Modern Wisdom - #219 - Douglas Murray - Permission To Think Differently

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

Douglas Murray is a journalist, author and associate editor of The Spectator. Gender, race & identity have been the most inflammatory topics of 2020, Douglas returns today in an effort to throw some sand on the fire of social justice. Expect to learn whether Douglas is bored of talking about identity politics, whether looting is an effective method for political change, whether Ben Shapiro is a better rapper, what Douglas' gym routine looks like & much more... Sponsor: Get Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (Enter promo code MODERNWISDOM for 85% off and 3 Months Free) Extra Stuff: Buy The Madness Of Crowds - https://amzn.to/35j0uus  Follow Douglas on Twitter - https://twitter.com/DouglasKMurray  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back. My guest today is Douglas Murray, journalist, author and associate editor at the spectator. His episode last year was one of my favorites from 2019 and whole boy did he turn it up to 11 today. Gender, race and identity have been the most inflammatory topics of 2020, and Douglas returns today in an effort to throw some sand on the fire of social justice. So expect to learn whether Douglas is bored of talking about identity politics, whether looting is an effective method for political change, whether Ben Shapiro is a better rapper, what Douglas' gym routine looks like, and much more.

I love speaking to this man, and I already want there to be another international incident or book that he writes, so we can get him back on. I really hope that you enjoy the episode as well. I'd love to know what you think, get at me at ChrisWillX, wherever you follow me, Instagram, Twitter, et cetera, et cetera. Other stuff that's happening, the remainder of September is just insane

for recording Chris Voss X Head of the FBI's international negotiation division, just insane for recording Chris Voss, X-Head of the FBI's International Negotiation Division, Ryan Holiday, multiple time best selling stoic expert. Bloody hell, who else have we got coming up? Seth Golden, I'm behind tribes, it is just so good. So I very much hope that you are enjoying all of the episodes that are putting out because I'm loving these conversations. Also, this week is the return of three episodes a week. So today, Anther's Day, and Saturday, moving forward for the rest of time.

Well, until I snap another Achilles, maybe that'll be when we drop back down to two a week. But yes, we're back to three a week for, which video-guideen is obviously absolutely thrilled about. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Douglas Murray. Great to be with you again. It's been a year, probably. One year, one year since we spoke. It feels like you've done your ceiling. I've done my ceiling, so all of the people on the internet that were complaining and saying was that mold on the ceiling, it wasn't. It was candlestick. I went through a period where I

loved Yankee Candles for a while, but we're out the other side. But yeah, it was only a year ago, which feels like 75 years ago. Doesn't it just? Doesn't it just? We're both looking okay despite that. I'd like to think. I hope so. I mean, I've lost in Achilles, but that's really the only thing that's gone wrong. So at the end of 2019, when the Manusacrides came out, I asked you what chapters you could have added, which you omitted. And you said, mental health and green, what's your answer

in 2020? I think I'd stay with that. Green, in particular, has been really doing well in the lunatic Olympics. They've got a whole new wardrobe of lunacy. They've got new makeup that shows them ad. mad, they actually dressed to say I'm mad. So I do feel still a bit annoyed that I never did the green chapter, but as I say, there's an awful lot of material in those guys and girls. I would observe simply though that since we last spoke, everything I write about in the man's of crowds, everything I do put in on gay, on women, on race, and on trans has just... which, you know, I could see coming, it was why I was trying to warn people about it, but goodness, particularly in the last few months,

so much more than I ever feared could happen this fast. Do you feel vindicated? You got it right or sad that it occurred as you prophesized? You know, I don't like vindication all that much. I mean, you should try it sometimes. Yeah, I mean, it's always nice when people point it out, but it actually doesn't feel that great that because if you say, look, here's this terrible thing that's coming towards you, and then it happens anyway, you know, you feel like maybe you didn't warn well enough or you didn't warn clearly enough or something like that. But I might be over doing what you can achieve in warning, but I do feel that those of us,

and there are a number of us who said, look, dig down into these identity traits things and you won't heal society. You'll make it more discombobulated and eventually you'll make it more divided. And you're not gonna solve it. You're gonna make it worse. A number of us said that,

but too many people thought, no, we love the sound of the apocalypse you're talking about. Let's get there faster. Let's take the fast route. Yeah, you're right. They got first class. They went VIP upgrade. Yeah, they got the trolley service as well.

What have we learned from JK.K. Rowling this year? Wow, well, who ever thought that the creator of Harry Potter would become Gerbils? I mean, the most unforgivable cancelled person, it's extraordinary. I never thought that the Harry Potter, I mean, I never thought that the people who are great fans of J.K. Rowling would turn on have this much. The only thing I've ever seen that I can think of that it reminds me of was I once saw some footage from Trafalgar Square of some young girls who had stayed out all night waiting for Lin-Au to to cap here to come for the premiere of a movie and it was raining and he didn't stay very long to greet them because it was raining and I remember this footage

of him saying, I hate him! And they turned from so devoted, so devoted, they had camped out and arranged their lives around the possibility of a glimpse and got to, I hate him, he's the nastiest man in the world in no time. And that seems to be what's happening with J.K. Rowling. Now of course, not with all her fans, I don't overemphasize it, but there are as apportioned people who believe that the Harry Potter woman, who they were lied on all the time when they were growing up and who gave them all this great time, has become an Nazi when they weren't looking. And I don't, I should stress, I don't think she has.

But there's a lot to learn, firstly in the de-menting tones of the time, second in the way in which public figures can just be made versions of them that have no resemblance to what they are, become, you know, played out there in the public sphere, and then you get the very interesting other lessons. I don't like this term cancel culture. I think it's sort of, it's already stale and it's not quite accurate because, you know, JK Reading hasn't been canceled.

Like that, you know, there's a bunch of very insane people who think that the Ika Bogg is too difficult for them to cope with in this life. And by the way, I mean, because that was the attempt, the war, the attempted walk out at her publishers, Hashtet, was not because they didn't, the, the, I think 150 or so people, mainly young at Hashtet, who said they couldn't work on the latest JK Rowling book and didn't want to be in the same places. They weren't publishing JK Rowling's big book of trans. It wasn't chicks with dicks by JK Rowling.

Dumbledore and Harry have an ex-rated adventure, it wasn't that. No, it wasn't that. It was a new children's book to be called The Ika Bog. And if you are an adult in the world and you can't be in the proximity of a children's book called the Ika Bog, it's possible this world isn't going to be able to be arranged around you anymore. You know, it's that's a bad place to be. And so J.K. Rowling's story has lots of things to tell us, but one of them is, what can be done by one person? Just one person. Second thing is, we are learning lessons about who

can be counseled and who cannot and the fact that clearly it matters that she makes money and that she has money. Now that's not all the good for sign because it means that those of us who aren't multi-zillionaires are still vulnerable. And I wouldn't like to be in a position where only the very rich can survive attempted cancellation. But it shows that one person with a voice and with some guts, she certainly has that, can say, look, I'm not persecuting anyone, I'm just telling you, I'm not going along with the following crazy thing you made up yesterday. And I admire her for doing that.

