Douglas Murray - The Madness Of Crowds: Gender, Race And Identity

Full transcript: Douglas Murray on London Real

3:48 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Douglas Murray, the British author, journalist and political commentator. You are an associate editor of the British political and cultural magazine The Spectator, and also write for The Times and The Wall Street Journal. Your new book, The Madness of Crowds, Gender, race and Identity reveals the new culture wars playing out in our workplaces, schools and homes. In the name of social justice, identity, pollux and intersectionality.

4:13 Douglas Welcome to London, Real. It’s a great pleasure to be with you, great to have you here. I wondered if we could just start and ask, You know, after your previous book, The Strange Death of Europe, why write this book next, Why write this book now? And I guess part of me wants to ask you, Is this what everyone’s thinking on the inside in any ways and just not talking about? That’s what I think, okay.

4:37 In the strange death of Europe, I looked at immigration questions in your Islam, other topics most people want to keep away from. And I found, to my enormous pleasure, a wonderful audience in all sorts of countries, so many countries and so many people who just seemed to me. And this is the best thing ever for an author, because there’s an author, you just you put a book out and you don’t know if anyone’s going to read it. But seemed to me to gain satisfaction and pleasure. Encouragement in a way from the fact that somebody was thinking about this and was trying to address the things they were trying to address.

5:15 And what I realized was, of course, is that in all of our countries at the moment, in all this of liberal Western democracies. We’ve become incredibly bad at talking and because he become bad at talking, we’ve become bad of thinking. And I’d noticed the things that are the main subjects in the madness of crowds. I’d noticed them for years and I started looking into them. What?

5:38 Why did people’s careers keep on getting destroyed over the same things? Why did why did the mob keep coming for people who misspoke on things to do with gender or race or sexual sexuality? And what was really going on and I wanted to look into that. I wanted to explain it and to say, basically what I think people want to be thinking about, because there’s just this. I don’t think there’s any harm in open conversation.

6:12 I don’t think there’s any harm in actual exchange of ideas. All right, I have a real confidence that the bad ideas get chased out by good ones. They’re sort of unbelievable confidence in this idea, and I think our societies don’t have that confidence anymore. Fact We seem terrified by this terrified of bad ideas about ideas might catch on, and then we’ll all become bad. No, no, if you, if you allowed yourself to have the conversation, then the bad ideas can’t win.

6:40 So, yeah, having trodden on one set of landmines, I decided to go hopping merrily across all the rest. Were you concerned when you published a previous book that you might be completely vilified? And no one was gonna read it and people were gonna hate you? I don’t know I was. I’ve written five books now and my first book when I was 18, and I view it as being.

7:11 You write things, you put them out there. You hope there’s a readership, but I don’t particularly mind about the response when you want a good response. But that’s not why, right? I wasn’t so worried about the criticism on the last book I was worried about. Some of the subjects I was over then are really dangerous subjects and I know that my own costs and a lot of friends have discovered that throwing cost.

7:39 So I was worried about that a little bit, but again, I mean, you have to weigh these things up. Is it better to talk or not to talk, speak or not to speak? And I think is better to speak, and that’s really what this book is about. It’s about having these conversations that right now are unpopular, you know, and typically it may be mostly on social media seem to be completely dominating the conversation and going in very, very strange ways. And I know you travel the world and meet people.

8:09 I meet people all the time, and yet I don’t have these conversations with real people in person. They seem, to all a lot of times, happen out there. What sort of conversation? The ones where we are vilifying someone for doing this, or there’s a big stink about someone saying something about a scandal. Girl Yeah, all that seems to sometimes happen, mostly in the Twitterverse and not always in real life.

8:32 That’s true, but sometimes these two things meet. If I, they meet a lot these days. Yeah, you see, I think we’re all lying about a whole range of things, and mainly to do with these issues. I address in the madness of crowds. And I think, Look, there’s a cost to that, as I say, of bad ideas seeping into the whole system and individuals in their lives.

9:02 I think know this and can feel it. Not everybody, but broadly speaking by now. If you don’t think that the sort of woke intersectional culture is coming for you, then it’s only because you’re self-employed. Like the only people I know who aren’t now worried, it’s our self-employed. They just they don’t go into an office, they didn’t, don’t need to speak.

9:22 LEON Me. Everybody in, you see, people used to think, was just the education field or academia or something. And then one of the things I discovered as I was researching this book was, No. It’s everywhere. So the corporate world, people in big banks and big corporations and any energy companies and media, of course they all have these diversity departments and diversity enforcement departments and human resources departments and all these sorts of things which are in some companies.

9:53 You only really growing bit of a company. I mean, they’re doing really well, some of these human resources, people, but so many people I’ve spoken to in recent years. They’re trying to work this stuff out because it’s all being imposed on them. And of course, it’s got its got some good in it, it’s got some good intentions in it. It’s just what its gonna lead us to all this hell.

10:19 So everybody’s sort of thinking about this. But they’re not able to speak about, and if they do, if they do, they are serious likelihood of losing their job. I mean, there are very, very famous examples of people who’ve just slipped up once, you know. Tim Hunt, Nobel Prize winning scientist, gives a does a joke at a conference in South Korea. It’s one woman in the room says it’s a sexist joke.

10:48 And by the time youth back in the UK, he’s fired from every position, every position. There are cases famous cases like the James the Moore case in Google, you know, Google says they want some ideas. This, you know, tech guy gives some ideas, bang, he’s out and people learned from that. They learn not to speak, not to air worries and concerns. So I think it’s the self-appointed task of those of us who don’t do not have wobbly hierarchies over us to speak.

11:23 And that’s why writers can talk about this stuff more freely than a lot of think. People I think were the only people who can now write. And with James at Google was interesting because he really put together a very articulate argument about talking about. I think it was why there are more men coders than women at Google, and Google is an intelligent company. But at the same time, they were living in the reactionary culture and they kind of had to do something, and so the more.

11:48 The smartest decision for them was to get rid of him, but it didn’t really make a lot of sense. Logically. Yeah, well, that’s because there are lies. We tell ourselves. And you need to enforce the lie and you need to enforce the lie by punishment.

12:06 Beatings of truth tellers. So if you say maybe there are some differences between the sexes, oh, you’re already in trouble. I mean, you’re going into dangerous terrain already. And really, what it is there are a whole set of things in our society that we don’t look at because we know what the answers can’t be? And if somebody comes up with one of the answers that it can’t be, you gotta shut them up.

12:36 You’ve got to get rid of them. What’s an example of that? Well, as I say, that D’Amore case is a very good result, right? But that happens. That happens with some regularity, if I mean, there are, because there are very painful things that keep coming up.

12:54 I mentioned in the book in the Race, Chapter One, one of these. I’m so worried about this retreat identity and this retreat characteristics is everything down the road from it as hell. And I write in the race chapter in the madness of crowds about the Harvard admissions scandal, which is extraordinary. And there is an example of trying not to come to certain conclusions and as a result, doing terrible things. This is for energy, doesn’t know.

13:27 This is a lawsuit taken out against Harvard by a group of Asian students who say the admissions procedure. In order to try to introduce fairness into the admissions process, it and to allow people of various ethnic backgrounds to get in was prejudiced against Asian students. Because they didn’t. They knew that more Asian students would be able to get in than other ethnic groups. And so they downgraded all the Asian applicants on character traits without meeting them.

13:59 And that’s the sort of dark stuff you get into if you don’t have a more honest conversation. And, you know, I understand some live here because honest conversations can be dangerous anyway. They can be risky, they can be, they can certainly be hurtful. But in the end, what’s better going for a bit of that pain or making an entire society go through the pain of constantly reinforcing lies? You make this analogy in the book with St.. George and Slaying The Dragon.

14:41 Maybe you can talk about that because you kind of look back and say, Okay. We were fighting for women’s rights, we were fighting for gay rights and racial rights. Kind of in 50, 60, 70s and made some great progress and then kept fighting. And now we’re to a point where a lot of people want to fight, but we’re not sure there’s anything to kill. Maybe you could explain, yeah, it’s.

15:00 It’s a wonderful phrase that the late Australian political philosopher Ken Minogue came up with in a book of his called The Liberal Mind He yeah. He identified a certain type of person who is keen on the revolutionary attitude, keen to be at the barricades he called. It’s in Georgian Retirement Syndrome that sent George after slaying the Dragon and getting all the acclaim of slaying. The Dragon might be tempted to go round the land, finding more dragons to slay. And there, being a deficit of dragons in the land might end up swinging his sword as smaller and smaller beasts.

15:44 Until eventually, he might be found swinging his sword at Finnair. Well, I don’t say that there’s no Dragon like thing left to slay in our society. I don’t say that everything’s perfect, but is a lot in that in the febrile, furious atmosphere of our times. Where, when things have never been better, they’re portrayed as if they’ve never been worse for all minorities, for women and this, this idea, I understand why people have it. I mean, I understand why people wish they’ve been with Martin Luther King at the March on Washington.

16:26 I have a few friends who were there, tell me about it in my, You know, it’s fantastic, just thrilling in the telling. I understand that people might want to be there. I understand that some people wish they’d been at the Stonewall Inn. You know, I get that, but we I would urge that instead of thinking, therefore I will fight as hard now as they did then. Even if the stakes are minimal or non-existent, I would say, Why not just enjoy the fruits of your predecessors, legacies and bravery and do something better with your life now?

17:10 But that isn’t the attitude of our time. The attitude of our time is an audition. After the fact to be right in the center of the melee now, you chose to break this book down into four, I guess issues or types, so it’s race, gay women and trans. Is that difficult to nail it down to those four, what is ever gonna be three or five? They’re a couple, no, they’re a couple more.

17:39 I could have done and decided not to. You could put some of the green stuff in this right because it’s definitely taking on the whatever. The debates on the sides, that there’s definitely a religious aspect to it. Now I think he’s almost right under beatable. You say religious.

17:59 Explain that, oh, you know, I mean, the paying of indulgences in carbon tax, the belief in primordial, original sin, the expiation of Gills it’s actually got. It’s got something that most religion, most post religion, religions don’t have. In that. It not only has the guilt, but the way to atone for the guilt is clever and attractive. I could also have done a one I did think of decided to avoid because it sort of seeps through the whole thing is mental health.

