Ivor Crotty - Russia Today

Full transcript: Ivor Crotty on London Real

9:06 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. I am sitting here with Mr Ivor Crotty, having a little sip of Bulletproof Coffee. Yeah, yeah, it’s going down very well. Feeling that when I said there was butter in your coffee, you gave me that funny look.

9:20 Like I did. Did I really come to the right place today? Uh-huh. I wasn’t quite sure, but after first sip I was convinced. Come on, that’s, and let me recommend it to everybody listening, who’s watching.

9:30 I’m going to hook you up so you can take some of that back with you to Moscow. Thanks, dude. For people that don’t know you, just arrived from Moscow, is that right? Definitely, in this morning. Yeah, okay, you are the head of social media for RT, which is the television network, I think, formerly known as Russia Today.

9:45 Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Last year you guys, I think, became the first television news station in history to reach a billion views on YouTube. We did. That’s impressive. We just hit 5 million, so congrats.

9:57 You know, it was a long. We’ve got a ways to go to keep up with you guys. I think you guys are available to like 85 million people in the US, maybe that’s gone up. Since I checked that stat, it’s a big number of people in the US. In London, you guys are rocking Mr Max Kaiser, who’s been sitting right there, stable in this chair.

10:15 I feel, yeah, he’s been on that chair, and the first time we had him on it was about, oh, yeah, I mean, he was crazy. He was just like going off about Bitcoin and Bernanke, and like at one point it was me and Alessio Rastani in here, the guy that said Goldman Sachs rules the world on BBC, and both of us were like, oh my gosh, because Max was like, it was almost like spitting into the microphone. It was absolutely fantastic, and he’s been here again. He hosted on Silicon Real as well.

10:38 He’s into tech, he’s into Bitcoin, as you know. We’ll talk more, Max, more about Max later. You guys obviously have George Galloway with the Sputnik show here in London. George was one of our early guests on here, and he actually charmed the pants off of me. It was really weird, because I, I pre for George, watching all these YouTube videos, and most of his videos started off with “the Rupert Murdoch media is never going to give me a fair shake,” and he was yelling, and then he was here.

11:00 He’s the most charming dude when he wants to be. Very eloquent man. Oh yeah, very eloquent man. Historian, everything. The one thing I didn’t get to ask him was, I didn’t get to ask him about Fidel Castro, and I was kicking myself little, like, what’s it like to hang out with Fidel Castro?

11:13 So, George, we’ll get you back on for that. In America, RT America, you guys have some really breaking stuff. You’ve got obviously Abby Martin, you’ve got this whole kind of steady-cam shot that’s really, it’s just really, really brings the audience in, and you guys are doing impressive stuff there. Aaron Maté as well, and also over in London, Going Underground. I know, I think it’s a, he’s doing that show, you know.

11:36 I always know what his shows, like, because my guests come to London Real, and then I see him on his show, so it’s the sincerest form of flattery. And I want to say thank Aaron for that. It’s a great show. Yeah. He started with a new concept recently, the RT London Bureau is just getting on its feet right now, big time, and Aaron brought it, the A, and the guys came back with the Going Underground concept, and I think they’ve been really brave.

11:56 Yeah, they’re, you know, they’re not afraid to try and come up with something that’s a little bit of innovative, a little bit different to what you’re going to get on other channels, that’s, call them the mainstream. But yeah, options going great guns. I like it. It’s got a fresh camera style. It’s got a little bit longer of a format, which is nice.

12:13 They’re standing up, and yeah, he’s had Annie Machon, the former MI5 whistleblower, on, and he just had Todd Pierce. We had talking about Guantanamo Bay, lots of people. So that’s great stuff. Just want to finish out your intro. You are recovering newsroom junkie.

12:26 I want to hear what that means later, being the head of social media. You were the style editor for 5 years. I want to hear more about that. You’re an Irishman based in Moscow. Ivor, welcome to London Real.

12:36 Thanks a lot. Great to be here, Brian. Great to be here. It’s so good to have you here. It’s weird, because, you know, you probably will think that I’ve known you for a long time, but we just met, and, you know, he’s coming over to East London thinking, like, what the heck is this London Real thing.

12:48 But you know, thanks so much for being here. We were introduced to a mutual friend, Mr Bales, so it’s great to have you here. It’s just weird to think that, you know, you’re an Irishman in London. You just came from Moscow, living there for 5 years. I was in Moscow for eight years.

13:02 Okay, wow. For you know, I just, I’m going to go back to one of my earliest memories of RT. I think it was ‘ 06, and I used to get it on my cable channel in London. I used to watch it. It was still based in Moscow.

13:14 I remember Peter Lavelle doing the imos, where he would, you know, he would give his humble opinions about different world affairs. He had an American accent, spoke like an American, but would take some very interesting points of view about Russia and the Kremlin. And I remember seeing a black cab that was painted in RT, and I was like, wow, okay. And now, fast forward to now. You know, you guys are everywhere.

13:37 You’re hugely embraced, you know, social media, YouTube, and all that, and yeah, particularly, yeah, I was just wondering what has been, what has it been like for you to watch kind of the creation of RT as a brand, and what was it like back in the day? All right, well, look, so I’m four years in RT, so I came in 2009. Okay, and where was it then? Then it was, let’s have a look at who was president, I guess is probably the best way to start it. So Dmitri Medvedev was President of Russia at the time, which was between Putin’s two stints, let’s say, and Medvedev’s message at the time was real, like, you know, Silicon Valley modernization, technology.

14:19 You know, he visited Twitter and Facebook and stuff, and these were the kind of, like, the pivotal kind of pillars around which he was building his presidency. So the message, the message we were getting out there was this one around modernization, and you know, the necessity for Russia to diversify its economy, to embrace tech, to bring in partnerships, to improve the investment climate, you know, all of the key elements that, you know, standard elements so that it started there. He visited Twitter and Facebook, didn’t he?

14:50 I can’t picture Putin visiting Twitter and Facebook. No, not his style. Well, Putin famously doesn’t use the internet. Is nobody says, like, I don’t use it, because it’s you know, everything’s bugged, you know. Okay, all right.

14:59 So Vlad doesn’t go there, right? Well, he has a history in the secret services, so he does, you know. And I think he says he doesn’t use a mobile as well. Might say that. Yeah, he was probably saying this two years ago, and now we find out that the US is listening, is bugged.

15:13 Yeah, yeah. Merkel’s bugged by the US. Yeah. So who’s crazy, right? Yeah, yeah.

15:18 Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, and to let’s call, you know, let’s be boun here as well, though. I mean, you know, the FSB after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the FSB set up a program called SORM, which you may have read about, which is effectively the kind of the technological base for Russia’s NSA, to some extent. SORM. Look at that.

15:37 Yeah. So it’s, it’s not like, so it’s not like it doesn’t happen at all in Russia. I mean, obviously, you know that’s kind of public. Yes, it is, absolutely. Yeah, you can, I think there’s a Wikipedia page and stuff for, okay, for monitoring internet or monitoring everything.

15:48 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, certainly works down through ISPs. I think there’s definitely situation there, internet providers. So, anyhow, yeah, so to go back, so I came into that. I come out of investigative journalism in Ireland, and I’d come into Moscow and started work in the now-defunct RIA Novosti, which was kind of a, which is a major news agency set up, one of Russia’s primary news agencies.

16:12 It’s recently been liquidated by a presidential signature in December last. It’s being reconstituted right now. So I worked there, and then did a couple of years in, marketing communications and mobile advertising, and that’s where I got my Digi SAS, my sense of Digi. Okay, okay. And came into RT, and it you know, you just, I walked into the organization, and, you know, I was a little bit, I guess, afraid of, you know, upsetting anybody.

16:41 You know, I didn’t want to. I figured, oh my God, there’s got to be a party line here, and you know, it’s just a matter of time before I step over it, and I’m going to get my ass fired, and it’s, you know, whatever it is, you know, it’s going to lose my job, etc. Is this like 50 people in a building in Moscow? This, yes, probably at that stage. Only there’s definitely a few hundred people working there.

17:01 I think they already set up an Arabic channel by that stage, and Spanish, so they kicked off in ’06, and I think ’08 they moved out into Arabic and Spanish for sure, but still based in Moscow. Yeah, based in Moscow. Yeah. I think there was all the DC bureau got set up as well, but then once the Spanish and the Arabic got set up, then they started moving into those particular worlds as well. Then let’s say, like, I know that they keep the Spanish guys have a bureau in Buzar, for example.

17:26 Okay, very important city from our point of view. So yeah, so I get in and the guys asked. I wasn’t really sure what I could do. I hadn’t done that much work on TV. I’m a radio guy, and I love radio, and I’ve been investigative reporting, so that was kind of long form.

17:42 Okay, so they put me on the news desk in the Newsroom and they asked me to help sharpen the headlines, to help sharpen what you read on the screen. Yeah. So, like, with the, we’ve got this one where we start a package or we start a story, we’ll give you a headline, we call it a slug. Yeah, it’s, it’s like a one-worder thing or a two-word thing, and then we follow up with the two-line CG, which kind of frames basically the story and what we want to put, you know, and and when you started, that wasn’t even being done.

18:14 It was being done. Yeah, but it was not being done as well as it could be, put it that way. Yeah. I mean, the guys were just, there were just fundamental mistakes being made across the board, where I think we were backfiring. You know, like, I remember this just back in the day, you know, Georgian president Saakashvili claims Russia is rearming for a new invasion or something, you know, and the guys run this on screen, on text, Georgian president Saakashvili claims Russia rearming for a new invasion, and you’re like, guys, that’s, you know, that’s what his PR agency in New York wants you to put on screen, you know, some kids on a bonus, you know, for getting that on RT.

18:51 Right? Can we, can we look a little bit more critically at how we’re putting that out, and kind of, you know, talk about maybe president playing the fear card. He’s got no evidence. You know, like, you know, hand something back, frame it a little bit more You know, robustly, and strengthen the message. Plus, it doesn’t add to the story if you’re just giving a transcript, anyways.

19:07 Right, come on, you know, it’s, it’s just for btim, isn’t it? You know, and it’s just press release for btim. So anyhow, that was where I got into, and started doing that, and I really enjoyed it, and that it kind of started work back from the screen, back into the editorial process and production process, and got me involved with pretty much the entire production pipeline, in, you know, in a great way. The guys were just awesome and open, and you know, nobody had a turf issue within the organization.

19:34 So you were, and you were worried about hitting the party line. You said always? Yeah, yeah. You always worried about hitting the party line? Yeah, yeah, of course you do.

19:40 Were you the only Western there? No, man. They’d hired a bunch of them, a bunch of guys, Brits. Yeah, mostly Brits. Brit because they’re close, ’cause, yeah, because they’re close, and because they had the language, so there were guys who came out of BBC, and guys came from ITV, ITN, Euronews, that kind of stuff, and the guys, so they came over, you know, legendarily.

20:01 The packages being offered around that time were above market. Okay, and was Al Jazeera doing the same thing, or I don’t know? I don’t know what they were offering. I just remember they were kind, you know, getting newsrooms in London, and seem they’re doing now. I’m my God Almighty, do you hear that?

20:18 There’s an old wives’ tale about the big, like, the 200 vacancies they put up in New York. Couple, was it two years ago? Last year, before last? And there’s a story going around that, like, they got 2 million applicants, like, for I want here in New York. You know, can you imagine?

20:32 Because of the salary, or because of everything. I think, yeah, I think everything, you know, New York package as well. I mean, wouldn’t everybody love to go? Like, every young journalist, you know, would, who’s, who thinks, hey, you know, it’s a digital world, you know, the old institutions are losing ground. There’s a lot of open space there for young kids with good ideas, you know, I, so I think I don’t know if we were competing with Al Jazeera to that extent, like on the Saturday level.

20:57 But anyhow, they brought a lot of guys in. Yeah, sure. And, you know, and then of course comes the churn. You’re always going to get it. Yeah.

21:05 And I had, I was one of the few who came in to RT, having done other work in Russia. So I done, like, journalism, and then done like corporate, you know, kind of client-facing, or investor-facing stuff. So you speak Russian? I speak a little bit. Yeah, I’m okay.

21:22 I’m okay. I never studied it. I wish I studied it, but you don’t need it. Everything you’re doing was in English. Yeah, everything you do in Mark is in English, and then, you know, when it comes to work as well, then I mean, conversations that you do have in Russian, I mean, they’re very formulated.

21:34 They’re very standardized, aren’t they? You know, you can just, oh, we need to have this kind of conversation about the s*** printer toner or whatever it is, you. So it’s not that necessary. No, it’s not that necessary. Absolutely not, you know, and the guys, well, and that’s because of, like, the extraordinary guys that are working there.

21:49 Just brilliant people, you know, who speak. You just meet these people that “Hi, I’m 24 years old, I’m working in this RT News Room in English. I’m Russian, and you know, I’m really finding it hard to, you know, construct broadcast quality copy in a language that’s not my first language. I’m like, okay, well, you know, I’m going to respect you because you’re trying, and I’m going to help you out. And during that conversation that you’re having with these people, they also tell you that actually English is probably like their third foreign language.

22:20 They’re better at Arabic or they’re better at Spanish. Seriously, you know, and you come across these people, you know, they’re absolutely amazing. So very professional. Basically, well, I think very dedicated, and I think the channels learn professionalism as it’s gone on. I mean, as any organization would, you know, there’s always a learning curve.

