in my heart, in my mind, what's happening in the world around me, what's happening in politics, culture, society, all of that stuff.  So I mean, my last album came out before a lot of this stuff we've been talking about happened.  So, my last album came out January 2019, before I broke the British Women's deadlift record, before I went viral, before all these big podcast appearances; all of that.

Peter McCormack: It still kills me, man; it still kills me, every time!  Every time I see it, every time I'm on your profile and I see it, it just kills me every time!  Can you not enter the Olympics; can't you pull something there?

Zuby: I don't know man.  There's no powerlifting in the Olympics though.  There should be.  They have silly things like dressage, but they don't have powerlifting.

Peter McCormack: It's a total moment of genius, dude; I respect you!

Zuby: Thank you so much.  So actually, I haven't put out much new music at all since all of this stuff happened, and a lot has happened in the world.  A lot's happened in my life; a lot's happened in my career; a lot's happened in the world; a lot's happened in culture, society, all of that. 

Peter McCormack: How old are you, Zuby; do you mind me asking?

Zuby: No, I'm 34.

Peter McCormack: Okay, you're a bit younger than me.  You're a good eight years younger than me, but I would say the last year has been the most significant year of my life.  I cannot remember so much happening in one year.

Zuby: Okay, I'd love to come back to that.

Peter McCormack: A total shift in the world, but you carry on, man.

Zuby: Yeah, man.  So, I talk about all of this.  So, I feel like -- the album's called Word of Zuby, and I feel like it's my most everything album.  I think it's my most motivational and uplifting one; it's also my most personal one; I think it's my most controversial one; it's my most provocative; it's my most aggressive; it's my most political; it's also my most religious album.  It's kind of like everything.

I think, in the past few years, I very much -- I've always been someone who is true to myself and honest and kind of keeps it real.  But, one thing that's really happened over the last five years especially is, and I think some of this is just maturity, some of it is experience, some of it is actually what's happening in the world around me is, as you know, I've just become not just more outspoken, but I've become a lot more confident in who I am and what I believe and what the overall message I want to put out there is and kind of what my role in the world is.

I think I've attracted a big audience, both within and outside of my music, because people get me, right.  I have a certain world view and some people agree with it very strongly; some people agree with it to a degree and disagree with other aspects; and some people are very much opposed to it.  When I started out in music, most artists I think by default, you kind of want everybody to like you.  You want to relate to everybody, you want to cast the net very wide, you don't want to polarise, you don't want to say something on Twitter that may upset any single person in your audience etc.  And as time has gone on, I just don't care about any of that anymore.

It's gone from me wanting everyone to like me, to not really caring if everyone likes me, to actively not wanting certain people to even like me, and being very clear on, "Okay, this is my message" and you know what; the people who oppose me are people who believe in essentially the antithesis of my message.  So, if you are not a fan of personal responsibility and you are not a fan of hard work and you are not a honesty and you are not a fan of self-sufficiency and self-sovereignty and working hard, whether that's through exercise, mentally, physically, whatever it is, personal development; I'm all about that stuff. 

So, if you have someone who's opposed to those ideas, they're not going to be a Zuby fan.  They're going to oppose me on all these different levels and I'm kind of good.  In a way I'm like, okay, if they're a little bit open-minded, hopefully they can see what I'm doing and it might take time and there'll be resistance; but hopefully over some time, they'll get what I'm doing and they'll understand that actually, it comes from a good place, right. 

My intentions are good.  I'm not out here trying to make the world a worse place; very far from it.  But I think, if you promote that message of personal responsibility and self-development and try to be the best of yourself and not rely on these people, not blame your race or gender or whatever characteristic, your class, whatever characteristics you have, blame all your problems on that, expect the government to fix this for you, expect this person to pay for that for you; all of that.  It's kind of, for me, they're all linked together; they're all tied together. 

My innate libertarianism is tied to my love of going to the gym and working out and improving your body.  I've been very vocal about all these lockdowns and the mandates and all that kind of stuff.  It's all tied together and it's all real.  It's not like, "Okay, this is my marketing plan"; it's just, that's who I am, that's what I believe and the world needs those voices. 

The world needs those voices because it seems like, on a lot of issues, especially over the past years, it's like there are so many things where it feels like one side of the argument gets all the spotlight, or is the only acceptable viewpoint and it sort of narrows this Overton window to the point where someone is just saying something that's actually a view held by millions or billions of people and is very popular, might even be the majority opinion; but, somehow they feel silenced or they're treated as if they're very fringe, or whatever.

Some people view me as someone who's like -- I've got one of my friends who actually calls me, Mr Controversial.  I don't think that --

Peter McCormack: I wonder why!

Zuby: Yeah, but the truth is, if the world were sane, Peter, if the world were sane, very little that I say would be controversial, right?  Even that viral deadlift tweet, if I go back to Nigeria and I show that to my family in Nigeria, they don't even understand it!  If I showed that to someone in the UK in 2008, they wouldn't understand it; they wouldn't find it funny, because they'd be, "What do you mean you identified as a woman; what does that even mean?" 

We hadn't even reached the clown world to the point that that's even funny, right, because they'd just be -- if I show that to most people around the world, they'll be, "What do you mean you identified as a woman; you're a man?  I don't get it; why is this funny?" so, you kind of need that context of this modern era, where there are certain ideas around this gender ideology stuff, or whatever it is, for it to even have the context to be funny.

Peter McCormack: But, what makes something controversial?

Zuby: Oh, great question!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, because you know what; I've got the definition up here, "Controversy is a prolonged public dispute, debate or contention, disputation concerning a matter of opinion", so it's a matter of opinion.  But, what makes -- so, for example, you pick something like abortion; is pro-life controversial; is pro-choice controversial; or are they both controversial, because it's something that really splits public opinion?  I've never even thought about it.

Zuby: Yeah, it's a good question.  I think it's a controversial topic in general, due to the very nature of it.  And then I feel like, yes, in the UK, pro-life is a controversial position, because it's the one you're going to catch the flak for.

Peter McCormack: Because it's not the law?

Zuby: Yes, because it's not the default position.  The default position in the UK is so-called "pro-choice".  I have an issue with that term, but let's call it what it is, to kind of give it its credit.  That's the default position.  Even if someone hasn't thought -- I'll tell you how you know the default position; if someone has not even spent a lot of time thinking about, or researching, or debating the issue, what is their view most likely to be?  And the truth is, in the UK anyway, this isn't globally, but in the UK the default position is just pro-choice by default.

I used to be pro-choice by default, not because I'd ever really thought of it and I'd sort of outsourced my thinking to other people.  It's like, "Okay, the law is probably right and the majority opinion is probably right.  Other people have kind of thought about this", whatever.  And also, it's one of those issues, you know, thank God I've never been in a position where I needed to massively think about it.  Then, when I really did, I was like, "Oh, wow, I'm very pro-life", obviously, very clearly.  I'd always leaned that way and I guess my moral leaning, I'd always felt like abortion, that's something that -- on my very first single, I even mention it, and that's in 2006.

Peter McCormack: What, pro-life as in pro-life personally, or pro-life in terms of legislation?

Zuby: Okay, so I think that's an interesting point, because I think there are two aspects of the argument.  I think there's the moral position and there's the legal position.  Me, I'm pro-life on both and that's the only way I can even be consistent, based on my belief; not just my beliefs, but based on actual facts plus my moral foundations.  Pro-life is the only thing I can be on both fronts.

Peter McCormack: You see, I think the reason your friend calls you Mr Controversial, I think he says it in a way, and he probably has a different meaning from where I sit; I think he thinks you're Mr Controversial because he sees you getting involved in topics which will cause heated debates.

Zuby: Ones you don't want to talk about?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you don't want to talk about.  Whereas, I see it similar, but I would say Mr Controversial for the same reason, but you're willing to absolutely be firm about your position, whatever the response may be from the public, whether it's popular opinion or unpopular opinion, you're controversial.  Some of us will shy away, right?  There are certain people who are probably pro-life but just don't want to admit it.

Zuby: Oh, definitely, tons of them; millions.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  There are probably plenty of people who are pro-trans rights or anti-trans, whatever.  There are plenty of people who will just go with public opinion, I think especially some middle-class lefties, because they're really scared of the response they'll get from their friends.  I know it because, during Brexit and the election, I was posting some pretty controversial things up on Facebook, just to test things, just to see what the response would be; things like, "I don't agree with maternity and paternity pay.  I think it's your choice to have a child and the people who choose not to have children shouldn't be paying for your choice", just to see what things were; and it really upset some people, because it's not popular opinion.  So, I agree with your friend, but I just see it slightly differently.

Zuby: Yeah, I also like to make people think.  I like to challenge questions, because the truth is, most people don't really think about -- most people just accept their opinions from the herd; they outsource their thinking.  They don't really think, "Okay, what do I really believe in and why do I believe it, or even know the facts?"  Most people don't even, to use what we're talking about, most people don't even know how an abortion is done; they don't even know what it is.  Even some women who get them, they don't even know what happens.

