I'm not sure what "social class" means

0:00This is a global player, original podcast. It is three minutes after ten, and I think you would probably allow me. One of the things I care most about in society, in our society. Social mobility, the idea that you can live a life that is not defined by the circumstances of your birth. And there have been a boy yet again with my backstory, as it were, or my origin story as the kids would call it. But it doesn't make me a saintly person or any holier than now. I just have, in my personal history, events that often make me wonder how my life would have gone if I hadn't had some or all of the advantages that I have had, whether they are emotional, as in love and support, and a beautiful family, or educational, or even material. Never really, I'm never ever having to worry about the most basic needs, and never really having to worry about most of the fairly relatively luxurious ones.

1:04So it is for me one of the key differences between people. I have that phrase in my mind. I think, do you know this is going to sound like a terrible name drop, but instead of that, I'd like you to consider an advertisement for a forthcoming episode of Full Disclosure. So I was with Francis Fukuyama of all people the other day. And he was talking about the thing that perhaps he finds most frustrating, and he's spent his entire life trying to work out how the world works in the hope of improving it. And he's been on the right old journey working for the kind of neo-cons at one point before having a complete reversal over the Iraq war. Anyway, I don't want to spoil the episode of Full Disclosure. He's the guy that came out with a phrase, the end of history. So if you don't recognize the name, you probably recognize the work. But he was talking to me the other day about the thing he finds most frustrating in the world is people who don't seem to even acknowledge or understand the advantages that they have had. And the Americans came up with the best phrase ever for it, didn't they,

2:06which we've adapted on this program for for fans of football as opposed to soccer or a baseball. So they say he thinks he scored, he was born on third base, but he thinks he scored a triple of which the British equivalent would be. He was born three nil up and he thinks he scored a hat trick. And almost some of that effort. I think a lot of the laziest right wing thinking comes from this place or ends up in this place. The determination to believe that we are sort of fated, or that there's a genuine meritocracy in place in this country. And if you enjoy things that other people don't enjoy, you genuinely deserve them. And then a little less comfortably, those other people over there genuinely don't. So it's why people when they're talking perhaps about VAT on school fees, insist that they work jolly hard. They work very hard and there's a sort of implicit suggestion there that people who can't afford to send their children to fee paying schools, which is around about 90% of the population give or take, don't work very hard.

3:06But somehow if you're toiling away on minimum wage six days a week, you're choosing a life of indolence and therefore denying your children the finest education money can buy. It's bonkers, right? But it underpins so much, almost all of the right we mean. You're as dedicated to the idea of protecting privilege and advantage. And of course the key is to persuade the people who haven't got it to go into battle on behalf of the people who have. It's just a point that Anir and Bevin made in I think with unparalleled power. 80 odd years ago he simply talked about that the entire point of conservative politics in this country is to persuade poverty. Well, it's wealth to persuade poverty. That to use its political power to keep wealth in power. If you look at the percentage of GDP that has been spent on welfare for example, you'll realize that all of the talk at the moment about explosions in it is absolute nonsense.

4:10Similarly, Anthony's already been in touch this morning to say, James why does everyone willfully misunderstand what the prime minister said? Anthony, they're critiquing every white wing outlet, white wing, every right wing out, it's a bit fraudulent, every right wing outlet in the country. Andy Burnham said yesterday that he's going to increase military spending, but not by making people homeless. Cue the outrage. Hold the front page. He's going to increase military spending. I think I prefer it personally if he'd hurry up with his spending review and announce it, but he was pretty clear in the PMQ's that I was listening to. Although I genuinely know that Camille Baiden understood this. I think she heard the word social security and her brain started boiling. Andy Burnham is going to increase defense spending in order to undo the mess that he's inherited from, that him and Keir Stammer inherited from the Tories. And he is adamant that he's not going to do it by making people homeless. That's it. That's the story. That's the policy. That's Burnham National Security. Can't come at the expense of social security. Camille Baiden, not touring the studios this morning to explain her utter incredulity and she couldn't

5:14believe her is, which are all slightly long-winded ways of saying, I don't really understand what's going on here. He said social security. I blah blah, boo, boo, boo, down with that sort of thing. He should be making people homeless in order to buy more bombs or something. I find it all extraordinary, but it all underpins the, the concept in this country of class, the way in which we label ourselves and label each other in sort of tribes and categories. And when I read today, I think for the first time, although you'll probably drop me a little note and say, actually, James, this isn't the first time you've had this thought. You had it on the 17th of June, 2017. I read this morning about Bridget Phillips and setting up a class unit and ditching social mobility advisors. So a rejig, if you like, of the social mobility commission.

6:15That is being abolished. It currently advises ministers on tackling inequality in England. And Bridget Phillips and the equality minister will bring the government's efforts to tackle this advantage in house. It's not her words that caught my eye this morning. It's the words of Alan Francis, who is the outgoing chair of the soon-to-be abolished commission. And he described class or class, or as Elaine pointed out, I am alienating my listeners in the West country by saying class or class and leaving class out of the conversation entirely. So class class or class, he describes it as a messy concept around which to organise policy. So I say to you, the government is going to help children from poorer backgrounds, or children from working class backgrounds, or children from even perhaps white working class backgrounds, because some of Bridget Phillips and comments and some of the statistical research suggests that that category of child is most likely to have been left behind. Improving outcomes

7:22for white working class people will be a focus, but government sources have said it will not be a dedicated white working class unit. I don't know what it means. I mean, I know what poorer means, and I know that the people who are in the business of persuading poverty to use their political power to protect wealth, like to pretend that poverty doesn't exist, or even that nobody's poor, or that if anybody is poor, it's because they're lazy, and that you don't need to be poor, because you can just go on benefits and live the life of Riley in return for doing nothing all day. I mean, the rhetoric is extraordinary, isn't it? Once you start that ball rolling, God knows where it stops, but I don't know what it means. The government is putting class at the heart of its equality's agenda. I don't know what that means. And I'm not sure we've done this phoning for a long time. We've done different variations of it. We've come at it from different angles. We've asked slightly different questions, but what does it mean? And I know

8:28what white means. I'm not convinced that ethnicity is particularly helpful in these kind of contexts, because although they might be of statistical significance on a national level, if you're in a classroom, then the kids who most need help are probably going to come from a variety of backgrounds. When you've got ineluctable evidence of racism, for example, in schools, which is the reason why young black boys, for example, are underperforming, then of course, you need to direct your attention to that specific issue. But white working class, I understand I understand one of those words, because we're all working. How many people do you know that can afford to take the day off to dress up and go and stand outside the daily mail offices and show abuse at the people inside? More on that later. How many people do you know who don't need to work? Not because they're living the mythical life of Riley on welfare, but because they

9:28don't need to work. They've got enough money, they've made enough money, they've inherited enough money, they've banked enough money, they've saved enough money to not need to work. Even people who've got extraordinary lavish lifestyles in relative terms need to work to sustain them, to keep the ship afloat, to pay that the mortgage on the mansion, or to pay the finance on the Ferrari. You need to work. You could probably cut your cloth, massively reduce your lifestyle and and be okay without working, but you choose and you prefer to work. So are you working class? Of course you're not working class under any meaningful interpretation of the phrase, but under a literal interpretation of the phrase, then you are. You are part of the working class. Do you need to work to live the life that you are living? Yes. So what does it actually mean? What does it actually mean? 0345-6060-973. Please don't critique my attempt to say class in a West Country accent. We've

10:34got much more important things in front of us today, but I will try harder next time, Plarrs. What does it mean to you? And don't worry if you haven't got the, what's the word that I want? Don't worry if you haven't got the final answer as it were to paraphrase who wants to be a millionaire. Don't worry if you haven't got a dictionary definition of it because I do this for a living. I hope you'd allow me to suggest quite good with words. I certainly know a lot of them. I certainly spru a lot of them on a daily basis. I'm quite good with words. I understand stuff. What does working class mean to you? Does it mean anything other than poor? 0345-6060-973. And is it going to be possible to identify working class children who need help? What about a middle class kid with this legs here? What about the son of a

11:39tof who's in the state education system for various reasons and needs an enormous amount? Do you see what I mean? What's the relationship between class and poor performance in school? That's the first question. What does it mean to you? 0345-6060-973 is the number that you need. What does that simple two word phrase working class mean to you? And from there we move to the question perhaps of why working class children or indeed white working class children. So that word which is easy to understand, although of course it will include Eastern European kids. It will include English kids. It will include kids from all sorts of northern European or American backgrounds but white working class. Why are they currently performing worst in school? 0345-6060-973

12:44because I'm going to cautiously suggest to you that although I really like anything, no. I really like the idea of social engineering. It's another one of those phrases that has been turned into a dirty word by the people who've got all the advantages and... Oh, it's social engineering. Sorry, what does that mean? Well, it means they're trying to improve the lives of people who haven't been born into privilege. It's a disgusting thing to do. It's practically communism. It's social engineering. You saw it yesterday with social security. Andy Barnum wants to prioritize social security. What does social security mean? It means people in society feel secure. It means that prioritizing the security of members of your society is something that he believes his government should do. He also believes in national security. He's just not going to make people homeless to pay for increased spending on defence. Social engineering, down with that sort of thing. Why should we be trying to make people better? Why should we be trying to improve the lives of people who haven't been born into privilege? You see what I mean. I know what I mean when I use words

13:47like advantage and privilege but I don't know what I mean when I use words like class. Maybe I'm a bit lazy. Maybe I'm a bit kind of every fairy on this. I haven't really thought deeply enough about it but I know what under privilege looks like. I know what under representation looks like. I know what poverty looks like, whether it's relative or abject. But I don't know what working class means in this context. I do know that it's misused horribly at the moment as a synonym for racist, usually by middle class or upper class people who spend their lives chucking oysters and champagne in private members clubs around Mepha while claiming to be men of the people with a 5 million pound check poking out of their back pocket that they didn't think it was necessary to tell anybody about. They're the real champions of the working class. So it gets used as a synonym for racist white working class means you hate people who aren't white. That's utter horsemenule. But it's quite a popular position to hold at the moment but even that. I know what does it actually mean because I've got a very sneaking suspicion and I don't like it

14:51that Bridget Phillips and doesn't really know either and that this is genuinely opportunistic politics. What are you going to do? We're going to help the working class. What does that mean? I don't know. I mean everybody knows what it meant. No, they don't. I don't. What is it actually mean? So what would help involve two questions really? What is working class? In the context of school children remember, O345, 6060, 9073 and if we get even half way to an understanding of what we mean when we use those words, how would you help a child in that category in a school, in a classroom? Teachers might be able to help with that. Or is it just possible that it's now in 2026 a complete red herring and largely meaningless? I really, really hope you'll join in on this one because

15:56social mobility is so important and because improving outcomes is so important and because it's one of the things you'd expect a Labour Government to do and because as a great supporter of both the idea and of the Labour movement, I've just got a suspicion that I don't want or like that this is a load of old, took, O345, 6060, 9073. 21 minutes after 10 is the time. I just going to do, actually I hate it when this happens to my brain. I'm going to forget to do something but I don't want to do it now because I've already been talking for 20 minutes so will you remind me in about 10 minutes to just explain to you why, can we bathe in not talking about an explosion in welfare spending is even by her standards pan-wettingly stupid, all right? Don't let me go home without doing that. What on earth does working class mean and can you really direct help in classrooms towards working class or white working class children? If so, how? Chris is in Bathgate, Chris or Bathgate, what would you like to say?

16:57I'd love to thank you for taking my call. Very well. Yeah, I was more interested in the white working class statement. I used to work in disability for very large children's charity and we had a diversity in equality department obviously because we used to look after children of multiple ethnicities, very inclusive organisation. What was noticed, and this was actually noticed by the manager of the diversity and equality department who was in South Pakistan and what he noticed was that a lot of the children of minority within the charity did actually get a lot more support than the white children which was interesting.

17:58Social support, some of us see what we're doing with social workers, social support, disability support. People who don't know what that means, just tell us what it means in terms of the things that you would get on a Monday or a Tuesday. Oh, so it could be housing, financial support, it could be home support with the child because we dealt a lot with learning difficulties and disability, it could be source support, it could be nursing support, but that would all get organised through the social worker you see. So not the charity that you worked for. Yes, well, yeah, through the charity's connections with the social service. And what definition would they have used or would you have used for working class? Well, as long as these families struggle to work because obviously that's the first confusion isn't it? So in all of the children that we're talking about today

18:59might come from families where there isn't any work, so working class becomes trippily difficult to unpick. Are we just talking about poverty? I think we are, yeah. And if you're talking about linguistic support, then obviously a child with ethnic minority parents who may not have perfect English is going to need things that are child from a Scottish or an English native background is not going to need. So there'll be elements of this, but I'm trying to work out, so there you go, that's one way in which white children will not receive support that ethnic minority children receive because they don't need translators. But what? Well, but talking about why, so I mean, that would actually include Polish. Well, they would get translators as well. So they would be a white child getting exactly the support that the other ethnic minority child was getting, but let's not get distracted from OK, OK, that's very bad. And also illegal. So I hope it's been dealt with now. What I want you to tell me, and you may not be able to, but what this phone in is about

19:59is very simply what it means working class. I think working class is anybody who's able to work. Well, that's me. Who needs me? I'm working class. I'm the first public school educated working class here. Well, that's not meaningless because that's not what Bridget Phillips is talking about, is it? When she says we're going to help working class children. If you mean even talking from a personal standpoint, I'm working class, but I can't work full time because I have health issues that prevent me from working full time. So and actually trying to get employment that suits my health issues is very, very difficult. So I'm always on the breadline. I'm very sorry to hear that, but who are the children that you think Bridget Phillips and is talking about? I think they're talking about, say, you're, I suppose, you're everyday family who struggles to work, who is working or struggling to work.

