Piers Morgan Uncensored - Piers Morgan Uncensored: Barbie Empowering Women, Gay Rights, Nadine Dorries

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

On tonight's episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored, Piers speaks about whether empowering women has to be about trashing men after Barbie's record-breaking opening weekend in the box office. Also looks into the Quran being burnt in Sweden and the 1975 causing outrage in Malaysia in a stand for gay rights. Piers is joined by TalkTV Presenter Nadine Dorries, to chat about how the Tories are relaxing their green policies. Watch Piers Morgan Uncensored at 8 pm on TalkTV on Sky 522, Virgin Media 606, Freeview 237 and Freesat 217. Listen on DAB+ and the app.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Growing backlash for its anti-man sexism. Why does empowering women have to always be about trashing men? Or debate? Wildfires rage in Europe, but both of Britain's leading parties go cold on their green policies in the wake of the by-election turmoil. The Dean Doris is still a Conservative MP and joins me live. Those British pop rockers, the 1975 calls outrage in Malaysia by taking a public stand for gay rights or reign noble.

But what were they doing there in the first place? or talk live to renowned philosopher Sam Harris on religion versus free speech. From the news building in London, this is Pearce Morgan Uncensored. Well, good evening for London. Welcome to Pierce Morgan Unsensored. Love it or Loat It. Barbie is an undeniable box office, Beamoth. Hollywood spin on the world's most famous plastic doll

banked $377 million on its opening weekend alone, a box office record for a film directed. by a woman or a person identifying as a woman. And the biggest weekend for movie theaters since pre-pandemic. But it's fair to say, not everybody is enjoying it. The premise of the film, politically speaking, is that men and women are on two sides

and they hate each other. All men in the film are either bigot or idiots. Now, is Barbie a smash the patriarchy feminist film? Yes, it is. The real world and all the men in it are shown to be universally irredeemably horrible. Well, prominent US Conservatives is now calling for a Barbie boycott.

Barbies are being set a blaze in the streets. Strait as a Ted Cruz, a former presidential candidate, says it's brainwashing Chinese communist propaganda. That's got something to do with flags, I think. As always, I personally feel a measure of dignified perspective and restraint is required at moments like this. But also, as always, I hate to say, I told you so. There are a number of Barbie characters in the movie.

One plays President Barbie, one plays Dr. Barbie, One plays a Barbie with a Nobel Prize in Physics. One is a mermaid Barbie. However, all the male characters in Barbie world are simply called Ken. So it's pretty clear where this movie is going. This is an assault on not just Ken, but all men. Well, I wasn't wrong, was I?

And it's even worse, and I feared the core focus of Barbie is, oh, God, the patriarchy. The word is used endlessly in the mainstream. movie, even though most people, really me actually, have no real idea what patriarchy really means. I guess it means all men are evil so they can prove otherwise. Women are their oppressed victims. Anyone disagrees is obviously a misogynist. Barbie's message is that the only solution to all this dreadful patriarchal state of affairs is obviously for women to rule the world. Preferring to do so on their own without horrible men to ruin it or ruin them in their lives.

So they want to do it on their own. There's a slight genetic problem with that, though. What happens in like 100 years? It's all over. If there is a plot, it boils down to something like this. Barbie lives in Barbie world with many other virtue-sign barbies, including a transgender Barbie, a disabled Barbie, and a black female president Barbie. These Barbies are all powerful,

while the Ken's obviously are all second-class, useless half-wits. Then Barbie and Ken are transported to the real world, where, wait for it, men are in charge of everything and are largely despicable. Barbie is immediately objectified. One ghastly man shouts, give us a smile, blondey, which is a phrase hasn't actually been used in the real, real world since probably the Second World War.

Mattel, the owner of Barbie, is represented as a macho, misogynist outfit with an all-male board of alpha dogs. The unfortunate reality is that Barbie was invented by a woman called Ruth Handler who ran the company for 30 years. As president, to his day, Mattel has five women on its 12-person board. Now, without spoiling all of the movie, all the stunning conclusion. He does all that for itself, of course. Ken returns to Barbie world filled with patriarchal malice,

prompting a battle of a sexism which all of the empowered Barbies have to unite to defeat the evil idiot Ken's. My question about all this is why? Can't we just get along? I thought feminism was about equality. Why does empowering women always have to be about trashing men? The real world I live in is full of confident high-achieving. women who probably will laugh at such a derisory misrepresentation of their supposed

lowly status in life compared to men. And if anybody made a movie which depicts women as Barbie depicts men, well, they wouldn't just be cancelled. They'd be tarred and feathered and marched through the streets. Well, it's a debate the Barbie backlash is Nomiconce, the director and matriarch. And here in the studio, lifelong Barbie fan Esther Crackier, who I have to say looks absolutely fantastic. You look, that's a look you should keep.