22:34 Okay, all right. So you’re there, you’re seeing the kind of the Genesis, or I guess you’re trying to find out what it’s ultimately going to become, as far as what the news network, what the feel is. So how is that? I mean, how does that evolve, or what do you see? Well, we, I got lucky in a way, because what I was doing on TV got noticed.

22:54 We got into a little bit of trouble from time to time for, you know, crossing the line of taste. I’ll, what’s an example of that? Well, I’ll give you one. I’ll give you one, definitely. Give you one.

23:08 Well, one was Sergey Lavrov, the Russian minister was meeting the head of, I think, they’re called the Zionist Organization of America, something like that, it’s a very powerful AIPAC lobby group. Okay, and Lavrov was the, he was the senior figure in the Middle East quartet, this quartet that’s designated with responsibility for kind of shepherding the Middle East towards some kind of peaceful situation. And so we, now, RT takes, I would say, you know, a pretty tough stance on the situation, in Israel and Palestine right now.

23:47 And RT’s angle is certainly, wouldn’t be described as pro-Israeli. yeah, and definitely not, even though Russia has a lot of ties, course, huge cultural ties, a lot of Russ, exactly. absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Politically, yeah.

24:01 I think there’s always been a strong relationship there between, with the Palestinians, going back to the, you know, to the Soviet, and they probably also have an opposite view from what the US wants to do. Exactly. You know, makes sense. You know, makes sense. So, anyhow, so these guys are in Moscow for a couple of days, and they’re meeting Lavrov.

24:19 And we do this, like, really, like, little, like, you know, 20 minutes into the news block, this small drop-off piece with, like, you know, just the update on Lavrov is meeting these guys, and they’re here is part of a delegation, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever, and there might be a bit of news for it, but anyhow, so the mischievous part of me, the Irishman in me, decides, well, we can play a bit of, we can play with this, and so I’m just sitting there thinking of, like, funny headlines that we can write, and my line is, well, hey, look, Lavrov is the senior guy in the quartet and it’s a really serious business, and as part of his responsibility he’s got to meet these guys, you know, when they come to Moscow, he might NE, not necessarily, want to, in other than the fact that he’s got this big responsibility to do so as part of the quartet.

25:07 So I’m thinking, well, maybe we could run the line, due diligence. Wow, okay. That’s, yeah, wow, and didn’t, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I regret, like, I regret having done it. You know, I mean, let me be very clear about that. I regret having done it.

25:26 I think it was over the line, and it was in bad taste, but we ran it, but you’re in a place like RT where you can kind of experiment, but you can do that kind, like, you know, you’re kind of like the blog of the TV at the time, where you can play with things, and there’s no, like, some guy in New York yes, there’s no fixed, fast formats. You know, it’s really exciting, really ex, which is why you guys have made such progress when it comes to social media. And also that’s what’s great about digital.

25:48 Yeah, that’s what’s also about digital, isn’t it, is that everything has just collapsed? And right now I just love it. It’s to me, it’s like, you know, it’s, it’s like the old, the golden days of punk, or something. It’s just like, you know, you have guitar-based drums, put them in a van, you know, go and make your music, right? You know, right?

26:03 And you don’t have some guy like Morley Safer over there in the corner, saying, yeah, we never did it this way. Yeah, for example, because some of those old-school journalist guys are hardcore, right? And they’re like, this is the way we do it, and that kind, sure. Like, look, I mean, you know, I think you know there’s a, there’s the legacy issues, yeah, and but legacy is a, can be a great thing, and legacy can be a real pain in the ass, and it can, it, you know, can be a ball and chain around your foot, and you’ve got to figure out which elements you know, which elements work and which elements don’t for, you know, for brand.

26:32 So yeah, so we got into the, basically, we started working on the digital side when we started looking at YouTube, taking them seriously, four years back. Wow. And one, I was approached by Carill Kovich, who’s now head of Web projects at RT, and Carill and I basically struck up a creative partnership, where I would help him work with, how, you know, bagging and tag and setting stuff up on YouTube, and just, you know, just trying to create a language and a vocabulary that’s as dynamic as possible, and you know, get stuff out there, you know, get ourselves noticed, and do you want did you want your footage to have shelf life?

27:10 Was that always something, or did you just want it to get to the most eyeballs as possible? We wanted eyeballs. Okay, all right. Yeah, absolutely. It’s what we’re there for.

27:19 It’s what right now. I think, from that point of view, I think it’s what YouTube’s there for, isn’t it? You know, I mean, say it yourself, holy mael art is the first channel, first news TV news channel to you hit the billion. Yeah, you know, so I think, yeah, we’re there for eyeballs. We went there for eyeballs, and what we’ve learned since is a whole lot more, you know, than that.

27:38 That’s totally, I think it’s starting to empower elements of the organization that I really didn’t expect to be able to reach with kind of a digital media message or a social media message. This is an interesting point you make, because in my job I meet social media experts all the time, and they send me emails and like one way I found of being a social media expert is having it be business, is, like, I’m sure you figured it out. Me, once you’re in the trenches and you get that feedback loop, you start to learn, well, like, probably no other channel what it’s like to try to juggle a billion views and what works and what doesn’t.

28:09 Right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know. I mean, and our people tell us, you know, and that’s what I love about it.

28:14 I love it for that. You know, like, we do stuff on TV on a regular basis, but you know, you go into the TV studio, you do it live. It’s great, it’s really exciting. You know, you’re dry-mouthing, you’re nervous, you’re like, you know, but you do it, and you know, there’s silence, whereas, you know, on YouTube you put something up there, you know, and off it goes, bang. You know, you put it on Facebook, whatever it is.

28:40 You know, the trolls are awoken on TW, on Twitter, whatever it could be. You know, so yeah, I think that’s, that’s like, you know, best of juice for us, you know. So we learned really quick, yeah, what our people like, um, and we try and give it to him. Okay. Is real simp, is part of your job?

28:55 I mean, you know, social media. I mean, social media platforms change all the time, and we were talking earlier about how, you know, YouTube can one day all of a sudden decide that, he, the games change. Guys, all of a sudden, you know, especially as a, you probably enjoyed a lot of benefits as a partner in the past, and then all of a sudden, now everyone can do partner things and do pre-roll videos and put thumbnails up, and things like that. And then Facebook changes the name of the game, and they change what a like is worth, and they change everything.

29:17 So is part of your job knowing what, knowing what the changes are going to be, or trying to deal with those changes? Like, part of it is, yeah, part of it is, like, you know, there, brothers, like, you know, I’m not I’m not the only, you know, social media point guy, or whatever, you know. We have a marketing department. We have, like, Web projects, commercial department, you know, so we, you know, we pool, or, you know, we get the wagons in a ring when it comes to these guys, because, you know, they’re business people at the end of the day, you know what I mean?

29:45 They’re going to do what’s good for their business, right? And, you know, I’m not that’s not a criticism. That’s just an observation of fact, and, you know, I think you’ve got to make sure that your interests are being represented, you know. So I think, you know, I’m evangelistic about a lot of elements of digital media and social media, and particularly when it comes to news, but I’m not evang terribly evangelistic about the idea of, you know, making a profit.

30:13 That’s kind of an old-school idea, isn’t it, you know what I mean? Just like, you know, guys running a business, and they’re doing very well. They just happen to be, you know, the Google guys happen to be enormous business, you know? Yeah. With, you know, huge influence over over how we live and, you know, how we consume media.

30:28 Yeah. What is your, as far as, like, online versus your broadcasting, is there a split there for you guys? I mean, I know there’s much more feedback with the online. Is that something you guys think about? Is it small, completely, completely different?

30:39 Man, like, you know, Golden Rule, you know, is like, when I came into the social media job, and my, the first thing I did was to go back to all of the various showmakers in RT, so go back to, like, the likes of Abby and Max and these guys, and you know, we have a host of other great shows in there. We also have a great technology show. There’s a, there’s a documentary channel that we’re running, and talk to these guys and say, guys, you know, don’t give me television to put on the internet and expect people to watch it.

31:11 You just can’t do that, you know? So we’ve had to go back and re-educate these guys to become content creators, as much as you know, talented directors and producers. And so I think, like, the differences are just enormous, you know. Chalk and cheese. Chalk and cheese.

31:26 There’s, like, when it comes to news as well, on TV, there’s an element of me that thinks that anchorman is a documentary. I was about to say, don’t you think so? I was wondering what you were thinking that, you know, because it’s a dying breed or a changing breed. I think it’s, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s dying.

31:42 I don’t think it’s dying. No, because when you told me it’s definitely changing, it’s changing. When you told me about those titles that you ran for Saakashvili, I remember in Anchorman, Anchorman 2, isn’t there a point where they’re running, like, all of these titles all over? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s it. You know, I mean, I think so.

31:56 I think there’s an element, like, there’s an irony-free element to TV news broadcast that is conspicuous by its absence when you compare it to the kind of tone and the way news is delivered and consumed and responded to online. You know what I mean? Geez, man, we slice and dice each other in 30 seconds. You know what I mean? It’s like, I want it in 140 characters.

32:19 I’ll take it, and I consume this thing in one and a half seconds. I’m not clicking through to anything. People, I’m continuing on Twitter and I’m going away. I have the information. That’s all I need.

32:28 You know, you’re so, whereas in TV, you know, God Almighty, you’ve got so much responsibility there. It’s, you know, it costs so much money. You’ve got guys, you, there’s a team of what, 20 people around you who’ve, who are participating in the construction of whatever piece of journalism or whatever you know piece of TV performance you might be delivering, you know. So that’s very old school in your way. Yeah.

32:48 So I think I think you’ve got to be, you know, you’ve got to be more like you’re part of a bigger team that costs more, and therefore you’ve got better, bigger responsibility to, you know, to just make sure you don’t f*** up, right? Flip side of that is, I just thought of, like, The Young Turks, like these guys that are, like, YouTube enabled. They start it off on YouTube, they use it to the utmost ability. Jen, the guy that started it is actually on the Rogan Experience today, and I’m listening to him talk about the Genesis of it, and I didn’t realize that he actually had a long kind of storied kind of journalistic career where he was trying to break in via SiriusXM radio, and he was running kind of a young version, even like an O2, so it wasn’t just like four years ago.

33:31 But now these guys are like almost purely internet enabled. We’re big fans of their, not what do you, what do you think of them, what do you see? I think we think they’re awesome. We think they’re awesome. We met Jr from The Young Turks at News Exchange in Morocco last year, year before, and we just sat down.

33:52 We invited them to come, because we absolutely love what they do, and we were running a session on new forms of, basically, new forms. Yeah, it’s like the Roni Size drum and bass album back in the day, the one, the Mercury, New Forms, and we we were New Forms, and we ran the session on new forms, and we brought Jr from LA, and he came over. He said, “Jr, is that Jen or is that, is that no? JR’s another one of the guys on the show. Yeah, Jen and Ana are, Jen and Ana are front-facing.

34:21 Yeah, really like the people that, the big names, let’s say, but we love them. We love what they did from the moment they started doing it. You know, because they, you know, again, you know, that’s, they’re just bringing a voice that is entirely sensible, and is totally unrepresented in mainstream media, right? And now, with the tech, it’s so easily to, and now it’s all over the place, right? Yeah.

34:44 Or not all over the place, but now these guys are going to be huge, and deservedly so. They work their asses off. Yeah, they got like 22 different channels. They’re, yeah, I mean, they’re live for, well, I don’t, I think their news channel is probably live for four or five or six hours a day, something like that. I don’t know, but he was kind of walking me through the business model, and it was interesting, you know, to see.

35:01 So you see something like that, and you’re thinking we need to kind of go that way, but then again, you’re in the television business. I remember Max Kaiser told me one time, off camera, he’s like, “Brian, television isn’t dead.” He’s like, “I get 20 million people watching me on RT. I like, those are big numbers, you know. His YouTube views might be between 20 and 50,000, so there’s that big audience in television.

35:21 So how do you put those two things together in your head? Oh man, I just, like, to be honest, I think there’s an element of incompatibility, and I’m totally reconciled with that. I do. Yeah, I do think they’re just, like, incompatible in many ways. We’ve got a great length to represent social media events on television.

35:39 So we’ve done these scenes where we did them around the Sochi Olympics, where we ran a whole analytics package about how, what hashtags were trending in what cities, and you could see, you could juice from that. How I saw that piece, they got you in front of the camera, which is good, right? You seem very comfortable in front of the camera. That, yeah, yeah, yeah. No worries, I mean, like I said, you get nervous, because, you know, there’s a lot of people relying on you.

36:01 You’ve got to set up the graphics and you’ve got to do it all. Right, very exciting. And it’s live. Yeah, that’s no joke. Yeah, I watched these.

36:06 I watched the live, people like Abby, or I saw you on that Sochi Olympics bank, and I’m like, and like, okay, maybe someone did a bit of a, or a flub, and I’m like, this is live, baby. There’s no, you know, they did great, because they didn’t fall over. So you were doing a whole social media platform where you could see where people were tweeting from, what the hashtag was going on. Funny enough, I was actually at Google campus, which is right down the road here, and they have something similar, where you can see, you know, where the Google campus is being tweeted all over the world.

36:32 You would set something up like that for Sochi? Yeah, we worked with Trendsmap. Okay, and they’re great guys, great guys, and they’ve been really, really helpful. And what we were seeing, because, well, what pissed me off first of all was that I was, I came across Trendsmap. I was like, “F***ing hell, this is great.

