The Boyscast with Ryan Long - Douglas Murray on Everything Wrong with the West, Crappy Journalists, & Christopher Hitchens

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

Author Douglas Murray joins the boys to discuss the immigration crisis, bragging about mental illness, and people being locked up for offensive tweets in the UK SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Factor - Go to Factormeals.com/boyscast50 and enter code boyscast50 to get 50% off your order Liquid IV - Go to liquidiv.com and use promo code boyscast at checkout for 20% off Quip - Go to getquip.com/boyscast to get 20% off any electric toothbrush, mint & gum dispenser, or water flosser SUPPORT THE BOYSCAST: https://www.patreon.com/theboyscast http://ryanlongcomedy.com MERCH - ryanlongstore.com Ryan @ryanlongcomedy Danny @dannyjokes LEAVE US A FIVE STAR REVIEW! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You know, recently there's been a lot of articles pointing out how men are far less emotionally intelligent than women and how that's been ruining their relationships. Oh yeah, you know, I always say the wife's more intelligent than me. Emotionally, of course. You know, it's unfortunate, but it's an apartment that we lack in. Last week we were at the airport, our plane gets delayed an hour, whereas my natural instinct would be to say, it is what it is, there's nothing we can do.

Brittany had the emotional intelligence to realize this is a big deal, we should be arguing with anyone who will listen and in general, just going ballistic regardless of whether or not it'll help. Look, it's not about whether or not it helps. For example, say you plan an outdoor event and it begins to rain. An emotionally unintelligent person like myself might suggest some sort of alternative or contingency, or maybe we'll do it on another day,

as opposed to realizing that this is in fact the end of the world and you should be flying off the handle. You know, whether you're reading an article about COVID coming back or your Uber Eats driver brings you the wrong order, we as men do not have the emotional intelligence to realize that not only is this something we should be freaking out about, but we should also be becoming actively hostile to others who are remaining calm. And you might be listening to this and thinking,

Craig, I was born the less emotionally intelligent sex. What can I do? And the trick is to track her emotional intelligence in order to activate yours. A few weeks ago, Brittany's mother was over who really gets her emotional intelligence working overdrive. So I use the little bit of emotional intelligence I do have to book a work trip during that timeframe and really allow her emotional intelligence to work its magic in the absence of me. I had a situation where Deb had a particularly emotional intelligent day at work. That'll happen. And I knew that she was going to tell me all about it, so I used my meager emotional intelligence to pretend that my car wouldn't start and I hung out in the parking lot. Very emotionally intelligent move, and especially useful if it's that time of month where their emotional intelligence gets turned up to levels we can only dream of having.

And that's when I use my final shred of emotional intelligence to fake my own death again. And this episode, we have Douglas Murray in the studio, who is probably like one of the top intellectual guys. Danny is going to Vegas, so he's going to be setting up shit down there uh because we have lots of cool stuff planned over there we're going to do live podcasts that we're going to try to put out lots of stuff i also have a wedding there's talk of carrot top yeah so yeah he's getting out of here and to keep things as normal as possible in my absence we are subbing in the kid jj lieberman is coming and sitting in the hot seat right here i got my fucking ass grooves we have him eating right now yeah he's eating right now

he's getting hyped up he got that tap on the shoulder you go you're in kid and so he's gonna be sitting in talking to douglas with you unfortunately i wish proper intellectual proper intellectual eating his gruel and we've been trying to get him for a while yeah just to see how it works out yeah he's coming into New York so and a lot of people

have asked for him too so this is a this is a high end intellectual probably outside of our sphere of intelligence but there's a lot

of cool stuff and a lot of people have requested him so without further ado we're gonna bring in the Keanu Reeves replacement to keep the environment.

And he's going to help me. And we'll be hanging out with Douglas Murray. Starting now. The boys. The boys cast. The lads. The boys cast. The dudes.

Prepare yourselves for the boys cast. The bros. The boys cast. The homies. And this very special episode is brought to you by Factor. With convenient meals for jam-packed days, Factor is America's number one ready-to-eat meal kit. They can help you fuel up fast with chef-prepared, dietitian-approved, ready-to-eat meals delivered straight to your door. Head to factormeals.com slash boyscast50 and use the code boyscast50 for 50% off. That is boyscast50 at factormeals.com slash boyscast50. is boyscast50 at factormeals.com slash boyscast50. We are here at the boyscast blessed with a proper intellectual. So okay there's a few things I'll say out of the gate and because I think you might be one of the most like quoted guys in the world right now because you you were sort of the original person that sort of like popularized the idea that at the end of every you know at the end of every empire

everything becomes super into gender and all that sort of stuff and i feel like you you were probably the original one that kind of had that point and like everyone's talking about that now and even i don't know if you've seen but like the big thing on the internet in the last little bit has been like how much people think about the Roman Empire and stuff like that. And then, so you wrote the book, The Death of the West. The War on the West. I have a War on the West and I thought that I wrote it down wrong. I've written quite a lot of pessimistic books. So it's easy to get the decline bit in there.

Fucked it up, dude. Klein bit in there. Fucked it up, dude. So, okay. Probably, so I'm going to say three quotes of yours that I thought were the best before we get into it. And then I want to talk about the Rome stuff and then also the New York stuff. So I thought that the thing that you said, you said journalists, they're not being journalists anymore.

They're just campaigning. Is that? Yeah, yeah. We see that everywhere. I mean. Yeah, it really does, does right and it used to be something that only a few of us who are obsessed with media or in the media could tell and now everyone can see it i mean everyone who absorbs news now can see that they can see that

paper after paper and channel after channel is just not doing what they used to do yeah and people smell it now they're aware of it uh in a way that they weren't even 10 years ago is that because you know to be a journalist you have to say that kind of stuff or is it a mix of that and then if you're the type of person that becomes a journalist like if you want to be like an activist they're like oh be a journalist now well there's actually there's there's various explanations but the best one is is uh i think piel's I think was Peter who said it first that if you look at journalistic salaries not not like the highfalutin columnists to get super well paid or the sort of Rachel Maddow's who get tens of millions a year but the average journalist the

the the salary has declined significantly in recent decades okay and there's lots of explanations for that, the demonetization of much of the media, fall off of print media. But it means that if salaries are lower, it means you get a certain type of person going into the profession. And that's one explanation for why there are very few working-class people in journalism these days.

There's probably a lot of professions that sort of have that. And here's the thing that happens in journalism, which makes it kind of unique, which is that if you go into it and you're the kind of graduate who's got a whole pile of debt, particularly in the U.S., you need, if you're going to be badly paid and you're going to be living in a bedsit or one bedroom somewhere in New York,

you have to be paid in a bedsit or one bedroom somewhere in new york something you have to be paid in some other currency and the other currency will be paid in is the respect and esteem of your peers so like the professors in college right so it's the same people so it was very very similar absolutely there's lots of professions which have got this going on in them. But journalism is a sort of particularly weird one because you can see, I mean, in my own lifetime, journalists used to regard themselves as hacks. I mean, we used to use that in the UK, hacks. We didn't take ourselves too seriously. Now we have democracy dies in darkness. We are the last line of defense.

We're practically like the firefighters, but braver. And we run into burning buildings all the time. Sure. I mean, there's no profession that pats itself on the back more regularly. Advertising, maybe. Maybe. And there's a sort of Venn diagram of those two as well so i think that's kind of one of the explanations and they uh they go into it because they think that they're

they're they're going to be they all think they're going to be um uh they're going to break a watergate like scandal that's your thing ever since watergate um all journalists seem to think that everything is Watergate. And you can tell that by the fact every time there's a political scandal, it has gate stuck after it. I always hoped it would stop some years ago when there was a scandal in the UK about a politician breaking through a gate. And I wanted them to call it gate, gate. And then stop. Stop with the gate stuff.

Very tedious. Sure. It kind of does remind me, like, it's know similar by always bringing back to comedy but it was if you look at what comedy was too it's the same sort of thing where you think of it as like a low profession you're like i'm talking about sex and nightclub so a lot of times when you look back at some of the most you know revered people they what they're remembered for is their political statement. This guy was a philosopher of the time. He said this. And you go,

most of the time he was talking about sex in a nightclub. Yeah, absolutely. So it's almost like the one little part of... The 99% of what they were actually doing wasn't that. I was joking earlier about journalism pretending it's a dangerous profession. Comedy actually has become a dangerous profession, of course. Bad over here yeah yeah that's very bad boy yeah well

because comedians try stuff out and say things that everyone knows to be true and uh this is uh not a very propitious time to do that yeah i don't like to try i don't like to say that too much about myself because you know what there's and this well you know what this kind of leads to my second thing that you said but there was like a you said that there was a i've been trying to put my finger on this forever of why i don't like the internet right and when you're doing comedy in a club or if you're writing for your audience you um you start to do it a certain way right and then whenever you're doing any making anything on the internet you have to do it in a way that you know people that don't like you don't maybe know what you're saying think you're funny the same way that if you're in a group of

friends you talk a certain way and then if someone else is listening to that you talk a different way and then you describe it you're like yeah it's an out group hearing and in groups thing yeah and i was just like that's like the perfect summation of like what kind of bothers me about the internet because it makes things worse yeah well it makes and it makes everything sort of homogenous everything has the same boring predictability about it because everyone's trying to speak to the whole world all the time or at least not to say anything anyone in the world can find defensive which is essentially impossible um i noticed this um some years ago when you know there were always these things like um quite often it was sports teams or rugby clubs and things where like

the leaked mess text message exchanges of the club would like come out and then all of these guys would be absolutely destroyed sure for what they're saying you go well yeah you weren't meant to read that it wasn't for the guardians media correspondent she wasn't in the group so and if you were in the group that group would not be fun anymore yes absolutely and they wouldn't be talking about that they wouldn't be talking about the elephant walk i don't know if you were in the group, that group would not be fun anymore. Yes, absolutely. And they wouldn't be talking about that. They wouldn't be talking about the elephant walk. I don't know if you know what that is. In rugby, it's where each guy follows each other with their thumb in their ass. You've never heard that?

You've never heard of the elephant walk? I've seen quite a bit of rugby. I've never seen that. Okay, yes. It's a very common practice. Are you sure it's rugby you're watching no it makes me wonder anyhow sorry yeah yeah yeah no i mean if our group chat if my group chats

this is a big joke between guys but they're always like if the group chat gets out like world war threes are absolutely of course and that was always look a much comedy was like that much literature was like that it wasn't meant to be discovered by everybody it was for a particular type of discerning reader um they know the vibe yeah i mean i mean there's a there's a there's a classic example of this which is you know uh let's say a first year philosophy class at any university will do one of the one like, why is it wrong to eat babies? If an out group were to listen in on that, because these sickos at university,

they don't even know why it's wrong to eat babies. What's wrong with them? It's disgusting, and government funding should be pulled, and they should all go to prison forever forever lots of stuff isn't meant for everybody lots of comedy isn't meant for everyone lots of literature is meant for everyone lots of lots of thoughts aren't meant for everyone and unfortunately the internet has forced us all into this homogenous group of what's acceptable to say all the time because somebody might just have their camera phone up this has changed everything the fact that everyone's got

one of these uh and that it's got a camera on it will will have altered things more than we can ever have expected and it will continue to do so and one of the things it's caused is a boringness. It has. But you don't hold back. You never, like I watch a lot of your stuff. You don't, like I was telling Ryan before, I don't know, I don't remember where I found you. I think it was through whether it was Jordan Peterson or Jonathan Haidt.

