TRIGGERnometry - Academia Has Fallen - Dr Paul A. Taylor

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

SPONSORED BY: ExpressVPN. Go to https://www.expressvpn.com/trigger and get an extra 3 months free on a one-year package! SPONSORED BY: easyDNS - domain name registrar provider and web host. Use special code: TRIGGERED for 50% off when you visit https://easydns.com/triggered/ Dr Paul A. Taylor is a critical theorist who read economics and politics at Edinburgh University before conducting his PhD thesis on the early history of computer hackers. Paul has appeared on a number of Radio 4 and Radio 3 programmes including Woman’s Hour, The Verb, Thinking Allowed, and You and Yours. He is critical of the largely unchallenged rise of the bureaucratic mind-set and its deleterious effects on public discourse and professional standards. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 Intro 02:03 Why Dr Taylor is Here Today 08:03 First Educational Experiences 24:22 Dr Taylor’s Academic Career 31:12 Sponsor Message: ExpressVPN 33:03 What is Postmodernism and How Does it Impact Us? 41:29 Our Need to Think More 51:19 What is Happening in Modern Academia? 1:00:24 How Herd Mentality Stops People from Speaking Out 1:15:42 Similarities of Postmodernism & Marxism to Religious Belief 1:19:45 Sponsor Message: EasyDNS 1:25:48 Ideology is Destroying Meritocracy 1:32:49 Consequences of Universities Being Driven by Data 1:45:51 What’s the One Thing We’re Not Talking About? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I was in infant school, so I must have been about five. And we had books got delivered every month. So I'm sat next to this lad. And he had this bright yellow book that was about red Indians. I'm sorry, I can't say that. Native Americans, red Indians at the time. I could see they had an ink drawing of a Native American with his arm on the ground. He was lying down, listening.

And I, you know, read enough even at that age, no, he was listening for things in the distant. And he said, no, he's dead. I said he's not, he's listening for things in the distance. And it was in the context of the chapter. It was pretty obvious. So it escalated quite quickly, me being me. And I started calling it, your fish, your fish.

So the teacher came over. And she basically, I was hoping she was this authority figure. And to me, even at that age, the truth mattered. And she said, oh, leave him pull. It's like everyone's entitled to their opinion. So in that, so in that, one moment. I think from the age of five, so you're talking 50

years later on that's never left me because I've witnessed it at universities that authorities who are guardians of the truth is putting too fine spin on it. But the truth does matter and learning does matter and they've turned their backs

on it. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constance Tim Kisham. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a retired academic who's absolutely fed up of what he's had to deal with his entire career and he's come on Trigonometry to drop some truth bombs. Paul Taylor, welcome to Trigonometry. Shuff to be here. Thanks very much. It's great to have you on.

You're going to black pill us about the state of the academic world. But before we get into that, tell us who are you, how are you, where you are, what has been the journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us. Well, until a couple of months ago, I was an academic at Leeds University and before that I'd been at Solford and I studied, I did my degree in PhD at University of Edinburgh and the reason, I'd split it into two, there's my motivations for wanting to speak and it was basically I think I was on the risk of having an aneurysm watching the television and the type of things that are said. It's a very common condition nowadays, I tell you.

Well, we'll get on to hopefully some of the good aspects of this. So, for example, I went through a phase where I kept shouting, it's the Salem and bloody witch trials. And then Andrew Doyle wrote his book on The New Puritans, so I thought, well, at least I'm not going mad. And this is the type of thing. And it's mostly the media's inability. So they can talk about what annoyed me most about the media,

and I'll try and do that as quickly as possible. But one of my main points is the way in which the media dumbs down everything. So I know that's a bit of an obvious point to make, but I can go into specifics. And I just sometimes think I get in a tattoo on the forehead saying it's more complicated than that. And if there was a machine to make things unduly simple, it would be places like the BBC, which I can, you know, you can hands off commercial TV or radio because it's not their remit to necessarily educate the public.

But the BBC is supposed to be part of their historical remit. And I just remember him watching terrible things. So, for example, without going into the politics of Brexit, which easier said than done, the level of discourse. So have you heard of Target 2 balances? No. Right. If I can remember, it stands for a trans-European automatic, real-time, gross settlement, express transfer system. And it's because in the EU, when they used to have float before they had the euro, you'd have floating exchange rates.

So if you're buying loads from a foreign country, your currency depreciate, they become more expensive in this balancing mechanism. The Germans typically export loads. And this means that in the old days, the Deutsche Mark would have appreciated, and that would have balanced things out. Because they got rid of that, they have a paper trail. They have within the EU that everything still

in Euro still has to be paid. So they have nominal balances, so the Germans have this massive. surplus and it wasn't too bad until about 2008 with the Lehman banking crisis. And then you can check out, it's a while since I looked at them, but it's about Germany's owed inverted commas about 1.4 trillion euros by the rest of Europe. So if, for example, a country ever wanted to leave, Italy wanted to leave, and I know there's jokes about the Hotel California, you can check in but you can't leave.

But this is one of the reasons Italy are on the hook or they could just renege, but they could There are huge balances which show the inequalities that because of variable exchange rates are no longer there. Now, forgive me that it's a slightly technical economic analysis of what's going on. But it's not insignificant. And if you don't believe me, Mario Draghi, who's supposed to be the godfather, so to speak, of economics within the EU. He's the go-to man, the fixer. He's gone on record as saying it's one of the first things he looks at each morning of the target two balances. So these are serious issues.

Now, can you remember in any discussion? And this idea that the ignorance was always on one side when I think it's quite clear. I mentioned it to a few colleagues. Target, what? But they were somehow the self-appointed. I know you've been reading Thomas Sowell, I think you've said in the past. And he has this idea about the self-enointed where intellectuals give themselves credit for things they don't know and act as if they do. So that's just the default position of the media as far as I can see.

And there's instances, so I was getting slightly annoyed. I think on one of the roars you've had, you've had to go with Alistair Campbell. And that was the other thing that was risking giving me an aneurysm, because you made the very valid point. Why is he being spoken to? This is a guy who should be in the Hague, not in the television studio. And you can find it online. an Irish, something like The Late Show, and Nigel Farage was on with him.

And I've only watched a small segment. But the antipathy, there's a live audience, the antipathy towards Nigel Farage, you can cut it with a knife. And at one point, this will surprise you, but Alistair Campbell gets quite angry and is talking over everybody. And he says, Nigel, this is a direct quote, Nigel, Nigel, own your own shit. and the audience gives a spontaneous round of applause, unless I've just imagined that bit.

And I'm thinking, own your own shit. Is this a projection? Just the inability, the level of way in which civil discourse, the way in which to have an intellectual, but just a rational argument, has become completely ruined by people's tribal affinities. And I'm from, by blood, I'm Irish.

And it really does annoy me the way in which the Irish give themselves a free pass on some of the difficult issues around the EU, which now they're trying to get rid of their tax haven status. Some of these things might come to the full. Well, we'll get unto all of that. And your point about Alistair Campbell and Nigel Farage is quite a funny one, because if you think about public consciousness, which of those two people is considered more moral and more evil and more despicable and more specifically morally. questionable. It is, without doubt, certainly, if you watch the media, it would be Nigel Farage, a guy who followed the democratic process. Some people didn't like what he achieved, but that's what he did. Alison Campbell, on the other hand, very different kettle of fish, certainly Iraqis, I think, would agree with that. But you still haven't answered my question, which is

what's your background. Well, that's what academics do. Oh, you're scared. You might have to be worked out by now, born and bread in Liverpool. and my first, I can give you two little examples of my first educational experience before I talk about how terrible the universities are. My mother, I think they diagnose it now as severely dyslexic, but it was never, I don't think it was too early in those days.

So she really struggled with reading, but I think she transferred, she hot-housed me. So I've got a very vivid memory of being, if anyone knows Liverpool, it's Chill-Wall Five Ways, there was Chill-Wall Library, and I was tiny, and I was looking up, and there's a big,

librarian and they wouldn't give me a library card because I was far too young. So my mother was all scouse, come give him any book, any book, give him one. So he handed me just an adult non-fiction book which I promptly read without any problems at all. He thought, fair enough, here's your ticket. So that was a love of books and when that would sound like old father time, because I know you, for example, Constantine, you're addicted to your bloody mobile. You know, your attack is like an umbilical cord, doesn't it? But those days, what did you have? have, you know, wooden toys and loops and their hoops, whatever. No, but there wasn't much.

So you did, and tell you was even worse now, because at least you've got the internet now. But, you know, there wasn't that much to do. So I read, you know, I read an absolute hell of a lot. And then I had this very formative experience. I can tell you this story, and then we can just call the interview to a halt because it just encapsulates everything. I was in infant school, so I must have been about five. And we had, books got delivered every month.

And it was like, you know, one of these book clubs. And it was a big deal. And I remember if someone's a bibliophile, the smell of books, there's something about it. And it's this wood pulp smell. It's still. It's like Proust and his bloody Madelaine's. But I can smell the books still. And we had a nice, I'm not crying poverty.

We had a nice house, but there's a northern phrase. There's a phrase, all fur coat and no knickers. So we had a nice house, but we weren't spoiled as kids, so I never got one of these books. So I'm sat next to this lad who I've subsequently, I'm now know in my head, excuse the vulgarity as little Johnny Fuckwit. And he had this bright yellow book that was about red Indians. Sorry, I can't say that now, Native Americans, red Indians at the time. And it was all about, I had it over his fat shoulder I'm looking. and it was about Indian culture and what they did

and I could see they had an ink drawing of a Native American with his arm on the ground, he was lying down, listening and I read enough even at that age to know, he was listening for things in the distance. So he said, I mentioned this to him and he said, no, he's dead. I said he's not, he's listening for things in the distance. And it was in the context of the chapter.

It was pretty obvious. So it escalated quite quickly, me being me. And I started calling, your fish, your fish. So the teacher came over and she basically, I was hoping she was this authority figure. And to me, even at that age, the truth mattered. So I thought he's not dead, he's alive, it's about Native American culture. She's going to tell him. And she said, oh, leave him, Paul.