36:48 You know, we’ve got to use this. We’ve got to use this all the time, because it, you know, it’s just going to tell so much. But then you have a look at how it was being used on TV, and and like people were just like typing in their search hashtag. So it could, let’s say, you know, Ukraine, and they hit return, and they run a search, and then map of the world, blah, up come the hashtags. Yeah, like you know, with the bigger the blacker, the bigger the blacker, the more int.

37:16 Yeah, and then like they put this on the TV screen, and a news anchor goes, “This is how much around the world people are talking about Ukraine.” Yeah, I like, no, it’s b******t, not, yeah, because there’s nothing, there’s no benchmark to measure it against, you know? Maybe it’s just colored into pictures, you know what I mean? It’s not, so you’ve got to use it in a more sensitive, like, intelligent way, because intelligent search, and come on, like, and you can’t, like, so you’ve got to give people, like, okay, well, if that’s what they’re talking about, Ukraine, can you show us what they’re talking about?

37:44 American football, or, you know, soccer, or what you, you know, like, and they will dwarf whatever’s going on politically, you know what I mean? You also get a very clear picture of the Anglophonic strength of Twitter, for example, right? And you see that very very clearly in what that dominates. Absolutely, absolutely. And is anyone using this in real time?

38:04 Like, I don’t want to. I don’t watch a lot of news, but are people using that on a regular basis? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like, there’s there’s a bunch of great platforms out there, right now. There’s a lot of really, really clever people creating really clever stuff for people who want to understand their news market, reach it, engage with a little bit more deeply, grow audience, you know.

38:23 So yeah, there’s loads of stuff out there. I’ll, I’m going to, like, two Irish companies. Let me Storyful is a great, great company, that story. Yeah, Storyful, set up by a former news anchor, an Irish news anchor called Mark Little and some other guys, and Mark, Mark, as I say, went from big hair to big data, and he, Mark, Mark set up this business. They sold it to Murdoch.

38:44 Murdoch’s people bought it three, four months ago, 25 million bucks, I think, something like that. They had a bunch of guys verifying video content coming out of Syria, for example, in particular, but they’ve said they’ve got an entire suite of products for news organizations that patch them through, you know, quality information, basically, and real time. You’ve got Twitter lists, and you’ve got video licensing going on in in within their dashboard. That’s one great company.

39:08 Another great company is guys in Dublin, Spike NewsWhip. They give you like real-time trending social media trending for articles. You can geo them, you can section them, you can do it by publication. It’s absolutely awesome. So we can watch, you know, you can watch your own stuff go viral.

39:25 Okay. You know, literally the news experience, interactive, with RT now, around the world. Like, are you constantly putting out the hashtags and getting feedback from Twitter and interacting with it, with the web? Not so much, not so much with Twitter. No.

39:38 Twitter for us is mostly a broadcast mechanism, because it’s too trolly. Man, it’s just too trolly. Yeah, so for us it’s, it’s the bicycle wheel. Yeah, that’s Twitter for us right now. Get the info out there, attach an infographic or an image, and get it up and running.

39:53 Facebook is where the engagement happens. Okay, yeah, that’s where people sign, you know, people like you because they like you, right? And it’s not anonymous, and so people can. Exactly. Yeah, okay.

40:02 We talked about the Turks. Let me just hit a few other competitors. Tell me what you think. BBC or Fox News. Let’s talk BBC first.

40:10 When you hear BBC, I mean, part of me thinks, you know, way behind the times, slow to adapt. But then there’s the BBC player, and they seem to have got some of their game. Another news media organization, people work, work in that organization? Question, another company that’s funded by a government, right? you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.

40:27 Look, as an Irishman, I got my own take on the BBC, you know. I got like got my own take on like the great institutions of Empire, Auntie, they used to call it. Did you ever hear that, Auntie? Yeah, they used to, “Auntie, Auntie.” Oh, “Auntie.”

40:38 That’s what the BBC was called. The B used to be known as Auntie. Nobody says that anymore. Don’t, why H? But yeah, look, you know, I mean, you know, IR, I’m 44 years old.

40:46 I’m born in 1969, you know. Troubles kicked off in 1969, not too far, you know, like 80 miles up the road. I have a big American audience, so you might have to walk him through some of the basics. Okay. sure.

40:56 So you know, I’m born in Derry City, Ireland, 1969. You know, and around about that time, the what starts as a nascent kind of civil rights movement turns into, you know, a small version of kind of what’s going on in Ukraine right now, almost, you know? I mean, some kind of, you know, minor civil war situation with our paramilitaries, and a, well, in this case, there’s a security force that was that kind of colluded with loyal paramilitaries, and like, it’s just a dirty, dirty situation.

41:29 So I grew up with all of that, and the BBC represented the Empire, well, to some extent. Yeah, you know, it did. I mean, despite itself, you know, and like, they certainly represented the, you know, the British position as they should do. You know what I mean? Like, if they weren’t representing the British position, someone’s going to lose their job, weren’t they?

41:48 You know what I mean? So, so they did, you know, and like, I don’t resent anybody for anything about it. I don’t have a particularly strong, you know, Republican or political position. As an Irishman, I’m much more flagma and much more open-minded. And I’ll come back to something about Ireland and bipolarity on that in a second.

42:08 So, but the BBC, yeah, the BBC is just this. It’s too big to fail, isn’t it, you know what I mean? It’s just so freaking enormous, and like, as a news, or let’s talk about, as a news organization, because we can talk about David Attenborough all day and all night, you know what I mean? And like, I mean, which you’re meaning, that they make some fantastic content, years, and they raised the bar in the our tagline here at London is putting the BBC out of business.

42:32 You know, it’s, it’s like an inside joke, because people in the States don’t necessarily know that the BBC is funded by a television license, which you must purchase if you own a television in this country. Let me repeat that. If you live in America, you have to buy a television license which supports a state-run media organization. I feel like I should say that a third time. Okay, it’s just so, it’s for me, it’s, can I just, can I just double check with you?

42:54 Let me just double check with something here. Yeah. Have you got a television license? I don’t. You don’t?

42:58 No, I don’t, in the studio, because I don’t have a TV. Okay, but I didn’t have one for my first 5 years in London. I refused to buy one, because I thought it was a socialist construct. Gotta, but anyways, my, one of my teachers went to jail in Ireland for not paying his television license. Yeah, because he said there wasn’t enough Irish language on the TV, and that was a political protest, basically.

43:15 Yeah, it’s political protest. For who came out of the TV license? Yeah, good for him. There we go. All right.

43:20 So, forget forgetting Adam BBC, okay. But as a news organization, look, yeah, you know, I mean, I think the B the BBC is just the big old big old oil tanker, isn’t it? You know what I mean? It’s like, you know, it takes a hell of a lot to turn that ship. It takes a lot of time, lot of organization, but look, you know, everyone in the world is jealous of their amazing newsroom that they built.

43:37 It looks awesome. I’ve spoken to had really enjoyable conversations with BBC people who’ve been really open about how they organize it, how they’ve created created, like, you know, creative spaces within the news, within that newsroom, where we go, well, that’s just a table over there where f***ing anything can happen. You know, and we put it down to that. You know, okay. So I think, you know, and look, there’s reputation, and there’s reach.

44:01 You know, I think, what have they got, 15 million followers on Twitter? Yeah, probably. Jesus, that’s a lot. That’s like just under Obama. Okay, and like, let’s take 25% of those off, anyway, because you’ve got to take 25% off everybody’s numbers in Twitter anyway, I guess.

44:13 But, you know, so but yeah, it’s absolutely enormous. It’s absolutely mammoth. You know, and yeah, so I, but so yeah, as an Irish person, I always felt that, you know, it’s such a, of the British character, and the British character, by and large, is, to me at least, looking at British expats, and I’ve lived away from Ireland for good 10 years, I guess, and I, you know, come across a lot of British expats, and, you know, they’re never like, what I love about British expats is that they’re constantly amazed that it’s not Britain.

44:46 Don’t you think? My goodness, it’s just amazing. I mean, the locals is incredible, and, my goodness, like, of course they’re f***ing locals. They live here it’s their country. Wherever they live, they’re just like, you know, and it can become like, I’m being very stereotypical about it now, but I think there’s an element of that character somewhere in the BBC’s work.

45:09 They’re all great journalists. We are looking down on the rest of the world slightly, I think. I like, you know, I think there’s still British mentality. Yeah, I think, like, look, as a postcolonial subject, I would say, possibly, yeah, you know. I’m a sociologist by training, and I would say, yeah, you know, there’s probably a bias there.

45:27 Jeez, man, look at how they’re reporting on. Look at the Scotland thing, for God’s sake, the Scotland Independence referendum. Holy s*** is that just completely not being objective? Yeah, man. I mean, people, pro-Empire.

45:36 Yeah, and plus, they’re saying, well, you know, we’ve had pro-independence guests on our radio shows, this, that, the other, and it’s ticked as a, you know, the box has ticked. You know, we’ve had balance. We had an anti- guest and a pro guest, but the anti-g guest gets away, or the pro-independence guy, you know, I’ve heard it several times where they just get much harder time than the other guys, you know what I mean? But it doesn’t matter. It’s still balanced, by us, and, you know, it’s not for me to go.

45:59 I live in a glass house. I shouldn’t go throwing stones around. That kind of, stu point, where’s it going to be in 5 years? Are they going to turn it around yeah? Oh, I think, yeah, I think the BBC’s going to be, in my opinion, I think the BBC’s going to be exactly where it is, but I think they’ll be competing a hell of a lot harder for news eyeballs and to create the kind of content that, um, that Vice are creating right now.

46:21 Let’s take an example. Let’s take Vice, because we wanted to talk about Vice. Let’s talk about Vice. Right. There’s, I think you were recently down in Cannes, and I heard madey all over the place.

46:33 You were at MIPCOM, which is a big media conference, an enormous media market. Everyone comes and shows their, what was really interesting there was that YouTube made a keynote. Yeah, and the keynote started with all of the stuff that you’d kind of expect to see from a YouTube keynote. There was a kind of brief video run-through of everything that started with, like, what’s that Scottish woman who sang in the X Factor there, Simon Cowell kind and then 3 minutes into what is like a 25-minute set-piece MIPCOM keynote in front of a thousand people, they go into news.

47:07 YouTube goes into news and says, “We want to talk about news,” and they bring out what’s his name from Vice, Shane Smith. Yeah, Shane Smith from Vice, and Shane Smith comes out and sits down, and they have a power out, for like 15 minutes, 20 minutes, about how awesome Vice is. Okay. And why they bring him out, why they, what? Well, yeah, because he’s got the, he’s got the traction, baby.

47:30 You guys have more views than Vice? Yeah, we’re close, but I think, but I think, as far as reputation is concerned right now, I think it’s fair to say Vice are really, because they’re hot. They’ve got the momentum. Oh Jesus, they’re hot as hell, aren’t they? And they had a guy kidnapped.

47:43 They got a guy kidnapped in Ukraine, for God’s sake. I mean, you know what I mean? Yeah. Doesn’t get much better than that. F***ing hell, okay.

47:49 So Shane comes out on stage, and that was noteworthy, because what YouTube brought him out, yeah. And I’m just, like, you know, for me, I was, I’m, I still don’t totally understand why YouTube are pursuing news so determinedly when there’s all that entertainment, cats, gifts, you know, hanging low-hanging fruit, knocking around series, all because the guys are really really like you know Google people, and I know Google people, and the guys are really, really freaking serious about it, and they really take us very seriously, and you know, they really want to work with us, and I’m still kind of, you know, looking at going H, yeah, you know, you think it’s a small piece of the pie, and they think it’s a big one. I, I think, I think it’s a small, like, financially it’s got to be a small piece of the pie, man.

48:35 I mean, if you compare sport and music, and you know, to the kind of numbers that news brings in, well, then you know, we’re tiny little babies. Is it a factor of 10 or 100? Oh, I think it’s, like, in my opinion, probably, like, depend on the platform. Twitter, factor, factor perhaps 10, for sure. Okay.

48:52 You know, maybe it’s a demographic. Is it the people that are paying the bills that are watching the news, and the kids are watching the videos? Probably, yeah. Probably, but, but the guys, yeah, the guys, you like our YouTube demographic actually starts around 35. It really kicks in around 35.

49:07 We have, we’ve got 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube, and our demographic kicks in by 35, which is very late. And YouTube guys are telling us, “Maning your way over market, get younger.” You know? Yeah, yeah. You know, ours is quite old too.

49:20 I’m surprised. Mine’s around there as well, but I was quite happy with it. I was like, hey dude, you know, I’m frankly, you know, I’m all right with that. It’s a good demo for advertisers, actually. Exactly.

49:30 Exactly. Brands like it, but for the up-coming, well, we get back to Vice. Yeah, so let’s go back Shane. So Shane comes on and basically talks about, you, he’s wearing his shorts, and, you know, he’s just hanging out, being really relaxed. You know, as your Vice, you have to wear exact.

49:45 If he showed up in a suit, you’d be worried, right? And he’s, and yeah, you would actually. H. So Shane’s just, you know, he’s just in a really comfortable position right now. The market is loving what they’re doing.

