QAV AU 850 — Copper Fever

Tony Kynas­ton: Okay. They decid­ed about a pulled pork to do camp on Aris resources, if I’m pro­nounc­ing that [00:36:00] right. A‑I-S-A-E-R-I‑S. How do you pro­nounce that, cam?

Cameron: Paris,

Tony Kynas­ton: that’s what I thought.

Cameron: you haven’t you done them recent­ly? I feel like we did them like last week.

Tony Kynas­ton: Well, I, I had the same feel­ing. It’s not in our list of pulled porks. And remem­ber doing it about five years ago. I was in, in the first year, I think, of our pod­cast series. I remem­ber it because we had a big debate about how we treat­ed a com­pa­ny that had more than one com­mod­i­ty, um, that at mine and how we found a com­mod­i­ty chart that com­pa­ny. And we start­ed to look

Cameron: Right.

Tony Kynas­ton: its, its rev­enue split or its prof­it split between those com­modi­ties. And this one s, I think is. Almost neck and neck and that was the issue for us. Which one do we use? and I think it all alter­nates between cop­per and gold, but in this case now, it does­n’t mat­ter ’cause both cop­per and gold are buy.

So whichev­er one we decide is the more dom­i­nant. Um, and they seem to be fair­ly, even in terms of, um, split for this com­pa­ny. [00:37:00] They’re both doing well. And that’s anoth­er rea­son for pick­ing it today is it’s to extend this cop­per theme, um, for our very own bio cop­per min­er.

Cameron: Episode 4 37. Tony, it’s, uh, when you did it.

Tony Kynas­ton: How long

Cameron: so that’s a few, uh, a few years ago.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, yeah,

Cameron: Uh, Sep­tem­ber, 2021 was the last time we did it,

Tony Kynas­ton: yeah. I thought,

Cameron: and

Tony Kynas­ton: ago. Say four years ago. Okay.

Cameron: we did talk about Robert Miller’s depar­ture from the board last week. That’s why it was fresh in my mind.

Tony Kynas­ton: Oh, okay. Was it, was it this board that he left? Yes.

Cameron: Uh, yeah.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. Okay.

Cameron: Um, yeah, it was resources.

Tony Kynas­ton: Okay. Um, well, I, I checked this morn­ing and, um, they, uh, sole pat still has a large share­hold­ing in the com­pa­ny any­way, so, um, I haven’t seen any announce­ment about a replace­ment, but I [00:38:00] expect, uh, so Patel wan­na have some­one on the board of this com­pa­ny. Um, okay, so let’s, let’s go through it. ’cause, uh, if you like the cop­per theme, this is what to have a look at. Um, and it’s also a rea­son­able size. ADT is $2.6 mil­lion for this com­pa­ny. So, um, one of the big­ger ones on the buy list, it’s a mid-tier pre­cious met­als pro­duc­er. Um, they have two pro­duc­ing oper­a­tions and they call out three devel­op­ment projects. uh. A lot of these, um, the, a lot of the, a lot of their, or both of their oper­at­ing, uh, mines have fair­ly large ten­e­ments and they’re still drilling and explor­ing on those ten­e­ments and have some prospects.

Uh, they can con­tin­ue to, um, devel­op into fur­ther mines. So they say an excel­lent plat­form for growth, and it’s prob­a­bly fair­ly true. two, uh, cor­ner­stone assets. The Trit­ten [00:39:00] Mine, which is, um, a high grade under­ground cop­per mine locat­ed in Cen­tral New South Wales, near the town of Ing­ham. Um, and that’s on a square kilo­me­ter per­spec­tive.

Ten­e­ment pack­age as well, includes oppor­tu­ni­ties for expan­sion, which were already, um, kind of under­way for the Wabe pit. Um, uh, con­stel­la­tion and Ong and Bud­gety, um, poten­tial mines Mabb Wabi pit’s. Inter­est­ing. It was, um, an old cop­per mine slat­ed for rehab, but because the cop­per price is boom­ing, they’re gonna, um, retrip the mine and, uh, push off the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of it, which means they save a bit of mon­ey on rehab, but they’re also mak­ing mon­ey, um, uh, now that they can afford to, con­tin­ue min­ing in the Mabb Wabi pit. Um, they also have a mine called Krakow, which is a, in Queens­land, um, about 500 kilo­me­ters north­west [00:40:00] of Bris­bane, and that’s their mature high grade gold­mine. They also had assets in North Queens­land, which they’ve recent­ly sold for 15.5 mil­lion. And, uh, last I saw that was expect­ed to com­plete soon. And that was the Mount Col­in mine.

