TRIGGERnometry - "Gender Gets You Cancelled, Islam Gets You Killed" - Andrew Gold

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Andrew Gold is a journalist and the host of YouTube channel Heretics (https://www.youtube.com/@andrewgoldheretics). A former BBC presenter, Andrew produced documentaries focussing on bizarre and controversial subcultures. He now interviews free thinkers and heterodox figures on his own podcast. He is the author of ‘The Psychology of Secrets: My Adventures with Murderers, Cults and Influencers’ - available here:  (US) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CN1J23BJ/ (UK) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1035002655/ British Muslim and general public attitudes polling: https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/HJS-Deck-200324-Final.pdf Watch Dr. Gundry's free video on the hidden toxins in so-called "healthy" foods. Click here: https://GutCleanseProtocol.com/Trigger Go to https://gdefy.com and use code RELIEF24 for an exclusive $20 off orders of $100 or more. Join our Premium Membership for early access, extended and ad-free content: https://triggernometry.supercast.com OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: 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/#mailinglist 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You've got and got yourself cancelled, mate. Yeah. Again. Double cancelled. Double cancelled. But it does seem to be gender that gets you cancelled. Islam gets you killed. How did they find out that you have these horrendous opinions? If you go to my YouTube, it's just...

I have very real discussions with my wife about, you know, are we safe? And are we safe in the UK? Can you imagine knowing there are people calling for the death, of you and your family and they live down the road from you. Andrew Gold, welcome back. You were on the show like, feels like very recently, because it was very recent. We don't normally bring people back this often, but A, you're doing really well. It's good to see, another British YouTuber doing well.

And B, you've gone and got yourself cancelled, mate. Yeah, again. Again. Double cancelled. Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. No, it's great to have you back. So you wrote a book and then what happened? So the book, yeah, the psychology of secret.

It's about authoritarianism and suppression and how governments and authoritarian regimes and things suppress their people. Also just about the sort of more of a microcosm of secrets themselves, what it is to keep them, that kind of thing. And, yeah, before it had even gone out, I had been invited to all different kinds of events, book festivals, bookshops, those kinds of things. Bookshops will do signings and that. And promptly, a week or so later, disinvited from them all. I haven't been given all of the information except for one or two that I know did cancel me. There was an event at the Tate. I don't know if it was the Tate the organizers themselves or the event makers who made the event there.

A festival called Haywood Festival or something. And it's a really difficult thing here because I don't like picking on individual festivals and things like that. A lot of them don't have any money, as we know at the moment recently, they don't have sponsors and things like that. It's really difficult for them. At the same time, unless we do start to show them that it's worse for them, because they only care about popularity, that it's actually worse for them when they cancel because they're worried about controversy, they're going to keep doing it. Anyway, so that's what happened. Why was that happening? That book seems uncontroversial to me.

Yeah, there's nothing controversial in the book except for a chapter about what we call PDF files on YouTube. There is a chapter of these people keeping a secret. The people who go to parks and try to get children who can't say that word. on YouTube, which is also ridiculous. Can you know? If you want me to, I can. No, no. But does that get demonetized?

Yeah, sometimes, particularly in the first few minutes. What do you call them noncers? I think that's all right, because Americans probably don't think of that. Although Jerry Barton got in trouble for talking about bike nonces, didn't they? Well, he called someone specifically a bike nonce and then had to say that he doesn't actually formally think that that person likes children, which I thought was weird, because everyone knows that a bike nonce doesn't mean that he's actually a nonce. Jesus is obsessed with bikes.

Yeah. Right? Well, has inappropriate relations with a bike. Just a weird... How do you do that? Well, you have to ask for a bike's consent. Yeah.

There's quite a lot of phallic endings of the bike. Not that I'm an expert on that. Right. Well, this episode has taken a turn. Anyway, that's chapter 10 of the boat. There's chapter 10 about nonces. That's the only controversial thing.

That is. There's nothing... The reason was because I've said many, many times that trans women are obviously, obviously, very obviously, not women. Right. I mean, everyone knows that. A child knows that. 95% of the population know that. The other 5% sort of know it, but are being tricked into thinking they don't know it or whatever it might be. And that is where the issue lies. I thought it might be more to do of Islam, but I've been told because I've been saying I'm worried about, I'm concerned about some of the aspects of Islam. But it does seem to be gender that gets you cancelled. Islam gets you killed. But I haven't been killed. I've been cancelled.

Right. So that's really interesting still, because we talk all the time on this show and people make the point. that things are getting better, that we are starting to move beyond peak, woke, as it's often called. Do you think we have, or is this an example that we haven't, and this stuff is still in the water? It's something that's really hard to empirically know, isn't it? Is it getting better? What are we starting to surround ourselves with viewers and other collaborators who are all like-minded in this respect? So it seems better to us. It's really, really hard to know. What I would say about bookshops in particular, festivals in particular, that these are particularly woke places. They will be the last bastions of the wokeness. So if it is starting to get a little

bit better, that's the last place. Universities, of course, as well. It's the academics. It's the type of person who is happy to work for a relatively low wage, providing they can try and tell everybody else what to do, I think. I don't mean that of all bookshop people. I mean, a lot of them are just wonderful people who want us to read more books. Of course they are. And a lot of them are really good people who understand all of the nuances. But unfortunately, they're going to get protested. So they're in a difficult spot as well. How did they find out that you have these horrendous opinions?

If you go to my YouTube, it's just the, this is... Trans women aren't women. It's like the banner. Yeah. Please don't take our slogan. Yeah. I think I did see that as Kelly J Keene. It was like that.

I thought, well, that's got over a million. Let's just keep saying it. This is a problem that we have as well as creators. particularly on YouTube, the algorithm is changing all the time. We have to make a living. We have these extremely expensive productions because we want to be able to compete just as a few of us against huge TV channels like the BBC

to give an alternative or a different view. That costs a lot of money. It's a lot. So then you put out a video and you go, okay, I'm going to give it a more nuanced thing. Hey, maybe trans women or not women, we should talk about it or something like that. And it will get like, as you guys know,

that it will get one-tenth of the number of views, which means you can't then afford to run the channel, which puts the videos out there with more nuanced views that convince people. So you're in this difficult trap that I'm sure you guys can relate to, right? You feel that way sometimes or not? I don't know. I feel that we've tried to thread the...