49:54 I think they, Simon Ostrovsky, who’s the journalist who was who was kidnapped in Ukraine was doing great work. Okay, you know, and his, he was coming up with the kind of content that nobody else was coming up with, right? I think I saw some of his articles in UK. He was in Kiev square, and did he, he was definitely in Maidan. Yeah.

50:12 Simon, Simon used to work on the Moscow Times with a bunch of guys who now work in the RT newsroom, for example. I mean, it’s a small, you know, if you look at the xat hack pack, as they call them in Moscow, it’s a pretty reasonably small pool, you know? So a lot of the guys know each other face to face, with friends going back here, as you know, there’s much more camaraderie behind the scenes than you’ll see on social media. Okay. In that sense, you know.

50:34 So anyhow, yeah, so I think, so anyhow, everyone’s all about Vice, and we’re loving Vice, and you know, Vice, amazing. Tim Pool’s a great guy as well. We, does Tim, does Tim cast gu with the Google Glass stuff? Where is the beanie? Okay.

50:47 On Vice, on Vice, yeah. He, Tim, Tim was the first guy to start live streaming Occupy Wall Street back in the day. He just turned up with the backpack in a battery full of batteries, started streaming off his iPhone. Yeah, yeah. He’s a great guy.

50:59 Tim’s a great guy. So anyhow, so look, we’re looking at the way Vice were picking up these people, going, oh my God, you know, that’s, they’re really, they’re really doing well, and then they have them working with a cameraman, so it’s a really straight documentary style. And frankly, like, and this is why I think that I’ve got great respect for what they do. Is one of the big messages that our people on YouTube tell us, and one of the things that we built success on was that our people like it raw.

51:21 They don’t want to be told what to think. Okay. Yeah. The Vice touch is very much along those lines, right? They’ll describe what they think is immediately happening, but they will not try and overprescribe an interpretation unless they put an appropriate music track and an appropriate camera shot, but they won’t verbally tell you.

51:43 No, they won’t. Ver, yeah. Yeah, so exactly. So there’s, there’s lots of other ways of couching it up and you know, of telling a particular story, right? And you know, it all depends on from which side of the barricade are you walking towards?

51:55 The barricade. Right, you know, little things like that. Wow, huge things, is that generation? Is that the millennials telling us that they don’t want to be told what to do, what to think, told how to think? Is that ultimately what we’re learning?

52:06 I think there’s, like, in my opinion, I think there’s an element with that. Yeah, I think it’s, you know, that’s, what’s, that’s why I think it’s punky, you know? Right? I think it’s like, you know, much like the punk, punk music generation, right? I’m going to do it myself, thanks very much.

52:18 And was Shane there to talk specifically about news, and did that kind of blow you away, or were they talking about all cont Yeah, that was the thing, he spoke almost exclusively bad news. Didn’t talk about all the other great brands as part of the stable or anything like that, or, you know, how he manages to fund Vice, you know, with the monies that coming in there? No, it was all bad news. So that was kind of fascinating, and that’s really interesting.

52:36 Yeah, really really interesting why that’s happening, and that it took me a while to even figure it out. I was just sitting there. I enjoyed it. It was a really enjoyable presentation, and it was like an hour afterwards, I was like, hang on a second, but YouTube just did a keynote at MIP, which is entertainment, right? On news, right?

52:52 Yeah, that’s kind of strange. I think I’m the right market. Yeah, I mean, yeah, how does that make you feel? I mean, do you see that as competition? Is it not competition?

53:02 Of course it’s competition. Yeah, of course it’s competition. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s really healthy competition, because I think, you know, it’s a, I think it’s a new product, it’s a new format. People are consuming it in large numbers.

53:13 It seems to be very easily devoured. I’m not sure how it’s being devoured, like, in terms of, like, on mobile or what kind of, you know, or on desktop, and how that’s breaking down. I imagine it’s pretty much like ours as well. So you’ve got a growing mobile situation, but you’ve also got format challenges there, and stuff about, you know, getting content that, you know, pictures are so small, and stuff on mobile that you’ve got to, you’ve got to overcome those.

53:34 So I think, I think it’s really exciting. It’s a big challenge to us. Like, we certainly had, we had a couple of great years, some great stories you know, literally fell in our lap, man. The meteorite, you know, the meteorite, literally landed in our lap. You, you were probably the only one that had real coverage, course, man.

53:51 Our turf, you know, and we were, we were just buying up as much as we possibly could there, you know what I mean? We were just sending out SMS, is just buying buying people’s content. Any video of that, anybody’s got anything fascinating, video on that? Yeah, yeah. It was extraordinary, you know, extraordinary.

54:03 So I think, you know, I think, you know, we’ve rode our luck, definitely, but we’ve got to look at, we’ve got to look at new ways of challenging these guys, you know, and going toe-to-toe with them with a narrative that they’re not necessarily bringing. Just to finish up with Vice, I mean, I see obviously they’re getting into the news thing, which I guess they’re probably growing rapidly there. They’ve done a lot of documentaries in the past. Now they have a bunch of different channels, like Motherboard, they got a Food Channel now, which I was like, what?

54:30 That’s Vice. Very intelligent. It looks like, I mean, they’re getting into all these different kind of vert, sub-verticals, I guess you call it. I mean, do you see that and you think, okay, we have to kind of develop into that platform and get away from the daily news? Or, and also, my second question is, do you think Vice, since it always is kind of the cool kids and the cool generation, do you think that audience is targeted?

54:49 It, I mean, is is capped at, like, say, 20% of the world? And after that, my grandpa, your dad, doesn’t want to see the co… I don’t want, I don’t want to see a hipster with a GoPro, you know what I mean? Yeah. Absolutely.

55:00 Absolutely. You get that, I mean, you get that from journalists as well, you know. You get, like, the guys going, you know, man, it’s just a matter of time before one of those Vice guys gets into trouble. They’re they’re sailing really close to the wind, and, you know, like, you know, it’s out there. You know, people, journalists have gone on the record and said, you know, I’m a little bit worried about, you know, that this Vice idea of putting people right into these conflict situations, and picking up the raw footage, or, you know, picking up the footage, because they’re going to get hurt.

55:26 They could get hurt. Okay. Right, right. They’re pushing the envelope really, I think, like, there are people who have that opinion, you know, whose opinion I respect. And I think, you know, you’ve got to look at, you know, I don’t like, I don’t know what Simon Ostrovsky said after the kidnapping ordeal in Ukraine.

55:44 He’s back. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. He’s totally fine. But you know, he wasn’t the only one there.

55:51 A bunch of guys were picked up. A bunch of journalists have been held by these militias in Ukraine, so it’s not, it might, you know, it’s not exclusively a Vice issue, because these people were working for all sorts of agencies. You know what I mean? But there are, there are, like, there were con… You come across the concerns people kind of, you know, at a conference or whatever, we say, geez man, you know, that’s full-on.

56:10 They’re kind of just focusing exclusively on the, you know, the, the conflict. So it’s a super high rate of growth, but also who knows the size of that market or where it’s going to go? I guess, I guess we don’t know where we’re going, but it’s fascinating that something like that can exist, isn’t it? You know, the can be. While we’re on Ukraine, let’s talk about it, let’s talk about it.

56:29 Um, Ukraine is obviously bordering Russia. There’s all sorts of fascinating things going on there. I could talk all day long about geopolitics and Kiev and in Ukraine, and I thought it was fascinating to watch. I, I thought things like the, some of the guys in the square in Kiev had Bitcoin addresses like on their shields, and like the whole, you know, mind-f***ing you could get into as far as, if someone could fund these guys via Bitcoin, like, what could be going on?

56:56 Like Joe Biden’s son picked up a jobest. I just heard about that with a gas company or something there, right? Yeah, it gets really interesting, but I was just thinking, like, back in the day, if the CIA wanted to support some people in Kiev, they might have to send a guy in, get some cash, get it to the right guy, da da, but now maybe they could just send it up via Bitcoin. And then I was thinking, I’ll take it even further. Um, then maybe you could say, well, you know, Putin’s in the Kremlin thinking the same thing.

57:19 I could fund them Bitcoin. So like there’s all this craziness going on now, with, with, co, all these cryptocurrencies and things like that. But okay, Ukraine, uh, comes out. You guys are obviously a Russian organization funded through some entity of the government. Putin’s even come out and said, yes, we’re funded by Russia, but at the same time, you know, we, we’re objective.

57:38 Abby Martin comes out and some other journalists saying they don’t believe what Russia’s doing in Ukraine. How do you balance all this stuff going on? What’s your take on it? I’m ask Ukraine. Okay, right, uh, Ukraine, like, so, uh, let me start with, it comes back to the Irishness again.

57:51 Yes. So I, I learned learned what the dynamics of an ethnocultural conflict, I, I learned what that is, and I learned why it’s cancerous and poisonous. Okay. Uh, you have a unique view on this, you know. And then in 2003, before the Orange Revolution, I spent a year working for George Soros.

58:05 I was paid by Soros to teach sociology in Lviv, in Western Ukraine, right? So I taught out there, s and I spy, yeah, yeah. Soros is the financier who, whatever, broke sterling and and is, is, uh, propping up financially the, the, um, you know, the, the, the non-Russian loyal, uh, uh, politics in Ukraine. Basically, he, one of the guys, one of the major, his name has been so, you worked for him back in the day? Yeah.

58:30 So 2003, I, I spent a year living in uh Lviv, and I watched this nascent Ukrainian identity, cultural identity, um, form, take shape, gain momentum, uh, and watched it, uh, grow, in my opinion, uh, you know, somewhat naively into a very, very corrupt political environment, uh, very nasty. I mean, you know, if you think, like, you know, the Muscovites say, like, you know, geez man, you know, you think we’re, b… you know, years ago they said you know, you think we’re about, you got to, you got to see like, the Kiev is a nest of vipers, really, you on both sides. Yeah, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

59:04 There, there are no sides in, like, as such, but I mean, but, but yeah, it’s just a nest of vipers, uh, and, uh, so I got a great understanding of what was going on there, and I watched, uh, enormous quantities of, uh, US aid money, education money, musky fellowships, that kind of stuff, uh, go into Ukraine, and people, you know, be, you know, people living their dreams, you know what I mean? Getting to go to university in the States, coming out of, like, Kiev or coming out of a regional Ukrainian city in 2003. God Almighty, you know, it’s extraordinary.

59:36 Uh, life-changing event, right? Very powerful, self-power, right? Funding, yeah, with some kind of ulterior motive, of course. I’m not yeah, yeah. So, so like, like, this is not about the individuals.

59:45 This is just about the structures and kind of organizations and institutions that were, have been built up over the last 10 years in Ukraine. For example, I remember the Orange Revolution. Yeah, man, God. Yeah, me too. Uh, so, so I felt, uh, and, and like, let’s talk about the other side.

1:00:00 You know, it’s just notoriously corrupt political system everywhere. Yeah, and that’s just a politically corrupt system, no question, in Ukraine. So you know, talk about the Russian side, all, all that kind of stuff, the pro-Russian side, whatever you want to call them. So I think, uh, right now I think it’s just a proxy situation going on, I think, where, um, uh, the Kiev has completely failed, like, the, the post-coup governments, so Yatsenyuk and, and Turchynov and these guys have totally failed to speak any language of consolidation and peace.

1:00:29 When you call people terrorists, like, you call your old civilians terrorists and stuff like that. I think, you, it’s just absolutely, uh, it’s very clear that they either don’t want to integrate Eastern Ukraine back into a new Ukraine, uh, or they’re idiots. Do you, I mean, like, it’s just extraordinary, uh, uh, what they’re doing, and, and, and how they’re just inflaming what is already a really, really crazy situation. And then, as far as the Russian guys are concerned, yeah, look, I mean, you know, that’s, I don’t know, man.

1:00:59 It’s like, it’s like, um, the bleed over the border is like, the border’s almost non-existent in terms of, like, the cultural bleed, the, uh, over that border. There’s so many Russian passports on the eastern part of that country, right? Exactly. You know, and I remember, like, I remember the first thing people told me about Crimea in 2003 was, like, ah, man, it’s Russian, right? Yeah, straight up.

1:01:17 Yeah. If you go, if you go to Latvia or Lithuania, you realize 40% of the population is, quote unquote, Russian, and you know, there’s, it happens a lot on this frontier. You know, absolutely it does. Yeah, absolutely, does. That’s hard to, I understand if you’re in, from California.

1:01:30 I think some people, even though the Mexican border is a great example, like, look at the Mexican-American south and north of the US border. Like, where’s the border, really? But that’s another discussion. Yeah, yeah, well, The Mex, like the Mexican was, was another example, it was going to use. So, but so anyhow, yeah, so, so what I’m talking about is, is right now what we’re seeing is, and we saw it in Ireland as well, after independence was there’s this postcolonial swing.

1:01:51 Yeah, and people just, like, get real f***ing Hardline. You know, socially, sociologically, it just happens. These positions polarize, where it becomes, your, if you know, where it becomes that bipolar. You’re either with us or against us. You, I mean, it’s like, Jesus man, you know, I’m neither.

1:02:08 You know, uh, can’t I be neither? Can I have another perspective? And uh, like, and, and that’s just, I think that narrative, in my opinion, personally, uh, that narrative came out of neocon America. Uh, you know, it’s, it’s a, and, and it is. Well, you’re quoting Bush, aren’t you?