I mean, we can all agree on this. Also, join my socialist and author. We can be a socialist author, actually. Raised Blakely, who came his Barbie last week, to be fair, but has not got the memo today. Plus, appropriately stuck in the middle of this strong female panel, is Chris Taylor, who plays one of the Ken's in the actual movie, which is now one of the biggest movies of all time,

and he was in Love Island. So I may have to finally concede that somebody connected with Love Island that actually done something with themselves, which is an incredible moment of realisation and self-awareness. Well, thanks to joining me, everybody. Before we get down to some serious Barbie-related debate, I want us all to feel comfortable. There we go.

We're now in Barbie World. Okay, where do we start here? Let's start with you, Esther, because you look fantastic, and you saw the movie today. I've written a column for the Sun and the New York Post, actually, the same column. Just because I feel... When I hear the word patriarchy,

as often as it said in this movie. Immediately, I'm like, here we go again. Here we go again. This sort of construct that, despite everything that's happened in the last 50 years, all men are awful till they prove otherwise. All women are downtrodden, oppressed. And if only it wasn't for ghastly men, they'd be ruling the world. Lily Allen said she went to see Barbie and Oppenheimer.

And the clear conclusion was, if women were in charge, none of that would have happened, right? I mean, it's just, it is exhausting to me. I mean, I suspected this would happen when we started having a conversation about whether Barbie's a feminist icon and I just thought to myself, why does Barbie need to be a feminist icon?

Anyone who's grown up with Barbies knows that she's just a doll that girls like to play with. And then 10 seconds into the film, I'm just being shoehorned with this ideology, this, you know, patriarchy this and feminism, that. And I'm just thinking it's a giant catfish of a film. It's like going on a date wanting to see Jay Lowe and then, I don't know, at the other end you see someone like Lizzo, for instance.

I'm just, it's completely unnecessary. Why can't we just have a film about dolls? The people that made this film have never seen any of the other Barbie anime movies. Because it's completely unrelated. It's a giant catfish. And I just think... And all the kings are no offense, Chris. We're going to come to you in a moment.

All the cans are such dumb dweeds. They've come off the scent of Love Island or something. But this is the problem. They're so incompetent. And it's like how can... And at the end of the film, they try and say, oh, but we're all humans and we're all equal. Okay, but you've painted half of humanity as incompetent half width.

So exactly how does that work? Nomika, you represent the matriarchy, which is another awful sounding word. It seems to me what the movie really wants to do is just replace the patriarchy with the matriarchy. In other words, go from one thing which every woman apparently believes is the problem with the world and flip it round so that the people who suffer the problem and the oppression and are made to look like downtrodden imbeciles are men, not women.

I don't really get that. Why have it so awful, this atriarchy syndrome? And why replace the P with an M? Well, we're like in late stage capitalism. The world's on fire right now. Women are losing their fundamental rates, at least in my country, left and right. We still don't make equal pay on the dollar. We're doing emotional labor.

We're doing physical labor. As the beautiful America Ferreira, as she had a moment in her long speech, that is why we want to replace the patriarchy, which is very top down, into a more communal, democratic way of living, which is the matriarchy. And back when we had matriarchies, was more democratic. I mean, Crete, the famous island of Crete, had a matriarchy where they didn't go to war.

And then everything was communal. So I don't really see a downside of this. I mean, right now... So you think, just to be clear, you think if women around the world, there would be no warfare? I think that we have different ways of dealing with conflict than men do. And if it was a majority female-led environment, we would not be in a lot of these circumstances.

Really? You think women never engaging, Women never engage in conflict. Is that a joke? I say we engage in conflict. I think we engage in conflict. We're humans. But we don't engage in conflict the same way.

And I think this was satire. It was art. I'm sorry if some people wanted it to be a kid's movie. But the best art, whether it's the Wizard of Oz or Barbie, is really a reflection of the times, is a reflection of the struggles. And frankly, I don't know. I saw, you said that you've never seen a movie like this. When I saw that Marilyn Monroe movie, who was a complicated, beautiful artist, genius,

They made it out to be, I mean, it was despicable. It was an assault on women. So how about most movies out there do make women feel uncomfortable? And my God, it's art. Have a sense of humor. There was satire. It was, you know, attacks on capitalism, climate change, warfare. It was fun.

It was layered. It was complicated like women. Before I bring in Ken, let me just bring in Grace. I know you're not into the whole Barbie thing particularly, but patriarchy you're definitely into, right? I'm so into it. I'm so into patriarchy. But this is the ultimate and obvious end point

of the very successful attempt that we've had within most capitalist societies for liberal elites to basically take over and commodify the feminist critique, which was a critique of capitalism. This is a massive box office, you know, hitting movie made by a huge multinational corporation that's going to make loads and loads of money

that also uses like exploitative labor practices all around the world. The problem is, you know, it's not like there was Arianna Huffington famously said, the financial crisis wouldn't have happened if it had been Lehman's sisters instead of leaving brothers. That's obviously completely wrong.

I personally don't even buy the idea that there are these huge insurmountable differences between men and women. The problem is capitalism. That's why we have gender inequality. That's why we have racial inequality. We have all these different forms of inequality and unless we get that fit

by taking down big corporations like the town, everything is going to stay the same. That's fine. I have no problem with you believing that. That's fine. I'm glad you have no problem with me believing that. I'm glad we agree that. to believe what I believe. Can we just leave Barbie out of it?