18:34 I think there’s a huge discussion to be had about all sorts of complex things, about why mental health has become the issue. It has what in it is totally plausible in which what, what we’re behind on understanding and what is being overreached in that debate. But I, I decided that those were those were the green. One has been done quite a lot and the mental health one I think, needs a lot of time and space on its own. And it’s not quite as deeper tripwire at the moment because it’s still sort of asserting itself as an issue.

19:12 But everything to do with LGBT relations between the sexes and race are just there. The nature of almost every day is news. They are the thing that can get anyone, irrespective of everything else they’ve done. I give example the Nobel Prize winner, Tim Hunt, but, you know, a Cabot, we’re sitting in London. Former defense minister here was found to have, 15 years earlier put his hand on female journalists knee.

19:43 She smacked it away and said, If you do that again, it’s not getting a smack around the chops. And that was it. That was the end of the incident now you can, because it was bad behavior, obviously, but 15 years after that happened, somebody wrote about in here he had to resign. And I just find that fascinating that’s that’s a defense minister like that’s a decimal, that’s a serious role. And it’s seriously interesting that, as I say, I’m not saying that’s great.

20:18 Like everyone, I’m not saying everyone should put their hands on the knees of the person beside them at dinner. Anything it’s just the assertion of a certain set of moral norms in our time, including behavioral norms, is shifting. Has been shifting very, very fast with, I think, just not very much discussion. And I mean, that’s why I wanted to do the women chapter in the way I did was to say, What are the things at the same time as there are things that we pretend we know about, that we don’t really know about, like we don’t know that know as much about gay as we pretend. We know relatively little and we definitely know very little, nearly nothing about trans, but we pretend to be incredibly certain about these things.

21:04 Oh well, that puzzles, frankly, they say the trans and, but at the same time you have these things which everyone knew till yesterday. And they’ve pretended they didn’t know or they forgotten, or we did. All we never did know. And that one, the most striking example that is in relations between sexes. Okay, and how?

21:23 And you have a whole. You have three interludes in here, which is interesting and one is on forgiveness. Yeah, or trying to like you said, maybe look at something that happened in the past and maybe not react to it and understand and forgive it. Also, you mentioned technology in there, which is kind of fascinating. And then I think the Marxists, yeah, peace there, yeah, I’d love to talk on each one of the four issues, but maybe the technology is something that links a lot of it together, and maybe it’s something worth talking about.

21:48 I watched a very interesting discussion with Jack Dorsey and Joe Rogan. You were on Joe Show. He actually went on twice and it was interesting we brought his lawyer back the second time. And they went through all of their policies on how they model in moderate Twitter and how they’re very sensitive to. A lot of issues around trans issues, young things.

22:10 And they have their laws which have nothing to do with any other laws in sovereign states. But it’s kind of the way they moderate things, and I find it really interesting about how this is. Okay, that’s not okay, a lot of things around trans like you said, which I guess maybe we’re just starting. Understand. What do you see in that space?

22:25 And you know, they lie about what they do or why they do it, because it’s a corporation, you know, explain that the tech companies. I mean, I have actually seen the lists of some of the words that are the things that get you in trouble. Twitter is one of the worst because Twitter doesn’t tell people to double standard. They have a list of will get you in trouble and then is what really gets you in trouble. And the ways they mute people, I pretend they don’t, the way they pretend they just can’t do things at the moment, which they do.

23:00 And it’s political, its political, and it’s taken a while for some people to realize that, but it’s naked. Ly political. The same with Google, I give an example in the tech chapter as you know about Google Images, and it’s just fascinating because most people don’t. It doesn’t occur to most people that when you type something into the search engine, what you’re getting back isn’t true. Or not, real or not really representative of what you wanted to get.

23:32 And one of the examples I give is Google Images, which is just fascinating if you go to Google Images. And you say, I would like to see its type in, anyone can do it now. I mean, all they might, they might now. I’ve pointed it out at me. Skee the algorithm back but say, You want to see photos of gay couples just put gay couples into Google Image search.

23:58 You’ll get lots of nice photos of nice, happy gay couples, a lot of mixed-race couples just to, you know, accentuate the positive. But there’s lots of nice, nice gay couples, happy, happy gay life, do straight couples. You don’t get what you asked for, you don’t get what you asked for, you get a lot of gays, awful lot of gays. When you Google straight couples. Yeah, okay, you get a lot of mixed-race, a lot of black photos of black couples you get you get.

24:33 It doesn’t want to give you what you’re asking why, because it is this intentional. Yeah, of course, OK, so I if some people thought this was just machine learning fairness, which I explained about in the book. But it’s not just machine learning fairness. She’s fascinating subject, so its machine learning fairness with a human intervention. The same thing happens, if you do, here’s another really dangerous one.

24:59 Do black couples, you get black couples, you get happy, black couples, just picture after picture. Do white couples, you get black couples mixed-race, you get, you get very early, you get a mixed,-race gay couple with black children. It’s a why, why? Because Google wants to say, How dare you be searching for that? You bigot.

25:35 What kind of a monster will be searching for straight couples or white couples? Bigoted will show you will give you gays, will give you black gays, will force-feed you things you didn’t want you didn’t ask for, because only a bigger will be searching for that. And now it’s fascinating, but the most interesting thing is that most people don’t know it’s going on. As I say, I mean, it’s not like, you know, they’re always all these stats on the number of school-age children. That think that when you Google a question that things come up in order of truth, you know they’re all these studies of that.

26:14 And then, you know, you have to. One of the things of course, with people growing our children growing up in the Internet, age is just to make sure they’re educated. To not think that sort of thing in demand and it’s very hard for them. It’s very hard for everybody. But I know very few adults or children who know that this stuff I’ve just described is going on.

26:35 And by the way, it’s not it. I say that what is happening with that in tech is just a sped up version of something that’s happening in the rest of the media. All right, I have a bit of fun in one of the chapters, I think. A chapter on Gay about just one day in the life of The New York Times. Whether the lead business story is two pages about a gay Japanese businessman who’s come out in his firm.

26:59 And it’s not a problem because Japan doesn’t particularly homophobic society or anything. Okay, if your it feels like a businessman in New York that morning and you open the business section, why do you need to have just the funk? Two pages about a gay Japanese businessman who came out and it wasn’t a problem. It’s not just a definition of not business news, it’s not really news. And the same day had the culture section was a story about how two male ballet dancers of the New York City Ballet were dancing together in a scene that had previously been for a man and a woman.

27:37 And, you know, because obviously it’s very important to stress that the otherwise wildly heterosexual world of ballet is, you know, has been gaede up a bit. It’s So why is this happening in The New York Times? Well, because they were demanding to let know for why they’re doing the same thing, right? That’s their agenda. That’s the thing that is happening and which the tech companies are just doing faster.

27:59 Okay, there’s just, it’s partly a post Trump thing, it’s partly a post Brexit thing. We’ve got a lot of our sense. Making mechanisms have broken down and a lot of our organs of, in fact, all of our organs of communication have broken down pretty much. And it’s partly because of this that the instead of, instead of being the thing that tells us what is happening. They have to stand Equi, distant between the facts and the public and like, negotiate between the two.

28:28 We can’t have the public because they can’t be trusted with facts. You got it, you got to interpret them for the public now. Of course, that’s always happened to some degree, but this version, the retributive version of It, looks like giving you more gay stuff. And you want will be good for you because it’ll smoke out the bigots. Okay, so they’re giving you more gay stuff, and you want more pro minority group stuff than you want more pro trans stuff than you want.

28:58 Yeah, and more pro feminist stuff and you want. Or, yeah, and oh, I think, and the hysterical, the hysterical attitude, always coming to the fore. I mean, we have this with the sort of Margaret Atwood obsession, the idea that, you know the idea that. It’s likely that women in America are or are soon to be living in a situation akin to that of women in Tehran. In 1980.

29:24 I mean, I read The New York Times -, and I see this as well. Yeah, and there’s more. It’s the environmental stuff and the anti-trump stuff is just like it just kind of front loads with that. Where I, I can kind of see the article, I’m like, Oh, of course it’s that, and it’s really noticeable. Yeah, and they are doing it.

29:46 It is easy way to do this, which you just blame The New York Times you blame. Yet it’s no, no, it’s the public as well, because you know. Recently, The New York Times around a headline about Trump called After another massacre in the U.S,. called for unity in the face of racism. Yeah, it’s what you’d expect, what you’d hope the president, he does it, of course he does. Having your times just reports that, you know, President calls for unity.

30:16 And the backlash from The Times subscribers means that they have to change the headline. So it doesn’t look like they’re saying that is what Trump said, and they’re not criticizing it, they’re like they have to make it into well. Tomas said that, but he wouldn’t really mean it because we know he’s a bigot that because that’s what the readers are demanding. So it’s not just that the sort of people in power are in influence. I think we’re doing this to ourselves, we’re trying to cut off our sources of information ourselves.

30:48 Are we ashamed of who we are? Oh, yes, I don’t know. I think I think a lot of people are bored, bored and they want the drama, they want a victim, they want a battle. Fun enough, there’s a reading of Hegel where this is. This is predicted where the person at the end of history is.

31:11 Hegel would have it benefits from all of these things. All of the forebears gets to. The position has been got to the position that one would want to be in of being in a free state. A free society with all of these attainments in the way of rights. And that at that point, we might rebel for the sake of rebellion, for addiction, to the rebellious attitude, and thus bring the whole thing down.

31:39 So Hegel sought some of that, and others have as well. It’s not far off what we’re doing, it’s not far off. And I think, you know, people understate the effect of think of things like boredom like it’s people want to be heroic in some key. Not everyone, a lot of people want to be sort of area or seemed to be heroes or seem to be virtuous. Just because you lose religion doesn’t mean you lose that things people want from religion, including the perception of your peers, that you are a person of virtue.

32:13 And if you lose the old religious virtues, you’ve got to create new ways. So no more crusades. You got to make up your own crusade. Yeah, I might gosh, if they made them up. And with all.

32:25 There’s other things, of course, that we know from Gerard and others that the need to get a scapegoat, you know? And it’s particularly useful if the scapegoat is somebody who has committed a crime. Which you’ve committed a version of yourself in the past and need to expiate your own mixed feelings about that. Your contorted human of things about that by taking it out so vengefully, is this person you can find, Okay, is this in the media movement? Oh yeah, okay.