I'm not too sure. I don't know if you've ever done anything with Jonathan Haidt, but yeah. And then I've been a fan, but even to this like day, you still press well i mean i'm in a as i often say i mean with the one time i'm willing to confess my privilege um what's the privilege my privilege is that i'm allowed to say what i think okay and that's not a privilege that very many people have in our societies at the moment. I do it by some crazy tightrope walk of saying what I genuinely think, backing it up, following my instincts,

following the research and reading I do, following the groundwork I do and and um what i know to be true so i i sort of feel like that shores me up to say it i guess i'm not just firing off shit and then you kind of like i like to think i guess if you sort of bill yourself as a little bit like controversial to some degree then maybe it's in your head a little bit less because you're just like well people are going to see this wrong and you're like yeah that's what happens with my stuff yes yeah i don't mind that at all you know when i discover you know i mean when you discover that people are upset about something you've said i mean it bothers me not a jot right why would it you know but i think that it's but i mean you have to spend you have spent quite a lot of time and and emotional capital as it were getting to that place because

a lot of people particularly when they're starting off don't feel like that they really do want the esteem of their peers and they don't want to be unpopular or anything like that not that i feel unpopular but you know it's you have to break through a certain number of barriers before you can you can achieve that freedom. But yes, I mean, I'm fortunate enough that, you know, I'm fortunate enough to have a career and have done for about a quarter of a century now in which I'm allowed to say what I think. Yeah. So there's, before I go to like the kind of more of the stuff I want to talk about,

just because you're here and I know you're already writing about it, there's so much going on in like new york with all the like immigrant stuff but i feel like i'm kind of watching i don't really know exactly what's going on and you'll hear because i see a lot of the videos where you're just like there's all these huge ass lineups of like dudes and stuff like that the hotels yeah the hotels but i haven't actually seen it in person well if you're not no you should go over them. Is it right around here? Yeah, I mean, it's right around everywhere. So is what happened that people, they just, are they, so people, if they get into New York, they basically like put you in a hotel and then you're like lined up outside of a hotel with all your gear, essentially.

And then eventually you get a spot at the hotel and they, what happened? No, no. And eventually you get a spot at the hotel and they, what happens? No, no. What happens is, just for anyone who's listening who hasn't followed this, because there's basically an entirely porous border on the southern border of the United States, as to a certain extent there is in Europe, and it's something I've written about a lot, because, of course, if you come into this country to work legally, as we all know, it's incredibly difficult.

If you come in to work illegally, it's bliss. Well, yeah, because we're all immigrants here, I guess. We all did it the right way. Yeah, we're the mugs. We're the mugs, it turns out. You are sort of the sucker. Yeah, absolutely. I'm a total sucker. I feel like a total sucker now.

Every day as I watch the Southern Border. It's the same thing as in Duane Reade, a pharmacy, chemist, drugstore, depending on the nationality of people watching. When I'm in Duane reed a pharmacy chemist drugstore depending on the uh nationality of people watching um uh when i'm in duane reed i sometimes think why am i the only idiot who's paying everyone else is just stealing their stuff in front of me in front of me and in front of the staff and they watch them walking out with the stuff and literally that's what happens in new york if there's anyone who doesn't believe me, they can just come here.

Now they've got most of the stuff barred up. Now everything's barred up. I had to buy toothpaste there. I had my bloody toothpaste. I had to get a large woman to eventually stop eating her lunch and come over and reluctantly open the wrong case

until she could get the right one. Then open the case under that and take it out of the box. She's out of breath, the fatty. Yeah, and I'm wondering whether it's just best not to clean my teeth by this point. And, you know, but you're at the till and, you know, you see people stealing all the time.

You think, why am I the mug who's paying? A friend of mine in San Francisco said this recently. He said, he actually stopped paying on the public transport. He said, I was the only one paying. And actually, in the end, I just thought, you know, I'm not going to be the only mug. That's how a society really deteriorates. And that's one of the ways it's deteriorated in New York. And the time we've all been here.

That's what I hear is one of the scariest things, how it really does, like, come to shit, is that everyone starts becoming aware of this. When you see smart people talking about this, and then someone who pays attention, pays their taxes, pays their bills, and they're like, well, this smart guy's talking about it. They're like, well, fuck this system. Well, if someone's cheating on a test, and everyone's cheating on the test, what are you, a moron? You're the room! You're the room! Absolutely.

So that's what happens. People come through the southern border. The southern governors are sending them up to cities like New York because New York has declared itself a sanctuary city, as Chicago has, as California is a sanctuary state. So the southern governors are quite understandably saying, look, why do we have to take millions of people, which is what it is now, who are illegally in the U.S.?

Why do we have to take them in and look which is what it is now, who are illegally in the U.S.? Why do we have to take them in and look after them? Send them to places that advertise. So they just put them on a bus. So they put them on a bus. Party bus. They send them up here. Yeah. And they arrive.

By the way, they always arrive at unpopular times of the day so that the media and others don't see them. But the buses come in to the terminal very early in the morning. They get put into various hotels. They're put into the Watson Hotel just up the road here. Nice hotel, nice rooftop pool, which you don't get. Now we're talking. I mean, you may not have a rooftop pool. I don't have a rooftop pool.

I don't have a rooftop pool. And they go into the hotels. And the people you see lined up outside is when sometimes the authorities try to clear the hotels for families for instance uh and uh the men then object because they're going to be sent to somewhere i was actually the watson only the other week and uh they the men objected because they were being sent to brooklyn now they're like what do i look like some hipster exactly do i i mean i mean i'm a city guy. I'm used to the city now. I'm a Manhattan guy. I'm a Manhattan.

I'm a New York City boy. I'm not a Brooklyn, Williamsburg hipster. I've been listening to Pet Shop Boys. Exactly. Well, good reference. There you go. You're not the only intellect here. I like the fact that Pet Shop Boys are the test for intellect around here this is a very

worrying discovery but um no it's um it's amazing they they they do try to get them off the central manhattan hotels and that's why quite often you see people wind up outside by that time by the way they're already working in the black market which is why you also see all the delivery bicycles there because the brilliance of the democrats in new york is they fought for the minimum wage for people like deliveries workers and then allowed in over 100 000 migrants all of whom workers delivery workers undercutting the people who are working legally so that's a great example that's a great example of smart yeah yeah just that's i guess what happens when you're just like hey the whole policy is to make me look good obviously don't care what happens or yeah it's what uh rob henson

calls luxury beliefs i mean the luxury luxury beliefs it's it's it's it's what happens when you have a belief that you can afford because you're living on martha's vineyard yeah and the the migrants aren't aren't in your neighborhood and of course when they were sent to Martha's Vineyard by Rhonda Sanders um the locals went absolutely crazy we don't have room here I mean when we had that sign up saying you know no one is illegal we didn't mean illegal people it sort of pits people against each other a bit too because you go because then you sort of you put a bunch of people here and they're sort of not really infrastructure for them and then people are sort of like hey this doesn't work and then they get mad at the people they get mad at the immigrants

when it's like well they should get mad at the politicians yeah it's kind of like it makes people get mad at each other and then they're just like people should be mad at the politicians because i mean one of the one thing i'm consistent pretty consistent on is is that i don't like people who don't who can't expect the inevitable consequences of decisions they've made so when you make a decision like don't don't properly police the border i someday that's going to have consequences and for you and your family it might happen later but for other people it'll be earlier but don't pretend it's not going to happen same thing with the crime stuff like don't don't just sort of think it's going to be just shootings in bits of you know the city you don't visit you know it'll come to your neighborhood too if you

put up with that i mean i can even see just if you think of your just normal job where you go hey if i do comedy and they go we just brought in like every comedian from every place when it was like hard to get here and then you go now there's just like a million comedians it's like you would be that you know some british comedians would walk in you'd be like oh this fucking guy like it would piss you you would be just naturally the guy would annoy you even though it's not him that did it or whatever absolutely but okay you know everyone says like the they'll be like oh this guy's against immigration when people just say no i just want it to be like a law or whatever do it the right way do you think when people say that it's because are they just like

straight out lying like is that just straight up a political tactic or or is it both where there is people that like brains are actually fried to the point where they do not see the difference between the two um i think a lot of people's brains are fried i think a lot of people care more about how they look than about the truth depends depends what um uh you navigate by in your life i try to navigate by the truth so if i see something i learn something i believe to be true i would follow that i regard that as being absolutely essential. If you're guided by truth, then you're likely to get somewhere. You're likely to not fall into error as much, or at least hopefully not at all.

If you're guided by something other than truth, such as how people see you or how a majority see you or how your circle see you, see you or how a majority see you or how your circle see you you know you will end up in the sort of lowest common denominator race um to i mean it's the equivalent of being on a date and saying i can't believe you love puppies too that's unbelievable yeah yeah oh my god do you like chocolate wow we're made for each other you end up in a really low thing of, like, love is love, no one is illegal, all of these crappy, banal terms of our time, which have nothing to do with truth and everything to do with a sort of soppy sentimentality that actually can lead you...

There's a terrible mistake that sentimentality of that kind can't lead you into horrible error. Sentimentalists cause so much damage in this world. What's an example? Well, one is, you know, let anyone who wants to come, come. Right. Okay, well, if you've been paying your taxes all your life and you're on the low income, that's not much fun. and you're on the low income that's not much fun if you've been undercut in the labor market a point that democrats like democrat socialists like bernie sanders used to make and don't anymore

that's not much fun if somebody says um love is love and it means that you're sorry to hear another hobby horse but it means that you know you've got to affirm your child's It means that you've got to affirm your child's crazy idea about their body. That's not kind. That's dangerous. There's lots of stuff going on in our time which is dangerous, but it is pushed through by this soggy, forceful sentimentality, which I personally find kind of odious good word for it yeah so if you're okay if you're because if you're saying you're going to be guided by truth if you're

just like a normal guy and you kind of it seems like now you go you can be like oh there's these guys that are all saying this then there's these guys are all saying this and a lot of it's like reactionary or whatever sure what like how do you even find the you know how do you even guide yourself by truth is it just like you kind of try to go with what you actually think you know the first thing is go with what you see yeah that's a very good guide but even immigration stuff you're not going to see all of it it's kind of like all you really see is what you're seeing in the media or on the internet really a lot of sure you can see it on the streets well i mean any anything like

any great city like this one you can see a whole load of things a whole load of problems a whole load of great things um but like the evidence is in front of your eyes um it's not um hard to see the way in which cities disintegrate for instance if you use your eyes and you haven't just become used to it and you've lived in san francisco say from the 90s to now you only need to use your eyes to notice that it's deteriorated you don't need to have any wild policy views it's just like walk around because people didn't used to shit on the pavement in front of me yeah that's interesting we didn't used to have that in the past if you saw a turd it was usually a in front of me yeah that's interesting we didn't used to have that in the past if you saw a turd it was usually a dog's that's changed that's interesting it's interesting

that people are just living on the streets on the main shopping boulevards of san francisco and that's become normal i guess it's like a boiled frog thing yeah of course. It's interesting that in a city like San Francisco or Philadelphia, where I was recently, you just see incredibly mentally ill people, like insanely unhappily mentally ill people everywhere, all the time. And, you know, that's not the case in Paris, which has its own problems. But that's not the case there. I don't think it's the case in Toronto particularly. Toronto's pretty aggressive. There's some areas, yeah. There's some like, you know, again, it's pretty isolated.