There have been women who have had abortions and then deeply, once they actually learn what happened -- because the so-called doctors doing them don't tell them; the abortionists don't tell them; and in fact, they bar them from even getting certain types of information, because they don't want them to see it; they don't want them to see the scan; they don't want them to see the baby before it's killed, etc.  And it's, "Okay, why do they not want that?"

If pro-life people put up pictures of aborted babies or foetuses, I don't care what term you use, it's the same human being; if they put up pictures and show, "Okay, this is what an aborted baby looks like", people don't want to see that.  It's horrible, it's disgusting images; I know why people don't want to see it.  But, that's what you've done; that's your kid right there.  But, people don't want that.  This is just facts, those are just facts; but people don't want the facts.

The facts make the pro-life side of it much, much stronger, right?  It's much easier to talk in euphemisms and in slogans and in, "My body, my choice"; that's why people don't…  Abortion itself is a bit of a euphemism, right, but they're always using euphemisms, "Reproductive rights; a woman's right to choose", what else do they say?  Even if you go on an abortion-provider's website, they will never, ever use the word "baby"; they'll call it "pregnancy tissue", or they'll say, "We've removed the pregnancy; termination of pregnancy", whatever.  They always use this language to get around what's actually being done. 

They don't want to say, "We ripped your baby apart limb by limb [or] we poisoned the baby and then we then rip it out limb by leg".  They don't want to say that because it's awful.  It's something horrible.  But, if you speak about it in euphemisms, you can kind of create this distance between your rational side and your emotions where it's like, "Okay, saying you support a woman's right to choose sounds a lot nicer and a lot more palatable than saying you think it's okay for a baby to be killed, as long as it hasn't been born yet", right?

Even if you say the term "baby", some people are like, "It's not a baby, it's a foetus".  Okay, foetus means "unborn baby"; that's literally the meaning.  In many languages, there's not even a different word for foetus and baby, right; it's the same thing, it's the same human being.  You used to be a foetus, I used to be a foetus; up until the point we came out of our mothers; we were both so-called foetuses, right; we're the same human.  If you kill us there, or you kill us there, pre-birth, post-birth, whatever; we're dead.

So, that's all it is.  So, I like to, as I've said a few times I think on Twitter, I'm very much, when it comes to social commentary or talking about cultural issues, whatever it is, I like to get people to think.

Peter McCormack: And it works. 

Zuby: Good! 

Peter McCormack: Can I explain to you how it works?

Zuby: Okay, go ahead.

Peter McCormack: Because, you know I don't agree with you on everything and sometimes I've jumped in.  But what's happened is, a couple of times I've jumped in and there's a little backlash from some of your followers and it's made me think.  So, you put something up the other day, and we'll get onto the pandemic, but about the pandemic and with regards to COVID numbers; how many actually died with COVID. 

I was typing a response and I was like, "Hmm, am I just responding; do I actually know?"  And then, I went and did some research and I wasn't confident enough to reply, so I didn't actually reply to it, because I wasn't confident enough in my answer.  But, it definitely did make me think and it made me go and research.  So, if that's what you're trying to do, it's worked on me.

Zuby: Okay, cool.  What were you going to reply out of interest?!

Peter McCormack: So, I think sometimes, what I find really difficult with the pandemic sometimes, with debating on Twitter, is some of the nuance.  So, that idea that people don't die of COVID, but they are recorded on their certificate as dying with COVID; I still haven't got to the bottom of it, but I've been trying very hard to try and get to the bottom of it and try and understand exactly what's going on.

I try and think about what are the things I believe and what don't I believe.  Okay, I don't believe that the government has sat there going, "Hah, we get to keep them under lockdown; we get to put in new rules; we get to create new powers to repress people".  I just feel the government, it's almost like a creature that just gradually becomes more authoritarian for whatever reason, but I don't think they're rubbing their hands, trying to become authoritarian.  I mean, there was even the backlash from the Tory backbenchers with regard to COVID passports, right? 

So, I'm trying to understand, why do they put, "Died with COVID"?  So, what I was trying to find out is, is the reason you don't really die of COVID?  COVID causes something like pneumonia, and then you die from pneumonia, and so it records on it -- or it accelerates something.  But, it appears to me that there's like a COVID spectrum from dying from COVID, dying from conditions which come from COVID, or COVID accelerating other conditions.  So, I was trying to get to the bottom of that; it's really hard and I've been trying to get to the bottom of that.  Trying to say that in a tweet is very hard!

Zuby: Yeah, but the fact remains is that, do you know how the deaths are counted in the UK?

Peter McCormack: It's basically if you die with COVID.

Zuby: Within 28 days of a positive test.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, 28 days of a positive test.  Because, what I think I'm trying to say, I think that's like a catch-all?

Zuby: Yeah, but what it means is, I don't know if you know, I had COVID in January.  So, if I'd crashed my car on 2 February and unfortunately died in a car accident, I would be marked as an official -- I would be part of that statistic.

Peter McCormack: Is that 100% true, because I don't know? 

Zuby: Yeah.  Any cause of death within 28 days of a positive test.

Peter McCormack: Okay, and do we know what percentage of deaths that is?

Zuby: No, we don't.  But, okay, and this is a great way to show you how silly the counting is.  So, okay, imagine if you marked anyone who took the vaccine; imagine if within 28 days of them taking the vaccine, if they died of any cause, you said that was because of the vaccine; you'd see that that's very dishonest, right; you'd see that that's very dishonest.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's a fair point.

Zuby: So, if someone gets the vaccine and then three weeks later, they have a heart attack or there's a traumatic accident, or they even commit suicide; and if you were, "Okay, that's a vaccine death", you'd be like, "Come on, man, no it's not"!  That's not fair, so that's what they do with the numbers.

Peter McCormack: That's a good analogy.

Zuby: That's what they're doing with the numbers.

Peter McCormack: But why?  Do you question why do you think they're doing that?

Zuby: It's different in different places.  I know in some places in the USA, for example, the funding they get is tied to the number of COVID deaths, so there's a perverse incentive to mark as many deaths as COVID as possible.  I think some of it is a little bit malicious.

Peter McCormack: But, that's the US; I'm with you on that.

Zuby: Yeah.  In the UK, the honest answer is, I don't know.  Someone could interpret it in different ways, right.  The least charitable would be saying, okay, they're trying to pump up the deaths to keep people scared so that they can continue to justify some of these measures, etc, or to make more money off the vaccines by keeping people scared, etc; that's the least charitable.  The most charitable would be, I guess, it's somehow very difficult to determine the exact number of deaths, or if they don't have the time, or whatever it is; I guess that's the most charitable.

The honest one is, I don't know.  I don't know if you know this; three members of my family are NHS doctors.  My dad's in the NHS and my brother and my brother's wife, so I talk to them about this stuff.  My dad himself, he's a consultant at the NHS and he's like, "Yeah, the way the numbers are counted is ridiculous", and that's just a fact.  This is just how they are counted; and they're open about it. 

It's just, I think, they're a little bit slick.  So, in the media, they'll say, "There've been 140,000 COVID-related deaths in the UK", or they'll just say, COVID deaths, but then there'll be a little small print and it says, even on the BBC you can see it, "Deaths within 28 days of a positive test".  Those are really different things; dying from or dying with or within a certain range.  That in itself is sketchy.

And then there's also the whole thing with the PCR tests and stuff.

Peter McCormack: They do record those separately.  So, they definitely record either, I'd have to look it up, so it's either you died directly from COVID, or it's a comorbidity, right; I'd have to look it up.  But, they definitely record the two separately.

Zuby: Well, we don't know that former number.  If they record it, we don't know it.

Peter McCormack: They're not putting those two numbers out in the press, but we know they are recording those numbers.  Because, I always want to question why because I'm in this Bitcoin world and in this Bitcoin world, we have very cynical people who don't trust; they verify.  And again, it's a spectrum, but a lot of anarchists who just don't believe anything.  The police and governments are all evil.

When the pandemic hit, we had a Conservative party in full control of government and we know politicians just want to keep their jobs.  A pandemic isn't really good for politicians keeping their jobs.  The only reason Conservatives will probably stay in power is because Keir Starmer's so weak.  But, Rishi Sunak is in a very difficult position, the amount of debt he's built, putting on to the government.  Boris Johnson's in a very difficult position.  The pandemic is not useful for government.

Zuby: Oh, wow, I think it's a gift for them.

Peter McCormack: You see, I don't think it is.  I think it is if your belief is we're always descending to 1984; every government wants to be authoritarian, wants to create rules and wants to enslave us, and I certainly think there are governments like that.  I think there are authoritarian governments.

Zuby: No question.

Peter McCormack: I think under someone like Erdoğan, perhaps that is a gift.  I don't believe in the UK, this is a gift.  I think it's a real problem for the government.  It doesn't mean I don't think they'll fuck it up; it doesn't mean I don't think there'll be politicians who will strike deals.