I mean, I think you're right, that you're always thinking, how do we have a title and a thumbnail that gets people interested on the one hand, but also how to... For us being faithful to the content is quite important, right? So that is a balancing act, I suppose. But I also feel that it depends on who you think your audience are. I think there are some audiences that are much more likely to go for super clickbaity things. And I'm sure somebody can go through our channel and out of the 500 interviews we've done pick out 10 and they say, oh, look at this click bay. Generally speaking, though, I think we try to be a bit more sensible about it, which I think you do as well, in fairness.

However, these people went to your YouTube channel and did see some content. that may have suggested the trans women are not necessarily. They saw some of it, and they saw something that was quite intense and extreme. I think there's a difference that a lot of people don't realize between clickbait and sensationalism. And clickbait being, as you say, something that isn't actually there. Well, YouTube protects against that. If someone say, oh, that's the thing that's there, you click on it and it's not actually there, you won't watch much of it, and it means that YouTube won't share that video around.

It has to actually be there. But if you take, let's say you do an episode with Matt Goodwin or someone like that, And the most sensationalist thing he says, well, he said it's in there, and it was aggressive, and he was right. You think he's right. There's nothing wrong with what he said, but that's the title. And then someone who doesn't know you and doesn't watch the entire nuanced conversation sees just that. Trans women are women. This is the end of civilized. Those kinds of things, which do seem a lot more sensationalist than our shows actually are. And that's an issue with YouTube. It's an issue with the platforms. It's something that the BBC, for example, don't necessarily have to contend with. A lot of the legacy media don't have to, so they'll look down on us.

And they don't realize that's a luxury belief in many respects. And I've had this argument with a lot of legacy celebrities who say, oh, I just wish your titles weren't so good. And it's like, mate, you got in through a gatekeeper while it was okay to be a white man going for jobs. You don't have to worry about the title of your show. You don't even know what it is. Well, yeah, if we could charge everyone in this country 160 quid a year under pain of imprisonment, I don't think we'd need to have sensationalist titles either.

Not a bad idea. And it's also, as well, it's ignoring, if you look at any type of newspaper, they always had sensationalist headlines. That's true. So I find it deeply hypocritical when you have these publications pointing the finger at us and going, mate, you're the son.

Mm-hmm. What Francis is saying is we're no worse than the Daily Star. Exactly. Now get your tits out. Exactly. And put little stars on the nipples. Anyway.

Well, you get some of the smug people are other podcasters. You get a lot of eccentric kind of smuggy podcasts. Decoding the gurus. That's one of them. They've had a go at you guys. They've had a go at you. I think they just don't like me.

Yeah, just me, man. Yeah, so it should be. Yeah, exactly. The Jews. Yeah, that's actually true, because they've better go at me now. Hmm. Well, they've had a go at us. And literally in the middle of having a go at me for saying things like, look, if you like

this content, please do subscribe. They were doing a whole thing. Oh, typical grift. And as the sentence was, they asked them to subscribe that is grifting. For free. As that conversation was happening, it started to go towards mute on their audio podcast. It started to simmer down the audio, whatever. and then said, if you want the rest of this, please subscribe to our Patreon.

I thought, how can you not realize the hypocrisy here that they are literally in the middle of their sentence cutting off the viewers? That's the respect they have for their listeners. While we're just saying, hey, subscribe for free. Or if you like it, if you want extra stuff, do come along. I don't know. There's a smarmy smugness in the centre. There's a smarmy smugness on the TV and, of course,

bookshops, festivals and things. And to get back to your question, yet, they saw that stuff. They saw what I'd written, what I'd had in the thumbnails and titles and things. They didn't watch the shows, obviously, I imagine. and they got in touch with Pan Macmillan, who was the publisher, and Pam O'Millan said, sorry, they've disinvited you. And here's the thing that I find really upsetting about this. Their book festivals, if you look at some of the greatest writers in history,

they tend to be quite problematic people. They don't tend to be very particularly well-balanced. They don't tend to be nice on occasions. Charles Dickens was a bit of a C-word. So now, how are we? going to make something that celebrates an art form? Art forms are created by artists who very frequently, like I said, are not the best people morally. How is this going to work? Yeah. It doesn't. And then what does more, then you have to get into what does morally even mean?

I noticed, okay, with regards to my book about secrets, secrets, we think we tell our secrets to people to people who are polite. It turns out that actually polite people that the people were least likely to reveal secrets to. And that's because polite people in any regime would have been the card carrying members. All polite really means is adhering strictly to a societal norm of a particular time and place. Anyone who's too keen to do that is not someone you would want to tell your secrets to, because if you did that in the Stasi, you'd be out. You'd be tortured and all of that stuff. So we know we've got it inherent within us, which is amazing, really, that we shouldn't tell secrets to polite people. We tell secrets to assertive people, people who are going to get

stuff done without necessarily judging you. So what does it even mean to be a polite person in a particular? But what does it mean to live by the rules of the book publishing world? For them to even set those kinds of rules, like this is the narrow Overton window of books that we accept and beliefs we accept, suggests to me an authoritarian streak. And why do we, you know, I don't know, maybe it's just me, but like whenever I've had a secret, I've always wanted to tell it to somebody. Why do we do that? Yeah, that will be, well, a lot of theories, but evolutionary biology going back to that, I love all that stuff.

I love thinking about the tribes and why we do things. So a tribe that had people in it who had this physical compulsion to reveal their secrets might have done better and lived and passed on all their genes within it. If you knew where some food was but you tried to keep it for yourself and you didn't feel compelled to tell everybody else in the tribe, that tribe cohesion isn't going to be very good. You won't do well. So over millions or hundreds of thousands of years, the tribes who had this secret telling thing. And we call it the fever model.