It's like everyone's entitled to their opinion and tell them. So in that one moment, it was, I think from the age of five, so you're talking 50 years later on, that's never left me because I've witnessed it at universities that authorities who are guardians of the truth is putting too fine spin on it. But the truth does matter and learning does matter. And they've turned their backs on it. So anyway, that was infant school. I went to, it was, I got the 11 plus, did a grammar school in Liverpool and it would have been

a grammar school but it turned an independent school when I was already at it because they threatened turning it into a comp. But everyone who was already there was sorted, all your fees were paid and everything. It was the 11 plus. And we might get on to that later, but that taught me about the selection procedure

because I benefited from my, it was in West Derby, my school, but people from all over, Liverpool went to it. And it was the top one or two percent of Liverpool who got to that school. So it was just, and I know there issues about everyone, arguably everyone should be educated together, but there's undoubtedly advantages when the teacher doesn't have to explain the most basic things to people. And I experienced this, I did maths, I've always had to think about math, I absolutely adore maths,

but I'm not particularly good at it. When I say not particularly good, I got Maths O level a year early and I got an A. So nationally I was good at maths, but in my, I was in the A set for maths. out of 34, I'd regularly come 30 or 31st. So when something was explained to me in class, I knew very quickly that these people are, they're getting it in 10 seconds. It's taken me three minutes.

I don't have a comparative advantage on this topic. But that didn't stop me loving it. But that also, I've always had in my life as well educationally, this trade-off between, it sounds like an American average, doesn't be the best you can be, versus everyone should have access. So I understand the dilemma, but I am a massive advocate.

I think Peter Hitchens has stood just in a book called The Revolution Betrayed about grammar schools and what they achieved. And, you know, someone like Anton's, you know, a nerdy well from recent times. But, you know, Liverpool in the 80s, that was rough. And, you know, I'm not kidding, boys from the black stuff, all that type of stuff. So I've got vivid memories. I know it's not Soviet Union levels of poverty. But it was...

It was much, much worse. It was pretty rough, but everyone I knew, I was going to say, who made it out of Liverpool, but went to a grammar school. And insofar as there was any social mobility in those days, it was grammar school assisted. And I think that's a massive argument in Peter Hitchens' book. So, ironically, if I had gone to my local comprehensive school, it would have been, I know you don't like class analysis. No, it's not I don't like it.

I'm joking. Yeah, yeah. It would have been much more homogenous. in terms of the local catchment area. So ironically, I went to an independent school that had a much, much better mix of people from around the city. And you've got a sense of how, you know,

I was hot-housed as a kid to read. There was never an issue. You know, I didn't put money in the electricity meter to get the lights on which some, you know, people I studied with did. So I was just very, very conscious, but that was their way out. It was by education.

So, you know, this sounds like, I'm talking about the developing world, but in parts of England specifically that I know most about, that's true. So that was, I did A-levels, I went on to do A-Levels. I'll only mention them because I want to pick up on some of the themes. I did Spanish, English literature and economics, and we did, everyone did general studies. But the English and Spanish, in those days we did about a good third of it was literature and history. So I did the conquistadores, so I learned all about that, which was fascinating. And for today's knowledge, it's interesting that when they went to Mexico, I think it was Cortez,

they managed to bring down the whole Aztec Empire with very few people, a few rotwiler dogs and a few horses that scared the locals. But that was because of various complex reasons, the weakness of the Aztec Empire. And the idea that nowadays, small vocal groups are doing so much damage, if there's a rotten culture, there's something wrong with the dominant culture, absolutely catastrophic things can happen. So that's what I got from that. And also, I did some existential, Anestosabato, El-Tunel,

which was an existential novel ahead of its time. It's better than such, in my humble opinion. So I got a taste for things like, and just reading in a foreign language, I think you've done translation work in the past, Constantine. And one of my frustrations teaching was, let's put it this way, if I saw an essay that was really grammatically really good, I'd look to see which part of Scandinavia they came from because British students don't have facility with their own language. So the idea that they'd have facility with other languages, I think that's one of the saddest things about you get lots of good inputs from overseas students. But I think as a, the UK as a whole, I think language teaching is getting worse, not better, in terms of resources, the amount of language teachers.

So that was one of the things I learned. It just brings so much. So maybe later on we'll get on to, but I've started looking at Midrash, which is a Hebrew biblical studies technique and body of literature. Because I'm fascinated by how meaning is constructed. and that approach to language, and when you look at the, we'll hopefully get on to the issues about the canon and, you know, the books that we should be reading. But when you look at Old Testament or Hebrew writings, and often it will have gone from Aramaic to Hebrew, to Greek, to English, and at every single point, someone's made a translation judgment that's got profound consequences on what the thing means. And if you don't have facility with language, so, you know, history, a historical context has been driven out to public discourse. Language skills are often limited.

And the subtlety, the complexity of what's truly there. So I'll give you one little example before I go on. There's, I think they're called the Wisdom Books. So I think it's Ecclesiastes, which is also known as Kohelet, Proverbs. and the book of Job. And I'd never, I think we're talking off camera about once you're retired, you can read all the things you've wanted to read.

And I never would have read, you know, Old Testament type, boring. And there's a guy in America called Robert Alter, who's a biblical scholar, and he's done a retranslation of the wisdom books. And I think in Ecclesiastes, there's a famous, there's a constant phrase, O vanity of vanities.

And it's all about things under the sun. But he translates it as mere breath, mere breath, and then later on there's a refrain, it's like herding wind. And it's existential literature from two and a half thousand years ago. The language is beautiful, the meaning is beautiful. But in order to engage with that, you have to have a frame of reference, which that's what those, the English and the Spanish, But having said all that, and this is why I've learned as my career progressed, because I'd done economics, I thought my father was an accountant. I thought, well, go off and do an economics and accounting for life. So I signed up, I did economics and accounting at Edinburgh, realized very, very quickly accountancy wasn't for me. So I managed to do economics and politics. And through the politics over the years, I've drifted more and more to the literature, which is what I should have done from the get-go.

But in the first year of Edinburgh, one of the highlights for me was we had a, it was a general course, but basically people across the social sciences, you had to do a statistics course. And there was this guy, I think you've spoken in the past, Francis, about teachers and the importance of them. So it's the course no one wants to teach. It was statistics. There's a load of grumpy public schoolboys and people like me. And it was like listening to someone verbally described the visual manipulations of a Rubik's cube.

It was absolutely wonderful. I've never heard anyone speak about maths the way he did. And I think statistics is quite specific because it has a social context. It's not pure maths. And if, you know, Neil Ferguson and the COVID bunch had done any proper statistics, we wouldn't have been in lockdown for what seemed like five years. which is, you know, it's a major issue. People don't do stats.

So jumping around, but that would be, if you're going to say, what's your recommendation that everyone does? Forget all this government or let's learn what democracy is. Every student that can possibly be force-fed a statistics course should be. So you're in agreement with Rishi Sunat then, Paul? Well, specifically statistics. I think he just wants everyone turn everyone into an investment banker. but if you're going to be an active citizen.

So we are jumping around now, but you pointed me in that direction. I'm blaming you. You know, the grooming gang scandal, I remember seeing a discussion, one of the very few discussions on Channel 4, and I think it was Cathy Newman, and she was talking with Nazir Afzal, who was the Northwest Director of Public Prosecutions, and he's from a South Asian origin.

and at one point, I think she was trying to argue, and forgive me if it wasn't Cathy Newman, but it sounds like the type of thing she'd do. She was trying to argue that because the vast majority of child abuses are white, that it's completely unfair to focus on the grooming gang scandal. And I'm thinking the overwhelming number of child abusers are white because the overwhelming number still in this country are white. So it's your selection categories.

And then she actually said, he said, it's undeniable that the overwhelming demographic of these child abusers are South Asian, men of South Asian origin. And I remember she said, that's a bold statement. I'm thinking, really? No, that's a statement of basic truth. But anyway, that statistics would have helped massively if Channel 4 reporters had ever done any or paid attention. And that would help in serious issues like that. But then in second year, the highlight of my whole university career, and you might like this, Constantine,

I did a year-long course on 19th century Russian studies that involved literature and history. And unlike today, it was a year long. So you didn't do these little bitty, you know, in a module here's a module here's a module everywhere. It was just wonderful. And we did. It wasn't just, oh, you'll do Tolstoy and that's it.

We went from Gogol to Gagnev, Lermontov. We did all the Dostoevsky. We did a war in peace. We did Anna Karenina. That was half the course. The other half was history. So the intellectual ambition and scope, and you got people from within the humanities

and social science has got to do it. In today's universities, you can do, like, discovery courses or something. And you'd be lucky they'd probably give you a few chapters of War and Peace. It's obviously the whole books, far too tiring and too difficult. So that, in those days, what really struck me compared to now was the level of intellectual ambition. Talk to us briefly about your academic career, because we haven't got there yet.

Right, I'll get to that. I'll get to the point then. So I went from Edinburgh to Salford. I wrote some books on my PhD. Sorry, I did me PhD Edinburgh. That was on computer hacking. And it was interesting. I struggled to get, I got the PhD published,

but it took a while because they said, I love the logic. They said, because no one's written on computer hackers before, we don't have a market for it, which I thought was a bit odd because surely they want to sell things that haven't been written about. But it was a sociological study of hackers, or as I would say, hackers, and how they went about it. And no one had done that before.

So that was quite interesting. Then I did a book on hacktivism, which is politically motivated hacking. And that was all that's Solford based upon the PhD. And then I moved more into, so what's interesting about that is in my early academic career. And in the PhD, it was about how people interested. interact with and try and control technology. So I wasn't arguing that technology dominates us. I was actively trying to seek ways in which people can take control of technology.

But as my academic career progressed, I realized more and more, I became much more of a determinist. I think technology has very determining features that are massively underestimated. So I move more into what's known as the culture industry, what's known as, ironically, it's portrayed nowadays as cultural Marxism. Frankfurt School, I wrote a book called with a co-author called Critical Theories of Mass Media then and now, so it was in the past and brought up

to the modern era. And then I moved to Leeds and got very interested in Slavoy-Jijs' work, again, labeled by some as a cultural Marxist. So what makes my career slightly unusual is, I've studied technology in depth from a sociological point of view. But I'm very, very critical, and I think universities use technology in ways that are quite unthinking and uncritical. I've done a lot of cultural Marxism.