I don't mind them making this trash heap of a film. Quite hard to leave Barbie out of it when you're literally dressed like Barbie. Yes, but let's rename the film to something, some pink feminist-like child film. Let's do that because what this Barbie film is not Barbie related at all. Anyone who's seen any of the Barbie films, any of the animated series who's grown up with it, this is not Barbie related at all. Ken is not, you know, a half-wit. Barbie is not ideologically incoherent in the way that she is in the film.

Let's just separate the two. Well, let's bring in the... Let's bring in the smirking half. Yeah, shall I weigh in on it. All right, Chris, first of all... Peter's you've been really mean so far. Ned Arlington. I'm only...

I thought it's... I'm Yankees' change. I have a historic thing about Love Island, which I'm sure is very aware of. Let's put that to one side. Look, it's incredible. You're in this movie. Thanks.

Which is now one of the biggest grossing films in history. First of all, how does that feel? Yeah, pretty good, yeah. I mean, you're on Love Island and now you're in the biggest movie in the world. Yeah, it's fairly overwhelming. Not a normal progression for Love Island. No, no, not really.

Yeah, it's pretty mind-blowing. And the story about how you got this is equally mind-blowing. You go to some premiere of a movie, and you end up, or you're not there, your mate's cell, you end up going to Margot Robbie's after party. Yeah. And she turns out to be a massive Love Island fan. Yeah.

Including you. Yeah. She knows who you are. Yeah. And then I started talking about Melgenitalia and the rest of history. Was this true? Yeah, no, I didn't make that old. You talked about someone who knew with a micro penis.

A friend of mine who has a micro penis, yeah. As in how big? I've not got a rule around next to it, Pears. I don't know exactly. You're telling Margot Robby. It's small. Tiny. I'd say inch.

And then you have a mate with very large testicles, is that right? My dad's best mate has very big bollocks and he can carry 12 bottles of beer on it. And this is how you managed to get inside Margot Robbie's head to end up playing Ken. Maybe. I don't know. That is what happened, but I will say I panicked. I panicked and I just said whatever came to my head. And it was relevant.

Like, people were talking about penises. but we're not here to debate this. This is actually find that the most... I found the most... I found the most riveting thing of all. This sounds like one of those stories where it's like, oh yeah, my friend needs advice about something. Yeah, and this is how you basically wooed Mungaerobin

to get you in the movie, right? Next thing, 18 months later, you're in Barbie. I'm in Barbie, yeah. All because of that conversation. All because of my great penises and big balls, yeah. Now, you get there. You're one of My impression of them is they're basically depicted as a bunch of losers.

And if I'm maybe... If I made a movie flipping this round and depicted women the way that this movie generally depicts men, all hell would break loose. Do you accept that? I accept that, but I feel like you're missing the point. So I think everyone's missing the point a little bit. So it's a comedy, right? And we're in very dangerous territory when we start picking out comedy

and saying, oh, you can't say that, you can't say that, because then we're going to live in a world where comedy don't exist. I'm not something they can't say it, but there's a distinct political and social point they're making about the patriarchy. which is rammed home again and again and again. What I'm getting to is the overarching comedy, the overarching joke of the entire film

is you're looking at Barbie, which is played with by children, mostly girls, and this is how they play with Barbies and Ken's. Barbie is the primary character, and Ken is the secondary character that comes in and out a little bit and is widely disregarded because the girls see themselves in the Barbie

and not so much to Ken. That's just an interaction thing. My problem with it is this idea that you go into the real world from Barbie lamb, where all the women are in charge, and the real world, suddenly you're confronted with this vile place run completely by men, and they're all awful, even down to the depiction of the company that makes the Barbie dolls, which is so different to the reality of that company.

Female president for 30 years, half the board now are women. It's not run by a bunch of madmen executives, as this film wants you to believe. there is no overt sexism from the company because it was basically run by women. I don't think Mattel would want people to believe that. I think what you're missing is the fact that it's a joke. And a lot of...

He's got you there. No, because listen, right? Who cares? Listen, comedy. Exactly. No, I totally agree. I totally agree. It's a free market capitalist society.

The film made money. What's wrong with that? I totally agree with you. My point is, if I made the movie and flipped it and was mocked. women like this, you would be leading the charge. I'd be hung, drawn, and quartered, probably executed. It's the hypocrisy at the heart of it.

And then you would say, oh, they're all... No, no, no. And then you would say... The way you're making a very deliberate point promoting feminism and using patriarch as a stick to beat all men so they can prove otherwise, I have a problem with it. And then if women come on your show and say, oh, I've got a problem with this, you say, oh, shut up snowflake.

Like, that is the whole debate that we've had in recent years. You can't say anything about anything because you're a snowflake. Men are being snowflakes about Barbie. I don't even like the film. No, no, you're missing my point. You're totally incitiveness. I haven't seen that. I'm sorry.

I think you're missing point. I'm not asking for Barbie to be cancelled. Obviously, everyone's enjoying it. My wife and daughter went to see it in LA a couple of days ago. They loved it, right? Fine. My problem is with the argument it promotes, I'm allowed to criticise that.