That's what they are. I don't call it anything. That's what the sort of scientists and people call it. The fever model very much like a fever in real life, which makes the body uninhabitable for the virus. Your body starts to feel that way while you're keeping a secret, which is why you have such visceral portrayals of it in literature, the telltale heart, crime and punishment.

Those kinds of people start to, almost as if they have a flu of some kind. They're dying until they can get their secret out and feel better. But it's not always a good idea because the social consequences might be dire and you might be ostracized. So it's about weighing that up. And it's also as well, it's, everybody knows what the rules are, but they're not written down anywhere. Because when we were working in the comedy industry,

I remember this comedian came up to me, she was like, well, you always say that there's things you're not allowed to say. What aren't you allowed to say? And I just went one, two, three, four, five, and then she stopped and just walked the other way. Because we all know what the rules are. But it's very interesting because you go, how did they become the rules?

And how are they enforced? Because they're not forced overtly. They're enforced covertly. Yeah. And it's insidiously done. As you guys know, often in the universities, it's young people changing to these fashionable words. I find it amazing.

You know, for a long time, you weren't allowed to say coloured. That was the one thing you're not supposed to say. And it was funny in England for us or for the crowd to laugh whenever there was like an old football commentator who didn't seem to get the memo. And it was like 20 years too late. And were we really laughing at them

or pointing at them because we thought they were racist because they used the word coloured? Did we really think that when the context was, he's a wonderful person, this coloured person, or he's doing good things

for the coloured, whatever it might be. The intent was always good. However, this is somebody who wasn't O'Fay with the latest words in lingo and that was funny to the rest of us because it meant we grew in status

by comparison. About three or four years ago, we finally got to a point where I think everybody in the year, UK, probably in America, knew. Finally, everyone's grandma, grandpa knew you're not supposed to say coloured. And then it changed from black to of colour. It went back to off colour again. So it seems like there were people almost messing with us trying to catch us out, trying to use the new words. And this is a very cultish thing to do as well, to start changing words and making sure everybody uses the right

words. We saw that, you know, Heaven's Gate. They do that all the time, the neurolinguistic programming, which just means they all changed their names. Everyone had different names. Again, much like the trans stuff, she, he, or Zir, and all the weird pronouns that they have, this has been done by so many cults over time. It's nothing new, but it always feels new to those cult people who are making up the rules for the rest of us. And when we talk about cults, which I think is a fair comparison, we always, I always think of cults as people who operate on the extremes, people who have decided to move away from mainstream society,

like the Heavens Gate cult and all the other ones. But this is Main Street. This is right here. Can a cult be Main Street? Yeah, it depends how you look at cults. And a lot of the people, like in any industry, let's call it, the people who talk about cults, they like to gatekeep what a cult is. So they say, that is a cult, that is not a cult. And they will say it's irresponsible to suggest there's any cultishness anywhere else. That's palpably untrue. The elements of cultishness are written into our DNA. That's who we are as humans. We are cultish. Every single one of us in some ways acts in cultish ways. It doesn't. mean that we're a 10 out of 10 cult like Heaven's Gate or Jones Town or Scientology or Waco or any of those. But you can even see how like a book club, you go to a book club, that's going to be culty because in the book club, maybe you feel like there are certain things you can't say about the book you've just read. Maybe those are the only friends you have and you feel like if you say the wrong thing, you're going to be ostracized, you're going to be kicked out. So it's tribal

in that sense. There might not necessarily be a leader as there is in cults, David Miscavich of Scientology, for example. So I do think that we are always going to be a little bit cultish, that political ideologies, of course, are, and they're using the same tricks. So of course it can be mainstream. And then you can say the average person hasn't signed up to the trans cult, to a 10 out of 10 degree, but some of them might be a three or a four. There are little things where they think, oh, I shouldn't say the wrong thing. Their friends kick them out. And to me, that is cult-ish. So coming back to your story then, your publisher gets this email. You've been on a disinvited or whatever the term is. Did you try to contest it or make a big stink about it or whatever?

Like there's obviously different ways you can go in that situation. I felt terrible. That's the first thing to say. Oh, yeah, exactly. Some people said, because I wrote this article and sub-site you're saying, some sort of woke people were going, oh, I thought we weren't supposed to get about feelings. I was like, well, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of how this works. You're supposed to have facts, and then any good writer hopefully imbues those facts or shows the consequences of those facts, which are the feelings. But the facts still have to be there. You can't build your house on shaky ground, which is just the feelings.

Anyway, that's too complicated for that particular anonymous troll, who I didn't give a second thought to and I'm still talking about two days later. What was the question? What were we talking about? The question was, what was your reaction? How did you try to deal with it? Francis called me and was really, really nice. I mean, that tells you you're in trouble. That's how you know you've missed up. When you get the Francis call in the industry, you're out.

Francis called and said, look, it's a horrible feeling. And he empathised and it helped me a lot. And he said, you've just been thrown out to the savannah. You know, you're out on your own because of, and you should know that you've got this community around you. And it was such a beautiful thing to do. So thank you, Francis. That was the initial thing.