Yeah, she didn't have to get into any of this. She could quite easily have continued buying Harry Potter castle sized houses and living very happening. Most people would be very happy to have a quiet life and enjoy their loot. But she's done this and I have all respect for her for doing so. It's a sort of thing, her legacy in whatever form that will be. I'm sure that she is going to be remembered. You know, Harry Potter is one of the most popular children's series ever. And really sort of was a pivot as well with regards to children's literature, I think, that was adult-friendly as well.

You know, like you had kids, they even did special adult cover versions. Yeah, so that adults were less embarrassed reading your kids. I thought very poorly of the adult. I've had the children's editions. I thought very poorly of the adults who thought they were fooling everyone by reading. Still very far to make. But yeah, and you're right, she could have just quietly allowed that legacy to roll forward without doing anything to potentially upset the balance, but she decided not to. Yeah, and I just think that we need to reflect more on when things go well. You know, you hear an awful lot about, you know, when things are going badly. This has gone very well, you know. There was a fear around the time of the J.K. Rowling thing that maybe even making

money for a company didn't protect you. You know, look at Netflix. Netflix has been willing to take financial hits in order to do worse programs so long as they're in the right political realm. I worried in the publishing industry that would be the case with JK Rowling, but fortunately not. Fortunately, it's still, you know, success still speaks. And I'm delighted by the people, by the way.

I don't want to be snottied about this. But some of the people who resigned, there were some people who resigned from her literary agency because the literary agent was now representing an anti-trans person. And I just, it was one of the funniest reads of the year, reading the authors who'd resigned from JK Rowling's literary agency. I can tell you, per literary agent isn't any poorer. I'll just, I'll put it in its most diplomatic. The literary agents praying to the gods

thanking them that they finally rid themselves of some non-selling authors. Yeah. Yeah. So, no, but it's been a very good thing because I think I just spoken about this when we last spoke, but I've always said that cowardice is catching, and when a society encourages people to be cowardly and meek and shut up and all that sort of thing, and if the public figures all do that, then other people do it. But the reverse is also true. And if you know mainstream and totally responsible and respected figures like J.K. Rowling,

do this and fantastic. More men and women will say what they think and they won't go along with stuff just because they're told they have to. Particularly when it's mad stuff that was just made up yesterday. So you've said cancel culture is a term that you're not super happy with. What is the cancellation sphere that's out there in the world at the moment?

Well, the clear one that does exist is the attempt to find people whose employment is vulnerable to mob stampeding. So, you know, somebody says something on Twitter, for instance, in support of somebody that Twitter doesn't like, and the Twitter then finds where they work, and you know, lobbies they're bossing until they're sacked sort of thing. That's the aim. lobbies there boss until they're sacked sort of thing. That's the aim. And there's lots of versions of that lobby a company, a company's going to lose masses of money because it's just destroyed its market capability because everyone's unhappy with it. That stuff does go on. But you're not happy with that being called cancel culture? No, no, no, no, it's not that. What I'm worried about is that we get stuck on it

because I believe it's much more important to focus on what is winning and what winning looks like. And you know, there is a certain, you notice it's an American journalism a bit more than you do here. There was a bit of, oh, I there is a certain, you notice this in American journalism a bit more than you do here. There was a bit of, oh, I was so nearly canceled, oh, I was canceled. There's a sort of certain, you know, you always have it in writing because writers are very self-obsessed bunch and tend to think of themselves as being brave. I mean, Mark Stein may have famous cryptos years ago, you know, like writers are forever giving

each other awards for bravery. And you know, you don't... all of the professions where you know, like you've got to run into burning buildings and save people. They don't spend all their time talking about bravery awards, you know, but writers are very big on bravery. And writers like, quite a lot of writers like the idea that they're sort of, you know, edgy and all that sort of thing. And so the idea of being cancelled is a little bit, you know, for them. I don't really care about that stuff. I care about people saying what they think, and I'm really, I really think that people should not pay so much attention to a very, very, very rarefied and demented minority of people. And I don't think we should give these people the right to dictate the cultural weather. In any way, in any way, why should a small, demented group of people who believe that

the big bearded man or the penis is a woman if he says he is, that they should dictate the cultural weather across the country and make major authors have to fear for their careers and make all politicians become jibbering wrecks when the subject comes up. Why should that be the case? Why can't we just have discussions out in a reasonable fashion and advance your case to the best of your capability, but you don't do that.

I think we've given an issue after issue very deranged minorities, minorities of minorities, the right to basically dictate the weather, and we don't need to, because on any estimation, on any estimation, most of those people are not doing that well. The authors who were the anti-rolling people are not doing as well as her. So why the anti-rolling people are not doing as well as her. So why not say, actually, the point is about this is to say, the person in your life you should want to be is JK Rowling, not just because you should want to be rich,

but because you should want to be in a position in your life where you can tell the truth. That should be the position you aim for. And I'm worried that all of this sort of actually encourages people to say, the position I would like to sort of hold in my life will be the one where nobody notices me and nobody comes for me and I sort of get away with it and then die. How vanilla can I spend the remainder of my life? I would like to be somewhere in between the colour egg plant and beige.

Absolutely, on the great colour chart of humanity, human experience. But that's what they're doing. And I think we should encourage people not to play that game. It's not the right. You've hit on something there that people like yourself, or Sam Harris, or J.K. Rowling, by virtue of success, or or financial backing or a level of independence with regards to your platform or whatever it might be, have taken great, got a great length to make yourself uncancellable, but not everyone has that luxury. Sure. No, no, no, I don't underestimate it at all.

Just my experience in life is that I've always said what I think. And it's worked. Well, not to you. That's the thing. I've always said what I think. And it's worked. Well, not to new, that's the thing. I said before our first podcast, how do we get through all of these topics without stepping on a land mine? And you increasingly just sort of do a ballerina dance through this land back and forth. Everything I do. I like to think it's slightly more butch than that.

But I agree. It's something like, if someone's a new ray of like leaps around that's what you're that was the image that was in your mind correct you are I've got this image of you in a pink 2 2 that's just dancing through mean, yeah, that's my experience. It is not to say that it's completely easy. I mean, you have to do your work and you have to work hard. You have to, you know, weigh your words and you speak them as when you write them. But you, you know, any normal person would anyway.