1:02:25 After 9/11, you’re with us or against us, with us or against us. And, and perhaps, yeah. I, I and I’m guessing even like Rumsfeld might have been running that line back when he was working with Nixon in the 70s. I don’t know, but, but to me that bipolarity is, is the, the problem. You know, it, there can’t be either or.

1:02:43 There has to be both. Okay. Is this going to get worse? This situation? I fear it will.

1:02:47 Yeah, I fear, I fear it might. Yeah, it’s pretty dicy. It looks really, really bad right now. Uh, and, um, like, the, the level of militarization in that society, uh, is huge. Um, I had a great conversation with one of the guys from Espresso TV, who were the, the guys who famously ran the live streams on Kiev of the, like, the bar, the burning barricades.

1:03:07 They had, like, cable stretched all over the city, and these guys miraculously managed to run uh live broadcast of these things that ran 24/7 for three months. Three months. Wow. Yeah, yeah, it was amazing. Absolutely amazing.

1:03:19 Uh, anyhow, he told, he, uh, we had a great conversation where, uh, we just spoke about, spoke about the level of trauma in Kiev, and like, it’s, it’s in, you know, it’s what do they call it? Post-traumatic K’s, in, in, uh, PTSD still. That whole city, come on, man. Jesus, that square, like, yeah, I, I don’t know if people watch the detailed footage of that, but it’s hard to I mean, Jesus, I, me, that was like a proper war zone. Yes, it was.

1:03:44 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure, yeah, yeah, guys, really well trained. Yeah, sorry, it’s going to be, I, I, I know. It look, it’s a proxy war between the West and the East, end of the day, happening there. I, I think, uh, I honestly think it’s a war that’s being taken to the East by the West, really.

1:04:00 Okay, interesting. Yeah, I think, I think the dynamic is coming, like, for the love of God, why does it have to be John Kerry’s freaking son that is appointed to the board of directors of a major Ukrainian private gas company? Why does it have to be him? Is there no other American lawyer? B, like, is there no other American lawyer that could do that?

1:04:20 Yeah, I was surprised that they would even let, like, so it’s very, very clear that, like, you, that’s just, like, man, you know, the Russian Bear thing. You know, like they’re just playing with it. They’re like, they’re just poking it, and poking it, and poking, po… I mean, what do you do as a part of this, this Russian, you know, media channel? Yeah.

1:04:37 And then, like, Abby Martin comes out and says I don’t believe what Russia’s doing, right? And someone else in the States, I forgot her name, resigned because, oh, well, oh yeah. But that was, that was a neocon set-up, though. That was Jamie Kirchick and the guys out of a, um, uh, he works for Victoria Nuland’s husband, uh, at, at, one, at a neocon think tank in, in, um, in DC. That was totally set up.

1:04:57 He tweeted, uh, like 20 minutes before Liz Wahl resigned on air. He’s like, tweeting, I think something really crazy is going to go down in RT very shortly. Let’s start watching. With the whole thing, was set up. Okay, yeah.

1:05:06 So, but you have to live and watch this stuff. But what do you think, like, when Abby comes out and says this, and then she’s like, I didn’t get any flak. Is that a good thing for the network? Of course it is, yeah, of course it is. It’s a great thing for the network.

1:05:16 I mean, it’s a huge netw… show. OB, we need well, I think it’s not necessarily about objectivity, Brian. In my opinion, it’s, I think it’s just about a case of, of you know, my, my father’s house has many mansions, you know what I mean? I think there’s got to be space for voices in there, and like our guys, like our show hosts, um, you know, criticize each other for that. You know, Lavelle went after Abby.

1:05:34 You know, well, he, he toes the line. Yeah, yeah, you know, that’s Peter’s opinion. You know, and, you know, and Abby’s opinion is, you know, kind of, I guess, I guess she’s like Peterson. I I guess would consider himself a conservative, although he considers himself a liberal conservative, maybe. Uh, Abby’s probably coming out of anarchism I’m guessing an activism.

1:05:50 I don’t know this. I mean, you know, let’s call her up and ask her, and so I think, you know, they’re just coming from different points of view on that, you know, but I think it’s really important that people are, you know, particularly personalities, who are, you know, who are willing to get out there and, you know, present what they think to people and create an audience around it and build a community that they’d be allowed to express themselves in a network. I’m thinking of the Juice WP News guys.

1:06:18 I know you guys support them. We’re partners. Yeah, yeah, since back in the day, a couple years. That’s a big, for you guys, for people know, Juice WP News. You’ve got to check these guys out.

1:06:27 We feature each other on our YouTube pages when they ever get to London, we’re going to have them on the show, but they put out a very good piece on the carian war. They did a great piece. They do a great job, and it’s weird, because when you first hear about Juice WAP News, they’re like, they do news to rap, but you’re really, that’s not the point, because they’re very intelligent guys. He’s brilliant. He’s a brilliant, brilliant man.

1:06:45 They have a very subtle and very intuitive message, and the way they do it really sticks it in your face. Like when they have carry on and the general in the US and the Fox News guy, or whatever it is, Fox, but it’s like, oh Jesus, you know, within 8 minutes you can really start to wonder what you’re being told. Absolutely, completely, it’s, and again, that’s one of the, one of the things we loved about it. New format, new idea. It’s newsy, yeah, but it’s not news.

1:07:08 I was surprised to hear you guys partner with them. Was that just, is that because you guys are kind of new, and you guys are big on New Media? Absolutely. You know, it’s not like, you know, we, because they’re being critical of the news and you guys are the news. Yeah, I think but, but so are we.

1:07:23 You know, like, we, when I say we, so is RT. I mean, RT, like, look, RT is an outsider. Yeah, like we’re an outsider in a market of, you know, heavily vested interests, right? And enormous corporations and institutions. We’re talking American news media everywhere, all of them, like the news business, you know, the news business, news business, and we’re an outsider you know, and we’re an, we’re an unwelcome freaking outsider, because we’re, we’re, we’re delivering a message, particularly, let’s say, in the English language.

1:07:57 We’re delivering an angle, and a message that is not the message that is conveyed by these other channels, you know, and so, so what we’re pointing to is, like, look, guys, you know, this kind of foreign policy that you people are practicing, you know, maybe NATO, maybe Europe, United States, you know, is really destructive, but you’re not, you know, you’re not hearing a lot of stories about why it’s destructive. You’re not hearing a lot of stories, particularly coming out of the Slavic world, for example, of why there is this enormous suspicion of your interests, you know, enormous suspicion, particularly around NATO. My God Almighty, the Slavic world is suspicious of NATO and their interests.

1:08:42 Okay, oh my God, and the Western media. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think, you know, and so we’re bringing all these lines, and we’re bringing, you know, End the Fed, Bitcoin, the market is fixed. Max, I’ll never forget the day Max called Sean Fitzpatrick, the guy who, who, who, the guy who ran an Irish bank that cost the taxpayer 80 billion euro. Yeah, like that f***ing took, you know, €20 a week off my mother’s pension or something, you know what I mean?

1:09:07 Seriously, do you know what I mean? It’s the reason why kids can’t get hospital beds, whatever. That, like, Max called him a financial terrorist, and it was like, I think it was about two years ago, three years ago, and that was one of the most awesome things I’d ever heard. Okay, I was, I was absolutely, loved it, and so, know, it’s not, it’s like, it’s like rap news. You know, I think I think, you know, from that point of view, like rap news is amazing for what it does.

1:09:35 You know, it completely mashes up two formats to create something really, really new. We’re not like that at all. You know, we, we’re new organization. We’re not a rap organization, but we’re definitely coming. We’re coming with a message that I think challenges the consensus in the mainstream.

1:09:55 You guys are freaking simple, and we’re outside of it, and we, and we probably always will be. Right? You know, you guys don’t have to worry about a profit. Do you like a lot of other places? Do I mean, the Kremlin, I think it’s public 3 or $400 million a year to kind of run this organization.

1:10:10 How does that change the game when it’s paid for? It totally changes the game. I think, you know, in that one, there’s like the whole, the whole organization culture is just built around I’m not going to say built around not for profit, because we want to earn as much freaking money as we possibly can. Do you know what I mean? Geez, but it’s built around the budget, right?

1:10:35 You know, and it’s not it’s, it’s not built around shareholders and shareholder value, or, you know, it’s built around the budget, and how did you do your job? I don’t know what metrics they use. I genuinely don’t know what metrics they use, but I know that they’re proud as hell of the traction that we got on social media, for example, right? You know, they like that, you know, they like eyeballs, right? So I guess it’s like, you have the set budget, do coming with us, give us good results, and come back next year.

1:10:58 I guess the BBC is probably very, very similar. Probably those just be imperially enormous. Again this year, please, would you please? Certainly, certainly. Some we haven’t talked about is the American media.

1:11:08 Now, I don’t live in America anymore, and so like when people like, you know, Rogan or other people talk about Fox News, that seems to be the one that gets everyone going as far as this, this catchall, almost ridiculous media organization that typifies, like, American. I don’t know what it is. Mala or something, but that seems to get, be the catch-all, but I don’t watch it, so I don’t know. I don’t see the girls and the short skirts and the goofiness that happens, which is so-called news, obviously.

1:11:34 That must be on your radar, the American news media, and what is it like? Is it is it something you look at? Is it something that’s gone too far? Is there some? I honestly don’t even know, man.

1:11:44 I think, like, I like, I said, when it comes to TV, I think Anchorman is a documentary. I think it’s like a really, really good piece of cultural criticism about what’s going on in TV news. And what do you mean by that? I just think because it’s just like so much of it is just so patently unbelievable, you know? It’s just these, you know, overmade-up people delivering lines that they like, where half the time they don’t even know what they’re saying.

1:12:07 Uh, freaking Jen Psaki yesterday, the State Department spokesman, for God’s sake, was started accusing Ukraine of like, oh, well, there’s been loads of carousel voting, and Matt Lee from AP asked her like, what is carousel voting? She said she didn’t know do you know what I mean? Like, I mean, it’s that culture. Yeah. So I think, and like, so I I don’t watch it.

1:12:24 I don’t watch Fox News ever, you know. I watch a bit of HuffPost, because they do live stuff online, so I’m more interested in line, you know. I’m not interested in American TV news. So like, people like, you know, like, I always keep a close eye on what Miriam at BuzzFeed is up to, you know, great girl. She’s a former Moscow correspondent for the Guardian.

1:12:43 So I’ll watch the guy, you know, I’ll watch them. I’ll watch. I’ll watch Vice, and I’ll watch Huff, and a bunch of others. You know, streaming has gotten much better, right, and they have some great people coming through, really relaxed in there, isn’t it? It’s like, it looks great, someone on a sofa, but they get some great guests, and it’s, it’s ultra-relaxed vibe that seems to work, right?

1:13:02 Yeah, yeah, I think they might have, they might have hit on something. They seem to be happy with it. I don’t know what their numbers are, but they certainly seem to be happy with it. Yeah. So you kind of ignore, I think.

1:13:09 I was actually on today. Jen, from The Young Turks, was saying they’re not news anchors, they’re news actors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, now that I’ve watched so much stuff, and like, this isn’t news. What we do here, but we try to ask some like real questions.

1:13:19 But now, sometimes when I watch, especially lately, it’s been trendy to have, like, four people talking at once, which, like, on these, which, my head, everybody wants to, that they’re not an idiot, and sometimes I’m like, what, what are they talking about? Yeah. I think, like, to me that’s where the breakdown happens. You know, I prefer, I prefer something, more discreet, like, you know, manageable. Its parameters are smaller.

1:13:45 I don’t want to, I don’t want to have to deal with this, you know, multiple voices, and this, this performance of, uh, you know, theatrical kind of disagreements. You know, it’s like, just like watching politicians. I mean, back in the day, back in the day, they just had politicians come in and point fingers at each other, you know, and all they did was re-affirm the f***ing consensus of their own two sides, and that’s just, comes back to it, the goddamn opposition of the two sides is the problem.

1:14:10 We need a different way of doing things, you know? We need a different way of thinking about things, and all these guys doing, you’re wrong, no, you’re wrong, I’m right, you’re wrong, I’m right, you’re wrong, this, just a self-fulfilling prophecy, two-way street. So I think, you know, I, I just don’t have a lot of time for, for me personally. It doesn’t bring a lot of value to my day, unless you’ve got, you know, it comes back to, you know, like, you know, people that I’d always love to hear you know, who can deliver something in a brilliant soundbite, for example, or who can just make perfectly sensible statements.

1:14:45 Some, like, non-Chomsky, for example, you know, common sense, right? Just good common sense, you know what I mean? like, those people are great, and then you’ve got your Maxes, and whatever, your, you know, your guys, you know, screaming and shouting, and the financial terrorists, and the, and the whatnot. The show, I guess, to some extent, showman, you know, and Max, as we know, like, is, he’s a funny guy, and that’s a great way of delivering, delivering a message as well.

1:15:11 You make someone smile, you make them laugh. Yeah, because I guess, I mean, I guess it is, ENT, at the end of the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a form of entertainment. So yeah, for news, come on, you know, TV news just can’t do it.

1:15:21 An American TV news, no way. It was funny. I, when I first had Max in here, like early on, I was off camera. I was like, okay, Max, but RT’s funded by the Kremlin and all this, and he, he was just like, he was just like, okay, look at Fox News. He’s like, how come whenever a Pentagon official wants to go on, they’re on, and like, everyone tells me all these things.