But we happened to be messaging just as I got that email. Pit of your stomach. Horrible, horrible feeling. And then there's embarrassment. Because again, if you're in the tribe and you've been caught, say, doing something that you're not supposed to stealing some of the food, taking the shelter, whatever it is, again, your body primes you to feel embarrassing.

and shame so that you don't repeat those kinds of things so you stand a better chance of staying in the tribe. Well, as Francis said, I've been kicked out that tribe. It felt awful, pit of my stomach kind of thing. And you don't want to rock the boat in that moment because your book's about to come out, first book ever. It's a big publisher, Pan Macmillan. And the individuals working there are really nice people. That's the nuanced thing. Maybe it's not what people want to hear. They want to hear like, everyone's horrible and everyone's this. People are very complex. And a lot of them are really, really nice people who were trying to do their job. And I felt bad that I've made these PR people have a more difficult job than they would otherwise have had with a typical writer. As the days

went by and the weeks went by, I started to feel a bit pissed off, especially receiving messages through people. And I don't want to say who the people are because they're just the messengers, but from the bigwigs at Pan McMillan saying, don't share this in social media. And it's going to make things worse, that kind of thing. Well, as you guys know my story, I had about seven years with the DEI stuff where I was told you can't have this job because you're a white man you're going to be

you can go off screen and we'll get somebody who's a minority on instead well I had about seven years of everyone saying do not talk about this don't mention it that's a very lonely feeling

and whenever I did say to someone they were always like well did that happen I've just had a hundred producers tell me this and now I have to face that so it felt like that was happening again but rather than because of my skin color

this time because of my beliefs which is slightly less insidious A private company has the right to say, hey, we don't want this guy at our festival. I just think the problem here is that I hold a belief that the vast majority of humans across the world hold as well. And as I think I was saying before, until we start to speak up about this, until we make them realize that the consequences are worse for canceling people, because that's all they care about. They just care about, am I going to get a bad rap? Are people going to stop coming to my festival? So we need to show them actually it's even worse.

Unfortunately, you're in a difficult position in festivals. But it's even worse if you cancel us. And your publishers, and correct me if I'm wrong, they weren't the most supportive, were they? I don't think they were too bad. Did I say that they were really bad? No, no. No, France just wanted you to say,

slam the pub and they said, go on. They were fine. They were fine. That's British for no. They are so ideologically captured. Going back to that cultish aspect. These are not people who go. home and bow down to Tom Cruise every day and say, I love you, and see him in a dream or whatever.

But they are people who are so far gone that firstly they can't even imagine that people like us might have reasonable arguments to make. I'm sure you've come up against that a million times. Brianna Joy is that I think? Joy Gray. Yeah, Joy Gray, for example. She went into that, not even imagining you might have been quite smart and have better ideas than her, because the other side is, as they say in Scientology, the suppressive person. guys are so far gone that, I mean, one example I wrote about in my substack piece yesterday was, I was at one of these events. I was with a guy who's one of the editors at one of the publishers,

so I don't want to sort of, you know, but, and this, and the funny thing is this, this won't even necessarily show who he is, but he's somebody from minority who also represents as queer, or says they are queer, and they were speaking to, because I was just, I was sort of eavesdropping, they were speaking to a woman who is a body positive, extremely overweight, autistic, mixed race, pro, tracts, there's like 50 of these that I could go on and on, but it was just one of those people who I think is quite a difficult person as well, as you can... Really? I may I say, in it having this conversation where the editor's saying, God, we had this book

that I really wanted to do that was like trans people for business or something, business advice for trans people. I don't know what. And it's so annoying because the marketing people, they said they did the research and nobody wanted to buy that book, obviously. Like, obviously, who wants to buy business for trans? Why would it be different for a trans person? Just do business, sell an idea.

but it wasn't good for anyone. And they were going on about, oh, what a shame, isn't it sad? I think I'm going to try and make that book anyway. And all I could think was, you've been given this prestigious title where you are the gatekeeper at one of these century-old publishing houses that have thousands of people in your employ, thousands of people relying on wages and things like that, and you've been told this book will not sell, but you are so ideologically captured that you believe it is good somehow, virtuous, righteous, to make a book that not a book that No one's going to read, providing it tells the readers, the paupers, that this is what we should all be reading about trans business.

I mean, it's insane, isn't it? When people are arguing about taking a decision and making a product that has no commercial value to it whatsoever. I mean, that is the antithesis of what companies should be doing. It also denigrates what good business people do and good creatives do. Because really good creative people, I think it's an art, of course, to be a creative person. The real art is in being creative in a way that society can profit from it. You know, it's all well and good being the best Tiddly Wings player in the world, right?

But you're probably not going to make good money from it. And for good reason, it doesn't really serve society. So by all means, be a great writer who wants to write about trans business. But unfortunately, no one wants it. So if you're a real genius, if you're really successful or want to be really successful, make an idea that people want. And that's the nub of it, because if you look at companies like Disney, they're doing exactly the same thing, different type of content. obviously, and they're declaring a huge loss year after year after year, and you're watching this and you're going, this can't carry on.

There has to be a point where they're faced with either bankruptcy or change the business model. You'd like to think so. I mean, that Disney example is a macrocosm of what I saw in the publishing world in that conversation. So we know that. We know there are people at the top at Disney who are probably scared to say things, and there are other people who are going, this is my idea. this is what they should want because my son is trans or whatever. Don't put that in the trailer, my son is trans.

I don't have a son. That's a great title. Andrew Reveal, son is trans. Elon Musk's kid's trans, isn't it? But I mean, you do get a lot of these, and I'm not entirely sure about this, you might have to check it after, but David Tennant, for example, a famous actor in the UK, he's come out as very pro the whole ideology. And I think he has a trans child or someone in the family.

And unfortunately, those of people are just beholden to the mad ideologies of their offspring. So you didn't, see, because I think this isn't to like second guess your decisions, but quite often in the situation that you find yourself in, actually the smart thing is to say something, is to go, look, this is what people are doing. But you kept being told, don't say anything, don't say anything. And ultimately, you didn't initially. Is that right? Yeah, yeah.

