TRIGGERnometry - "They've Weaponised Guilt and Shame" - Africa Brooke

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

Africa Brooke joins us in the studio to kick-off 2020.  Follow Africa on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/africabrooke/?hl=en  Listen to Africa's podcast Beyond the Self with Africa Brooke  Sponsored by Author Tired Moderate. Buy the book Woke Fragility here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08PG55FZW/ 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 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. You didn't like it. No, no. You didn't like us. I didn't.

You know what's hilarious. I feel like I'm doing the rounds speaking to people that I didn't like and being like, I love you now. Please take me. And I'll tell you why I didn't, KK, it's because I knew that my story was going to have to change. Hey, Constantine, are you feeling fragile? Of course, I'm a full-blooded, toxic, straight white male. Then I have the perfect book for you. It's called Woke Fragility.

Oh, what's it about? It's a satirical takedown of the woke movement, poking fun out all the nonsense, and the ridiculous arguments were forced to endure day after day. Ah, so it's a parody of Robin DiAngelo's white fragility, a favourite of middle-class white gimps everywhere. There is nothing wrong with being a lower middle-class white gimp. Anyway, the great thing about the book is that it's not gratuitous or incendiary. It's a light-hearted and playful book written by someone on the left

who's as incredulous at this idiocy as we are. I'm guessing he hasn't been able to find. a publisher because, well, for the reasons that we all know. So where do I get a copy for my one remaining woke friend? Search woke fragility on Amazon or just hit the link in the description. All right. Well, what happens if I don't read it? I'll buy you a copy of white fragility instead. Get me a copy of woke fragility stat. Finally, I'll figure out what it takes to make him behave. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen. And this is the show for you if you want.

honest conversations with fascinating people. I'm absolutely pumped for the guest we have for you today. She's a writer or speaker and consultant, Africa Brooke. Welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you so much. Thank you. Obviously, we've been speaking for a while before starting to record, but I'm very, very excited for this conversation

because I think there are so many parallels in our stories, even though we're very different people. And I'm just really excited that we get to speak about here because I admire everything you both do. That's very kind of you. And there was a bit of distancing as well. Obviously very different people. We'll keep you over there. Very different.

Very different. She keeps looking at you as well. We're very different, mate. Just a quick glance at Francis Foster. No, Africa, it's a real pleasure to have you. You know, there's a bit of a mutual admiration society going on here, mutual appreciation thing. But before we get into all of that, for people who don't know you,

tell everybody who are you, what has been, your journey through life because it has been a fascinating one. It has. It has. And some people will be familiar with my story because I do think our audiences and our communities cross over a little bit, but I know most people won't be. But the work that I do today as a writer, as a consultant, as a coach, as a speaker, it all comes from about five years ago, which is when I got sober. And my journey to sobriety wasn't an easy one. It wasn't me just making a decision and then just fucking doing it. It was a very grueling process. And when I was 19 years old, I realized that I had a very big problem with blackout drinking, binge drinking, which I know culturally in this country

specifically is almost seen like a rite of passage. I don't know what it has been like for you. But I knew from the very first time that I drunk that there was something that wasn't quite normal, if you will, because I blacked out from the very first moment. And I blacked out pretty much every other time after until I got sober at 24. And I had tried seven times to get sober consciously seven times. And, you know, I always say that this is not including the moments where I said, I'm never drinking again or felt some kind of shame, seven times trying to get sober. And I relapsed every single time.

And in 2016 is when I had just exhausted myself to the point of really. that if I don't get sober now, I'm not going to make it to 25 years old. I'm not going to see another year of my life. So again, it wasn't a profound romantic decision. I didn't do it for myself and my well-being. I was losing everyone in my life. I was becoming someone that I didn't even recognize. The version of me that would come out when I was blackout drinking

is a version that I wouldn't even be able to write. But I had to apologize for her actions every single time. And the thing that kept me and has kept me sober from 2016 is the curiosity. And even in the work that I do today, curiosity is something I speak about so much. And I'll tell you exactly what I mean by that. I started to just wonder what is happening to me on a brain-based level when I drink in this way. What is keeping me in this destructive cycle? What is keeping me in a cycle of shame,

feeling like I want to escape my reality to a point of losing eight hours because that's the longest that I've ever blacked out, eight hours. And I remember actually, and I'm sure I've shared this before, I remember going to lunch with a friend. We went to lunch in Soho. I think it was a Monday.

And then I woke up a day and a half later in Surrey. In Surrey. She knows how a part of that. Not really, mate. She ended up in Surrey. I'll just be very... I'll just be very honest about this. I woke up a day and a half later doing Coke at midday in Surrey. I had no idea how I had got there.

Or my friend wasn't there. I was with people that I had never seen before. But this was just one incident of many. But anyway, I started to get curious about what was happening to me in terms of behavior. And then I just got immersed into a world of psychology, into a world of personal development, into a world of just hearing different lecturers speaking, different professors, different mentors sharing their stories. I spoke to so many people who were also addicts.