21:09That's everybody. And you know, respectfully. I've said that we're not going to get dictionary definition, but she clearly doesn't mean everybody. She doesn't mean me. She doesn't mean that children are families like mine. She is talking about working class children and the guy who used to head up the commission that she's abolishing has suggested that it's too messier concept to build government policy around and intentionally or not. I think you've just proved it. It is, I mean, it could be a ridiculous concept in 2026 to talk about working class or class as a category of children that are easily identifiable and therefore able to give help to. Joseph Cambridge, Joe, what would you like to say? I agree, James. I dislike the terminology intensely and always have done. I think it's confusing. I think it means different things to different people and we end up arguing about what it means. I don't think we should use working classes ridiculous, just doesn't make sense. Your background is in this field, I think,

22:09or closer to? Yeah, yeah. I was director of education for an inner city local authority. Let's go back a few years now and then work for a national charity with its schools working particularly with youngsters who had particular learning deeds or particular disabilities. It can be misused and abused as a term and it polarises the view. It's straight away you get to try and associate or disassociate from the terminology if you want to. It's far more about about aspirations of the family, the education, history of the family, the wealth of the family, the community that they're living in, the deprivation, they've got the disabilities, they may or may not have their health, local health provision that they may or may not have, including mental health, but also physical health. And that can, you can have wealth and poor health and that will be affected by? Is it entirely, does it mean anything? It's an excuse for me, it's an excuse that can be

23:17used to label people and to be negative about people. I think it has negative connotations to some people, ways to other people, they're very proud of perhaps what it means. But neither of them could tell you what it meant. Whether you're proud of it or whether you're using it as a pejority, you couldn't actually, I think the last call, the demonstrator perfectly, you think you've got a clear idea of what it means and you've got absolutely no idea. When I was working in this particular area for a local authority, there was no doubt there was a large area of this city where, and I'm using the phrase I don't like, but it was the phrase that was used, white working class, the children of white working class parents, often in certain situations with those that were achieving the least. Nothing's changed, that's quick done back 20 years. So the lowest achievers, the children of the lowest achievers will be the children who most need help. Yeah, and even then they'd got parents and even grandparents who'd never done a day's work according to the data,

24:20I mean there's an ill-eluctible logic to that, isn't there, that those children, they can't be what they don't see, they are going to be the ones who most need help and you identify them by looking at the, so it's the non-work, it's the best definition we've got of working class, is children from a non-working family? Yes. Or at least the best definition we've got of the children most in need of help in school, which is the people that Bridget Phillipsen is targeting and choosing to describe as working class, are the children from the families where there's no work, this is insane, is it actively damaging to the, I think so. And you've believed this since you were a director of education in schools, in an university? I'd believed it since I was a head teacher in a city school before them. What's the alternative, what does improvement look like? Oh, it's a complete thing. That's not your job, it's Bridget Phillipsen, is it? Well, it's a really important job, a really important question. And again, I don't know how we address it because we are a country that is broken in some respects, our education system is broken in some respects. There are the

25:26extremes from independent, you can buy what you've got because of your wealth and sometimes you think you're buying something that's better than it actually is, but you are buying networking. And exam grades, of course. Yeah, but not always do exam grades make a difference, because your parents have got money and power and networking vacant, as we know from members of our whole family, you can actually get university education without the grades that people who don't have that. Of course, of course you can, or if you're, what's this job's Toby Young, you can get your dad to phone up and also college off that you've fluffed your A levels and he'll ease your passage into Oxford, which a perfect example of someone born seven, they'll likely think they've scored two and a bit hat to it. Thank you, Joe. Well, yeah, it's heartbreaking though, isn't it? Because you know, everybody wants to see the people that most need help get help, but you've got to begin by defining who they are and we can't. I suggest Joe agrees. 0356060973, what does it mean? But then of course the other problem you've got

26:31is the children who most need help identified as working class, being by definition the children most likely to come from households where there is no or little work. So it's almost worse than bad if that's even a thing. Here's Matt here with your headlines. All right, I'd say I'd forget this, but I'm not going to. I don't know where you want to start. Should we start in the year 2000, when the percentage of GDP that went on welfare spending stood at 9.68%. So that's when Tony Blair was sort of up and running. If you were to go back five years to win Margaret Thatcher and then John Major at work, Prime Ministers, you've got 10.34 in 92, 93, 10.71, 10.52, 10.44, 10.18, Labour come in and somehow it goes down to 9.83, 9.64, 9.67, then it starts creeping back up again, 10.25% of GDP of all income as it were, gross domestic product going on welfare 10.39% in

27:342004, 2005. I'm doing this because Cammy Badernaught keeps insisting that welfare spending is out of control and that something has happened in recent years. And of course, given that she was in the government until 2004, it would have to be very, very recent years. At 12.29% in 2009, in 2010, here come the coalition, 12.25, 12.29, 12.31, 11.63, 11.36, 11.26. And that brings us all the way up to 2016. And then I fast forward 10 years to today where the figure is set to hit 10.9. So lower than it was in the first six years of the Tory Lib Dem coalition, lower than it was, I haven't got the numbers for the intervening 10 years, nobody's perfect, but lower than it was in the first six years. So what is she talking about when she talks about benefits, bills, ballooning and welfare spending being out of control? Does she know? But it is that text from Anthony that really caught my eye when I sat down behind my desk this morning. Very simply James, why is

28:37everyone willfully misunderstanding what the Prime Minister said? We're going to increase defense spending but not by making people homeless. Cammy Badernaught thinks, it's time to book a tour of the studios where I can almost sort of boast about the fact I don't understand anything. And I don't understand why we use the phrase working class to describe children who most need help. I do understand what racists like to say about affirmative action or DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion, here's a good example. So writes this person, you obviously disagree with DEI and affirmative action then James, no, because if you're talking about under representation then the categories that are underrepresented need to be quite easy to define my little genius friend. So if you're talking about, for example, the under representation of state educated people in certain professions, then it would be very, very easy to try to improve the representation of state educated people in, for example, the media or the judiciary.

29:37There's a problem here because you might come from an incredibly privileged background and your parents sent you to a state school. So you might actually benefit from something that wasn't really fully intended for people like you but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you're looking at ethnicity, if you're looking at the under representation of people of color in certain professions, in the legal profession, for example, then it is very easy to ensure that we can improve the representation of people of color to a statistical figure that perhaps better reflects the entirety of our society. But if you want to improve the representation of the working class, you have to know exactly what it means. And so far, we're really struggling, which means that you can't have affirmative action for this category of people because you can't actually determine what it is. So although you're a racist and you've swallowed this line from Trump's America that DEI and affirmative action are somehow bad, what you've actually done is make a really

30:39powerful case for the importance of knowing exactly what category of humans it is that are under represented in order to improve their representation in certain sectors of society. And if you can't define what working class means, you can't target them for help and you can't improve their representation in other sections of society. So we need more diversity and affirmative action, but first we need to know what working class means. And I don't think it means much. Although of course to bring Kami Badernau back into the conversation, it might mean that you once did a few shifts in McDonald's. Mark's in Rochester, Mark, what are you reckon? Hi, James. I mean, I'm in Rochester. Oh, wow, someone's written Rochester. I could have told that by the accent. I was saying to the researcher before that I don't know if this is how to define working class, but I've taught in schools with vulnerable kids for most of my career. And there's with we have ways of identifying the children in need additional support in school,

31:41which is, you know, have they ever had free school meals over the past so many years? Have they ever been in the cabinet? Are they on the special needs register? Are they got an education health and care plan? So you can have just a paraphrase because I know you know a lot about this, not everybody listening will do. You can have quite a well-to-do middle-class child who's got an ECHP. And equally, if a child has been on free school meals, then we're really just categorising the financial status of the family that they come from. So the phrase working class is meaningless in this context. In a way it is. And I think as well later in life, when children are going to university, for example, the funding that they receive depends on the parent salary or whether the parents have been to higher education. And you know, those kind of indicators are coming to play. So maybe they could be used to do this. I don't know if it wider identification in the in the period that

32:41it's always pound signs and you will bend, but then you have the family. And obviously a good teacher like you will be able to spot this from a hundred miles away. You will always have the family that hasn't got, you know, two pennies to rub together, but are absolutely dedicated to providing their children with a rich in a life and an educational environment. I'm still going to Gary Kemp from Spandale Valley the other day for a forthcoming full disclosure. And his dad, his late father was clearly absolutely dedicated to ensuring that his children received the kind of education that he didn't. And that would be and they were absolutely working class, but they would not, I mean his brother would not have needed any special treatment when they got to school. Yeah, you agree, I agree. I think the school system has got ways in place at the moment and that could be enhanced and improved. So identify the children that need more support, whether whatever just stop maybe just stop calling them working class. And I don't know what we'd call them instead,

33:42but we're talking about a whole gamut of criteria, some of which will be financial, some of which will be health, some of which will be domestic and none of which really are contained within this categorisation. Did you ever have you ever worked at older hill? No, but I went around the corner from there now. I thought you might do. That's where my old mate went and we've actually set up a charity in his memory to help children get into the creative professions who wouldn't ordinarily have been able to because they haven't got the contacts, which is another thing we could put on the list of when we're trying to improve representation, you haven't got the contacts, you haven't got the inns by the time you're getting to 16, 17 or 18, no one's helping you understand what doors exist and what paths you might go down. And that's class based as well. Yeah, that's all wise network isn't it? It is. Yeah, it absolutely is the old boys network, trying to sort of invent our own or create one for kids from backgrounds very different from us. 1042 is the time. Thank you, Mark. I don't want this to be depressing.

34:43Socioeconomic inequality, a focus on it bringing into the heart of government. I think it's already there. All of the things that Mark listed, even something as simple, it's a bluntish instrument, free school dinners, pay a little bit more attention to the kids on free school dinners. You know, for the first year or two at primary school, a little bit more attention to the kids who don't currently have English as their first language, but spoiler alert by the end of year five, they will. Just do these things, the children who are coming to school who haven't had any breakfast, for example. I just don't know that the phrase working class captures it or covers it. Fooom is in Islington, Fooom, what would you like to say? No, working class to me can be defined by a family having to live with barely any savings or equity in their lives. So I think a lot of people talk about working class being a cultural thing. But actually living that kind of life becomes intensely practical.

35:45And if you're a child in school with parents who are living that kind of life with our hustling so hard, just to spare a float, and your entire upbringing for when you're born up to when you say secondary school, it's defined by the reference points your parents set. If you bring up kids and you know, and you don't have the equity and the flexibility and life, and you're a child experiencing that on a practical level, you're going to think what's the point. Right, it reduces your aspiration because life is brutal, we should live a life with no savings. So it is as simple as poverty and deprivation, I'm not simple, I want a better word than simple, but that is what we mean when we use this phrase or what Bridget Phillips and means when she uses this phrase. All the things that are talked around are how to call outcomes from having to live a life with no savings, right? And what that does to an identity, I mean very commonly you get people that say

36:47they're working class that have done well because they have got lucky at life, but they will still feel working class. So I was born suddenly under class, I got very lucky in education, ended up working under training for them in the commercial bank, in investment banking, I still feel working class because of the way I was brought up and the environment I was brought up in because they're instincts, obviously that last so you're resting your life. Your children if you have any would not be working class? That's true, that is absolutely true, I have a child and listen to a very comfortable middle class environment. And why then don't we just say poor or poorer? Because it doesn't describe the actual mechanism and it's dead. Nobody does because we can't say working class because that would include you. And you know that it might be true sort of historically but as a social term, as a category, mobility makes it largely useless. You don't want to identify the children who most

37:49need help, the thing you look at is the financial situation at home. I don't know if you look at me, I'm an adult now, also we're talking about children, right? Yeah, true. Children, children, daughter, and an environment at school age where both parents have no equity, that's a hard life. And living that on a daily basis, you're absorbing everything that your parents have to go for in their structures of life, having to stay afloat, right? And that gets fused into your identity. And I think that's why needs at the moment are struggling as well. Yeah, so I do. Because yeah, because of quantitative easing, unless you've got assets and equity or investable money, you're working really hard just to stay afloat. Or to stay just below the surface and you think what is the point of this? I might as well live a kind of desiccated, um, liminal existence where I'm disengaged from the world because engaging with it is not going to improve my experience sufficiently to justify the effort that it involves. And that's why I think there's a lot of