Zuby: You think their motive is more positive and more benevolent than I do, essentially?

Peter McCormack: Possibly, yes, but I do also think they're incompetent, I do think a lot of them make stupid mistakes, I do think there's corruption, I do think there are deals being done.  There's all kinds of bad shit going on, but I don't believe there are politicians sat there, rubbing their hands thinking, "Great, pandemic, we get to put in all these new laws and enslave people".

Zuby: That's interesting, see, I do!  And I'm not saying it's all of them.  There are definitely good politicians out there.  There are politicians who are in it for the right reasons.  But, there is no doubt, historically, globally, there is no doubt that there are plenty of people, thousands of people, who get into politics because they crave power and authority, or even personal enrichment.

Peter McCormack: I agree.

Zuby: So, I think it's tricky, because when we talk about the government, I think we're sort of talking about two things.  I think we're talking about the overall beast, but then we're also talking, you know, a government is composed of individuals.  It's like talking about society.  So, when we say, "Society is this", you're talking about millions and millions of people, but I guess, I don't know; they're not very definitive terms.

And I think you've agreed with this, which is that the overall governments, by their nature, they exist for power and control and authority.  And as we know, they naturally grow. 

Peter McCormack: Until they break.

Zuby: Yeah.  It's very rare for them to shrink down naturally; they tend to grow.  So, when I say, "Okay, the government is growing its power and its control and its authority", I'm kind of talking about that whole thing.  And then within that, I think that there are absolutely individuals, whether they are MPs here or mayors or governors.  You've see some of the governors in the USA and how they've taken advantage of this to become little mini dictators, then start putting in rules that they themselves, you know they don't believe in them, because they themselves are violating the rules.

Peter McCormack: Of course, yeah.

Zuby: It's like Communism, right?  These are the rules for you guys, you plebs, but we're not following that.  So, that's when you know that it's very disingenuous and that's when the sinister aspects of it are there.  And then you know, amongst that, of course, there are going to be many people as well who are just trying to do their best job.  Some of them will be competent, some of them will be incompetent; I think the truth is, it's kind of difficult to tell the difference between incompetence and malice sometimes, because they sort of look the same.

Peter McCormack: I agree.

Zuby: It's like when you say something crazy on Twitter and you're not sure, "Is this person being malicious, or are they just dumb?"  You know, you can't really tell.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, of course.

Zuby: But, I think the reality is the result kind of ends up being the same.  So, okay, let's take a police officer.  If a police officer kills an unarmed citizen in a situation where we all agree, "That person did not deserve to die"; whether it was malicious or incompetent, it matters but the result is the same.  Whether that was just a poorly-trained cop who killed someone because they just couldn't manage their trigger finger, or they actually had some malice in their head and they thought, "Actually, I want to abuse my power and hurt this person"; it matters in a way, but in another way it sort of doesn't.

Peter McCormack: But, this is the exact question that's being asked of Derek Chauvin right now?

Zuby: Yes, exactly.

Peter McCormack: Was it malice or was it incompetence?  And a lot of people believe he murdered him and it depends how you define murder.  I personally sit on the position where I don't think he was -- I just don't believe he was thinking, "I'm going to murder you with my knee", but I think it was the most incompetent action he could ever have done.  But, I don't think he was sitting there thinking, "I'm murdering you", on camera.

Zuby: It's hard to know, man.  I mean, I think there is no doubt that there was -- whether or not the intention was murder, in that situation, having watched that video, there's certainly a disregard for the harm that he's causing, because there are other people there and they were saying, "Hey, he's not breathing, he's not moving", and he's still there, right?  That's where it's hard for me to give the benefit of the doubt on that one.  It's like, well maybe your specific goal in your brain was, "Okay, I want to kill this man", but it's like, if you're…

It would be like if you got into a fight, if you got into a physical fight with someone and you knocked them out and they're literally lying on the ground and you're still wailing; and people are like, "Yo, he's not moving", and you're still wailing.  Maybe in your mind, your goal isn't, "Okay, I'm trying to kill this person", but your actions are showing you have a clear disregard for the unnecessary harm and suffering which you're now causing.

Peter McCormack: That's a fair analogy.  It's the difference between premeditated and --

Zuby: Yeah, but a murder doesn't have to be -- I think first degree has to be premeditated, right; I believe second or third doesn't.  It's also when people are reckless or, what's the right term when someone, not abandons their children, or they leave their dog in a car with the windows -- what's the right word; do you know what I mean?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, because I often see -- you gave me an example and I often think, and oh God, this is highly controversial; the parents of Madeleine McCann.  I always think, "Hold on, what the fuck?  Did you just get away with that because you're white doctors?" because if that was a -- well, we've got a case recently in the UK.  Well, she'd left a child for six days, but that's a lot worse.

Zuby: What's that called; there's a word for that?  It's not abandonment, but it's really annoying me now.

Peter McCormack: This is old age; you forget words!  You talk, I'll think about it.

Zuby: Yeah, so there's that.  It's just a sort of total lack of care; so, harming or killing someone through a total lack of care and disregard for what's potentially happening there, rather than wonton violence.  If it's a hot day and you leave a dog in a car, or even a child in a car and the windows are up and you go off and you go shopping and you come back an hour later and something really bad has happened, it's like, okay, in your brain, that wasn't direct, attempted murder, but it's --

Peter McCormack: Neglect?

Zuby: Neglect, yes!  Neglect, literally!  How did I forget that?

Peter McCormack: I googled it.  You know, it's old age!

Zuby: Yeah, so neglect can also be a criminal offence, right, because as a parent of children, you are in the -- if my neighbour leaves their child alone in the house for three days with no food, I don't get arrested for that, because that's not my responsibility and I'm not aware of it.  If I'm aware of it and I still neglect it actually and they can show that I knew about it, then I could probably still get in trouble, because it's like you were supposed to do something and you didn't; and as a result of your inaction, something bad happens, etc.  So, it's all of that.

But, coming back to the COVID thing, there's a lot of stuff that's really, really shady with it.  But, one thing is that people don't want to just look at the numbers.  So, we've already accepted that, okay, the numbers are higher than the direct deaths from COVID; but even if you go by the official published numbers, which I've just pulled up in front of me, for NHS England, I don't know if you've looked at this, but I mean…

Peter McCormack: Let me get it up on my side.  What's the page; how did you find it?

Zuby: Yeah, sure.  Let me -- can I send messages?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, there's a chat in here.  Send it to me and I'll have a look.

Zuby: Okay, let me send this to you.  So, this is all of the deaths, "This file contains information on the deaths of patients who have died in hospitals in England and have tested positive for COVID-19".  So, this is cumulative.  So, if you go to Tab 3?

Peter McCormack: It's an Excel file?

Zuby: Yeah, it's Excel.

Peter McCormack: So, they distributed spreadsheets?!

Zuby: Yeah, they've been publishing this for the past year, every single week, with the updated numbers.

Peter McCormack: Okay, which tab?  Death by gender; death by --

Zuby: If you go to Tab 3, Death by Condition.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Zuby: So, this is throughout the entire pandemic.  So, this is cumulative throughout the entire thing, okay.  So, if you look at this, in total in England, there have been 86,308 deaths recorded of which 76,649 are people over 60 with pre-existing conditions; so in all of England, in total, regardless of age, 3,542 deaths of people without pre-existing conditions.

Peter McCormack: You could say "known".

Zuby: Okay, you could say "known".

Peter McCormack: Because I wonder if, for example, you may be undiagnosed diabetic?

Zuby: But there's also a column here saying "unknown".  I know it's all zeros.

Peter McCormack: It's all zeros; they've not used it, and maybe that's for the future.  Because, if you're diabetic, you might be diabetic and not know, right; it's only at the point where you have some concern, you go to the doctor and they're like, "Oh, yeah, you're diabetic".  But, we know it affects people with diabetes, so perhaps that number would be higher as well.

Zuby: Yeah, maybe so.  But, okay, let's look at the ages.  So, the average age of death with COVID is 82.  That's the same as the average life expectancy, bro.  So, the average age of death is 82; so 89% of the deaths are people over 60 with a known pre-existing condition.  And this is not me saying that people over 60 don't matter, very far from it; but the point is that most of the people dying are over 80. 

So, in terms of the measures we've taken, we've locked down 65 million, whether you're 5 years old or you're 15 years old or you're 25 or you're 35, you've locked down everybody where something like 89% of people dying are over 60 with pre-existing health conditions.  So, I've been consistent all the way through.

Peter McCormack: Oh, you have.

Zuby: And we've known this since over a year ago.  So, I've been saying from the beginning, why don't we, rather than this one-size-fits-all approach, and yes, I understand viruses transmit; but, rather than this one-size-fits-all approach, why are we not -- I mean, I'd still oppose locking down elderly people, because I think they still should have the right to make their own choices and risk assessments and analysis, as they've done their entire life.

Peter McCormack: Dude, if I was 80, I would lock myself down.