That's not a term that I ever used for myself specifically. But I did realize that I had a big issue with alcoholism. So I started to wonder how I could use my own story, not only to save myself, but to maybe connect with other people that are going through the same thing. It's when I came across the concept of self-sabotage, which is now a big part of my work. It's my main area of focus. Why do we get in our own way? And five years on, I mean, I'm kind of jumping here, but five years on, the work that I do now is heavily influenced by my sobriety journey

and me wanting to understand human behavior, our capacity for change that we can actually change when we can to a different story and also just understanding the psychology and science behind all of that. So that's what's led me to what I do. That's one part of it. And Francis has a lot of questions and things she wants to discuss with you about that. But also just to add another part. And we talked about this before we started the show. You know that for us, you know, the way we do the show is we have conversations that we find interesting. And while I think everybody knows our particular stance on wokeness and woke culture and we are not particularly keen to like just have that endless conversation

over and over because we're not even sure that it's particularly productive. Nonetheless, one part of your journey also is that you wrote an open letter talking about how you left the wokeness cult. And I'm sure that had an impact on you as well, right? Yeah, absolutely. And the way that ties in, and I'll get into the lesson, but the way that ties into the work that I do now, self-sabotage and understanding self-sabotage and understanding self-sabotage. censorship is because about two years ago, it's when I started to move away from looking at the individual. Why does the individual sabotage? Why did I censor myself? Why do people censor themselves? I started to see what was playing out in our culture. And I realized that actually we might be

witnessing a collective sabotage. Where it's no longer just the individual experiencing something and having to work through it themselves, we have groups of individuals projecting their own internal happenings onto an entire society. So that's how my work has shifted into what I do now. So the letter that I wrote, why I'm leaving the cult of wokeness, was me saying that I'm not playing that game anymore. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it because it started to make me sick in a way that I can't even explain. It wasn't even just me feeling emotionally like, actually, something is not quite right. But for whatever reason, even though I've always been a very outspoken person, there seems like there are some areas that other people have decided that I can't

say anything on or that I have to follow a very specific script. And this script is based on my identity markers as a black person, as a woman, etc., etc. And then I just started to realize, oh my goodness, I know all of this well. But the thing is, I only know it well in the sense of sobriety and drinking culture and why we again get in our own way, etc. But I realized that I was starting to see the same things playing out in our culture in a different way, which is when I wrote that letter. And what moved you to write the letter? Was there a particular epiphany where you go, I just can't do this anymore? Yeah, yeah. I would say 2020, which was, are you surprised? Are you surprised? I don't know. Something, anything.

a little bit weird happened in 2020. I don't know what it was. I don't know. It was 2020. When, and to be even more specific, the racial tensions that were happening, especially in June, and the level of dehumanization that I started to see.

And here's a thing. When everything that happened in the US happened with George Floyd, etc., immediately I was on board. I was on board in the sense that something horrific had just happened and injustice had taken place. And as a black person, the message that was essentially presented to me was one where just by default, I had to also see myself as victimized. I did. There wasn't any other way

to look at it. It wasn't a, something has happened. Let's sort of look at it objectively. I'm in a completely different country with a different history. I'm not saying it's a romantic history at all, but it's a very different history to the US. But there wasn't any objectivity, there wasn't any room for critical thinking. You just had to take on the fact something has happened to a black person, which means that it can happen to you and you have to take on the exact same pain. And I did. And I was very frustrated and I didn't even really know why.

And I started to see myself echo, even in my own mind, echo sentiments that I would have never agreed with before. For example, the idea that all white people are racist, I have never in my entire life thought anything like, to me, that doesn't make sense. And I've said this many times, but immediately what comes up for me is, okay, what white people specifically are we talking about? Because a white person in the US or Norway or South Africa or Kenya or Australia, very different experiences of so-called whiteness, right? But I didn't, there was no room to even ask anything like that. You had to echo what everyone else is saying or else you are the enemy.

So I saw the division. I really started to see the division in a way I just hadn't before. And I was buying into it myself. And it took about a month for me to almost snap out of that and start to start to just think to myself, what the fuck am I doing? what am I actually participating in? What am I doing? This is not me.

But again, I felt very alone in that because no one else was having any kind of conversation like that. I think the only person that would have been having any conversation similar to that is Ayesha, it can be. I really can't think of anyone else that was openly having any kinds of discussions like that. And in that same year, you both interviewed her. actually. So I would say the summer of 2020 really was the nail in the coffin for me,

but there were a lot of things that had been coming up for a couple of years before then. And do you think your sobriety played a massive part in this? Because as someone who doesn't drink, I gave up alcohol in 2011. Right. And the part of giving something up is a realization that you can't live with it anymore. Yeah. And you can't disdise. And you can't deceive yourself any longer. And once you start that process of being honest with yourself and practicing sort of a form of radical honesty where you see your life for what it is, once you start looking at the world through that lens, you can't stop doing it. Oh, absolutely. And I'm so, gosh, I'm so fucking glad that you just said that because I always come back to

my sobriety. I think with sobriety that, Janet, it gave me a very useful, framework that can be applied to so many things. And radical honesty is one of those things. And again, it's not a romantic process. Because I think to say that term, it can sound like it's this kind of fluffy, self-helpic, no, it means that you have to be in integrity even when you don't fucking want to. And me writing that letter, why I'm leaving the cult of wokeness, me saying that I'm not going to dehumanize white people. I'm not going to use the exact same framework that was used many years ago in segregation onto another race in the name of justice.