32:53 I had Rose McGowan in that seat about six months ago and it was a very interesting conversation with Rose. And I appreciate what she went through, and at the end I said, Rose. I’ve seen things like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, whose season of Cosmos has been put on hold. And from what I could read, it was thin, really thin. And I said, How do you feel about things like this happening where entire careers are being taken out?

33:15 Where, Yeah, okay, I don’t know the details, of course. He was later exonerated and the show came back, but it looked thin and I’d had Neil on the show as well. And she looked at me and she said, That’s collateral damage, right? And I was. I was really surprised, she said that, but she said, Yeah, it’s nice saying it, Yeah, I’m saying it, she said.

33:33 That’s just what happened of the course of these other things happening, and it was interesting. To hear is an interesting question to ask in that situation. I had this yesterday with a journalist from a guardian I was in discussion with is because I hear a version that’s very few. People are as honest as she was to you. But there was an example I given in the Book of CNN presenter, who says at the height of me, – Okay, maybe it is an overcorrection.

33:58 Well, we’re doing over. CORRECTION I remember that know one of the questions I would have for such a person I had it. The yesterday where this Guardian journalist was If that is your view, please tell us what your mechanisms are for correcting me over correction. When you might see it as being necessary and who might call it? Because I think in a lot of the rights claims, I think this is the case in LGBT issues, women’s issues, racial equality issues.

34:34 It’s understandable if when you have a group that have been oppressed in some way in the past. But in you get to equality and at the point, Nord equality, you might want to run a bit further to make up for lost time or sort of hit further in order to get the pendulum more correctly. In the position you want to get it to, you might overcorrect in order to at some point swing back to normal. That’s why I say, We’ve had this strange period. We are still in this strange period where in some ways it’s better to be gay than straight better.

35:14 You’ve got an extra card, you’ve got something going for you, not like that, lose a straight guy, okay? So it went from gays six years ago against the law to equality and one of the most magnificent movements. And then you go to better, and then the same thing happens in other citrus. This is speaking it as a gay man. Sure, are people surprised when they find that out about you?

35:46 Based on what I’m right about, I don’t know, I mean, I, and low arguments from one’s own characteristics. So I mean, even though that’s a lot, what happens out of this is the only thing happens out there. I know six years ago and audiences people would say speaking as a and I just, it doesn’t matter. The content of your point is what matters, not what you’re speaking. I don’t care if you’re a fertile Rican woman or a Puerto Rican man or American, you know, for Man Jesus, it doesn’t matter what’s your point?

36:15 Now everyone else, pretty much in this age, has decided only about the Speaker nothing about the speech. But yes, just to get back to this point, this same thing has been happening. Others so and I quote the very brilliant young American writer called Coleman Hughes echoed in the introduction. He says in his time at University in America, he noticed that there were people who seemed to behave around him. He happens to be black.

36:36 He seemed to behave around him as if there was some special, heightened amoral knowledge that came from being black. Now, of course, there are some a lot of Black people who will have some heightened moral noise, depending on their circumstances. Just as there will be some white people in some Chinese people and all those people who will have some heightened carnal knowledge. But the idea that everybody with a particular characteristic has it is like a flipside of racism, just to put it in, it is politis. And so we got to this stage with Black, that’s a bit like the gay one, like it’s better again.

37:14 It’s understandable. If particular with America’s history of racial problems, it’s understandable, like when would? When would you know you’ve leant too heavily on that, and when? When have you gone past equal and got to better and how can we just get back to equal again? Things going past can be very destructive and dangerous to.

37:35 And the Me to Thing hits the women’s one on this because, okay, well overcorrect, okay? We might punish a generation of heterosexual men good, we’ll give them some of that. When will you stop that and who will call time? Who will stop this zero-sum game of vengefulness? And, by the way, what’s interesting about that?

38:01 Among other things, this is an English-speaking world phenomenon in particular. It doesn’t happen elsewhere, but it’s particularly bad in the English-speaking world. And I have an example of this, by the way, which is on my mind a lot. Because, you know, I, I travel all the time. I think I said I’m a different country every week, pretty much, and I get around a lot.

38:21 And versions of this are everywhere. But France, for instance, when the me to thing happens, there is a when. When people see that. Here is somebody who’s clearly been behaving in an in an inappropriate way and possibly trials committee, and in a legal way that has that beer dress has. We stopped and an example made absolutely.

38:46 But when it becomes clear you’ve got things like the Ansari case, comedian America who suffered, I think, is very wise. Several times it was a bad date, bad, bad, bad date etiquette on, perhaps on both parts, a bit fuzzy and so on. Yeah, when you see those people being destroyed. It’s really striking to me that it was France that has 100 very prominent women, some of whom were friends of mine in France. Actresses, intellectuals, thinkers and leading figure than in France.

39:19 Who happened to be women? write a joint letter saying This has gone too far. Men and women have to still get on, have to get on. And why do they well, because you know, because they’re more sensible about that, but in some all sorts of reasons which are fascinating themselves. But, but broadly, could we have found three or four women in equivalently prominent positions in America or Britain? At the height of that?

39:50 To say, Look, we might be overcorrecting know, but everyone wanted to keep their heads down, including women I know, but of course they did, because this is how people’s lives get destroyed. You don’t have be the one person who sticks her head above the parapet. Just as everyone else of your sex is stampeding your the other way. Who saw it happened? Khempo stuck their heads up and they were gone.

40:11 So and why the French culturally, or they are they not in this kind of this madness of the English-speaking, Twitterverse Beco Chamber? Okay, just kind of removed from it one step. Well, I think you know you have to be so careful what you wish for years ago. You know, sometimes you something happens and you slightly feel responsible and you can’t be responsible, but just something you said once. But was some years ago member a dinner with some friends?

40:40 I care of what it was, it was something just mad. it happened that day. It’s about ten years ago. I remember saying to riffing off, Don’t you sometimes want a dose of Presbyterianism to come back into the society in a bit of Puritanism who come in useful here? And I remember that one needs to be quite sure. I said, Douglas, You can’t mean that I said what I saw, don’t really, but it’ll be, you know, you could quite do with a moral force, a train.

41:01 Some of this in a little bit right? And then of course it did happen. It just came back, as always happens from a totally different direction than any that I could foresee. It didn’t come up from like black hat, head, Puritan Cromwellian. Figures from the 17th century came with a movement calling itself a social justice movement.

41:24 That decided to embed a new form of norms, particularly in relations between the sexes. That makes the Puritans look like Plato, and that’s what’s happening, that’s what’s happening. Yeah. A friend of mine in her fifties, I said to me recently, One holiday to go, and she said, she said, Douglas Darling. I feel like I feel like people must have felt at the Regency just before Queen Victoria came, she said.

41:52 I mean, I like sex, you know, I like men, she said. Be, she said, I just, you know, I feel like a libertine. You mentioned that this might be rooted in the economic collapse in, Oh, wait, and there’s this weird Marxism going on here. And it was kind of interesting to read that in the book. And obviously it’s part of kind of the interlude, which is maybe kind of the underlying fabric or structure about how these things come up. Can you just talk about that idea, that theory, yeah, in between doing these, these main chapters on gay women, Race and trans.

42:25 I wanted to flesh some of it out where it comes from. I’m often asked, particularly students, young people, I like where, where answers come from. And of course, you can trace some of it. Some of it’s very hard to trace some of it. You just gotta, you know, keep looking into.

42:45 But one thing that’s very clear is a Marxist substructure of some of this. It keeps revealing itself in, among other things, the perception this is all to do with power. See, I think this is a really ugly game we’ve all got caught in. It’s a it’s basically being done on Marxists and post Marxist terms, the perception that everything in our lives is mainly to do with power. A lot of people imbibe this from Foucault, who, by the way, I mean, he’s the most cited scholar.

43:12 If you look at Google Scotland, then he’s the most cited scholar Foucault. It’s not a not a small figure that he cited like four times more than Einstein in academic papers. And he’s a very brilliant thinker, in a way, but he embeds the whole set of really ugly ideas. And one is viewing basically everything, including sexual relations solely through the through the lens of power, and I think the power is significant. I think it’s interesting, it’s important.

43:38 But if you said to most people, what motivates you in your life, how many people say power, love, family, friendships, forgiveness, God all sorts of things power? Yeah, it’s a force. There were a lot of forces in the world and there’s something perverse about seeing everything through this prison. But the Marxist, but part of it is, is partly to do with that and the idea there’s a source structure in society. Which, in the old days, was the workers at the bottom, holding up the structure and on their shoulders.

44:17 The middle classes and then up and up and up until you get to this sort of aristocracy and capital. Well, that was the sort of the Marxist understanding of how society was structured, which was a perverse understanding in its own. In his own way, for lots of reasons. But there’s a version of this that is in the social Justice movement, which is that basically the pyramid is slightly is differently organized. I mean, you might have gays and black people and people of color on and women in various bits.

44:49 And but at the top is capital and particularly white, male, elderly capital, and that keeps revealing itself as the version of societies. A lot of people believe is our society. It’s just that, and therefore you need to bring it down. And this is. This is a sort of form of Marxist interpretation, which I also traced by.

45:15 The way that the number of Marxist academics and writers and thinkers who were working on this so it didn’t come from nowhere. They’ve been working on this in the 1970s and 80s, particularly 80s and – thinkers in particular. I cite Leclaire and Moof say in the 80s face, basically, as the whole appalling Communist experiment is finally starting to fall down. I don’t know if they realized at that point that it is, but it’s running out of steam. They say, Well, you know, basically the working-class let us down.

45:48 The working-class didn’t do what we thought they were going to do, of course, was one of the glorious problems for the Communists. You know, the working-class led us down and therefore we need to find the Revolutionary Forces in other movements. And these, these Marxists are saying in the 80s, I quote the litter. We need to find them an identity. Movements like sexual minorities, racial minorities.

46:12 There will be groups of feminists and so on, and we will use them now. The reason why, I think is interesting with. Because one of the things I think a lot of us have started to notice and become wide about in recent years is the weaponization of identity, the weaponization of it. I feel it’s, I mean, the site. The thing I said, I don’t make arguments my identity, but I worry about this with the gay thing.