Sure. But when you go to those areas, man, it's like when you go to Moss Park in Toronto, it's sketchy. Yeah, yeah. It's very sketchy. Toronto's got a lot of the same stuff, I think. Well, every's sketchy. Toronto's got a lot of the same stuff, I think. Well, every city has problems. I mean, I always, whenever I go to a city, I always upset my

hosts by saying, take me to your worst place. Well, I always think it's interesting. You learn more. But I do think that now American cities' worst places have become the worst places. What do you think that is? Like, just because they're sleeping with each other?

Like, what? He's saying that they're breeding. They that is? Like, just because they're sleeping with each other? Like, what? What? He's saying that they're breeding. They're breeding? No, no, no, no. But no, that's what I mean. But what do you think? No, I mean, like, on Skid Row in Philadelphia,

which is called Kensington Avenue, it's very diverse. People would be happy about that. Bewildered. All peoples of the world have come together. And in a case like that, it's the drugs. It's the strength of the drugs and the contents of the drugs. And things like Trank have not entered Europe yet.

They are cut into drugs in certain cities in america and they're totally devastating as you know i mean and you know the strength of drugs like i think crystal meth it used to be 15 months from first using to being on the streets you know everything in your life has just gone through the floor and now i think it's like three months from first use wow and and that's because of the strength of the drugs. And that's why, I mean, a lot of people outside of America don't realize when people from both sides of the aisle talk about the opioid crisis, for instance. A lot of people outside of America don't understand what that is, but that's one part of it. It's like massive addiction problems.

If you lose 100,000 people a year, that's a major public health crisis. So I think the strength of the drugs, and and again lots of that is because like 68ers Spent a lot of time thinking that the drug stuff was just like having a sneaky joint occasionally on a Saturday night with your friends and getting a bit high and they didn't realize then the strength of the skunk and stuff like that and then The strength of the other drugs and then cut into that really dangerous drugs like fentanyl as you know you need like that amount in thing and loads of people die without meaning to i mean it's just and i know some yeah yeah i mean it's like everyone in america now knows it used to be a time when it was only a specific sort of bit of america everybody in

america now knows somebody five people yeah yeah yeah they have the party patches you see them they're one of uh at this festival we're going to next week one of the main sponsors are those fentanyl testing strips yes yeah it's definitely gotten to a weird point with that's weird well i mean yes because as you know i mean like if you put a cent coin, we don't have coins anymore, but the amount of fentanyl you need to overdose is like a tiny bit of that coin. Right. So if somebody has cut that into the line you're taking, it's over. It's scary. And that's if you didn't even mean it to be over. And people like the ones on Kensington Avenue in Philadelphia,

doctors I speak to in the area say, I think the people here want it to be over. Or the very least indifferent. Yeah, they come here for the last really big hit. It's terrible. I mean, it is really dystopian. But I should stress that there are all these downsides, you can say, about American cities.

But there's a reason we're here as well, which that of course they're also like the greatest places in the world the greatest opportunities in the world and much more okay so to bring that to the rome stuff like what were the what were the main similarities when you look at what was there this kind of stuff where you know there was way more homelessness and that kind of shit? Was that like the end of Rome? No. Okay, so it was mainly just the ideological stuff? Like, what are the big similarities between what's happening in Rome and what's happening in America? Oh, wow.

Or is there tons? There's a lot, and I don't want to be... I don't want to impose too much on history or try to carry too much weight. pose too much too much on the history or make it try to carry too much weight i mean the obvious thing is that is that it takes it can take a long time for an empire to fall i didn't never like the idea that america was an empire because it isn't as colin powell beautifully said once uh you know if america was an empire is the only empire that when it went into a country demanded only one piece of land which was the land to bury its dead um um it's if so it's unlike other empires so i don't like referring to america as a sort of empire but a global hegemon however you want to call it um it's it's it can take a very long time to fall apart it's not inevitable it does fall apart but

rome took 400 years from nero to the end you know so it can take a long time when people when people say oh well it hasn't happened yet you know they think i mean don't think that means that it can't yeah at the very least don't think it means it can't and um I would say that among other things, the dominant things are a loss of belief in leadership and then the people, loss of belief in yourselves, loss of belief in your own uniqueness or virtue, or in the end, a kind of indifference that the barbarians are coming in.

And by barbarians, in this case, I'm not talking about illegal immigrants. I'm talking about anyone who's a barbarian there are fine barbarians at the top of who's the barbarians now yeah well I mean to my mind the barbarians are the people in with a grip on many of the institutions of this country and other countries I mean I I find it amazing that so many institutions are run by the people who seem to loathe them. But that was Bob Conquest's third rule of politics, which was that you should always, the fastest way to understand any institution is to assume that it's been overtaken by a cabal of its enemies.

Right. It does feel like that. It's always true. Almost always true. Like, I don't know, you'd think that an artistic uh a museum say likes the museum no no no they're always warring on their collections they hate their collections they want to get rid of them they want to hand them back they're stolen goods it's like they've inherited a whole bunch of microwaves off the back of a lorry you know reliably our institutions particularly our

cultural institutions are run by barbarians. I have like, I feel like I have two theories on that, that I wanted to hear what you think of. So the first one is that I kind of feel like everything that starts out great, whether that's like an artistic movement or, or yeah, it could be like a museum or whatever.

Usually like the original people, you know, had like kind of a unique vision and stuff like that. And then by the end of it the only people that are left are people that are like kind of like to enforce rules and stuff like that so maybe when you look at so you're thinking of america as a sort of civic religion yeah and sometimes just the individual like subcultures are a religion uh like maybe journalism like we said or something like that but because almost when there's like a new thing there's a like i mean you've kind of mentioned that it's very easy to

like tear stuff like people are really into like tearing stuff down instead of building yeah but then also i kind of think of like if you start a company now right like every new company is almost like a little sliver between two things that already exist like it's very hard to start like the biggest grocery store now right right so. So all the main roads are there. All the main cities are there. So there's, like... Well, all the main roads aren't there. But you know what I mean.

I mean, the infrastructure. Drivable roads. Infrastructure. I mean... I guess the, like, predominant infrastructure. Infrastructure is appalling. Okay, so maybe... I mean, I'm going to get on muskets, right?

It's insane. It's insane how bad the infrastructure is. Well, the only thing you could do is tear it down, I guess, at that point. So... No, or you do new stuff but well so let's say we said for example that um we think that uh the way that you know car companies are run yeah you could start a new car company but like mostly people start like a business that's kind of like oh i'm the guy that uh introduces the car company to the thing like all that right i guess my there's a lot of intermediarism yeah and i think a part of that is because all the main stuff's done like in some ways so my theory was that

maybe that's why there's so much tearing stuff down because the way that uh in terms of like thought in terms of like ideologies like people just kind of find there's very few like new stuff so maybe in like later empire stages like all the main stuff's been done so people it's like uh use your brain to tear stuff down as opposed to build new stuff because there's all the main stuff's built does that make sense yeah is that stupid it's somewhere between the two. The, um... It's... Sorry. It's good. It's a good place to be. I feel like my theory's bad. No, no, no.

It's not. It's not. I see that with myself sometimes. That's why I'm saying that. Well, I wrote about this bit in The Strange Death of Europe, which came out in 2017. But, I mean, you can see in Europe post-war a very clear

uncertainty about whether or not it really wants to keep going i mean it's sort of a slight insouciance about its survival uh you see it in germany obviously in particular because after the catastrophe of what germany wrought on the world, you would have questions about yourself as a country, as a people. I don't know why that should have so incredibly strongly tainted everyone else, but it did. So if you don't think it's really as much good, then, yeah, that's when you sort of don't think it's really much as much good then yeah that's when you sort of don't mind and i think that's become a default setting for part of the american left and a little bit of the american right as well growing bit of the american right which is maybe we aren't so good

and that's very interesting to me because that in my own lifetime has shifted most americans in my lifetime used to think that america was a force for good in the world and that you know it had its problems and as gene kirkpatrick famously said during vietnam you know some of us believe we can be improved but improve we need to. And that was her response to the people who then, in the 60s, were saying, tear it all down, destroy it all. I think that people, it's very easy to be wildly unaware of how much worse everything can always be. And the tear-it-down brigade never take into account

the central insight of conservative thought which is everything can always be worse if you don't believe that speak to the people of iran if you don't believe that speak to the people of russia speak to the people of ukraine everything can always be worse and so don't be too blithe about the order that you're in and certainly don't hope that it's going to be worse because among other things when a thing crashes it doesn't crash in your direction it crashes in every direction and the idea the the the insanity of thinking that if it all could be brought down, it would favor you. Very unlikely. I think of the communists who wanted to bring down the Shah in Iran and who, when the Shah fell, were immediately imprisoned by Khomeini.

That's not how they were planning on that. They weren't planning on that. But that's what happens in every revolution. It happened in 1917. It happened with the French Revolution. that's what happens in every revolution it happened in 1917 it happened with the french revolution the the why does everyone who's at the heart of the revolution including robespierre himself end up in in in the clutches of the guillotine because they thought they could direct the force they had this belief you could direct a force this strong you've no chance especially when you're like a rich guy like the guys that are you know rich, worth $10 million being like, let's get this revolution happening.

You're like, they're going to kill you. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it reminds me of a friend in the UK who tried to convert to Judaism some years ago and stopped at one point. Stopped eventually because she said that she would become a very bad Jew and she thought that would be worse than being a bad Christian, which was interesting inside affairs.

But she also stopped trying to convert because her rabbi in her synagogue in Brighton, which is a very liberal city on the south coast of England, was a lesbian who preached a sermon in favor of the anti-Israel forces in Israel, including Hamas, I think. And my friend ended up screaming at the rabbi after the service said say you stupid dyke You're a Jew and you're a lesser you'd be first against the wall So I think that's a Important thing to keep in mind. A lot of...

Yeah, where it's like they're fighting for feminism and everything, and you have no idea how bad it is everywhere else, and you think it's bad here. Oh, I mean, by the way, that's another thing about time, which is the total collapse of international context, you know. The wild, the sort of, it can't be worse, nothing could be worse, it couldn't be a more oppressive society. It is.