Um, and that also had ten­e­ments, uh, one called the Bar­bara Project, which looks promis­ing. But they decid­ed to, um, to sell that rather than go through the cap­i­tal devel­op­ment required to, uh, to con­tin­ue with it. uh, also have over in WA an oppor­tu­ni­ty called Jaguar, which is, um, focused on cop­per, zinc. It was a mine called the, um, it’s called a brand field oppor­tu­ni­ty. So it’s an X mine that they can restart, but they’re also doing gold explo­ration in the area, which is, um, promis­ing in five prospec­tive areas. The Jaguar mine is cur­rent­ly on care and main­te­nance, which is cost­ing a cou­ple of mil­lion bucks a year, but they may well start that up again in the [00:41:00] future.

And I also have the stock­man, uh, ten­e­ment in Vic­to­ria, which is also cop­per, zinc, gold, and poten­tial­ly sil­ver. uh, in terms of what the fea­si­bil­i­ty study is show­ing and their. a 12 year mine plan for that, uh, Ong mine in the Stock­man area. And, um, uh, they’re at fea­si­bil­i­ty study there and they’re decid­ing to, um, shore up their pro­pos­als to pro­ceed there. Um, cou­ple of things I noticed in their results. They are a high cost mine. I, I did­n’t, um. Did­n’t, uh, pick up on what their cop­per were, but, uh, their lat­est quar­ter said they’re all in sus­tain­able costs for gold oper­a­tions are 3,692 Aus­tralian dol­lars per ounce in the Sep­tem­ber quar­ter. Uh, which is kind of fine giv­en that gold sell­ing for 6,500 Aussie a ounce.

So there’s a, a mar­gin there. [00:42:00] I asked, uh, Google Gem­i­ni, what was the, to gimme some exam­ples of ASX gold min­ers and it said in late 2025. The oil and sus­tain­ing costs vary, but many major min­ers like North­ern Star hov­er around 2,100 to 2,300 some like evo­lu­tion, min­ing, tar­get, even low­er costs at 1400.

So, uh, a few oth­er exam­ples there, like mid-tier min­er, like Gen­e­sis was around 2,300. So this com­pa­ny’s at the high­er end of that. Now whether that comes down, if they do go ahead with some gold expan­sion, um, whether it comes down as they get out of North Queens­land, which is being sold, I’m not sure. but that, um, it’s cer­tain­ly a case that looks like this com­pa­ny’s mak­ing hay while the prices are high. Um, and if they con­tin­ue to go high­er, good luck to them. anoth­er inter­est­ing, uh, part of the finances for this com­pa­ny is a thing called envi­ron­men­tal bonds. So come across this in the detail [00:43:00] that they were called out with uh, areas as case, but I’ll go through it quick­ly. Aras resources holds envi­ron­men­tal bonds, which are in finan­cial assur­ances, that the gov­ern­ment requires that when they do exit their mines, that they have suf­fi­cient funds for the reha­bil­i­ta­tion those mines.

And of the rea­sons that Wash­ing­ton H sold Pat was involved in the com­pa­nies, they pro­vid­ed a $60 mil­lion guar­an­tee facil­i­ty these envi­ron­men­tal bonds. Um, and, uh, along with the fact that the com­pa­ny has to hold $80 mil­lion in restrict­ed cash, and that cov­ers all their require­ments for envi­ron­men­tal bonds.

And um, was refi­nanced, uh, with WHSP. Wash­ing­ton sold Pats recent­ly. Uh, they did have, pri­or to that, a $50 mil­lion facil­i­ty from a NZ. Um, they also did a cap­i­tal rais­ing last year, which I think may have repaid a fair bit [00:44:00] of that. guar­an­tee. They raised some­thing like, uh, $80 mil­lion, um, at the end of this year.