That's call free speech, right? I'm not trying to silence. And I'm allowed to call you a snowflake for criticizing. Yes, you are, but you're missing the point about why I'm criticizing it. I'm criticizing the hypocrisy. If you flipped it around, I made a movie which lampooned women like this from a very male-dominated position,

all hell would break. The thing is, it is hypocrisy. I take offence with the fact that you think this is a comedy. It wasn't funny at all. And also, there is something like this that actually mocks women. It's called a Dave Chappelle Special. And every time he comes up with a new special,

we need to cancel him because he's punching down on the poor women. The reality is this film is a giant catfish, and you use the Barbie name to try and shoehorn these ideologies into a kid's film. And you can call it a comedy, if that's a movie. standard of entertainment, that's fine. And I don't really have a high standard of entertainment. I watch Love Island. I watch Fast and Furious. And also, how are they selling this feminist. Let me go to Namiki for this. How are they selling this feminist utopia? I'll tell you

how they're selling it. They're selling it by choosing the hottest woman in Hollywood, Margot, Robbie. Everyone thinks that, male and female. And she's making, she produces it, I think. She's, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she's making tens, probably hundreds of millions of dollars as the hottest woman in Hollywood in every sense from a movie, which makes out all women are oppressed by the patriarchy. Forgive me if I laugh. She's the walking, breathing embodiment of someone who's making

the patriarchy look like a bunch of losers. Isn't she? No, I don't agree with that at all. And I think historically, there are a lot of women who had to use whatever tools were available to them. She is beautiful. She's also a brilliant actor. She's also extremely intelligent. She's also all spoken. As are all

of the women and men, by the way, in that film. Ryan Gosling is not getting, you know, the attacks the way she is. That's capitalism. And until capitalism failed, which I think is the patriarchy, by the way, I think the patriarchy is capitalism, until it fails, people are going to do whatever they can to survive. I mean, that is what... At what point would you have to accept on behalf of the matriarchy that the patriarchy doesn't really exist anymore?

And that basically most women I know are running rings round bloke. At what point you admit that? I think you're literally in a bubble and do not open the newspaper because the way that women are under attack in the United States, right now is jaw-dropping. I mean, the ban on abortion, the ban on women's health clinics, women being targeted, a rise in domestic violence, not to mention that our pay has

not moved in ages. There's a declination in women in leadership, even though we think we should be at some sort of a parody at this point. It's the way that women in the press and in the public are attacked by online campaigns, by corporations, by the right wing. Well, you don't think men are?

By you? Have you spent even a minute in my Twitter feed? Trust me, This idea only women get trolled on Twitter. It's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous, great. It's important because actually this is the problem when we get the commodification of feminism. Is that we get this idea that feminism means like every, you know, CEO of every corporation being a woman or having 50% of women on boards.

That's not the lived experience of the vast majority of women, you know, alive. The vast majority of women actually live in, you know, either in very poor countries where they're denied an education or they live, you know, in situations where they experience domestic violence here. in the UK, one in three women will experience sexual assault at some point in their lives. That's what life is like for most working-class women. And you can't get rid of that by just saying,

oh, we're going to like, you know, make a couple of, you know, prime ministers or CEOs women. That's the problem with liberal. And you don't think young men ever get assaulted. I mean, I do, but they don't get assaulted to the extent that women do. That's not the point. You know, who gets stabbed in the streets is very rarely women.

It's young men by men, right? I think we can agree. So there are different forms. is a problem, but it's not... There are lots of male victims of violence. Right? We didn't say sexual violence. Yes, I did. I said sexual violence, right?

Which is a deep, deep problem in our society. It's actually, if you look at it within and outside the home, more common than what you're talking about, kind of gang violence on the streets. And it happens to women so much. And when it's, oh, when it's part of a big narrative about racism, then it's fine to talk about violence against women. But we're actually talking about how we tackle violence against women, unless it's a part of this wider agenda, cultural agenda,

Nobody cares. And that's a problem. Well, I care. Ken, last word to you. You're Ken to me. I wait with a bait and bro. Last word from me. Your last word. As the resident, Ken. I think everyone's just missing the point.

Oh, okay. It's a joke. Greta Gerwig has done a good job of navigating a potentially massive minefield. You're right. If it flipped, it would be a different story. Right. Ultimately, that's my point. I'll admit that right.

Thank you, Chris. We're talking about a doll that was made. in the night in 1959 so in power women and that took you 18 minutes but you got to a place of saying that's beside the point that's beside the point by the way I want to end on that about women empowerment there was only one of course yeah all right enough virtue signaling mate you've got you've taken to all the boxes I'm going to end by giving women what they really want from their ken it's this I'm terrified that's a proper chem there's no one here Like that's heavily photoshost.

Not at all. I have no words. This is the whole, I've got a whole raft of Ken pictures here. I have nothing to say. That is terrifying. That's actually really disturbing. I'm silenced by the glory.