Oh, I can show you a whole pile of places. Yeah, is that, do you get a lot of like, we were talking about a couple of things I'm very intrigued about. One was about the collapse of the US and I still am curious. But the other thing was, do you get the blowback from a lot of Americans

or do you get it from a lot of, you know, when you're talking about immigration? And you seem like you don't care, but you must get intense people, like, coming after you online. Oh, I don't care about that. You don't give a shit at all. Why would I even notice? So you don't even pay attention to that. I don't even pay attention. Why would I pay attention?

Yeah. It's like trying to go and find the maddest person in the street and asking them what they think of you going to the most cracked out person in the street and are saying no come on be honest what do you think of my reason it's kind of the in-group out-group thing again right like if you're in the out-group and you don't like it you're like yeah duh if you're the in group you don't like it i usually say maybe the information that you don't like it's useful what you're about to say next probably won't be yes yeah yeah and i i think that in i think that in the in the context of the the sort of what blowback you get discussion, I have very little sympathy for whining.

Yeah. But what about threats? I don't care. I mean, people are so damn proud these days. I mean, you get people, they're so proud and they've got their first death threat online. And they carry themselves. That's this guy.

They carry themselves. I love, I, uh. Sort of, you know. Oh, I bask in it. That's why I asked you. No, I mean, there are uh. Sort of, you know. Oh, I bask in it. That's why I asked you. No, I mean, there are people. He's jealous, by the way. There are people.

Envious, envious. I mean, there are, you know, there really are people, I come across them, who are so proud of the blowback they get online. And I always say, I mean, apart from the thing that's sort of self-harm to even notice, people just have some damn self-respect. You know, stop, because also that's narcissism, a lot of that. Of course. anything else it's all self-harm to even notice damn self-respect you know stop stop because also with that narcissism a lot of course it's just like oh you won't believe what somebody said about me he puts a photo of him smoking a

cigarette with a leather jacket given to middle fingers I mean the sad thing about is of course is that there is there are certain subjects and there's some I've touched on in my own life and career, which genuinely are dangerous. Well, the Salman Rushdie, I mean, that's... I was at an event with Salman in New York last night. Oh, how what? Last night? Yes.

That's insane. Interesting. Anyhow, yeah. Well, I mean, you know, losing an eye to a jihad is an example of real world problems. And that does, there are some things. So, I mean, I'm not, when I'm saying online, I'm not brushing off the idea that some people actually do pay a huge price for their opinions. And I've known quite a lot who've paid, you know, every price.

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i kind of go back and forth on what you were saying before where it's like it's so obvious that you go yeah look over there i'd be way worse at those countries but then there's the other sort of keeping up with the joneses thing where you're like the same way that if someone's born like a billionaire it's like to tell them like look you have so much more money than that kid who's not it's like well yeah but you gave my brother more money than me and that's the guy that i'm comparing myself to sure so there is like kind of a like a context where i guess if people are like angry telling them that you're better off than this other place that you don't know i know but i agree it's very hard to tell people it you're right it's very hard to just

tell people that i think they have to see it i think they have to experience it i mean i'm pretty well traveled and so i have always had a very profound sense of gratitude for the societies that i live in i don't take things like order and law and the rule of law for granted. I don't think they just come in the water. I'm very grateful for them. I'm very grateful for property rights. I'm very grateful for, you know, basic non-corruption. Okay, there's levels of corruption.

There are everywhere. But I'm grateful to be in a society. And that's what the West has more of. Yeah, I'm grateful to be in a society. One of the tests I always used to do when i was traveling in middle east and things was um uh if you all the difference in the world between a society where when you get pulled over you can put a a packet of cigarettes or a you know a few dollars on the dashboard and the and the societies where they would say right out the car yeah yeah yeah

and it's a very interesting thing do you have corruption at that level do you have that kind of basic level of everyday corruption and um so i don't take these things for granted but i think that in general uh people do until they actually see for themselves what the rest of the world is like i have a friend who's a headmistress in the UK and she has said to me before that if there's a pupil that is playing up, very often she will suggest to the parents that they take them back to their parents' country of origin or grandparents' country of origin. It's a very immigrant area of London. And they always come back transformed, she says. Because if you've met your cousins, your first cousins in Bangladesh, transformed she says because if you've met your cousin your first cousins in bangladesh and you live even in the sort of worst bit of london you will be aware of your luck to a degree

you weren't the day before so why do you think that though because i've heard you say that the west is kind of the only place that does this where it's like there's just non-stop self-flagellation or whatever yeah it is well why is that is that like a winner's guilt thing is it just like yeah because i think if you think of like china and russia it would just be like not tolerated i guess from the top right if you were out there being like we're the worst it would just be like okay how about you're this you're in jail right yeah yeah it's kind of like you're allowed to do it so maybe that's what happens yes and um uh in a contract north korea mean, the people actually have been taught to believe that they are the luckiest people in the world. Occasionally, when there's a famine and two million people die, like in the 90s, they have to try to change that narrative around.

But it usually comes back. That's a tough one. You've got to be a good propagandist. Yeah. Kim Jong-il had a very tricky propaganda gear change in the 90s. They actually managed it by saying what is that they managed it by saying that the famine had happened because of the dirty Yankee bastards blockading North Korea so you can always find you can always find a way around if you have a totally manipulated

population but you know the people North Korea taught they're the luckiest people in the world so I just think that the the flagell self-flagellation is is some it's a luxury obviously it comes from a good place i do think that i do think self-criticism is a good thing in a person as as with a society why would you not want to improve but but the the difference as i've often said is between a critic who wants to improve you and actually improve you and a critic who wants to kill you if if um if if it's not if it's somebody wants to kill you they're an enemy they're not a critic they're not wishing you well if i gave you some life advice now uh or you gave me some gave you some life advice now uh or you gave me some in the right tone of voice we would probably accept it or take it on board if uh if um we littered it with the c word and jabbed our finger

and told you you'd always been rotten probably wouldn't take it on board no i've seen that with so many people that are kind of like in our industry where you're just like, you know, you're you're listening to people that hate you. Yes. Yes. Well, if somebody says if somebody says, you know, everything about America is rotten, it's been rotten from the beginning. It's born in sin. I just don't care. I don't really mind your views on education policy.

I don't really want to hear your views on the inequities of taxation. I don't really want to hear your views on the inequities of taxation. I had a buddy that was like, he's really against kind of like, I think it was at the time, probably Jordan Peterson, probably people like you. And he was just like, I'm not really a fan of this guy. And I was kind of like, oh, which one, like, which one, you know, kind of like thinkers of our generation do you like? And he was like, I don't like that type of stuff.

And it was just like, well, then, yeah, that same reason if you're just like, I don't need to hear your opinions on metal bands if you don't like metal right okay so your opinions are relevant you hate that stuff you're made up your mind then why would you you know i mean yeah if we're looking for condos and you hate condos like i don't really need an absolute loathing yeah you know yeah exactly it's like the worst thing in the world visceral loathing i don't need your opinion now on like what door you like better because you hate those ears is irrelevant yes yes so there's a bit of that i wish that people did that more i wish people did that more

it's really not hard to discern the difference you know and there's also even in your like personal life you can probably look at the difference between when you're giving yourself actually trying to make yourself better, or when you're just like, you're just being like hard on yourself. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. I think that, as I say, with people as with nations, you know, a desire to improve yourself in all sorts of ways is laudable.

And sometimes you also have to learn to give yourself a break you know how do you kind of reconcile the idea when like kind of on that topic but you're saying that when because i think i think i've heard you say this correct me if i'm wrong but you said that like gratitude is sort of the answer in reverse right and you hear a lot of people say that even on like a personal level right like that's the best thing to do every morning kind of yes But then sometimes I think that some of like my most successful people in my life are way more like no I don't I never you never have enough almost. Oh, like how you almost how do you you know? I mean, it's a really interesting point and it's a very interesting conundrum that one. Yes

Very successful people tend to be restless highly self-critical never satisfied never enough always pushing and I've often thought about this that's if you had that version of yourself and you also had the version of yourself that didn't have those things, which would be the happier life? Right, that's what I'm thinking of. Or what would...

Yeah, I guess happier is the... I wasn't thinking happy, but yeah. Or what would be... Well, what would you like as a word? More peace. Well, I guess... Or why would peace... Peace is not bad.

Two questions. So the happiness, I think, maybe is more closer to like what's the best way to live your life? And I guess maybe I was just saying more you accomplished your goals. But I guess. But if your goal is to be happy, I mean, we know how you do that. How?

You should believe in God, which, as it happens, I don't. I'm not. This isn't a preaching. No, I think you're. But all the evidence shows you should believe in god you were like one of the og atheist guys yeah um wasn't it like hitchens you say there is sort of right anyway but um you should um have a family definitely having children makes you enormously happier again i don't have children um but i mean there's there's enough data on all of these things

you should um you should have a form of work uh that you find reward in and it doesn't just financially reward you um you should live in a community of people who you know and there's a set there's a set of things which is the absolute back baselines for for a happy life yeah i agree with those a hundred percent and uh and if you if you don't do one or two of them then you've got to go long on one of the others right they all sort of have a community in a little place and then they're all sort of related back to have a community and then when you're like you know the family it's like you have not only do you have a community you have a community where like your status matters not even status but like your existence matters uh where you're um regarded as a person of worth

that's a good way to put it yeah it's a thing uh there's a sociologist i once said years ago i asked i said what's the biggest difference he'd seen in his lifetime in america and he thought about it for a while and he said i think it was when i was a child if you whatever the most menial job in society if you were a bin man a bin collector a garbage collector and you provided for your wife and children you were a man of worth you know yeah and he said that had changed the the garbage collector was a loser by now and that that has had a very profound effect and um but yes we know how you can have a happy life but but what you're talking about of goals is different and most people who are successful are very restless in my experience me too and um i there's a lot of reasons that by the way

in politics there's there's one overwhelmingly obvious one which is a lot of people in politics have had an early loss in their life. Do you know that? Interesting. A lot of people in politics have lost a family member early on, particularly a parent. It's very common. Well, not very common. It's disproportionately common to the rest of the population. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, that's interesting. And actually a lot of driven people have that kind of thing they are racing to chase up with and impress a shade you know and um and and and so it can be useful uh it's it's to do with making up for a profound gap, which can never be filled that way, but you can imagine could be. Yeah, because if you are like, I'm so grateful I have everything and I'm happy to be here,

it's just like, well, you might need more. Somebody was saying to me recently who said that he'd just been given a drug to deal with his irritability problem. And we were talking about it was a prescribed drug as you know in America you can get prescribed almost any drugs oh yeah amazing but he said he got this drug from his shrink for psych for irritability and he asked if I wanted to try it and I said absolutely not if I lost my irritability

I'd be out of work Six months sure I'd be you know, so I mean there are attributes that you have that aren't necessarily that Pleasant to have but which are useful. So is that you are you like? non-stop, I mean obviously by just even having a conversation with you like using words like banal and banal i just learned that word months ago and i'm like man this guy can really talk this guy's got something but seriously but that is obviously like i think about it like ryan was you write five articles a week. You must read. How many books a month? Like, I do audio books, and I try, and, like, I'm a huge fan of Hitch,

but I could not, that language in that book, for me, it was too much. And I love, but I watch his. Which book? Hitch 22. Me too. It's a wonderful book. The memoir, yeah. It's amazing.