So the cap rais­ing was 80 mil­lion in Octo­ber and a share pur­chase plan for anoth­er 10 mil­lion, which closed just recent­ly, that’s been used to repay, uh, debt. So inter­est­ing sort of, um, uh, inter­est­ing sort of finan­cial instru­ment, these envi­ron­men­tal bonds. And they’ve been, um, par­tial­ly backed by a bank and then Wash­ing­ton sold pats and now it looks like, um, uh, that debt has been cov­ered by cap­i­tal rais­ing. Um, the oth­er thing about, uh, that we could see in the finan­cial results this year is that a IS is now prof­itable ver­sus a loss, uh, in 2024. And I think per­haps even for the year before that, FY 25 results, uh, was rev­enue up 37 mil­lion net prof­it, up 69 mil­lion result­ing in a net prof­it of 45 mil­lion from a loss the year before. So, [00:45:00] um. Doing well this year, which is prob­a­bly why it’s back on the buy list. Throw­ing off cash again, uh, I said before. So Pats has a stake. It’s 31% stake in Aries resources. So a bit of his­to­ry. Uh, Aries acquired sole Pats cop­per busi­ness Round Oak for $234 mil­lion in 2022. The cash and script deal saw sopas joined the reg­is­ter and sopas Bob Mil­ner being admit­ted to the board. Um, they also replaced sopas debt in April, which I said with anoth­er cap­i­tal rais­ing of $70 mil­lion. And, uh, part of this arti­cle in the AFR on the 29th of Octo­ber states that the shares have gained more than 180% this year. So they’re on the rebound. Um, what else can I say? Uh, they also bought, uh, oh no, sor­ry, uh, as part of the, this, uh, buy­out of salt pets. [00:46:00] Mines com­pa­ny Round Oak. Uh, they, they bought or they acquired the flag­ship asset, which was the Jaguar, zinc, cop­per, sil­ver, and gold mine in WA that was pre­vi­ous­ly owned by IGO Lim­it­ed, which is in the East­ern Gold­field Fields region two 50 Ks north of Kal­go­or­lie. Um, and it made a prof­it in Jan­u­ary.

But how­ev­er, the, um, the mine was, or the Jaguar mine itself was talked about being in Keira main­te­nance in the, in the most recent announce­ments I saw. So that may well come back out of care of main­te­nance, espe­cial­ly if they find some­thing worth min­ing, or if the cop­per price and gold price keeps going. Um, what else can I say? prob­a­bly about it. So I guess my take on the his­to­ry of this com­pa­ny is it’s done a lot of acqui­si­tions and it’s now sell­ing off to North Queens­land assets. and if you are think­ing about buy­ing into this com­pa­ny, it’s just done a cap­i­tal rais­ing. [00:47:00] And you’ve got­ta be pre­pared, I think, to expect more cap­i­tal activ­i­ty in the future, always an issue for these kinds of, um, small to mid cap min­ing com­pa­nies.

They’ll, they’ll try and grow both organ­i­cal­ly, but they, they also have one eye to the fact that their minds won’t last for­ev­er. And they’re usu­al­ly sort of a decade long before they become investible, but they may not get to two decades, which means they need to con­tin­ue to raise mon­ey and either acquire or con­tin­ue to explore.

So that’s just some­thing to tuck away the back of your mind if you’re think­ing about buy­ing into a com­pa­ny like. To go through the QAV num­bers. Stock price used is 54 cents, which is above IV one of 23 cents, but below IV two of a dol­lar 26. the cur­rent stock price is 87% of con­sen­sus. Tar­get com­pa­ny does­n’t pay a div­i­dend, so we can’t score it for that Stock Doc­tor.

Finan­cial health and trend is strong and steady. Wikipedia, inter­est­ing­ly enough, have a qual­i­ty rank of 70, an over­all rank of 95 due to high­er rank­ings for val­ue [00:48:00] and momen­tum. But they give it an F score of eight out of nine. So I thought that was inter­est­ing at scores almost per­fect­ly for its F score, but it’s qual­i­ty rank is only 70.

So I’m not sure whether stock Edia or still look­ing at, um, a com­pa­ny which was car­ry­ing $80 mil­lion worth of debt or not when it came out with its qual­i­ty rank. Can’t tell. but the over­all rank of 95 is very strong. the PE for the com­pa­ny is 11.8, which is the high­est in the last three years, even though. Mak­ing a loss for part for prob­a­bly half that peri­od. Um, we, uh, we can’t use a lot of, uh, PEs to com­pare that to Pr/OpCaf is only 4.74 times, which is good. equi­ty per share is 28 cents, so we can’t buy it for book or book plus 30, which I guess is also, you know, a reflec­tion of some of the good­will it’s car­ry­ing from its past acqui­si­tions. Fore­cast. EPS growth, how­ev­er, is 174%, so growth over P is 14.6 times, which is way above our cut­off of 1.5 before we score it. So [00:49:00] we like that. Does­n’t have an own­er, founder. Direc­tors only hold 1% of stock. But the exec­u­tive chair­man’s got a rea­son­ably mean­ing­ful, stake in the com­pa­ny, I guess on as a per­son­al basis.

So, we can’t score it for that, but it’s kind of good to see that he’s got about $4 mil­lion worth of stock him­self, as I said. So Pats has a cor­ner­stone stake in this. Uh, Bob Mil left. Bob Mil left last week. We don’t know why, but I expect, um, so Pats may replace him. I mean, it’s a, not, uh, a wild, you know, a wild part of fan fan­cy fan­ta­sy to say that per­haps they’re look­ing to sell their stake to get off the board where that hap­pens.