Zuby: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.  If you're at risk, you have the right, you have the freedom to distance yourself.  You have the right to take whatever precautions you think are needed.  My thing throughout this whole thing is, okay, so let's look at people under 40.  Okay, even if they have pre-existing health conditions, we're talking throughout this entire thing, 635 deaths; 635 in 14 months and all these people have been suffering all these lockdowns and consequences, etc, and to me, there's no proportionality, right.

Peter McCormack: Can I just jump in there?

Zuby: Yeah, go ahead.

Peter McCormack: So, a couple of things.  I don't think we've known for a year, because I remember when the lockdowns happened.  At the time the lockdowns happened, I definitely had a different position than I have now, because we were seeing videos in China of people collapsing on the street and dying, which hasn't happened!

Zuby: Yeah, that was like February.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I still think we didn't fully know.

Zuby: By April last year, we knew that this thing was very heavily skewed towards elderly people; we knew that by April.

Peter McCormack: I don't disagree with that.  But, I don't believe the lockdowns are about deaths at all; I think they're about illness and the NHS.  And I think the government did it for the NHS.  You could probably say there's a percentage, maybe it's 80/20, but I think primarily they did it for the NHS, because the hospitals were, to begin with, seeing a lot of patients coming in and I think that's what it was about. 

I've spoken to some doctors, both in the UK and abroad and obviously, you said your father.  I think over time, there's been a better understanding of how to treat it; lay people on their front, not their back; give steroids; etc.  I think we're in a very different place now than at the start.  I was more sympathetic towards the start; I'm less sympathetic now.

Zuby: Yeah, but the thing is, the start was January, February, March last year.  By April last year, I mean the first lockdown had been done by this time last year.  The data points I'm pulling out, because we had this not just for England; we had this for places all over the world. 

Because, at the very beginning, the truth is the very first lockdown, regardless of someone's view on this, whether or not you thought it should have been mandated, like I'm opposed to it being mandated from the beginning; but, if you tell me -- I did not oppose primarily sitting in my house and being cautious for a couple of weeks, because you remember how they sold it, right?  Flatten the curve; we need enough time. 

Remember, they said they had a shortage of PPE, so we need to buy some time to get PPE; it's a new virus; we're not yet sure about some of the death rates, etc; so, we need to buy some time; we don't want the hospitals to be overwhelmed; we want to flatten the curve, because if too many people get sick at the same time, etc.  It was sold; it made sense; it was logical.  It made sense and everyone was -- go ahead.

Peter McCormack: Sorry, just a slight correction on your dates.  I've got here, the PM announced the Stay At Home Order 23 March and 1 June was phased reopening of schools.  So, it wasn't until June, we opened back up.  But, I mean it's not far off.

Zuby: Okay, sure.  I might be mixing, because I follow lots of different countries on this.  But the truth, okay, absolutely we know certainly by spring, early summer last year, we had the data.  The so-called first wave had happened; we've got the data; we're like, okay, 90% of the people dying are over 60 with pre-existing conditions; we know that.  We've got that; it matches up with data from Germany, Italy, USA, Asia, etc, so we know that.

So my thing was, look, to me, I don't think lockdown should be done in virtually any situation and actually, the World Health Organisation agrees with me on that one.  But the thing is; proportionality.  And also, the one-size-fits-all thing has also been maddening to me from the very beginning, because we are not talking about something where there are -- it's just been very myopic, because lockdowns have very severe consequences, very severe consequences.

Peter McCormack: Agreed.

Zuby: I think it's entirely possible, I don't know how you'd measure this; if it hasn't already, it's entirely possible and I think very likely, very probable, that more people will die as a result of the government response than the virus itself, whether you're talking about --

Peter McCormack: It's almost an impossible measure, because we can't know what would have happened if there hadn't been a lockdown; we just can't know.

Zuby: Well, we can look at places that didn't lockdown.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but there are always different factors.

Zuby: Of course it is.  But, if you look at the US data, there is no correlation between states that did lockdowns and ones that didn't, and the death rates per million; no correlation at all.  In fact, the median death rate of the places that did lockdown is higher.  So, I'm not saying the lockdowns itself caused that, because we know correlation isn't causation.

But, take an obvious example; Florida.  Florida has the second oldest population in the USA.  Florida's been open for over a year.  So, if lockdowns were super effective and masks were super effective, you would think, whether or not you agree with lockdowns, you would think, "Oh, wow, Florida is going to get hard".  Florida is ranked number 27 in the death rates in the USA.  You can look at North Dakota and South Dakota.  I think North Dakota locked down, South Dakota didn't; no difference.

You can look at the UK and compare it with Sweden, Belarus.  I think Sweden has an even lower death rate than the UK.  It is higher than some of its neighbours, but it is lower.  So, I think the US is the best example for that, because you do have state-by-state data and the policies were based on a state by state basis.

The truth is, if lockdowns and masks were very effective, it wouldn't be a debatable thing.  Whether you agree with the mandates or not, it wouldn't be debatable.  It would be, okay, we can clearly see this correlation here; but the fact that there is no correlation…  I know people want to believe they've made a difference, but the truth is, they haven't.

I think, for the past six months, a lot of stuff has just been some cost fallacy and ego protection, because no one wants to feel like --

Peter McCormack: "We've fucked up".  Sorry!

Zuby: Yeah, "We've just suffered for over a year and we've done all this and the truth is, it hasn't made a big difference"; no one wants to do that.  Texas reopened; were you paying attention when Texas reopened, or when they announced it was going to?  Do you remember on Twitter everyone, even Joe Biden, came out and said, "This is reckless; this is going to cause a spike in deaths; this is the Governor of Texas basically issuing a death warrant on his people", all these blue check marks were going crazy, whatever?  What's happened in Texas in the last four weeks? 

Peter McCormack: Everyone's having a good time.

Zuby: Cases massively dropped; deaths massively dropped; you've got filled-up stadiums; you've got music concerts going on, etc.  They're fine.  People almost wanted Texas to do badly, because then it confirmed what they believed.

Peter McCormack: Justified it; yeah.

Zuby: Yeah, but now they've just gone silent; they've just gone quiet.  No one is saying, "Oh, actually, I was wrong about Texas".  They've just gone quiet and they've moved onto the next thing.  But, people like myself remember that and we're like, "Okay, well, Texas has just shown".  And, Texas is bigger than the UK; Texas is a big place and they're having full-on events and whatever.  There are no mask mandates, there are no restrictions, there are no capacity limits, there are no lockdowns.

Peter McCormack: Could it be that all the 80-year-olds are dead now; we've killed all the 80-year-olds; there are none of them left to die?!  I'm joking.

Zuby: But the thing is, Texas didn't do any worse to begin with than all the others.  I mean, the worst affected places were New Jersey and New York and somehow, their governors are still getting praise.  But, there just wasn't a correlation.  The truth is, I am against lockdowns and I am against mass commandments.

Peter McCormack: No, I understand.

Zuby: But, despite that, I would still expect that, okay, the places that locked down, logically, should have lower death rates, all other things considered.  I know you can't compare any two places perfectly, but you think there'd be a trend.  So, when I saw that there was no trend, even my mind was blown, because I wasn't even expecting that; I was just like, "Wow, there's really not a correlation here, not even a strong one"; there's none.

Peter McCormack: I mean, I don't know the data now so I can't answer that.  All I know is my position definitely changed.

Zuby: Sure.  At what point?

Peter McCormack: I think, it's very hard to say.  When the first lockdown happened, I was just very conscious of what was happening and I was like -- because, I spoke to my friend who works in a hospital and they had a massive influx of patients coming in.  I interviewed him and he was getting quite upset during it.  It felt serious, I was thinking of my dad and I was like, "Okay, I get this; I get what the government's doing.  I support it, whatever".

Then I think what I kind of realised is, it's not so much whether the lockdowns work or they don't work; I think, in my head, I think the net cost is worse with a lockdown; the net cost on business, culture, mental health.  My mental health has been kind of okay, but I've seen family members affected; I've spoken to friends who were affected; people have lost their companies; they can't run their business; they can't pay for food.  We've had a massive problem of feeding children in our country.

There are so many issues: suicide rates, abuse in the home.  I think the net cost is worse and I think in the end, we could have made our own choices; we could have scaled up the NHS.  The government did build all those Nightingale hospitals.  I just think the net cost is worse, but I also think it is a complicated problem.

Zuby: Yeah, I mean I agree with you.  I mean, that is my position, right, it's because we're not talking about -- the way people have been framing it, especially the very pro-lockdown people; they framed it as if lockdowns barely have any consequences.  So it's like, okay, either you lockdown and all we're focussing on is the hospitals and COVID death rates, not even death rates in general; COVID very specifically.  It's very myopic.  It's like COVID is the highest priority.

This is something I tweeted earlier, it kind of went viral, and it's, "Who decided that COVID-19 deaths are the most important thing in the world; who decided that?" because that's not a medical question, it's a philosophical question.  So, why do we care more about COVID deaths than all the other things that kill people?