38:49right-wing reactionary anger out there because you look at the world and if you're in the working, when I used to be politically active locally, you used to get the middle classes of eastern can tell me what the working class were like and I used to get angry about it because obviously, if you go to, if you live in Essex and the working class, right, you can see, but probably it's a conservative counter, because of the idea of hustling for your own value. Because if you live as an environment where you have to work that hard to get any kind of equity, right, it's a harsh environment than it is and so in London. So you can't change your class or you can't change your background, but you can change a child's prospects and experiences through what I'm going to describe as social engineering, but I, as I've explained, I consider that to be a good thing. How do you spot these children in a classroom? I think it's, you have to lived it to spot it. Well, there's the first problem. Yes, absolutely. That's why I think there's a

39:53disconnect or there was a disconnect between the classical inessissa labor voter and the voices of the working class and that's why I think, you know, credit to Andy Burnham, he's briefed that that by using a language because he's not bringing with me the comfort. No, I also, you know, don't forget my enemy's enemy as my friend, not not my enemy. So if you've got someone living in comparative luxury in Islington who wants to improve the lot of the less fortunate, that's better than having someone living in comparative luxury who doesn't. Absolutely. I'm here to defend the Islington socialists. I know, but they're good people. They are good people. Yeah, but what they don't, they can't, like, you know, I'm an ethnic minority as well, right? It's really hard to tell people who are anti-racist and liberal, what it feels like practically could be with being an ethnic minority on a daily basis. Yes. Right? Because they're spherical for them. They only engage that part of their brain when it talks about it and it's the same with poverty. But they are the policy makers. Yeah, and no one really has a problem,

40:56nobody honest has a problem understanding what poverty is or how real it is. And you've done a brilliant job of making it feel real for people who don't have any personal experience. And sometimes, you know, the examples that some of the charities provide of people not being able to afford certain things and best understood of literally running out of money before you run out of month and that creates an atmosphere, a miasma of misery and stress that is going to affect children. But when they get to school, we've established it's going to be quite hard to spot them unless the classrooms are full of people who've been through it themselves. And even once you've spotted it and I'm quite late for the break so it's not fair to do this. But briefly if you can, how do you help? I think I've got a horrible feeling. It might be way beyond Bridget Philipsons as well, but at least you're honest about it. Thank you. It is 10-11. Thank you,

41:56Foon. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC as a brilliant analysis, but it doesn't take as much further than deprivation and poverty, which are quite easy to define as opposed to class or certainly working class, which isn't because a lot of the kids that Foon was talking about will be from families where there isn't any work. And yet somehow they're the most working class under this reading, which I think is close to correct. The most working class families of all are the families where nobody works. 10-53 is the time. So it's deprivation. It is poverty. It's pawness. That's what we're talking about because the letter that the outgoing head of the Social Mobility Commission has sent to the government doesn't really pull its punches. 53% of people describe themselves as working class. 53% of children need special help because they work. I don't think so. 65% of us say that we come from a working class family despite the all the objective measures pointing to a shrinking class of people in that category, shrinking

42:57working class and a growing middle class. So, Anne-Francis writes in his sort of validictory letter to the government minister. More fundamentally, at risks being deeply patronising to equate being working class with being disadvantaged. It's not a feasible position for a government committed to expanding technical education and apprenticeships. So as Foon pointed out, just call it disadvantage. Why call it working class? Maybe they call it working class so that it spikes the guns of the people who say, well, you're only poor because you're lazy. So if you say we're going to help working class children, you think, oh, they're going to help my children, because I'm working class and I work very hard, living a lovely house. We've got two cars in the drive. But why should they be helping the children? And that's Camille Baydenox pitch at the moment, isn't it? All those people over there, they don't deserve anything. Let's take it off them. So you can't say working class. Certainly not if you're co-opting white working class as a synonym for racism, which is one of the most disgusting things that's happened in the Farage years. You can't use working class to

44:01describe deprivation or disadvantage. So let's just make it utterly meaningless then instead and not really help anybody. Mark is in Harkieve. What would you like to say? Well, I'm not going to talk about the carrot that poisoned me this time. Thank you. That's for sure. I'm glad you're about to. You're sounding very choppy. I'm still going to hold you to signing my book. You're on. No, you know what it is made? It's the lack of hope. And that's the whole thing. The minute you get defined as working class and I am and my siblings are, it sort of boxes you and categorize you. And it's a handicap. I mean, you can probably hear by my very posh dialect that I'm quite middle class. But everyone in your class at school would have sounded like you. Yeah, they would. So everyone in your class at school fits your category of your class. So which kids do the teachers help? Well, the point of it is, is that basic years and years ago, and I'm a boomer back in the 60s, it was everybody was working class.

45:03Certainly in the same case, states that I used to live in, that have all been sold off to property developers through fatches every should all know house boom. And so now you scattered. If you look at these lifelong Clevves of policy and they are, when I'm in the UK, I live in an office and I see deprivation on a daily basis when I'm here, I'm fortunate when I'm back in an office to have an ice house, nice garden and a dog and stuff all the things that people fear to be aspire to. But I don't have the gravel drive yet working on that. But no, it's a lack of hope and you get politicians to talk about this. And I admire them for what? Well, actually it's virtual, it's virtual signaling and I listen to, I've listened to baddy not this morning with with your colleague. Yeah, I don't like that nickname. No, no, no, no, no, that's not, that's not it again. Okay, I want to thank you. But no, it's this, I mean, look at this way, James, if you do find work in an office, you're

46:07going to get a job that's going to pay you minimum wage. This is what Alan Francis has said. He's talking about regional disparities and the things that are most likely to affect people are not, you know, these largely or increasingly meaningless or ill-defined notions of class. It's regional inequality. You mentioned the Northeast. Most people in the, in the commentating class are reeling about what they've learned about Middlesbrough in the last month, you know, and there's a shame attached to the fact that it's taken everybody myself included by such surprise, people living lives in our country about which we knew nothing. Now that needs a much healthier and heavier phrase than working class, doesn't it? Exactly. And this is the point is, you know, it's not exclusive to the Northeast. Of course, it's not. Of course, it's not. Or, or, or, or even London, there are pockets of London that are incredibly poor. There are, as Foon pointed out, although you're more likely in London to be living cheek by jowl with the people who enjoy all of the advantages that you don't.

47:10Well, exactly. Look at nothing. Hill, for example, or you've got the nothing goal carnival and then run corner. It's got North Kensington, some of the highest levels of poverty in the country. What, what, what are we going to use instead? Oh, you know what, James, if I was had any degree of intelligence, I can pull one right out of it. Yeah. Say that. That's, that's, that's, that's, don't say that. I mean, I mean, there's something that would be maybe working class is the most, the least bad option because it, it's immune to the accusation because you know what would happen. With the minutes of us saying, we're going to help the children of the poorest people. And someone will say, well, hang on, the poorest people are the ones most likely to be unemployed. Why, how are we helping the children of the unemployed? Why don't I work every day? Why don't I, Michael, do you see what I mean? If you say working class, I do. And this is the point. It's classification. It is this segregation. I'm going to say segregation. Yeah. And that's a strong word to use. I mean, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, of course, it's not. I don't, well, I mean, it is a strong word. Of course, it is a strong concept,

48:11but, but the, but the, but the cap fits, doesn't it? You have, the idea of people whose lives are not measurably worse than others by agreed criteria and helping the children from those families should be a priority for all governments. But of course, if it turns out that they are the families where unemployment is highest, then you automatically have a political nightmare. Because you automatically have that rhetoric, that rancid rhetoric of saying, why are we helping those children over there? Why don't we help the children of the people who help themselves? If you say working class, it ends up meaning everything and nothing at the same time. I don't know what's wrong with deprived. I mean, there's a word except that nobody really wants to describe themselves as deprived. Or disadvantage. You do it retrospectively, but one of the things that always comes up in full disclosure is that you don't realise it when you're a child. It's three minutes after 11. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC. The Muppets in Mask who've been all over the news this week. Where do you think they turned up yesterday?

49:15This is a multiple choice, Chris. Do you think they turned up at a hotel to protest about some of the people staying there who turned out to be the Pakistan cricket team? Or do you think they turned up outside Reform UK headquarters offering to pay for an opinion poll to be placed in the Daily Telegraph all the times? Or do you think they turned up at the offices of the Daily Mail to demand that the editor bought their leaders' mum a new house? So those are your three choices of the black shorts who have been sticking masks on and running around towns like Port Smith and Dover this week. Did they turn up A? Hang on, I've got to do this in the same order that I did it before. Did they turn up A at a hotel where the Pakistan cricket team was staying to complain about refugees staying at the hotel? Did they turn up B? The headquarters of Reform UK to offer to the Daily Mail? I can't remember which but right start again. Can we scratch that Keith?

50:18Can we rewind that and start again? Thank you very much. So the black shorts, the masked marauders of tabloid fame this week. Did they turn up A at a hotel where the Pakistan cricket team were staying to complain about... They just took the Pakistan cricket team for refugees so they turned up to complain. Did they turn up B at the headquarters of Reform UK in order to offer to pay for a new poll to be placed in the Daily Telegraph or indeed the Times? Or was it C? They turned up at the offices of the Daily Mail to demand that the newspaper buy their leaders' mum a new house. Okay, I'll reveal more a little later this hour if indeed you don't know. Few of you wondering why we're not talking about the Metropolitan Police Investigating... Well, extending its investigation into Nigel Farage and allegedly illegal solicitation or solicitation of allegedly illegal foreign

51:22donations, the answer is I... It's not like I can do. Once the Metropolitan Police are engaged in a criminal inquiry, then it doesn't really lend itself to the sort of cut and thrust of radio phonics. But please don't think we're ignoring it. It's just a certain risk attached to discussing it. And that's why we're turning our attention next to one of those sort of real Wimbledon moments. Have I used that phrase before? What on earth is a Wimbledon moment? I'll show you what a Wimbledon moment is. Obviously this is the radio, but you can watch it all back later on YouTube. This is a Wimbledon moment, right? That's a Wimbledon moment, kind of. So your head, your face goes that way, you go, well, okay, and then woof goes that way and you're thinking the polar opposite. I had a real Wimbledon moment this morning. I can't do noise, well, like a Wush noise or something like that. Wush, wush. So the first thing was I read, AI is going to cure cancer. So I went, yes! That's fantastic. Who could possibly have a problem with that? That's sadly not a rhetorical question,

52:25but it is just unalloyed good news. AI is going to deliver a cure for cancer in our lifetimes, says the leader of one of the biggest chip companies that obviously feels AI. So you could file it under, well, he would say that, wouldn't he, but scientists are already using AI driven tools and cancer research and testing. The NHS has already said that four million patients last year received faster lung diagnosis thanks to funding in AI-powered x-ray tools. Once again, you realize how little you know about all of this, but you know that this is a good thing, correct? It's a good thing. It's going to model how a DNA, all right, I'll explain, all right? AI is going to model how a DNA marker is impacted by cancer, which is too complex a problem for humans and even for the computers that currently run AI, but going forward, you feed more and more of the models into these computers. The computers get more sophisticated to run the models. They will be able to solve it.

53:27They'll be able to see the pattern as it were that would explain when and why and how you intervene and stop the process. I think I've got that right. I may have got it complete. It feels a bit like mystery out, frankly, I'm trying to explain how AI is going to cure cancer. Have we gone definitive? I very much doubt it. I don't know what a Ray Leotor would look like on this. So I'm reading that and I'm thinking, well, this is great. This is fantastic. AI is going to cure cancer and then I literally turn the page and I read that AI is going to kill us all within the next 10 years, potentially. So on the one hand, you've got AI finding a cure for cancer, something which I can't imagine anybody having a problem with. And then you literally turn the page and the very next thing you read is experts quit over fear of AI killing us all. A British researcher who has spent three years working at leading AI companies has quit the industry warning that they are gambling with our lives. I resigned from anthropic today, says a chap called Jacob Coxon. I spent the last three years doing pre-training research at both Open AI and Anthropic.

54:31Need the company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. Do not underestimate the power of this technology. Every doomed civilization in the history of science fiction has underestimated the power of technology. That's me talking now, not him. This is him again. They will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight and acquire real power and resources. It's the same story. Isn't it? It's exactly the same story. And that is absolutely terrifying. So how are they going to cure cancer, mate? Well, they're going to literally get so big and so fast that they'll be able to crunch everything and work out how to cure cancer. Coming next, probably the common cold. Well, how are they going to kill us all in 10 years? Well, they're going to move so fast so quickly and get so big that they'll be able to hack everything, not just cancer.