And, but yeah, I just, I think we've got to change the um you know there's this thing that's gone on in our ear in general. I think it's count last time that that we've moved from the heroic mood in the society to the victim mood. You know we've moved in general from the who is the person who's been most heroic in their life, to the sort of celebration of whoever's, say they've been the most victimized. And this is all a little bit of that. It's a little off-shoot of it. And I'm not really that interested in victimhood. Not because I'm hard-hearted or anything like that, it's just that my observation of life is that we can all of us win gendlessly if we want to about our lot because human experience is extraordinary in lots of ways and will always include an awful lot of and pain and grief and much, much more. So we could all do it.

I'm just not sure that our society should encourage it as much as it does. I think you're right. There's an interesting translation change that I came across recently. The Buddha said life is suffering, but the word of suffering is duke, duke, and as with all ancient translations, it's a nearest closest term that you try to find, right? And suffering was one of the translations,

but there's some scholars that can test that it's not suffering, it's unsatisfactoriness, life is unsatisfactoriness, and if you spend a lot of time in evolutionary psychology, you realize that unsatisfactoryness is fitness enhancing. If you were fully actualized upon killing your first bison, you'd never kill another bison. Upon having sex the first time you'd never have sex again. Exactly. I do know people like that, but the... Come on. No, you're right. Look, the unsatisfaction is, of course, wanting to do better, wanting to do more.

A lot of people find this with the accretion of wealth and never get enough of it. It's not the best way to do it. But it's one thing. Yes, unsatisfiedness isn't an entirely bad thing. It's an enormous drive for a lot of people. It's obviously one of the things behind ambition. And yes, I think there's an awful lot of things going on in our age, but we should try to identify the things that we are erroneously holding up as good. And I do think that holding up victimhood is not just good,

but meaning that you especially deserve a platform or a microphone has turned out to be an unhelpful way to start a new generation off in this world. It's a Jordan Petersonism, right, where he talks about the fact that a rabbit isn't inherently good because it's unable to commit evil. It's the enacting your shadow, fully, fully internalizing your shadow from the Jungian perspective. And the same with that, like you, you very correct,

there is no bravery in avoiding courageous challenges. Right. And when one of the things, again, I would touch on this when we last met, but one of the things I'm particularly worried about in this era is what's happening to men in all of this, because men seem to me the primary people at the moment who have been persuaded to lessen their capabilities, to lessen their capabilities, lessen the things they could achieve, and sort of just find a way to get through this strange period that we're in. And it's not healthy, it's not healthy for men, it's not healthy for women. It makes very unhappy men and it makes the very unhappy women because the women don't want those men What are your thoughts on looting as a method of hastening change? I'm mainly against it

Are you ever for it? No, not I can think of You're referring I assume my other things to the book. There's just been published in America In defensive looting 2016 that came out, you know. Did it really? Gosh, that was a really, really, really interesting. So I'll, I, the, it's had its moment now that book hasn't it? She is so much more insightful than you, her ability to see what's going on in the

future is that much greater than yours. Yeah. And so Vicki Osterwile, for anyone who doesn't know what it is, I've got a little, a little breakdown here and then I'll, I'll get your opinions on it. So NPR summarizes the book as an argument that, quote, looting is a powerful tool to bring about real lasting change in society, end quote. Osterwile's argument is simple.

The so-called United States was founded in, quote, cis heteropatriarchal racial capitalist violence. That violence produced our current system, particularly its property relations and looting is a remedy for that sickness. Looting rejects the legitimacy of ownership rights and property, the moral injunction to work for a living in the justice of law and order. Ownership of things, not just people, is innately structurally white supremacist. Looting is good, she says, because it exposes a deep truth about the great American confidence game, which is that, without quote, without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free. She came to this conclusion

six years ago, and in her book, which is written in love and solidarity with loot as the world over. Well, the obvious question is, where does she live? Is there anything you need to know? Do you know that at the front of the book, they have the classic. This is copyrighted by whatever publishing. Yes, I know because a colleague of mine, and spectator, wrote her publishers the other day, saying, we are publishing our own edition of this. Looting her book. You were just looting her book. And the publishers didn't seem to be up for that. You're amazed. I mean, I just said, look, if you see it in the bookshop,

take it. It's yours, all properties theft. Why not? Turns out, actually, nobody wants to steal her book. Certainly not if it's filled with stuff like you just read. These people, I mean, they're so reprehensible on so many levels. I mean, first of all, by the way, how ignorant can somebody be? I mean, how ignorant do you have to be to make that claim about the foundation of American society? And I suspect, like a number of authors of the American far left, she's never been anywhere else in the world in her life. I just strongly suspect that. If she can send me photos of herself in Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa across a lot of the Middle East and the Far East and things, I could be persuaded. But I would suspect that she's been brought up in America, hasn't traveled very much further, and has simply been indoctrinated in this now completely boring and predictable way, where all you

need to do is throw out this same word, salad about heteronormativity and indigenous people and all this sort of thing. And before you know it, you've got a not very well-selling book that you can't even get stolen. But the... That's not good. Do you remember the saga of a card thing that he got really, really in trouble for where he said, I wouldn't even rape you. That was his thing to the politician. I can't remember the lady's name and that was what got him in trouble. This is a book so bad you wouldn't even steal it. It can't be stolen. It can't be stolen. I mean, if anyone can

show me an example of it being stolen, but, you know, it's, it's all time it's, it's, it's amazing we're in this era and that people are talking and thinking like this. I, I simply think it's, she is a product of capitalism at this particular stage where she doesn't know very much, she hasn't been very far in the world, she's not been educated well, she's not seen anything of the world, she doesn't know anything about life, she doesn't know how life is normally run. And all of that is playing out on the streets

of various American cities at the moment, primarily Portland, Oregon. But there are a lot of people in this strange position. I have a lot of friends in America who tell me that this is very common, this sort of thing among their children and grandchildren. They say that they genuinely think like this woman that their country is uniquely bad. And these people just don't know anything. They just don't know anything. I don't know anything about history, they don't know anything about geography, they don't know anything about the world. And I'm very uninterested in the thoughts of these

intensely parochial, so-called internationalists, because that's what they are. I mean, they just, they have never seen the consequences of their own thought. They, the idea that you take away the police and everything will be, was it free, I think she said? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you also will get a massive upsurge in rape murder. Disproportionately in minority communities as well.