I wasn't sure about it. It's something I spoke with Francis about. Like, look, I know this is a big. deal and will get me clicks and views and things. Now, that's something that the other side will hold against you. Like, oh, you want clicks and views. It's like, this is my living. And I can't make my living. I'm not going to do a second book. Like, of course not. I'm so lucky that I managed to get that book. That book was done before. I was even a YouTuber, didn't have a name or anything. I had to go to like 50 different literary agents and then they had to sell it to 50 or so publishers

who all said, no, you know, the standard story that everybody who tries to sell a book has. It's impossibly hard. And I'm very proud that I got to do it. I'm not. They're not, they're Firstly, they wouldn't want me to, and I wouldn't want to do it because I'd have to deal with the sort of knowing looks and the, oh, God, is he a bit controversial, these kinds of, I can imagine meetings where they would say, or, you know, not just me, but Francis and Constantine, you know, oh, God, do we want to do their book? This is a bit awkward. The real hypocrisy comes, obviously, when, like, the bookshops that didn't want me to hold meetings in there, I'm sure they might have Jordan Peterson. They might have Jeremy Clarkson, who punched a guy. You know, I think if you're that successful and famous, I think that's when the money comes into it. That might be the case with Disney as well. I don't know. If there is an idea that's slightly not woke, but they know it's going to make huge amounts of money,

maybe that will change it. I don't know. But you're right, yeah, I wasn't going to say anything at first. I wasn't sure. I was a bit scared to because what happens? Do they pull my book? I'm even thinking that now.

Do they stop it going out in America? It goes out there. And it's not even out there yet. Does something happen? I don't know. I think it's a little bit of controversy is not going to hurt, Andrew. Yeah.

As well. Like, if people are upset about, something you've said and you haven't said anything actually terrible, that's not going to hurt. And I'm not as successful as Jordan Peterson or whatever, but I have no problem, neither does Francis get in the book deal? Because once people are interested in what you have to say, it's kind of, so that's why I think, you're going to love my trans business book, mate. I saw you being approached. I mean, look, when we were in America and I wondered if there's a sort of American publishers were sort of hovering around the event we were at. And I wondered, is it maybe a little bit different in America? Is there a slightly less fear?

There is, I think. But even in the UK, ultimately what it's about, I think, is once you establish that people are interested in what you're doing, then at that point, money talks. So at this point, I think it's good that you're talking about it, and particularly given that the book itself isn't controversial, but it is very interesting. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Well, apart from the PDF file stuff.

Why is that controversial? Surely isn't everybody against that? Not everybody. What about the pro-map community? That's a good way of putting it. God bless him. The thing was, that was a chapter that was just me going as a journalist, which is what I've always wanted to do. It's just the gonzo journalism. I mean, so many of us have other, you guys are comedians, of course. I spoke to Andrew Doyle about this. He was a literary reviewer. That's what he really cares about and wants to do. I think I always like the whole Louis Theroux kind of going to meet all these weird subcultures in different parts of the world. So that book allowed me to do that. So I was off in Germany meeting a young sort of 25-year-old woman who is attracted to children.

And she said she's never offended. But people sometimes will be a bit, I mean, it's been fine actually so far. But some people might be offending, oh, you've platformed this woman who you've made anonymous. But I've never said, oh, so she should. I said she's good because she is withholding from doing that deed. Here's a question. Yeah. When you were putting up.

I'm worried by what I'm just saying. I'm tense. Yeah. Go on, mate. Go on. Let it go. Here we go. So, when you were putting out all of that, all of the, you know, the trans stuff,

trans women aren't women, we really should have copyrighted that, mate. Anyway, we're going to... Kelly J. Keene was the one that said it. Yeah, exactly. We just sat there and shan ourselves on camera. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, carry on. Let's be honest.

You knew you were treading the line. Did you not think, hang on a second. This could be, because I certainly felt that way. And I know Constantine did as well, when we were, especially the spiciest stuff. Balls of steel. Yeah, and you've got each other. Some of us are out here on our own. But, you know, and that must help sometimes, right?

You've got to tell you like, hey, let's go through it. I mean, my previous channel, which that's what I was doing until six months ago when I started Heretics, it was about cult ideology. And that's what really interests me. I love thinking about how humans get moved one way or another, the banality of evil, how it might happen to me, where I might be doing. I love that. And so I did so much stuff on obviously the Scientology and Nixium and all that stuff.

But every now and then, and I did Hasidic Jews, of course, as well. Every now and then I did one on, say, Islam or I did one on trans, which I just felt obviously still have these cultish elements. And firstly they didn't do very well compared to the others. I mean, the Hasidic Jew stuff was hundreds of thousands of views. Everyone was really interested in it. Everyone was criticizing. Oh, gosh, this community where there.

And there are things to criticize about the Hasidic Jewish community. Islam didn't get many views. and the comments were just, oh, well, you're a racist. You're just a racist, then. Trans stuff, you're a transphobe. Suddenly there's like Reddit, subreddits about me being the transphobe. Everybody's putting in their two pence about me being a transphobe. And I just thought being a contrarian, which I think all of us must be,

and all our viewers must be to be watching this kind of content. It's like, you've got that itch now. You're like, well, if those are the two things that I can't talk about, the two cultish things, you know, and I'm writing about suppression and authoritarianism, then I'm making a new channel, and that's what I want to talk about. Because I don't have any friends who are right-wing. I don't know anyone who is a student studying English literature with me

who is some right-wing Nazi and believes that people of different races are less important than other people or whatever it might be. I have loads of friends who are woke, who sign up to these things unthinkingly. That will change, mate. There are lots of friends. It has never. Yeah. It is starting to change, yeah, come from this.

But that's what it was. So you're right. I knew it would be hard and I knew it would hurt. And it does really hurt. You feel misrepresented and misunderstood, but you also feel like it's too important not to do it. And one of the things you have covered, and I'm really enjoying Heretics, by the way, you're doing a great job with you and Winston Marshall have both really taken off in the last few months and it's great to see. Trigonometry blue print. Winston and I.

Winston and I speak about that. We're like, you know, thank fuck for trigonometry. I thought, can I say fuck on trigonometry? I thought, yes, I can. Yeah, I think you can. But look, everybody's got a, like the way really cool stuff happens. is through inspiration, and then you combine that with your own skill set. So you have a unique skill set, having done filmmaking and done your other channel and worked at the BBC and whatever.