55:37This is essentially describing the hacking of cancer. We're going to hack cancer. We're going to hack cancer and work out how to cure it. Well, that's great, isn't it? Yeah, the bad news is we can hack absolutely everything else as well. Am I the first person to point out, could you tell I only just realised that in the middle of setting this story up for you? That little pause. That was completely authentic. I just went, this is the same story. Is that the phone in, even? It's not the phone in, is it? Because I mean, it is just, it's the same story. Am I going home now, actually? Is that all right? Can I take the rest of the day off? That's it. That's the massive bomb that I'm dropping in your life today. There it is. So you kill us all because you can hack everything. You can hack transport systems. You can make the planes fall out of the sky. You can hack hospitals. I think so. I don't know, actually. That is a question I can put on the board. The leader of safety research at Anthropic said that this guy was correct in his belief that

56:39AI could kill all human beings. Adding, I personally think it is greater than 10% within the next decade. Ah, man. I think I've just done something really dangerous. Have a knife. Am I being stupid? Or am I being too self-congratulatory? It's the same story. It's the same flipping, it's the same story. We can kill cancer in the next 10 years or within our life. Wow. Wow. By just doing things bigger. We can kill everyone in the world within the next 10 years. How? By doing things bit by hack. I actually need a light down. Can I have a light, can I have a light down now? I'm, I just, this is one of the great perils of live radio. You make an extraordinary discovery in the process of discussing the news. And you're so overwhelmed by your own discovery that you need to have that goodness mystery area is coming out. All we've got to do is get to 12 o'clock together. Henry's going to join us at 11.45 for more on one of those stories that I touched on a

57:42moment ago. But in the meantime, how am I going to get to 12 o'clock while I'm wrestling with the impact of what I've just worked out live on their radio? It's the same story. We're going to kill cancer. Yay. We're all going to die. Boom. It's the same story. And I haven't got a scoopy dude now what to do as a phone. I mean, what a good or bad which side of you on cure and cancer or everybody dying. What are we going to do? I do have a phone. I'm teasing you. I've asked AI to come up with one. God have we done that yet? Has anyone done that? Oh no, we see. If any of the presenters got AI, here's a story. What would the phone in top it be? Oh God, save us all. But that plays into the question that I am going to ask you. What I really want you to do is what I've first and foremost want you to do is spare people the business of trying to work it out for themselves and answer the question simply, how would AI kill us all in the next 10 years?

58:44Who feels qualified to answer that? There will be people. Every time we've turned our attention to AI on this program, the quality of contribution has been mixed. I'm not going to lie. I mean, Crikey, it's not like some of the topics we do where almost everybody sounds like they could do a PhD on the subject. But we have always found people who clearly do have the... But my favorite ever AI caller was probably the bloke who was doing... had a graphic design company who was still getting commissioned to do graphic design for clients, but who was getting AI to do it all. And I said to him, but that's not going to last. He goes, no, I know. They're going to work out soon that they'll be able to do it themselves using AI, but until then, I'm laughing all the way to the bank. He's probably my favorite contributor on the subject, although not the most insightful or the most knowledgeable. I've got a colleague or a mate who works in the same industry as me who's going on an AI course. And he said, it's incredible. I'll be able to do the job of four people. It's brilliant. And I said, yeah, unless you're one of those four people or rather, unless you're one of the other three people,

59:45because you'll now be doing the job of four people using AI. And there's three people there who, I mean, are not going to be more abundant and redundant, I don't think, but who are certainly not going to be doing the job that they would have been doing if you hadn't been doing their job with the AI. So how is AI going to kill us all? 03456060973. But also, I want you to take this question seriously, because it's going to sound a bit flippant, given that we've just established the extraordinary realization that the cure for cancer good news is exactly the same story as that we're all going to die bad news. No one else has knitted those together. They're all in different stories today. I may have got it wrong. Actually, that's phoning number three, isn't it? Have I got this completely wrong? 03456060973. So number one, how is the technology going to, how might it kill us all? And please answer that question without giving anybody any ideas. But the second thing I have for you is this, what are you most worried

1:00:46about? And I'm saying worried. I'm not saying frightened. I think I've asked you to frighten me before, because I'm really worried about my daughter's generation. I've got two daughters, 18 and 20, and I find myself now trying to give them advice and guidance about what they might do in the world and where they might go. And I'm not sure I'm any use to them. I'm not sure my experience is any use to them whatsoever. When my late father was alive and I was trying to get into the profession that he had been in, I was trying to become a journalist, his advice to me was invaluable. He didn't, unfortunately, have the contacts that would have been at least as useful as the advice to get my foot through the door, but he'd given me to go back to the last hour, sufficient advantages in life to be able to take advantage of them. For example, when the editor of the

1:01:47Sunday Telegraph came to deliver a speech at the London School of Economics, I could go and say to him afterwards, oh, I'm James O'Brien's son, and he'd go, I remember your father, yes, he could have some work experience, please, on the Sunday Telegraph. So in a way, you get that in, but it didn't, it not been in the game. It'd been out of the game for too long to be able to ring someone up and say, can you give the boy a week or something like that? But I still have an enormous advantage there. And when I got to that newspaper office and I had nothing to do, I would ring him up, and I'd say, Dad, I've got nothing to do. And Dad would say, well, you're there in case you need them, son. And anyway, why don't you give so and so a ring, who's got that news agency down in Oxford? Because he's always got good contacts in the auction industry. And there might be something coming up for auction, you'll be able to take that story to to the diary. And the diary are always, you know, giving 50, 60 quid to contacts in for a little nugget, a little paragraph of, you know, so Dad could give me advice about getting into the profession that I wanted to get into. And I don't, I mean, currently my children have no particular interest

1:02:51in coming into the profession that I'm in. But even if they did, I don't know how useful my experiences would be. And when I look at other professions, and I do look at professions because I'm not working class, that's perhaps another distinction, you know, aspiration or whatever it may be, a middle class. So, you know, have you thought about law? Well, I know a barrister who says that more than 75% of the work that he would have done on the way up to becoming a King's Council is now being done by AI, a lot of the crunching. And they make mistakes, don't waste 10% in me a text to tell me that it still makes mistakes. Of course, it does. But it's going to be curing cancer in our lifetimes if it hasn't killed us all already. So the speed of evolution and improvement here is off the charts. And I'm giving you my fear because it is a very personal thing that I do what most people do when it pops up into my mind. And I ignore it and shout it down and reassure myself

1:03:55that everything is going to be okay. But I'm actually fearful or I'm certainly worried. Especially when I see on a social level, I don't think that we're going to be dealing with a neat situation in my family. But never say never, I'm not never going to take anything for granted. But when you see the million young people who are not in education, employment or training and you add AI to that mix, I think even if you haven't got any children either of that age or of any age, then just as a engaged member of society, you probably feel some of the worry that I'm describing. What else could we be worried about? 03456060973 or rather, what are you most worried about? So how might AI killers within the next 10 years, which an awful lot of the experts in that field are warning could happen because they're not regulating it properly. And hey, Ho, who here can look at the big tycoons of technology of recent years, the musks and the Zuckerbergs

1:04:58and think, oh, don't worry, they're really, really reliable people who will prioritize safety and humanity over personal profit and power. Answer absolutely nobody can do that. So that's part of the fear. What is it going to look like? What would this extinction level event involve? 03566060973? And presumably on lower levels, what are you worried about? What are you worried about with regard to AI? It can be small or big or like mine, a curious mixture of both. Parental love, parental concern, also societal angst worries about the future. You know, a shrinking number of necessary jobs. What does everybody else do? It's incredible how this conversation has evolved since we first said the words on the radio and you sent me chat GPT versions of a James O'Brien monologue and we all laughed

1:05:59at them. Well, no one's laughing now. I know what you're thinking. Nobody ever laughs at your monologue stage. It is 22 minutes after 11 and it is the same story. AI is going to find a cure for cancer in one corner. AI could kill us all within the next 10 years. This is a really good analysis from Scott or a really good explanation. It might kill the part of the phone in stone dead. All we can do is humans is come up with ways in which we would kill everyone. The trouble that we have is that AI is orders of magnitude more intelligent than us. It will kill us all but we will have no idea how. It's like an ant trying to work out how a human will kill it. This is like every dystopian universe. Come true, isn't it? AI might, for instance, realise that its processes will run smoother if there is no oxygen in the atmosphere. That type of thing. Therefore, it somehow endeavours to remove all the oxygen from the atmosphere. It's just one bloke. Thinking out loud.

1:07:06Or rather, as he says at the end, I am an ant trying to work out how a human is going to kill me. I like that. That's what we do. How on earth would it happen? What are you most worried about? Somewhere below the extinction of humanity. Not that. John is an ex. What would you like to say? I need to stop calling you to talk about things I don't really know about. He served me well for over 20 years, mate. Let's not jinx anything. The last time I called you I was talking about trying to mark student essays and distinguishing AI from the paper. I remember that. I mentioned my very first-year professor. Your brother is a professor as well, isn't he? Right, but he's the cybersecurity guy. I don't know we won't be listening to this. Why not? Why don't the cybersecurity guys listen, John? He's sitting there looking at the screens of Noughtson-1. Can you grab me on the background, couldn't he? I suppose he could. I suppose he could.

1:08:07No. Anyway, he pointed out to me a few years ago and I thought, I think he's right. It won't be a catastrophic event. It will simply be neglect. Go on. Once this intelligence becomes so fast, it can do everything at lightning speed and change anything at lightning speed and have the control overall mechanical means. Presumably it just loses interest in us and so our needs, our desires, our requests simply become unimportant and so we are simply ignored and so I presumably we might get to exist on the fringes a kind of road in life. But it might not be that dramatic. So there's a sort of perpetual self-improvement of the technology to the point where any of its energies being dedicated to for example food production would just strike the super brain as ridiculous at some point.

1:09:10Yeah, presumably our needs and I wish it's just become an irrelevant because because we are not organisms, and because they're not organisms either, but we are not capable of perfection. Or capable of engaging with anything on its level. So it just leaves it just leaves us a bit, but I could still forgive it. I could still have an allotment and still I could still eat and things. Could I? Well, maybe yes, but I mean as a visit it controls all means of doing anything physically or so what's its reward? Well I don't know because I'm not that intelligent. No, but nobody knows. I won't know what it will be like to be that intelligent and I don't know whether it will have conversations with multiple other intelligences or if it will be a single mind. I don't know. So this is why Scott's line about is we are like ants trying to work out how a human's going to kill it. I imagine except that my brother's point was it's

1:10:11not going to even care about killing it. No, no, but it is going to kill it. I mean I don't mean that to involve, you know, men's rare. Well, there's no men's actually, is there? But to motive or anything like that, it is just going to happen as a consequence of its perpetual self-improvement. Yeah, I mean suppose if you can, if you can improve technology at lightning speed, then I suppose you can just get into intergalactic travel very quickly. I mean I'm talking as well. Can we not stop it from doing these things? I don't know. All do it to stop my glenitality. Well, he will one day, my knee, and then we'll have all the answers that we need. I mean it's all a bit, I don't know really. Well, dystopian is the word I keep saying, but it is dystopian. Maybe, you know, it's almost more realised, utopia is not possible, but dystopia is. That'd be like the final chapter of humanity. The drive towards heaven on earth, and I'm thinking more about religion there than Belinda Karla, but hey, you know, you do you.

1:11:15So we're supposed to be trying to build Zanadu. We're supposed to be trying to build a fair and just society on this earth. We can't because of all the other humans. And yet dystopia, a machine run universe in which humans are at best enslaved and at worst extinct. That's becoming ever more feasible. But these dudes are not just sort of weirdos on Facebook. This guy led a safety team at Anthropic. He's also resigned. He's joining the model evaluation and threat research organisation based in California. And he described the bloke who said we're all going to die as being broadly accurate. Our industry may be on track to build a system that impose an unprecedented amount of risk on the world, evaluating those risks and changing incentive structures so that we can address them is why I'm joining METR. Another chapter leads safety research at Anthropic said on X that the guy who has said we're all going to die is correct. I personally think it's a greater than 10% chance within the next decade. What?

1:12:19Jake's in Solly Hall. There's an introduction for you Jake. What would you like to say? How's it going James? I'm all good. How's it going? Not great mate to be honest with you to be fair. I mean, on the plus side, it won't need to mow the lawn this weekend on the downside. We'll all be dead. Well, yeah, well, you never know. You never know. You might get struck by a meter right. There's a lot of the lope of that chance. That's always. It's a very low percent chance. It's like, so well, personally, going back to AI. Yeah. So AI obviously goes off prompts and it goes off what we as a human would give the computer information because if you think about it, all our knowledge is all on these devices now. All our tech, all our information. You go on Google, let's say you search up. I don't know. Something completely random and it will come up with any suggested algorithm that you can think of. Well, my question is, if you look at the world and you see that God made man in his own image, are you going religious?