Yeah. And, and then what are you going to blame it on? Maybe the period when we still had police, and there's a lingering overness that makes people do that for a time. I mean, this is juvenile thinking. This is not juvenile, this is wicked and juvenile thinking. Again, I don't think very many people believe it. And I think that this is, there is an argument, it's a bleak argument, that people like her simply have to see this tested

close up at some point. Did we not see this with Chaz Chop? Was that not a perfect microcosm for this, that you could have, you can have, you can have, idiocy masquerading as moral virtue. you can have idiocy masquerading as moral virtue. Within a few years. There was certain, there was certain, very, very pertinent. The Chaz Chad was a very good example of it. There were lots of individuals who demonstrated it. Do you remember that big story? I think it was in the New York Times

when it was still in newspaper, which where there was a description of a couple, an American couple again, some like Oregon, some like guns. No, that could be another couple. This couple didn't have guns as far as, and in fact, they're very anti-gun. They were very pro-peace, though, and they feared that the world was lacking in love, and they just needed to give it more love to the world, you can see how this ends already. It can't you.

They decided to go on a cycling holiday and sort of spread, spread, well, something or other. And then they ended up just getting killed by a g-hadi sale in like Tajikistan. And they did a blog of their stocks in various places in the Far East and the Near East, the cycling. I think I want a tandem even. And then they just, you know, one day they just, you know, it's all, it's all stuff is like we just, you know, you think the world just needs more love and more tandem holidays

and they've got a basket of rose petals in front. And this, this, a couple of guys, couple couple of G-Haddies, saw them one day, and just, you know, on the flu, because they couldn't believe their luck clearly, and just, just took them out. So, human naivety is very familiar, and one has to be careful not to love too much at the people who express it,

but it's a very, it's a very common thing, to be totally naive about the nature of the world. Ordinarily you get over it when you're very young. Unfortunately, in America in particular, we have a generation of juveniles who are growing up and still juvenile and who actually believe these things, who actually believe that life is really quite straightforward. If you just don't have the police and you're like def straightforward. If you just don't have the

police and you're like defund the police and you don't have the patriarchal cis heteronormative state then what? I mean, by the way, did you see somebody did a video the other day from Paul Lorgan of one of these parks where they've really done their best, you know, the protesters? And it's just, it really does look like the apocalyptic wasteland they deserve. Just covered in piss and just people just lying, zonked out on whatever illegal or legal drugs they've been able to get and everyone just looks like they've pissed themselves and they've taken, they've taken, I'm, I'm, everyone wearing a trench coat. That's what I imagine lots of trans. They're all wearing someone else's trench coat Yeah, and yeah, and and they've got all the statues are down of course the whole place is covered in plinths

Beautiful plinths everywhere And no, but they're and all the plinths are covered in BLM graffiti and fuck the state and police of this And that's what these people inherit and they deserve to inherit it police of this. And that's what these people inherit and they deserve to inherit it. Are you're in stenched, graffitied wasteland in which just zombies lie around until they die? I really want to just put that as the trailer. That's just wrong. That's right. That's, you know, this is what they deserve. This is what they deserve. This is the final endpoint of their stuff. I can't believe that there are actually adults talking about this and the New York Times and the NPR and things

taking these discussions seriously. We've done the experiment many times before in human history of what happens when you have a total breakdown of law and order and it always comes out looking exactly like Portland, Oregon. What does the silent majority need to stop being silent me? Yes, this is something I have very keen people taking to account. I've fed up of hearing about the silent majority. I've heard about all my life, I'm sure you have people say, well, the silent majority don't believe that. I've always said, but why are they silent? Well, it's problem? And if they're a majority, even more so, that's, it makes no sense to me. The thing that we've been told in recent years is, the silent

majority only stops being silent at elections when it it silently votes in ways that surprise the rest of the country. Which it seems is kind of true, right? Yeah, the obvious example is Brexit vote in 2016 and the Trump vote in 2016. And then they say, well, now we've heard from the sign of majority. And then that sign of majority has said to be totally deplorable and it should be somehow expunged in the democratic process because it doesn't know what it's doing. It says the losing minority. But yeah, I don't understand why it should be the case that people only make themselves heard at the ballot box once every four years or something like that. So what I think is happening is back to where we started actually, is that a very small

number of very valuable people are making all of the weather. And I don't see where they should. And the only reason they do is because they manage to intimidate the majority into going along with things that we don't have to go along with. I just, I refuse and I think everyone else should to go along with any more of the crap. I strongly urge people to stop going along with the crap now. What does that mean? It means, for instance, if you work in a company and you are told that you're going to have a day where you've all got to think about racism, you either say no or you say, what is

it you're trying to make us learn and what are you trying to make us conclude? And are you right in that? So I published a little while ago, a letter I'd been leaked from the NHS Trust where this NHS Trust chief in Birmingham told everyone working for her what books to read. And I think that the people working for her and with her should not just laugh at her or say, oh my gosh, I didn't rise her racist, I am, in the NHS Trust in Birmingham, I had no idea that the NHS Trust in Birmingham was a place where the fourth rife was going to reemerge. Why would we stop it?

They don't just do that. They say, no. No. We're not going to spend the rest of our lives being told what to read and told what to think and told what to say and told how to dance and everything else. No, we're not going to do it. And if the so-called silent majority did that, then we would be so much further forward as a society. And what's more, we can do it in a

perfectly reasonable way. I've had experienced a lot in recent weeks, I assure you, have a wanting to have conversations about, by the way, you always tell, oh, we just want to have the conversation about this. No, you don't, you want to lecture people. But I'd be very happy to have conversations about colonialism and slavery and racism and the existence of racism throughout history

across all races and all. I'm very happy to have all those conversations. But actually the people who say they want those conversations don't want the conversations. They just want to win. What they want is to wear a unitary, spandex, khaki-colored sort of one-piece thing and tell you that your racist and put their paypal address up on the board. That's what they want to. Yeah, yeah, they want to be the Kim Yong-un of anti-racism.

And to tell everyone what to believe. And I don't think that's... I'm not going along with that. So I don't think other people should either. I got a small confession to make both to yourself and to the audience. I've been holding on to this story since we got to speak. So I had Carl Benjamin's Sagan of a card on the show a few months ago and it was slap bang as chaz was happening. So we're talking peak race tensions, right? And I've spoken to Carl before, we get on really well, episodes are great, but

for some reason I had this ambient anxiety throughout the day leading up to it. And I started talking to him and I was really nervous. I don't usually get nervous, especially when speaking to guests for a second time. So it's just a friend, how are you, how's this, that and the other? Sure. And I found myself being super, super, felt like I was training on egg shells as I'm talking to him. And then upon listening back, even some of the things that I said I didn't agree with, I didn't agree with myself. I'm watching. What sort of things?