We used to sit there in Edinburgh, and it was like the Bible. I remember specifically the addition of Das Kapital. It was paper thin tissue paper, and we'd all reverentially go through it line by line. It was John Holloway taught me there, who was quite a well-known Marxist. So I've got all this Marxist background, and I treat it more as literature, though. To me, it's fascinating analysis of capitalism, but the idea that the assumptions are often bonkers, the analysis is great, and the conclusions are bonkers with legs on. So I am in this slightly interesting situation where I'm immersed in this type of stuff,

but simultaneously very critical of it. But I also think it gets a very, some of the so-called postmodern stuff gets a very bad rap and is profoundly misunderstood. And my sense is that if we're going to, some of the issues you talk about on this show, about how do we break through,

how do we have this rational discourse in good faith, how do we relate to each other better, how do we have proper debate, one of the things you might want to talk about is the way in which people don't understand the things they're labelling so I'm a massive fan of Douglas Murray but I think he's on certain issues about I think he's doing what Richard Rannon would call shadow work on postmodernism I think he's misrepresented it and he's put on loads of bogeyman aspects interestingly Andrew Doyle doesn't do this I think Andrew Doyle's got a doctorate

and whenever I've heard him and I've read, he's very, very cautious about he doesn't blame postmodernism. I think he distinguishes him postmodernism, applied postmodernism, so people have made a mess of. And I can relate to that because my book, Critical Theory is on Mass Media then and now. It was translated into farcey. And I was interviewed by someone from, I'm not exaggerating, he was someone linked with the Revolutionary Council. Because retrospectively thinking about it, I was. having a go at Western capitalist media from a very critical point of view. So if there's ever another revolution with the Ayatollahs, my book might be waived in the streets

of Tehran. But my point is, you don't know how your work's going to be used. You don't know how your work's going to be misinterpreted. And what I think is interesting is if it was, if the ivory tower was the old-fashioned ivory tower that was quite tightly circumscribed and there weren't. So when I went to university in 1985, I think it was about 12% of people went to university. Now it's a good 50%. And, you know, some of the concerns you've discussed on this show about how bad ideas

percolate into society at large. Well, first of all, the ivory tower was more ring fenced. And I think Oscar Wilde said, you know, the stupidity of professors. is long studied for and earned. But those stupid ideas, I absolutely, I've spent a bit of time with Slavoy-Jewjegh. I was the unofficial tour manager when he gave some talks in the north of England,

but I wouldn't trust him to run a bath, never mind run a country. So the idea that you use some of their ideas and you see that as some type of guidance for societal policy and stuff, it's brilliant intellectually. I think David Starkey made the point that conservative thinkers aren't particularly interesting

because their intellectual ambition by definition is limited to conserving things. Whereas the wacky postmodern, well, we could talk about potentially later on postmodernists so I don't even think necessarily their left wing, which is another misunderstanding. But lots of left wing, you can have ridiculous ideas of where you could take theory in a practical sense.

You've had to suffer that in the Soviet Union. But I don't see necessarily why it has to be that way and why we have to take these ideas. It's the lack of filtering. It is one of the ironies that the more you've expanded the universities, the more you've let all that toxic, theoretical discharge get into society. It doesn't have to be toxic, but it can be. Hey, Constantine, do you like privacy? Yes.

It's like going to the toilet. What? Well, not having a VPN is like using the toilet without. shutting the door. You don't want anyone knowing your dirty business. That's why I use ExpressVPN and you should too. We've interviewed Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, Lord Nigel Lawson as well as a whole host of other great minds. I thought this was an advert for ExpressVPN. Yeah and this is a simile you use toilet doors. Why not mention that ExpressVPN creates a secure encrypted tunnel between your device on the

internet so your online activity can't be seen by any... But... that your internet service provider knows every single website you visit. They can sell this information to add companies and tech giants who then use your data to target you, which is why you need ExpressVPN. I was just going to say, why didn't you mention it works on phones, laptops, even routers, so everyone who shares your Wi-Fi is protected and all you have to do is just fire up the ExpressVPN app, click one button, it's as easy as closing the bathroom door. I thought the toilet was a great metaphor. Yeah, okay. Get an extra three months of ExpressVPN free by going to ExpressVPN.com forward slash trigger. Come on, Francis. That's ExpressVPN.com slash trigger for three extra months free.

It's absolutely fascinating and the breakdown and explaining what's been going on and your own experiences. To someone who is listening to this and didn't go to university, intellectually curious, What is postmodernism? Explain to that person what postmodernism is and then the effects that it's having on society, particularly universities at the moment. Right. It sounds like an academic answer,

but one of the problems is, if you ask what postmodernism is, it's defined by various people in various ways. So I'll give you my definition, but there will be people who disagree, and this is one of the frustrating things. If no one can agree on the definition, how do you analyze it?

Very postmodern, by the way. Exactly. But I think the shortest version would be to say that it's a response to modernism. And I think that's also one of the misapprehensions. Modernism defined as in art and culture, highly technologized societies. So, you know, Duchamp, I think David Starkey talked about that. The fragmentation of technological society, modernist art was trying to represent that or engage with it. And for me, postmodernism, are in a modernism.

intellectuals struggling to think, well, how do we, given this fragmentation, so Samuel Beckett, people like that, Sartre, the existentialists, everyone's trying to make sense of what this technological society has done, and they came up against a brick wall with existentialism. So Sartra wrote a critique of dialectical reason, which took existentialism and tried to make it Marxist. Who else? T.S. Eliot, I think what's one of the ironies, he was a conservative. but in his poetry, you know, the wasteland, you know, this isn't news, but it's not full of giggles and laughs.

It's dark, dark stuff. The hollow men. It describes my career, actually. I think at one point in the hollow men, they say, this is how the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. Mine ended, my career ended with, I did an online class where none of the students show their faces. So it was like some very ugly narcissists looking in this screen, this person. pool looking back at myself. And one by one, these non-faces with just a name, disappeared off the screen.

And that was my last lecture ever. So that was nice. But I mean, post-modernism. Modernism is what it's reacting to. And it's trying to make sense of that. So there was an article in the telegraph. By the time this goes out, it would maybe about two Thursdays ago. Nick Timothy, who you might remember the name.

he was an advisor to Theresa May. So this is a bit like the right-wing version of Alastair Campbell. Given Nick Timothy's performance as a political advisor, how does he get the gig writing for a national newspaper? He didn't seem to go very well with Teresa. But he does anti-blames post-modernism, as people tend to do. And he mentioned specifically Foucault and Derrida. Now, so a U.O.K. I can explain differently,

but if you took Fouca and Derrida, this is someone writing in a national newspaper, they're his definition of what postmodern thinkers are. Fouca and Douglas Murray's written negatively about Fouca, but Fouca was a French thinker who's trying to make sense of these modern trends, the alienating aspects of technology. And what he did was look at various epochs in history. He called them epistines. And his argument was that it's a what we can say,

intellectually, how you conceptualize things, is dominated by ways of thinking that you may not even realize you're being circumscribed by. So if you took it back to classical times, they had notions of virtue. They had notions of honor that we just don't have. Socrates famously died. He got offered a chance to escape. He refused because he said it was honor. If you look at a softening, Apophocles and Tigone. This is a story of a woman who, it's a big internecine conflict in a Greek city-state, but her brother gets killed.

He tries to have a coup. And the custom of the time was you have to bury your relations. And word was put out. He's lying outside the city. If anyone tries to bury him, they will be killed. And she buries him. He says, sod you. It's my blood.

I have to bury him. that is the law. So she goes to the wall for the law. There's the Spartans, you know, the Battle of Thermopylae. There's that famous thing, Oh, stranger passing by, what was it, a stranger passing by, go tell the Spartans loyal to our customs, here we lie.

So they all died because they didn't want to portray what it was to be a Spartan. So that's an example of classical times. Modern times, we don't think in that way. So one of the obvious arguments is, you know, the postmodernists are defined as being relativists. There's no absolute truth. Nothing really matters. And I just think it's a massive mischaracterization.

Richard Rorty is another postmodernist. And he was, someone said to him, are you a postmodernist or a nihilist? And he said, neither. I'm an ethnocentrist. And what he meant by that was he said, he found American, democratic values. It was very unusual for doing this. He said American democratic values are actually what's worked the best. So he didn't believe in truth and he quipped, he got taken up for it. I think it was mostly joking. He said the truth is what your peers will allow you to get away with

saying. But he had this strong sense of like science, all knowledge is tested and in any given environment the truth will be what survives the testing process. So Einstein eventually overtook at a subatomic level, Newtonian physics doesn't work. So Newtonian physics was the episteme, it was the way of thinking, and that controlled how we were able to think about gravity. Einstein comes along, and actually he's rewritten, and they're still using technology now. There was something in the paper about, in a black hole,

they're finding that Einstein's theory is being borne out, they can see what's happening, but they think they might be coming to the point when Einstein's theory is stretched to the limit. So that's a Foucaultean idea. Now, I don't know what you think. I don't see the idea that truth is relative. They mean it in quite a specific way.

And Derrida is the other guy. He's often labeled as he doesn't believe in a concept of truth. What he actually means is things are incommensurable. So one of the examples is a brilliant guy If people want to check this out Because it is complicated But there's a guy called Chris Watkin

Who he's like my doppelganger I'm like Dr Jekyll He's like Mr Hyde He's really nice And he'll say things like He'll be asked a really stupid question And he'll say That's a wonderful helpful question

Thank you And then explain it But he does Derrida and Fouca And he's from the Reformed Church So he's actually a card carrying banner waving Christian. And he engages with Derrida and Foucah and applies them to old biblical scriptures. And he makes the point that with Derrida, it's like saying if someone nearest and dearest to you, you said, how much would it take before you'd agree to have them killed?