So last year, by official numbers, there were about, and again this number will be inflated, but being as liberal as possible, there around 2 million deaths globally from/with COVID-19; 2 million globally.  66 million people die every year, so we're talking 2 out of 66 were COVID and all the focus --

Peter McCormack: It's like 3%.

Zuby: Yeah, it's a very small percent.  And again, we know the average age, let's say, is 80.  And we know that, look, people don't even like saying this because it's -- it's not a controversial statement.  We all know there's a difference between an 80-year-old dying from a disease and a 5-year-old or a 20-year-old.  We know that, right?  This is not saying that, yes, human life is created equal, but if you're 80, there's a lot of stuff that can take you out.  You could just have a fall and die.  So, as you get older, we know the body gets weaker and death, unfortunately, is something that happens.  So, death is not new.

Peter McCormack: It's part of life.

Zuby: It's part of life.  Everybody dies, I'm going to die, you're going to die, we're all going to die; and we've been acting as if, no, it's all the same, it's very myopic.  And it's also been very binary.  So if I say, from the start, I oppose lockdowns, people are like, "Oh, so you want to just let it rip through the population?"  I'm like, "Are these the only two options?" 

Are the only options either we put 65 million people on house arrest, make it illegal for them to travel, to see their friends, to see their families, have old people dying alone and their families can't visit them; all these small businesses have to shut down and go broke and close; millions of people becoming unemployed; the mental health; all of that, or we just let it rip?  And I'm like, "What's with this false dichotomy?  Can we not take a measured approach?"

Okay, 90% of people dying are over 60 with pre-existing health conditions.  Okay, so what we need to do is protect those people, prioritise those people; let's keep everybody else -- even the whole, "Protect the NHS" thing; how is the NHS funded, man?  If people are not working, are we protecting the NHS in the long run?  Where's that money?  That's what I mean.

Peter McCormack: Well Zuby, how much has Rishi Sunak borrowed; we're talking hundreds of millions, right?

Zuby: I don't even know.

Peter McCormack: Imagine he took that total number and he said, "Right.  What we're going to do is we're going to scale up the NHS.  We're going to train nurses and assistants and we're going to be able to deal with the influx of patients.  But, what we are going to say to people is, 'Let's just be as careful as we can'.  Let's create a bubble around old people's homes.  And then you have a choice as a person: do you want to see your family or don't you?  If you want to see your family, this is the risk you're taking and if you get ill, you might die".

I locked my dad in a bubble.  He needed to be; he's asthmatic, a smoker, in his 70s; he is a perfect candidate for if he got COVID, he might die.  And, that was our choice.  I think the government could have mandated certain things, limited restrictions.

Zuby: Like what; so okay, maybe large gatherings or something like that?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, maybe just let's not have football stadiums full of people right now.

Zuby: Yeah, that's fair.

Peter McCormack: Let's maybe not have concerts full of people right now.  Let's maybe, I don't know, I'd have to think it through and I don't know the details.  So, let's say, nobody can just go to old people's homes; there have to be appointments or something and there have to be agreements.

Zuby: Dude, that's reasonable.  That's what I mean; it's measured; a volume dial rather than an on and off switch.  To me, it's a bit like, okay, if you --

Peter McCormack: Sweden did it, right?

Zuby: Yeah, exactly.

Peter McCormack: They had a dial and they turned their dial up, but they haven't gone full lockdown like everybody else.

Zuby: Yeah.  So, if you had a rat in your house and you're going out and you call someone, "Hey, while I'm out, can you deal with this rat in the house?" and you come back and they've just burned down half the house and you're like, "Dude, I just wanted you to get the rat!"

Peter McCormack: Dude, it wasn't a spider; it was a fucking rat!

Zuby: Yeah, so I feel like there's a rat and we are burning down the entire house, or amputating this whole body part, because you're trying to deal with this one targeted thing.  I'm not a policymaker; I'm a rapper, I'm a creator; but, I'm a thinker.  And I've said, for literally a year now, "Okay, I don't get this one size fits all".  That's the point where it also breeds the conspiratorial thinking, right, because it doesn't make sense.

The truth is, every single person knows that there are some aspects of this thing that do not make sense and have not made sense, whether that's experts saying, "Don't wear a mask", like they were around this time last year, to them saying, "Wear one" and now in the USA, they're trying to get people to wear two, and there was no explanation for that.  Whether that was, do you remember all the BLM stuff last year; you must do?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, we talked about it.

Zuby: Yeah, exactly.  So, there was the hypocrisy around the medical professionals supporting that, but then blaming Trump rallies or anti-lockdown protests on coronavirus spread, all that kind of stuff, all this hypocrisy.  When you go into a restaurant and you wear a mask standing up, but when you sit down you can take it off.  There's been a lot of stuff that does not make sense.  And everyone knows; everyone's like, "Wait, that doesn't make sense?"

So, that's what also feeds into the conspiratorial thinking because it's like, wait, there's another agenda that's going on here.  Bro, they've shut the gyms for three months.

Peter McCormack: That's the thing I don't agree with.

Zuby: Okay, so public health.  What's the biggest comorbidity for COVID?  Obesity.

Peter McCormack: Being a fat-ass!

Zuby: Yeah!

Peter McCormack: And I did it; I put a stone on!

Zuby: So, you're trying to convince me that in the name of public health, you haven't just shut all the gyms for months, but I can still go to KFC, I can still go to McDonald's; but I can't go to the gym.  So, if I go to a KFC and I'm ordering a KFC; that somehow doesn't spread the virus?  I mean, I don't have it anyway, but okay, that's fine, but going to the gym?  And all the gyms had already taken precautions; they'd already spaced things out, they'd already done all that and there was no evidence that the gyms were a place where this was really spreading.

Bro, they even shut the outdoor gyms.  In Southampton, where I live, there's an outdoor gym.  They removed all the bars. 

Peter McCormack: They took the basketball nets off the basketball courts where my son plays basketball; they took the hoop off.  He was like, "Dad, they've taken the hoops off" and I'm like, "For fuck's sake".

Zuby: To me, that's sinister.  To me, that can't just be incompetence.  We know that this thing does not spread outside.  We know it doesn't spread outside.

Peter McCormack: Well, I think it's a bit of incompetence.

Zuby: I think a big difference with us is you give them more benefit of the doubt than I do!  I'm just like, "No, this is too many things for me to just be incompetence".  And then you have the fact that now, people are -- I was talking about vaccine passports six, seven months ago and people were saying, "Zuby, you're a crazy conspiracy theorist; they're never going to do that".

Peter McCormack: I think it was obvious.

Zuby: Yeah, but now people are seeing it.

Peter McCormack: Are you going to take a vaccine?

Zuby: No, why would I?

Peter McCormack: Okay, what if they say you can't travel without it, just say you can't; would you take it for the sake of being able to travel, or would you stay here?

Zuby: I'm going to get out of here, don't worry!

Peter McCormack: I'm going to take it.

Zuby: Bro, I've already got immunity; why would I even take it?  Even if there were vaccine passports, I'd be eligible for one, because I've already got the antibodies.

Peter McCormack: Well, you haven't got 100% guaranteed immunity, but you've got most likely 99.999%.

Zuby: Nobody does, but I've got the immunity that someone else would get by taking the vaccine.  So the thing is, my position on all of these things is not -- it's actually really funny when my detractors are even calling me selfish, because the truth is, on all levels of this, I personally am not someone who is, who has been, or will be as affected as millions of other people.

So, whether it's the virus itself; I'm young, I'm healthy, I've actually had it, I've recovered, I'm fine; I'm not a massive risk from that.  I'm not a massive risk from the economic downside.  I'm self-employed, I can make money from anywhere, I'm fine; my finances have not taken any hit whatsoever.  Even when it comes down to these, I don't even want to call them "vaccine passports" right, because I think that's giving them too much credit.  They're really freedom licences.

Even when it comes to that, I would be easily able to get one as someone who's already had it and recovered.  So, I'm not just thinking for me, I'm thinking for my men.  There are millions and millions of people out here on all different sides of this thing who are really getting hurt, who are really getting harmed.  I've heard of more people committing suicide than I've heard of, or know of, people who have died with COVID; especially on the younger demographic.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I want to know if that stat's real; I need to validate that one, because I've heard that.  If it happened, it wouldn't surprise me, but I would want to validate it.

Zuby: Sure.  Well the truth is that we know for a fact already that under 40, the suicide rate in the UK on average is about 6,000 a year on average.  And as we know, how many people under, okay, let's go under 60; how many people under 60 at most have died with COVID according to the NHS in England?  It is, including comorbidities 6,800.  And we know, on an annual basis, okay, if we make that under 40, then it comes down to 635.  So, that's about one-tenth of the average number of suicides.  I don't think the official data's going to come out for several months.

Peter McCormack: We'll be looking.

Zuby: Yeah, we'll be looking, and they might downplay the official numbers.

Peter McCormack: Or, they might have committed suicide and have had COVID within 28 days.