So, for instance, we were talking about should the Faulty Towers episode be taken down while happening with Little Britain, variety released a list of 10 problematic movies which need warnings under discussion before and after watching. And I put this to forward to Carl and he gave his thoughts. And I just, after that was done, I said, I pushed the rhetoric of my compassion too far. I was saying basically, I don't think that anyone should be offended, which isn't true because in order to communicate, you have to risk being offensive. That's the way it works. Another Jordan Petersonism. So anyway, what I found was that I had somehow managed to, and that listeners may be able to sense this within their own lives, I'd become so ignorant to where the goalposts were

that I wasn't, I didn't even know what sport I was playing anymore. And I feel like this is the end goal, which a lot of the smarter people who are using just this movement to further a particular agenda are hoping to achieve. To move the goalposts so fast that you don't know what's right, what's wrong, what's anything else. And I was super nervous. and that yeah, yeah, you can be personally you're completely right and here a couple examples of that Tony Abbott former Australian Prime Minister Was appointed by the UK government as a trade advisor the last week in the days leading up to his appointment Various people led by a number of left-wing broadcasters and newspapers. Claim that Tony Abbott is a, you can do it, homophob, misogynist, granny killer, they did actually do that with, and global warming to that.

And that's the big four, isn't it? Bingo. Well, no, the biggest one, the fifth one, they actually weren't quite brave enough to do, which was to accuse him of racism, but they accuse him of all the other stuff. And he's none of those things, by the way, he's none of those things. He's a terrific, a terrific guy, a terrific public servant. And the former prime minister of Australia for goodness sake. So anyway, but the point is, is that the day before the appointment, the day of the appointment and the day after it, the Guardian had on the front page both days, the government appoints misogynist advisor. Okay. As if that's proven, okay, it's proven. I mean, they put it in quote,

scare quotes just to make sure they were legally a bit on better tap terrain. But that was what they said. Now, if I was a young woman or a young man growing up with an ordinary level of incuriosity, I would look at that or might look at that and think, that's awful. I mean, that's awful. The British government's deliberately appointing someone who hates women. Now, as it happens, the longer you go on in life, the more you get a sense of things, the more you rise, what's things and the more you realize what's bullshit in the Guardian and what's real life. But it is easy to see how somebody can be given a wrong view of an entire society once you embody little things like that. Now that's an easy one. Let me give

you a harder one, the killing of Joy Floyd. We are in a very perilous position on this, all of us because I don't know how much time you spend in the US. I spend a bit of, okay, so like me, they have racial problems that we don't have here, I would submit. Every country has racial problems, there's a peculiar and particular one that is existed in America throughout history. You could also argue that in the most militarized country in the world, the most militarized law enforcement, it has a likelihood of fatal encounters with the public that is higher than, say, in Britain, where most of the time the police just spend the time running away from protesters. And the point is that if you didn't know America that, well, I'm giving here the nicest

best analysis of something that's going on at the moment that I can do. If you didn't know America very well. You didn't know very many Americans. And you read that this white cop had been allowed to kill a black man on camera for eight minutes. And that was okay. Is it work? And this happened a lot. You would join Black Lives Matter. Absolutely.

You would want to join something that said that's not on. That's not right. And the problem is that there are these moments. By the way, Black Lives Matter was just primed for a George Floyd-like event. And lots of reasons to do a lockdown. I think the sort of the world was in a way. But what I think happens in those moments is, it's very hard for people to get a correct sense of exactly what is going on.

So maybe the police in America do kill black people with impunity because they thought that cross is your mind. Maybe America is a racist state. Maybe the British police are like that. Maybe Britain's like that. Maybe we're all racist. Maybe there's such a thing as white supremacy and it's everywhere and so on and so on and so forth.

And it all starts from that first inaccurate estimation of what's going on. So the killer of George Floyd is in custody awaiting trial on charge of murder. He literally has no defenders in the public sphere. He had a lawyer, but nobody says I think he did great. So what is this utilization of this one appalling incident and it's widening out not just to encompass say all police in the Minnesota area or all police in that state all police in America every white person every white person on the planet no No, you don't get to do that No way But in that moment you see certain very very bad actors advancing because they feel they've got an advantage

And that is the moment when people become worried Because it's hard to interpret exactly what the situation is and Bad actors deliberately pump lies into the system They say yes You can do this in America because black lives aren't worth anything. There was a very moving press conference with some of the police in New York, and the police chief was just standing with his colleagues, saying, people are getting away with saying things like one activist said, I don't even know if we

don't know if we're black, if our children will return from school or whether they'll just be shot by the police and it's police and we say That isn't the case in a mental. Yeah, it's not the case But again, if you don't know the country very well or if you do and you have a certain understanding of it or a misunderstanding of it or if you're a long way away it's possible to invite those ideas and So that's why I say that one of the deranging things in our time is that a very significant number of people, particularly young people, have been given,

or have given themselves an enronious interpretation of the society they're in. And that's how you end up with the lunatic writing a book about the indefense of looting. And that's how you end up with the lunatic writing a book about the indefense of looting. And that's how you end up with people on the streets of Portland running around looking for Nazis and not being able to find them and so smashing in some old woman's face. Now that's how you get there.

And reasonable people of any political direction just have to be able to say, no, we're not going along. You know, what it is actually, it's like the Roman Legion thing that the people in Portland sort of try to do. They use terrible and very freakish events to push forward and behind them is a whole legion of hell. That is the purpose. That is what BLM and others have been doing. And it has to be said by people of every background. That is not on.

You should not be able to make the, the famitory claims, sweeping claims, about whole races of people and whole societies, in this manner. We just need to speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way that we can speak to people in a way weren't stopped from having that discussion and we're only stopped from having it because dishonest actors say if you add any new ones to it then you are basically on the side of the guy who killed George Floyd. I think a big part of this is to do with the fact that we are not built to imbibe the entire world's news instantly 24-7. Yes. There is too much stimulus and too much information.

And also in the past, in order to have got your message to reach 10,000 people, half a million people, 10 million people, you would have had to have had jumped through some hoops that made sure you had integrity or virtue or capacity, whatever it might be. Whereas now, the right tweet at the right time about the right thing that just sounds good can get a million impressions within 24 hours. That's not the way that it's supposed to be. This isn't a counter to free speech. Your desire to be able to say

whatever you want does not mean that I have to listen to it. This is what Helen Pluckrose said the other day. And as a, it might be a little outdated now, but I know that you're a massive fan of Sam Harris's pullback from the Brink podcast, which as far as I was concerned was the best sense making us all around this. Wonderful. And that ties back to what we were saying about JK Rowling, that if you have the capacity and the platform and the uncancellableness that gives you license to do this, doing it is a good idea. Yeah, but let me just add one other thing, it's not just people in that position. The hero of the hour to me is young woman in the DC restaurant who wouldn't raise her fist when the mob told her to.