But when I watch him debate online, there's nothing more fascinating. And it just seems like a guy like that when you see his last interview. I don't know if you ever saw it. It's him in his house, and he's got all these books on the wall. I'm like, but he seems so relaxed too. But he also seemed like he just never stopped. He didn't, yeah. He was rather similar beasts in a way um he although his he had

a great advantage over me he could write when very drunk and i can't at least i can write but it comes out yeah i look the next morning i think i i did a chapter last night and god damn that chapter was a good one and then I look at it And it's something about tractors and Same thing when I'm stoned total is terrible. It's never right well there is that's the big writer thing is no no no You can I have a rule which is I never write after more than one drink, and I never speak after more than one drink I mean I speak yeah, I got you I speak at a dinner table or a bar after more than one drink, but I will not speak in front of an audience after more than one drink

because the first one can free you up, the second one you start to go too freewheeling. But Hitch, he did it in front of me. We were occasionally very drunk for lunch or something, and I would sleep it off in the afternoon and the bugger would write an article, which I would sleep it off in the afternoon and the bugger would write an article which I would read the next day and admire so yes I mean he if he of course had an early loss which did loss was a suicide

of his mother which I doubted which he never spoke about till the end and he said he used to say to me that he would never write his memoirs because he would have to write about his mother and he won't he once said to me that he would never write his memoirs because he would have to write about his mother And he won't he once said to me him if I was the sort of person that people think I am I would have done it and And then a couple years later we wrote his memoirs And actually the chapter on his mother is the most the mother and the father the father chapter They're the I think the best things Christopher ever wrote. Because it was so personal.

So personal. Yeah. And that quite often happens in my experience, that people late at life suddenly look back and they understand something about themselves that they just didn't know at the beginning. But yes, I'm always trying to read or absorb information because I'm always trying to sort of find things out, really. And new information, new things.

That includes, you know, everything about human beings. I mean, as the Roman Terrence famously said, I feel like nothing human is alien to me. I want to know everything that human beings can do and are capable of for good and ill. In terms of the human stuff, one thing that this is like, our audience is mostly dudes and stuff like that. And one thing that a lot of people say that

i was kind of uh wondering your opinion on it's kind of a two-part thing but the first one is do you obviously when you look at you know capitalism versus socialism and just those kind of like even the way that people think like you know everyone says like girls are more likely to be like collectivist and stuff like that do you think that's, do you think that plays a big part in everything that's happened in the last, you know, 10 years or whatever? That males are more like,

the male-driven societies are more likely to kind of be a certain way? Oh, I think, here's very dangerous ground, but let me leap in. I think it's less dangerous here. Okay, yeah,

but we're being watched. Out groups are after us dude i would love to be watched um because there's no girls allowed to listen to this podcast that's actually the thing and the ones who do are like what they came he sold out grammar see theater uh i started night and these the the females that come it's a smaller percentage well now that it's bigger obviously there's's more, but at the beginning that's what it is. But they're hot. Like, they're not like, you know, they're like cool hot chicks. They're not like pigs.

Okay, well. But you would think, you know. But shout out to the pig community. Of course. Shout out to the fucking oink. He likes the pigs. I love the pigs. I love a pair of heavy hitters on a fat broad.

I'm glad we now know that. Yeah. But in terms of political systems. Well, there'll be a division in the queue next time. We could cut that out. No, no. I think if I get the root of what I think your question is I think what actually happened is that our societies have become feminized in recent years and

We're dealing with the consequences of that and you know The when I say that I say they're just there so that is what I'm asking. Yeah, there are certain feminine traits, which Are in politics now, which didn't used to be for instance um oh compassion being incredibly important the carer in chief you know joe biden has to be like the most empathetic man in america yeah yeah when when a flood occurs he's got to say oh i'm so sorry about the flood and now i as a man tend to think i assume you're not pro-flood i assume you're not like thank god that hurricane hit florida and all those people lost their homes god damn that was a good day i'm assuming he's not thinking that. I'm assuming that when some natural disaster happens, he's anti-natural disaster like I am. But that's not expected anymore.

It's expected that he has to say how sad he is. He has to show how sad he is. Now, in the case of Joe Biden, I mean, Donald Trump, everyone is bad at this. But Joe Biden, you know, talks about himself and says, I've had a couple of terrible things happen to me in my life again that's not that comforting you gotta have a story like it's american idol yeah it's not yeah exactly like we're not going to vote on the saddest one afterwards and award the winner to saddest story but but that thing i mean look at jacinda ardern in uh in new zealand uh when she came in everyone said oh she's just so wonderful why is she so That thing I mean look at Jacinda Ardern in in New Zealand

When she came in everyone said oh, she's just so wonderful. Why is she so wonderful? What's so great about her? She's so empathetic She's just she now she does because she's got it's horrible horrible way of communicating where she just trips is kind of About everything yeah, but everything she was at the UN yesterday about everything yeah but everything she was at the un yesterday whining about the climate or something and she was just she just talks as if she's got to just she's trying to emote more than anyone else in the room as if she is the soul of emotion then you're like oh you're so wonderful no it turns out horrible political leader like horrible political leader and actually when it comes to compassion not compassionate at all about the people of New Zealand when it came to lockdown.

It's always like that in real life, too. Like Trudeau. Yeah, Trudeau's the same thing. Trudeau's exactly the same thing. He's like this. Oh, yeah. I care the most. I care the most.

I'm so caring. I'm so caring. But if you don't like me, I'll get you silenced and locked up and your career ruined. And we'll get you debanked. But I'm caring. My point is... And it's like in real life. The mother that's just like, oh, I care more than other mothers.

Most of the time, that screws the kid up. Right. That didn't actually help. And I actually, cynic that I may be on this, I tend to think now that the person who tries to campaign to be the most emotive and empathetic person is most likely to be a bastard.

Yeah. And by the way, the opposite can be the case. A lot of politicians and public figures who are thought to be very stern and so on are lovely human beings

because the competition and politics is not about who can be the loveliest person and so that has entered our our society's not i gave the example of politics but you could do it at almost every level of the society they've sort of said at schools now it's like dudes are like underperforming chicks at like a pretty high rate yes, because all of the masculine qualities we've been told are toxic. I mean, I would hate to be a young boy growing up today. Well, yeah, because all the teachers are brides, too. Well, that was always true.

It was always a disproportionate. Well, not the older you get. From about kindergarten to grade six, right? Is always being female-dominated. That makes sense. it makes sense but um but uh this but this this clamping down on the male virtues i mean you know there there are several things we very badly need and one of them is male virtues i think we also could do with a bit less of um of the worst female virtues or at least we should say look these can lead us wrong as well like there's a positive and negative

to everything in a time and a place where they're both needed maybe yeah i mean take take the obvious example um a very tough situation your country's going through you might want a bit of the like look i sympathize with you as your leader whatever and we're all going to get through this together but you don't want to be crying okay yeah you don't want to be crying you need them to be tough and stoical and they need to say we're going to get through this and i'm going to show you how to do that you have to have built up a reservoir of toughness through your life now by the way that doesn't have to be only men when the covid thing happened in the uk it's masculine well yeah well i'd say it's masculine it's a it's a more dominant masculine trait but women can do it as well i mean uh you know uh

it was the queen who led the uk through the covid thing by just saying you know we're going to get through this and now if she just sort of cried and said i can't believe we're all being kept apart the nation would have gone what you know so so but the point is it's a bit of damn stoicism is required yeah and at some point in the last generation or two that got beaten out of everybody and i i think it's a profound shame as well as a disaster because and again there are times when in your life you need somebody to say to you you know sit down tell me what's happened and that person needs to listen carefully and compassionately to you and there are other occasions when somebody needs to stand over your life, tell you to get the hell up, put your shirt on, and get out there.

And you need both of these things at some point in your life. Now, do you need them in equal measure? No. And it'll vary throughout your life. You certainly... Now, at some point in the past, that first one was less common. Like, talking through your problems, explaining your problems, used to be undoubtedly in all of our societies much less of a thing.

And there were some consequences from that. But there are some consequences from the let-it-all-out society as well. There's some consequences from the let it all out society as well there's some consequences from that there's some consequences to having people boasting about their mental illness all the time you know i mean the one like certified ptsd certified oh my you are impressive look at you look at you with your certificate card-carrying member Of your mental disorders well done you I mean there is a By the way one consequences one consequence from that the nobody speaks about for instance is if you do do that You will be applauded at the moment, but you know what people won't want to employ you

Of course, yeah, of course, right? The society doesn't tell people that they don't want to employ you of course yeah of course right the society doesn't tell people that they don't say that if you come out and go i have profound mental illness issues that your next employer might look you up online again yeah i'm good on that whole thing go with that reliable person there there's so many people that post online they'll be just like my company's like just screaming against me because like you know all all i said was that like at training i'm gonna need a whole separate seminar just for myself yeah yeah yeah i mean well it's like the one who like it's provable that employers now rightly avoid people who put their pronouns on their um uh cvs well yeah you're just you might as well be putting like by the way i'm just a little a footnote that says like just so you know i'm

going to be a hassle i'm going to be a total hassle and i'm probably going to sue you in a couple of years time for something you didn't do and i'm you looking for problems i'm gonna be have my eyes gonna be fucking peeled for any infraction yeah yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna basically act as hall monitor in this company at the most junior level we on this construction site well that's it's radia i played poker i played poker during the pandemic because we were shut down from comedy and we would get on these zoom calls every morning and do some poker studying stuff and one of the calls someone came on with their pronouns on fucking zoom this is zoom at your poker game yeah like what our poker study group i'm like who cares what you're

fucking this is the dumbest place that you're like identifying with your pronouns we're playing poker we're all dudes yeah we're about to gamble away our fucking uh house and you give a fuck why people are calling yeah he him i'm like i'm fucking i'm in the whole 10k dummy i don't care my pronouns are very broke my pronouns are soon to be broke but it's it is so ridiculous it is one of these things like even in comedy when i first moved to new york um, obviously I moved here right after Ryan, you know, Ryan blew up.

We grew up in Toronto. Our whole crew moved down here. Um, and I was just trying to get on shows at first and it's, you'd have to fill out forms on some of the shows in certain areas. And one of the questions was like, well, yeah,

put your fucking pronouns in the line. It's like, well, I, I toured all over the fucking country. Is, and and i here's a clip of me for five minutes is this not enough right like isn't it you need to know because it comes to that thing it's well he has a little bit of the same thing where he's like a gay and there's

a lot of people that would put him on like at the very beginning put him on the gay shows and then they'd see him be like this is not what the type of gay we wanted. What are the gay shows? What are the gay shows? So I came out at 35 years old. Okay. How old are you now? 35. Really? No, 42. I'm an old, disgusting troll.