I'm not going to do that. Me rejecting the narrative that I'm a victim by default because of my skin color, but it's kind of rebranded in this empowering way, which is really weird, isn't it? I always call it, it's just rebranded tactics. All of it, if you really just look at it, it's just rebranded as something new,

but it's the exact same thing. me rejecting all of that, there was nothing for me to gain, nothing for me to gain at all. But because I'm so committed to being in integrity, no matter what, that letter was going to fucking happen. And it took about two years for me to actually get it out, but I knew that I had to. And yeah, I do think my sobriety really fueled that process. And you've come a long way because you mentioned having watched our interview with Asia Academy at the peak of the of the racial tensions and I think that's the best way to describe it. You didn't like it. No, no. You didn't like us. I didn't. You know what's hilarious. I feel like I'm doing the

rounds speaking to people that I didn't like and being like, I love you now. Please take me. And I'll tell you why I didn't, KK, it's because I knew that my story was going to have to change. I knew that my story was going to have to change. I knew that I was going to have to really sit with the cognitive dissonance that I felt and the discomfort. Because the information that I was taking in, it made sense. Everything that you and Ayesha were talking about, it made sense objectively, right? You weren't speaking about your own emotions and your own feelings. Things that I think are useful, by the way.

I'm not of the thinking that they're useless. but I think there is a time and a place with certain conversations. What you were saying made logistical sense. But it didn't align with the way that I felt because I felt so angry. I had been told that I need to feel angry on the behalf of all of the people that share my identity. And I was okay with that for a time until I was told all of these other things that I also need to do, that I didn't sit well with me. So even though I didn't like what I was hearing from all of you, speaking about statistics and just speaking about some of the contradictions, etc., I sat with it. I sat with it. I didn't reject it straight away. For whatever reason, I kept coming back to the conversations that you had and looking at what else you've been talking about. And I do remember feeling so jarred by

just how audacious you both are, which I think is such a beautiful thing, but just how bold you are and how unapologetic you are. And it was very refreshing because I guess I had been in so many echo chambers where you have to apologize for your existence

and you have to, you know, preface everything with as a cis white this, and you both just refused to buy into that. And that was the process that I was in saying, no, I'm not doing that. So it was very jarring, but also it was very compelling, which is why I kept coming, which is why look where I am. So what pissed you off the most about the conversations that we were having? I'm serious, but that's the interesting thing, is like, what is it that really, like, oh.

The truth. The hearing the truth. Because, again, and I didn't realize that subconsciously, I was finding myself in echo chambers where the truth wasn't what. or at least a certain truth is welcome. And there are unspoken rules. We all know that this is what you speak about. This is what you don't speak about. You don't point out contradictions, especially if you're pointing out contradictions to do with a certain race or a certain community

or a certain whatever, because there's an unspoken hierarchy, which doesn't fucking exist in the real world. So I think it was hearing truths that I'm not really used to hearing. Or at least don't want to hear. I think it's inconvenient, right? So I think that's what sort of pissed me off the most, if you will. But I don't think it really, really did. As I said, I think I just had to change my story and a part of me didn't want to

because it's much easier to keep yourself safe in groups where everyone says the same thing. No one disagrees with you. But at the same time, there's a hypervigilance because you have things you really want to say, but you have to keep them to yourself. You do, don't you? We do live in a society which is hypervigilant and obviously social media plays a part of it. Yes, yes. How did you feel that impact your life? You know what? I would say the hypervigilance piece didn't really impact me specifically, but I could see it with other people. I could see that behind closed doors, because I have always been a very, very open person. And with the things that I've been speaking about in terms of self-sabotage for the past five years, naturally, I have to be open. And I think as someone that has experienced just so much fuckery with sobriety and blacking out and just doing things you would never normally do, there's a level of transparency that comes with having to tell that story anyway.

So I think because of that, a lot of people trusted me, which meant behind the scenes, I would get to see what people really think. I will get to see that you have this thing that you want to say, but you're so afraid of even just asking. the question, not stating an opinion, asking a question. And when I would ask people why, even some of my own clients, they would tell me that, you know, they have some of their followers messaging them, asking them, why are you following this person? I expected more from you. I'm disappointed that you are following an individual on social media. So the hypervigilance piece, I saw it more so from the outside looking in, not experiencing it firsthand. But I wanted to know as well if you both have experienced that to some degree, where you feel like you're being watched.

Oh yeah. I'll tell you a story. I was, I was, I remember a friend called me one day and he goes, Francis, and this, I was in the comedy industry, which is ultra woke, blah, blah, blah, blah. We know that we know all that. I didn't know that, by the way. Didn't you? Didn't you? No. Oh, massive. I think I first heard it from both of you and Joe Rogan, speaking about it a little bit, but I really didn't know. Yeah, oh, it completely is. It completely is. All the liberal arts, whether it's theater, whether it's TV, they've all gone to that side. And I remember he called me up and he goes to me, I've been looking at a lot of your tweets and you're sounding like a conservative. And, you know, you might want to have a look at that.

And I remember I was in a bad mood. I think I had an argument with my girlfriend and I said the words, I don't give a fuck anymore. Because I just... Why is it wrong that you have certain conservative opinions? I have opinions that are liberal. I have opinions that are conservative. I don't identify with other side because to me that's tribalism. And then you're not being authentic anymore. What you're doing is being part of a tribe.

And once you do that, you lose your sense of who you are, your sense of self. Right. But to me, I just found that shocking that someone would look through my tweets. There's got enough time in the day, number one, to look through the tweets and going, oh, you know, you said this, you did this. And when I had a bus stop with the same person, you remember he called me and he goes to me,

you're going to lose a lot of your liberal friends. And he was right, to be fair to him, he was right. It's all right, mate, you've got me. It's me, Africa and Anton. That is your social circle now, my friend. That's what you need. That's what you need. No.