I, we just dun­no, there’s too much, vac­u­um around his depar­ture to know what’s going on there, but until recent­ly he was on the board. Uh, the com­pa­ny is not a new point trend­line uptick. Uh, net equi­ty per share is not con­sis­tent­ly increas­ing, so we can’t score it for either of those. [00:50:00] Fore­cast iv, enough, is twice the share price.

Um, so IV two is a dol­lar 26 share price is 54 cents, and that’s very rare on our buy list to find a, a stock, which is cur­rent share price is less than half. It’s, um, IV two, which is based on its fore­cast EPS. So that’s, um, uh, a pret­ty good thing and a fair­ly rare thing on that check­list. for qual­i­ty is 10 out­ta 15 or 67%.

QAB score is 0.14, which is more towards the bot­tom of the buy list than towards the top. Um, risk for this com­pa­ny, uh, the, I think the biggest risk for any­one going into this com­pa­ny is that there’s a risk of fur­ther cap­i­tal rais­ings. So, if you don’t want to be dilut­ed, you should par­tic­i­pate in those.

Um, not always manda­to­ry that you do you go case by case, I guess, but just be aware that. you have a stake or you’re buy­ing a stake in this com­pa­ny, it may not be the last time you were asked top it up. Uh, it has a high, a high all and sus­tain­able, [00:51:00] sus­tain­able cost for gold will be more sen­si­tive to the gold price com­ing down in some of the oth­er com­pa­nies in the gold min­ing sec­tor, which will have big­ger mar­gins that they can eat into before they become stressed. it’s heav­i­ly reliant on explo­ration this com­pa­ny and if the explor explo­ration it’s cur­rent­ly doing does­n’t bear fruit and then lot of wast­ed cap­i­tal, which will be an issue, may lead to fur­ther cap­i­tal rais­ings or for the board to for acqui­si­tions instead, or both on the pos­i­tive sides.

Wash­ing­ton sold. Pat saw some­thing in this com­pa­ny and they. Pret­ty well known as a val­ue investor and um, they’ve got very good cre­den­tials in the area. you look at New Hope Mine, the coal mine, which has been on the list before, it was spun out of Sopas after they devel­oped it. the oth­er thing to see as a pos­i­tive is cop­per is trend­ing on AI data cen­ter usage.

Amongst rea­sons, gold is trend­ing as well, and the FY 25 num­bers are much improved. So [00:52:00] there’s a few things to like about this com­pa­ny.

Cameron: Thank you, Tony. Just try­ing to fig­ure out. Where it’s, uh, gone since the last time you did a build book on it? What’d I say? It was, um, 4 37 Sep­tem­ber, 2000. Yeah, Sep­tem­ber, 2021. Share price was about dol­lar five. It’s now 52 cents, so it has­n’t had a good stretch, but if you did buy it Jan­u­ary, 2024 when it was at 9 cents, you’d be very hap­py with it.

But yeah, it’s, it’s had a bit of a rough ride.

Tony Kynas­ton: Can’t

Cameron: Speak­ing of hav­ing a rough ride.

Tony Kynas­ton: and, you know, cap­i­tal rais­ings and

Cameron: Mm.

Tony Kynas­ton: rest of it. So, um, it has had a rough ride and, but this year it’s been good. It’s back on the bi.

Cameron: Speak­ing of hav­ing a rough ride, I men­tioned that LNG [00:53:00] was Josephine and I just noticed. A cou­ple of alerts popped up for Wood­side. Just become a three point cell today. So, uh, I own that in my super and it’s, uh, pos­si­ble and one of the light counts. So if any­one holds Wood­side, uh, by the time this comes out, it may have gone back above its cell line.

Cell line is, uh, $24 17. It’s $24 and five at the moment. So when you lis­ten to this, if you haven’t already checked your alerts, if you hold Wood­side, um, have a look and see where it’s at. I check the news. There’s noth­ing about Wood­side I can see in the news. So just gen­er­al stuff. Busi­ness as usu­al.

Alright, now we end after hours. Tony.

Tony Kynas­ton: are. That’s all I’ve got.

Cameron: Thank you. Tony Airs [00:54:00] resources. What have you got for me this week, Tony?

Tony Kynas­ton: so not nec­es­sar­i­ly a book or a movie, but have you come across Calie or Poly Mar­ket? The pre­dic­tion mar­kets the trend­ing quite wide­ly in the US now.

Cameron: I think I have heard of Poly Mar­ket. Yeah.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, so they’re, they remind me of Bet Fair. And there, there are two sites and there’s prob­a­bly oth­er ones as well, which are allow­ing peo­ple to take bets on things that might hap­pen.