Thank you. Let's leave it on that. Rendered silent by the glory of my kendom. Thank you. Chris, congratulations, mate. Marga Robb is one of my favourite actress. Probably he's my favourite actress. I met her in a Nosca's party.

She was fabulous. Did she tell you about how she likes Union? No, we talked about cricket. A big fan of Union. We talked about cricket. She's a big fan of Union. Australian, unfortunately. And I'm obviously right now.

Right now that's the last thing I want to talk about is tricky. But at the time, there was no Ashes series. We had a great conversation. Lovely woman, very talented. Couldn't be happy that a woman is making hundreds of millions of dollars out of her looks and her talent in the patriarchy. What a miracle. How is she doing it?

It's really, it's incredible. It's incredible. Some woman is able to do that, break through this, towering, sexist mayhem, which inhibits all women I know, including these two downtrodden oppressed female creatures in front of me, who I know just never feel they can even speak unless I let them. Right, ladies?

Of course. Chris, great to see you. And congratulations, seriously. Cheers. From Love Island to the world's biggest movie, that is a trajectory I never thought I'd ever witnessed. So you can't slate us anymore. I can't slate you anymore.

I can't slate you anymore. An Oscar worthy meteorocris. It's amazing. And I genuinely, cu-dust. Thank you. Unsensored next from pink to green, both labour and the concert. go cold on their environmental policies after mixed results and by-election. But isn't really their unpopular leaders that should be taking the heat.

Nadine Doris joins me live after the break. Welcome back to Piersburg and our sense at the front page of today's Times newspaper because it's an interesting, just a position. Tory retreat from green policies to woo voters, it says, next to a startling image of tourists fleeing a wildfire in roads. Fires are raging across several parts of Greece, forcing many tourists and locals to evacuate following weeks of extreme heat across the world. But both of Britain's leading parties to pitch have decided that unravelling green policy could be a vote winner.

PM Rishi Sunak sees it as a recovery plan up to two bruising by-election defeats. They were party, meanwhile, blaming London Mayor Zedekh Khan's anti-pollution policy, but failing to win Boris Johnson's old seat in Uxbridge. So... I don't think there's any doubt that Ulaz was the reason that we lost the by-election in Uxbridge. And I have said we should reflect on this, including the mayor. I've spoken to him, as you would expect. And so there will be that reflection.

So is the green agenda worth trading for an electoral band-aid or is it merely covering up a popularity crisis for both leaders? I'm joined by Conservative MP and Talk to you present at Nadine Doris and the Daily Mirror's Associate editor, Kevin McGuire. So, Kevin, before we get into the weeds on this, pollution, right? I know that Sadiq Khan's Ola's policy is not proved very popular, probably because of the way it's been executed and it doesn't quite work.

I've got to say that, on pollution in London, I'm 100% behind him. I'll tell you why. For the last five years, I thought I had really bad hay fever every year. Turned out it was all pollution. I got four air purifiers in my house. I shut the windows.

I check an app every morning. I only go out when it's reasonable. And as a result, I've had zero symptoms when the pollen counts apparently been raging and people have been suffering from hay fever. I'm a complete convert. I found out that one in 12 people in Kensington and Chelsea Borough

die from pollution-related illness. I was shocked. But I'm also sure. shot by the benefit to my health by taking pollution more seriously. Yeah, if it was a virus causing so many deaths, 40,000 people a year dying. We know what would happen. We've just been through that. Exactly.

The government would really be reacted. Opposition parties would be piling in. But I think because they're individual deaths, they're almost ignored. Although there was a case last year, a coroner found a young girl had died of pollution. Look, the plan in London is to get the dirtiest cars off the road. It's fewer than one in 10 in those outlying areas. understand you're a cost of living crisis while some people will clearly kick back against that. I understand it. I think the fear is more widespread because people don't realize you could have a

petrol car 16 years old and you won't have to pay this £12.50 a day charge. You can have a diesel eight years old and you won't have to pay this charging. Charging is crude. No question about it, but we have to clean air. It's not just about global warming. It is about the air you... See, I, Nadine, I do think there are lots of issues around this whole world. green debate. But on the issue of pollution, I do think Sadiq Khan's heart is in the right place. I was really shocked by the impact of my health that I had year after year after year until I took pollution more seriously. And it was pollution. I completely agree with you. And in fact, I think what it demonstrates this sudden, this is a very sudden conversion of both party

leaders to suddenly peddling back from these green policies and net zero particularly. It just shows a paucity of ambition. They are, they're scared as a result of what happened last week with the by-elections. Nobody was really a winner in any of those by-elections. They're scared and they've actually seized on what happened to next bridge and think this is the populist wave, which is riding through Westminster right now. We need to jump on it. If it was Euler, that's going to work in the rest of the country and of course it won't. And, you know, if anybody under the age of 40, kids in school today, this is what they care about. They care about net zero and and policies which benefit the environment for the very reasons you articulated mainly to deal with health and to do the future with the future of planet