Zuby: Yeah.  I think throughout this whole thing, there's just been a lot of aspects of the conversation that are not being taken seriously and not being considered.  Another part, I was talking about this with my family over the weekend, is just the effect on young people; whether you're talking school-age children or toddlers, or you're just talking about young people, they don't really have a voice in this whole thing.  The focus is so much on --

If you're 40+ and you're pretty stable and you've got your life together already, I think it's relatively easy, "Oh, come on, the lockdowns aren't that bad"; you're situated; you're fine.  But, for someone who's 20, for someone who's 15, for someone who's 10, it's like, man, are we thinking about what impact this is having.  Even this whole stuff with them sending kids back to school and making them put masks on, I'm like "Why?  Why are you doing this to children?"

Peter McCormack: It's ridiculous.

Zuby: Why are you doing that, man?  To me, that goes beyond incompetence.

Peter McCormack: Well, I'm living this with my kids, man.  I've seen it through my son, how it's impacted him; my daughter.  It's changed a lot; it's not good.

I want to ask you another thing then.  When we talked earlier about abortion, you said you are pro-life in terms of legislation, but you obviously also have, you are a bit of a libertarian, issues with the state.  So, what do you think the role of the state is, because this is a conversation I get in with a lot of people on Bitcoin, because there's a spectrum of people who believe in no state, minimal state, full state?  I'm not an anarchist --

Zuby: Sure, nor am I.

Peter McCormack: -- I don't believe in no state.  And I understand the arguments, I think, theoretically; they're great.  But, I just don't see how it works, on a number of different levels; but I don't know the answers because I've seen very solid arguments for having a state like Singapore, which is pretty authoritarian, but is run like a company; safe, clean.

Zuby: Saudi Arabia.

Peter McCormack: Like Saudi Arabia.  I have my issues with Saudi Arabia, but we don't need to get into that.  So, you've got these more authoritarian states that seem to operate quite efficiently, but have some nasty sinister undertones.  You have full democracies that can be a bit of a mess.  I think what I'm getting to is my brother, I was having a conversation with my brother about it, and he said, "Pete, basically what you have to accept is chaos and everywhere you go, there is a push and a pull in different directions, and embrace the chaos.  There is no utopia, there is no perfect solution; everything is just being pulled in different directions".  Where do you sit with all this?

Zuby: Yeah, sure.  I mean, well, I agree with your brother on that definitely.  The truth is that human beings are very deeply flawed, individually, let alone collectively; we are just flawed.  So, any system involving humans is going to be deeply flawed; that's just the reality of it at every level.

So, my personal position is, I believe the sort of fairly traditional American view on rights and liberties, which is that they are natural and/or from God, depending on one's belief system.  I'd say that the most basic human rights come from God, right; you're just born with them?  If you were just on a desert island, what rights would you have?  And then, to me, the role of government primarily is to protect those rights.

So, the number one role of government to me is to protect your right to life and then extend that to your right to bodily integrity and not being harmed; and then I guess the next step would be your private property, right?  So, I cannot kill you or harm you or take your stuff, essentially.  And the government's role, the primary role of the government to me, as an absolute minimum, is to take care of that.  So, if someone wants to come in and harm you or take your stuff or kill you or kill someone near you, or whatever, there's a role for government to do its best to prevent that happening; and/or if it happens, there should be some justice for the person who's violated that. 

So, to me that's really the core; anything beyond that, I view as kind of concentric circles.  And I guess a big difference in political opinion is how wide and big do you think that circle should be?  If you expand it outwards, you get to public roads and public facilities and things like that.  If you expand it wider, you get into education and schooling and I guess potential --

Peter McCormack: Healthcare?

Zuby: Yeah, healthcare, etc.  You extend it wider, you get into, I don't know, welfare policies or whatever.  You extend it super wide, you end up with things like Universal Basic Income or guaranteed jobs, I don't know how that would work, or whatever.

Peter McCormack: Until you get to Communism?

Zuby: Yeah, exactly!  Where it's a full circle, government has total control, you don't even own stuff, there's no private property anymore; state owns everything, provides everything, etc.  So, to me, I think most libertarians -- obviously anarchists, the circle is a dot, or it's non-existent.

Peter McCormack: Dude, there's no circle.

Zuby: Yeah, there's no circle; minarchists, it's like a dot; libertarians, it's a very small circle; conservatives, it's a little bit bigger; and then the more liberal, gets bigger; progressive gets bigger; until, like you said, you get to Communism.  So, with me, I'm someone who, I don't mind being called a, I don't really care too much for labels, but I guess I'm in the libertarian/conservative zone.  So for me, the role of governments is to protect those basic, fundamental rights.  It's not to give you loads of stuff, it's not to do a bunch of stuff for you; it's to protect your basic rights and your safety and property so that then you can do the stuff you want to do. 

You can then go create your family, create your life, create whatever you want, pursue your dreams, create your businesses, whatever without someone just being able to walk in there and shoot you and take your stuff and roll off with it.  To me, that's the primary core function of government.

Peter McCormack: Right, okay.  I like these concentric circles.  I'm definitely going to be stealing this as a way of explaining it.  I think it's a really good way of explaining it.

Zuby: Okay, go ahead!

Peter McCormack: I will credit you; I'll say my friend Zuby told me about this!  But, I do like that idea, because I was definitely, as a child, and I think a lot of children will have a large circle.  If I turned round to my daughter, who's 11, and say to her, "Do you think our government should help homeless people get homes?" she's going to say yes.  And, "If somebody loses their job, should we give them some money?"  Yes.  And, "Do you think if someone breaks their leg, they should get treated in hospital for free?" they're going to say yes.

I think that's a natural thing and I think some ways, as you grow, some people stay being quite socialist, quite left-wing; and some -- do a lot of people, I don't know?  But people can gradually, that circle gets smaller.  I would say my circle's definitely wider than yours, but it's shrinking.  I've only ever voted Conservative in the UK; I've never voted for the Labour party.

Zuby: Interesting.

Peter McCormack: But, I've definitely had, previously, socialist sympathies, but they're getting smaller.  I historically like the NHS; I have issues with it now.  Do I want to get rid of it completely?  No, but potentially I'd maybe change it.  It's a shrinking circle, but what I have realised it that one of the biggest mistakes the government makes is trying to insulate us from our own mistakes and pain; that's my biggest issue.

Zuby: Yes, agreed.  And the thing is, as well, if someone else gives you something, they can also take it away, so this goes beyond government; it's just a general thing.  So, we're both independent, right, so no one can just take your podcast from you, right; no one can just take my career or my fan base, or whatever; they can't just kind of come and take it --

Peter McCormack: Can't take my Bitcoin!

Zuby: Yeah.  But, if it's handed to you, it can be taken away.  And then, of course, with most things, we all know that due to the nature of free markets and competition, that increases efficiency and brings down prices, right.  So, if a government has a monopoly on something, we all know that everything governments run tends to be inefficient, because there aren't those competitive forces there; and that kind of goes across the board with everything.  So, that's where my general philosophy comes from.

I think also, this is another thing that I think leads to unproductive conversations across the political aisle often, is that we all -- it was interesting when you used that example of what you said your daughter would say, right, because a lot of the conversation isn't necessarily about what should be done or if something should be done; it's about who you think should do it and where the responsibility falls.

So, someone who's more socialistic leaning will say, "The government should do that".  If you ask me, do I think something should be done for homeless people, I'm like, "Yes, absolutely".  Do I think that I want people in poverty or kids not being educated, "No, I don't, of course not".  Any decent person is, "We don't want that".  The question is, okay, so where does the responsibility fall?

I'm very, very pro-charity and even large charitable organisations can start to have their problems when they get too big as well.  But, I'm very pro-charity, I'm very pro-helping people, especially the old "teaching a man to fish" kind of axiom; I'm very big on that.  And, I generally believe that individuals, or private institutions, or private companies, etc, in general tend to do a better job of that than the government does. 

I also think that the benefit of it being done that way is, it can actually be attributed to something.  I think one of the big problems I have with the welfare state actually is that, people feel like, I think, if someone is on welfare, it feels like an entitlement.  Also, because the money comes from the government; the truth is, that money is coming from other people who are working.  But, because of the nature of it and the way that it's viewed and even communicated, the person 1) just feels entitled to it; and 2) they don't really see where it's coming from.

So, if you're down and out and you're in a bad position and other people help you, you know who helped you.  You know, okay, when I'm successful, I want to pay back that person, or I just want to say thank you to this person, or I want to thank this individual, or whatever, because they helped me through this period; so, it's a lot more human and natural and reciprocal, etc, versus if it's just some nameless government cuts you some money, or gives you this thing and you can't pay it back really; you don't know where it came from; you don't see who was taxed that money for it to go to you, etc, it sort of feeds this entitlement mentality.

So, I think even from a wider sort of sociological perspective, that's also important; let alone the efficiency.  We know government is the master of wasting money.