And this is a bad question for me, because I just have a terrorist. You just take notes. Yeah. He's got his card laminy. Exactly. I know my figure. But I think the point... That's comforting. Thanks, mate. I think the point Chris Watkins trying to make is that, well, actually,

you can't put a value on your nearest. It's an incommensurable question. So in that sense, truth is relative. And that's the short version. He'll give lots of ethical examples from Christianity. Do you think this is part of the problem, though, in that we are talking about these topics, whether it's postmodernism, whether it's all of these, you know, big terms, schools of thought, and then people are talking about them in the media,

people are talking about them in their workplace. And the problem is, is that most people, to put it bluntly, haven't done the reading. And they're having discussions about things that they fundamentally don't understand. Well, it's Richard Grannon an interview. I'll take you back to that. And it was interesting. I know, I don't think it was, you're making a serious point, Constantine, but you did say at one point, thinking isn't power.

So give me some practical examples. And Richard Grannon did the Chris Watkin thing. Well, thank you. But then if you actually listened to what he said, he basically said, he's saying it was a stupid question. No, no, what he actually then went on to say was we need to think more. And we need to have the Socratic method. And there's a point that Theodore Adorno has this beautiful phrase where he said,

when the doors are barricaded, it's doubly important thought not be interrupted. And one of the points of that is that when it's all kicking, off. Newcastle on a Saturday night. It's people have this reaction. It's like, let's go and do something. And often they go down the wrong. So I'll give you one very specific, hopefully helpful example to listeners or viewers. Bob Geldof, live aid. He did this, remember him swearing at the, I remember the originally swearing at the television saying, you know, don't bother about credit card sending cash or something. He's going, you know, swearing in his Irish accent. Fast forward, he's on the Thames lobbying abuse at Nigel Farage about the EU.

Now, the whole point about live aid was you're dealing with the symptom of African poverty. Now, I'd argue from an economic, having an economics background, one of the major problems of African poverty, it's not everything, but a major element is African farmers have never been able to compete on an equal playing field with places like the EU. Why? Because it's not, they don't have free access. There's tariffs. So if Bob Geldof wanted to do one practical thing, if he genuinely cared about the African people, he'd be banging on the doors in Brussels saying give African farmers access. And that would, but no, we want Italian, French farmers to be subsidised. So that was the point about Bob Geldof did something incredibly practical.

He got off his backside, people will lord him. But then he seems completely oblivious because he's a celebrity, and he's famous for being famous. He's not stupid, but also I don't think he's half as bright as he thinks he is. And another example would be, I'd have to please indulge me? I want to get this off my chest. Have you ever seen there's a Norwegian, I think Swedish co-production called Scavlin? He was a journalist and they're on YouTube.

He did a series of interviews of quite big names. Jordan Peters and Richard Dawkins, these type of people he'd interview. And he had Jarvis Cocker on. And it's all done in English, which is helpful. But Jarvis Cocker went on this rant about Brexit. And he was saying it was, what was he saying? Basically, he made analogies with the music industry and said that occasionally you'll get a record that will get to number one from nowhere.

And he says it's very dodgy. And he didn't really have an argument apart from it. Overwhelmingly, what came across was Java's Cocker didn't like the fact that Britain had voted to leave the EU. And you can ask many questions about that. But one is, why do we care what Jarvis Cocker thinks? He gets that platform because he's made a song ironically called Common People. So he claims to understand common people. And I just thought, you know, what an absolute tosser.

You completely misunderstood. And if I can ask you to a question, you know, you probably won't be aware, but you know the Welsh voted for devolution in 1997. So they had a Welsh Assembly. Do you know what the turnout was? I think it was 50.2% of the people turned out. Do you know what? The majority, it was a binary question. Do you want a Welsh Assembly or do you not?

You know what the winning percentage was? 0.6%. And guess what? We got a Welsh Assembly. Without a big fuss. Well, because it was self-it. It was explained. This is the question.

There weren't any limits. It was only just 50% of the population. If you don't care enough to vote, you don't have a say. Winner takes all. I can't, I've never ever seen anyone in any media format complain that this was a travesting or a stitch or so jarvis. Well, it's one of the, the, if you look at the genesis of trigonometry with me and Francis, one of the things that we both found. And I use it, I don't use this term lightly. I was disgusted by the way that people reacted to their vote. And by the

way, as you well know, Francis and I both voted remain in that referendum. But the idea that because you didn't get the result you wanted out of a referendum, that you are entitled to undermine the that you're entitled to try to overturn the result. I mean, I've told the story before, but I'll tell it again. I was having a meal with some friends from my translation days when I was in Edinburgh for the festival. And there was a French girl there. And she was, I don't know what the problem is.

In France, we had the vote, and it did not go away, so we did it again? And she looked at me as if I was supposed to, like, clap along to this. It was outrageous. And I completely agree with you. Sorry to interrupt, but as you're saying that, there was a documentary where Francois Hollande was interviewed. And I think it might have even been a BBC documentary when I still watched the BBC. It's how long ago it was. And he basically said to the interviewer, why did you not just ignore the vote?

And it was cold seriousness. It's your point. This is how these people think. And so for us, as two people who actually believe in democracy and in fair play and justice, and which are all British values, by the way, that we've seemed to have forgotten about, We were both indignant at that in itself. And then, of course, the other thing, which is anyone who disagrees with me

is a massive racist and all of that. Just complete lies. And I felt very... I was disgusted by it. You can't just... I mean, when democracy does not go your way, whether that's Donald Trump and his non-election, right?

Or Brexit or whatever. Democracy relies and loses consent. That's what that's about. And the moment you start messing with that program, you're going down a very dark path very, very quickly. So I hear you on that. But coming back to your point about thinking versus doing, I think what we were talking about with Richard is that I agree with you that when we're talking about,

and I want to ask you about what you think is actually going on, because it's not postmodernism in your conception. The fact of the matter is that no matter what ideas you have, at the end of the day, that is not going to change reality. out there, right? If you're concerned about the university or you're concerned about the media or if you're concerned about any of those things, there is something that you're going to have to do once you've decided what that is, once you've thought about it, once you've had the ideas and conceptions and structures and whatever, someone somewhere is going to have to do something

to change those things. And so for me, for example, with the media, what you're talking about is we are sitting right here doing this, we are changing the media by doing this. If we were just thinking, if you were sitting at home and he was sitting at home and I was sitting home and we were having ideas about how the media ought to be different, we'd be in a very different position because this wouldn't exist and people wouldn't be watching this and they wouldn't go, oh, three people can sit down and have a rational conversation for an hour. And so I think doing and thinking, they will go hand in hand.

What you're talking about is very much the Thomas Sol thing, which is people who do things that make them feel good instead of things that actually make the right difference. I think what I'm also doing is I totally, agree. And I knew when you were talking with Richard, it wasn't the point. I wasn't trying to misrepresented. It wasn't the only aspect you were mentioning. Yeah. And I totally, and I think David Starkey mentioned about it. It's like being under an elephant, you can poke. The irony is I'm retired. I've wanted to come into the music. MC Hammer can't touch this. But that is profoundly

sad. Yes. Yes. The fact that I'm here because, and I did, to be fair to me, which I do like to be, I was writing in the 19, the turn of the 2000s, 2003, I wrote an article about the bureaucracy. And Frank Faradies, you know, ignore me, go and read a lot of his stuff. He'd been writing about this book after book after book. So this has been going on, but my slight, I'm not sure I'm disagreeing with you, but it's just that, yeah, doing all this stuff is. But one point I'd make is the fact that you're having to do this, you're taking risks, because you're being entrepreneurial.

Where all three of us, I think I still pay just about pay tax, we're paying for a national broadcaster to insult us on a daily basis. That gets my goad. I get it. So, apart from anything else, I demand my right not to pay to be insulted. I agree with you. But my point is to you is thinking about that and being indignant about it isn't going to change anything. No, no, I totally agree.

But anyway, let's not dwell on that because actually I think the most fascinating, question to ask you is what you think is going on in the world. Where is all this stuff that we talk about on the show, the stuff that is destroying universities a step at a time? What is going on and where's that come from? Well, it relates to what we've just been talking about in the sense. I get the sense and you chip in if you think I'm going off on one. But it's this, we go around in circles. So I mentioned the misrepresentation in my view of what postmodernism is. But if I just throw out another idea, if I say to you, anyone heard of Nietzsche, A lot of people, if they have heard him,

well, oh yeah, isn't that the guy who ended up snogging a horse and went mad? Just that's one little example. The accusation he snogged a horse because he had syphilis, I think, is what goes around. The syphilis has never been confirmed, and it's actually highly unlikely, because this isn't from personal experience.

But tertiary syphilis, tertiary syphilis takes about two or three years to hit. He had 11 years before he died. But he went Gargar. but they think it was a benign tumour potentially, or they've looked at his medical records and tried to, tertiary syphilis was the default diagnosis. So that's just one little example.

It was the COVID of its day. But at least you enjoyed getting syphilis. That's what you think. Well, but Francis's point is that people are using terms they don't know about. Yes. So a very quick answer to what you're saying is, I think what's dominating the problem in our society is, There's a, not even, because it sounds like conspiracy theories, there's a technocratic.

And to call them an elite is wrong because they're heraldically bad at their jobs. But I can't think of a major institution. I was moaning too off camera about the situation or train system. But there are managers to the guilds in all major institutions in this country who on a routine, regular basis, can't punch their way out of the world. wet paper bag. And Mike, but they will give you tabulations. They will give you formulations.

It's the Neil Ferguson effect with COVID. That isn't any system we have, apparently, to hold these people to account. So Andrew Dahl has been in this chair and said that it doesn't matter if you vote, whichever party, you're not getting genuine left or right. What you're getting, and it reminded me of, I saw an interview Douglas Murray did with Ed Vasing. Ed Vazey's in the Lords. but I think at one point Ed Vasey was Culture Secretary.