1:15:37 You know, you see a Seaman ad on Fox News, and it’s just brought to you by Seaman. It goes to some website where it’s just Seamans, and it’s like, that gives them the put option to, whenever there’s a news article against the company, we’d rather you not do that, because we’re paying you millions of dollars a year. So there’s all this soft money, these soft deals that are happening, and it definitely opened my eyes a little bit, some of the things that you don’t see.

1:15:59 The guys who have worked in the big media organizations, particularly the American media organizations, a lot of those guys, uh, come back with stories of, you know, man, you know, we had to run this by the lawyers. You know, we couldn’t say boo without running it past the lawyers. You know, we were given very clear messages about what to say and what not to say, and you know, it was, it came from the top. You know, it was a corporate-wide instruction. Like, yeah, this is what they say.

1:16:27 Yeah. There’s a girl by the name of Amber Lyon, who was a journalist at CNN, and now she started her own crazy psychedelic journey, and she’s got a new website called reset.me, and she’s gone a completely fascinating way, stuff that we talk a lot about on the show as well, and I think she spent a year now doing this whole new project, and it’s really fascinating, but she had some crazy and fascinating horror stories. She did, didn’t she resign from CNN?

1:16:52 Yeah, she did. Yeah, she did that. And if I’m not mistaken, there, there, there, all, there’s a lot of these kind of stories that are out there. Sure. Yeah, yeah, there is.

1:16:59 There’s, and everybody knows them, but nobody did. You ever read about him? Do you ever see him? Do you ever see him in the newspapers, right? And mainstream America never hears about that either.

1:17:07 Come also, you, we’re over here in England, and we’re surrounded by lots of different countries, lots of different political agendas. You take someone, and nothing against the Midwest, but in the middle of Kansas, and that’s what they see every day on their television. There’s not a lot of new perspectives. I mean, my parents live in America, but when you’re in America, the world is America. Yeah, and so hey, come on.

1:17:25 Yeah, you’re not going to hold that against anybody, but you know, I always, I always do my cap to, you know, the millions of Americans who make the effort, you know, get the passport, travel, yeah. No, I definitely agree. The world, you’re a social media guy, so I want, I want to ask you about a few social media platforms. You, we have this show called Silicon Real, which is all about the tech industry here in London, and I’m going to pretend that you’re a, you’re a, a tech VC, and I’m going to give you, like, 10 million pounds, and you’re going to have to buy or sell these companies on a 5 Horizon, and I’m just going to hit you with a few, and I’ll give you my opinions too, but Twitter.

1:18:00 Buy or sell the share? Yeah Do you think it’s going to be a relevant platform in two years from now? Is it going to be more relevant or less relevant? I think Twitter will be more relevant. Really?

1:18:13 Is that because you said everything’s getting shorter? Everything is getting shorter. I think he’s got a great, like, I think it’s, yeah. I think, well, not everything’s getting shorter, but like, Twitter brought out a new short form. Let, yeah, yeah.

1:18:26 But I think, look at internet penetration, look at mobile, penetration, and I think that’s enough to tell you that Twitter’s a grower. Okay. Yeah, I’m bullish on Twitter. I think it’s tapered off a bit. I’ve felt, personally, like, in the last six or nine months, Twitter seems to have gotten much busier than it was, say, 18 months or two years ago, and now it seems that there’s just so much more on Twitter, and a lot more corporate messages.

1:18:48 This is just my, this is my qualitative view of Twitter, but still I agree, it’s got so much potential, and it’s got a great way of intera acting that you can’t just, just can’t do on, on, yeah. And it’s got, I mean, you know, didn’t it really give the world the whole kind of popcorn thing, you know? You’re like, oh my God, these two are going to troll each other, you know, and you just sit down and watch it, as like the, you know. Yeah, yesterday the troll of the day was this, was this girl in, okay, this Okay magazine girl in London, and a girl who was doing something on Muslim identity in the UK, and they just trolled the f*** out of each other man about, like, I see you’re wearing, you’re covering your modesty with your hand and face in your Twitter profile picture, surely that’s not right for a Muslim lady.

1:19:27 Like, this kind, like, was hilarious. Absolutely. So you get some of that as well, huh? On Twitter. But like, but for hard news, I think it’s got a great use.

1:19:36 Yeah, yeah. I think it’s got a good future. Lists, I like lists, like partnerships. See, yesterday, was it Vice, Vice, and Mashable and at least two other companies started a gr to work around a single hashtag on Ukraine. Okay, and that they would all use the same hashtag on Ukraine.

1:20:00 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Little projects coming up like that. Okay, get a little critical mass going with that, I think. So, yeah, yeah. I think it could be interesting.

1:20:07 Could be interesting. Moving on Facebook. Facebook? Bye. Really?

1:20:09 Yeah, you’re big. You say you get a lot of good feedback on that platform? Yeah, engagement. Okay. The best engagement, you get, totally, 100%.

1:20:17 I think, I think it’s, uh, the right place for engagement for a news channel. Okay, yeah, interesting. All right, okay, got the right balance of images and text, and people, people feel they can express themselves but nobody, nobody really tells anybody else to violently f*** themselves on Facebook, do they? You know, it doesn’t happen that often. It happens a lot on Twitter, but it doesn’t happen that much on Facebook, and I think from that point of view, for that reason, I think we have, you know, from an RT point of view, I’m really delighted with the traction we’ve got going on, uh, on Facebook.

1:20:45 So, yeah, I’m, I’m good. I like Facebook. I question the value of a like. Sometimes I question if, if, if the things I’m posting is getting seen in the news feeds of people that like my page. I totally agree with you on that one, man.

1:20:56 My, yeah, I totally agree with you on that one. I have no idea what they’ve done recently with the algorithms, but the stuff that they’re throwing up into my newsfeed right now is not what I got used to seeing and not what I want to see. Fair enough, yeah. Mark Zuckerberg, you’re heard to here first. Sort that out.

1:21:09 Um, uh, moving on. Google+. Uh, no, you know, you’re a social media guy, so I read an article the other day, and they were saying that Google+, even if it doesn’t even become close to making any money, it will have huge value, because it, it tells their ultimate advertisers, you know, who the people are and what they’re doing. So even just as a feedback loop for Google, apparently it’s already of value. It’s already, whether it doesn’t ever rival Facebook from a profitability standpoint for them.

1:21:33 Just that metric is important. What did they do, you know? They were so close. They had, they had all the pieces of the pie. Oh, Google didn’t they?

1:21:41 Yeah, and all they had to do was stick them together. I think again, it comes back to this innovator’s dilemma, which is why you guys have had success where other people haven’t, because you came with no legacy, so you could just go for it and do all these things. I think with, with Facebook, you know, they have one business, they’ve got to do that, right? I think maybe in a place like Google, they’re, they’re so, they’re worried about so many other things, so many other things.

1:22:01 J, maybe they just don’t concentrate. So, uh, yeah, I see why they’re doing Google+. I don’t think it’s going to rival the Facebook anytime soon. Totally. I think it’s, I think it’s the, the next Myspace.

1:22:10 Oh wow, okay, bold. A couple more. Reddit, do you guys use Reddit? You think, yeah, uh, we, we are, we were, um, blocked by Reddit, Reddit, Reddit, actually, uh, um, had us, uh, they funny TF out of one of their streams. Yeah, okay.

1:22:23 So, so you interact with them anymore? So we don’t do a lot of interaction with them. No, um, I can see its value, uh, but I can see it’s short, it’s got huge shortcomings for me as an editor. I don’t use it. Gotcha, yeah, I don’t think it’s the best editor tool.

1:22:35 I think it’s a sign, it’s a signpost for what’s, you know, for, for what’s popular, what’s trending, but frankly, there are more sensitive and intelligent, uh, analytics platforms out there, yeah, that can tell me, uh, things in a much more colorful and pleasant way than having to read all that s*** text that they put up. Yeah, and and and watch all that’s SMY ass. Like, well, I don’t think, I think you find yourself to be completely wrong, Mr Reddit man.

1:23:00 Are I can’t take it. Can’t take they, some of those, some of it is just like the trolliest of the trolls, like it can be like, uh, it’s like, um, Lord of the Flies there, because, like, one little K gets you wrong, and then they’re all like, we’re going to be. Exactly, and yeah, and and at the same time, like, so yeah, it’s, I think, I think what we’ve learned in the Moscow hackpack on digital, there’s a great community of people who know each other uh digitally and personally, or and digitally or personally, uh, and we’ve learned that, uh, it’s, it’s good to be respectful, you know, to your peers, and to, to your fellow people who are working the same business as you.

1:23:36 Uh, it’s always good to be respectful, and it’s a really bad idea to go out and and and troll the f*** out of somebody who’s doing the same f***ing job you do. Um, and, uh, I think so, so for me, Reddit, from that point of view, is just, you know, full of, uh, noisy finger-pointing opinion, spoken like a true grumpy old man, just like me, 44 years old. Totally, yeah, yeah. And, but I want to say one thing. If you want to see the trends of things that are happening on Reddit, that front page is probably unlike anything else on the web, is that it just kind of goes wherever it’s going to go, and it cannot be manipulated by anyone.

1:24:09 Well, yeah, there, yeah, it can be manipulated by Reddit moderators, for example. You, the stories about, like, the, you know, the words, the word blocks that were in there with Snowden, NSA, bunch of, bunch of word clouds that automatically demoted articles, and out of RIT. I didn’t read that, but I’m not surprised. Moderators, and it’s very sub. It’s like, one moderator, like you’re out, one moderator, like you’re in.

1:24:31 I’m so, yeah, we’re, we’re at in Reddit, but we don’t do a, we get dragons there. There be dragons from Reddit. Um, uh, uh, last one on YouTube as a platform. YouTube going forward. Yeah, uh, YouTube going forward.

1:24:43 I mean, how much more penetration can there be, you know? Uh, I think you mean new users, or how, how many more minutes a day can watch. Exactly. Yeah, how much growth can be uploaded, and stuff, you know. For me, for me, I’m, I, I, I tend to side with Mark Little on this, and the Storyful guys.

1:25:04 It’s like, you know, content is like water, you know, you can turn the tap on and it’ll run forever. Yeah, the question is how you bottle it and brand it, you know, and how you take that content, structure it, verify it, and, uh, brand it and sell it. And I think, I think that to me is the next step, is, you, YouTube becoming as much a source, uh, for material as it is a destination for publication. Uh, okay. So I think, you know, UGC, you know, I don’t, I’m not saying UGC and, like, personally, I’m not saying UGC and news is going to be f***ing awesome together, uh, because there’s so many problems to try and figure out, uh, uh, before you, before you get there.

1:25:41 UGC, what’s that? User-generated content. Yeah, okay, of course, which they’re trying to foster. I mean, YouTube studios here in London, they brought us in two days of free instruction, bought me lunch, yeah, taught us how to do this and do that, and keyword and all that, and I mean, and have offered their studios up for use, and, aw, they’re really trying to get people to make that serial content. Sure they are, but it’s small scale.

1:26:02 I mean, yeah, well, look, from our point of view, I think we’re just like, uh, I think we’d like more people to watch us on YouTube, no question. Um, and I have a feeling that that audience might already be there. We’re not bringing people to YouTube to watch it, you know what I mean? We’re just reaching their audience. Okay, uh, so yeah, YouTube, come on, it’s a buy.

1:26:23 It’s an absolute buy. I mean, for for us, it’s, it’s our most valuable social media platform, if you consider it that, by a factor of 10 for us, but for us, you know, I mean, I get, you know, 6 or 700,000 views a month from YouTube, and most of that is new, organic people that have never known about me before, yeah, that have found me via keyword or another video that featured my guest, and so for me it’s my most valuable platform. But that’s us, you know.

1:26:47 So, is uh, will television be dead in 10 years? Oh yeah, really, everything will be internet enabled, smart TV, really? Yeah, you think so? 10 years? Actually, you know what?

1:26:57 Okay, there’s a culture, one doesn’t want to die, does he? there’s a thing, no, F doesn’t want to die. It’s, so, should, and the big screen is lovely. It’s great, it looks good in your room, you know what I mean? You can put pictures on it, like, it’s fine, but, uh, it’s the the, like, coming to the UK, for example, it’s always so funny when you, when you do the culture jump from Russia to, uh, and back into, um, uh, the, the Northwest European archipelago, as I, as I call it, up here.

1:27:20 And, uh, and, um, everything’s on Sky. Sky, this Sky, coming up on Sky every f***ing everything is Sky. Uh, and BBC’s got a big challenge there as a new, as a news provider. As news provider, BBC is, is really challenged. I remember I can’t remember what was the, what was the, the, the case.

1:27:40 Was it the Dunblane tragedy, where the, uh, where a senior police officer said, well, I think we’ve all seen the footage on Sky, and that was the moment that the BBC realized that they’re no longer king of the game as far as live breaking news concerned? But no, I’m, I’m actually talking about, uh, set-top boxes. Talking about, like, what the model that Sky built. Yeah, right, which is set-top boxes, now they’re bundling the internet into that top box, so everybody’s got the box in their house.

1:28:02 Yeah, uh, that never happened in Russia. Nobody there, there was no set-top box player. Okay, so everything is coming in. Uh, there are set-top box pairs, there of course, but like, it wasn’t embraced to the extent that it has been in the United Kingdom, for example, so it was just broadcast via radio waves, and exactly, and now it’s coming in, uh, in the pipe, and that’s where smart TVs can be activated in Russia, so they don’t have to go set-top box, they can go direct to smart TV, so we’re expecting big smart TV take-up in Russia.