But it's it is a pretty tragic state of affairs that we find ourselves in when a few days after by election That it is the the the uller's policy which is interpreted But I do find yeah and I thought I was a bit disappointed from Kirstam Yeah, and I'm disappointed by Rishi Sunnet too about this you've got to take these issues seriously I think a lot of the problem is they over promise they set the targets that can't be here actually we're We know we've got to move to a place where we are less reliant on fossil fuels. We've got to move to cleaner air. So how are we going to do this while we don't lose tons of jobs and it doesn't cost

everyone money they haven't got? That's the calculation. Yeah, and how you can transition the most prosperous and easiest where possible. It's got to be the goal. But what do party leaders really stand for? They stand for winning the election. That's what we're seeing. What are these by-elections tell you about where we really are here?

because Keir Stama can't have been that happy. Yeah, but hang on, if you're Keir Stama, you've overturned a 20,000 majority in Selby in South Yorkshire. The Liberal Democrats have overturned... But you didn't want to see it, you really, really thought you were going to win. But the direction of travel, the momentum in British politics was seen in Selby,

which Labor won, and Summett and Frum, which the Liberal Democrats took for the Tories, not in Uxbridge, where there was a specific local issue in outer London. And I think, I think, Steve Starrma is in danger of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. across 650 constituents. Where do you think we are politically as a country right now?

Do you think it's just, is it inevitable that Labor will win the next election? No, actually, it's not. And it's not for a very important reason, which most people seem to, I think, just don't acknowledge. I think if Angela Rainer was leader of the Labour Party, that would be a far more dead cert of happening than it is with Kirstama. There is no love for Kirstama. And I remember being out in the doorstep in 97, you know. As a conservative, people hated it.

I got spat on the doorstep. That isn't happening now. And the reason why they hated us was they didn't hate us so much as loved Tony Blair. It was Tony Blair. You could argue in 92, it wasn't particularly the little latexies.

Could argue in 92, Neil Kinnett was more popular and more charismatic. Until the last two days. Than Gier's down. Yeah, but he's lost in 87. I mean, I remember 92, and I never thought Labor would win. No, no, no, no, no.

I think the reason the Labour victory isn't inevitable. They were further ahead at this stage of a cycle. Yeah, it's because the next election is not 70, really weeks away, isn't it? And as Harold Wilson said, a week as a long time in politics. And as Harold McMillan, a conservative prime minister said, events.

And as the Dean Doris said to me on this very show, I am quitting as a Conservative Member of Parliament. And here you are. We must play the clip, actually, go on. Are you actually going to quit as an MP? Yeah. I've resigned. There's no way back. Some people think you may change your mind

that you were being a bit hot-headed. No. Yeah. So that was June. You're still here. You're still a conservative MP. Anyway, moving swiftly on. So, Neil Kinnick...

You just whispered quietly, shall I announce what I'm doing? Go on there. Come on. No, I'll do that on my own show. Thank you very much. Wow. So... Are you staying? Are you staying? Are you staying?

Hang on, are you staying. No, no, no, no, no. You are definitely leaving. Definitely, definitely. Wait. You'll hear all about it on the... Soon. On the Friday night of the Dean show.

Which is not back on until September. Let me make this point. Neil Kinnock was actually riding high until the Sheffield rally. which was about three days before the 92. It was. He was un-course to win. I think that symbolised what was going.

People had doubts about him, unfortunately. Well, we all see. I still think it's everything to play for. I really do. I think if Prishy Suneat got a bit of steam behind him and the economy starts to come back quite strongly, anything could happen. Conversely, if neither of those two things happen,

you can get a flatline. I think the actory mood has taken all. Have you seen Barbie yet? No. I'm going to more tonight. You are? Yeah, I'm outraged the way they're using my body double as Ken.

I heard it was your brain double. Oh, ooh. Nadine, have you seen it? I'm glad I never said that. No. Do you like Barbie? Your Barbie fan? So, I'm not a Bobby fan and not a Bobby fan. I'm neither. But I haven't seen it never.

Do you think you're being suppressed by the patriarchy? Exactly. Exactly, my point. You didn't have to say a word. Thank you. Before to you're announcing on your show on Friday. Thank you. On sense of the next, Pop Rockers, the 1975 calls outrageous.

Malaysia are taking a public stand on stage for gay rights while copies of the Quran being burned in Sweden. Does free speech have the right to offend even the most firmly held beliefs? Sam Harris will be with me to discuss that place. Welcome back to Pizzball and I'll say. Someone just tweeted me asking how I'm feeling about the cricket. How do you think I'm feeling about the cricket? England and Australia, dead and buried, and then the rain ruined it. So obviously I feel sickened, absolutely sickened. but thank you for asking.

An angry diplomatic rile between Sweden. A number of Islamic majority countries has erupted over the weekend. It comes out of copies of the Quran were burned and stamped on as part of protests by an Iraqi asylum seeker in Stockholm. Pakistani protesters held anti-Swedden protests and retaliation and Iraqi protesters set fire

to the Swedish embassy in Baghdad. The incident once again raised a debate around whether free speech always has the right to offend even the most firmly held beliefs. Let's ask for my special guest, the author, Neuroscientist, and host of the Making Science Science Sense podcast, Sam Harris.