Cameron: Mm-hmm.

Tony Kynas­ton: Includ­ing things like, you know, who’s gonna be the next per­son to leave the Trump White House? Or, uh, which, which AI’s going to be rat­ed the best by the end of 2025, et cetera, et cetera.

So it’s a bit of use for this in terms of the wis­dom of crowds and, you know, if you have a ques­tion about where you think things might go in the macro sense, these sites might be a guide for you. Not that I use them, um, but yeah, they’re, they’re trend­ing. Uh, I, I can’t for the life of me see that, why they aren’t being reg­u­lat­ed by like gam­bling [00:55:00] com­pa­nies are ’cause fair, um, which is one that I use car­ries a lot of sim­i­lar sorts of mar­kets. mar­kets and some event mar­kets, um, cer­tain­ly mar­ket and the oth­er one are at a lot of a, a fair, a a big­ger range of things to bet on. Some of them are quite, um, arcane, but they are tak­ing bets on who’s gonna win next, the next foot­ball match and things like that. So to me is just straight out gam­bling.

I, I can’t see why they’re not being reg­u­lat­ed by gam­bling com­pa­nies.

Cameron: Is there wis­dom of the crowds and that sort of stuff.

Tony Kynas­ton: Um, I think over­all, yes, uh, you know, like if the, the fact that you can be an index investor and make mon­ey to me says yes, but does the crowd always get it right? No. And con­trar­i­an investors are proof that the crowd does­n’t always get it right. Um, so yeah, it’s, I think yeah, gen­er­al­ly yes.

Specif­i­cal­ly, no. And we’ve talked about [00:56:00] my bets on, you know. Polit­i­cal out­comes before and how I make mon­ey out of arbi­trag­ing them. Um, and that’s gen­er­al­ly going against the con­sen­sus for what will hap­pen and say­ing, Hey, that just does­n’t gel with the facts I’m see­ing. Um, but then, you know, even­tu­al­ly that infor­ma­tion also makes its way into the mar­kets and the odds change.

So the, per­haps it was the crowds gets it right. It is an inter­est­ing debate. Um, I remem­ber going to the race­track once with some­body in New­by say­ing, oh, it’s wis­dom of the crowds means the favorite’s always gonna win. And I said, no, check the odds on the favorite. If it’s three to one, that means it’s gonna win one in every three races. Um, and yes, that gen­er­al­ly hap­pens with favorites, so you got­ta make sure that, um, you’re tak­ing that into account before you start bet­ting that way. Yeah. Inter­est but inter­est­ing, I had to play around with them. They’re, they’re very inter­est­ing to have a look at if any­one’s inter­est in that kind of stuff.

Cameron: What was the most inter­est­ing one that you saw?

Tony Kynas­ton: Oh, I think the ones around ai, what’s gonna be [00:57:00] like, Google Gem­i­ni was rat­ed, I think about a 75% chance of being the best and then they go into a def­i­n­i­tion of what best AI is. It’s accord­ing to some rat­ings ser­vice that rates ai, uh, offer­ings. So I found that inter­est­ing. Um, yeah. But there were things like they were offer­ing mar­kets on what the s and p 500 would end up in.

They sort of gave three ranges. So that’s inter­est­ing to see whether that comes to pass. They were, uh, offer­ing sim­i­lar mar­kets on how low Bit­coin would go and how high Bit­coin would go. And I’m look­ing at it going, this is a finan­cial, this should be a finan­cial­ly reg­u­lat­ed prod­uct. It’s a, it’s a bet on finan­cial mar­kets, which is the same as invest­ing in an ETF or tak­ing a short posi­tion on the mar­ket.

So, If you want an unreg­u­lat­ed mar­ket to place your bits, go for it. But, um, uh, I think they might get reg­u­lat­ed in time.

Cameron: I can see I’m, I’m, I’m on the site now. I can see one [00:58:00] is how many tweets Elon Musk will post between Decem­ber 9th and Decem­ber 16th, 2025.

Tony Kynas­ton: Well, if I was Elon Musk, I’d take that bet and then match it and then, you know, make it ful­fill his own prophe­cy and make some mon­ey, which is one of the prob­lems with, with com­pa­nies like BET Fair like in Aus­tralia. Any­way, the bet­ting agen­cies were stopped from doing live in Mabb, what they call in mar­ket bets, because, you know, if there were cas­es where a crick­eter, you could bet on whether the next ball was gonna be a wide, and of course the gangs would pay crick­eters to bowl a wide on the fifth ball of the third over, and then they’d bet if you look at the bet­ting activ­i­ty, there’d be noth­ing for three ohs and a huge spike on the fifth ball.