46:34 I don’t like these things where it looks like Gay is being used to batter something else down. I don’t like it when I see it with other groups is what I’m the one that’s clearest with that. His trans see, you can absolutely get there is, and I lay out in my chapter on Trans. There was a very plausible set of steps you can take to try to work out where. In the trans argument, there is something plausible, and all of this is to say people can do what they want.

47:03 I’m, yeah, if they’re an if they’re an adult, but just to say here is a bit, that is definitely there’s something there. We need to address it, something we need to think about. And then all the way to war. Now. If you, if you work that along, you always find whenever.

47:20 There’s somebody who’s basically got the revolutionary Communist, the Marxist like interpretation of history in their mind. Still, they will always go to the furthest bit of the trans one always, I mean, AOC in America. In her early weeks in offers does a fundraiser for a British very controversial group in Britain called Mermaids, which advocates the giving of puberty blockers. To children who believe that there are trans, it is very, very controversial and I’m not at all in favor with myself, having looked at it and spoken with people who’ve gone through this. But what business is it of an American congresswoman till I encourage the taking of hormones by teenagers in Britain?

48:11 So why does she do that? Because that’s what I think it’s like the thing I was describing with the Google search engine. It’s an attempt to deranged us it’s an attempt to batter down the white, patriarchal, heteronormative society. And like good, we will make you say that the big bearded man with a penis is a woman. We’re going to make you do it, and if you fail, we’ll call you every name we can think of and we’ll try to destroy you.

48:46 There is no other explanation as to why, why they don’t have the debate at every stage up to them. I say in the book, I owe this observation to my friend Eric Weinstein that why didn’t they start with intersex rights, intersex of people who don’t follow all of this too closely? If people born with a genital, unclear genitalia or gender genital abnormalities, including, in some cases, evidence of sexual organs of both sexes? This, by the way, I mean, this is this is a It’s not that common, it’s quite a bit more common than I think people realize. The medical profession knew about this always.

49:32 It was a quiet, say, embarrassing, tricky thing. Now somebody born with an intersex condition deserves all of the sympathy. Imagine when this is a It’s not going to ruin your life necessary with some bloody hard place to start. So definitely suboptimal situation to start your life in. But there was never a movement for these people, you know, the rights campaigners stampeded straight party intersex people too big, bearded man with penis say it’s a woman, and I think that’s because they did it.

50:03 It’s a very counterintuitive thing until you sit. We might assume that people try to get coalition’s together, to agree with them and then do something productive. Sometimes people don’t want a coalition. They just want a battering-ram, get that smash that get the big bearded man with a penis and use it to smash down our enemy. And that’s the weapons and weaponization of identity, and they got the biggest weapon.

50:34 It’s a walker way of putting it. Yeah, that’s a fascinating way to take down the power structure, and obviously it’s effective to a certain extent. Yes, yeah, obviously is effective because it’s it is de ranging people, and it’s demoralizing. I mean, you see this, and what do you say? And let’s actually talk about that term white privilege male, which both of us are.

50:56 I didn’t like any of those, turns out me neither, but I’m sure people would call me that. What do you make of those terms just as they are? Bret Easton Ellis almost named his book That, and he just truncated it to White, and he’s that code similar some similar things about this. And as a gay man, he’s called out a lot of this absolute ludicrous behavior by the gay community. Yeah, it’s been called out by the community for years about not supporting and getting in line with everything they’re saying from Academy Awards to whatever.

51:27 So, yeah, your thoughts. Well, I don’t. I don’t like when I hear White, I don’t like the I don’t like the thing because it returns us to race when I want to, and I think we should be trying to avoid it. Because if you open up that chasm, there’s hell in there, so I think we should step back from it. But the way in which white in white privilege is now weaponized just disturbs me enormous.

51:59 LEE Because I know what’s gonna be played back down the road. I know it already because I see it, there’s audio, there’s audio playback happening and you, I find it. Every single country I go, I noticed it for the last three to three years. Everybody’s talking about I.Q. everywhere, not everyone, but everywhere. That discussion is starting, and I think what’s happening is people are fed up being told they’re privileged because of their white because they’re white and they’re starting to look into.

52:31 What is the ugliest discussion in the world, which is inherited IQ differentials? And that’s one that’s it. I say this, no, but it’s like that might be a weapon some people are going to use to hit back. It’s a bigger weapon. So all right, can we, just before that happens, avoid this whole thing?

52:49 Can we go back to equal? Can we not have people’s skin pigmentation in any situation used against them, including white? And then you get on to the same male. I say the same thing I can think of lots of communities I’ve been to around the world. Where there are plenty of men who have never worked or worked intermittently have provided to the extent they can for their families, for themselves.

53:21 But you think they’re privileged, you think they’re privileged? You think that white men in the north of England in former mill towns are privileged? You think all my forebears were privileged, you know, and then you get to the level beneath that, which is who’s to call any of this anyway? I want the hell, Do you know about the person you’re doing that to where you are? You got white male privilege, okay?

53:54 Work out in every single situation, the legitimacy of that claim today because this happened the other day. With The Guardian, Guardian Rights and a leader column. The Papers view about the release of the memoirs of David Cameron, not a Prime Minister. I’m enormous, for sure off, but David Cameron’s memoirs come out. The Guardian attacks him, The Guardian says in its editorial.

54:25 The David Cameron, that the setbacks he had in his life were not real setbacks because of his privilege. And they included the fact that his first son died, and they said even that. Him sitting at the deathbed of his own son wasn’t as bad as it would be for other people because he had privilege. That’s the kind of dehumanizing route you go down. If you start playing this game.

54:54 You end up judging the extent to which the father has the right to mourn his child. Because you’re playing a privileged game. And I think, among other things, this game. It cannot be played because it can never be won because it can’t be solved, it can’t be ended, we don’t know hour by hour. Where we might be in this hierarchy is the person who inherited a huge amount of money, for instance.

55:25 I’m Santi, not in such a situation myself. But let’s say let’s say a person who inherited a huge amount of money is naturally privileged. Well, they’ve definitely got one advantage, they’ve got load of cash. Does that mean that they are a privileged person? Every other I spent their life.

55:41 Let’s say they have a terrible personal life, you know, let’s say they have a horrible heroin addict problem well, their child does, or their wife does their husband. Where do they go exactly in this hierarchy? What about the very well-off person who’s not white? where are they, in comparison to a not well-off white person? Wait, do they meet? If you’ve got five million quid and you’re Indian, do you meet the unemployed white person somewhere?

56:19 Who wants to play this impossible game? And the next things talked about is then the reparation game, right? Just kind of a derivative privilege. Somewhere home, I’ve got a couple of fast-track ways to try to stop that one, is my idea. I maybe I’ve tried on you that I would favor reparations to try to address the problem of the most prejudiced against people in history.

56:50 Being after the fact rewarded for the presidents happened to their people, and that’s why the American government should send people to every household. Everyone is white, every one is black in America and takes some money from them and give it to the Jews. Well, that’s what everything had. No, no, no, I think it might make things a lot worse, but I mention it because you’re choosing one group right reparations, I would. You.

57:17 Would anyone deny that of all the people in history, the Jews have probably had it worse? If you want to play that game, I suggest you know that people don’t. But if you wanted to play that game, you could do that, yeah. And some Swiss banks cut some checks about ten years ago for that, but you could do by point, you could do it endlessly. I mean, you’ve, if not just from the Holocaust, but the pogroms before an inanimate.

57:39 Much, much more the expulsion of Jews from England, the expulsion would use from Spain. You could, we could do this on everything. I mean, there have actually been there been some people recently, right? Even Advocate, I mean, the craziness never stops. Some people actually argue that there should be reparations for gays.

57:57 So, among other things, this is one of the reasons why we can’t get the present in a sane light because we’re so insane about the past. Like we have such a bad understanding of history, obviously it’s because in America and Britain, everyone history thought so badly. People learn almost nothing and they can put almost nothing in context. And they had suffer from the fallacy that they’re better than their forebears because they know things there for beds didn’t like. I know exactly, I mean, I would have be an anti Hitler in 1939.

58:26 Yeah, yeah, sure, sure you would could, because you know how it turned out. You know who won, if you don’t know who won. No one does is you’re going through it. You sure you sure you want to take him easier route and that’s the case with case after case. Why didn’t they see the First World War coming because they didn’t know it was going to be the First World War?

58:46 And we have this version, we do ourselves all the time, and I actually I have another. I have a shortcut to that, which is to say to people I’m one of my editors, makes his point to me. It’s hard, he says, assume, because every single everybody in history did things that we look back at home, we say, What were they thinking? A productive thing is to try to work out what we’re doing now, and we will be doing things that people after us say. What were they thinking?

59:20 Try to work them out now in order to avoid doing them that’s a productive thing to do. That’s much more productive than doing this. Strange troll through history to find victims and perpetrators and work out exactly the cash balance that people should get as a result. All by the way, ignoring the feather’d. Most of history was held for everyone, and that to be born now is to have absolutely one the historical lottery.

59:57 It’s unbelievable luck, so concentrate on the present and try to get it. Tried it. You’re not going to get it perfect, but at least don’t do the worst things. I like it. I give a couple examples in the book of what I think of the worst things.

1:00:15 What do we do now? If people read this book and they say, Okay, Douglas, I think you really have made some great points here. What is the next step? I think we need to stop this game, get out of this game, the privilege games, the intersectional games, all of this. We need to get out of it and get on to things that we ought to be doing.

1:00:42 There’s a really great point, friend Wayne made recently. I was teaching at a university, well, went to speak to university on in America, and all the students were asking these identity questions. What are you doing this? Your generation should be working out how to how we live in underwater cities, how we live on the moon. Why are you doing this?

1:01:09 This is so unproductive, my point on top of that is, and it can’t be done it. Actually, it’s not a winnable game, but I do think that I think. And I think there’s demoralization and an innovation in our societies because we’re engaged in a game that’s unwinnable, and that’s all we’re being told to do. Why don’t we inject things that we should be doing? You know, I give the example with, with a feminism issue some of your brilliant feminists.

1:01:44 Camille Paglia makes a point, she says. Why did feminism basically park motherhood as an issue and not address it? That’s a really big one, that’s a really big one. I, of course, men are meant to speak about women, because what in dress could one half the species having the other? But this isn’t a small one to miss.