Sam Harris, great to have you on Peers, Morgan Nuss Edison. Yeah, hey, Pierce, good to see you. This line between religious beliefs, freedom of speech, is there a line that should be drawn? Well, ultimately, no. I think we just have speech, right? We just have a contest of ideas, and when ideas actually matter,

we really need our best ideas to be operative, ideas about human freedom, ideas about about political tolerance, equality among people. I mean, these are ideas that we really can't afford to compromise on. I would say that extends to just a rational understanding of the way the world works, right? So we can't compromise on scientific truth

or historical truth or journalistic truth, ultimately. And I mean, I think there's certainly scope for civility and pragmatical, pragmatism and politeness and picking your battles. But the general picture here is that there's only one religion on earth at the moment that imagines that even non-members of the religion should be obliged to live by its strictures. Right? So all religions, or certainly most religions, have some concept of blasphemy.

They don't like it when they're sacred objects or sacred places or sacred figures or are defamed. but there really is there is only one religion that will murder you for doing anything like that. And really without any, well, the full clarity of conscience among, you know, even majorities in many communities will call for the murder of blasphemers or idolaters or, you know, others who traduce the sacred tenets of the faith, even if they're not part of the faith. and that religion is, of course, Islam in its various forms. And so there is a contest between this kind of fundamentalist intolerance and modernity. And if we were dealing with the Christians of the 14th century, well, we would have a similar contest with Christians, but we're not happily.

But we have this, I hear that, openly burning copies of the Quran. Personally, I'm a massive believer in free speech. I campaign about it on this show all the time. But openly burning copies of religious but like the Quran, I think that does cross a line. I don't think you should defend that necessarily using free speech as they defend. Should we? Well, I don't defend it as a matter of taste.

I'm not advocating that people burn the Quran, but I think we should be politically free to burn any book. We should just acknowledge that books are books created by people, right? And the idea that some considerable number of people in the Muslim world see otherwise, right, and would imagine that a specific book is more important than any specific person or a group of people, that's just, it's just upside down ethically and politically in a way that we just have to recognize. It's just, you know, I mean, just take, you know, leave aside the burning of books. just take just the disrespect for religious traditions. You have a Broadway play, the musical, like the Book of Mormon, right, which was very funny

and which most Mormons didn't much care for. But what they did to protest that was they took out ads, rather cheeky ads, in Playbill, the magazine that you get when you walk into a Broadway theater. And this was all in good fun, and it was really, you know, they tried to recruit for Mormonism within Playbill, you know, and it was delightful. and yet they voiced their opposition to the basic project that was poking fun

at their religion. But the thing to notice, of course, is that a book of Islam Broadway musical that poked similar fun at Islam would have been and would still be unthinkable and not just in Baghdad or Kandahar, but in New York, right? I mean, the security concerns

that would attend such a would be excruciating. And that disparity is, it should be intolerable to us. What about this story where the band, the 1975, who are a rock band, they go to Malaysia. They know that Malaysia has anti-gay laws, but they accept a booking to go and perform on stage there. And then the lead singer, Matty Healy, decides to kiss his band member, male band member, on stage and a deliberate act of defiance. So it turned out that he'd done something similar in 2019 in Dubai,

which also has anti-gay laws. So it wasn't his first journey on this rodeo. And he also came after inflammatory comments he'd made, which were perceived to be homophobic and offensive a few months ago, which came out on a podcast. So there's a bit of hypocrisy there. But the basic principle of going to a country like Malaysia and deliberately flagrantly breaching

the conventions of that country. Is that a sensible thing to do? You're allowed to do it, obviously. You can do it and get all the credit you may want from Twitter for doing it. But should people do that? Well, I don't know. I think you have to view that on a case-by-case basis.

I think there's an argument for not going to places where there's such religious intolerance that you just don't want to support anything about the norms in that society. Or I suppose you can go, as this band did and protest those norms and hopefully make a point that lands politically in that society. I really, I think that's just a judgment call, and I could go either way with that. But I mean, the larger point to make here, though, is that we can't afford, we, the West,

we, you know, secular societies, diverse societies, pluralistic societies, globally speaking, can't conform to the religious taboos of any sort of. specific community. I mean, right now, if you go on chat GPT4 and ask it to tell you a joke about Jesus, it will tell you a joke about Jesus. And if you ask it to tell you a joke about Buddha, it will tell you a joke about Buddha. They're not good jokes, but it'll tell you jokes. But if you ask it to tell you a joke about Muhammad, it will refuse because of the religious sensitivities of Muslims. And if you ask it about that incoherence, it will basically become as evasive as Andrew was when you interviewed him.

Well, you know what's interesting. I was actually going to reference... I was going to reference another interview, actually, which Richard Dawkins, when I asked him about speaking out like this in the way that you've been doing just now. And his reply was really quite... I found it quite chilling, actually. Take a look. Are you worried about... Did you get threats because of the positions you've taken on some of these things?

When you saw what happened to Salman Rush to you? Didn't send a shutter three? Are you saying no, you don't want to talk about it? Yes. Right. I mean, that's interesting in itself. Because there are areas which you would prefer not to discuss. Yes.