The third over, um. with ten­nis play­ers, you know, you could bet on whether the next serve will be an ace. Again, same sort of thing. You pay a ten­nis play­er to, to um, not return the serve in the, you know, fourth set of the third what­ev­er, third game of the fourth set or what­ev­er. Um, [00:59:00] so it’s, it’s, it’s cor­rupt­ible, high­ly cor­rupt­ible. as if Elon Musk is smart, he’ll take a slice of that action and then tweet the required num­ber so he wins the bet.

Cameron: Fas­ci­nat­ing.

Tony Kynas­ton: Hmm.

Cameron: Um, what else you got?

Tony Kynas­ton: Uh, look, cou­ple of, um, we watched the cou­ple of things not and out rec­om­men­da­tions. We watched the Knives, the New Knives Out movie, which I think is called Dead­ed Wak­ing, or Dead Man Walk­ing or some­thing like that. Or Wak­ing Up the Dead. Um, and it’s, it’s not per­fect, but it was actu­al­ly, I thought, bet­ter than the last two and much more watch­able than the first two. More of a. Straight Detec­tive series, uh, sor­ry, the detec­tive sto­ry this time. Um, and, uh, just a ton of amaz­ing actors in it. Um, cameos all over the place of, you know, Glen Close and, um, uh, who else was in it? David Hay­den Church. Um, Brolin. Yeah. Good, great [01:00:00] cast. We just kept look­ing at going, oh, that’s so and so, that’s so and so. Um, so that was fun. Although, you know, I great’s watch­ing Daniel Craig with long hair in the South­ern accent play­ing Beit Blanc, the, the south­ern gen­tle­man from North Lanes. It just does­n’t sit well with me. Um, but yeah, I, I liked it worth watch­ing. Um, and I’ve been read­ing Ben Elton’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy. I’ve got, I think I’ve got this thing for flawed pieces of art at the moment.

I mean, it’s, they’re things that intrigued me the most, like the a Ben Elton fan before, um, haven’t been for a while. He kind of went, I thought he went off the boil. In his lat­er years. I thought, I thought, um, black Hat was great. The young ones was great, his standup was good. Um, I thought Spark in his first cou­ple of books, grid­locked were amaz­ing. And then they became, I thought, fair­ly for­mu­la­ic, but just inter­est­ing to watch his take on all that kind of going on and how he would say, oh, this got panned, or that got [01:01:00] panned. and you could take the point of view that they were rub­bish. How­ev­er, you know, we did this under duress and we did that quick­ly and blah, blah blah.

And I’m like, that’s why they were rub­bish. But he just kind of was­n’t acknowl­edg­ing that in the book. So very flawed, but um, still a great read for what was going on, you know, in that sort of Eng­lish sphere of influ­ence in the Um, and onwards. You know, he became friends of McCart­ney and George Har­ri­son and, um, fry, and Lau­rie and Emma Thomp­son and all those.

So yeah. Good read.

Cameron: Well, speak­ing of that, I watched a cou­ple of episodes of the Alien Earth Series since you rec­om­mend­ed it. Um, and I’m enjoy­ing it, but I was so hap­py to see Adri­an Edmond­son

Tony Kynas­ton: Yes.

Cameron: in it. He’s fan­tas­tic. I was like, holy shit. Is that eight? That’s Vivian.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

Cameron: I haven’t seen him in any­thing since. Um, Rick May [01:02:00] sort of died and his, uh, did his, uh.

Funer­al or the obit or what­ev­er he did for him on stage, um, which was great. But yeah, it’s ter­rif­ic to see him in a seri­ous role.

Tony Kynas­ton: He’s a good actor, isn’t he?

Cameron: He does­n’t have a lot to do in it, but what he does do, he’s great, is that sort of, I don’t know what he’s sup­posed to be, but some sort of con­cil­iary.

Tony Kynas­ton: Hmm.

Cameron: And the oth­er thing I’m enjoy­ing, I’m enjoy­ing a lot about it, but Tim­o­thy Olefin, I’m a big fan of Tim­o­thy Olefin from the Dead­wood Days and from Go and stuff like that.

But to see, like, do you think he is sup­posed to be a Roy Bat­ty esque char­ac­ter in this?

Tony Kynas­ton: Or

Cameron: They’ve kind of

Tony Kynas­ton: Pat esque. Oh yeah,

Cameron: Bat­ty

Tony Kynas­ton: Yep.

Cameron: ER’s char­ac­ter in Blade Run­ner.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, yeah,

Cameron: He’s got the hair and the man­ner­isms. It’s a dif­fer­ent uni­verse, but still [01:03:00] in the Rid­ley Scott.