1:02:05 That isn’t now. Of course, the moment you start that people, oh, you just want to lock women in the home and make them have. No, I just think that it would be unwise to pretend that one of the most important sources of meaning in anyone’s life, if not the most important, is some bureaucratic technicality we’ll get on to at some point in the future to address. I had much rather that we were able to have the discussion about motherhood, and I know from many friends. The extent to which not having had that discussion has made life at a certain point unnecessarily harder than it should have been.

1:02:47 And on that same note, other discussions you think we can be having that are productive in the trans world and in the race world. And then the gate holds. Yeah, and I think one point of Amica, the point of the book is in some ways to not do is to lead people out of this. But one thing I say is like where there is a point where there is a plausible problem, a recognizable problem. Why don’t we agree on that and address that problem?

1:03:13 But maybe it’s incarceration rates, for instance. And then let’s address that problem. But not, let’s say that all the races have historically been against each other. Those people have always again against these people, and that’s why we need to get these people get their dinner locate the things that are in unjust, unfair. And why don’t we unite in trying to solve some of those?

1:03:38 But nobody will agree to solve one of those. If they think that after that, your desire is to destroy X race of people or humiliate them, right we could. We could have a much more fruitful discussion about what sexual norms should be, what dating norms should be. If there wasn’t a fear that really, some people, not all but some people want, matters. The first step to vengeance that you can’t do it.

1:04:06 If that’s the case and other equivalents as well in the in the gay world and in the trans as well. Well, I think the gay thing is just, I mean, it’s so bonkers. I just before coming here, by the way I saw that I just. I’ve just been attacked by the main gay magazine in the UK and the main gay magazine in America for misgendering Sam Smith, the pop star who came out the other day as non-binary. Which I don’t believe, and I don’t think is only such thing as non-binary.

1:04:40 Can you explain that? Well, I’d like him to explain it because he couldn’t. Sam Smith came out as gay some years ago and then came out a few years later, was genderqueer. And then said last week that he’s actually non-binary, he doesn’t know what that means. And that’s, I humbly submit, because it doesn’t mean anything.

1:05:00 But he says that he wants everyone to refer to him by different pronouns, specifically they them plural pronouns. And he said he doesn’t know exactly how to explain what it is. But he looks forward to coming back and telling us when he does. Yeah, okay, look forward that I’m not mutilating the language until the day you come back and explain this to me because I’ve got a fair guess. You’re never going to come back with what I would regard as a plausible explanation for it.

1:05:25 There are lots of ways of playing this, by the way. If I wanted to and wanted to play the game that the people are criticizing play, I could say, You’re disappearing gay men, why are you doing that? why you? Why are you disorientating? A young man growing up rising, he might be gay and making him think, Actually, he’s a woman a bit of the time, why are you doing that? I could play that game, I don’t, but my point is that because I won’t jump on board with the latest crazy? I mean, they because of that.

1:05:58 The name Game magazine in the UK, the main gay magazine in America, just attacked me for misgendering Sampath. And say that the person I was arguing with was like destroying me because I and they say I that I’m the bigger this. By the way, they don’t mention that I’m gay. They’e raised that because it doesn’t help them, because what they want is to say, like winged, heterosexual, homophobe won’t correctly gender. SAM SMITH So I screw it up, so they chuck me out of the Church of Gay.

1:06:34 OK, this is politics, this is nothing to do with anything else. These are dying media brands, these are dying media brands which have people left in them. Who shouldn’t be there because the things shouldn’t be there at the point that gay magazines have to DJ people when they just disagree on politics, you’re not talking about politics, anything but politics, you’re not talking about pulling up yours, you’re talking, not talking. I again, you are only fighting a battle to win, and I’m not up for that same thing that Bret Easton Ellis has learned. I’m not up for that next, I’m not up for the next phase.

1:07:21 I was up for equality, I’m not up for equality. And then make then pretend that men and women don’t exist, or that gender is just something you perform. Or that somebody who’s basically saying, Look at me is actually to be treated as if he’s a woman, a part time buddy. You can play that again, women can play that game. If they want, I would urge them not to.

1:07:46 But women could easily say, How dare you? How dare you pretend you know what it’s like to be a woman just because you’re feeling a little bit female that day? No, you don’t get the right to do that. They could do that, but I’m not going along with the demoralization. I’m not just agreeing to say whatever the crazy is that everyone’s being told to say today, I want to know what it’s about.

1:08:11 There’s such a thing as genderqueer or non-binary, and by though it, nobody knows what the difference seen. Those two things is because there isn’t one, because neither of them exist if there. If you want to do these things, come back and tell me what they are like when you got the science, come back. We’ve got even a reasonable argument, but I am not demoralizing myself and demeaning myself by doing whatever you want to make me dance to today. No, and I don’t want other people to either.

1:08:43 I think it’s profoundly demoralizing. It’s what I don’t even is fortune of going to a country which, you know, suffered under a totalitarianism. But from my own experiences of occasionally going to such places and prowling for work as a journalist, I know that what the main thing in a in a society that starts to shut down is make. People agree to things they know not to be true because it demoralizes them, makes them low. And then, in the end, you just great.

1:09:12 Writers like Milan Kundera have addressed this. In the end, you just reality becomes and you just agree with anything, you go along with anything. And it’s just so striking in our time that’s all done in the in the tone of social justice. Wouldn’t it be, wouldn’t it be nicer of you kinder of you to just go along with the lie? Why do you have to keep stressing the facts?

1:09:36 Why do you have to be so interested in the truth, especially to these oppressed people? Sure, and minorities? And this is what kind of made Jordan Peterson famous years ago when he refused based on freedom of speech, I think is what he said. I’m not gonna use these neutral pronouns and you can’t make me because you’re infringing on my freedom of speech. Well, I know quite a lot of Sino Jordan and he’s wonderful man, and I know quite a lot of people who tripped over this.

1:10:04 Why? And there is a reason which doesn’t get doesn’t get highlighted enough. I noticed it with the trans one with friends in the sciences. We see the scientific method has ruled very successfully, not ruled, then been predominant very successfully for cover centuries in the West. And it’s, I think, got an awful lot going for it, you know?

1:10:31 We weigh up the evidence, we look at the facts, then we weigh up what we think is something we should agree to. What can’t be the trans one is so interesting because I noticed from friends were scientists that the reason why people kept tripping on. It was because this was the first time that people were being told not to do what the discipline told them. So, okay, the man says he’s a woman, say he’s a woman, he is a woman. And there was just, you know, I’ve noticed it in the last ten years.

1:11:07 I’d go into it in the book, is it? But I can’t, because it’s not the case because I’m a scientist and I know it’s not the case. But in universities and much more, it started to be just, Could you just? I have a greater friend, right? he writes under the name Theodore Dalrymple. He was a he was a prison doctor for me, so his lies worked in prisons and he has amazing stories.

1:11:38 Of course, as everyone who’s in that situation does. But one of my faces is that towards the end of his career in the National Health Service in the UK, there was some new jargon. Yeah, to some new form-filling. And he was retiring soon as they didn’t remind anyway. And he’s quite an independent, very independent minded person anyway, he said.

1:11:55 One of the questions on there that this sort of bureaucrat asked him was he said, Have you? Do you have you always and at all times in your life behaved in an ethical manner. And my friend said, And I have. I will only answer your question if you answer two questions of mine. And the first is who would ask such a question and who would answer such a question?

1:12:19 And he went on this he was explaining Nobody could say yes, because nobody has, throughout their entire life, always behaved in an ethical manner. So I can’t answer the question because you shouldn’t ask such a question. And anyway, he, of course he’s the guy who caused the form-filling bureaucrat ending. That was saying to him, Could you just say yes? And then we can move on, okay?

1:12:43 So in order to ensure that everyone is behaving ethically, the person from the NHS asks the person to live so they can move on things. That is that is a not that uncommon thing. Could you just can we just, could you just agree to the lie and we can get on to something else and I, and that’s what’s happening here. It’s happening everywhere, and I mean, I have a bunch of friends that, you know, people like Jordan, people around the world. I’m very lucky to have his friends, who partly who become friends, because they are the people.

1:13:21 In all sorts of countries. Who were the people who said, No, no, I won’t do it, I won’t, I won’t agree to the lie. And they’re from an amazing array of countries, an amazing array of disciplines, but they always have that in common. And I like that. I like that trait.

1:13:37 Yeah, it takes 42. It lets some people more than some people think, and less than others, yeah, you know, so non-binary does not exist. Okay, no, I always come back to me when you’ve worked out what it is, and then we can have a discussion. Okay, I go swimming at the Hampstead male men’s pond very often, and about six months ago, a bunch of women busted in and jumped in. The thing.

1:14:01 And it was very surprising because I’m used to only men being there and they were nude. No, there is a nude sunbathing section. So it was when I said that I began where that’s the sort thing at people like, Accept and just uses her. Okay, yeah, so it wasn’t, and they came in and they jumped, and we were coming, like, Why are you here? she said. Well, a bunch of men went to the women’s only pond and walked in and said, Identify as a woman.

1:14:25 And they swam around. And I don’t know, maybe the leader did them, I don’t know. And so as a protest, they came to the men’s pond to do the same to protest us. And so times it just seems to see the reaction of the men. They’re like, Well, we didn’t do that, and I don’t know why you’re coming here.

1:14:39 And it was a real where the rubber hits the road of the binary thing, and it was just strange to observe. Did the Madam and mine? Some were quite offended, and some were like, Okay, let’s just was anyone like, Hey, there were some really interesting arguments, like What, Why? and why should you do this? And we actually just had, like the men’s pond, and we think that’s okay. And you have a great women’s pond and, you know, and there’s also a mixed pond.

1:15:05 And so it was, you know, it’s one of the reasons why I bang on about the transceiver. One of the reasons why the trancing has become so big is because it runs against the issue of half of our species. It’s not a small thing there, it’s not a small thing. If a man says is a woman and therefore can be in all-female spaces. I don’t think all women should be made to feel like Phobes if they’re not comfortable with that.