But that's where we were. And the same, we were telling you the story before we started about a friend of ours who's not really, you know, he's just a comedian who happens to have all sorts of different opinions. And he got another comedian who said to him, the optics of your tweets lately are right wing or whatever the phrase was. The industry that we come from, unfortunately, it's a very small circle and it's everybody's watching everybody all the time. Right. To the point where when I was sort of in the place that you described, where you came across people who were doing stuff online that you thought, well, I'm learning something.

I remember the exact moment for me when it hit me. I watched Larry Elder, who we've since had on the show, on Dave Rubin. And he did exactly what you were saying you saw with us and Aisha, where he just went, fact, fact, fact, stat, stat, stat, stat, stat, which like only Larry can do. And I was like, oh. And then I was like, shit, I now have to believe this because I can see that it's true, but I know the price for that. That's it.

So I didn't like Dave Rubin's like Facebook page for two years. And I don't watch much of Dave's channel because we're doing this now. And, you know, he's gone in his own direction. We've gone in our own direction, whatever. But at the time, what he was doing was groundbreaking. And I remember watching it and being terrified. I wouldn't even subscribe to his channel on YouTube. And there's people who do that with trigonometry.

There's people like, I was chatting to Zubi. about this the other day. And he reckons his Twitter following is twice what it is, and he's probably right, because there's lots of people who are afraid to follow the wrong person. Yes. Right? Yes. And I think the vast majority of people who know they have something to lose, who know that they're going to be punished at work, are going to be fired, their opportunities are going to be curtailed. And it's, you know, of course it's the creative arts, but it's also it's publishing, it's the media, it's politics to a large extent. You know, are you following the wrong person? And it's, you know, are you following the wrong person? Are you associating with wrong people? We've gone into, we went into

the thing, and I don't know, maybe tell me what you think about it, but there was a point where we just went into this sort of crazy game that I call six degrees of white supremacy, which is, you talk to us and we talked to this person, and he once stood next to that person who was walking a dog for another, and then suddenly you are that person's six degrees of separation away. You are the white supremacist, because you once talked to the, you know what I mean? That's, I think, the world we're living and with what you talk about with self-censorship, that seems to me to be really the key piece here. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And you know what I always think of it, it's the exact thing that you just outlined. I think of it as cancellation by proximity. That's the sort of world that we're in right now.

And I also received messages from people saying, Africa, I would love to share your Instagram live or your podcast episode or your post. But I know that if I do, I'm going to be, yeah, I'm going to get it from the mob online. And if you ask yourself, I mean, go on to my social media. What the hell am I even saying? I'm advocating for hello people. Can we remember that there's a fucking middle ground? That's it.

That's it. Right? Yeah. Just advocating for nuanced conversations. Can we understand the context before we buy into a three-minute clip? Those are the conversations that I'm having that we don't have to pick between pro or anti, white or black, with us or against us. So many of us, and I would argue that the majority are in that middle ground. We're in the gray area.

But it feels like to even say that puts you in a certain position. And to me, that's fucking crazy. And that is the nature of self-censorship when it comes to the point of it doesn't even take an external mob. to tell you that you can't say that it's the mob in your mind. And that is the most dangerous thing where you start to filter every single thought, every single action, every single idea through what the mob will accept.

That's frightening. It's terrifying. It's terrifying. I remember my girlfriend went to a comedy night and she came back and she's really into, you know, more controversial comedians like Stan Hope, Doug Stanhope, people like this. And I said to her, what was it like? Did you enjoy it, my love? And she went, I just found it really boring

because no one was saying anything interesting. No one was actually pushing the boundaries. And I said, but you can't blame them because that's the system. That's the industry. If you do push boundaries, if you do, for instance, go and do a joke about BLM, where you take the piss out of BLM, you ain't playing that gig again. It's really that simple. I mean, it would be a fucking great last gig. Yeah, you'd go out with a bank. But you're right.

And that's in many ways I think why we started trigonometry because that mob in your head that you're talking about, every comedian in this country who is not already a multimillionaire super successful, and even many of them, we've all got that mob in our mind now. Everybody. Everybody.

I remember, I told the story before, I think, once. There was a comedian when I used to do comedy, we did a gig together, top secret, best club in London, in my opinion. and I always used to talk about political and cultural stuff as a comedian that's who I am that's what interested me and I came off stage and he went oh man I love the fact that you do this I'd love to do that and I was like well it's great you know like let's do some writing or

whatever and he was like oh no no I couldn't do that and I was like why and he went well as a straight white man and I was like oh you know what I call that I call it the script yeah I call it the script because when I started to pull myself out of all of that To make sense of some of the things that were happening, I just had to sort of just label certain things in a certain way so I can remind myself not to get sucked in. And that, I always refer to it as the script,

because it's like you're given this role that you have to play and you don't get to decide whether you played or not. Your identity markers pick out the role for you. And when I started to see how many people, especially women, for some reason. And I'm really looking into this, actually, a slight tangent, but I'm trying to do a lot of research to see why it seems as if it's mainly women that buy into this culture.

I find that piece very interesting. I have some theories for you that are not going to go down well with people. I find it very interesting. And it made me think of something Jordan Peterson said a while ago, and I've seen some research on this as well, that with women mainly kind of tend to, to go for reputational damage instead of physical. And that maybe plays a part into why we see women mainly kind of spearheading a lot of what we see.