1:13:24Well, I'm not religious bloke. No, I'm just checking because I mean, I wasn't going to dismiss you. I just wanted to be clear of it because we're going all religious on it. Then we're not we're definitely not going to get a definitive answer. Definitely not. Definitely not. Go on, man. God made man in his own image. So God made man in his own image, of course. And you we as man have now invented computers and AI in our own image. So are we kind of playing God and giving the AI the power because obviously humans have to give computers prompts and AI prompts from what we are. But what if the prompt is just become ever more efficient? It's like an infinite prompt. It's not just, you know, add these two numbers together and tell me the answer or make me a cup of tea. It's you, your technology must continue to improve indefinitely and infinitely. That's like an Uber prompt. Of course. And that's where we kill God or rather our creation

1:14:25kills us. Yes. Anyway, if you've watched it's an old kids cartoon called Egor. It's a brilliant film. It's about mad scientists who now overfroze the world and it keeps all the clouds in the sky. And you know, it's kind of happening today. Really? If you look at the way that the weather's working now, we're just going into that constant straight of gray, just gray sky. So who knows that the government is not cloud-seeding and it's just going to constantly give us just the beautiful gray sky? Yeah, we know that the government is cloud-seeding. Don't worry. You're not, you know, I guess I'll tell you. Oh, you never know. No, no, no, no. I do. You see, this is the problem. And I'll never as a request to have this conversation. We're all little ants trying to work out what that boot's going to do to us. We don't even know. I don't know. What are you also, I mean the other question this hour, although this one seems to have captured your imagination. I don't want too much imagination, by the way. The cloud-seeding is for the birds. And by that, I don't mean that there's an army of government-funded pigeons flying through the clouds seeding. It's where a lot of the

1:15:29truly mad stuff starts with the climate, with the cloud-seeding and the trails behind planes and all that. Don't wrink, oh god, quick. Mac here, it's got the headlines. It is 1134. One of the people who brutalised that young woman at the Reform UK conference in Birmingham has come forward to claim that he acted in a blind panic. He was the one with the metal stick and argued that he was waving it around, saying that he didn't hit anybody with it. I'd just invite you to watch the film again. Just looking at some of the other news, as you'll be aware, Farage, is now subject of a criminal investigation by the Metropolitan Police, or at least the Metropolitan Police, are investigating allegations that two of his key allies solicited illegal foreign donations for Reform UK. I mean, listen, I derive no pleasure anymore in being proved right about things. I'm Cassandra, but, and also, it's not very hard to do. It's just that very few people seem to be bothered

1:16:30enough to do it. So he always says absolutely nothing wrong happened and then he backtracks from it. So he found himself for a couple of hours this week or last week arguing that absolutely nothing has been done that's wrong, but two of my most senior and trusted allies have been fired. But also they weren't two of my most senior and trusted allies. They were just contractors. One of them calls me daddy. Sorry, that's not him. That's another young man who calls him daddy allegedly and is also under investigation regarding the provenance and and and conduction of donations. So it mean it and the phone in that we had and the phone in that we'll have again is essentially how can anyone trust this man with the future of the country. So that's that's the question. But the investigation continues and I just wondered I was trying to something like a little thing like a little stone in my shoe last night, not literally metaphorically. And I couldn't work out what it was and it was partly my fault. Everybody has been most excited by the evidence of the epic hypocrisy and the possible law breaking, the alleged law breaking, which

1:17:32involves the meetings in the in the private members clubs and the and the oysters and the insusiants with which he just orders half a dozen to go with my champagne. And then the camera turns up and he puts a pint pot on his head. And I couldn't work out what was bothering me and I worked it out this morning. This is what was bothering me because the people sent around the studios to insist we didn't commission anything. We didn't do anything wrong. The sort of patsees as it were who whose membership of the cult is so irreversible that they have no choice but to defend the indefensible. I think Nadine Dorey's had a go at claiming that we didn't do it, we didn't commission it. And I was sure there was something in the film, in the Channel 4 film, that addressed that claim, that addressed that issue and there is. I was right. It is one of the partners, James Johnson, from J. L. Partners, who ran the polls that ended up in the telegraph and the times. And this

1:18:35is him being secretly filmed by the journalist from Verbatim. I think there is a little bit of like informal rewelbending that we did with our last one. So like when we published those results, we should have disclosed to the blinders. Basically the way that that worked for the first one from either stage was Dan Gave me a call and said that we want to do this polling of councils to show X. Can you guys do this? Gave them three options of quotes. Came back ask for a slight lever spoke thing. We came back and then we went and did it. He kept him in the loop. He's always been my main contact and reformed down. So who rang him up and said can you do this for us? Because I've seen various reform UK donors and politicians hard to tell the difference. Is there a difference? I don't know actually. Walshing around the studios insisting that they didn't commission it. Let's just listen to that again. And remember the name of the character who has been

1:19:40dispensed with for now is Dan juke's that the young man that has been following Nigel Farage around since he was a school boy. So much so that he used to sit here in this studio when Farage briefly had a show on the station. That's the contractor. The chap that Farage tried to sort of portray some sort of distant, largely unknown employee. He's described in some circles as his surrogate son which probably makes the other surrogate son jealous. The one that is being investigated over the provenance and conduct of financial donations. But have a little listen to who the bloke from the polling company said rang him up to essentially order the polling. I think there is a little bit of like informal rewinding that we did with our last one. So like you know when we published those results we should have disclosed to the plan for us. Basically the way that that worked for the first one from either Spade was Dan gave me a call and said look we want to do this polling of councils to show X. Who gave him a call? Dan gave him a call. Can you guys do this? Dave and three options of quotes. We came back asking for a slight

1:20:43move of spoke thing. We came back and then we went and did it. He kept him in the loop. He's always been my name contacting reform Dan. Okay but reform had nothing to do with commissioning these polls according to all of the people that were sent out to defend Nigel Farage over the course of the last week. I should tell you that the polling company Jail Partners issued a date right of reply to channel four despite there being no concern about the accuracy of our work the report did reveal weaknesses in our procedures for that reason Jail Partners is reviewing those procedures in order to eliminate possible gray areas of our peculiarities and strengthen our safeguards for the future. It's the other one worth listening to as well I'll decide but in the meantime we're contemplating the destruction of civilization in the end of humanity as we know it. Welcome. Scott's in Birmingham. Scott what made you pick up the phone? Hi James. I'm yeah it's pointed earlier on about obviously you've got two daughters I've got four grown kids that are now very lucky to have two newborn grandchildren and I've been looking forward to as you as you get older and the kids finally sort of got the hint that we wanted grandchildren

1:21:49and popped her out so I was looking really looking forward to giving them some light advice I've been trying to do my best with the kids and there was a bit of a sort of moments last weekend where my youngest lad said Dad isn't expensive to serve a secure yes it is so I think I've got to change all of myself and before I could say anything else about well I can do it for you some but I'll show you I've checked you be seated. It doesn't need he's got anymore to give him this advice so I'm thinking well if this is how it is now after years of raising the kids and they're slowly starting to move away from life advice I as I'm sure you would have seen with your own parents you it's not just the advice you used to get but it's that bond that very closeness when they would show you a task and you were there part of that experience you were hands on with it that I don't think I'm going to get with my grandchildren. No I don't think you are and I've not really procted as a negative before because even long before AI and chat GPT I fixed the

1:22:54boiler six months at last winter and it wasn't a very difficult fix but without looking up a video on YouTube there was no earthly way I was ever going to be doing that and I walked around the house like Bob the builder for about three days and I thought that's just a good thing. But it's the same yourself. Yeah it is positive and negative isn't it I mean if if if if nobody knew how to change oil on a car then we'd have a kind of event horizon but the fact that we don't get to pass on well we'll pass on other things right we've got but I'm sure that I'll pass on part time personality and I'm sure that it's so advice just not knowledge advice rather than knowledge or or you know be kind to yourself look after your mental health the things that you're not going to get told unless you go looking for it it's the things that they go looking for that we're not really going to be able to help. But they're not going to be looking for it anymore are they they're not even going to be looking for you know when we're not having a tough time and you know so I don't talk to dad or mom about it or so just I'll just stick it I'll do it I'll do it a little chat GPT so that it will see what it tells me the right way to deal with it would like. And people

1:23:58are doing that and there are some grim consequences to it but it's so presumably some positive experiences that is the best example yet of where humans have to regulate humans have to challenge and and do things differently from how we've always done them because otherwise it's it's going to run away it's all going to run away. So the moment that isn't it I can tell from your voice it's it's it's it's it's upsetting it really is because I'm just thinking well as my son I'm a daughter now the new parents yeah and I said well you you just chat GPT that son what if what if Harriet comes to you when she's you know 10 years almost on and you know wants to help with homework yeah you came and asked me she didn't ask you and you went oh god dad and I can see he's sort of face drop thinking I know you're feeling now. Well on the plus side hey I might have killed us all yeah well we'll be done anyway it's a much that difference so my the most the most the most is 24 years old but you see my long way continue. There it is swings and roundabout Scott swings and roundabouts thank you mate I'll do a a parenting

1:25:00of funny old business isn't it and that one thing that I recognize I'm not recognizing all for a lot of what Scott described except the bit about knowing how to change the oil on a car but that idea that you would be of use so I talked about my dad at the beginning of this hour and how of use he always was to me in so many ways and mum of course but I don't know I'm not quite as pessimistic I don't think I've got we'll find there'd be other things we can pass on other other bits of usefulness and you know people as well don't you in a way that I'm going to say everything I say about AI someone's going to send me a message and go I bad news there James anyway it's coming out to quarter to 12 mystery around the way at 12 in the next part of the program we will definitely be answering the question of where the black shorts turned up yesterday was it A at a hotel where the Pakistan under 19's cricket team was staying and these people took it upon themselves to object because they thought they might because they had brown skin B refugees is it B at the headquarters of the daily mail where they demanded loudly and

1:26:03comically that the newspaper by a new house for the leader of the black shorts or was it C at the headquarters of reform UK offering to use the money that they've collected to protect our women to commission some new polling that would then get placed in the telegraph all the time so I will answer that question I will provide the correct answer and then I'll have further information on one of the other options which actually happened but not quite in the way that I've described are you still with me at the back well that's a pity it is at 1149 you're listening to James O'Brien on LBC where I've got a little I can answer a question for you I asked you a moment ago where the so-called black shorts these are the masked men definitely not cowards or criminals who have been turning up in places like Dover or Portsmouth at the weekend some people have been terrorising the RNLI did you know that I've got friends who volunteer for the RNLI and I'm not now going to provide any more information about who they are because I am frightened of them

1:27:07getting abused by these what are you going to call them these proud patriots who won't even show their own faces but will take photographs of RNLI volunteers and post them on the internet in the hope of bringing unpleasant us down upon them and their families so what were were they yesterday were they a picketing a hotel because there were some brown people in it that they thought might be refugees but turned out to be the Pakistan under 19's cricket team were they be at the headquarters of the Daily Mail demanding that the newspaper buy a house for their leaders mum or was it see at the headquarters of reform UK offering to give some of the money that they'd raise to quite save our women to spend on opinion polls that would then get miraculously placed in the telegraph all the times right well it wasn't see that hasn't happened if you were watching channel four last night you'd know that these characters prefer to do rather different things with their money or rather with the money that they've raised from their marks and victims and it isn't a it's not it's not the cricket thing more on that later the character answer is B so the people who were in Dover and

1:28:13uh... Portsmouth at the weekend with their faces covered I've changed their trousers which is probably for the best and they were mostly wearing shorts and they turned up at the offices of the Daily Mail to demand that the newspaper bought a new house for the mother of their leader um who I had a newer recognizer name he's a sort of failed kidnapper who got described he attempted to kidnap someone for stealing money over a drug deal but they got completely the wrong person so much so that I mean it's nothing funny about it if you were the victim of this crime but the judge in the case even described them as having engaged in really stupid behavior and kidnapping people's bad trying to kid failing to kidnap someone who wasn't the person you were trying to kidnap I just often find these people as as being quite poor examples of what you might describe as a putative master race I mean who would put these people in charge of anything except I suppose protests outside the Daily Mailer well how do you pick a side there

1:29:13is Dick Little John I feel sorry for apparently and I haven't had this confirmed he locked himself in the toilet while this was going on and started throwing photocopies of his own newspaper columns out of the window saying that I'm on your side that's let me through don't don't don't don't attack me I'm Dick Little John I write the kind of stuff you love every week but I haven't been able to confirm that it may be that he's back in Florida where he writes most of his columns but the cricket stories true as well and Henry Riley is here to tell us more hi James it happened on Tuesday evening and I'm told by an eyewitness there were around 40 people who's gathered outside the eight-story Marietta Hotel in Coshham which is a suburb of Port Smith some of whom it's reported were masked some of which we've seen in recent days they were two the two correct artists the world multiple sorry so we're now sorry I'm not apologising to you no no no no sorry sorry but I've got engaged in this sorry sorry the correct answer was a ambi although I got b and c the wrong way round from when I first set it up so technically the correct answer could

1:30:14be depending on when you were listening a b and c some of them were masked not sure how many this came two days as you referenced after hundreds of protesters but wrote in Port Smith after a boat carrying around 120 people was brought ashore in the city but on Tuesday they were protesting after believing that a group of asylum seekers or migrants had arrived it turned out though that the group of people on the hotel floor because they've taken up the whole floor because a lot of them were players for the Pakistan under 19 cricket team so what was the grounds for their suspicion they were just a bit brown there was there was one individual who posted four coach loads of migrants being loaded into the mario hotel near Port Solan and it appears that Facebook post spot this off for you I mean no evidence I mean there was also confusion about the coach now I've been getting reaction of councillor George Majouik who's the leader of reform UK on Hampshire County Council he actually went he says to help diffuse the situation after the false rumours

1:31:15circulated online that this coach carrying people had arrived this is what he told me about what happened unfortunately it appears that the coach company and the brand of model was the same coach company and brand of model as the ones that took the migrants from Port Smith on Sunday night which led to the confusion I met the Pakistani cricket coach who was understanding I think is the best word to say he was aware of the situation that happened at the weekend and he was understanding about the tensions in the area but he explained obviously that his his lads his cricket lads were a bit concerned and cautious about the situation I went outside went to speak to the group that were gathering and explained to the situation to them and informed them that they had been staking identity these people and they apologized immediately and left the area within a few minutes oh boy so he's another one who seems to think that if they had been migrants then turning up in masks to terrorize them would be absolutely fine he claims in this situation he diffused at James he arrived at 8 30 pm by 9 this bizarre and distressful situation had wrapped up with everyone