Tony Kynas­ton: Hmm.

Cameron: Uni­verse and, uh, I, I think they’re like, well, we can’t say he’s a syn­thet­ic from Blade Run­ner because we aren’t mak­ing Blade Run­ner, but he’s real­ly a syn­thet­ic from Blade Run­ner.

It’s Way­land Ani ver­sus the, what was the cor­po­ra­tion in that? The

Tony Kynas­ton: I just keep think­ing

Cameron: Ter­rell Ter­rell Cor­po­ra­tion.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. Um, well, he remind­ed me more of the Lars Erick­son char­ac­ter in, um, Ords Aliens, the sec­ond one. So there’s been a

Cameron: Sim­i­lar.

Tony Kynas­ton: char­ac­ter before. yeah,

Cameron: Yeah. But I’m enjoy­ing it, and I’m lik­ing the fact that at least two episodes in the Xenomorph is kind of a side char­ac­ter. You don’t real­ly see it much, which is how it should be. It appears, it kills every­body for a few sec­onds, and then it’s gone and

Tony Kynas­ton: yeah.

Cameron: more about the, the char­ac­ters and the sto­ries and all that kind of stuff, which I’m chill­ing.

Tony Kynas­ton: aliens, which are far worse than the xenomorph that come along.

Cameron: Yes. Hor­ri­fy­ing,

Tony Kynas­ton: [01:04:00] Yeah. Yeah.

Cameron: Speak­ing of hor­ri­fy­ing. Uh, so I’ve been read­ing the Bond books as I men­tioned to you last time. So I fin­ished Casi­no Royale, which you know, very unbond­ed like it was obvi­ous­ly a, you know, when he start­ed it, bond was­n’t the bond that became the bond. It was a very sort of much more sub­tle OneNote char­ac­ter.

Um, and half the book is about bac­carat and then him get­ting his ball smashed under to pret­ty sim­ple tor­ture by lash schifrin. But the chau­vin­ism and the misog­y­ny is the most fas­ci­nat­ing part of it for me. I get, I, you know, I read books in con­junc­tion with GPT, so I’m always like copy­ing lines or para­graphs and putting it in GPT and going, did he just say what I think he just said, or explain the rules of rad to me?

’cause I’m not fol­low­ing this, uh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like, there was this one line where he’s fan­ta­siz­ing about hav­ing his way with, um. [01:05:00] Uh, but at Ves­pa,

Tony Kynas­ton: Hmm.

Cameron: and he talks about how she’s so inde­pen­dent that each, the time they sleep, he sleeps with her, it’ll have the sweet Tang of rape. And I’m like, I’m like, real­ly?

Real­ly? And, and there’s a lot of that kind of chau­vin­is­tic stuff in it. And then I’m read­ing Live and Let Die, and there’s all this Haiti and the, the Negro races are final­ly show­ing that they have some intel­li­gence and all this kind of stuff. I’m like, wow. And GPT was like, yeah. Even in 1954 when this came out, what even Amer­i­can pub­lish­ers were.

Ooh. Yeah. I don’t think, uh, and they start­ed to just some sub­tle rewrites in the Amer­i­can edi­tion of it appar­ent­ly.

Tony Kynas­ton: Oh, okay. Did­n’t know that.

Cameron: But, but talk­ing it through with GPT and try­ing to under­stand this mid fifties chau­vin­ism, I was talk­ing to Chris­sy about it last night. Like there was all of this. Sex­u­al [01:06:00] repres­sion, I think in west­ern Chris­t­ian soci­eties where women were sup­posed to be vir­tu­ous, weren’t sup­posed to enjoy sex, you know, where, uh, where moth­ers would tell their daugh­ters on their wed­ding day that, uh, the mar­i­tal bed they should lie back at and think of Eng­land and this kind of stuff.

And, you know, chrisi grow­ing up as a Mor­mon said that they got all of that stuff too in her day. It was some­thing to be endured, not to be enjoyed. And, um, and so there’s this mind­set on behalf of guys like Flem­ing that, you know, women want it when they say they don’t want it. That’s just their reli­gious con­di­tion­ing and you just need to break through that, break it down.

They real­ly do want it. You just need to for, you know, break your way through their reli­gious con­di­tion­ing. To unleash the sex­u­al ani­mal inside them, and they’ll be grate­ful. And thank you for it after­wards when you do it. Um, and I can [01:07:00] kind of under­stand that from that per­spec­tive. It’s shock­ing to read in 2025, but try to under­stand how that was, what, what his mind­set was, how that was accept­able, uh, to edu­cat­ed, lit­er­ate men in the fifties.

And, and I assume women too.