1:15:43 I think that’s wrong. Yeah, and again, I admire the many women, some of whom I know and some of whom have put through hell for this, I really admire the women, who say decently with intellectual rigor and with considerable fortitude. No, no, you don’t get to do that, you don’t get to tell women what we are, you haven’t had our experiences, you’re not us. No, and there’s some Jess just that I may give some example I give a hero’s role call out in the book of some of the women. This is the case with them.

1:16:22 Nobody has to be unpleasant to anyone, but, but there are certain things which, no, you don’t get to do. And some medications and things that are happening with young people, and you talk about some of the stories. Yeah, both some of that is well. But there are some things we can and should do in the trans movement in the trans community that our watch will wave them up very carefully. Okay, very carefully.

1:16:45 I again. I think the facts are gonna matter enormously. Let me let me give one example of why and when children are growing up, what is what’s one of the strange things that happens in childhood? But the moments when you, but the moments when you think that the fantasy world is real and the moments when, then you sort of know it isn’t, but you get the glimmers. That could be the Harry Potter like things that why does Magic matter?

1:17:23 Sure, because the thing and, as you know, child everyday, the Fiat or time, they see a trick on stage that you like. They never seen it in real life, it seen it on film, they never seen it on the stage and died. Somebody disappears and took one of my God children show reason somebody disappear on stage. I knew as a trap door puff and submitting to travel, she was Because you’re like, It’s real. Yeah, there it happened is, imagine, okay, so children are very when they’re working on it.

1:17:53 If you saved your tongue, well, you are a boy, but you could become a girl if you want or you’re a girl. But that’s fine. You can be a boy anytime. Well, everyone now I know large children, our parents who told me how it disturbed their children have been at this suggestion. But I’m more concerned with the people who would believe the suggestion, because this is all presented.

1:18:21 As if it’s really quite simple and it’s not simple, it’s not simple. It’s not straightforward for somebody born a male to become an approximation of a female. And it’s really hard for a woman to pass off as a man and have a best you say, successful sex life as a man. Yeah, you penises don’t just grow from skin grafts from the arm, and you know, this is all present. I, this is my mind, I mind the lie that it’s sort of straightforward.

1:18:59 You could decide to change sex. What do we do about our technology? Douglas We have to find a way to d deranged ourselves, and I think that we should go to wisdom. We all knew till yesterday in that before the aging Internet, there were lots of stuff, there were lots of things that went wrong. It’s not like it was human teacher who is great until Twitter, but it’s massively exacerbated.

1:19:30 Spread everything up. But how about we just take some of the lessons that we had in the past? Yeah, I don’t know if your mother ever told you this, but I was always told never, never, always sleep on an angry letter. Remember that, Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, just give it 25 hips, keep it till the morning, read in the morning and send it off then, if you still think. But in the age of Twitter, how about doing that?

1:19:54 How about doing that? How about not? I try to practice this. I think I succeed. My first instinct is not always correctly. If my first instinct is unpleasant, try not do it.

1:20:10 Okay, just sleep on it. Is that the way we should behave on social? Well? Another way I say this in the end, the book is I have face-to-face interaction is vital. I.

1:20:23 I’ve been rather promiscuous in my life in public debate and, you know, contesting ideas and with a very quite bewildering array of opponents. And when you meet somebody face to face when it’s, you always learn something you would never have learned without that opportunity. And sometimes, in fact, very often, almost always, there are things you just wouldn’t do. Once you’ve had the person in front of you, you know, because I, you can’t. Social media makes people dehumanize other people, whether it’s a dating app, we flick, flick, flick or whether it’s a Twitter thing we use.

1:21:10 Like pile in on that person who’s wrong for today. All of you think, if you see the person, if you’ve ever seen them be night, why? You wouldn’t join in that stampede or you wouldn’t join in so easily. You and just dismisses them as a person so easily. Because he knows is a person with thoughts, feelings, intuitions, loved ones, loves problems, hates everything, a human being, and that’s why I might.

1:21:43 There’s a portion in the Tocqueville where he’s notes, it’s about the early years of the American Republic. He’s struck by the face-to-face interaction that exists then in America. Now. Today we are losing that, but we can get it back. You know, I’ve been enormous.

1:22:03 Lee, one of the great joys of my life in recent years, has been young. Audience is growing. I’m sure you have this, people coming out to things and all this. Ma and I, you don’t have to agree on everything. But they know the things you should be thinking about, they know the things they want to be thinking about.

1:22:28 And I took, I think, about this time last year, Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris and I were doing some events together in Dublin and London. And I started then and asking people in audiences, you know, got in the interval. Whatever say, did you host the other thing at the O2? Yeah, okay, I was there that, and I said, I said, I said, No, why are you here, you know, just, and I. I’ve been doing it that other friends, Vince’s a friend, well, little a journalist within the audience that I was in the audience, something he did.

1:23:06 London packed out the London Palladium 2,000 people. And I went for pub with some of the audience a fit. And, you know, one of them know what they thought and what they’re doing. It’s on, and I discovered two really moving things, because almost all the responses have versions of these two things. The first is I’m fed up of sitting in my room watching YouTube videos, and I want to meet the other people.

1:23:33 It’s not like who agree with me. But other people who are thinking about the same things and want to come to the answers on some of the same things I want. So that’s the first thing, and the second thing is, and this is just it’s very moving. They say that they want to see somebody speaking the truth, they want to be near somebody speaking the truth as they see it. They want to witness it happening because they’d like to do it on their own lives, in their job and their education.

1:24:15 With a girl from their boyfriend, they’d like to be able to say things that are true, and they think, and they’re right, they’re right. But if it, if somebody is being honest in front of them, they will be honest. In turn, they will have more courage to try it out and they’re right, they’re absolutely right. And I know this from my own life. Like, if you surround yourself with courageous people, you will be more courageous.

1:24:49 If you surround yourself with cowards, you’ll be more cowardly, definitely, but if you try to orient your life towards braver people and people who tell the truth, and we’re not living them to Territorian system. So it shouldn’t be odd, but if you do that, your chances of living in truth, yourself are a lot higher, a lot higher. And I am. I just find this a wonderful thing, yeah, and that’s why 8,000 people came out to see you at the O2 that night. Yeah, because I think they’re not used to anyone telling them the truth.

1:25:26 And we got Sam and you and Jordan up there that are going against the grain. And something feels intuitively right about this. And Jordan was here the next day. And he said, Brian, we’re discovering that people aren’t as stupid as we thought they were. Does they want to engage in a nuanced, long,-form conversation?

1:25:44 THE MoRitz Yeah, it’s the other part of this one of the most beautiful things, you know, people like me used to be best of its. Yeah, I’m not a pessimist anymore about this, because exactly of this, the counter-revolution is underway. And it’s really smart, it’s really smart. It’s totally backed. All the trends.

1:26:08 You know, that the media companies, although all the establish all, thought the future, was like three-minute head-to-heads between two quacks who didn’t agree with each other. We’re never gonna agree to reach out with each other and just gonna perform a seal like thing, and that’s the most. The public can cope with become a public. It’s sort of low attention span, low IQ and so on. And basically the assumption.

1:26:29 Yes, and then it turns out, No, no, no, they’re smart, they want to know more, they don’t want lies, they don’t. This performance art, bad performance, art as well. They want to hear long,-form discussions, talking about the things that are real and matter interesting, and they’re gonna affect their lives. That’s just a terrific thing. Yeah, yeah, it’s a beautiful thing, and I think long-form conversations like this help.

1:26:58 And Jordan was saying that, you know, having these, you know, multiple our conversations like you’ve had on Rogan and Harris. And stuff just gets people really used to this and well, they can go to an event and have that same experience. And also everywhere I go in the world, people are at the same bit of it, that’s they’re pushing against the same issues. I was speaking in Reykjavik the other week for Icelandic translation of my last book, Walking Down a Street in Reykjavik. Some Viking comes, they know very nice.

1:27:36 Local guy comes over and said, Oh, your dog is my own. Yeah, you know what you on this YouTube thing, so what do you think is gonna be the? And he’s right up, He’s right where everyone else is, and I mean, I’m not wrecking. It makes a great city and every, but, you know, you’re sort of a far-flung place. Big.

1:27:53 This is terrific. I mean, this is because it means that we could answer lots of things we need to answer. We could get to the truth and it could have a really important impact because it means it is happening everywhere. Everyone is able wherever their base to get up to speed at the same rate and we can do an immense amount of good with that. As a species as people, you’re optimistic.

1:28:24 I’m optimistic about that. I mean, I can out pessimist anyone on certain subjects, but on this, it’s what do we do about our tech companies? Because, like you said, without even knowing it like I, you mentioned those Google search images, things I would have gone OK. Twitter is biases if I never would have thought my Google image search might have been that way. How can we, first of all, be aware of it?

1:28:45 And second of all, demand more from these companies that we basically pay with our attention and our information. I don’t have a wholesale answer to it, but we need to know what they’re doing, accept it, accept where we can’t change it, make new things, do other things, not give them things for free, punish them when they go wrong and lots more. But I mean, they are. They are magnificent demonstrations of the problem of human beings. You know, I mean, not to get all the religious on you, because I’m not, but there’s the lines.

1:29:31 And Paul says in one of his letters, You know that, which I would not, that I do and that I do of that. I would not spells it out in words of one syllable. We’re not that straightforward as people are we, there are all sorts of things we wish we could do. We did do and we don’t, and then there are other things we know we shouldn’t do and we do. And the tech companies in really impressive fashion have demonstrated that right.

1:30:00 You set out not to do evil, then you do really quite evil things, are you quoting our Google’s? The strange thing is this will be broadcast on YouTube. To people all around the world who can digest this entire thing. You’ll be demonetized. Yeah, exactly, my name’s on the same time, I’ll probably monetized and maybe not in the search algorithm.

1:30:25 And I mean, I’ve had people on the show or the comments say, Brian, enjoy the shadow band. Yes, yes, I’ve had them on. I mean, I told you, I con recently, and, you know, just they enjoy the shadow band. So now, where did you have David Icke? Oh, you have even nothing, yeah, although funny Enough, Says some similar truth, like I was telling you before.