1:28:30 Okay, via the web, obviously. Exactly, exactly. Uh, so I think, yeah, I think Apple, like, you know, Apple TV, big player. Yeah, we’ll see how that goes. See how Google goes, you know?

1:28:41 Uh, but yeah, I think the TVs we know, geez man, like, it’s dead, but come on, you know, as long as there’s governments, as long as there’s nations, they’re going to have to have their own national TV station, aren’t they? You know what I mean? Like, cities need football teams, governments need TV stations. Yeah, but you can, you know, you can stream RT to people’s holy s***. Oh yeah, I’m totally happy with, personally, right?

1:29:01 Totally happy with that. And by the way, you know, can we take some of the millions of dollars that we spent on TV studios and bring that back into creating awesome content for the web? Yes, right, you’re off. I canceled my virsion cable about 6 months ago, so I walked away from it. I was just getting frustrated.

1:29:16 I was summing through the channels, looking at garbage. I was pissed off myself, because I was paying for this garbage, and finally I was like, it’s Netflix, Apple TV, and anything that I’ll torrent up and that’s it. And I’ve been happy with that decision. I don’t touch it anymore, so I think I don’t pay a TV license anymore. So, got bu… we have to check that.

1:29:33 Let’s talk about Moscow now. I picture you living in Moscow, and I’m thinking, man, there’s a, all it is is gangsters and Range Rovers going around shooting people. Up Chicago, Chicago style, you know? Drive, really, like walking the kid to school in the freaking drive-by. Jesus.

1:29:49 Zoe, another drive by. You must get this question all the time from your mat. Mar’s awesome, awesome. Look, M’s awesome. It’s a great city to live in, like it’s, it’s like, it’s everything, man.

1:30:00 It’s everything. It’s, it’s, it’s brilliant. It’s hilarious. It’s hilarious, of course, it’s hilarious. It’s frightening.

1:30:08 It’s, you know, it’s, in my opinion, it’s unsustainable. You know, I just think there’s too much money there, and like, there’s, you know, at some stage when, like, you, like, here’s the Moscow bottom line on the environment, basically, in like 4,100 years time, when all the oil’s gone, all the gas is gone. Russia’s gone yeah, Russia’s gone. You know, global warming, whatever. Yeah, I mean, whatever.

1:30:34 Yeah. Moscow will be abandoned, because it’s just this huge freaking concrete bowl in the middle of this enormous marsh, and, uh, like this Russian step, and it’s just environmentally unsustainable, man. Do you know what I mean? It’s like, it can’t, it can’t stay the way it is, and I think someone’s just going to switch out the lights, like four or 500 years, they just go, well, there’s no point in living here, right? You know, why would I live here when I’m not making any money?

1:31:04 I’m not working here. You know, the economy is collapsing. Uh, you know, there’s no oil and gas to sell. There’s no huge funnels of unlimited cash coming through this country, or coming through this city. Uh, you know, I’m going to go to the sea right now.

1:31:16 It’s really well said. Why you said that? Because that’s why it exists, and that’s why it exists, right there, because it runs a huge empire that’s balanced by oil and gas revenues, the food bas in Ukraine, and keeping everything jug. It’s like Dodge City, you know? I mean, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s the last city before the frontier.

1:31:32 You know, the last major city and it’s, you, it’s, it’s, you know, so it’s, it’s that crossroads. You know, I always think of Moscow as a great crossroads. You’ve got to look at all of the directions, and, and, and recognize that, like, these cultures, it’s a very multicultural city, and you recognize that all of these cultures are coming there, and like, it’s a very stratified city. It’s extraordinary. Strat, social stat, if in there, from a sociological point of view, ifications in very distinct social classes.

1:31:58 Yes, very distinct social, and to some extent almost a cast. You mean, like, the kir workers and the migrant workers that come in there, and the jobs that they do, and you know, they’re recognizable, and they do these jobs. You know, they live at that certain level of, like, income and sustainability or sustenance, like, and they will never change. It’s like untouchable in India, they won’t change. You know, I, I don’t know.

1:32:19 I mean, and I’m not saying that, like, at the top are the white Slavs, you know, who, and, you know, a imperious position over this or something like that. I mean, there is a lot of snoby around this, again. I’m probably the Irish, Irish guy in me, you know what I mean? I’m, I’m right, workers of the world. Show me an institution, and I’ll immediately set out to try and deconstruct it, you know what I mean?

1:32:40 Like, that’s that, that’s what I’m at. Like, your day-to-day life, if you lived in New York City or Moscow, is it any different? Are there things where you’re like, quity, yeah, so in the qual h. No, there’s no, like, well, in terms of, like, you can’t go to Central Park. So, park is beautiful as Central Park, or something like that.

1:32:56 Yeah, there are great parks, but they’re not as, like, you know, amazing, and a Central park. Parks are improving a hell of a lot. Gorky Park. If you haven’t been to Gorky Park, everybody go to Moscow, go to Gorky Park in the summer, it’s awesome. Or, no, in fact, don’t go in the winter.

1:33:11 In January, it’s the biggest outdoor ice skating rink in Europe, at least. It’s enormous. Out, you can, you can ice skate for miles in the park, and everybody’s out there in their fur, smiling, and it’s just amazing. So like, there’s a hell of a lot improving really rapidly about the city. But you know, and it’s, and the people, the Muscovites themselves, man, they’ve been through so much, you know what I mean?

1:33:33 They watched an empire collapse in the end of the 80s. They watched absolute, like, freaking social and economic chaos reign over them for 10 years in the ’90s. Yeah, and you know, frankly, there was a lot of people really, really happy that, like, as they call it, the Steady Hand, you know, the hard hand came in and brought a bit of stability to the place, and they started to rebuild it, and so, this, it’s really vibrant. It’s huge architect going on, or architectural development, but it’s like, look, you know, I I live in an apartment, an apartment building, and you know, with my wife and kids, and you know, I take my kid to school in the mornings, and you know, go to work.

1:34:07 You know, Russian friends, do you hang out with the Russian? Yeah, yeah. My wife is Russian, and yeah, we got, like, awesome, you know, really, really close, really proud really proud of, of my friendships with Russian people. What are the Russians like? What are the Muscovites like?

1:34:21 Come on, all Russians, let’s, let’s, let’s just paint them with one you know, man, they’re awesome. They’re just freaking awesome. You know, they’re hilarious. They’re just not, they’re just not Western, you know, they’re not that composed and together, and everything in its right place, and you know, Mr f***ing clean and Miss clean, and, you know, and polite. They haven’t learned that s*** yet, you know, and maybe maybe it’s not the right s*** to learn, because you know, there’s an element of that society or civilization was well, we know we’re polite, and we’d be nice, but it’s repressed.

1:34:50 We’re repressing, repressing. There’s, and there’s loads of that going on, Russian side, but the people are awesome, awesome. I think they’re, you know, they know what they’ve been through better than anybody f***ing can tell them. Yeah, so, like, no journalist can tell these people, you know, can enlighten these people as to their fate, you know, as to what they’ve been through, and you know, the kind of how the political pendulum has been swinging across their civilization.

1:35:16 They know it, man, and like, so, so they are, they’re, you know, they’re hardy. They’re not afraid of adversity. They’re incredibly loyal. They’re so amazing at, like, the BR, the best people in the world for, like, look, man, I got a bit of a problem. I think I just need, you know, can you, like, and the problem could be, like, you know, I need some help with fixing my boiler, or it could be like, you know, I need to try and, like, you know, get this thing out of customs, and you know, or I need to buy a car, or you know, whatever it is, and everybody knows everybody, and there, and people, like, when you approach people like that, they immediately, their body language, like, immediately starts to go, like, I think I know a guy who can help you, you know what I mean?

1:36:03 Like, I mean, you, they’re straight away, and so, the, so, so there’s a brilliant informal network, a social network that grew up, of course, you know, as a response to the, to, to bureaucratic communism. So a real community. Is that a weird way of saying, I think, look, I, I like yes and no? People, people relate to each other, what they say, pichis, which is like, in human way. So they’ll so, let’s, so instead of talking officially, let’s speak humanly, but you, like, person to person.

1:36:30 Okay, and that’s when things can get done, and you know, people, people will, people will be far more open and honest with each other, I think, than bureaucratic situations where people, you know, obviously, you know, bureaucracy is bureaucracy, you know, and that’s if you’re a free market capitalist that can be frustrating. I’m sure bureaucracy. Yeah, or even the, the Social Network. If you want something done, you might need to, this guy. That’s why it’s brilliant for the free market capitalist.

1:36:54 When you talk to the boys who were there in the ’90s, do you know what I mean? Jesus, the money they made, you know, uh, they’re having a great time. Like, well, anything can get done. Anything could get done in the ’90s, right? Uh, unfortunately, so like so the people themselves, uh, there’s a great deal of alienation.

1:37:10 People don’t talk on the Metro, you know? Uh, as an Irish guy, I like to smile and say hello to people, and I sometimes do if they catch my eye in the Metro, and stuff, and you know, there’s a lot of, you know, people will tend to look away and not really engaging. Old people are great fun. They’re always, always, uh, much more up for a chat. Moscow’s just so, so, yeah, Moscow’s got so much, like, traffic.

1:37:28 We could, we could do a show on Moscow traffic, dude, you know? Uh, about the Ferraris and the Range Rovers, and then the juli, the old bashed-out f***ed up 20-year-old little ladders that the that the Tajik taxi driver is still driving as well. You know, you can stick your arm out and call one of those anytime. Just put your arm out the side of the street, like, cab. Yeah, cab, exactly, exactly.

1:37:45 And there’s still a lot of new money rolling around, like, furs and Ferraris, and that’s always there. Uh, yeah, okay. Yeah, I think, like, uh, I think there’s, like, since 2008, there’s definitely been a pullback. No question, crisis hit, crisis took its toll, and is taking its toll, I guess, and even the conspicuous consumption probably took its toll. Absolutely.

1:38:05 He didn’t have the money, and probably just rained in a little bit. Totally, totally. Yeah, like a lot of people left, you know, but a lot of these were a lot of people who had been there for 15 years, and you know, made fantastic quantities of money, you know, xbots, Americans, British, you know, uh, you know, and traveling. Okay, coming back through London, or you’re there, and you’re part of the United Kingdom. Is there any issue where you’re like, okay, I’m, I’m a Westerner, and I’m here, of course?

1:38:32 Yeah. Tce, I think, like, look, I’m always, like, as an Irishman, I’m always, like, I, I’ve always had an arm’s relationship with my Westernness. Yeah, because I think, I think there’s an element of Irishness there, maybe, because it’s where it’s, it’s a postcolonial country, but a Western country, too, geographically, but it, and so I’ve always had that arm’s length relationship with it, and so it’s not difficult to be in either side, you know what I mean?

1:38:57 Like, to be in Moscow or to be in London, or, or to be in, well, Dublin. Uh, Dublin’s great, you know? They’re like, you know, they’re part of me, and London is, like, you know, London is a part of the Irish consciousness, you know what I mean? Like, London’s, you know, half of Ireland’s been to London, lived in London, worked in London, you know, loves London, right? You know, uh, but I mean, as you living in Moscow and being a Westerner and and traveling is is it, is it tense ever?

1:39:21 I mean, I, I, Moscow one time, and they were like, American living in Britain, they’re like, okay, we’re going to watch you for a little while. I mean, is there any tension there, because you no, no, I don’t, and will it be, or no? Is this all posturing on a global, I think it’s all posturing. man, it’s all posturing, and people are great, you know, uh, the people, people are really, really great, uh, and the like the parties are, the parties go on forever, uh, if you want it that way.

1:39:45 Uh, you can enjoy a quiet life there. The like, the only issue for me, I think, is the environment. Okay, uh, is, is that, you know, the air quality, because you’re, I grew up beside the sea, so you’ll always miss the seaside air quality. Okay, uh, but other than that, you know, traffic is a bit crazy, city is very expensive, um, uh, but like, you know, man, I was, I I, I flew, uh, into domov airport in Moscow a couple of days back, and I was in a rush, so I went over to the taxi, uh, office straight away, and there’s like, you come out, there’s like 100 taxi drivers there, taxi, taxi, so I got to talk to the bus, went to talk to the bus, bus.

1:40:22 Look, last time you gave me taxi driver, I had this guy with f***ing bottle-end glasses driving an Audi sports car, and he wouldn’t drive the f***ing thing over the speed limit for the love of God. You know, give me a taxi driver I can rely on here. So he gives me this guy with the three series sports BMW, white thing with the black roof, and this guy, like, savages this 40K highway that goes from the airport straight into the, into the MKAD’s Ring Road into the city, and we’re turning on to the MKAD, and we’re, we’re going to take a spin up, and I’ve got to go somewhere, so he f***ing murders it, boom, boom, boom, and I’m sitting in the back, and, like, I’m too afraid to look, so I’m just taking out my phone, playing a game, you know, because this isn’t really happening like the way this guy is driving, and he’s, like, going in between lanes, this two-laner, and he’s, like, literally pushing cars out of the way, like putting in between, you know, pushing between, he’s, like, totally insane.