And it made me think, talking about Nietzsche, it made me think of Nietzsche's last man. Douglas Murray, you know, false, good things. I happen to think he's very good at a lot of what he does. When he was arguing with Ed Vasey, it just became so apparent to me. Douglas had integrity. He had a rational argument that everyone can agree or disagree with,

but you know what he's saying. And he was arguing it. I think the discussion was about the Tate Gallery. And they were decolonising it. I saw that interview. He was very good in that. Yeah. But Ed Vasey wasn't.

No. And I'd ask you, why do you think Ed Vasey wasn't? My answer would be because he's a time-serving technocrat who's gone to the lords. I'd have a different answer for you. Well, my view is he's a time-serving technocrat. He's part of a club. I'll give you a different example that Francis might be more interested in. Angela Rainer, professional northerner.

So she's in the Commons. never loses an opportunity. From north. Have you heard her say one single thing about the grooming gangs? No. As a woman, a white woman from the north of England, it's jaw-dropping. And my answer, why she's never said anything?

And if she has, I apologise, but she's certainly not said it in a high-profile forum. Because she's part of a club, whether you're conservative, Lib Dem, Labor, even SNP, You're part of a club, you've got all these perks, you're performing in the media realm. They're not engaging with genuine truth. They're not engaging with genuine politics. So my answer to your question is, what's going on?

We're going around in a loop where concepts don't have genuine depth because people don't understand the terms they're using. Or they do and they deliberately misuse them. So we could talk about another time, but I think Stephen Hicks, I know I think you like him, but his analysis of postmodernism is just off the scale wrong. Or at least if he was prepared to say this is applied postmodernism and its people have taken some ideas, mash them up and made a complete mess of them, then I'd agree with him. But the way which he talks about some of these trends,

I just think is profoundly wrong. But that's led to, and I get what you're saying about doing things, but one of, I think, the strongest arguments that you and Francis keep putting forward is we need rational argument in good faith. Who could disagree with that? And I'm not joking. This is what I was going to say to you. No, no, no.

I think this is fascinating. By the way, I'm sure it would be very interesting to talk to Stephen Hicks about and maybe even have both of you on at the same time for an interview that would be watched by about three people about the depths of postmodernism. But I think the reason these people operate in the way that they do. And I think about this because, you know, I'm interested in debating ideas and communicating ideas and so on.

I think they are captured by an ideology that essentially prevents them from seeking the truth. And so if you're at Vasey and you're talking about that particular issue, what that issue is really about, they were talking about the tape, but it was in the context of slavery, racism and all of that, right? Racism, sexism, trans, there are a few issues on which, you know, if you're part of this sort of liberal elite in an inverted commas, you have not a rationally derived opinion, but received wisdom. You must think about this. This is where the mantra trans women are women comes from.

Nobody who's ever thought about biology, anatomy, irrationality, human nature, men and women, childbirth, any aspect of humanity that is actually real could possibly make that statement in good faith. It is a statement of faith. It is a statement of ideological adherence. Will I just jump in there? I'd slightly correct you.

It's not good. It's not faith. It's bad faith. What I mean is it's a belief rather than a rationally derived opinion. Yeah, but except, and with someone like Ed Vasey, my point is he's intelligence that this is what makes it worse. If I thought Ed Vesey believed a word he said, I'd have a little bit more respect for him. I believe that he does believe what he says. He's bright enough.

He knows what he's doing. And that's what saddens me. No one. It just came into my mind, as I'm speaking, that one of the things that I finally stopped watching the BBC, I will watch when you're on question time,

I'll have to find where I've put it on me, widescreen TV little thing. But Robert Winston, so this is one of the issues, like, how do you talk about things? Yes. Robert Winston, I can whisper on about postmoderners

and people think, what's you're going on about? No Mark, very minor career. Robert Winston, it's like if God gave you the most respected biologist in this country, it would be Robert Winston. Yes. He's on question time. He gave what I thought, I'm not being critical, anodyne answer about, because he was asked about this trans issue, about chromosomes.

He explained the basic biology about chromosomes. Fiona Bruce, who's the Cathy Newman of the BBC. So what you're saying is, what Fiona B.O. Bruce then said was when they passed over the question. I think I need to point out at this point there will be some viewers at home are offended by what you've just said. How can you be offended by the country's most eminent biologist giving you a couple of lines from what used to be a basic biology textbook? To me, go sorry, go for it and I'll make my point. If an academic at that standard is reduced to not being, not even going beyond a basic A-level biology book,

But then having, so it's in Fridig, he's performing at a level exponentially below his intellectual capability when it comes to biology. And even at that low level, he's been told by a numb nut presenter who thinks because she's sat in the church, she's the controller of the knowledge. He's being corrected. So this is what I'd add to the discussion is. how do you have any type of rational debate when the people most qualified, even in good faith? He wasn't saying anything nasty. They're shut down or they're told that your argument is not valid. Where does this rational debate occur?

Yeah. It's got to occur outside of these institutions because the institutions are corrupted, therefore you can't have good faith rational debates on them because they will be shut down through the tools that we all know that they use. So it has to be in places like this. But I would also say to you, Paul, there's also a biological element to this, which is we are programmed to be part of a tribe. We are programmed to want to be accepted

because in the days of the African savannah, being expelled from the tribe meant death. It meant being on your own and being not being able to hunt, you'd be dead within days. So we don't want to be expelled from the tribe. We don't want to be ostracized. We don't want to be alienated. It's hardwired into us. to go against a grain, to stand up against a mob, that is a preserve of very few people who, in my, dare I say, uneducated point of view, that to me is almost overriding your biology.

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Discover the euphoria elixir collection by Calvin Klein. But the trouble I have with that argument is that it's the mob, and this is the role in my background in studying technology. And you'll well know the mob is the vocal mob on Twitter. No, but it's not, but it's also, but the mob, I also mean the people, For instance, let's say you do, let's say you say you say, trans women aren't women. I don't, let's say you work at the BBC, you say,

look, I don't believe trans women are women. I believe a woman is an adult human female. Now, 10 years ago, that is, I mean... If you had that conversation 10 years ago, people would look at you like you were a fucking weirdo. Yeah, exactly. Then what you're saying, sorry, I'm just clarifying. You're a mob, though.

I think what you mean is, it's the institution of the BBC and the dominant culture. No, but it's, but it's, it is, it's a dominant culture, but it's also the, that there are people within that institution who you may not even know, who may be nice to your face, who when they hear you say that, will try and get you fired as a result. But that's not, my only slight, I'm not being pedantic, I probably will sound pedantic, but what I'm trying to say is, that is not a mob, as I understand, a mob.

My frustration is, you're totally correct. What you're describing, though, is an institution that is failing at its most basic level. The managers are failing. Agreed. The people, yeah. But this isn't a mob. People are scared because they don't want to be part of the tribe. This is a Thomas Sowell self-annointed mini-trile

who are consciously and deliberately imposing their values on the country. I agreed. I agree. And when I was, I tell you the story because it very much fits this narrative. I have a foreign name. I have dark skin.

I look a bit different. I'm clearly not British, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I used to go in and do this radio program on the BBC. when I was doing stand-up a couple of nights a week. And they'd invite me on,

and there was this young woman there who works at the BBC, who would co-host it with me. And because I have a foreign name and she'd assume I'm one of them. And the way they talk about these things, some of them, at least at the BBC, I mean, they don't,

you think that these people don't understand, rather they pretend that what they're saying is one thing but then something else. No, no, no, they're true believers. And she was saying to me, well, now, now we've got, now we're in charge. You know, it's about equity. It's about diversity.

Like, that's how they think. They think that the country is overrun by people like you, racist, bigoted northerners, right? Who are a bit, you know. And finally, we have the opportunity to take Britain into the 21st century. That's how they think. They think that this is our time. We are the revolutionaries. They're not sitting there, you know, going, oh, we're going to do some evil shit here.

They think they're improving the world. They are true believers. And in terms of, you know, the majority, minority, whoever, look, the history of the world's, you know this better than me. The history of the world is always determined by a small group of people who sees the public's imagination, who sees the means of control over that society, whatever it is. There's a great speech that Bridget Gabriel gave about Islamic extreme Islam. know if you ever seen this. It's one of the most powerful speeches you ever heard talking about this. You know, the history of the world has changed by a small group of people who, who believe very strongly in what they believe in, and they seize the means of production

in Marxist language. Yeah, I think what I'd add to that, though, is a slightly different perspective. I think, you know, Hannah Arendt wrote the banality of evil. Yes. And if I got to chat with her, if she was alive, I'd say, I think you should have called it the evil of banality. Yes. Because it's the banal nature of what's going on. Yes. So I'll give you an example, because I appreciate it can all be airy-fairy if we're not careful, and it probably already has been. But a very specific example, if you, because I think the university is a dire situation,

and listeners of you is making, oh, he's bitter. I'm not, because he's retired, didn't go the way he wanted to. But I suggest go to the University of Leeds website. They've got an initiative, inverted commas, redefining the curriculum, which I think you probably can work out what this is. And they've got a load of people doing a professionally produced video. And it reminds me,

are you familiar with David Sedaris? Yes. He's an American raconteur, a very funny guy. He's got quite a squeaky voice and tells the stories. And whenever he tells them in front of an audience, it's brilliant. But he was a journalist, and he did an article for something called Stadium Mate. And basically, it's a bizarre example. But it's basically a catheter.

So you go to a big sports event in America, and I'm not judging Americans, but some of them are quite poorly. And they've got their jumbo Coke and their massive burgers and everything, and they don't want to have to go to the toilet. so you can go in your chair into your stadium mate. And he said he was testing it. He was testing. I don't think I ever took off. There's a surprise.

But the look on your face is what I was going to say. He tested it. And he said he was checking into a hotel somewhere. And he said, in theory, you just go whenever you want. And he said, but he was just about to check in and he decided to have a whittle. And he said, the person who's serving at the counter of the hotel knew, what he was doing. And he knew what he was doing because he had this thousand-yard stare. And why I say that is, you look at this video. These University of Leeds employees are mouthing inanities

about, we are going to make the curriculum available to everyone, dumbing down, etc., etc. And they have this look, and there's a brilliant, brilliant book. It's not, I think it's been reissued because I've got a relatively modern copy, but this guy called Robert J. Lifter, and it was called thought reform, the psychology of totalism. And then I think the subtitle was Brainwashing in China. And he was an American psychiatrist in the army. And in the 1950s, the books published in the 1960s, but he did his research, 1950s, because I know you've got your Soviet background.