Because I've been looking into this for the past year. I think there is sort of a gender aspect to it. Massively. Massively, right? So if anyone's listening and they have some kind of thoughts around that, useful thoughts around that, that would be good. I mean, speaking of Jordan, you're looking very, you look, you look the bit. scared for a second there about what I'm going to say. No, it was a face of wonder. Yeah. It was a face of

saying, huh. Well, I give you a couple of pieces that maybe are relevant here. Number one, as we know from the psychological research, women are more prone to negative emotion and emotion in general. Yeah. Just fact, statistically speaking. And if you think about this ideology and the cognitive dissonance that we all experienced that you were describing earlier when we were sort of confronted by facts versus our own feeling, if feelings are higher priority for you as an individual because of your hormones and whatever, that will be more difficult to overcome with facts, right, or with statistics or whatever, because your feelings take a higher priority. Negative feelings and also women are more empathetic and compassionate.

So if you weaponize empathy, as I've talked about in the past, right, weaponizing empathy, you're saying, look, I have empathy for people who are suffering, right? We all do. Now, if I come along and go, well, look, these people have been oppressed for millions of years and whatever, that draws people in. And it's weaponizing their empathy against them because they then can't ask questions. You have to accept the narrative, right? You can't go. So when you say you've been oppressed for a million years, well, actually human beings haven't existed that a lot.

Yeah. So that's part of it. And the other thing I think about it about as well, women tend to be more communitarian. They care more about fostering community. If you think about the stereotypical grand narrative mum and dad, right, in a healthy way, the mom is the one that keeps everybody getting along and the dad is maybe the one that pushes you and that sort of thing. You know what I mean? These are all generalized stereotypes.

They don't apply to every human being. But I think those are some of the pieces why this issue is gendered in that way. You know, emotion, being more vulnerable, susceptible to negative emotion, and the desire for community and empathy. I think those are the places. And those are wonderful human instincts that women bring to the conversation. But if you weaponize them against people, and also women get punished more. They get punished more for speaking out. That's the other thing.

It's more scary because you are perceived as more vulnerable. Women get way more hate online for doing the same things that I do, for example. You're right. punishment is also greater and therefore it's scary for women. That's why, you know, gender-critical feminists, for example, I have a lot of admiration for them because it's really, really dangerous. As do I. Yeah, as do I. Because behind, again, and this comes back to the self-censorship piece, this is really preventing us from having some really fucking important conversations. Because to truly be able to, and I speak to a lot of my trans friends, have you spoken to Buck Angel?

Yes, we have. Oh, isn't Buck Brilliant? Yeah, Buck's great. Oh my goodness. I'm so grateful that someone like him exists, but when I speak to people like Burke will just engage with his work or some of my other trans friends, you realize that the current conversations that are spreading like wildfire

are really doing a disservice to the people that really need the help. So when you have certain trans activists taking on the role of speaking for everyone else and taking people 10, 20, 30 years back and we can't even ask questions and have a discussion because people are so afraid, it's doing nothing. It's doing absolutely nothing. And something, I wonder what you think about this, but I think one of the things with undoing self-censorship, I think we all need to be

willing to risk something. I think we are in such extremes of binary thinking where we think, but if I speak, I'm going to lose my income, my job, my clients, my kids, etc. We go to the extremes. I always say to people, including my clients, yes, that is a possibility, but is that the only truth? Right? And I think people have an idea that to undo self-censorship, you need to speak publicly. No. It's about your very intimate relationships that have been heavily politicized. It can be a very silent and slow process between one person. It's you deciding that the mob in your mind should not exist to begin with. Because even when we say language, like, oh, you can't say this anymore. No, who the fuck gets to decide that? You can, and maybe you need to be willing to risk something. And I think comfort is the bare minimum that people can risk. I think people think that any kind of discomfort shouldn't be there to begin with. That means that I should shut up. No, I think you need to be willing to risk something. I think that's the only way through this.

Because accepting that this is just how it is and having a few people, maybe people like, us speaking on behalf of others, there's only so much that we can do. And I think it's easy for people to watch conversations like this and to maybe stop there. I do think some people start to see, how can I integrate this into the real world? Maybe I say, hey, listen to this podcast and start to undo that process. But I think we need to be willing to go a step further and actually integrate these things into the real world? I think lack of authenticity kills people. I genuinely do. I think it's an emotional dry rock. You get used to lying, you get used to saying lies, and then you tell lies to yourself, and then as a result, you become deeply unhappy, deeply frustrated,

deeply angry, because you know on some fundamental level that you're wasting your time, and time is all that you have. And if you're doing that perpetually, you realize that you're wasting your life. And that's when you become angry. And then you have that anger. And then if you don't express that anger because you're not being honest, you then turn that anger in on you, which is what? It's depression. And that's why people sink. I think the best thing that we can all do is just go, look, this is what I think and what I feel. Yeah. And I just think people are terrified to do that. And they live their life and fear. And it's tragic because at the most basic fundamental level, it's a waste of a life. Now, look, not everybody, not everybody needs.