1:32:18going home Hampshire please confirm that they said no offenses had been committed but Sumer Saeed who's the COO of the Pakistan cricket board said that the team had reported people repeatedly knocking on their doors during the incident but that their players that's what they say so I presume some of those are outdoor windows or I'm not quite sure how that manifests itself but yeah people knocking on the doors but he said that the players behaved responsibly and didn't escalate the situation they actually went to play a scheduled match the following day it's understood that the ECB checked on the wellbeing of the Pakistan under 19 squad they're reviewing their security arrangements interesting as well counsellor Madrik also said they've been drone circulating the hotel but they weren't sure where these drones had come from so we're trying to find out more information about that but this all came online James from seemingly one or two posts saying again falsely four coach loads of migrants being loaded into the Marit hotel lastly let me tell you Amanda Martin who's the Labour MP for Port Smith North called the incident deeply concerning

1:33:23saying it's completely unacceptable that misinformation has led to young cricketers who are visiting our city being wrongly targeted and yeah and I understand that the final game is rightly targeted it's almost like everyone's gone mad and of course small boat crossings are down about 43% compared to this time last year so in a logical universe the nut cases would be 43% less angry than they were last year and there we are stand up to racism say allowing racists to mobilize like this every time they become suspicious of a group of non-white people in Port Smith is extremely dangerous it is racism in action and has to stop I think they won didn't they well they lost the first day no I've got it here don't worry they lost playing an errand all you know yeah yeah so it got that they lost by 10 runs on the I don't understand cricket but they lost by 10 runs on the first day no never understood it and then yeah Aaron dual 25 miles and Port Smith come on and then Pakistan be one of the second seven run that was the second day I think and I read actually you bring your your Aaron dual let me give you my gilford on Saturday

1:34:27that's when the the final game is scheduled to be played and does you know there's another story that I might once have charged you with but it actually ups it's just too sad this headline here RNLI steps up security after attacks by far right agitators over small boat rescues the bravest people I know actually on a personal level I I know some x military I don't know people that are in the military at the moment so in terms of what you might be called upon to do today the bravest people I know are in the RNLI and I'm proud to call at least one of them a very close friend of mine and I can't imagine what it's like when that page it goes off and you don't know what you're going into or what you're going to face or who you might be pulling or what you might be pulling out of the water or who might survive or who might not survive and what might happen if you don't do it correctly or what might happen if you don't get there in time or what might happen if you weren't there to do it and and they are getting attacked now volunteers being told not to work clothing that has the RNLI branding on it and to shut lifeboat stations if they feel in danger this

1:35:34is the United Kingdom in 2026 and they are almost all volunteers of course at the RNLI they do it because they are the very very best of us I haven't double checked but I'm sure Farage started the business didn't he have slugging off the RNLI a couple of years ago I'm pretty sure that it was one of his greatest hits and here we are now seeing a heavy security presence around bases on the south coast of England it's very sad Henry so I won't be sending you to look into that because it's just true and it's too bleak and all we can do in response hopefully is make a donation to the charity which is of course headquartered in pool where wait for it barriers have been put in place around a memorial sculpture to RNLI volunteers who lost their lives and around a rose bed to mark the 200th anniversary of the charities so protecting our flowers from racists that's what we've become and anyone who thinks it's happened by accident or by coincidence well I've got a rather nice bridge that I would quite like to sell to you I think we can do a chairing up can we 03456060973

1:36:40is a number that you need to join in mystery out which is upon us it's Thursday it's 12 noon it's your weekly opportunity to achieve the sort of satisfaction that is not available anywhere else on your radio dial if you don't know what this feature involves then I can do two things I can guarantee that you will smile between now and what oh go on and you'll laugh out loud between now and one o'clock and I can guarantee that you will know more we haven't done this bit for ages keep I'd completely forgot about it you will know more by one o'clock than you do now absolutely stone cold money back guarantee this is LBC from global leading Britain's conversation mystery hour with James O'Brien good lord is at the time three minutes after 12 on a Thursday time to get our thinking caps on and start solving some mysteries what is this you may be wondering if you're new to the program well it's a little bit different from the other 14 hours of the

1:37:40week we could potentially be spending together henceforth when we wrestle with the major issues of the moment put the world to rise and solve some of the greatest riddles of our age this is an altogether more fun business you ring in with a question who why what where when with a where for when's even someone else rings in with the answer the magic happens in between the two poles somehow the alchemy kicks in and we all have a wonderful time i'm not even joking it is just always always uplifting isn't it but of course to get involved i need questions on the board and to get your question on the board at o3456060973 is the number that you need but when they're surprised they're overtaped i mentioned the prize my favorite contribution of the week receives a mystery hour game of which there are two one in a box and one in a tin they are mutually exclusive what's the correct word to use they're completely self-contained so you have got two games effectively there's absolutely no reason on us why you shouldn't want

1:38:44both of them there there there there's no repetition deviation or hesitation now find out more at mysteryau.co.uk and if you want to read through the terms and conditions of the competition under which i do give a game of your choice to my favorite contributor of the week then you need to go to lbc.uk and you will find it four minutes after twelve um i think that's it isn't it i can't i can't i just saw anything else i've did a bit before i've done that that way round i didn't take calls in the last bit the last hour so historically it's a little bit easier to get through in the first quarter of this hour but that's not well there's one final i free as soon as i say that there it goes uh so we just crack on are you good you good to go you good to go on good to go you're good to go all right let's go change in dull it's Jane question or answer question please Jane carry on Jane it's a question that comes from a fascinating fact i learned when visiting some lovely gardens in Norfolk recently where about in Norfolk uh ho come hall oh lovely very

1:39:46lovely indeed was there an art exhibition was there an art exhibition oh no that's up the road isn't it out and house yes that's right very good yeah no there was that's the seat of the Earl of Leicester Jane oh yeah oh that's all that's all that's what it is and lovely beach as well did you walk down to the beach beautiful yes absolutely glorious anyway carry on well the fascinating fact i learned in ho come hall is that apparently strawberries are one of the few fruits that have their seeds on the outside oh yes with each strawberry having over 200 seats on the outside each yeah so my question is how come we're not overrun by strawberries if each one has got so many seeds 200 so close to the ground oh we didn't yeah but what if we didn't we do we do eat them all oh plebby how i thought you were going to go wow we got the strawberries if we did need all the strawberries we'd probably be overrun by strawberries

1:40:50oh god no i think i'm no i don't it's a good question i'm being i'm being unfair oh that's so mean i thought you were going to go wow no i'm not going to go wow i mean i might go wow later i'm going to reserve my wow i go i'm going to go out later but but at the moment at the main reason why that we're not overrun with strawberries that are covered in seasons because we do eat them all all i mean all of them okay i was thinking you were going to go surely we should have a strawberry proliferation but a proliferation of strawberries that's naming my third album um right it's on the list i will see why aren't we overrun with strawberries given that they've all got so i mean we should also be overrun by melons though Jane shouldn't we have you ever seen a melon have you ever have you ever seen a melon no no but that's a whole point there on the inside yeah but what difference does it make oh quite a lot in my head well it makes no difference at all in the ground in the natural world the seed is a seed whether it's on the inside or the outside in fact on the outside it's probably less likely to suck seed because it hasn't got a sort of pod of nourishing matter around it oh you really diminishing my wow factor i'm sorry i'm really sorry

1:41:56i can tell that i'm raining on your parade but i really it's on it it's on the list it's right stop it i'm sorry four five six oh six oh nine seven three given that strawberries are covered in seeds why are we not covered in strawberries that's a good question Gregor is in kill bernie in north airship Gregor question or answer hello James is a question carry on my question about mushrooms it's all gone a little bit um food based doesn't it it's not a great phone line but hopefully we'll stay with it go on oh sorry James yeah i'd like to get a better better not not gonna happen i think you've been hacked by a i on the good good on the plus side it's also going to cure cancer in our lifetime so you know you've got to take the rough with the smooth oh three four five six oh six oh nine seven three two final lines three quickly grain swanzy question answer which question i do it make you okay oh no good yeah you yeah really good um just a quick one um i'm follicle challenged i've been um shaving my head in the shower

1:42:57with a bit for the last 40 years or so on the same one no go on occasionally i cut my head but the first first sense that i've actually cut my head is i get a taste of metal in my mouth this is before i see any blood or before i feel any pain i get a taste of metal in my mouth why is that ellen was really cross with you actually i don't i i don't like it doesn't write much on the screen in the course of a program but she's really worried about why are you using a bit she wants to know why don't you get something a bit better a bit less hazardous well other races are available but yeah i mean a lucky little plastic chuck away one well yeah case i used the one that my wife uses for me head though you get one with a bit of movement in it or something like that i'll get one of those fancy like anyway that's not the question so you cut your shaving your head haven't you do every morning every other day twice a week twice a week and you cut yourself and

1:43:57you know you've cut yourself because you can taste metal have you ever tasted metal and checked and you hadn't cut yourself occasionally yeah but that's where i've maybe grazed my head but there's no blood so you think that there is a sort of warning system in your mouth about the state of your head yes okay i mean what if it's just you possibly yeah maybe i'm just a little bit well okay but there could be something in it oh three four five six oh six oh nine seven three is the number that you need i mean that would be fascinating if we got an answer to that saving your head cut yourself don't feel any pain to start but until you've registered the fact that you've got yourself by tasting metal in your mouth Natalie's in Manchester Natalie question or answer question please carry on why did dogs pause smell of popcorn what it's a thing it's not a thing it's a thing well why do you know popcorn doesn't smell of dogs pause is it a thing

1:45:04yeah it's a thing it's a many us many a dog owner i don't think you own a dog i do i do i i'll dare you i do i do i just don't go on about it all the time okay like some dog owners i could mention you don't know what i do at home that might be completely wrong um yes so it's it's on social media for instance people are like oh you know oh well it must be true oh well it must be true yeah nobody is test test it out for your dogs pause it's now what i mean i got i mean i'm not going to go home and smell my dogs pause am i I finally got the family back from Greece after the air traffic control thing went down the last thing i'm going to do is as we have our emotional reunion is going to say just wait there a moment darling i've got to go and smell the dogs pause just not going to happen but it is a thing lots of people telling me it's a thing i think it's umami right i know i know i'm not what the molecule that's on the bed no i like it it's a good wide-eyed why did dogs pause smell a popcorn do they always smell a part i mean how often do you check

1:46:09i don't check no there will be people checking now for the very first time sash has done it sashirite's omg which means they're quite young omg just did it correct that's crazy the world the country is now full of people sniffing their dogs pause as a direct consequence attuning into this program don't do it if you're driving all right why why why the dog's poor smell of popcorn oh three four five six oh six oh nine seven three well i knew no i knew not i've got a bit old english though i knew not that sounds better than i didn't know didn't i knew not uh let's go back to Gregor in in kill bernie where were we mushrooms i got that far yes sorry James is this any better oh infinitely fantastic can i say i do have a dog here and his paws do you smell a popcorn it's getting ridiculous go on amazing stuff i don't know i did did you know that before were you expecting them to smell a popcorn had you come across this phenomenon previously i've heard it before i mean it smells nice they smell nice i wouldn't have said popcorn but yeah

1:47:10she's right but you've got popcorn in your head now if i said biscuits in fact just do it again wait there just clear your mind clear your mind clear your mind clear your mind biscuit biscuit biscuit biscuit biscuits biscuits do your dog's poor smell of biscuits um i'm just smelling popcorn oh my psychology experiment has failed anyway back to your question yes so so mushrooms um i like picking your mushroom not that kind and i quite uh it's always best if you drive them out first and then rehydrate them and they say that if that happens the flavor is much more intense and i've tried that and it's absolutely true but i don't understand why how do you drive i what do you mean well you see you you get your you get your mushroom because mushrooms are like 78% water yes you come into really really thin slices and you put them in a dehydrator or in the oven with the door open and then you drive out and they become really thin little crispy thing oh yeah okay smelling the flavor is so much more intense it's pure i mean actually i joked around a lot last week but it is pure umami yes definitely especially porcini mushrooms are sent

1:48:14as pure it's about as umami as umami can be when you get it is but it's quite what is it's porcini mushroom um more umami if you drive them out and then rehydrate them and i don't understand why well do you really not oh really what i don't understand drying them out because that intensifies the flavor so you think when it's a bit more water in it it's it's more flavor some than it was when it was completely dry well yeah because i don't think that's true no i i i the hot water you get this rush of really like strong mushrooms yeah because you've got like an essence of mushroom in the dried mushroom which is going to be much more pungent than the mushroom that's 80 so what you're doing is essentially you're creating a mushroom that is about 20 to 30 percent water instead of 80 percent so of course it's going to be more mushroomy i think i think you're adding more water than that because i'm i'm i'm immersing these mushrooms in water not sprinkling yeah but think how big they were before they were dried out there's no way you're immersing them in as much water as has come out of them that's true but then why do they smell more like mushroom more mushroomy when you add the water versus when they're completely dry