That's why I started fucking women. Guys won't fuck me anymore. All right, take it easy. Guys won't sleep with me. But no, when but i think you can reinvent yourself as a daddy these days i i i definitely am i don't pass on life advice but i would do no no it's can i ask a crazy question on this that we were saying and i know just this might sound like stupid but okay and i'm not going to say the same shit about trans

stuff that you've probably been asked a million times. But when you think of, we've just talked about this and I don't have the conclusion. Okay. If you look at like, what would make someone, what makes someone gay? Like, do you have an answer to that? Liking other men. Okay. In a sexual way. And what do you think?

Is it like a chemistry thing? Like, is it like? We don't really know. Okay. I wrote about that in The Manners of Crowds, where I wrote four chapters, each on a taboo, gay, women, race, and trans. I love the contents page of that book

because I knew the people were, like, opening it. Oh, sure. But, yeah, I wrote about that there. We actually don't really know is the answer. So there is... We don't really know. But there is proof because you go, like, the same way if you're attracted to someone, there is proof. Yes.

And I think sexuality is more malleable than we used to think, but it's not as malleable as people are currently pretending. And it's much less malleable among men than among women. That's what I thought. It's provably true. than among women. That's what I thought. It's provably true. You will never meet a gay man who's in a gay relationship with another man

who says that they did this because they had bad experiences with women. Okay? You speak my language now. You meet loads of lesbians who had bad experiences with men, ended up hating men a bit, and much prefer women as a result. Do you have, like, a bit that's like that?

It's just very common. Environmental. I think with women there's a great deal of environmental about it. In the same way that their sexual fluidity with they're much less worried i mean again this is a generalization it's backed up by the data then they're much less worried about being seen to be affectionate with other women um than men are with other men and uh so and that's again something that's changed a bit but we from assuming that sexuality wasn't at all malleable at some point i mean we pretended for a time we've now pretended it't at all malleable at some point. I mean, we pretended for a time.

We've now pretended it's like wildly malleable. And it just isn't. I mean, some people are clearly hardwired to be gay, just like some people are hardwired to be straight. And I think there's a small number of people who are like... I mean, what's your story? That sounds very accurate. Well, let me... Okay, sorry.

My story was that I was playing baseball and I'm very hardwired to be gay. Right. But then I also, I think I lived in the closet for way too long. Obviously you did. You came out at 35. Way too long that it did a lot of damage. And up until recently, you brought up stoicism. The pandemic, I was so angry at the world because I lived two lives. And then I, oh, so mad. And I got into stoicism that,

to this day, I still sometimes feel the rage, but I was never comfortable with guys and I dated guys and I dated guys in the closet for years my first boyfriend committed suicide so I would go through that and then I would date other guys and I was still trying to play baseball and it just was this weight with the relief was was doing comedy and then when I came out my buddies who were my buddies before I came out they kind of like ass up you know but then when I came out, my buddies who were my buddies before I came out, they kind of like, ah, so, you know. But then when I came out, they were still my buddies. But I still had this, what did you say, the PTSD card certified.

I was dealing with a lot. But now I feel fine. But I still think about a relationship with a man difficult. Really? Difficult, yeah. But the actual sorry well that i mean that depends on whether you have role models or people you've seen in your life who've done that i mean it's the same with almost everything is have you seen like positive figures or positive relationships i was

lucky enough growing up to see positive relationships of several different kinds so i never had to worry about that. But your description of living a double life, I mean, it's terrible and incredibly destructive. Oh, suicidal at one point, years ago. Years ago, I'm sure. Before comedy. You know, there's a beautiful line in Wilde's poem,

The Ballad of Reading Jail, where he says, he describes the prisoner who's in prison for killing his wife. And just before he's executed, Wild describes his cry from the cell as the hangman gets him. And Wild says, he says, And all the woe that moved him so that he gave that bitter cry, And the wild regrets and the bloody sweats, none knew so well as I. For he who lives more lives than one,

more deaths than one, must die. Intense. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. More lives than one. If you live more lives than one, you'll die more than one death. Yeah, yeah. Well, so if you, but when you go look at JJ or whatever, it's like, it's just obvious,

like your sexuality is who you're into. But then if you think of trans, you go, the evidence for a guy being gay, you're like, well, yeah, he wants to have sex with dudes. It's like pretty cut and dry. But trans, you go, I'm born in the wrong body. But what is the like i think it's all uh almost all nonsense with a small tiny tiny infinitesimally small number of people it the rest of it is all a social contagion i don't believe in it okay i don't i don't think it's

the case i i and by the way it's also totally deranging for the society to pretend that the only people born in actual sexed bodies are trans people who are born in the wrong body. Like just logically, it doesn't make sense. Like logical nonsense. Because brains kind of like don't work like that, it feels like. I don't know. And also, by the way, I mean, Jordan and I were talking about this recently, but one of the biggest lies in our era, and God knows there's a target rich environment to choose from one of the biggest lies in the era is that children know who they are and that is such horseshit children do

not know who they are they do not know who they are think back to ourselves as children I wanted to be a pirate. I wanted to be an Egyptologist and an archaeologist and also an astronaut for most of my childhood. People at my school all wanted to be black. Okay, there you go. But the point is that you're constantly negotiating with the world around you that's what childhood is about when children get the memetic thing of learning from other people looking at all the time looking at learning it's not the case there is this act innate self that the child has which the environment sort of has to just accept the environment has created the child that's why every time you see some um insane blue-haired uh couple uh you know who don't identify as anything who say we're so proud we've got a non-binary daughter

and a trans son you go oh what are the chances of that yeah wow i mean that's statistically like so wildly improbable unless unless it's environmental and the thing that's so weird about this is the thing with gay that's so different is that clearly gay isn't environmental or at least very unlikely to be because most gay kids grow up in straight households and children of gay parents don't grow up to be gay automatically obviously but the crucial one is that gay people have to struggle through the thing of being different from everything around them or or almost everything around them. Whereas at the same time we're pretending that trans children, which do not exist, there is no such thing as a trans child.

It's such a dangerous thing to have put into the lexicon, like gender affirming care. The trans child is clearly being manipulated and affected by the world around them that we are creating, which includes the nonsense, mermaids, minotaur bullshit, which is that you can feel different on the top than the bottom. Like, screw these people. I hate the people who've pushed this into our society. They've made us so palpably dumber. I mean, we did not need to go over this again.

This was the first thing we knew as a species boy girl first thing and we have undone that it's like you know one of my just wild furies about our age is that if you'd have said to me 20 years ago on the dawn of the millennium what do you think we'll be doing in 2023, Douglas? What problems do you think we'll be solving? I might have said, I don't know, we'll be learning how to live in underwater cities or how to live on Mars. Or we might have, you know, Nick's time travel. The cartoons will make you think that'll happen. You know, there's all sorts of amazing things that will happen.

And we'll probably be transportable across, you know, from here to Australia in three hours. No, it turns out we're discussing the fact that men and women don't exist i for that yeah well since they do if you are if you're looking at kind of uh the world that's you know becoming more and more feminine if you're like obviously the sort of reaction to that for dudes has been a little bit of like you can't like i'm sure you know like the red pill shit and like you know and michael malice walked me through it i've never been i've never been totally remembered which pill is which but oh yeah i think the way that he talks about it's a probably a little bit of a different thing i

think he took a whole handful of pills well he's created the white pill he has the white pill for his but yes right yeah he's created his own well this is more just like i'm just maybe red pills a term that's used for like a lot of different things but more so just so like you know get rich get jacked like fucking you know get women don't worry about any of that like you know what i mean that kind of that seems like the reaction to it and it's kind of like yeah there's definitely there's definitely a reaction you can see it in the dominance of weightlifting among men now yeah i mean like it's much more which i think it's a good thing i mean i don't i didn't get anything wrong with it but i think that it's obviously like a response to the kind of the attempt to emasculate and feminize men and

Make men these sorts of weedy figures, of course, that's gonna have a backlash and also, I mean you've created what I call in the madness of crowds the Cuttlefish problem, which is you know that this no cuttlefish is, I learned this from Brett Weinstein. The cuttlefish is an interesting fish because it can, the female is smaller than the male. Fairly common. But the male is capable of shrinking. And they have a, the female cuttlefish has a male partner that can be swimming along beside her. And there are all these male cuttlefish who want to come

and, like, roger the hell out of the female sexy cuttlefish. Roger. And the thing, so what they've developed in the cuttlefish community is this ability to make yourself small and look like a female cuttlefish. And then the male cuttlefish doesn't think that you're a threat. And then the man comes down here and then he's like, and then he can have his wicked way. Now, that's so many straight men in our era are like doing this weird cuttlefishing of like,

oh, yeah, no, absolutely. I feel like it's working less. Trans rights. The white knightings. Yeah. it seems to work less right well also those people who do that that you should always assume they're a sex pest always assume it just always again same rule same rule the ones who do all of the talking about the virtues of that always bound to be the worst so but those people and they'd actually did happen to a colleague of mine I've told this story before but it was so funny

that when the when the Trump anti-trump pussyhat protests happened in 2020 never any 16 2017 colleague of mine was covering it and told me is just delicious story of the father and all these women were walking around with the pink hat and And there was men obviously like yeah, yeah fuck the patriarchy and They and this fence said they had lot of years. Yeah I can never do that. That's like my, that's my English idiot voice. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck the patriarchy. Whatever it is,

but in American, it's a frat boy activist. It's a frat boy activist. Um, it's like, yeah, totally down with this. Uh,

and there will be, there's guys been doing that all day. And then there's some after parties somewhere. And my colleagues, he was, he ended up in this group. That was all men from over like the last woman that happened to be in that circle left and one of these guys just like

looked around me i was like can you believe how much pussy there is here our bodies we have a friend that goes i had sex with two girls at fucking well March no no no it was the original protest was a Wall Street Tang fat yeah, I know you're talking about That is this is so bad you couldn't pull out Wall Street you're gay All you had to do is say down with the international monetary system it's so cool what a great term the cuttlefish by the way to call a guy now who's like super leftist a cuttlefish war pig and just you cut because you know you know exactly what they're doing yeah because everything gets ruined like there was a time when

it was like so fun to call people a cuck but then it got too too like we got a bit much it got words always just like it's in group out group it's like fun thing and i honestly it's a perfect phrase yeah once it becomes i mean it's like liking a band you liked and then they become super mainstream yeah right there's just everything it really but now to have cuttlefish in the repertoire because now it's like the minute i mean you the minute you describe you know everyone knows the type everyone knows the type yeah and uh yeah but the point is is i'm sad about this because it means that there's a lot of that going on it's one of the ways in which men are thinking they can they can mate maybe the only way they think unless they go the other direction but i think i think that's just sad i think it's very sad we've created a society where men feel they have to

get rid of all the masculine uh virtues i say and and and that's because we've told them to i mean i haven't but society as a whole you know and you know we don't talk about toxic femininity which if we're going to talk about toxicity we should should be an even playing field plenty of toxic female behavior just there can be toxic male behavior but so what is toxic human behavior why make it about men why that men always have to be bashed like this? and I think I think in lots of ways we're paying the price for that in society and I just think that people have to get a bit more. I mean I say get more bit more so What should you do as an individual like if you're a dude?