And Winston's got his own skill set. He's like the most well-read man you let me. If you ever go to his house, it's like covered in books, books everywhere. So everyone's got their own skill set. So you take what you have and then you look at what other people are doing, you put that together and hopefully you come up with something new that didn't exist before, which is what you're doing, which is what Winston's doing, which is what we did when we started to econometry, because we looked around and we saw it. or people in America mostly at the time doing stuff that nobody here was doing.

And we were like, let's do that with our own twist. So that's how it works and it's beautiful that you guys are crushing it. But what I was gonna ask you was, one of the things you really have honed in on is Islam. And you mentioned you had concerns about it. And I think post October 7th,

with what we've been seeing on the streets of major Western cities, that conversation has come to the fore and people are talking about, the ideology, the fact that Islam isn't just a religion, there's also a political dimension to it, and all of that is, that was a conversation that was being had by people like Douglas Murray and others a while back. It's really come back and you're one of the people who's keen to talk about it. Tell us more about why you're interested in it and what

are some of the concerns you have. I think it's just another place where people unthinkingly, maybe they react emotionally and they see pictures of what's happening in Gaza, which of course is terrible and so horrible to watch and I feel terribly for those people. It's almost as if the world is split into two groups of people and one group is, is that group of acting emotionally and acting like they would like the world to be. As Bertrand Russell is one of my favorite quotes, but it's too much pressure to come up with it. But it's just, you know, look at the facts.

Don't look at how you'd like the world to be in or what you think would make the world better. And then the other half of the world looks at things and goes, okay, there's this war going on. Why? People are saying it's genocide. People are saying it's apartheid. These are thought terminating cliches in cult terms. These are thought terminating cliches.

That's such a great line. Yeah. It's just what you can't come back to. That's what I've been thinking about a lot because people keep using phrases of that kind. And I'm going like it doesn't, those words don't mean what you think they mean. And they don't map onto the reality of anything that's going on. No.

But they are very powerful at getting people to just like chant the same thing. That's it. Thought terminating cliché, that's a great, I'll keep that in mind. I'd even take it further if you're in a relationship. It's something I had to learn, I think, in my own personal relationships, not to say to people, you are a person who does this, or that is you, because then people can't come back from that. It's not conducive to a helpful conversation. Apartheid. And if, look, if your ideology falls apart after one line of questioning, then it's on shaky ground. If your ideology falls apart when you say, okay, oh, this guy's a woman, that's quite an extraordinary claim.

What's the extraordinary evidence? What is a woman? Nothing. And it's shocking because we are people who value critical thinking. So you think, well, these have, they have such strong beliefs. They must have something tangible. And they don't. And so apartheid, you go interesting.

Because I'm a Jew and I've been to Israel a whole bunch of times. We used to go fairly often. And one thing I did not see was one race lauding it over all the others. It was absurd to me. Israel is extremely mixed and does a better job of it than many other countries. The idea it is apartheid is insane. Some people then know a little bit more and we'll say, oh, but what's happening in Gaza and all that? That's where the apartheid is. It doesn't make Israel an apartheid state. It makes Israel a country at war. And these are things that are very difficult for, I guess, people who are in that particular cultish ideology to understand, and I don't

think they want to understand it. One good thing that's come of it, I mean, so much negativity and bad stuff has come from the whole war situation. One thing I've noticed is that, Jews have left wokeism. Jews have a long history of being on the left, of course, and sometimes in communism, Marxism and wokeism. Obviously, any race, ethnicity, culture, you have a huge divide of people, everyone's very different. But I've seen so many people I know, Jewish people I know who were woke and who disagreed with me on everything to do with trans and this and that, who at universities, if they work there, or they work in academia, where if it is, for the first time, are starting to go, oh, you know what, maybe, and if that's not right, what else is not

right in this. We know from all sorts of studies that we don't form beliefs in the pursuit of accuracy. We think we do. We think we form a belief because we want it to be right and we're right about everything. We actually form beliefs because of the people around us and we want to fit in. It makes sense, again, from an evolutionary perspective. The only way that people leave cults as well, like, you know, you might hope someone like your friend or your son is going to stop in the trans thing or whatever. They never do. They almost never leave cults just of their own accord or because they've heard better information. The only way that they leave cults

is if they're treated so badly in their own cult. So we are seeing that. I've seen it countless times as Scientologists who said like, nothing would have convinced them. You say, but Lord Zeno is not a real thing. They're like, yes he is. Tom Cruise isn't going to come and fuck you. Yes, he is. Whatever they believe.

The Jews in places that are particularly woke are suddenly coming into university or wherever it is and going like, oh, these people are all saying that what happened to my second cousin was an act of freedom and liberty when my second cousin was raped or whatever. And they're going, oh, this is me being treated really, really badly by my own people. Those people, it takes a few months, takes six months, maybe you speak to them again. And they're like, they're a little bit more open

about, oh, maybe the trans stuff is also a bit cultures, maybe some of the other things. So one good thing that's come from it is a lot of Jewish people and Jew adjacent people have started to move away from wokeness. So come back to your concerns. You mentioned you had concerns about Islam, just flesh that out for us. Because I know you had, we had Yasmin Muhammad on the show a while back. You've had her on recently. She's very, very good at talking about her own story, but also some of her concerns. So talk to us about that. Yeah, Yasmin, I mean, Yasmin Mohammed is one of the greatest speakers in the world, I think. And I'm just amazed by her. As much as anyone else, as much as Douglas Murray, as much as any of these people, she is just absolutely

brilliant, passionate and angry. We did a thing on Peter Bogotian's, you know, street epistemology. So, could you be friends with somebody who was a Muslim? And I stood in the middle because I think, well, it's the thing I could be friends. And she said, no, absolutely. And Peter asked our reasons and if we'd like to move afterwards. And Yasmin's reason was because that person wants me dead. And I was like, well, like, okay, I guess I should shuffle up towards Yasmin because I don't want to be friends with someone who wants Yasmin dead. And that is the issue currently with Islam. It's something that Dawkins said, of course, at the event we were out talking with Ian Horsi Ali, that all the religions have stuff that we may or may not agree with, but Islam seems to be stuck, or at least its adherents, its believers seem to be stuck 700 years in the past. What do you do with that? And what do you do with a nation's social cohesion when you have a huge influx of people with very different beliefs from your own? How do we make that work? This is absolutely terrifying. I can't stress that enough. And we're at a point now. where particularly is Jewish people, and I think that's why Jewish people really sense this.