I think to be going out there and doing stuff in the public eye or whatever. No, far from it. But the world's a stage and we're merely actors and everybody's got a role to play. There are some people for whom the way to integrate, like us, for me, integrating that dishonesty that I was living with resulted in this. For Francis the same, for you, your life. But for other people, it just means there are people who watch our show. We get people sending us money, as you know, watching on the Raw show,

going, oh, guys, you are some of the best commentators on YouTube. Please don't read my name out. Right? And I respect that. I understand where that's coming from. And for some people, that may be the extent of their honesty is they send money to a channel that's doing something that they think is valuable and that they want to see more of. But in their own lives, they're having to, you know, contain that to certain contexts,

maybe. Yes. I don't think it's a healthy environment necessarily, but for some people, that's, you know, they've got kids to feed and there's other responsibilities. they come into play. So I'm also aware that asking everyone, we don't, like, when I think about this, the way I think about is, would the world be a better place if everybody in the world was Constantine Kisson? I don't think no. Thank you. She went straight away, no. No, no. Trust me. No. Definitely not. No. No, it fucking wouldn't. I thought you were going to say something very

I think the world would be amazing if it was just filled with you. No, I don't think it would be. I think in every society, you need a creative, destructive element. An element of people who are willing to point at all the hypocrisies and the flaws and whatever. But if everybody was doing that, it wouldn't be a healthy society. So I think everybody's got a role to play. And it's not so much about looking at a screen and go, oh, I'm going to do that. I'm going to replicate that in my life.

I think it's about going, what is the authentic expression of who I am and what I feel about the world and my views and how do I. And I frankly have a lot more respect for people who, I don't know, build a church or feed hungry kids or whatever than people who do a YouTube show. You know, people who go out into the real world and do stuff to me. Or, you know, people who create a charity that brings people of different races together and helps them see their common humanity. To me, that's infinitely more valuable than what we do. There's a thing for everybody. I agree. I agree, which is why I always emphasize that if you are someone that is experiencing

just debilitating levels of self-censorship, or even not, if you're starting to think, I am finding that if I'm with this group of people, I end up agreeing with things that I don't actually really think. I think that is the opportunity to take the risk that I'm speaking about. Because when I say the word risk, I don't want people to go to the extremes again, thinking they have to lose it all. No, you have little moments every single day where you can just behave in a slightly different way and just experience that discomfort.

And like I said, it's a very slow, silent, unsexy process most of the time. You don't have to shout about it online. I don't think most things should be online, to be honest. I think it's a very personal thing. And if you do end up at a point where you feel like, actually, I do have something useful to contribute to a conversation that's currently happening, you've already done it in your personal life, you know. And I think that's far more sustainable even than trying to find a strategy

to be able to say something controversial and then put it online. I actually don't think that's useful because you haven't taken yourself through a crucial process of saying, actually, how do I think? How do I feel about this? And testing it out with a friend. Because I think it's worrying,

and I get thousands of messages like that. It's like what I'm about to tell you each day, people that have started to avoid their family members because they feel a different way to maybe what the rest of them feel, because they have different opinions about the vaccine, about mandates, about, et cetera, about, and I think to myself, but it's your family. It's the people that you should be able to have those conversations, even when you don't agree. So it's not something that just people in the public eye are experiencing. It's just the average person who is probably,

not have been on social media that is starting to experience this tension and this division. And to me, that's the area that I like to focus on the most. It's not even the people that are necessarily have thousands of followers or an audience. It's the everyday person that is starting to feel stifled. That's what I care about. Because we politicise everything. That's the problem. Everything is politicized.

And a year ago, it wasn't like this. Over a year ago. Five years, it really wasn't like this. It really, my goodness. And you think everything now, even whether you're going to take a vaccine, there's reasons to take the vaccine. There's reasons not to take the vaccine. I believe in bodily autonomy. I believe that you should read up about it and decide whether you think it's appropriate for yourself.

Anti-vaxxer cancel it. He believes in bodily autonomy. Yeah. And with that, I think it's, because it's exactly where we are right now, what I also find so sinister is, for example, the people that have experienced. let's say an adverse reaction, and they share their story, not telling anyone what they should do, they share their story, and then they get called an anti-vaxx-it.

They get attacked? Is that really where we are? So someone has made a decision, maybe because they think it's for the best, they also want to keep other people safe, etc., whatever their reasons are, and they say, hey, actually, I did make this decision and then this happened.

Is this happening to anyone else? Can we have a conversation? You can't even go. even go there. And to me, that's a big fucking problem. And just things like that are part of why I won't shut up about any of this. Think about what you're talking about there. And I've never really thought about it in this way. But as you were speaking, I realized this. Think about what's happened to the idea of the truth in that situation. The truth has been made a slave to convenience. God. It's been made a slave to achieving some kind of political outcome. And so we, we're

We don't want to hear your story about how you had a particular reaction to a particular medical procedure because we have an agenda. And your story is not only not important, we're going to suppress it. We're going to shut it down because we need to achieve our objective. And in order to achieve our objective, we're going to tell you to shut up and keep your experience to yourself. Right. That's what's happening there.

Yeah. And it's so interesting you say that because. I always say similar things about my work. My work resonates with so many people. At this point in time, my open letter has been read by nearly 5 million people. Amazing. I mean, it's not a short. It's 4,000 fucking words.

I couldn't finish it. It's not short. It's not short. It's great. I was joking. Thank you. And I've received, you might have heard me say this on different podcasts, maybe not, but I've received, I haven't received any pushback.

I haven't received any pushback. And the amount of people, specifically black people, brown people that have, I'm laughing at brown people because I always hear the brown bird. There's some of my favorite jokes, honestly. She's talking about Arroyo show, which is completely outrageous. Just me and France is talking shit. We do it three times a week. And inexplicably, Africa watches it.

Oh, I love it. Please watch it. Please watch it. The amount of people that have told me, just thank you for speaking about this. And that message, that it's inconvenient, it's inconvenient for so many people, especially so-called activists.