Because the other options like that no one's gonna save you like really, you know what I mean? like lot well the first the first thing is, I mean, in terms of, I mean, one thing, the most important thing, I mean, sure, people can build their bodies and stuff like that, and it's important to be physically fit and things like that, but you've also got to build your personality and your stoicism and your resilience and also your skills. And that includes, by the way, I mean, people talk about self-esteem all the time now

without really knowing what they're talking about. I mean, there's this sort of- What do they get wrong? Well, what they get wrong is they think we should all have self-esteem. Like, no, some people should- It's like earned sort of more? Well, you should earn it, of course you should.

Like some people, I have a friend who's a doctor earn it of course you should like some people I have a friend is a doctor I told the story for the world but the event is a doctor is a prison doctor all his life and one day and he said that prisoners often used to say to him Oh doctor I think I'm depressed and he'd say why are you depressed and they'd say well it's because I'm in jail because you know no you wouldn't they wouldn't say it's good I've got I think I've got something from low self-esteem and my friend used to say well that's one thing you've got right you know you should be suffering for low self-esteem you're in jail yeah like for stabbing your girlfriend or something like yeah self a lack

of self-esteem is good on this occasion like you should think yourself a shit for a long time a long time and if people tell you you're not a shit you shouldn't listen to them but my point is is that is that the there's this sort of oh everyone's so fabulous and everyone should have self-esteem and if they don't have self-esteem it's sad and no so like an accurate self-esteem should be earned um and it's earned by doing things of which you are proud you know that is is is is how you actually have a sense of dignity and self with is i'm proud of things i've done and that's why whether it's in your work life doing things achieving things that you're proud of or providing for your loved ones and being proud of that.

Like, you know, plenty of people I know who have done work they don't love, but for instance, they've been able to help their parents out or their, you know, or bring up a family or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's like a lot of value can come from that. And there are people I know who, if you say, what's your proudest achievement, it'll be something like that. Yeah yeah and that shit rules like as a dude yeah just being able to like yo you're in a position that can make someone else's life better and it's not even that

hard for you yes i mean so and and so i i do think i mean self-esteem is important but it should be earned and it is principally earned from doing things which you are justifiably proud of having done. That's a great way to put it. So if you look at like the, like it's pretty easy to see where there's like so much going wrong right now, but in terms of like positive things, one of the things that to me, I remember thinking like almost six years ago, maybe like even like 2014,

15, like almost prior to, you know, the switch when everything kind of got how it is now in a big way i used to always think like the fact that everything was so hyper specialized it was like it really was like you know these people made buildings these people are uh musicians these people are comedians this guy's and and it really does seem feel like now where it's the people that are you know good, good at something are kind of like, they're also thinkers.

They also have companies. And to me, that's like a very positive thing about the new time. But maybe, because maybe some of this stuff was, you know, the hyper specialization really does make everyone have all their like rules. Whereas when everyone's doing everything else, you kind of learn how other things work work which you maybe have such like a little bit less of a narrow path so i think also i mean i might be wrong but i sense that people also have a kind of portfolio career more than they used to at least i can think of a lot of people who have like several portfolio career yeah like several careers on the go several things they do they go side hustle of that and they do this you know the main thing is this and again that's that's more good yeah. Seems good. Yeah, it's more in America than elsewhere.

But I noticed in particular here, like quite a lot of people have several things going on. But it also makes it so it can't affect you as much. Like if you have, for example, if you're like a dude and it was kind of like, oh, this environment's like hostile to dudes. It was like, well, that's one of your six environments. Like it don't affect you nearly as much.

And if it gets more of that and you go, okay, I phase that one out and do more of these. So it's almost, maybe that's like a positive thing yes i think i think that is no look there's lots of positive things i mean again i yeah what are the most positive things of like the new world i know that you kind of said there maybe people are getting too much into conspiracies and stuff like that oh sure well then that's a negative but yeah but what are yeah so what are some good things about the positive is i can tell you from my own life i mean that uh if you've got an internet connection and you're smart

um you can be at the forefront of everything in your time yeah you really can you really can and it's startling sometimes it really strikes me like a few years ago jordan and i did an event at the o2 in london and it was a strange sort of thing itself to play a rock huge it's huge that's wild and it was actually quite funny because like the poster for that month was like you know beyonce jordan peterson and douglas murray i was like i saw it at the Underground in London. I was a bit... Actually, I got really nervous. That's so crazy. I got really nervous. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow. Beyonce's probably put a lot of work into this. Yeah, yeah. How many dancers did you guys have? Yeah, I know. I was walking on stage wearing a pair of trousers and a shirt. But anyway, when we were doing that, just afterwards or before, I can't remember,

I was in Iceland for something, and this guy came over to me on the street in Reykjavik. It's like a 20-year-old guy. I said, oh, you're Douglas Murray, aren't you? And I said, yes, I am. And we started chatting, and he was literally on the cusp of everything that was happening, that everyone was discussing. Tapped right in. Absolutely right there.

And I was looking around, and I think, like, Reykjavik, nothing is more than two stories high, and it's very charming. It's a long way away from everything. And when you say, no, no, take me to the center, this is the center. Oh, okay. Yeah. And it feels very far away from everything and yet this young man said you don't have to be you're not you're not if you're tapped

in and i just feel that that is the most positive thing that we are not doing enough with right because it's almost like an antidote for everything. It's an antidote for everything. Can you imagine if you've got everyone who's got a brain to think about a big problem, everyone who's got some technical skill to work out a technical problem? If you're like a solve inequality person that just naturally is going to do that.

Right, just like work that stuff out. That's when I moan and I moan a lot about is going to do that right just like work that stuff out that's that's that's what i'm that's when i moan and i moan a lot about and criticize a lot about things and even it's not gonna enjoy it it's because i'm frustrated that we're wasting this opportunity i'm frustrated that we're wasting the opportunity of going at the slowest speed imaginable i think we should be going at a supersonic speed and i feel like all these things that all these roadblocks that have been thrown in everyone's way the the the hatred of masculinity the the the nonsense about gender the nonsense about privilege and all of these

irreducible impossible to solve problems that aren't real problems they're just they're just they're just thrown in our way and i'm just like get that crap out of our way we have stuff to do we could we have stuff we could really solve like it's like you have to fix the engine and someone's like we should get a paint job on this car and you're like hey we've got a real thing going on right now it just or like i don't know it's just it's just horrible to see a society which has so much potential dampening the potential, deliberately putting the brakes on the potential, and saying, solve this totally unimportant thing. It's bureaucracy kind of bullshit. It drives me mad. Because I think if we just addressed one thing,

like, if you care about global poverty, and I think everyone does, nobody wants anyone to starve, we could solve global poverty so easily if we just decided to do it. How? Well, you just get all your smartest minds to work out how, for instance, you can grow meat in a Petri dish faster. Okay. You know, I mean, all sorts of stuff.

Yeah, innovation. Innovation. petri dish faster okay um you know i mean all sorts of stuff yeah innovation innovation and and and that's and that's the bit by the way when you where you started by talking about ancient rome that's the reason why you just can never predict things when you're in them because human ingenuity always comes along or doesn't It's just dependent on human beings Somebody steps forward like someone decides to take the burden on themselves somebody decides to do a crazy and Thing and you nothing nothing is it's off any predictive chart But equally maybe if you if you if you tell everyone they're crappy and you dampen them down and you beat them down, maybe those people don't emerge.

And that's my fear. That's my fear. And that's why I think, you know, what I always want to say is, like, get those people out of your way. Like, if you have them in your life, get them away. Like, move past them. Just recognize we have a finite amount of time as individuals. And, like, don't let those people waste your time. Yeah, don't try to fix them either necessarily.

No, absolutely. Particularly if they're totally unfixable and seem to enjoy it. Yeah, that's the other thing, yeah. I'm actually curious about the one thing because Ryan was talking about this before you came about the conspiracy stuff. And I'm not a conspiracy guy. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But. No, but I am.

We dabble. But I am. I like a good theory, period. I mean, I'm not like, you just want to, you're like, okay, what's going on? I don't know. I just, as a comedian especially, you're just like, I like a good wild theory. Okay, go on. But I am, like I said, i am a huge fan for years of you and uh

very similar thinkers of like you but there is something i didn't know this about your thoughts on there's so many conspiracy theorists right now which is true true so everything you said yeah that's like objectively true yeah objectively true uh but don't you think there is something true about people like yourself still getting stifled for your opinions, especially when you talk about, if you were to have these opinions about, yeah, just man, that's basically like what Jordan Peterson, you know, clean your fucking room, man up. And it's like, yeah, I started making my bed because of that man and it changed my life but don't you think that opinion is somewhat stifled and don't you think there was a reason that andrew tate you're saying like is it coming from the top down yeah i mean so in that terms no i don't think it's done no i i don't thinkruption doesn't have to be conspiratorial either. I mean, my feeling is that conspiracy theories in general are a low-grade explanation for any particular problem.

It's just... That's probably true. It's just usually a low-grade explanation. Like, why did this incredibly complex thing happen? There must have been a cabal of people who decided it would happen. Why did something come? By the way, also, it's when something comes out of the blue is very noticeable. Two of the biggest conspiracy theories in my life have been about Princess Diana's death and about 9-11.

Why? I'm pretty convinced it's because they came out of the blue took everyone by surprise nobody expected it and then they like want to know how it happened and the answer is in the first case shit happens like horrible things happen all the time like a drunk driver sadly you know but some people can't but some people can't cope with that They're like but this person who I was reading about and following every day somewhat too obsessively has just gone for my life and I've got a hole and I need to fill it and so You know that and same thing with 9-11 most Americans like most other people the West had no idea about jihadist terror until 9-11 woke up very fast

to the schisms and the problems within islam and uh some other people were just like how can the twin towers come down uh it's just a different mindset i think by the way a lot of that is again dependent on how happy you are in your life. I'm pretty convinced in my own experience that whether it's chicken or egg, it's debatable, but that most people who actually are conspiracy theorists or are likely to fall for conspiracy theories have an unhappy life because they are seeking meaning and they can't deal with the complexity of the world

and they go for these simplistic weird explanations now you do have some some exceptions to that i mean um i i saw rfk jr briefly the other week in new york and he's very interesting of course but one of the things that has struck me about him is, you know, he said this in his conversation with Bill Maher the other month. He told Bill, RFK Jr., he told Bill that he doesn't believe that Saran Saran assassinated his father.

And he doesn't think that the explanation for his uncle's death is accurate either now put everything aside for a second can you imagine what that would do to somebody if they believed that their uncle and their father had been killed knew that their uncle and father had been shot dead at different times believed that the official explanation was untrue and spent their life trying to find the an explanation it would make you a totally different person a wildly different person than if you and i'm not saying this is it but i just if you accepted that your father was killed by the person who it said he was killed by, you might be able to close that and do other things, get on with things.