I have very real discussions with my wife about, you know, are we safe? And are we safe in the UK? And I tell family members to, I mean, Jewish people have what is called a Mazuzza on the door. It's sort of a bit of a script or whatever. I mean, most of them are not even religious. These are culturally Jewish people, but they have the little Mizuzza thing and Marx on the side of the door. I wouldn't have that now. We live where we live with right next to two mosques, and we know,

that there's all sorts of radicalisation that does go on in mosques. That was 20 years ago when we knew about that. Channel 4 documentaries when Channel 4 used to do real hard-hitting investigations. They did all of these investigations into mosques and a radicalisation that goes on within them

and people literally calling for the death of Jews. So when there were people who are super woke in my comments going, oh, you're an Islamophobe or something, I would say to them, can you imagine knowing there are people calling for the death of you and your family

and they live down the road from you? That is something that is unimaginable for most people. And in the last 20 years, that's only been exacerbated. But even 20 years ago, the police then were annoyed with Channel 4. There's a whole documented thing about this where the police were saying to Channel 4, like, hey, come on, you're stirring up tensions here, rather than being like, there's what?

All these mosques where people are saying we must go and kill the Jews. Are you kidding? They didn't care. The reason they don't care isn't because they're anti-Semitic. It's because they're scared. People are scared. And what do we do? I honestly don't know.

I mean, what do you guys think we should do? What happens next? With all the GLP1 companies out there, how does someone know which one's actually reliable? I tell people to look at four things. Is it safe? Does it work? Is it affordable? And will you actually get clinical support? When you use that filter, one brand keeps standing out, believe. They use U.S. pharmacies. People see results close to the research, about 18% weight loss. It's around $4 a day, and they include nurse support at no extra cost. And full disclosure, I actually use that. them. I signed up during my lunch break and got approved before I even left work. Okay, I just Googled it while you were talking. And yeah, it really does look simple. For anyone listening who wants to check it out, where should they go?

It's joinbleave.com, spelled BL-L-I-V. So if you've been curious about GLP1s, joinbleve.com might be a good place to start. I mean, that's a question. What do I think happens next? I think what we need to have actually some frank discussions, which are honest about the situation that we're, particularly when it comes to radicalization and extremism and the inevitable results of that, which is terrorism and violence, we need to be honest about it. And I don't think people are being honest about it. They're a little bit more honest about it on the right, but they're certainly not being honest about it on the left. And until we actually admit that

there is a real issue going on, we're never going to be able to tackle that problem. I'm not even using the word solve. Tackle it. Because not every problem you can solve. that's how far away we are from solving it. We can't even begin to speak about it, can't begin to tackle it. That's why people turn to us, because people can see it happening around in their homes. They're not in their homes, hopefully, but around them.

It's really hard. And at the same time, you don't want to become someone who gets so stressed out by this and who only surrounds themselves with other people, who only talk about it, and who then maybe become a little bit blind to racism that does happen or immigrants who come over who might not be Muslim or Muslims who are peaceful as some are. I mean, the percentages of Muslims who hold very scary beliefs that don't work with our society is,

whenever I've seen those stats, they don't have them to mind, but they're always just like, oh, that's quite extraordinary. The number who believe October 7th didn't happen or was orchestrated by the Jews, the number who think they would like Sharia law in our towns and cities in the UK. It's not one or two percent, you know, these are big numbers. And again, people don't realize Jews make up about 200,000, 300,000 of the population. Muslims make up over 4 million and rising fast. And it's really hard because when we're having these kinds of cultural debates, everyone who goes to work will have one or two Muslim friends at work.

Very few have even met a Jewish person. So, of course, the conspiracies are going to grow. They're only going to hear one side. And I don't know how we combat that. What's interesting is it is an extraordinarily Western world. problem in the sense that, for example, there are places in the Middle East that are much better at dealing with Muslim extremism and terrorism than we are. The UAE, for example. They've basically dealt with the extremism issue much more effectively than we have. And part of the reason is

they don't pretend that this problem doesn't exist. They know that within their religion, there are some extremists and they deal with it. I mean, I grew up in, I lived for four years in Soviet Bekistan surrounded by Muslims, there was never any issue. So it's not specifically Muslims or even Islam. It depends on how it's practiced and depends on what is allowed to be preached in mosques. It depends on what is being taught in schools and in madrasas. And it depends on what society's attitude is from the police to the politicians to do whoever towards extremism.

And actually, whenever anyone criticizes Islamic terrorism or whatever people always say, well, you know, Muslims are the greatest victims of Islamic terrorism, and it's true. For reasons, actually, we discussed with Amundee when we had him on the show, which is basically there's a civil war going on within Islam, and it's the extremists who want a Sharia law and the caliphate versus the people who actually want a nation state like the Gulf monarchies, etc. So while that's going on, yes, Muslims are the main victims of terrorism, in which case, the simple answer if you're a politician would be to say,

well, that means the Muslim community of Britain is on our side when we crack down really hard on the terrorists and the extremists and the radicalizers and the rogue imams and the whatever. But that never gets said. That never gets said. It never gets said that the Muslims are on our side. We are together in fighting the extremists.

They happen to be Muslim extremists. We'd be equally opposed to Jewish extremists or Christian extremists. We'll go to wherever the extremists are and deal with them because we know that we have the support of all the communities in dealing with extremism. And one ever says that, even though that seems to me like a really obvious point.