And I could mention examples from the Nazi periods of this totalitarian. and maybe the Chinese example doesn't get spoken of enough. But he did this study of basically brainwashed. I think in Chinese it's Xi now, and there'll be Mandarin speakers at home thinking, why is he just ordered a bowl of noodles? But I think it literally means wash brain. And he got these people who'd been brainwashed.

They tended to be Catholic priests or general Christian clergy. And at the back of the book, it's called Chin Huen Lin, he was the most eminent professor of formal logic. I think it was probably Beijing University. And he did a confession, a written confession, and he publishes it in the appendix. And one of the things that mentioned in China, they did curriculum reform.

And he gets accused, and this is why I get slightly defensive when people go on about postmodernism, because he's accused, he has to do this explanation where he says, I was accused, I have played concept games. I am guilty because I should have only thought in a way that helped the people's republic. So the idea was there are limits to how you can think, and I'd just make the suggestion that when people are slagging off postmodernism,

just be aware, telling people the limits to which they should take thought has a bad heritage as well, as well as the misuse of these things in totalitarian society. So in Victor Klemprev, the Nazi example, he was a Jewish philologist, a studier of language. And he's done a book called The Language of the Third Reich. And it's poignant as hell because the very beginning is he talks about Greek definitions of heroism in the classics. And he makes the point that at the most brave it, because in Germany at the time, heroism, that was the word that was used, like today there are buzzwords. and he said his wife was so-called Arian and he was Jewish.

So he said she, her life was worse. It was unbelievably bad because she was voluntarily giving up all her privileges and being spat out in the streets. And I know it's not worse just because she didn't happen to be Jewish. She was not Jewish and could have just walked away. And she went through all this. He said, that is heroism. But one of the things he says was, we have this misunderstanding,

you know, propaganda is so powerful. He said he'd be sat there in an apartment and just observing non-Jewish Germans, and the radio would be on with gerbils. And people weren't listening. And he said they were talking about what they were going to get, the shops the next day. But he said, what did have an effect,

as a professional philologist, he noticed certain words got redefined. And in Nazi Germany, it was the constant repetition of words in daily life. that his professional experience said and his horrible personal experience was that's what had the most profound effect. So there's Robert J. Lifton, his analysis of these various people who've escaped, they had different methods, but he said there were two basic Chinese government methods. One is you're deconstructed, to use a postmodern term, as an individual. So your individuality,

your social networks, so ideally they'd get you in thought reform prison. But they're not just prison. The government did thought reform classes that people voluntarily signed up for. So if you wanted to get ahead in China, you'd sign up for your certificate. And in modern universities, what's happening is people decide the only way to have a very successful career, you know, despite what they tell you, teaching doesn't matter. That it really, um, as a teacher, I could have told you that right at the start of this interview. Yeah, but they don't, they play, in all the glossy brochures. The only thing they're bothered about is publications

and if you can bring in research money. And they really don't care. So those people, they've, I've seen it happen. And I think, you know, the guy who wrote Darkness at Noon, Arthur Kessler, it's a brilliant book about being imprisoned in a totalitarian. It's a novel. But he did this very funny little short article where he called, I think he called it the Commissars and the Yogi.

He said people are divided into two, types. The yogi is the spiritualist dreamer and the commissar. You'll know them from, if you've, you'll know, Constantine, but if you've ever had any engagement with any bureaucracy, you know what a commissar is. He's the person with the clipboard and the power. And the universities have created these institutions within the university where you don't have to be that good. You can climb the greasy pole by being a commissar, by enforcing language codes. And guess what? You set up a language code unit. I think Leeds has now got some harassment unit, so good job I left.

And guess what? When you have a unit devoted to finding harassment, you'll know this from the Soviet example. Guess what? An awful lot of harassment is found because they have to justify their own existence. And then the inefficiency, so tell me whether this is just made up, but they measure productivity by stupid, for example, weight of light bulbs. So what they did is they make the light bulbs heavier. And then you find you can't see through them, but they've met their targets because they've just produced bloody heavy light bulbs. So these irrationalities you're asking, you know, what's going wrong? You've got these people in institutions, within institutions, that are pushing.

And then it becomes a question of, again, ironically, this is where postmodernism helps. It doesn't matter if they believe in it. So this concept of belief, there are various fascinating postmodern ways of thinking about it. You've got a young child and I'm guessing he's Nikolai, isn't he? He doesn't know. I'm stalking you. He doesn't know. You've done more research for this interview than we have, me believe me. He doesn't know Christmas yet. But, oh, sorry, that's a bit of an odd. I don't know whether you will celebrate Christmas. It is. I'm thinking, I'm trying to desperately scramble. New Year. Yeah. Hanukkah, whatever. No, no, New Year. Father Frost.

Right, Father Frost, sorry. Yeah. But if you wanted to explain that, You will eventually explain that to him or he'll get his presence and be all chuffed. But there's a concept where, as Jujek writes about, the concept of we pretend to pretend to believe. And what he means by that is, as adults, no one will say we believe in Father Christmas. But actually, we believe in the children's innocence. Even when the children have worked out, this is all nonsense. We need to believe in those children believing. So there are levels of belief.

And there's another funny example. I think there's an Ethiopian tribe. called the Drosay, I think it is, and they're Christians, and they believe in fast days, and they believe, for some bizarre reason, the leopard is a Christian animal. But on fast days, when the leopard's supposed to be fasting, which they believe he does, they still guard all their livestock. So we have this idea that primitive people have primitive beliefs. No, they have beliefs that they realize tie the community together,

and they pick and choose what they truly believe. It's actually quite sophisticated. We as thicker Westerners, patronizingly. But apply this to modern institutions. And what you get is there will be some of these commissars, and you'll have experience or know of this from the Soviet Union, who are born again, nutty commissars. But there are others who are doing it for completely manipulative, cynical reasons.

Of course. And this is why you have to, look, you've got those people who are true believers, and they are the ones that are driving. this. And they have created in the universities and in the media and in the corporate world and in spore and we could go on an incentive structure. And remember, people respond to incentives above all. That's what drives human behavior to a large extent. People will do the thing that benefits them when to the extent that they're able to assess that. So you've got these true believers. And then the rest of us, we are fighting over that 80, 85% in the middle of people who will go and either

direction which is why a small number of extremists can change the course of history because if they can persuade brainwash manipulate inspire whatever the words you want to use that big majority in the middle they get to do whatever their program is whatever their agenda is that that small group and I think it's much worse than you say to the to in the sense that if these were evil people who in the technocratic elitist division that got together and were doing blah blah blah That'd be quite bad, but you can get a lot more done and you can inspire a lot more people if you truly believe the crazy thing that you're selling.

And I think these people, it's a religion. It's a cult, that some of them are true believers. And then there's a large group of people who will go along with it because it's convenient for them. I'm not disagreeing. I think one slight nuance, Adad, is that there's a thing called, I think it's Sipalinski. The soul's called... Solerlinsky. No, no, sorry.

It's some like sepalinky triangles they're called. Oh, right. And it's this weird thing is if you basically do three dots and then do something in the middle and join it up, and basically you can get, by the time you finish bisecting all these angles, you get a fractal shape. And all you're doing is repeating a pattern, a very simple pattern. So one interpretation of this is that, again,

some of these people don't believe, but if you're in an environment where there's a certain, without saying you do this in your local environment if you do one little act a similar act happens somewhere else and cross society you get there's a immensely symmetrical fractal pattern agreed and so that again is slightly it doesn't it's not so much about belief but it's it's about the power I'm the enforcement of the belief on other people I agree with you but that but what I'm trying to suggest is the enforcement can be quite subliminally it's

in the Nazi case in Nazi Germany within Jewish Holocaust scholars, there is a slight division. I think they're called the intentionalists who interpret what happened mostly as Hitler's personal. But there's also a group called structuralists, and I'm giving a broad divide. But there's a guy called Raul Hilberg who wrote this. It's in some ways horrible, beautiful writing, but horrible. It's a three-volume. You can get a one volume, but the whole thing is three volumes called the annihilation of the European Jews. And what's unique, about it is he was obsessed with the bureaucratic evidence so it's the evidence of at the most lowest level and there's a small pamphlet he did separately

about the Reichs barn which is the state network system railway and get how sick this is he was talking about the bureau the bureaucracy creates an environment were structurally things happen that never would have on their own and he gives the haunting example of they had an internal accounting system when people moved to the death camps as if they were bags of grain and if you were under 11 you went free on the internal accounting system this is how divorced from humanity but the point Raul Helberg and he's been criticized from other people who prefer to emphasize the intentionality of all these things and like most things in life my suspicion is the

truth somewhere in the middle but I just think it's a slight mistake sometimes to fail to pay very, very close attention to the way these things can occur on their own, because they're part of a structure. They're not on their own, though. You still have to have the Hitler at the top. And then the structures will provide whatever the Hitler at the top wants provided. So it's a combination, like you say, the truth is in the middle. The bureaucracy on its own has the ability to carry out the worst of things or the best of things,

depending on what it is that is being sent down from the top, right? But it is the ideologues of the top that determine the course of how that goes. And that's why alternative institutions to what we've got now are so important. That's why new media is breaking the mold. You talk about dumbing down? Well, what are we doing here? We're dumbing up, right? No, no.

I'll give you a personal example because I'm reading all this bizarre stuff. There's a guy in this state called Henry Abramson, who's a rabbi, who does some amazing, because I'm getting into Old Testament-type scripture stuff from a literary point of view. And he breaks down the Talmud and the Torah and the midrash. And there's a brilliant scholar, David Boyerin, sorry, Daniel Boyerin, who's, I give him the prize for the best title I've read in recent times. It's Socrates and the Fat Rabbis. He's written a book. And he's a fascinating, devout rabbinical scholar.