I think it's made him disproportionately dedicated to conspiracy theories as an explanation for things. And look, it might have done to me, if I'd have had that horrible thing happen that happened to him twice But I just think that I think in general conspiracy theories come from an inability to deal with the complexity of the world including the randomness of life and world including the randomness of life and um the desire to search for meaning is is so so strong and to find a pattern to find an explanation for things you know we've all had it in our lives that's a yeah definitely you're always trying to be like how can i like slot this information in

here in a way that like makes sense with all the other things i think exactly. And it usually will form into something that you already pre-existently thought. If you already had some idea that the world was run by a group, it will slot into there. That's fascinating you said RFK because now it's like you think about everything that he stands for. It is like vaccine conspiracy. RFK, JFK. Yeah. I think think it's very hard not to do that but there's also there's some part of it where it's there's messages like even when he says he'll be like oh i'm not but it's not that conspiratorial to be like this it doesn't have to be conspiratorial to be like hey this drug company like pays billions of dollars so they don't have to test it that hard right and it's like here's the information it's like it's not even

really like some behind closed doors thing you can just look like that's how the incentive structure which isn't a conspiracy that's just something that's happening so i guess there's both there's like maybe too conspiratorial and then there's also there's just normal shit where people are saying it's a conspiracy theory. Well, look, I mean, conspiracy theory is one is definitely a term that has been massively overused. And it's been used about things that are true, you know, in our own lifetimes. And very recently, you know, with the lab leak conspiracy theory, the the I mean, I watched that one in real time and they sort of couldn't believe it they were trying to make that a conspiracy theory i mean i'd seen a somebody who was an expert just before we all got locked down you know who said to do i asked about it and said well look it's just very

strange that this particular virus has come from the particular area which has a particular lab that's doing exactly this thing and it was an expert who i knew and trusted very well and i just always kept that in mind but to watch that you know and so so yeah for a time because oh my god i can't believe you're using the lab conspiracy theory so but but then you have to do this not very tough mental exercise but just to think okay a conspiracy theory gets overized as a way to shut down awkward discussions, but that doesn't mean all conspiracy theories are true. Tell them, yeah. Holocaust denier.

He's Jewish. But it is fascinating that you did bring up that. Because I didn't know no one that got killed. My grandparents were. Don't get this guy to start talking about the globe. No, he's not. But you want to talk about life-changing things, reading Viktor Frankl's book was literally the life-changing thing for me.

Interesting. Yeah. Well, so we won't keep you here forever. The last thing I'm going to, I kind of did, the same way that I live here, but I'm still pretty tapped into like what's going on in Toronto to some degree. I'm going to the UK, right?

And I'm doing a Europe tour and I'm going to London. And I was kind of like, while I was just looking at stuff and I was going to do some promos, I was kind of finding all these articles where it was like, they're locking up like nine people a day for speech. And, and I just hear, I know that it's, it's often you kind of,

uh, I'll hear things people in America say about Canada. And I'm just like, you guys are kind of off about it. It's not really exactly true. You know what I mean? But I feel like you being tapped in, like,

is that, is it really, uh, gotten out of of control or was that like the peak before because i'm hearing like you know we i know uh count dankula with the pug stuff like but i was reading the thing and they go it went up like i think it's at eight thousand percent or whatever the arrests and then you see all these videos and this and that and you go is it really kind of out of control and is it just like one government or like what's i guess my question in the nutshell is like what's actually going on is it out of control with that you're so you're so right it's quite hard in this era to actually get a feel on any other even like related very closely related country accurately at them i'm like yeah i i think a lot of people have that with canada a lot of people have that

about america from outside america a lot of people have that with canada a lot of people have that about america from outside america a lot of people have it about australia for instance one totally and i'll talk to like a normal guy there that i know and i'll be like it's not really what right a lot of times it'll be just as simple as like this revered person and he's like that guy's kind of a joke here you know what i mean yeah and you need to have friends on the ground in these places if you're going to understand them, and of course to visit. But, look, the truth is the situation of free speech in the UK is not good, and it never is. And partly that's because in the UK we don't have the First Amendment protections that exist in the US. I mean, when I'm writing in the American press, as I do every week,

I definitely write in a slightly different way than I do for the British press. Oh, I didn't know. Interesting. Well, it's because you get libel lawyered a lot more in the UK because you don't have First Amendment protection. And we also have a horrible system of self-regulation of the press the thing that people can just complain about you and you get tied up in this endless process of bureaucracy whereas mark stein once said you know the punishment is the process and um so so it's definitely not not as healthy as it is in the u.s i think the u.s is healthy and the thing the thing in any uh you know diverse society is you basically as fleming rose made this point in his book uh you basically have two choices if you've got an increasingly diverse society you

either clamp down on speech or you accept that you've got to have a much wider range of speech than you might be comfortable with and who said that Fleming Rose a friend who was among other things distinguished Danish journalist but he also came to international fame when he published the cartoons of Mohammed in okay it was a great great great great guy and he wrote a very good book called the tyranny of silence about that and he met he made that point in that book and it's a really crucial point that not enough people understood you know those are the two options in front of you you either clamp down on speech in general or you just accept you know it's going to be a bear pit out there and um i'm for the latter you know and just because i don't like the former i think the former

is always going to lead to error and you know you know, for one of the reasons that Hitch, among others, used to outline, which is, you know, like, who would you appoint as censor? Who do you think can decide what I can write and read? Yeah, yeah. Is there anyone you know who's good enough? Nominate someone. Shout out a name.

Jacinda Ardern. No, wrong. Justin Trudeau. There's nobody in the society virtuous and i'm not the most virtuous man not the most most deep thinking rabbi or the most thoughtful philosopher i wouldn't trust anyone and they get yeah they get to be like no on this yes on this no way no way i mean we used to have a sensor in the uk for plays and uh you know what a sensor oh yeah the same way tv does right there

used to be the lord chamberlain rather i'm using it all plays had to be passed through the lord chamberlain's desk before they were allowed to be put on it's done away within the 60s but i mean it's unbelievable looking back but but we do have that going on now with the twittersphere the the social media i think i i here's where i think it's settled in the uk and i'm very unhappy with it i think that the government has allowed the police to do things that are no damn business of the police including this that's how i'm on the board of something called the free speech union in the uk and we fight legal cases against people who get into trouble over these things uh non-crime hate incidents that's what it said that's like no if it's not a crime the police should not be involved you know there are some uh police areas in the uk which have not solved one robbery in the last in the last five years but they've got a terrific uh padding the stats the stats on non-crimes that they they've

really they've got hundreds of non-crime people not called a criminal but we've caught a lot of non-criminals uh we're killing who did hatey hatey words that's the other thing it's so juvenile isn't it hate it's always about hate yeah hate talk hate speech hate yeah and i'm sure the cops doing that are just like, what is this? It's embarrassing. It's got to be embarrassing. It's got to be embarrassing to have to show up at the door

and do that bullshit. I know, but of course, it's a lot more relaxing, isn't it? Oh, right. I mean, it's a lot more relaxing to sit watching ex-Twitter all day, eating a bag of chips, and then going, uh, uh you've got somebody at 43 late and drive has said a potentially hateful thing it's not criminal but that's why we're going we got a misgendering on fourth street here literally you're doing 999 calls yeah

which service do you need that's's great. That seems like the... He said tranny. The modern desk duty. You screw up and they put you on non-criminal patrol. But they want that. They really want that. And I think the police have given themselves a very easy life by doing this stuff. Oh, I didn't think of that part of that.

And here's the other thing. You're like, hey, there's a stabbing in the bad area that you don't want to go to oh yeah of course yeah i mean like you might have to catch i'd love i'd love that but i'm chock full yeah yeah i'd love to go i'd love to go and sort out the machete incident but you know anyhow so everyone's complicit in a little i think i think and and by the way it's shameful that i never stopped telling people in the uk that it's shameful this has happened after 13 years of a conservative government which should not that's interesting why is that do they are they just kind of inept yeah or they i guess old school conservatives weren't like big free that's more like a new conservative thing to

sort of be or am i wrong about that well brit always had, if I may say so, had the best tradition of free speech until America's First Amendment came along. Yeah, of course. I mean, Milton and Mill and everything. So why can't they fix it? So I think it's because they're just not very competent. Gotcha. But the interesting thing is, and here's why I'm fairly confident that the next time I see you, you will not be carrying a non-crime hate badge incident report in your seat. I kind of hope I do. I can see.

I can see. But the reason I'm fairly confident you won't be is because rather weirdly, this is a rather revealing thing to say, but I think it's true. I think they've decided not to go for high-profile targets. Because they know that they can't really defend what they're doing? Well, absolutely. I mean, I think that they know, for instance, that I or my colleague at The Spectator, Rod Liddle, if they came for us, we would go back at them at a million miles an hour.

They'd martyr you. They wouldn't get to martyr me. I would come at them faster than they, yeah. Yeah. And I think they know that and i think they know it about my colleagues and friends and comrades and allies in the uk it's good on that level but how disgraceful that you have to be at all prominent to get that cover how disgraceful that they go as they did the other week to the house of an autistic girl who had said had said that this female police woman looked like a lesbian like like her nan and this short blonde haired police woman who should be utterly ashamed of herself

turns up with like nine heavies to go and get the autistic girl out it was one of the most heartbreaking videos i've ever seen and the mother is shouting she's autistic please don't do it and there's this man like trying to grab her out of the cupboard. A policeman. Yeah. Taking you upstate for calling someone a lesbo. You know. And it turned out, as I said, that her nan was lesbian. It wasn't even anything about it. It was just a woman looked like a lesbian. Which she did.

And she is. And she is. She is. And we have proof. She was dating her nan. she was dating her nan but the point is that that the idea that a society i don't know why there isn't more anger about this i don't know maybe i don't think it'll happen to me sort of situation yeah but this is my point is that why should you should it be the case that things that I and other writers and journalists and thinkers say can be said by us, but not by a member of the public who happens not to have the virtue of a platform?

I guess that's corruption. It's just disgraceful. And I mean, you know, I would do away with the whole thing, but alasas i still haven't been called to government well that's a pretty good summary though that doesn't explain it i think it does yeah yeah buddy thanks so much for doing this by the way douglas such a pleasure this is a huge pleasure so very uh nice of you to come in the studio so very much appreciate it and the new book is The Guys in the West. The Men of the West. The Men of the East.

The War on the West. The War on the West. Men of the West. You know what's crazy? A relative of mine said they just like completely not tapped into any of this stuff. Messed me out of the blue you know it's crazy a relative of mine uh uh said they just like completely not tapped into any of this stuff uh meshing me out of the blue maybe like five months ago being like oh i just read this book and it was amazing this guy's amazing do you know him and i was like oh

he's actually like buddies with my friend and blah blah blah so so the war on the west war on the west men of the west it's a calendar that will come out that's a book I'm writing about I wrote that book it's just pictures oh yeah great pleasure thank you it's awesome the boys cast

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