Tony Kynas­ton: it could also have been writ­ten for shock val­ue too. I mean, I, I dun­no if it was, um, because

Cameron: I asked GPT about that.

Tony Kynas­ton: read Flem­ing’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy and he was very sex­ist and misog­y­nist it.

Cameron: Well, I asked you, I sent you a thing on that. ’cause I asked GPT after our last episode and it was like, no, no, this is, this is exact­ly how Flem­ing thought. Flem­ing, I, Flem­ing thought the bond was, it was wish ful­fill­ment for him. Bond. That’s who he want­ed to be, right.

Tony Kynas­ton: That’s who Bond was. Yeah. And wish ful­fill­ment for, you know, most young men in Amer­i­ca and Eng­land at the time, too.

Cameron: And then of course we know that Con­nery in the eight­ies when Bar­bara Wal­ter [01:08:00] inter­viewed him and he said that, you know, some­times it’s okay to hit a woman if, uh, she won’t shut her mouth. Uh, you know, he’s a guy of, that was a guy of that era, you know, that, um, you know, women need to be sort of thing or two,

Tony Kynas­ton: No,

Cameron: won’t shut up.

Tony Kynas­ton: you’re destroy­ing all my heroes, cam.

Cameron: Well,

Tony Kynas­ton: I

Cameron: I

Tony Kynas­ton: when I read, read them from end to end like you are doing now, back in the eight­ies, it, it, it did­n’t cringe, it did­n’t strike me as being over the top. It was, it was, I guess it was smack bang in the mid­dle of the Roger Moore bonds.

It was all about sex and bet­ting peo­ple and things like that. And I just read it as being a male fan­ta­sy. Um,

Cameron: nev­er had a fan­ta­sy to get the sweet of.

Tony Kynas­ton: true. No, but, you know, being the, being the secret agent, run­ning around the

Cameron: Yeah,

Tony Kynas­ton: world, bet­ting the, the hero­in, all

Cameron: sure. Yeah, I get that. Um, you know, and he’s, he’s in this, what I’m [01:09:00] read­ing now, he is in New York to chase down Mr. Big, and he is being put up at the fan­ci­est hotels and, you know, he is liv­ing the life of a bil­lion­aire. And I’m like, real­ly? I don’t think that’s how MI six agents trav­el real­ly. I think they’re on a bud­get.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah,

Cameron: But any­way, So that, um, yeah. Uh, what else? That’s about it. Noth­ing else to report real­ly.

Tony Kynas­ton: if you got it, but did you see the, um, I sent you last night, uh, via Mes­sen­ger, um, of

Cameron: No,

Tony Kynas­ton: of Tom Bak­er?

Cameron: no.

Tony Kynas­ton: Oh, it’s fan­tas­tic. It’s, it’s, um, looks from his doc­tor who days, but he’s, the pho­to­graph is him stand­ing at the bar and he’s writ­ten this sur­re­al­ist. Almost tongue in, well, prob­a­bly is tongue in cheek, but the sur­re­al­ist, um, 24 hours of what his life is about. You know, uh, wak­ing up at 6:00 [01:10:00] AM because he fell over ’cause he was too tired to go to bed. And then, you know, just get­ting up, hav­ing a, hav­ing a shot of whiskey and then going into do his voiceover work and just goes on and on from there. It’s, it’s, it’s a, I just loved it when I read it. It’s fan­tas­tic.

Cameron: I look for­ward to read­ing that. Uh, Tom Bak­er, I’ve got a Tom Bak­er, you know, action fig­ure some­where in my office. I, yeah. Tom Bak­er and Carl Sagan. I was try­ing to show Fox Carl Sagan’s Cos­mos the oth­er day. It’s like, like Luke Sky­walk­er. Tom Bak­er and Carl Sagan were prob­a­bly my three heroes when I was Fox’s age when I was 12.

Uh, and Bruce Lee, one of them.

Tony Kynas­ton: Uh,

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynas­ton: well, I could­n’t think of

Cameron: Okay.

Tony Kynas­ton: as he might. I think we were Do My Hero when I was 12.

Cameron: Well, about to go do the US Show, uh, where I’m going to be talk­ing about the man that launched Asi­mov Sci­ence Fic­tion [01:11:00] mag­a­zine in the 1970s.

Tony Kynas­ton: or astound­ing or,

Cameron: It was called Asi­mov Sci­ence Fic­tion.

Tony Kynas­ton: okay, cool. Can’t

Cameron: Yeah. Yeah, I’ll bet you like that. All right. Thanks Tony. Have a good week every­one.

Tony Kynas­ton: you. Oh, hap­py Christ­mas. I won’t be here next week