And it's your point. I can get all this on the Tintanet. It's absolutely amazing. But without sounding pompous, I will sound pompous. If you've got pre-existing reading skills and cultural hinterland and background, you can make use of all this stuff. But there are a whole generation of students I've left behind who don't have this. Frank Faradie makes a really funny comment. He said in one of his books, he criticised the fact that some of his students in the humanities can get a whole degree without having read a complete book.

He said this is outrageous. And he said after he'd published the book, he got contacted by university administration. Oh God, what's going to be said now. And the administrator said, yes, you're correct. And he's like, what? He goes, you're correct. And this is a wonderful thing, because it just shows we have multi-learning platforms. And this is the point.

There are struck, I don't mean to bang on about the structural elements, but if the, and what, you know, why? You are a critical theorist after all. Yeah, but why am I here? Because I believe in this. I, but what did I tell my first story is I believe in the truth. I agree with it. And all we can do is what we can do. But I thought something, it made me think,

because I think you sometimes get frustrated, it strikes me because you do want practical answers, now you'll understand why. Here's just a slightly odd thought. I just think we could all be a bit more canny. You know, on radio four, I'll stop listening to that as well. Is it Robinson in the morning? The guy who does the interviews.

Nick Robinson. And have you ever heard him let anyone speak for more than five words before he interrupts them? I have actually. I think Nick Robinson is not as bad as others, but I take your point. They all interrupt all the time. Sorry, well, I might have picked the wrong person, but one of the reasons I just stopped listening was it's not because I'm being petty. It's just I want to listen to people speak. I was just wondering whether there are more techniques whereby the one thing on radio they can't stand is silent. When they've interrupted you for the third time, just don't say anything until they say, are you there, can you say something? I'll respond when you stop interrupting me. I do think they're very practice. It sounds like it's a good. very small example, but I do think there are practical things. And you've, because I stalk you online, there's the one where you're discussing... Listen to, he gets more troubling every minute. There's London, stop being English, the whole John Cleves. And there's a fascinating, you've got it on your site where you highlight, but it was the power of logic. And forgive me,

it's not been snippy, but you weren't saying anything, it wasn't, you know, Derrida. Well, my entire, the tragic of my entire... careers, I say very obvious things. And everyone goes, oh my God, that's amazing. But the only thing is funny, you just said, if Scotland, sorry, if London was 50% Scottish, would it be fair to say it's less English? And but you had, you were, forgive me, I think you got in on that discussion because you have an ethnic background. Yeah, I do. But wasn't to wipe, there was two mixed race presenters. Three people from ethnic minorities discussing has London stopped being?

white, something. And, but you just said, if we use the example of Scottishness, would that, would it be like, and the look of absolute confusion. But it's your point about that. That's why I said it's a cult. It's a cult. That's why it produces the blank stare when I give them the logical example,

because suddenly they're confronted with reality. Or maybe they're using a stadium, mate. Paul, touching on universities and, isn't the problem that what this system produces is an absence of meritocracy? From my own industry, not teaching but comedy, I saw, well, we both saw it. This cult, ideology, whatever you want to call it, come in and infect an entire industry. And what happened in the Edinburgh Festival, the moment I knew that the Edinburgh Festival was finished as an institution, was because you go and see shows that are patently not four and five star shows.

They were then given four and five stars because they espoused the ideology. They said the right words. They had the right views, the right opinions, et cetera. And once that happens, meritocracy is done because it's not an accurate reflection of the quality of the work. Isn't that what's happening at universities? Yeah, there's layers to respond to that. And before I forget, it was talking about comedy. I came across it.

It was in Nietzsche's birth of tragedy. He referred to comics. They're the toxic discharge of absurdities, nausea, which I thought was... Doesn't sound like a compliment, man. But no, but the meritocracy, because I lived in Edinburgh for all that time, I went to a lot of the fringe, and it strikes me that it's very similar to the BBC. It's not what you know, it's who you know. And it is surprising, though, because I think there's a bit of unity between us in the sense of background, in the sense you're in a comedy industry, if I can call it that.

And you would have thought the most basic thing you do in comedy is tell jokes. And the most basic element of a joke is, and this is just obvious to comedians that you don't know in advance what's funny. You push the boundaries, or you turn into Michael McIntyre. Or the weirdest, I'd love to get your opinion on Frankie Boyle. what happened to him. I'm a seemingly normal, you know, telling terribly cruel jokes to going full-on woke. Strange things happen.

But anyway. Paul, before you go on, and I know I've been hogging the microphone, I should say Michael McIntosh is a fantastic comedian. He's absolutely brilliant. He's technically brilliant. He's fantastic at making a large number of people laugh. He's not necessarily an intellectual person's comedian,

But, you know, if you're going to be selling out stadiums, Michael McIntyre is brilliant. Francis and I both have a lot of respect to him. No, I have my, it's completely personal. This is why I mentioned Frankie Ball in the same sentence. When he was funny, I'm a dark. My interior monologue is notes from the underground. Dostoevsky around in my head. So I'm not a yardstick and I'm not a professional comic.

No, and I can imagine to do what he does. He's incredible. Michael McIntyre is supremely skilled comedian. Yeah, it's just not for you. Not for you. But the point that I was trying to make is the absence of meritocracy or when you erode meritocracy, the institution collapses. And that's any institution. And my point is, isn't that what's happening at universities now?

Where you do a literature degree, you don't have to read the book. You don't have the depth of study. You don't have the intellectual rigor. If you don't have the intellectual rigor, then it's not going to be an accurate reflection of your ability in that particular subject. If it's not an accurate reflection of your ability in that particular subject, then ultimately the degree that you were given is worthless. Yeah, and that, I mentioned, I went to university in 85 and it was about 12% of people. And then my career actually matched when I was doing my PhD. It was in the second year of my PhD, which I think I was.

think was about 91. I personally benefited because there was a massive expansion and I got to do tutorials. And this is 1991. I think in Edinburgh I was paid 18 pound an hour. It was like happy days. I did as many hours as I possibly could. But that was because they expanded the numbers. And that's when you notice it's your point. When you expand the numbers in and of itself, that reduces quality because you've gone away from this selective. And I've always joked that, you know, I'd have loved to play for Liverpool, the main football team, the main thing stopping me is fat and talentless. So I could probably still play for Everton.

You're going to get destroyed after this into by Anton. I'd like to say, I'm a fast runner, but I'm not even there. But so that's the sheer expansion dilutes. But then I've got mixed views because I'm a massive believer in elitism. So it really annoys me that Richard Granon, had this, he's a Spartan life coaching or something, doesn't it? Because I had this concept of Spartan therapy. You leave businessmen

on their underpants on the top of the hill in Wales where I live and shout at them a lot and they'll either recover or like the Spartans that they die on the mountain side. But where was it going with this? We were talking about meritocracy within the university system. Yeah, so it's the expansion, the numbers, the sheer

numbers. So, and then there's the fact the minute they start paying So I remember there was one point in my career where I was marking and one of the commissars said to me there's a massive disparity between the marks we're both giving. So I showed them the comments I'd made and said, oh, I see. And said, what do you mean? He said, you're marking the old way. So I missed the memo that said we're now.

But this is how it treats. What did that mean? What's the old way? I was using before the expansion. what would have been a first, a 2-1 and a 2-2. Nowadays, and this is the Guardian, which I know you two are massive fans of, they have things at the Guardian University League table.

Well, we're back to the Soviet manipulation statistics, and the Guardian League table, one of the criteria for how high you are is how many firsts do people leave the university with? Because that is a sign of the quality of the institution. Well, not if that feeds back. There's a feedback loop. Tell you what, lads,

if we give out a lot more first, we go up the table. Everyone's like, everyone's doing it. And why, if you're recruiting, let's just say you use my old standards. And the students and their parents, the helicopter parents, who by the way now attend, I think Frank Faradie again writes about this, they attend open days. So I remember saying any questions, I used to do open days with the admissions tutor. And any questions, and the parents, the kids are just sat there.

I'm thinking, I was going to say you do know you're going to have to come to university and write some essays on your own, but I don't think that's true. I do know of parents helping those, you know, professional parents helping their kids write essays. Paul, one of the things that I notice in my career in education is towards the end, it was a realisation that what schools were was essentially a factory for harvesting data, which then successive governments used to prove, that they were doing a good job in education. So, for instance, the way that the government deduced that they were doing a good job in primary schools is a SATs, which kids took at the age of 11. We had to teach them grammar.

Now, the way we taught them grammar didn't, in fact, helped them in any particular way with their writing, didn't teach them how to be better writers, how to construct a sentence, punctuation, or any of that. all it taught them was how to pass a grammar test. So we used to cram the kids full of this useless information that in two weeks' time they would have forgotten about simply to pass a test.

But once they've passed a test and the school gets 85%, the government can go look up, what a good job we're doing, tick. Is that what the university sector is like? Yeah, I've mentioned it before the idea of the Soviet, when everything's driven by statistics, you know, statistics are eminently fakable. And this is why, at the very beginning, everyone should be trained in statistics to know their weaknesses. Statistics are incredibly powerful and they get a bad rap because they're so often misused

because people don't know how to interpret them. If you don't know the difference in the media and the arithmetic average, I might know it, but I can't say it. This has an impact and you're completely correct. What that allows, when everything's data-driven, the people in charge of the data are all powerful. But Leeds, for example, that was one of the former, I believe it was one of the former vice-chancellor, Sir Alan Langland,

he was going to get rid of the classics department at Leeds. And they had to get an international petition to stop him. And at the moment, University of Turku in Finland, which I've been to, their classics department's under threat. And it's because of you, why, if you're obsessed with the statistics? And guess what? The classics are quite difficult. So to commit to teaching student the classical, which I would argue is the single most important thing we could do on a practical level to improve things.

So it comes to a slight tangent, the whole issue about non-binary stuff and trans, read Ovid's metamorphoses. And it relates to Narcissus, but is it Larry Opie is the mother of Narcissus? And she asks a blind seer, a forecaster of the future. what her son's outcome was going to be. And he's blind because initially he stood on, no, he was Juno and Jupiter. There's a point to this, but it's because Juno and Jupiter, the god Jupiter and his wife, Juno.