Peter McCormack: Absolutely master of wasting money.  Do you know if any work's been done, and I'd love to know this; a study of the net benefit of taxation and redistribution, comparing states?  My friend is about to move out to Sweden.  He's like, "I'm about to move to the Swedish utopia, pay 70% tax", but I don't know the measure of the standard of living there.  I kind of have this outside perspective that it seems pretty good, but I know there are some problems in certain cities and I don't know if that's because of poverty or immigration, or whatever.

I know there are other countries where there is no welfare state and there is high crime rate.  I don't know if you look basically across Europe, which you'd say is a modern liberal democracy, if there is a net benefit to the nation, I don't even know how you measure it, by having some form of welfare state?

Zuby: Yeah, it's hard.  And I think another factor as well is there's the whole, libertarians often say, "Taxation is theft", which it is.  The government, the state, does a lot of things that anyone else would be arrested for if they tried.

Peter McCormack: It's illegal, yeah!

Zuby: So again, as somebody who's kind of like, you have a right to your stuff, I'm not a pro-tax person.  To me, that's an ethical, a moral position.  I very much believe that if you are blessed and you've been successful and you are wealthy and you have excess, maybe this comes from my Christian beliefs, I very much feel like morally, you should give a lot.  You should be very charitable, you should help a lot of people, you should give a lot.

Peter McCormack: And that's you.

Zuby: Yeah, I believe that.  But, I have a massive moral issue with the notion that it should be coerced, that the government should come and put a gun to your head and say, "Hey, man, you've made this much money.  If you don't give us this money", it's extortion, right, "If you don't give us this money, we're going to take it".  It's not just theft; it's robbery.

Peter McCormack: Right, but when you talk about being in your concentric circle, you say, "Outside of libertarian; kind of in conservative", in that kind of zone, and you talk about the government providing certain services?

Zuby: My circle's shrinking too, man; my circle's been shrinking for years.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I can't imagine we can provide those without taxation.  I had a good chat with Dominic Frisby, I don't know if you know him, but I think you would have a great --

Zuby: I know the name.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  I think he's more close to you.  I think he's in between us basically, but he was like, "I'm not opposed to tax; I just don't think it needs to be 40%.  I don't mind 10%, 15% tax".

Zuby: Yeah, I'll be real, man.  When I say I'm libertarian, or I'm libertarian leaning, I'm like, "Look, anything closer to that position --"

Peter McCormack: Smaller.

Zuby: Yeah, exactly.  So, if it's, okay, if you're being taxed 40% and then it's a movement down to 30% or down to 20%; yeah, of course, a hardcore ancap will be like, "No, we must go straight to zero".

Peter McCormack: Zero.  Big red button.

Zuby: Yeah!  But at the same time, I have my sort of ideals and my ideas and then, I'm also very pragmatic and realistic.  So it's like, okay, a shift in this direction.  We were talking before about the pro-life thing; I would love to see a 20%, 30%, 50%, 70%, 80% reduction in the number of human beings who are having their lives terminated before they are born.  Of course I'd love that to be zero; I'd like the murder rate to be zero.  But, anything that shifts that in the right direction to me, I'm like, "Okay, that's a win; that's progress; that's a step forward".

As we all know, man, a lot of things don't happen in reality; you just snap your fingers and, boom, it's done, it's over.  It's like, as we said, the world is very imperfect, things are complicated --

Peter McCormack: Zuby?

Zuby: -- yeah, go ahead!

Peter McCormack: You're a bitcoiner.  All the bitcoiners would say, "Zuby, Bitcoin Fixes This".  I did this interview that stuck with me, a long time ago.  There's this libertarian.  He's a bit of a shitcoiner, but he's a good guy.  He's called Erik Voorhees, he splits community opinion.  I like him; I love interviewing him about libertarian ideas, not Bitcoin versus shitcoins, but he said to me something in, I think our second interview, that really stuck with me.

He said, "I'm not saying, 'Let's get rid of the government'.  Let's just make it smaller.  Next year, 5%, even 1%; let's just make it smaller".  Have you seen that website, WTF Happened in 1971?

Zuby: I haven't, no.

Peter McCormack: Pop it up now; let's show you.  This is really interesting.  This is what all the bitcoiners go on about. 

Zuby: Okay.

Peter McCormack: It's wtfhappenedin1971.com.

Zuby: Okay.  So this guy, Ben Prentice, and another guy, Heavily Armed Clown, it's a really interesting thing.  So, you're probably seeing the chart here, right.  This is where they came off the gold standard essentially.  So, you're seeing the divergence between productivity and compensation.  And you can go all down the charts and you can look at Real GDP and Real Wages and Trade Policies.  You can see all the different charts, all the different divergence starts to happen then they came off the gold standard.

This is why the Bitcoiners say, "The problem is not having sound money, not having this monetary base".  Because, what you've done is you've essentially allowed the government to print money at will.  And, by allowing the government to print money at will, they're essentially destroying money in itself.  And, this allows the government, with the ability to…

Think of it this way, right.  You've got your house, you've got your rent or mortgage, Zuby; and say you want to buy a bigger house, you've got to borrow more money from the mortgage provider.  And, if you can't pay it, they're going to take your house from you.  So you take a loan and you've got to make sure you earn enough money to get by and sometimes you hustle, dude.  Sometimes you go down to Manchester and stand on the street and you sell CDs; you hustle and you've made sure you get it.

The government doesn't hustle.  The government doesn't have the need; it used to when it was on a gold standard, it used to have that kind of overbearer responsibility.  But now they don't have that standard because they've come off it, if they fuck up, if they can't pay their rent, they print more money, or they just take more off us; they just steal from us.  This is the big argument that a lot of the bitcoiners are making, that all, not all but a lot of these issues that we're facing now are because of the money.

I don't know how much time you've looked at this.  I know you hold Bitcoin, or you are a bit of a bitcoiner, but how much have you actually looked at all this?

Zuby: I think there's a very good point that is made there.  I mean, I'm not an expert, but the value of money is tied to labour, right.  So, the more you disconnect money, or the existence or money, or the amount of it, from actual work being done and actual trade of goods and services taking place, the more the currency inflates.  The money becomes less valuable because of simple supply and demand; but also, it's not tied to anything anymore.

So, if nobody's working and nobody's trading goods and services, which is what work is, and money is just kind of being flooded in, then that money quickly becomes worthless.  So I think that, yeah, absolutely.  I haven't seen -- I'm keen to sort of look at this website in more detail, but yeah, definitely going off that gold standard…

I mean, look, if something is unlimited, we all know that if something is unlimited, then it tends to be less valuable.

Peter McCormack: Well, dude, if you had one of your Hewlett Packard printers in your lounge there and you could just print a bunch of cash, I mean you might say, "No, I wouldn't".

Zuby: But, it has no value.  It has no value because it's unlimited and it's not tied to any labour.  So, how far -- I certainly do think some Bitcoin maximalists probably overdo the Bitcoin Fixes This thing and think it literally fixes everything, including moral issues and ethical issues.  I don't think it's that simple as, "Okay, we just get everyone on Bitcoin and we sort of reach this utopia".

I'm not a fan of utopian thinking.  I think utopian thinking is actually very dangerous, as we've seen historically, right, when people imagine their own utopia and then actually seek to create it; it's dangerous.  But, I'm a big fan of incremental improvement; I'm a fan of drastic improvement quickly, when that's feasible and possible; but, I'm also very much a, I would call myself, an "optimistic realist".  So, I want things to always be moving in a good and better direction.

That's one thing that does concern me about the world, I guess, particularly the modern western world, is that by most -- obviously the last year hasn't been great -- but, by most measurable measures, things are way, way better than they used to be and generally than they've ever been, if we're talking certainly in terms of decades.  But, I do worry often about the moral and the ethical, I would say -- I mean, I wouldn't even say a decline in every sense, because in some ways again, things have gotten better.  But I do sometimes worry about where the world is going in that direction, so not just in terms of --

Peter McCormack: The Fourth Turning, man.  Have you read that book?

Zuby: I haven't read it, no.  Who's it by?

Peter McCormack: I'd have to look, is it Neil; I might get that wrong?  Is it Neil?  I want to say Neil.  Strauss-Howe.  I'm thinking of Neil, because it's Neil Strauss; is it Neil Strauss?

Zuby: Neil Strauss is an author, but it doesn't sound like the kind of book he'd write.

Peter McCormack: No, do you know what; I've confused the two, because it's William Strauss and Neil Howe.  I've confused it because Neil Strauss is the guy who's done a lot of those --

Zuby: The Game.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, The Game, but he also did that porn star's biography as well.

Zuby: Yes, he did.

Peter McCormack: Jenna Jameson as well.  He's done a lot of good and interesting stuff.  But, it's a really interesting book.  I did an interview on it, but I think it's that kind of, we're in that period of "good times create weak men" situation and we've seen that kind of, "Yeah, everything seems so good".  My kids have got iPads and my kids have got iPhones, for fuck's sake, like actual iPhones!

Zuby: And that creates its own problems, right; that's a whole new minefield.