And I'm not against activists. Of course, it would be ridiculous for me to be against activism. I think activism is so important and it's so needed. There's so many wonderful activists. that I know personally that are on the ground doing the very unsexy work of making a difference. They don't have big platforms. They don't want to be famous. But a lot of people want the fame.

But my message is inconvenient for them because a black woman coming forward and saying, no, actually, there's a very one-sided narrative about race. And I'm not buying it. I'm not into it. And also, this black woman is not affiliated with the alt-right, you know, because that's the angle that you always hear when people dismiss people like Candace Owens. They will just dismiss her because she's on the right. But I'm not on any kind of side. If I was to be pushed to say, where do you lean?

You could say that I'm more left-leaning. But there are many things that I agree with, with people that are more conservative and people that are not even politically affiliated anything. But again, my message is very inconvenient for people that want to just sell a very singular idea of the so-called black experience, which, anyway. So we'll talk about that another time. Can we talk about it now? Yeah, sure. What is your message on the race issue? That's a broad question.

Well, you were saying that it's inconvenient for some people to hear you say what you say. So what is it that you think that is inconvenient to certain types of activists? To me, first of all, I think the way that race has been spoken about right now is through a very Americanized lens. I don't know if you both have thought this as well. To me, it doesn't really, especially as someone that was born in Zimbabwe, came here to the UK when I was nine years old. And culturally, my life experience is just very different from. let's say someone who has been born and raised in the US or someone born and raised in the UK.

So I see race in a very different way. I didn't grow up thinking or being told that because of the color of my skin by default, I'm somewhat oppressed and I need to look at anyone who is white as my oppressor or my victimizer and I am the victim. It's just not the way that I was raised culturally. It just isn't. So I feel as though in the present day I'm being forced to see. step into a racial conversation that doesn't align with my actual so-called lived experience,

right? And I have a lot of questions about it. And I think that's the most inconvenient part because you're not allowed to say, hey, but I was born and raised in Zimbabwe. And my experience of my race is very different. And I actually don't see myself as oppressed. It's not even, But some people, and I've had this a few times, will get angry that I don't see myself as oppressed. They will see it as if I'm denying. That's the angle that people will go to. Oh, so you didn't know. I can accept the reality of what's happened in history.

And also acknowledge that I'm not oppressed because I think it's a slap in the fucking face to so many people in my country who are actually truly oppressed by the government and the system that will live under. And to be able to sit in the Western world, I'm probably more privileged than most people to say that I'm oppressed. It just doesn't, I'm not, I'm not doing that. And I think that's what causes a lot of friction with activists that have a very specific Americanized message about race. Africa, do you think, and I think we all have this, is that there is something I think of, we all have Western privilege in this. country, particularly people who've been born and brought up in this country. They look around, they only see the flaws, they only see the things wrong with it. They magnify in, they focus in on the flaws with this country, the problems with it. And they don't see actually how

lucky they are. Right. You know, you grew up in Zimbabwe. My mother's Venezuelan. I went back. I saw what happens when a society unravels. I saw what happens when you, quote, unquote, abolished capitalism. And this is a woman. And this is a woman. And, I saw what happens when you were, quote, unquote, abolished capitalism. And then you see people in this country wanting to implement those things, implement those ideas, put these narratives. And you know, having seen the other side of life, that actually how fortunate we are to be in this place. Right, yeah.

And I think that's what it is. I have something to compare it to. And I have immense gratitude for the opportunity that I have. And I always think of an area of so-called privilege that people don't speak about, which is passport privilege. The Zimbabwean passport, I shouldn't laugh, but I shouldn't laugh. I do have one. But I mean it's not the same as having a British passport. It's not the same. And just something that's so seemingly small that it changes my life in a way that most people can never imagine.

in my country. So to sit here and to say I'm oppressed. And the most interesting thing is that some people, through genuine curiosity, I will say, okay, so can you tell me how? How exactly are you oppressed? You know, when people are shouting online and they're saying, oh, we're oppressed,

no one can ever tell me. What actually makes you oppressed? Is it because you see your skin color as a burden? Because that's what so many activists fought for us to not be. believe and to think and you're willingly taking that on. A lot of people, again, the script that I was speaking about earlier, a lot of people will be chanting certain things. And when you simply ask a question, okay, so tell me exactly how. The whole thing fucking crumbles because they don't even

know why they're committing to this idea. Yeah, so I do find that very interesting. I do and quite disturbing. Yeah. It is. I think the conversation about oppression is probably even more nuanced than that because I think if you look at certainly the history of immigration into this country, the people who came here from the Caribbean and the 50s and 60s were treated very badly. Yes. And for

some of them, the residue of that and the legacy of that runs to this day through the family history and through some of the, you know, we know friends, comedians who at the time of BLM last year were saying, well look I'm not into all of this victimhood stuff but I

as a young black man was first stopped by the police when I was 12 and then it happened three times every year for the rest of my life. So there was that experience, whether it's, you know, there are some underlying reasons that we don't need to get into now that may explain some of that. Yes. But the subjective experience of that person is nonetheless one of, you know, uncomfortable experiences which are to some extent caused by their skin color.

Yes. Right. But at the same time, what triggered me in the way, to not buying into it is when it became these broad generalizations like you were talking about. All white people this. Well, actually, no. People would say that I'm white. My family never benefited from slavery.

Didn't live in this country. Most of my family, 50, 60, 70, 80, 150 years ago, long after the transatlantic slave trade ended, were slaves. White slaves, Jewish slaves taken to Germany as slave laborers or slaves in the Soviet gulags. Like, it's not as simple as white, bad, black, good. It's just not, right? And we can have a conversation about why certain groups of particularly Caribbean people in this country and in North America do have a different experience of life. And we should have that conversation.