She isn't famous or she wasn't famous. She certainly had no idea that she was the person who would stand against the crowd. She did, and everyone should want to be her. That's a goal. That's a goal in this era. He's not to go along with the crowd. You see, because the crowd says, this terrible thing has happened, and as you say, our sense-making apparatus is all shot. And we don't have the time and like okay I could study all the footage of the arrest of George Floyd and then look into the arrest histories of the arresting officers and his own past and all of that. I could do all that or I could live my bloody life but okay if we're forced to do all of this sort of thing, whenever there's an explosion like this,

at the very least there should be a reward to people who do not say, yeah, of course I'll go along with whatever it is you're telling me I've got to go along with. That's why I say that the job in this era of reasonable and decent people is to not join the crowd. I'm very, I mean, it may just be that I don't have a great crowd love in Bill particularly. You and me both. Right, I'm not, I'm not, I don't even particularly like large sporting events for that reason. I've Been bliss for you this summer though. Oh yeah, no, I mean, I don't, I wouldn't want to go with me the only person in the stadium either.

But the point is I just don't like very, very large crowds because I know what they can do. And I'm much happier as a, just I speak for myself. I'm very happy to hold my own opinion and justify it to whoever wants to take it on. But I do feel that the crowd fear that some of us have is because we know how swiftly it can stampede in a wicked direction. And I do think that's happening. I'm not overstating

it. I do think it's happening. I think that the people who are allowing that Roman Legion like thing to happen, who behind them have people saying we want to destroy capitalism, we want to destroy the free market, we want to destroy the foundations of civil order, you know, property rights. destroy the foundations of civil order, you know, property rights. And I mean, they now save this thing. They say, oh, well, these businesses are insured. So it doesn't matter. How dare you? How dare you? When some family has saved and worked like anything, all their lives to have some business that can provide for their children. And you decide that you can get in advance what their insurance policy is. And you decide that you can guess in advance what their insurance policy is,

so you have the right to burn the damn thing down. They are trying to smuggle all those things in at the moment behind the first shield. And I say the job of the era is for people to say no, to resist the crowd. It doesn't matter what it tells you to do, don't do it, hold your own counsel, don't go along with it. If for no other reason, then that we cannot operate as a species, vulnerable to one person acting appallingly somewhere else on the planet at any one time. There's no way. It's a Trojan horse delivery mechanism with a bunch of a bunch of very bad actors behind it.

Have you heard of woke fishing? No, I don't think I have. You are going to love this. The New York Post sums it up as the Wokefish dating trend, shady men are pretending to be progressive on apps in an effort to bed progressive girls. According to writer Serena Smith, Wokefish men are masquerading as progressive in order to get laid, similar to the phenomenon of cat cat fishing, where there is people post fake dating profile photos. And there's a quote here from Reddit of a particular successful Woke fisherman who said,

it worked. I went to an anti-Trump rally, started screaming, fuck Trump, and a bunch of people joined in. I kept doing it all night until some cute girl entered our group and then we hooked up late to that night. He is, this is what I call cuckle fishing, of course. I think this is different. I think that this is doing it from a much more trolley sort of, I think he's purposefully doing it to say,

right, this is just a tool that I can use as opposed to someone who genuinely believes it. I think the... No, no, no, no, but I always said the cuttlefish didn't believe it. You not think? I think some of the guys are so self-disceptive that they genuinely believe that that's what they're doing. It's just their method of getting themselves in. One of my favorite conversations that I've had regularly in the year since Madison Crouse

came out was with young heterosexual men who I describe the cuttlefish maneuver to and they burst out laughing. Because that was there. They, of course, they've started to show. Because it's the laughter of self-recognition. I just happened so many times in the last year. And I do think it's cynical. I think work-fishing is obviously just an extension of this.

I like this idea, the work fisherman with his knalled hands. It's a big beard and one of those little hats on top. Smoke and a pipe at the work sea. But these people deserve each other. And, of course, it's all a consequence, again, of us not having the conversations we should have been able to have. If we had reasonable conversations about men and women and relations between the sexes, instead of allowing the craziest and most deranged and unhappy people to dictate all of the weather,

then you wouldn't be able to have the situation where one person knowing they're being a liar attracts another person who they have contempt for. Which seems to me to be a suboptimal start to a relationship. Perhaps. Also if the difference between you sleeping with someone and not sleeping with someone is whether or not they shout fuck Trump. Oh yes, I think there's something amiss here with, you know, the knobs and the dials need to be adjusted. There's more than a little bit that's wrong with that. I don't think you just restrict yourself to one thing being wrong with that.

There's an awful lot of oddities in this, by the way, but in general, in recent years, the politicization of dating is something that's very, very interesting. What I'm always interested in that is the way in which it's one directional. As far as I know, on gay and straight dating apps, you don't find people saying no Democrats or no pro-EU. It's only every other way around. So there's a running though. No prexidias, no pro EU. It's only every other way around. So there's a running, no prexeteries, no Trumpies. There's a running joke in the dating scene. Any guy who puts moderate on hinge is a Republican.

And the sense here is that the overton window of optimal political preference on dating has been shifted so far left that moderate is now Nazi. Yes, yes, now I can see the problem there. By the way, the spread day to be published a very good column. A couple of years ago by Cosmolandism and wonderful journalist, who's one of his journalists, so I particularly loved because he always writes columns and you think, oh my god, I can't believe that somebody wrote that.

I'm allowed to be published. That's fantastic. He wrote a very funny column about why sex with right wing women is a lot better than having sex with left wing women. And one of my favorite details of this was during sex with somebody who said worked at the guardian. during sex with somebody who said worked at the Guardian. At some point during the encounter, he used the phrase, you love it, you bitch.

Now, you and I might think that using the term you love it, you bitch to a guardian employee is treading in risky terrain. Anyhow, it struck Cosmo as being the mocked juiced at the time and he came out with it. She immediately, apparently immediately stopped proceedings and made it clear that something on the lines of just because we're having sex, doesn't mean that you can degrade me as a woman and Cosmo was sort of, you know, it's like in a tricky position here and I think said something on the lines of, no no, sure, sure, sure, can I start again

though? Can I get back in and I don't know exactly how it finished. Maybe it didn't. But anyway, the point is, he said this is a nightmare. This is the sort of thing that happens with left-wing women and right-wing women are an awful lot more fun in the sack and this is provable. And I don't think we have pie charts, graphs, or anything else. Someone can provide proof of this,

but I hear it, but I hear this story all the time. And I think it's definitely the case and the gazing. You wouldn't want to date an extinction rebellion protest. You wouldn't want that. You wouldn't want to be with you wouldn't want to be with somebody who you had to weigh. I mean, I'm not even just talking about the sex.

I'm talking about the fact that you wouldn't want to be with somebody who you were forever having to check what you were saying with and who might, instead of the normal thing, most sort of normal people, it's not even the left, right thing. If somebody says something that they sort of don't agree with, they say, I don't agree with that. And then you people, it's not even the left right thing. If somebody says something that they sort of don't agree with, they say, I don't agree with that. And then you say, that's interesting. Why? And then they tell you, that's a normal human interaction.