I should have said that before we started. Yeah. No, I mean, listen to it. I think it's sad that you can't. I don't think anything should be off limits in interviews for people like you. I mean, I thought that was really interesting that someone like Dawkins just would not answer out of fear, it turned out. Yeah, well, I would have to ask Richard what his motive was there.

I can imagine it might not have been fear, but just the pragmatic concern that acknowledging the threat landscape is in some way unwise, right? That you're actually increasing your security concerns by admitting that you have them on some level. But this is just plain for everyone to see that there is this vast difference between criticizing Islam. however peripherally, even on the tiniest points, you know, to just, surely just depicting the prophet Muhammad in a cartoon, right? We're naming a teddy bear or a bear in a South Park episode, Muhammad, right? I mean, it's just, this is the kind of thing that can get embassies burned in a dozen cities, right? I mean, this is, this is just, there's nothing like this coming from any other religion. And that difference is important, right? I'm not saying,

saying that people should go out of their way to criticize Islam or any other religion necessarily, though I think when push comes to shove, we have to just acknowledge that we need good reasons for believing our most important beliefs and figuring out how to organize our societies. So just when people are resting on dogma, we should be increasingly impatient with that. And we would be impatient with astrologers if they were trying to change our laws and our politics, too. but with Islam we just we have to recognize that it deserves all of the respect that every other religion does and all of the the patience that every other religion does in a pluralistic and diverse society but no more right and we you know we're now we're literally building it into

our most advanced artificial intelligence this this double standard and we're doing it out of fear right we can call it religious tolerance but it is just fear. It's just, you know, we have been successfully bullied into having a double standard. And it's dysfunctional. It's ultimately dangerous. I mean, the problem for Salman Rushdie was that there weren't 10,000 Salman Rushdie's the very next day, as there should have been. And that's why he had this asymmetric risk for decades and ultimately suffered a terrible attack. We should stand shoulder to soldier with someone. And I'm not saying Richard wasn't doing that. Richard's an extraordinarily brave public intellectual and he's been on the front lines of this debate for decades.

Sam Harris, great to talk to you. I really appreciate it. Your podcast is making sense. Thanks very sense. I appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you very much. Yeah, take care. On says it next, a small tribute to a broadcasting great. Well, in case you didn't think you could see anything worse than the Barbie movie, that's Victoria Becker. on karaoke in Miami with her husband

murdering a Spice Girl song which may explain why she hasn't been on tour with them for many years. Am I wrong? You too? Did you hear some magic? I didn't. They're just drunk and having a good time, aren't they? I don't know what you're like singing when you've had a few drinks.

Brilliant. I singing a little bit less. True story. I once got offered a recording contract in a Barbados karaoke bar at 4 a.m. by an American record company executive as I was stripped to the waist with a bandana singing Guns and Roses version, Live and Let Die. Wasn't he thought of action? I wasn't.

I don't know about it, but he was serious. On the spot, wanted to sign me. Twitter is going to be rebranded as X by Elon Musk. Your thoughts? I just think Elon Musk's tenure owning and briefly leading Twitter has been a total disaster. The platforms been... Last time he had a business called X, he rebranded it as PayPal.

I mean... Made himself staggeringly wealthy. SpaceX has become... the most successful private space company in the world. And Twitter's revenue... Tesla is gigantic. Full disclosure, I have stock in it. Marketing revenue has...

Marketing income, sorry, has declined dramatically since he's taken over. There have been millions of people who left the platform. You've now got Instagram threads that being launched as a... I mean, there's a difference, ultimately, between running a social media company and running, you know, a large manufacturing organisation. And Elon Musk seems to have kind of basically got a bit of hubris about it. I don't really agree.

I sort of buy into Musk. in totality, warts and all. I think he's a kind of, he's a genius, and with geniuses comes this slightly mad stuff. Yes, but I do think he is too close to this Twitter project. He's on Twitter. We know all his views because of Twitter.

Yeah, and I think he's too involved to really be able to step back and see what everyone else is seen. I bet he cracks it. I'm not too. I bet you in two years' time, we look back on Twitter, and Elon Muscle have turned it around. No, he is because you saw the stuff about how it was apathetic, the way he was like twigging the algorithm

to make his feet more visible. He makes decisions off the cup. It basically seems like the power's gone to his head. He can't see anything clearly anymore, and he's like, this is my baby. I think if I had $260 billion, the power go to my head. Just FYI. You don't.

$160 billion? Not yet. But it's early days. I, on the other hand, would manage it perfectly. You'd love a lot of money. All good socialists. Great to see you both. Thank you both very much indeed.

I want to end on a very sad note. The BBC news anchor and brilliant journalist, legendary foreign correspondent, Alighaya has died of bowel cancer. He fought it for nearly a decade with incredible courage. He was an extraordinary inspiration to so many people. One of the most beloved people in the news industry. A lot of friends of mine at the BBC in mourning for him today,

and we share that sense of great loss, both for us, our industry and for the country. I want to thank George for everything he did for journalism and for news. That's it from me. Whatever you're up to, keep it uncensored.