We just don't know how much of a, let's say, reaction that they'd get from the Muslim community. If they feel like they're singled out, if you go back to that sort of culture, I know what you're saying that, it depends on the person, it depends on the individual family. We all know and have met lots of Muslim families who are perfectly present and lovely, and just like Christians, just like Jews, just, you know, they do their religious stuff and that's their thing. But in the communities itself, I'm not sure that would go down well at all. What we do see is labor sort of just going around to all these meetings with Muslims saying,

how can we placate you? Yeah. But this is my point, right? Yeah. If either that argument is right, which is the Muslim community is a peaceful community, full of peaceful people and they hate extremism and terrorism as much as we do, that would be one outcome. The other outcome is we discovered that isn't the case. either case, we're moving towards some kind of better understanding what the problem is,

which means we're moving towards the solution. That's true. Right? But it's the dishonesty that we're never even holding people to account on the basis of their own arguments. Like, if you're saying to me, 99.9% of these people don't support violence and extremism, great. Then there are people.

They're on our team. Let's go and deal with the extremists together. Yeah. Right? Yeah, I think we all know it's not, it's not 99.9% is it? In this country, probably not. No, yeah. That's the problem. That's the problem.

That's what it's so hard to know what to do because of that. And that, like you said, we're going to wrap. No, again, that is the issue. But you were never going to solve this problem unless you actually start to have some pretty uncomfortable conversations. Yeah. Until you start doing that, until you start putting it. Until you start putting a little bit of jeopardy in the room, we're not going to get any closer to solving it.

I'm sure Kea Stama will deal with it. Yeah, first he's got to identify what a woman is, then he'll tariff to Islamic extremism. You work your way up. Then he can suppress her rights in the neighborhood of her law. Yeah, exactly. It's tough. I'm very nihilistic.

I'm really defeatist and nihilistic, and I think it's because I spent so many years before this channel thinking about cults. And as I say, I speak to my friend Aaron Smith-Levin, who I think you guys at some point should interview. He's wonderful on all of this because he was in Scientology. And he says openly, there's not a single word you could have said to me that would have convinced me. And unfortunately, you look at question time.

You look at this super woke audience asking stuff to politicians, just clapping, clapping, not really listening to the questions, no ability to critical think to think critically. And I just, I'm sorry, I'm not giving an answer here. And I know I need an answer, but I'm just very nihilistic. And I have to you guys have to solve it. Are you thinking of leaving? the country. I spent too long away and it was wonderful for the most part, but I wanted to come back here to be near my family. I know a lot of Jews that are thinking of leaving. Yeah. Yes,

yeah, so do I. And they go and they go to like Australia often, places like that, places that are a little bit stricter on their immigration and they've got things okay. I don't know. Would you? Well, I mean, we're spending a lot of time in the US. I don't know about leaving exactly. I love this country and I would like to be to have a foothold here at least for for long term. But like I think after October 7th, I think a lot of people realize that a lot of the things we've all been thinking about are actually true. That's true. One of the things we are doing actually is like, you know, my wife is Argentinian and so I've moved her over here. One of the reasons it would be so hard to move again is because she was a lawyer there and I sort of by pushing her to move to the UK,

She had to do a whole conversion course, start again, basically, which takes years and years and years. And if I suddenly go home today and go, Constantine and France has suggested leaving. And she should go mental. She'd go mental at you guys and me. She's Latin America. She's like a American. She's not going to have mental anyway. Don't tell, why are you bringing us into it, man? I had a Latin mother. I don't want an angry Latin woman. More Latinos happening. No, thank you.

Yeah. Man, we just, for the wedding, we just had, we just had, we had like 40 of them in our house. Like Latinos everywhere. It was just, it was lovely. So, but anyway, what I was going to say is, For the first time I've started saying, you know what, as soon as we're married, so now, I have to get an Argentinian passport. Because if shit kicks off and it might do, I need to get out of it. Yeah, you'd never find any Jew haters in Argentina. Argentine took the Jew haters and the Jews. They just took everyone who can come and help this country.

But, you know, if it did really kick off in Europe, it's a place I could go if I had the visa. When I was there before, I had to leave every 90 days and come back again. But if there was a war like that, they'd probably shut the board. You know, no one wants everybody coming there now, I think. So that is something we genuinely talk about and genuinely are concerned about. All right, well, listen, it's great to have you back on the show. It's good to see you're doing well. As you know, before we go to locals and ask you questions from our supporters,

the last question we always end with is, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? I forgot about that. Shit. What's the one thing we're not? That's a British person's internal. Yeah. Americans have got like a list of 10. Yeah.

Well, listen, the one thing we're not talking about, is from Alabama. Sorry, sorry. What are we not talking about? Shit, why didn't I do this? It's so hard to think on the spot, isn't it? Because you're not as professional. We've been at it a bit longer, mate.

Yeah. We're not talking about... Yeah, fuck it. Sense of humour. Everyone's lost the sense of humour. I suppose Tom Nash, you know, Tom Nash lost his arms and legs. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was where we were in this event. He's come to England in the end, and we did...

He does his thing called Last Meal, which isn't even out anyway yet, but he just does it. I think he enjoys it. He had Dawkins on and he asks you your last meal, and he cooks it for you. I don't know how. Oh, does he? Yeah. I went around Tuesday the other night in London, and he's cooked me this lovely meal. But then he asked you all those kinds of questions.

Just like, where's the one moment in your life this? And you're like, how can I think on the spot? I wish I knew the questions before. But, look, here's his main point all the time is that by getting rid of a sense of humor, by getting, I was so scared to say the wrong thing. it makes things infinitely harder for him because people approach and don't know how to say hello where he wants to joke, he gives his hook to people

and he's like, sees how they shake it or fist bump it or what they do. And we need to laugh. You guys are comedians. You've both made me laugh a lot on stage and I want us to keep laughing because we're all going to be dead. I love that you specified

that we didn't make him laugh in the course of the series. Back then you did. No, you made me laugh a lot. All right, Andrew, thanks for coming on. Follow him over at Heretics on YouTube and head on over to locals. where we ask Andrew your questions. As it's you, strong opener, mate.

Does the right scare you as much as the left? Why or why not?