That is a relationship. You argue that's a religious name. I want to call it a Lissia. No, no, I don't like a Lissia. My aunt used to be called a Lissia. She was a bitch. Yes, exactly. Or just, you know, things like, you know, I've always had this I've always thought this and and then you know You know that's that's what this is one the nice things about it is you just discover the other person discover the audacity of the other person quite often And you know, and that's all that's all good. You wouldn't want to be with somebody nobody should want to be with somebody Who's policing all the time around the boundaries to make sure that you're exactly in lockstep with what you're meant to believe today. It seems who would want that.

It seems bizarre to me, especially that 69 is quite a popular sex position. It seems bizarre to me that you can have seen someone's arsehole inches from your eyes and not be allowed to call them a bitch. It's like, look. We have... I agree. I'll read you. and not be allowed to call them a bitch. It's like, look, we have, I agree, it's outrageous. Look, the sex police need to steam in and have a discussion.

As I've always said by the way, the hardest one on that one is how the rules are like that. And what's the name, EL James? I don't wanna say PD James, not PD James, 50 Shades of Grey Woman. That sells by the bucketload. I mean, I think I say that in man as a crowd somewhere. That's a very weird, I mean, you know, it's a very weird thing that nobody bothered to have out, that at the same time as, you know, all of the increasing policing about relationships in sexes're going on, women were buying hardcore

S&M fiction porn by the truckload. I mean, it definitely wasn't all men buying that. You know, it sold, it sold like more copies than the next four top selling of the top five books ever in like combined. So it's exactly, and so all of this is so damn interesting. Yes, it is so interesting. And nobody talks about it or can have the conversation about it. We are right now. Are you bored of talking about social justice? In one way, no, because they're so endlessly entertaining.

The opposition, you think they can't come up with anything worse than madder, and then they do. And you think I'm sure that must be a satire, and then it turns out not to be. And they make the same mistakes in the same order every time. Yeah, I mean, that stuff is endlessly, you know. I mean, there were, by the way, there's a very serious one. I mean, there was one that came up the other day, the American Psychological Association decided to become a sort of racist organization.

It announced that all white people have the, have white supremacy and a blood problem basically by being white. And now of course, the American Psychological Association last year decided that men were a problem. So I just sort of think at some point, the American Psychological Association is going to have to refer itself to a psychologist, I suppose. But, but, but, you know, they do this on a very regular basis. The UN did it today. The UN declared that, oh, what was it?

Yeah, until we address, oh, you know, the usual thing. It says cis-hetronomativity, patriarchy. There won't be peace in the world. And you think, yeah, I don't know if that's going to solve Yemen. But it's actually what you do if you can't solve Yemen, isn't it? You start jabbering on about heteronormativity,

somewhere in Geneva. But yeah, they come up with things every day. I'm fascinated by that, but I also don't spend all my time on it. Well, let me really phrase that. I spend too much of my time on it, but I always balance it out with something worthwhile. I literally think of it like sustenance. If I spend some hours

imbibing the latest crazy shit that everyone's doing today, I read a really good book. Or I watch a terrific movie I've never seen. So you're allowed to eat the hamburger as long as you go and go to the gym at some point. Right. I absolutely advise this for everybody. Like the joy of reading old books, the joy of watching old movies, you know, just take a classic movie you never bothered with or a classic book you've never read and read it. It's the best antidote to it. And by the way, it's not just an antidote. It's very important because it reminds you how people lived until the weird era we're in. It helps give you very basic things that are, era is losing, perspective, sense of judgment and much more. So that's, you know, that really is an important tip, if I can say so. People cannot imbibe just what we're being told to imbibe.

You said on the trigonometry episode I watched that was standing on the precipice, and it's interesting to use that word, because I've been thinking about this for quite a while, Toby Ord, who is from the future of humanity's institute at Oxford. He wrote a book called The Pressapiss, and it's all about existential threat. Oh yeah, yes, yes, yes, I've heard him. Yes, yes, yes. Wonderful, Australian dude. Also big into the effective altruism movement.

Fantastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I read him on altruism, that's right. Huge big picture thinking. And he called his book The Pressapiss, and he gives humanity's chances of surviving the next century, one in three. He gives humanity's chances of reaching our full potential as a civilization, space fairing colonizer galaxy, at one in two. So the vast majority of our risk as a species is front loaded within the next century. My concern is that smart people like you, like God's side, like Sam Harris,

are using up brain power on things that are self-defeating. There's a concept by Robin Hanson called the Great Filter, which explains the Fermi paradox. Why are there not aliens out there? He suggests that there is a particular section that we need to get past. And given that some of the smartest minds of the last few years have spent in an ordinary amount of time trying to work out whether men are women or not, to work out whether men are women or not, to me, feels like that could be the, if that's the reason that as a species, we don't reach our full potential because we decided to have these stupid tribal, like childish, completely idiotic, self-defeating discussions. When the asteroid comes, or a slightly more effective pathogen hits or

pick any one of the other existential risks that Toby brings up in his book. Like, we did this to ourselves. We built it. Yeah, yeah, no, I couldn't do more. I've said this quite often. In my own defense, and if I'm not going to do it, who would, and if I'm not going to do it, who would, the purpose of Princess Amanda Krauts is to give everyone else a fast track out. I can't stress this enough. James and Ian Telenplukrose, as you just mentioned, you've spoken with, also do an excellent task in a portion of this, to do with the academic element in their new book, cynical theories. The point is that I don't want everyone to spend their life reading unreadable books. I've read a significant number of them in order to tell people not to read them because

it's not worth their time. And it's the same with quite a lot of the subjects I deal with in a man's or crowds, is to say, this doesn't work, don't fall for it. This is a Ponzi scheme. That's a fraud. Now, that is not because I want to spend the rest of my life talking about mad Ponzi schemes invented by frauds. It's because I want everyone else to get through and all round or across this or over the top of this or borrow underneath it. However, you're gonna do it as fast as possible.