1:30:44 He had a clip with us called the Transgender Agenda, who basically said, All of this stuff is dividing us, so we will argue amongst each other and we can be controlled. Does he still do the lizards thing? He does mention the lizard thing? Yeah, it’s out way, and I would definitely die, and with me, -, but like 90- of the other stuff, he says. I have a really hard time arguing with it because it’s about perception and what you’ve been taught to the right versus what you might inherently believe to be real, but you would have got a believer. Presumably, yeah, he would be shadow man in some way.

1:31:15 We think so, but no, but the monetization is fascinating. Yeah, because that’s really in sidious, that the, you know, I mean, this sort of hoovering up this using of people’s talents. I mean, producers and camera vivillon. This is moving up of their work by an organization that’s making money from them that then stops them from making the money. So this is this is a really ugly capitalism in the guise of something that’s not that capitalistic, it’s really ugly.

1:31:51 It’s warfare out there and like you said, the only way to fight back is to fight back and channel uniforms and all that. But yeah, it’s obvious everyone’s weighing it up because you got a way up. Obviously, the reach you can have versus the money. That you can, you know, afford to lose by you, to basically making your content free. When it’s your own intellectual endeavor.

1:32:18 And but you know, maybe you can, just maybe I’ve only just do a lot of good and we’ll get our rewards. If not in heaven, then, you know, somehow, yeah, perhaps not in a check. I think the message maybe is more important. You mentioned Aziz Ansari, I don’t know if you’ve seen his latest comedy special on Netflix, it’s really interesting. Oh, I must watch because he speaks about all that stuff for the first time in two years.

1:32:44 Oh, and it’s really fascinating, it’s actually really good and the run, it’s really personal. But he says he brings some things up and he says, You know, some things. We did on Parks and Recreation. Which was like his big comedy show ten years ago, he said. Maybe that wouldn’t be okay today.

1:33:00 And he was kind of bringing up these things, that even things that he was a part of today would be looked at as racist or homophobic. Rhinos things. And I’m just wondering, How do we approach the subject of, like, forgiveness? Because I know that’s something in your book? Well, no, they say one it one is to have a more forgiving, more forgiving attitude towards the past.

1:33:21 That doesn’t mean you say the past is right. Obviously not, but to have a more appropriate attitude towards it because to do that is, among other things, and a request to what comes after us to be gentle with us, because we know we’ll be making mistakes, we know we’ll be doing things when we are. You know, I’ve been a writer for 20 years and masses of things have changed, I’ve made mistakes, everybody makes mistakes. It’s not until you’ve done them that you realize, of course, that’s because that’s what everyone in the past was going through. You know this, I have a favorite quote from Milan Kundera, who I mentioned earlier, he said.

1:34:06 Somewhere, man, he said. In testaments, betrayed, he said, Mankind walks in a fog. We stumble on a path and we make the path as we go. That’s not the interesting point, the point is as interesting as he says. When we look back and we see the path, we see the man, but we don’t see the fog.

1:34:30 Everything looks inevitable once you’ve been through it because it’s happen. But as you’re going through it, all you can do is to have the rightest lights shining that you’ve gone and tread carefully. Don’t just like stampede, fueled by self-righteousness and certainty, so that’s one thing be forgiving towards the pot. Have better attitude towards the past because we’ll need that forgiveness in due course ourselves. And I think this is also maybe I think this is also something which is an innovating thing for people I’m obsessed with.

1:35:22 One little things happened recently, which is a war on Winston Churchill that keeps happening portions of the left that keep doing this in Britain. They attack Winston Churchill for various things now. Winston Churchill was a man and he had he made a number of very big mistakes in his life. He also saved civilization. And occasionally you get these people.

1:35:49 We had one in Britain with the shadow. Chancellor John McDonald was recently asked whether Winston Churchill was a hero or villain, and he said Tony Pandey villain. This was blaming for the police action against some – My 10 and one minor dies and, oh yeah, murder 30, I’m not. There’s two things that are interesting about this. The first is what you’re really doing is you’re taking Winston Churchill.

1:36:17 Because you know that Winston Churchill, in some way, is the core of something at the root of being British today, because I, we have lots of uncertainties we always have, we’ve lots that we’ve got wrong, we know that, but we’re proud of that. You know, we’re proud of that. If we handle headwinds in church on this country, hunters to know the world would look totally different. Attack. There’d be any Jews, and that’s something to be proud of, to have stopped that.

1:36:55 So when somebody attacks church, shall we have something? We know what they’re trying to get us at the root of what is one of our certainties to demoralize us. But the second thing in some ways is more interesting to me is my problem with this is that it is innovating, particularly for young people. Because none of us in our lives are going to do something as important as what Churchill did. Then, knowing that if he failed, he would be killed, everybody he loved would be killed, everything he’d ever loved would be destroyed.

1:37:39 And the most evil thing in history would triumph. We are not going to have the opportunity to make a stand, let alone win, as he did. But if that counts as nothing because you once made a mistake, there’s no point in acting in this world, none. And I think that any young person looking at a system set up like that. Ah, once fail, once stumble once, and even saving civilization will not save you, well, why not just not do anything?

1:38:30 Yeah, well, a couple things about you, how do you write? How do I write? is the immature mindset? Has only one solute one, one where people say, How do you write? there’s only one answer Turn off your email. I love writing, I love getting to truths and things, and so I, I’d do it all the time. Read and talk and talk to friends and turn up ideas and write, and I, if I’m writing a book, I locked myself away, and I become very, very antisocial. And I say no to lots of things and doesn’t mean your life stops.

1:39:18 But, you know, I’m incredibly lucky, I’m really lucky. That’s a bit of luck I can. I get. I could do what I’d like. I get to write about what I think, you know, so that’s how I did I heard.

1:39:36 It’s very solitary when you’re writing a book. Yeah, yeah, it is, but you know, some writers get mad because you were sort of, you know, shut away. I’m not speaking to anyone. And then suddenly confronted camera they had locked away again. I didn’t have.

1:39:51 I mean, I’m very sociable and lots of friends and I, I don’t. I didn’t become a total. Hannah If I would ask all your friends, some of the people may be at your party last night, what is? Douglas is superpower. How are you able to get all these things done? What would they say about you? What would they say It is? and I will.

1:40:13 They know me. I didn’t know, I am, well, I. I never spent any time thinking about what other people think about me. I never have. I’ve always found it, just not that useful. Your parents teach you that or something you were born, I don’t know. I don’t know, have wonderful parents, a wonderful family. We always argued things out, we always contested, always have dinner and the same dinner table, and my brother and I argue everything.

1:40:45 And that’s probably where some of that started. But thought to try to answer your question, I don’t know, I’m driven, I always been driven. And that can be tricky for people around you. Because not everyone has much drive. They learn a lot and it can be exhausting for other people around you.

1:41:10 I know that I’ve learned that be exhausting for you, too. Sometimes maybe I’m not said bother about that, but, you know, it’s very easy to analyze other people’s actions very hard to analyze your own. And as I say, I don’t spend much time thinking about myself, really. But one of the only ways I could answer your question is some years ago. Somebody said to me, Ha, after some event or something, somebody said I think is in America.

1:41:42 So he said, Why do you do what you do? I didn’t understand, and there was a friend who’s also a writer who’s sitting nearby. And she and I sort of was fumbling around and being sort of. BRIG I don’t know. And his friend Leptin, and said Douglas has a very low tolerance threshold for lies.

1:42:05 If I have a gravestone, I wouldn’t mind that being on it. I think I think most of the people who I know and love and who I’d like to think, love me would probably say that. That’s, you know. I’ve got myself in all sorts of trouble in my life for this strange defect. But I’ve had an awful lot of fun along the way as well.

1:42:26 So calling people out on lies and saying the truth, that’s what, yeah, and I’d like to think I’m loyal. I’d like to think I’m loyal, I stick up to my friends and I like loyalty and I try to do it. I yeah, so I’d like to think they would probably say I drink too much like any good writer in England. The old school. Or at least as my late friend Christopher Hitchens, used to say, Nobody would say, I drink too little, do you miss him?

1:43:08 Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, is that lying? I’m very fond of TS earlier, there’s a line in T.S. Eliot, he says. I think in the four quartets, he says. As we grow older, the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated of dead and living. And, you know, this pattern becomes more complicated.

1:43:29 And I’ve been so lucky in my friends in my life, and we’re not entirely lark. I’ve also migrated towards people who I like and admire, you know, sort them out. Often here has become friends. Christopher and I are was a sigh, strange when he reviewed my first book, then we became friends, but there are people like him. As I say, I mean, sometimes that people who are well known, sometimes they’re people who aren’t were never well known themselves.

1:43:59 But as you grow older, you think, Oh, I wish I could wish I could share that with him and that I think that sometimes with Christopher, you know, I, there are times. I thought, Oh, he would have loved this. But I think that with the numbers of departed friends, what did you learn from him like watching him over the years and well? I was very lucky that when I was starting out as a writer, there were two people in particular. I was sort of caught between on one place, caught up with him.

1:44:38 One was Christopher and who is some big influences? One was Christopher, another was Roger Scruton. He was happily still alive and obviously Chris Rose of the left and Roger is over the right. And they have readily common in all sorts of ways. But I just love them and revered them both at a mile.

1:45:01 And I don’t know. I mean you, you pick up, as I say, you pick up things and the people you admire because you, you. You see again as worth saying earlier about Matt migrated towards people you admire Christopher Oh God, I mean, I, you never bloody let go, Never let go. you know, I mean, I’ve I fight an argument, or, yeah, I’m Auram Mullion than Christopher. Some things that he would do, I mean, where you thought, Leave your pushing that, you know, there are times when I would lay off, maybe when he probably wouldn’t, but, oh yeah, I’m.

1:45:45 I’ve told this way for the end time I have incurred Christopher’s Ayah. Was I, once around 2006 or so in Iraq, was going very badly, had been at breakfast that morning with Henry Kissinger, Henri’s had something. Which was, I thought, useful to the argument that Christopher was making about Iraq when he knew that he was in trouble with the argument. Everyone, you know in the disaster anyhow, and I remember thinking another, and I’ve seen Chris for that day for lunch. I thought I thought that I know it’s I said to Chris, Oh, I’m by the way I saw Henry Kissinger for breakfast.

1:46:25 My the moment I said it, I could just see Chris Kiss Me was one of his great hates. Just see. And as I started to hell, it relaying what the good doctor had said. I just and eventually got the end of it. Because just spat.