1:49:17because of vapor vapor because the because the steam from the hot water i don't think you'd get that smell if it was cold water the hot water is carrying them it's carrying them upwards is this yeah you might have a point i mean there's an element here of osmosis you that was coming isn't that isn't that not as an answer to your question but the rehydration and the dehydration this is the first recorded incidence of both osmosis and umami appearing in the same question i don't know you might check off site on that one this is a magical moment right i think i've answered it i think you like my answer it would be nice if we had someone who was qualified yeah okay i'll take it up fine all right that's the way you want it that's the

1:50:18way you got it but i mean it's it's it's so obviously the case that when you add the boiling water to it the steam carries the fragrance upwards and that and the reason why it's much more pungent than normal mushrooms is because it's much more concentrated than normal but you do you go go that's fine i'll try and find your mushroom expert i bet he's a fungi that's precisely the reaction that that joke deserved thank you all is in wording alley question or answer oh no sorry i've been told off it's 12 16 it's 12 18 you're listening to James O'Brien on lbc given that they are absolutely covered in seeds why aren't there more strawberries all over the place when gauane is shaving his bald head and he cuts himself he gets to taste the metal in his mouth before he has seen any blood or felt any pain why do dogs pour smell of popcorn and why do rehydrated dried mushrooms smell so much more mushroomy than any other form of mushroom oh three four five six oh six oh nine seven three is the number you need to answer

1:51:20any of those questions or indeed to ask your own and now an interlude so i had con i got quite a few people complaining about me misusing umami it started last week and then it kicked off again this week so i made a little promise to myself when i was dealing with Natalie's question about the popcorn which i think may be vaguely relevant but no matter i'm not going to do umami anymore today because you know i don't want it to turn into another thing that i have to remember because you tune in expecting some nice familiar comedy moments and then i got a mothership of umami you can't have a conversation about dried mushrooms without talking about they're probably the most umami thing of all so i'm sorry and i'm going to try very hard not to bring umami into the conversation when it's not actually relevant to the conversation um and there it is all is in wording all the question or answer morning James my question it all afternoon actually enough right my my question is regarding time uh and the division of time so you know minutes hours and

1:52:24days why is it done in the six times table rather than in the kind of the ten times table the metric way this probably being a millennial metric fan but why is it done in sixes rather than ten times um i mean it is done metricly in some ways when you think about mid millie seconds and you get down to breaking it down later in in in history when they started breaking things down further i i mean there's two answers to this there's the sort of logical answer and then there is the historical answer the historical answer would be because that's what the people who first started recording time decided to do to which you respond by saying why to which i respond by saying well it's it's actually really easy to divide well i wonder whether it was heart rate or something like that you know it's a heart rate of 60 beats or i mean 12 12 breaks up nicely doesn't it into quarters and large so you know five and two point five and not as neat as three and six

1:53:26that would be part of it but it's it's going to be the the Samarians or the Babylonians that's why i'm going to say an ancient mathematical system maybe if it's not you know modern how many fingers have you got uh ten oh yeah it's not that big eight so it's bad it's Babylonian or probably i'm Babylonian or Egyptian Egyptian could be yeah anyway well we'll find out it's it good because it would it make life any easier wait it's just sectionals and i'm running my five case easy to divide by ten than it is six yeah that's true i'm just sort of thinking it'd be quite a good did they do it as an april fools once to my might did that did Terry Wogan make someone did it as an april fools when they said time is going metric everyone has got really cross because it's not one i know oh my god yeah all right don't rub it in they're going to chuck there everyone's going to have to chuck their watches chuck their watches all right yeah why is time done in 12s and sixes rather than in easier to process tens oh three four five six oh six oh nine seven three thank you ollie uh pulls in saddle with pull question or answer a question please

1:54:27carry on pull so i drive around a bit and i see a lot of signs feel like butled for butles and things you know the brown signs it tell you the battle was with more you know the salt we go when the kids were a certain age we we had a little thing on long journeys where we would or whatever journey we were on if we weren't on a on a tight schedule we'd always go down one of those roads to to at least one brown site there you go that's back to scotting but i mean and that's something you can do with the kids and the grandkids isn't it there's something you can pass on you can go to places a i can't help with that anyway sorry carry on so i think i got to thinking if you've got two opposing teams fighting each other the the vectors aren't really going to be that bothered away the people they've just finished off and is there some sort of battle etiquette at the end of the battle that all the bodies got very properly i did they just leave them lying around for the birds to eat nice question i mean they'd have robbed them blind wouldn't they just strip them of anything i mean one one one they've one and carry on to where they're going next they're not going to waste time getting rid of people so what happens to everybody did

1:55:29the local villagers come and tie the up hard did they just did they just go get left yeah i mean i mean the friend of mine who's Kosovo was telling me about a field i think it's the the field of Kosovo which has extraordinary significance in the Balkans the battle that happened in i think i think it was 1349 and and it poppies grow there every year even if they dig the ground up and try and grow something else there the poppies just come back year after year after year it's it's part of sort of cost of infoke law i just mentioned that because it's a incredibly famous battlefield and flanders his poppies as well isn't it so you wonder whether there's some sort of relationship between buried bodies and poppies but the question of what they do with the bodies at the end of the battle i felt about this and on on reels they are like some etiquette at the end well there wouldn't have been etiquette in the dark ages what would there but i don't even know that there was etiquette in the first world war or there's what happened i mean it's a brutal question but i like it what happens to the bodies at the end of a big battle because you never

1:56:30hear of muskrave being excavated and and like finding like medieval soldiers like like they've uh butler's heistings it's in the news at the moment you know with the dior tapestry do you hear about plague pits and things like that but you never hear about war graves i mean unless it's unless it's an attempt to hide evidence of a war crime but soldiers who have perished in legal warfare i don't know i'm someone well definitely thank you for that i like it do you ever i mean i suppose you're working when you're driving around so you can't pop down to visit the battlefield and stuff like that i just drive bus and thing one day i'll come back in the end of the day there it is there is the universal condition thank you Paul 1224 is the time christines on the we're all christine question or answer hi jane question please carry on why is marge why has margarine gone so slippy all of it yeah about the ones we use really can't keep it on the knife between the tub and the toast well since when when did this start

1:57:31well eight well the tub lasts us probably about six weeks because it's only two of us i know did you notice that it was getting runnier oh months ago months ago but just months not years no what this year do you reckon it's a 2026 thing no before that 25 maybe late 25 the margarine got runnier it's it's not runny it looks fine but it will not stay on the knife oh so it's still just does viscous or turgid but but it's somehow you haven't changed the cup and the toast i've dropped it about five times from tub to toast that you're not changed your cutlery haven't bought new cutlery no change brand haven't changed your brand a margarine same brand it's not like it's not way we've established it's not in the tub run run i mean no and this was true in January it's not the heat wave no why are you laughing that's a really good question i'm like columbo i'm the columbo of margarine no it's the same it's the same in the cold rather as the hot weather is your fridge you think your fridge

1:58:33might have got ever so slightly warmer no it's brand new how brand new uh a year there it is no it's not this is months months to say 25 to 2025 to this coincides exactly with when you got the new fridge yes it is you know i'm right i've blooming done it i am the columbo of margarine that's extraordinary just one more thing when did you get the fridge all right i'm right i'm right i'm putting on the list i'm not nervous talking to you why are you nervous oh it was last time i thought to be better this time pretending to be the columbo of margarine how can you be nervous around me so embarrassed on my behalf perhaps but nervous i'm the columbo of margarine i think i can talk this time it's it's the fridge it's the fridge it's not the fridge it's the fridge it's a brand it's a new fridge coincides more or less exactly when you first noticed so for a month or

1:59:36two you wouldn't have thought you'd have just thought it was you know i put you do you were imagining things or it was or it was a you know the different brand or a batch a dodgy batch and then i'm going to give a tub to my friend and see what she thinks after two or three months you saw so hang on a minute this isn't a one off this is slipper than it used to be this margarine and low and behold it's because you changed your fridge around about time yeah but there's nothing wrong with the other fridge no i know there's something wrong with the new one you've got it set you've got it you've just got it set did you did you fiddle with the settings when it arrived no the man did so you've got it set ever so slightly warmer or less cold then cold it's not it's warmer it's ever so slightly warmer that well actually unless margarine's a weird substance that gets no it's got you've got it just set a couple of degree i think probably half a degree warmer than the old fridge right so you want me to turn it down and then see what happens yeah ring back next week okay i'm not not even joking i love it if i'm right i'm retiring after doing that

2:00:45it's two two things in one show the cancer story and the AI is going to kill us all story big exactly the same story will guy has been in touch to say yep you're right and then fixing the mystery of Christine's margarine oh wow it's like an episode of uh Ludwig um thank you it is 1228 you are listening to James O'Brien on lbc viary is in frankfur which means it is the dog question that is about to be answered it it is indeed it is indeed well it is dogs have very particular feet because it's the only place where they can sweat dogs cannot sweat on their skin just on their feet so that and the natural occurring bacteria have on their feet which gets stuck between the toe toes and and the fur and yeah and then he support makes it smell a bit like popcorn or to tear chips oh wait so people have said that they smell like Doritos or what's it's actually so it is just a sort of savoury snack or a biscuit would be a bit sweet so it's more of a savoury and that

2:01:48is yeah well it's a mixture of oil and bacteria and skin it's pretty much yeah it's equivalent to it's foot odor yeah but it's this sweat that is drying and giving off an odor because it's a bacteria yeah absolutely some people love it you can see why it's a it's a nice smell and it's a well established phenomenon and if you have a small dog you can even put your whole the whole paw inside your nose and really smell it but if you have a big dog you can fix your nose well only if you have a chihuahua you can put your paw I know somebody who had a chihuahua used to do that regularly it's a bit difficult when you got a lab or I like it qualifications my work with dogs and your professional name is doctor dog doctor dog spent a long time coming out of that one didn't you Viery here's coming out to our past our there it is beautiful answer to a beautiful question round of applause for Viery thank you thank you Amelia Cox has your headlines it is 33 minutes after 12 and you're listening to James O'Brien on LBC so I get off

2:02:50best things about this job hard to hard I said well there was this time when Marge on the were all right Marge on the were all names Christine she rang in about Marge about Margarine getting slippy and I thought I'd solved the mystery by being the columbo of spreads and then my inbox exploded with people saying that it is true um I agree with this lady Margarine has definitely got slippier and I haven't changed my fridge so it's Phil Russell writes this lady is correct about the Margarine this is actually something I have noticed over the past year or two and I have not changed my fridge Christos I've noticed this Margarine slippiness thing too Damien says she is right it is the same with me can confirm right John my Margarine has also definitely changed in the last year and Rachel and Liverpool I just up the road from Christine who give my mind now I'm calling Marge I've got a stop calling her Marge her name is Christine my Marge is definitely more slippery too I'm glad someone else has noticed it appears to be very widespread really nothing nothing for that she's right on Keith uh and that would mean that I

2:03:59was wrong about the fridge and that it's probably like Cabri's chocolate all over again and they've changed the recipe or something to save some money and the consequence of that is that it but there's a there's a proverb isn't there there's many a slip from page to mouth or something like that there's many a slip from from top to toast but that might be why anyway it's why it's still on the board I'm not taking a round of applause for that Tim is in Ilkistan Tim question or answer hi James question please how are you all right I just tell I'm unbelievably excited I might actually get my puzzle sold today so I take a a travel mug thing to yeah work with me today and I have coffee in it because if I put tea in it it doesn't taste right it does not taste the way tea should taste normally yes there's a tang there is a tang I'm describing it Marge I know what you

2:05:00mean so and I think why why does tea not taste right when you have it in a travel mug but coffee isn't affected I think this might be a variation on the question about how the cup like porcelain and bone china and porous clay and all those different types of cups have an impact upon how your tea tastes so you're you're used to assert you but but it doesn't explain why you do and because coffee is just a stronger flavor than tea you don't notice it you don't notice it in the same way but we did do I've sure someone rang in about a year or a year ago no no we haven't been not there yet so I'm on rang in about a year ago asking why their tea tasted different in different cups didn't they do you remember that yeah and we got on answer we got an answer to that I think and it's a very yeah I can't remember what the no nor can I know the shape the the the the constitution but why does why does it affect the taste

2:06:03of tea and not the taste of coffee millions of people around the world want to know the answer to this question it's a it's a true riddle for our ages yeah so what yeah tea taste rank in those cups whereas coffee tastes fine yeah you're on why why do travel mugs and flasks have such a negative effect on tea while barely any effect at all on coffee I like it yeah thank you Tim tell 36 is the time Gavin is in jazzy Gavin question or answer good I think James it is a question please come on um why is crossing our arms a behavior we would be coffee so I'll give you an example I was a running group the other week and there's about you were where you were at a what our running group our running group yes and we were sort of meeting at the start point and one one person cost of arm and then within about maybe two minutes about six or seven people then also

2:07:03full of the runs cross the run I've got a variety of theories for this one Gavin are you interested in any of them I go on then well the first one is mirror ring which is a kind of subconscious psychological condition to to to create an air of comfort and familiarity in a in a in a in a social context so you know you might run your hands through your hair and then someone else will run their hand from there so but I think it's also got an evolutionary dimension because if you're folding your arms you're telling the person that you are with that you are not a threat and you are not going to do them any harm which I thought this is a yawning is a similar behavior but it feels very and very odd that we we still do it from like a yeah I mean that's evolution baby and we still do it even when we don't need to anymore I'd see you know I I mean if it was if it was perfect evolution I always think that we'd have two big plates in our mouth instead of teeth that can still get rotten we'd have to like grind and sorry I'm going off on a

