Hey, folks, welcome to the Dark Horse podcast Inside Rail. I have the distinct pleasure of sitting

today with Carl Benjamin. It is early afternoon for me. It is middle of the evening for him because he's in

England. In any case, this is a podcast, well, not this particular podcast, but I've wanted to do a

podcast with Carl for a very long time, but I've wanted to do a podcast

with Carl for a very long time, and I will say a little bit more about that. But in the meantime,

let me just say, Carl, welcome to Dark Horse. Thank you so much. I've been long anticipating

doing a podcast with you as well. As we were saying, just before we started, I've been following

your work for a very long time,

and I very much appreciated your work during COVID, because honestly, it was quite brave to go so far out of the consensus, and I'm nothing of an expert on that particular subject in any way, shape,

or form. So it was nice to see someone who was prepared to just take the knocks and say,

no, I really do think that this is the case, actually.

Well, thank you for saying that. I will say I did not at the time know whether or not I would ever find my way back to the acceptable circles.

I'm not sure I'm all the way back there yet.

But nonetheless, I will also say, though, I became aware of your work in 2017.

It would have been when Evergreen was actually in the midst of melting down, if I remember

correctly.

And you, in your other persona, Sargon of Akkad, released an analysis of the meltdown at

Evergreen that I thought was incisive.

You were also very early to that story.

So at the point that I had no idea what anyone was going to make of it, you showed up and

I took quite a bit of solace in hearing that somebody across the pond could see exactly what was going on and just call it out without hedging.

So it's long overdue, but thank you for that.

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