Teresa is the name of the seer. He stood on two snakes copulating. And because of the coitus interruptors, they made him, turned him into a woman as a punishment. Don't shoot the messenger. So he's turned into woman. So he then manages to get the snakes back and he's turned back to a man.

So Juno and Jupiter arguing over who has most sexual pleasure, a man or a woman. So he thought, I know, we'll ask Teresa, Theresa, I think his name is. We'll ask him what he thinks is he's experienced both. And then he gives the wrong gansary, he says the woman has too much pleasure. So she makes him blind. So then he makes the prediction about narcissus. When narcissus comes along, it says an ovids, metamolumal, narcissus was beloved of men and women.

So he's basically Sam Smith ahead of his time. But my point is, there's a clue in the title metamorphosis. It's about changing. It's about fluidity. If these poor kids could read Ovid and have it explained to them intelligently, oh, that's interesting about identity as fluid. This has been known since the beginning of time. It's when you get the mermaid ideologues.

that these type of ideas get, A, it's the dumbed down version. B, it has no roots with actual community knowledge, which is what the Greek myths had. And it's just hilarious because the Greek gods were, they intervened and were jealous of humans. They did loads of mad stuff. Because guess what? The Greeks understood their gods were just ways of thinking.

It wasn't ideological. And the gods would do contradictory things. what? Life's contradictory. Life fate. You never know. All the point about hubris and nemesis, all these things, life's going to bite you in the ass. That is what the Greeks taught. Now my point would be when universities, because we're talking about how could the BBC improve? How could universities improve? Well, tell you what, next time, some stupid ignoramus from HR. And that's basically anyone from HR comes to give us a training course. why, you know, classics department around the world are under threat.

I would pay for the classics department to teach internal training using the Socratic method, like Richard Grannon said, using the Greek myths, and provide substantial stuff worth engaging with. I could imagine a load of academics, and this is the bad faith part of it. Academics sit on these training courses, and the vast majority aren't stupid, and they're not ideological,

and they're sat there thinking, I don't believe we're doing this. And the Vice Chancellor University of Leeds will say we're a wonderful community and we're all doing, and look, you've just been trained on gender fluidity. And she must know her staff think, most of them think this is nonsense on stilts. And that's the bad faith gets replicated. But she, it's a Dutch woman who's in charge of Leeds and she'll be on a hundred to thousands of pounds. They're propagating what she must know deep down. her staff think is intellectually vacuous.

So if that's the leader of a matter, a leader is a big university and approximately 35,000 students, if that's the leadership, and it goes back to my Ed Vasey point, if he's a lord, and he's espousing bad faith, and he's showing no moral character,

and it's, you're totally right, programs like this, the fact that Douglas Murray puts himself out there. I worry, I think Richard Grannon has said, worry about Jordan Peterson, his own health, because everything seems to have taken on an awful lot, like a savior complex. But it does, I think you're right at Constantine that perhaps we could go both ways, obviously you keep doing this type of stuff, but I don't think we should ever stop holding them to account because they're not doing their jobs. Yeah, I just, I don't think

you're going to get very far with that. I think we have to let go of the old institutions. Well, but then, forgive me, that's the type of defeatist thing I was saying before. It's not defeatist at all. The end of one thing is always the birth of something new. Well, why couldn't we, though, as a society and as public figure, well, I'm not a public figure, but public figures, why couldn't we argue for things like proper teaching of classics? You can argue for anything. No, no, but I mean, you're just not going to get it. No, no, well, I'm saying strategically, so, for example, your idea about the internet, if you look at what Jordan Peterson's doing with the book of Genesis, that, that,

And it's interesting, it is, he's been criticized because it's a certain type of male demographic who are lost to the in-sell type community. But he can sell out stadium. I think it goes beyond the in-cell community, his audience. No, no, no, no. I said he'd been criticised for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But my point is, that particular demographic feel lost, they lack meaning. Yes.

And I think it's the beginning of your book on Love Letter to the West, available all good bookshops. You actually quote Solz-Nitsyn and say when the, when a, when a, tree is rotten at its core, and it's about spirituality. And I think you've both said, you say grace before meals now. There's a loss of spirituality, and I understand you're not going to get the toothpaste back in the tube. You can't expect everyone suddenly to become religious, but you can connect with the wisdom of the classics. Absolutely. But my point is, and I think we could do it more aggressively. I don't think it's pie in the sky. For example, with Russian, again, Jordan Peterson and others, I was going to say bang on, but I'm a massive Dostoevsky fan.

There's an institute of savantes, instituto savantes, Spanish culture. There's the Academy Francais, etc. Where's the Russian is the one? Timing's not great for that. But we have to wrap up because you can see how much we've enjoyed this because we've overrun by about 45 minutes. But the answer to the problem that you're talking about is for you to get on the internet and give people that classical education in the form of you. YouTube lectures. That's how this gets addressed, starting there and working our way up to bigger

institutions over time. The universities that are starting up that are going to offer a different type of curriculum. That's how this gets solved. There's people like you going out there and making something for people to enjoy because as we've seen with this and with all sorts of other shows, there's an appetite out there for that. So I challenge you. Yeah, but you know why I'm not tempted to because there's people like Chris Watkins, Henry Abramsson, I think there's too many people. doing too much stuff in a way. I'd much rather try and help them. Chris Watkins is just brilliant. The level, he can explain Derrida and Foucault and Foucault and Foucault and Foucault and Fouca's a bogeyman. Why is this? My point to you would be,

I think everybody has a role to play in this. So, For instance, Constantine can write and deliver a speech much better than me that will go viral. I'm not going to go into the Oxford Union, write a speech and deliver it. What I can do is I can write comedy that lampoons, the sacred cowers of the day, the Jacinders, all the rest of it, and that people will share and that people, and I read the comments and people go, nailed it, spot on, absolutely. We've all got our part to play. Well, except, can I give you an example of online? Yeah.

Unheard magazine, which I really like. We all do. The great publication. So there's a Belgian, I think he's a postdoc. He wrote a brilliant article. I'm a massive fan of Jean Baudreard's work, who again, he's like an Old Testament prophet. He's been misinterpreted.

He really slagged off modern life. Yeah. Brilliant article about Jean Boudiard and how he's relevant to modern day America. I normally don't look at the comments. Look down at the comments and someone said, oh, he could have said this in three paragraphs. It's like, no, he couldn't.

He's Belgian. It's probably his fifth language. Brilliant. I thought it was a very good article. I'm a Bojard to pump myself up, but I've basically a Bojard expert. I thought it was brilliant. Snottie comments.

I wrote, and I normally don't, and the irony is my online pseudonym is Theodore Adorno, because I don't like using my real name, who's a cultural Marxist. So I wrote, your comment is typical of the Twitter generation. Everything has to be said in so many characters.

It's a great article. leave him alone. So he basically replied, Theodore Adorno happened to be a great musicologist. So he said, if you are the spirit of Theodore O'Donoh, go off and tinkle your ivories. And I said, I will go off and tinkle my ivories. If you go off and scrub your nan, full stop. And my point is, this isn't great. Even I understand that's not Socratic method. Yeah. But this is the point that online, and I do think there's Peter Slotterdyke, the German philosopher said that more communication builds more conflict. This idea that necessarily do more.

I think, no, you do more targeted stuff, do better stuff. You know, fail, try again, fail better. So sometimes, I think you shouldn't have below-the-line comments. So there's magazines, compact magazine is one of them in the States. The critic is another magazine here online. Great stuff that you're talking about. They actually don't think there's no comment. And that's something else, maybe,

that could be addressed as the idea what the technology does brilliantly is encourage loads and loads of interactivity. I would argue significantly too much. And we actually need to find ways to winnow it, to filter it, and that would improve things. Well, Paul, it's been a sensational interview. We've both, it's been brilliant, we've loved every second of it.

Thank you so much for coming on. The question that we always end our interviews with is, what is the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be. Can I cheat and give you two very quick ones? Go ahead. And we will do a couple of questions for our locals only they will get to see as well. I said one of them I said I wouldn't do because I've got a friend in the village Becky

and her husband's called Adolf which is another story. But Becky, I said dog poo bags. I live in the countryside and I just think it's the perfect embodiment, so to speak, of virtue signalling. people will leave them full of dog crap because that's what they're there for in the middle of nowhere

because there isn't a bin now can you explain to me why is that a passive aggressive why do people do that it strikes me that it's this passive aggressive there isn't a bin I'm making some type of point but it just strikes me

it's this failure to think through the consequences that will now be there unless somebody else picks it up moves it there aren't any bins because it's called the countryside you're Muppet so that will be there for the next thousand years unless it's a biodegradable bag.

The other thing is tea bags, which, no offence, it was a lovely cup of tea. But it's such a simple thing that tea, you know, the tea they put in tea bags is absolutely atrocious quality. Everybody uses tea bags. And if you're woke and economically focused, the tea they put into crap

so people in the developing world who grow tea don't get a good price because it's the fanning's off the floor of the factory. And it's so you can buy great quality tea, Use a teapot, use a strainer, hardly any more effort. And the whole world of tea is out there. But tea bags are, it's this encapsulation of the easy. I don't think it is particularly easy.

It's bad for you, bad quality tea, bleached bags, glue in the bags. So you're all killing yourselves, and I drink great tea. And on that note, thank you so much for coming on. If people want to find you online, ironically enough, where is the best place to do that? Well, this is what's funny. You're going to have to deal with all the complaints. I don't have a mobile phone. I don't have an online present.

I'm like high diggers run off to the German forest. I live in the Welsh Hills. So anyone who wants to have a go, please just bother you to. Sounds good to me. That is what they usually do. We're going to ask you a couple of questions from our supporters that only they will get to see an answer on our locals too. But for now, Paul, been great to have you on.

Thank you so much. Does the doctor think that the lack of access to universities from the working classes has resulted in the current with mostly middle class, upper class kids, going into uni and creating strange, woke religions, as they have never known in inverted commas, proper hardship, reviews.