1:46:42 Didn’t need Kissinger to tell us that he never let go once the thing was between his teeth. But I’ve been so lucky with friends, I mean, there are other wonderful people. I yarn Hirsi Ali, who was a friend of Christopher’s as well. He’s a friend of my. It’s still a wonderful, wonderful woman.

1:47:06 I’m one the bravest people. And but just all around the world, I’ve met wonderful, brave people and some of him. And not famous at all. And never will be celebrated. But just one of the great joys of my life, you know, what was the best day of your life and the worst day of your life?

1:47:28 Gosh, I’m very worried about answering things too personally, mainly because I think you gotta be careful what you put out there. Cuz, it can always come back and be used against you. MHM So I’m quite private and I don’t want to say what the worst day of my life was. Okay, the best you, I don’t know, it’s very hard. One thing I one thing I would say is my experience of life is it just gets better and this is an This isn’t common, maybe, but when I was at school, I just wanted to get on, get out into the world.

1:48:22 And when I was at university, I post my first book in my second year and I was out into the world. I didn’t want to be a university, I just wanna forget her. And then it took me a long time to establish myself and it’s damaged my career and. But it just got better and better. I got freer and freer now.

1:48:43 I said this recently to a friend, he said, Gosh, you’re lucky that’s how it feels. And I realized that wasn’t his experience of life, but that’s how it feels to me. I yeah, and it’s like I could complain, but I don’t. I mean, I, it’s a wonderful thing to do what you love, and that’s why I. That’s why I always say to take young people who ask me advice, I say, Em, throw yourself at the thing you know you want to do and be because of the West. Is that your fall short so we’ll probably short fall short will do?

1:49:34 Worst thing is that you’ll fall quite a long way short. But that’s a hell of a lot better than aiming yourself at something you don’t want and making it, you know, and it works. I agree mine from me, life gets better, I feel like I understand myself better. And, yeah, for me, it’s just keeps getting better every year. But maybe because I’m doing what I love to, maybe not arise doing that.

1:50:04 And yes, that’s true, but maybe also the old you guy turned 40 this year. But it’s that’s just the what just everything is so fascinating, you know, is why I travel a lot. It’s never boring, it’s never bored, even slightly boring. Places are interesting that they’re boring, right? You know, like interesting, that nothing happens in this particular place.

1:50:40 You know, that’s a good perspective. What scares you? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t. I’m not mad. I’m not like wildly irresponsible with my safety or anything like that. I’ve the only time in my career that I have been scared.

1:51:28 Maybe I didn’t. if I should say this so well, was four years ago after a massacre. The offices of Charlie Hebdo. I knew people there, and a couple of weeks after that I was at a theater in London and came out in the inn for my friend was buzzing and it was because it had been off. The names of the people who were texting weren’t clear, and just it became clear that been another shooting and then another.

1:52:01 There’s some friends in Copenhagen and Free Speech event, and another terrorist had come and shot them out. They were just texting to say that they were alive, and it’s the only time I’ve ever felt. I think he’s funny at times, ever felt scared. I didn’t think I’d ever stopped, I didn’t think I’d ever stopped, but I, I thought then I thought, Oh no, it’s gonna keep happening to other people or to you or well. By then, I’d the police that told me not to appear in public, and things like that, right, that’s scary, that doesn’t.

1:52:46 I not bothered with that because what will be will be, but yeah, I’m. That was that was that was wearing Cuz. I just thought, God, if this keeps happening now, what would we be surprised to learn about Douglas Murray, some guilty pleasure or some non authoress? Spectator ish thing that you do? I know they’re mundane, things like games, a gym, go every day, right?

1:53:21 Yeah, pretty much okay, and that’s a game changer for you. It’s good. I turn my mind off, I sometimes people are surprised I’m nice, but I see I could see that. Why do they think that way? Well, because, actually, I mean, I think I wrote your scruton.

1:53:49 As an event we did recently was asked by a member of the audience Something about me and I comment, but and he said he said something like he said Douglas is a harmless person, and somebody else in the audience said, Why would you say that? What does it means on it? And Russ? It was very embarrassing for me because I sitting in a hole with a couple of thousand people with Roger talking about me. I was, but, but he said something very funny, he said, and he said, Douglas is essentially, I think I’m gonna agree, that’s right, he said.

1:54:17 Douglas is essentially an agreeable person who’s been bullied into being disagreeable by disagreeable people. That’s very perceptive. That’s good. I mean, what I want to get on with people I’m, you know, I pretty much get on with anyone. But as long as there’s no lies, as long as there’s no lies.

1:54:37 And then just did. It’s held for everyone things up, a superhero in you and what keeps you awake at night. No regrets, Yeah, never keeps me away, yeah, worried in the night cool, Yeah. You were great things, you play things over your mind, things you could have as a person, being a better person, things you should have said. MMm things you forgot to say things you can’t say now, are you hopeful on the future of the planet to species?

1:55:22 Everybody too big a question, but neither an optimist or pessimist other than our case by case scenario, that’s well, said Douglas Adair. Now is ask people a few last questions. If you could pick up a kind of a magic phone and call up the 20 year old Douglas and give that young man a bit of advice, what would you tell them, and where were you university? Yeah, as a university, I think it would be personal advice. I think there’s a lot of things you work you do.

1:56:03 If you’ve known it about relationships, if you known about it earlier, takes a long time to navigate personal relationships with other people in. I mean, meaningful takes a long time to work it out to know what you’re doing. I’d have given myself relationship advice, including not to worry so much. You know, when you’re 20, you think, I’m never gonna meet the right person, you know, yeah, and I think I’d say to myself, Don’t worry about that, it’ll come on. That same note.

1:56:52 Best advice you ever received could come from a parent or a professor, or Christopher Hitchens. Anyone? Best advice I ever received? Well, I might dodge that and just give you what is a total Dodge Bird a career piece of advice. When I was starting out, I was.

1:57:16 I wrote, my first book was on literature, and I was writing reviews for The Spectator and the then editor was Boris Johnson. It’s a really good point, you know, I was all used to it.

1:57:55 Welcome, we could see this and on the other hand, you could see this and in a very real sense, I didn’t know this was a really good piece. If I see you’ve got to make it good, you’ve got to make it enjoyable, you’ve got to make. They’ve gotta want to read it and all that. Nobody tells you that, and that was really good advice and I’ll always be grateful to him for that. It took doing a lot of work after that for me to get it right, but yeah, that was a good piece of career.

1:58:20 Advice. And what? What? What do we not know about Boris? What’s he really like? I don’t know him well enough. I think he’s in my view, he is exactly what you see. And the floors and the virtues are all out there, and you all know that when you appreciate that.

1:58:42 Yeah, I think he’s a very remarkable figure, he’s the only person in politics in my adult lifetime. Who, when you? Maybe it’s not the case now, but it used to be the case that if you mentioned his name, people felt better. That’s a very unusual trait. And the politician, no one ever said, Ah Hammond, yeah, but Boris, they liked him.

1:59:17 I see Ming, Is there still residue? There’s a little anger about the referendum. Obviously we’ve got to get over that. I’ve got to get over the anger, but yeah, that’s a really remarkable trade to make people feel better as a politician. Yeah, you kind of forget about that sometimes.

1:59:32 Day, Yeah, what do you think of his book on Churchill Haven’t read It? I quite liked it, it was a very political book, but was a that was pretty good. I read Andrew Roberts Is Magisterial Bofill Churchill recently? Okay, that’s a book. Yeah, okay, politics for you, ever. I suppose I can’t say I never thought about it, but I, I most of my life. It’s not been possible to be a politician and tell the truth.

2:00:05 Yeah, after a nanosecond, yeah, even if I managed to get in, I’d have. The whip was drawn on the second bit too much truth, last part of that question to that 20 year old that’s been watching and listening to us advice to them there. In this strange world. They were born into this world, a lot of them where it’s a thing like, I wasn’t born into this world. You know, there was nobody chatting, there was no Twitter, there was none of this advice to them.

2:00:31 If they read this and they’re like, Okay, how would you say they move forward? Well, I give I give them the last chapters, you know, the ways, some of the ways out that we think hovers. But I think I think that the one of the most important ones is Don’t, first of all, don’t do things which will demoralize. You, don’t do things you’ll be ashamed of and hold your stock high higher than the era tells you to hold it. Don’t put everything out there, don’t cheapen yourself, keep something back of yourself.

2:01:21 And one piece of advice I was not given in person. But one of the great joys of reading is that, of course, you get the advice from centuries of people who’ve been thinking before you. One of my favorite quotes is a quote from Schiller. He says Somewhere be a part of your age, but do not be its creature. I just say that 21, be a part of your age, engage yourself in it, completely immerse yourself in them.

2:01:56 But don’t be its creature if there’s lots about it you don’t want, don’t want to be a part of, don’t have any part of it, be a part of another age, which is kind of what this is about. Douglas I think the books gonna do very well. I think you might know that as well. It’s called The Madness of Crowds. I’m guessing people can pick it up on booksellers.

2:02:21 Amazon all that. Yeah, if you can find a bookshop these days, you could buy it in there. Yeah, is that – at Amazon and all these things of going and you’d be travel in the world talking to people, Australia, us. That kind of thing, right? I will be honest.

2:02:35 I was hesitant on having you on the show. I think I watched some clips and I, I didn’t know if I liked you and I’m really glad I did have you on. I really appreciate what you’re saying in this book, and I appreciate that you’re telling the truth, and I appreciate your saying hard things. They’re gonna be unpopular for some people and that you’re willing to even a potentially offend them, and I appreciate that. And I appreciate people like you and Jordan Peterson come on and just say, and I hate to put you in this thing.

2:03:01 But even David Icke, that says, Look, if you think something is wrong, say so. That’s one of the simplest things, he said at the end of the episode. Say it, don’t feel like you can’t, that you’re gonna be out of stuff. If you really believe intuitively. And I’m always pointing toward much my heart here, wait a second.

2:03:17 No, this isn’t right, you should say that. And I think that’s how we move forward in this whole world, and when we’re not doing that, that’s how we don’t. And I guess that’s probably what your book is about. So thank you for that and really enjoyed my time with you and all the bests. Great pleasure. Thank you, cool thanks to us.