It's very hard to do it if you don't know what you're facing because if you don't know what you're facing, you've got a disproportionate likelihood of getting killed, blown up. If you know what you're facing and you know the shortcut ways through, it's likely you can get on with the rest of your life. And that's why I did. That's why I wrote the man as a crowds first of all and why I have now updated it is because I wanted to stop particularly young people. First of all, feeling intimidated by this, including intellectually intimidated because they shouldn't feel

intellectually intimidated by this. Secondly, for them to realize the size of the thing that was that they have been faced with, in other words, a total reorganization of everything, In other words, a total reorganization of everything, which I submit is not gonna work, but crucially, in knowing and understanding this, you can get through and get on with your life. And this is a very important task because I absolutely agree that for a lot of us, I mean millions of millions of us,

everybody on the planet, we are wasting an opportunity at the moment. So I absolutely agree that for a lot of us, I mean millions of millions of us, everybody on the planet, we are wasting an opportunity at the moment. And the opportunity is, as you describe, is that at this time in our history, there is so much we can do because we have access to knowledge in a way that we never did in the past. Our forebares have to live with ignorance on a lot of things, a lot of things. And the most obvious one is, if you didn't have access to a book, you didn't know what was in it. Who doesn't now have access to a book? If they've got a relatively

small sum of money, they can join a lending library or they can buy a book on like they can you can get a classic book You can you can get hold of things very recently our parents generation our grandparents generation certainly that wasn't the case so That's that's the case in area after area we live in a time where instead of being an ignorance about so many things you just you can just put it into a search engine. And why in that situation are we spending our time, as you say, talking about whether or not intersects people with a particular condition are the same as trans people. I often used to,

Joe, you know, this is what happens when the barbarians break in. You know, we'll all get collationic after while talking about gender-neutral bathrooms or horrible last thought to go through your head. And I've always thought that. And as I say, a self-appointed task of mine is to try to help other people get through that itself. But I stress, and I think I said this the other help other people get through that itself, but I stress and I think I said this the other day that people on trigonometry. There is also a very, very important thing that people need to bear in mind, which is not to put off what you're meant to be doing with your life, not to put it off in particular because you want the conditions of life to become optimal. I have

it here somewhere. I said to the trigonometry people the other day I was reading a sermon that CS Lewis gave in 1939 just at the outbreak of war. It's such a moving sermon because he says in it, you know, these aren't optimal times, but they never were. They never were. And as he says, if human beings put off their search for beauty and truth and creation until the times were optimal,

they'd never have got started. We would never have started doing anything. And the thing that's so desperate about the politicization of everything, and the reason I say to people, please depoliticize your lives, is because it is not what you were meant to do, it's not what we were meant to do, to spend our time endlessly going around, such issues, all of us, every single person watching you and me, all have an enormous amount that we could do with our life. An enormous amount we can contribute.

Probably the least positive thing we can contribute is to some mass movement that's almost certainly got enough members anyway, even if it was going in a good direction, and they almost never do. And what you're meant to be doing should not be put off until that movement gains total ascendancy, firstly because it won't, and secondly because it'll be hell even if it did. So don't put it off. Whatever it is you're meant to be doing, but do work out how to survive in this era and then get on to doing the thing

you should be doing with your life because I can assure every single person watching it is gonna be so much more damn rewarding than what you're being offered at the moment. Topics like that, and that particular passage that you pulled from the sermon in 1939, that's what I want more of.

That's what I want people like James Lindsay with a PhD in pure mathematics. Bro, stop, I don't want the world to have, he should be getting us to Mars, he should be trying to do, that's what I want to hear, I want to hear more of that. Timeless, evergreen wisdom, you know, that is going to be the sort of thing that's usable in 50 years time or 100 years time. Because critical race theory isn't. I have two quick questions before we go. First one, who wins the US presidential election this year?

I don't think it's going to be clear. You're going to stick to both sides, don't agree. I think that there's going to be a lot of contested areas. And I think that it'll be hard for either side to concede. I think it's how. That's going to be the end of that. Final thing. What's your gym routine looked like in 2020? Because there was a period that I brought up with Dave Rubin when he came on the show. Maybe sort of the last 18 months up until the start of this year where you went from normal Douglas Murray to Jack Douglas Murray. I want to know what you've been doing.

Not as I'm saying I talk about it very much. The simple reason is I've stopped weighing suits partly because I thought if it was going to be the end of the world I didn't have to put on a tie. But I've worked out all quite a long time, 15 years, 20 years or so. For me, it's the most important point of the day when I turn my mind off. I think it's very, very good for people, for people like me who basically work all the time. It would not work all the time, think all the time. When I'm not writing, I'm reading, and that's great, but I actually do need a time to turn off. For me, the gym has always been that. Well, I don't know if I can tell

you my exact routine. Is it a push-pull leg split, what are you in five days a week? Normally four or five days a week, three at the absolute worst lockdown was tricky. It was for a lot of people because, however many of those banned things you get, they definitely quite approximate the weights. And, um, and I'm also very anti running in public. Okay. Very, very, very, I'm not just, I don't like to do it myself, I don't like seeing people coming

towards me on the pavement, gibbering and sweating and dribbling. So, so for me, exercise has to be in the gym. It has to be confined to that place. But I think whatever you did over the 18 month period, there was a current moment where the photo was that went sort of semi-semi-sort of viral online. I was weirdly, I know exactly what you're talking about because it was from behind. There's a lot of tricep in it.

It was weird. It was when I discovered what a first pick was, which was not something I'd ever encountered before. People said to me, you've posted a first pick and, which was not something I'd ever encountered before. People said to me, you've posted a first pick and I said, what is that? And yes, I know exactly when it was. I was in Mexico and I happened to be in the study that Trotsky was assassinated in, which is not the obvious place. If you've posted the first trap, if you weren't deliberately posting a first pick, you probably wouldn't choose an assassination side. Anyhow, it was very kind of flattering of people.

And I'm deeply grateful. And obviously the next book will be a Davina McCall, like, work out with Douglas. I want a home DVD, Booty, Bums and Tums with Douglas Murray. And comment below, comment below if you'd buy it and maybe we'll get that. Oh, this is the final thing. I lied to you.

You said if you hit the bestseller list that you might consider reading the lyrics to WAP, is it coming up? Do we think that might happen? I have actually just heard the news of my publishers. Oh, we have made the the best seller lists this week on his first week. Yes, I... This is the internet is listening, man. I'm going to be held to this,

aren't I? Yes. It was a start as a dare with a friend. It was because, as you probably know, I recited the works of Enemunage in a particular work on Anaconda in the audible version of Manus of Crowds, and a lot of people particularly enjoyed that. So I said, if you enjoyed that, then if this becomes the best, I'll do WAP. Also because Ben Shapiro smashed it. I feel a certain level of competition with Ben Shapiro's. He's trying to take your thunder a little bit there. I was worried about that. I was worried about that. I thought it was quite a strong play. And so I do think, if Madness of Crowds audible edition which I strongly recommend which is updated with the new material and all that if that

Makes it into the best sort of lists again in audible then I will do a rendition and unlike Ben I can promise now I will not say the P word for the P word. I will do the whole thing There we have it ladies and gentlemen at link to the new updated paperback version of the madness of crowds is below. If you've got an audible subscription, I implore you for the good. All that is holy, please use your credit for this month on the madness of crowds. Douglas, it's so good. I can't wait to get you back, man. It's I always love talking to you.

The great pleasure. Well, likewise, see you soon. I hope and take care.