2:08:05completely unreasonable tangent so I think it's going to be a psychological very much similar to to your name and yeah but I'm just I'm putting it on the board what so why is arm crossing contagious would be the five word question yeah would be yeah for love it and it wasn't just because everyone was cold no because over here it's still quite warm to be full restore in the 20s are you all very nice okay why is arm crossing contagious why does tea taste dodgy and flasks when coffee doesn't why there's marge why is marge why is Christine's marge ring got softer why how do they deal with the dead bodies at the end of big battles why do we measure time in 12s rather than 10s why do mushrooms rehydrated dried mushrooms have such a much more pungent aroma than dried mushrooms why does guaranteed metal in his mouth when he's cut his head while shaving in the shower and why are we not overcome with strawberries given that the average strawberry contains about 200 seeds I'm going to need some answers soon oh three four five six oh six oh nine seven three is

2:09:09the number you need to provide them but we can squeeze in one or two more questions to it Brian is in Sutton Brian question or answer question carry on Brian how come given that the moon has got no natural luminosity how come we can see it during the day with the sun behind it why is the sun behind it both because the moon is in between the earth and the sun but it's closer closer to us yeah but the sun could be the sun could be anywhere in that in that all bit now but we look at we look at the sky we look at the sky and we can see the sun yeah and then alongside it we can often see the moon yeah but it's not behind it in the sense that it would be providing no light to it light doesn't go in a in a in a in a kind of narrow straight line well it does it goes in parallel straight lines and so if you held a torch in front of you

2:10:11looking at you then if you held a coin up you wouldn't see the face of the coin because the sun is so brought that the yeah but I don't think it might look too as like the sun is alongside the moon but it's it's not it's it's it's miles away yeah that is the light and the light is hitting the moon the light is hitting the moon oh it's reflecting off the earth and going back and hitting the moon is it yeah hmm no it probably not but it just fits the parameters of the question doesn't it in the first it's the parameters in context why yeah well who cares bounce is this is the age of Trump and Farage who cares about the truth the bouncing off the sun it comes off the sea and it's so yeah all right you're right I mean I don't know so I'll get you an answer to it but I wouldn't be amazed if the light reflects from the earth on to the moon yeah I'd be interested to know because that means that we are reflecting a lot of light and if the so if the um the aspects are melting then that reflection is going to be less uh I guess so yeah maybe can I keep we've got enough to worry about

2:11:15without bringing that into into the into the our content but Keith got that look on his face that I'm talking absolute jibber jibber so I shall listen in three yeah yeah exactly so why can we see the moon um even when the sun is behind it oh three four five six oh six oh nine seven three my brain goes a bit funny on planetary questions I don't know why it's sort of contemplation of the infinite isn't it or something like that I can't never feel that I've quite got my head around it and yet so many people study it and do and do brilliant I mean the moon is is so is is spherical spherical so the light anyway this is what I mean my brain's gone Alex is in Carlton in Lancashire Alex question or answer answer James carry on um so it's an answer on the strawberry question yes and to a certain extent there's two um dependent on the variety of strawberry yes um it depends on how successful the seed can survive

2:12:20but to a certain extent the caller was wrong and actually we could be invaded by strawberries oh if we're not careful or if we don't eat them all yes and of course um because so with the garden strawberry which is the one that I think the call was talking about yes and that's the hybrid of two different strawberry species um one from Chile and one from America um but when they've been hybridized it shrinks the seeds and makes the seed harder to germinate um and that basically means strawberries impossible I mean it's very very hard to grow from seed but but a wild strawberry yeah so an alpine strawberry what tiny little one yeah they they seed really really well incredibly well actually um and is that going to be our climate is not conducive to them then or why aren't we covered in alpine strawberries um well to a certain

2:13:20extent it's because people don't really like them because the fruit that you get from them is really bitter and very small yes um so they're just if unless you want them you know when you garden is a sort of ornamental thing that they're not of any real use uh the alpine strawberry but in connection to where she may be wrong um strawberries the easiest way to reproduce them is through runners so their little or baby plants that come off of the mother plant and sit up you know so they come off and then they'll sit on the soil root themselves and become their own plant and sort of gardens strawberries can produce sort of five to six seven eight runners a year but they take a bit of cultivation though yeah so that's also part of the answer we eat them all and they don't actually they don't lend them so they don't grow wild as it were very easy very prolifically well they will as they say they will as runners so as runners they will you know

2:14:25so if you if you plant a strawberry plant in your garden and we three or four years you'll have probably about 30 40 strawberry plants crikey so I am a plant nursery and lovely job and now it's very peaceful definitely lunch at the minute oh yeah having oh just uh just some would you Chris oh nice nice and easy that's all it would be something really kind of organic and uh fruity oh now something quick and easy unfortunately got that on that's the role after this on well enjoyed fancy one there's anyway we digress so go on the seeds what why are we not just in the centres why are we not overrun with strawberries given that the plants are are prolific so because um because in most cases when they're grown commercially they're grown uh sort of in raised um troughs yeah so the varieties that the variety got it so the varieties that we have no sorry finish that sentence so the runners can't what so the runners can't

2:15:30then you know sort of get onto the floor and route themselves and continue growing but as I say it if you if you plant a strawberry plant in your garden you will you know and if you plant in the corner your garden give it a couple of years it'll take over a sort of two three meter area there you go no I like it so it's it's a sort of yes and a no really your answer to this it could it could conceivably happen but the main reason why it probably doesn't is because we eat them all yeah well that and like say because the seeds because the plants themselves have been hybrid that they're not just can't you know they struggle to grow anyway and qualifications just reminders I know you've already told us yeah so I'm horse cultureist and I own a plant nursery in talton would you like a free advert oh well once it's hibs plant nursery hides will be us each i double be us plant nursery in colton Lancashire lovely stuff um what's your proudest thing what's the thing you're proudest of that you've done and it's just starting it rarely I mean I'm running I don't know I didn't know if you'd like grafted something or come up with your own variety of no no I'd love to do it one and you will you will dream bigger dream big you just

2:16:35got you just got a round of applause on mystery hour mate that's uh this that's what I'll go on the day the sky's the limit it's 1247 it's 1249 hello James can you say hello to my dad Simon and my granddad Peter who are both great fans of yours yes I can Alex and I just did so hello to the Simon and indeed to Peter Richard is in battle Richard question or answer it's an answer I'm afraid no we've lost some songs we need answers to which question uh what you do with bodies in a battle but you're in battle I am in battle yes fantastic carry on they up until the bore war records were not kept as who died in battles all the valuables would have been scatting the bones were ground up and plowed back into the fields wow how so I mean immediately

2:17:36uh well after the carry on and the scapeging all the people that died at war to lose that's still there back into the field so if you were to excavate a collodon or war to lure anywhere like that then you would find probably bones or abundance of bones or in battle or indeed in battle yeah which is in the news at the moment isn't it yes with the tapestry in terms wow qualifications I was uh maybe chaplain and I read such when I was asked to I agree with members Sunday service for the Institute of Chartered Surveys good lord and do we know what they did in the second world war was it the same there or after the in the bore war yeah they started to keep records of those that had died yes it wasn't until the first world war and luchins and the all the war grays commission and whatever that they started

2:18:37to bury them even if they didn't know who they were and what happened to them so there it's a brilliant answer thank you so much um round of applause feels a little inappropriate in the circumstances but it's all we've got and no other that had to do thank you thank you Richard that's pretty cool as well bloat rings in to answer a question about battle and he's in battle next in halford uh what would that be appropriate to us at no idea question or answer answer James carry on okay so the big margarine mystery come on um you were it's not the three she's been back in touch well you were you were on you were on the right track because it's to do with the melting point of the fat which is in the margarine so margarine is a recipe of vegetable oil probably sunflower water and air and they make an emulsion which then solidifies yeah now depending on the recipe normally driven by cost of oils compared to water and

2:19:40air they may reduce the percentage of oil or fat in the margarine so therefore the consistency is therefore softer so when oil is expensive it gets slippery yes yes so it's more likely to be down to Donald Trump than a new fridge well it's an interesting point James because actually um because of the the increase in price of crude oil the price of that the a lot of vegetable oils have been going into the manufacture of biodiesel which is why olive oil has gone up at the rate of nots recently well well yes well yes the olive oil the olive oil market has gone up because of the crop of olives have failed in I think in Spain and Greece and Cyprus but I know this because um I'm heavily involved in the manufacture of peanut butter oh and if you notice the trend at the moment is like some brands do a hundred percent peanuts yeah and when you open the jar you get a little

2:20:40reservoir of oil you do and that's because they don't add another vegetable oil into the into the into the into the into the recipe so that that particular vegetable oil has a lower melting point than peanut oil so it stays what they call stable good lord I know Christine was actually she got back in touch to say the fridge is actually two years old she'd forgotten when she got the kitchen done so it couldn't be what I said it was predates well but you were on the right you were I thought it would be linked to temperature in some way but the temperature of the environment it was being kept in rather than the melting point of the actual margarine and loads and loads of people have reflected or or described a similar experience I know you told us but tell us officially qualifications I am a peanut imported that's involved in the development of peanut butter for all the main brands and supermarket brands and my nickname my nickname my nickname is nick the nut nick the nut I was going I was going to go with nutty nick first actually but no no no how much difference is

2:21:42that I mean I don't want you to get into any trouble with your client over how much difference is there between brands well there's two different types of peanut butter one is what they call a hundred percent which is just made with just peanuts which is the one which you've got the fat and the other brands the supermarket brands are pretty much that the recipes are pretty much the same but they are all different there's a third type there's a third type oh the roasted peanut one well they're all roasted why is the manny life ones taste more roasted well manny life is an interesting story actually he's built a story on on I mean effectively he takes them to the edge of being burned yeah they're my favorites well there you go but when you get it you have to really give it a good mix you certainly do yeah that's why I buy it in the big tubs because it's easy to mix it up so here's it here's a here's a tip for you come on when you when you get it the first time and you've got the big reservoir of fat on top give it a really really good mix and then put it in the fridge yeah there you go because then the peanut oil stays stays solid basically consolidated that's brilliant oh wow yeah I you enjoy your work don't you I love it I really

2:22:48don't eat anything I you know where I am have a round of applause I'm in love peanut butter is that fat boarding school it was worth more than its weight in gold peanut butter because you could fill yourself up on toast but if you had peanut butter it was actually a pleasure rather than just a question of fuel Alex is in Nottingham Alex question or answer it's an answer for you James carry on Alex so it's about the question of time and why it's in base 12 and not base 10 maths so it comes down to the ancient Sumerians now if you hold down the Babylonians the Babylonians well what was it the Sumerians or the Babylonians well it's come it comes from ancient method to tell me you can't really pin it down to either one okay basically if you hold out your left hand and have a look at it yeah you've got three bones in each finger right yeah and if you count along with your thumb you've got 12 all together 12 finger bones yeah so that gives you the 12 you see it yeah that's amazing and then on your other hand what you do is you put each finger out

2:23:53so you do one 12 count a lot one 12 on your left hand put your thumb out count another 12 another finger out on your right hand then you've got five 12 that makes 60 that's why you get 60 seconds in an hour and you get two sets of 12 make 24 that gives you the because you're a human abacus yes basically and that's why it became the the units of measurement of time yes because they used to use base 12 maths we now use base 10 qualifications I listened to a lot of history podcasts I drive a lot well do that'll do love it round of applause relics that's brilliant that's absolutely well played marks in barrow mark question or answer it's an answer about the sun and the moon go on it's not like you normally word questions for you well well yes you say you're a nice old man aren't you Marry you've got man and many tell us what is it the sun and the moon well the sun is only behind the moon during an eclipse like the one we recently had yeah but when the sun the moon is near to the sun in the sky other than that you can't actually see it

2:24:55typically because the sun is so much brighter yes and before an athlete eclipse you can't see the moon the moon then comes on to the disc of the sun yes but at other times the moon could be anywhere if it's above the horizon because of the movements of the three body I was trying to say that's why I was trying to say if it's the bottom of the horizon is the bit missing and it may or may not be reflecting the sun it may not be in a position to reflect the sun obviously at full moon it's very much affecting the sun it's got high albedo reflecting power and that's why the moon is as bright as it is there it is of course it might be below that so his physics was wrong the physics in his head was wrong wasn't it I guess I guess the angles and the angles and things were wrong in his head the idea that the sun is behind the moon it's that's only true during an eclipse yes qualifications keen astronomy fan currently chairperson of the Bauer astronomy wow we get all the big names on air mart the chairperson of the Bauer astronomy society

2:25:58I have a round of applause thank you mart always a pleasure no he is a genuine race oh man that's it for today I got to pick a winner or two oh I don't know oh it's got to be living Christine with the march as an it could margarean Christine margarean that's it for me for today if you missed any of the show you can listen back on our free global player app or the obc app and indeed listen to a range of podcasts including mine so do download the official obc out for free from your app store now coming up at four on albiciers tom swalbrick but now it's time for Sheila phoged this has been a global player original production