1:41:09 So anyhow, we, like, and and so, like, his driver Kudos has definitely been established, and I’m like, hey dude, you know, that was that was right impressive, pretty slick. Yeah, it’s a guy code thing. It’s a guy code thing. It’s guy code thing. It’s car, fast cars, vom, vroom.

1:41:21 So anyhow, so uh, we swing on to the MKAD, and at that stage he’s kind of like, think my Kudos has been established here. I’m just going to cruise it, and we’re cruising, and we’re cruising, like, I don’t know, like 3 km an hour, 140 km there, and we are savagely raped, uh, by a Smart car. A Smart car, really, uh, going across five lanes, left to right, at about, it’s got to be over 100 miles an hour. Yeah, like, this thing was f***ing flying, man, and even, like, even my speed guy, my Speedster, like, just blurted out like, “F*** I didn’t know Smart cars went that fast.”

1:42:01 I have no idea Smart cars went that fast as well, and that was just on my first, like, that, and that’s Moscow. Like, you want an example of, like, MOS driving and Moscow stuff on the roads? It’s still bananas. It’s totally bananas, but like, the city is, uh, you know, slowly but surely reconstituting itself and civilizing, and it’s gorgeous. I mean, you, it’s, it’s really fun place to visit.

1:42:21 I’m going to go back. I, I asked everyone on the show a couple questions at the end. I’m going to hit you with these: if you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old, uh, Ivor Crotty, and give that young man a bit of advice, yeah, what would you tell him? H, I’d go with, um, to the 20-year-old. Yeah, what were you doing, uh, when I was 20?

1:42:40 I was, uh, working in an insurance company, uh, and I was about to hate it and ditch it, in and get a poncho and a guitar, and grow my hair along, and go traveling. Jes, uh, so what would I f***ing say to myself? I would probably say, SEL the Alfa Romeo. Really? That would, yeah.

1:42:59 Where did you end up traveling after? Uh, I just did inter-railing Europe. Okay, yeah, yeah. Have guitar, will, uh, will travel. It’s awesome, you could buy, like, the Inter Rail ticket was like 180 day, like 250 bucks, and, uh, you know, second class, and all the trains in Europe.

1:43:13 Off you go, even in the ferries, you know, so you can get the boat to France and f***, and like just arrive in Paris, go right where we go. Uh, so I would say, uh, I would say a 20-year-old man, I would do, okay. Um, probably choose journalism, because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, because you hadn’t made that choice yet. No, I hadn’t. I went back to college when I was 25.

1:43:33 Okay, so yeah, five, five years after that went back to college, and, uh, show sociology, and then, and then got into radio and journalism. So yeah, I would say choose journalism, go with it. Yeah, that’s good advice. Yeah, um, on that same note, the best advice you’ve ever received, it could be professional or personal. Oh, uh, uh, I really like, uh, I really like any fool can work for nothing.

1:43:54 Okay, and I really like, uh, don’t, don’t sell yourself short by trying too hard. Any fool can work for nothing. Okay, so explain both of those to me. So, uh, uh, any F can work for nothing is, is just about making sure that you get, like, for me, it’s about, it’s about making sure that you recognize your own value, uh, because I heard my bosses say it, and uh, it was said in a kind of disp… disparaging way of any fool can work for nothing. You know, uh, where somebody’s been hired on a salary, and of course they want to keep the salary down, uh, and, and someone wants to come in and go, well, look, what do you want me to do?

1:44:32 I want you to pay me for what I’m going to do. You know, there’s, and there’s a, uh, there’s got to be a kind of a fairness equation there. Okay, so I think demand, demand value for yourself. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, and I think a great way of throwing that back at somebody who’s negotiating with you or something is like, look, dude, any fool can work from nothing, you know?

1:44:47 I’m not going to f*** you. Want me to work for nothing, uh, you know. Well, then go out on the f***ing street and hire the next guy, which is topic for any freelance journalism, anybody working in digital media right now, you know, all that stuff. Like, yeah, I strongly row in beside those guys who say, screw you, you know, don’t expect me to just, you know, give you my writing so in the hope that someone will watch it. Yeah, totally.

1:45:09 And the second piece was, the second one was, don’t sell yourself short by trying too hard. Okay. People take s*** really seriously, man. This is so so explain that one. So yeah, uh, like, just people, people take s*** really seriously, you know, and it’s like, you know, I can do it.

1:45:25 I can do it. I’m a winner. I’m a winner. I can do it, you know. It’s like going on TV.

1:45:29 This is a Britain and America, isn’t it? I’m doubly offended by this. No, maybe, maybe, but it’s not, it’s not about, no, it’s more, it’s about just personality types and about wanting to do well. I was that soldier, man. I’m totally that soldier, you know.

1:45:44 Like, you know, uh, you know, you like, let’s take doing something in TV, for example. Yeah, uh, where you stress your bones out of it. You know, it’s a big deal, and you realize that, like, you know, if you just go in there, smile, and enjoy your job, do your job, it’s way, so way easier than, you know, just going in and stressing about it, and, you know, oh, that was s***, wasn’t it? You know, you know, the arses can worry themselves. You know, they can worry for the world.

1:46:12 You know, and uh, so don’t worry too much, don’t try too hard, don’t make it, don’t make everything such a big deal. I think, you know, work, work as hard as you can, okay. But, you know, don’t put too much pressure on yourself, you know what I mean? And like, you know, try and get yourself into a position where you’re, you know, if you’ve got, you know, where you’re trained, where you’re useful, where you’re of value, and, and enjoy it, you know. Be positive about it, and, uh, you know, don’t be afraid, uh, of making mistakes, and I think, you know, people just get, people just get so f***ing, you know, hard on themselves.

1:46:42 There’s so many, like, you know, geez man, I mean, it just, you know, everybody’s their own best critic, aren’t they? You know what I mean? And, and, and you throw that into a culture of, you know, into a hyperactive culture, culture of, like, you diagnosis culture, for example, you know, and oh, you’re very critical of yourself, maybe you’re potentially, you know, grade one hyper-depression, or, you know, like some b******t thing that we’ve just invented, but by the way, might have pills for that, or whatever, you know?

1:47:05 I mean, I think just people, people are, are encouraged to be critical of themselves. I think that’s a good thing, but you don’t want to be too critic. You want, you want to know where you step off and go, oh, right, you know, I’m going to, I’m now I’m trying too hard here, you know? That’s just focus on, let’s just focus on the work. Well said.

1:47:19 That was me. That was you at one point. Okay, last bit of that question: what do you say to the 20-year-old that’s listening to us somewhere around the world that wants to, wants to maybe get in the news business or get into doing some, something like what you do. What, what, what advice would you give them? What should they do?

1:47:35 Oh man. Uh, okay, I would write. Learn, learn, learn to write well. Uh, read. Um, read, read your headlines, read your tweets.

1:47:46 Copy is everything. Good copy is everything. Uh, and, uh, so, and, and you’ve got to be a master vult trit yeah. So in, so instead of just, you know, being like copies everything for the newspaper guy, but good copy right now is, is crossplatform video, is crossplatform, uh, and camera work, photographs are crossplatform, so you’ve got to be, uh, you know, the Jack of all trades. You have to be good in all of those things, and you’ve got to be goddamn good at all of those things.

1:48:16 Yeah, you got to be good at all those things, uh, but I think you, they should also look at, you know, you’ve got to look at, uh, the how the production chain, uh, is built in news, and look at, it’s not just about you, kid, right now, 20-year-old going with your camera out into the field, the face, you know, like Hunter f***ing Thompson going to Las Vegas. That’s not what it’s about. It’s a trade, it’s a skill. Uh, it’s part of a huge business. Uh, there’s lots of people brilliant at what they do.

1:48:46 There’s loads of great training and great examples out there. Go out and learn. There’s no, there’s no excuse not to. Uh, but you know, choose your heroes, uh, choose your idols, follow them, learn from them, critique them. Uh, but you’ve got to be able to work across platforms at the same time, so you know, tweet, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram.

1:49:03 Uh, should they go find a new news organization to work for, or should they start broadcasting themselves? I think a bit of both right now. I, uh, I, I think everybody needs a bit of corporate, and everybody needs a bit of freelance, in my opinion. So, uh, so to a 20-year-old, depends where they’re at. If there’s a corporate opportunity around the corner, hey, take it, but it’s not gonna you know, it’s, it’s not, it’s not going to define you for the rest of your life.

1:49:27 Go and do it, you learn a lot, you, no question. Uh, and, and you know, learn from your peers. You know, just have, have a great conversation with your peers. It’s a brilliant world. I mean, you know, it’s, it’s a great community of people, uh, doing this job, and, uh, you know, I think, I think a lot of the really brilliant stuff that, that, uh, like, the, the most amazing illustrative conversations that I’ve had with, with my peers, with my colleagues, uh, in journalism, in arts, uh, it’s not stuff very often that any of the networks that we work for would broadcast.

1:49:59 Yeah, and so I would say, you know, retain, you retain your critical faculties. The conversations you have, wouldn’t they, wouldn’t broadcast. What, what do you mean by that? Because I think you know, I think you know, behind the scenes, you know, journalists will, will open up, right? You know, and uh, and be honest about, you know, not be honest, they’re being honest, but they will open up and, and divulge or confess or give you the real story behind what people were seeing, and stuff like that.

1:50:24 You know, this is what wasn’t reported, and you know, so there’s a lot of that. So, so I would say, like, embrace collegiality, right? Really mentored properly in a place like, absolutely, uh, because otherwise, like, you just, and don’t go trolling people. It’s a waste of f***ing time on the, on the web. Yeah, know, I completely agree with that.

1:50:39 Um, and then the last part of that do you think that news is going to be completely decentralized at some point, where we’re just going to be broadcasting to each other, or do you think there will, will be these Vices and these RTs and these Young Turks? Oh, I think, uh, like, like, uh, well, don’t, don’t, don’t you think that this is, like, that, like, we’re, we’re in an evolutionary cycle right now. I mean, I think where things are changing, and there definitely, shape the shape of the market is changing rapidly.

1:51:02 Uh, you know, and, and, and hopefully, like, in 100 years’ time, people will be asking themselves, like, what the hell were we doing spending all that goddamn money on television? Um, you know, uh, I think so. I think I think that there will be definitely that element of people just broadcasting to people. You know, 100% man, right? Micro-blogging and micro-newscasting, because if you look, look at, look at Asia and, uh, India, Africa, you know, the, the, the, the big markets, yeah, the ontap markets that everybody’s getting, and everybody’s, like, you know, rubbing their hands, getting ready for them, you know, and I know Facebook and Twitter are doing a lot of development stuff, development work in African stuff, but that’s what, geez man, they’re the markers they want.

1:51:45 And I don’t know, I mean, I, I, like, I just see new news organizations coming through all the time, uh, and I think it’s good and really interesting, you know. So, uh, I think, uh, there’s going to be a bit of both. You’re always going to have your brands, aren’t you? You know, brands is a brand, yeah. Uh, but I’d love to think that there are going to be, uh, people-focused news organizations, uh, for, you know, for, for, you know, failed newsroom junkies, or for news, for news junkies, and, you know, failed gonzo journalists like me, or whatever, that that uh, uh, that, that see the value of, uh, doing that, you know, doing that kind of journalism.

1:52:24 You, there’s, there’s just so many, there’s so many, uh, uh, opportunities there for, for a 20-year-old right now to get into journalism. I think it’s an awesome time, uh, but they’ve got to be able to, uh, you, it’s a lot, it’s, it’s a dirty ladder right now, isn’t it? You know, everybody wants an intern, and there’s going to be some, uh, there’s going to be some kickback, yeah, and you’ve got to put the time in. Definitely, you know, yeah, put your time in, put your time in, kid.

1:52:47 Learn how to ride, kid. Learn, take photographs, kid. That is awesome advice. Stuff, Ivor. Uh, I knew this was going to be awesome.

1:52:55 Uh, thanks so much for coming here. It’s, uh, pleasure, Brian. Really great to be here. It’s been really mind-blowing. Um, I think that’s probably another like 10 questions I can ask you, so we’ll have to have you back to do that.

1:53:05 Anytime, anytime. More, more than happy, dude. And congratulations on, on, what’s turning out to be a great show, great brand. Thanks. You just told me the content’s getting ever shorter and shorter as I now put this hour and a half show out there, so you’re telling me my business model is, is fatally, no, no, no, no, no.

1:53:19 I say, you, YouTube loves, YouTube loves the long form. YouTube loves long form, man. No, no, I’m not saying the business model is flawed at all. I think people are always going to rally around and engage with, you know, quality individuals. Quality, quality questions, quality conversations.

1:53:33 I’ve enjoyed it very much. Brian, thanks a lot for having. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. How do people get a hold of you? Is Twitter the best, or what’s the best way?

1:53:39 I’m at Ivor Crotty on Twitter. Yeah, um, uh, you could, that’s probably the best way to get a hold of me, or you or you can reach me through, uh, through RT. Okay, fantastic, fantastic. You guys doing a fantastic job there. If you happen to be listening to us on iTunes, you can see, uh, Ivor in pink, uh, on our YouTube channel, London Real TV.

1:53:55 So come check that out, and, uh, we’ll be putting this out with all sorts of, uh, spliced-up videos with you, you know, your take on all these things we talked about today. So, uh, it’s awesome. We say on London Real, it’s about the journey. It’s about the journey. It’s about the journey.

1:54:07 Right? Let’s go. Yeah, cool, man. I wish you the best,