Peter McCormack: We should be the happiest; we should be happy; it should be good times, yet everyone is unhappy and shouting at each other.  Perhaps it's the fall of Rome now.

Zuby: People need struggle, man, people need struggle; people need purpose; people need meaning; people need community.  There's a lot more than -- I'm going to be doing a podcast with a massive UBI advocate soon, actually, so even when it comes to something like, besides being libertarian leaning and UBI being a very socialist idea, one of my main big pushbacks against something like that is a lot of the problems, even a lot of the problems that people attribute to poverty, it's not as simple as lack of money, right.

I think we all know that it's an old-age saying that "money doesn't buy happiness", which is true; but we also know that a lot of people's problems, yeah, there are problems that can be fixed with money, but there are a lot that can't.  I mean, the UK, the US, these countries have trillions and trillions of pounds and dollars, etc, but it's not as simple as just, we can throw money at any situation; whether it's individual or on a wider level, and fix it.

I think even doing work, the value of work goes way beyond making money.  So I know a lot of people, they feel like, "Oh, I wish I didn't have to work, I wish I didn't need a job, or whatever, and I could just kind of get money for nothing", but that in itself destroys the human spirit.  I haven't got data on this, but I think that could probably be even looked at with some type of data, not that you can measure spirit, but how people's behaviour changes.

A lot of the value of work is doing something productive that is contributing to society in some way, shape or form, even if you don't really feel like it is.  I don't know, you're a waiter or you're doing customer service or something and maybe you don't feel appreciated, but the truth is, you are offering something of value to society; let alone the fact that you're using your brain, you're physically moving around, you're doing something that is valuable.

So, I think that's kind of the weird thing with money, is that, I don't know; if you or I earned as much money as we did without putting in the work and the grind and the hustle, all that stuff that we were talking about, we would be far less-developed human beings and we wouldn't have all that much to offer the world; we may be not be able to have this conversation, because we would be shells.  We wouldn't have been through this stuff and we wouldn't have this perspective.

So, I don't know, I don't know exactly where I'm going here, but --

Peter McCormack: Proof of work, man; it's proof of work!

Zuby: Yeah, literally!  Great way to put it; proof of work; and that's where the value comes from and that's where I feel like a human being, certainly both men and women, but I'd say especially as a man.  I mean, look, if you take away a man's work, then you leave him a shell of himself, right?  You leave him a shell.

We know that if a man loses his job or a woman loses her job, the man is far more likely to fall into depression; at an extreme, he's far more likely to have suicidal thoughts, things like that; because as a man, we know that in society, whether within our family or just in society in general, our sort of value and self-esteem, our self-worth, our confidence, all of that is tied to our work and being able to provide and being able to do something.  So, if you take that away from a man, it really emasculates him, etc.

It's also why I don't really like the idea of retirement.  And I find that actually, when men retire, that's when they really start to age; that's when they really, really start to age.  If they keep working, you know, my dad's in his mid-70s and he's still working and I'm glad he is, because it keeps him sharp, it keeps him engaged with society, it keeps him feeling valuable and he's doing something that's -- you know, if he'd retired ten years ago and for the past decade had just been sitting there, I don't think he'd be in as good a state.

Peter McCormack: Check out Mick Jagger; check out the Rolling Stones.  They're all like 106 and still strutting it on stage, going down the gym and making babies.  Didn't one of them just have a baby and he's like 84 or something?

Zuby: Yeah!

Peter McCormack: I mean, Mick Jagger goes to the gym every day; he's thin; he looks good.  If he didn't have the incentive to get on stage -- actually, how old is he?  Am I being an arsehole?

Zuby: He's probably in his 70s.

Peter McCormack: What are you going to say; I haven't looked it up.  I'm going to go 82; what are you going to say?

Zuby: Wow, okay, I don't think he's that old.  I'm going to say 75.

Peter McCormack: 77.  But still, he's 77.  He's still strutting it.

Zuby: I think we're kind of like sharks, you know; if sharks stop swimming, they suffocate, right?  So, I think it's like you've got to stay in motion.  I think even with the human body, if you don't move, you atrophy, your muscles literally atrophy, you weaken.  I'm looking forward to the gyms opening soon so I can see how weak I've become, but I've still been training. 

But, if you don't keep moving, whether it's your brain, it's your mind, whatever it is; you have to stay in motion, you have to stay doing things, you have to stay creating a struggle and I think this is also a big part of some of these social issues and whether we're talking all this woke stuff or this SJW thing, whatever, I think a lot of it comes from the fact that human beings crave -- it's weird; we're always trying to avoid struggle, but we also crave it.

Peter McCormack: I'm with you.

Zuby: I think that's why, you know, now -- dude, we're in 2021.  I've never seen more people, especially online, talking about white supremacy.  It's 2021!  I'm like, "What are you guys even talking about?  Where are all these white supremacists?"  I keep hearing about white supremacy; I'm like, I wasn't hearing this in 2011 or 2001 or even 1991.  Have the KKK just made some huge comeback; are there neo-Nazis?  I'm like, no, but they've just diluted all these terms and are literally inventing things in their brain to have this monster to fight against.

Peter McCormack: I need drama; I need drama!

Zuby: Yeah, but it's really, really bizarre when you get super-duper feminists and, "The patriarchy this!" and I'm kind of like, "You live in London.  What are you talking about?"  When you say, "the patriarchy" it's like this ghost; it's like this ghost that's just hovering around and I'm like, "What exactly are you talking about?"  They often can't even describe it; they can't define what they're saying, but they just sort of feel this thing.  I'm like, "This is weird".

Why can't you just go, "Actually, you know what; things are not perfect, but actually they're pretty good.  If you live in the UK in 2021, things are pretty good".  I know right now, the situation is not great, but generally speaking…

Peter McCormack: I know what you're saying.  Let's go back 15 months, things were okay, right; things were okay.

Zuby: Yeah, things were more than okay.  If you have any global perspective, or historical perspective, it would be hard to argue.  I remember I tweeted this once, I think I tweeted this two or three years ago; it went viral, but it was quite controversial, which says a lot, because I said, "If you live in the UK or the USA right now, you live in one of the least racist, least sexist, least homophobic countries in the world, in the least racist, least sexist and least homophobic time period ever in history" and I somehow got flak from that; and I was like, that's a good thing.

Peter McCormack: Can I give you my favourite Zuby quote, and you did it on my show, and I don't know if you've said it before; can I give you my favourite Zuby quote?

Zuby: Okay!

Peter McCormack: "The demand for racism vastly outstrips supply"!

Zuby: Real talk.

Peter McCormack: So true, Zuby.  Listen, man, this has been awesome.  You know I could talk to you for hours.  This has already gone on longer than I thought I would, but I slipped in a little bit of Bitcoin; I had to do it, man.  Okay, listen, when's the album out?

Zuby: So, I don't know when this comes out, but the Kickstarter is running until 14 April.  If you pre-order it on there, you will get it in May.  The physical ones are going to be in June and most likely, July or August for the vinyl; and generally, the wider release is looking like June or July.  I don't have a set date yet.  But, yeah, exciting times.

Peter McCormack: When do you think you'll be performing onstage again?

Zuby: Oh, man, I think this summer, honestly.  It might not be in the UK, but I think this summer.  It might end up being in Texas and Florida and all of that, but we'll see!  I don't know where the UK is; I don't know where the UK's going; but I'm not going to be there in a couple of months' time.

Peter McCormack: Down the shithole!

Zuby: Yeah, it's disturbing.  I'm very concerned for the future of this country in a way that I've never been before.  I do really, really hope that things sort of snap back and people quite quickly go to normal, just as quickly as they fell into this weird sort of madness and totalitarianism, but I think it's a real fight.  I think it's an important fight that people need to fully reclaim their freedom and not allow the government to just continue to bull them around, push them around and keep shifting the goalposts and keep doing this and doing that.

I mean, every day, the justification for all of this stuff gets weaker and weaker and weaker, especially now the vaccines are there.  We've got 90% of the people who are 90% of the deaths and hospitalisations who are already immunised.  I don't know; there were like ten deaths yesterday, or something like that?  I mean, stuff is going to open; I just hope that it snaps back really quickly; that's what I hope for.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I agree, man.  Well, listen, I appreciate you, man; I definitely learn from you; I definitely reconsider things from you; I don't always agree with you.

Zuby: That's all good, man.

Peter McCormack: I do definitely rethink positions.  My circle's getting smaller.  I think I'm going to end up in Texas; I really do!  I fucking love it there, I do.  I love the people; I love life there; and I like Austin, because Austin just has that nice mix of blue and red.  It's kind of purple; I like it.  You can go and get your bit of red, you can go and get your bit of blue; I like it.

But, dude, good luck with the album. 

Zuby: Thank you very much, bro.

Peter McCormack: Anything I can do for you, you know you can reach out to me and love what you're doing, man.  Peace out.

Zuby: Thanks so much, man.  Appreciate it, Peter.