And there are some problems there that need addressing. But we don't need to demonize people black or white or brown or whatever other skin color as a race. And this thing about whiteness, that is literally what you say. which is it's just taking racism and flipping it in reverse. That's all it is. Yeah. That's all it is. Yeah.

But I do, with all of that being said, I do, people always ask me, so are you hopeful or do you think everything has just gone to shit and we're fucked? I am hopeful because the fact that a year ago, I, even though I thought of myself as a very confident, outspoken person, I'm in integrity, I've led myself here through my sobriety journey, I don't think I would have sat here speaking to both of you. I think I would have, if we're just isolating that moment in time, I would have sort of just kept this to myself, that this is what I'm engaging in in terms of just conversation. The fact that we can even have this conversation, and it's not the only one happening, I'm sure you've seen that more

people are starting to feel able to say, hey, something really fucking weird is happening. We need to talk about it. Or, you know, to start. to create comedy sketches that address some of the things that are happening and you start to see that things are shifting, you know, maybe not as fast as some people would like it, but I think it's, something is happening that is changing, shifting the tide a little bit. So that allows me to remain a little bit hopeful through all of it. Yeah. Do you both feel I, I, There are times where I feel hopeful. Yeah.

And then I go on Twitter. Do you know what I mean? I'm not on Twitter, so maybe. So maybe there is because we're starting to have these conversations. The tone is less heated. We do seem to have cooled down when it comes to the whole discussion on race. So perhaps we are. The thing that I always find very worrying and very sad is how you see black people who come out and say,

look, I disagree with this. I disagree with that. I'm not on board of a lot of what BLM do. I'm not on board of a lot of what BLM say, these are my reasons. And then I see other black people then use racial epithets against them and then say the most horrendous things.

Yeah. And that's just normal. And I'm thinking to myself, and then I see white people doing it. Like a friend Zubi who comes out and he was very critical of the BLM movement. And then I saw white people saying racist things to him. And everyone was like, oh, yeah, that's fine.

Right. So it's almost as if someone is labeled a Coon or an Uncle Tom, that means they can be treated as if they are an actual so-called white supremacist. So it doesn't matter. Victimhood revoked. Yeah, so the victim would revote. So the dehumanization is almost just a default of that because they've been. Yeah.

Yeah. But I am slightly optimistic, at least on the wokeness front. There's some other things going on right now that we probably don't have time to get into that make me a lot more pessimistic. But on the stuff we're talking about here, I do think the pendulum has slowed. I don't think it's swinging back at all, but I think it's slowing. It's slowing down. It's slowing down on the race issue. It's slowing down.

I think very noticeably actually on, you've got to be very careful. careful with words in this area. But to me, there is a lot of portions of the feminist movement, which I see is very legitimate and very well-intentioned and rightly existing. Right. And actually talking about important things. And not just as gender-critical,

there's stuff about domestic violence and all of that, which is really important and it's unaddressed. Yeah. But there was also a portion a few years ago of the feminist movement, which was just about man-hating. It just was. That seems to have died down. That's encouraging to me.

And the general wokeness and social justice thing, again, I do feel that it's slowing down and more sensible people are being a bit more measured about speaking out against it, but a lot of people are now criticizing it. It seems to me like when Barack Obama is saying, maybe you shouldn't be quite as woke. Like, we kind of, you know, you know what I mean. Like people might listen to that, I would hope, you know. So I think on that issue, actually, I'm with you and not with, for answers for a change. I've been less infected by his pessimism in that area. I do think we're

making progress. I do. I do. I think the fact that you hear is progress. Yeah, me too. I think that is progress. Me too. It's fascinating. It's a very, it's a very interesting moment. You know, we haven't talked about Zimbabwe much. Do you think that you have an outsider's perspective and that's what colors your ability to look at this in a different way? Absolutely. I do. I really do. And I'm so grateful for that actually because I think it introduces, again, another angle that is important in this conversation. Because even though you hear, you know, activists, social justice people, chanting black people, not a monolith, etc., etc., they still treat you like you are one. They still treat you like you are one. Because if you are, let's say, conservative and from the right, They'll say, but you're black. Okay. Right?

So many of those contradictions do show up. And I think just me being able to offer that perspective as an immigrant in the UK, that doesn't view things in this very singular way. I think that's an important perspective. And I think me being Zimbabwe is a big part of that. Yeah. Yeah. And do you mind if I'm making some, would I be right in assuming that you come from like a middle-class family in Zimbabwe?

Is that fair to say or not? It's just a curiosity. Working class family. Really? Working class family in Zimbabwe. But the thing is with most African, in most African countries, education is valued. It's really, really valid.

Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You like the Jews. Exactly. We are like the Jews. That'll be the title of the episode. I am Jewish. You know, there's a lot of black Jews.

No, they really are, especially in Ethiopia. Yeah. So education is really valued. So you will have families that are very much working class that will pour everything they have to make sure that their children actually get an education, which is why I think also with you, and I didn't go to private school or anything like that. I didn't even go to university. But my family did make sure that we did, especially coming to the UK in 2001,

where Zimbabwe was on such a decline and my mum was a geologist in Zimbabwe but when she came here to the UK none of that was useful. None of, she couldn't do anything with that. You can't use any of your degrees in the same way. She had to start from zero. She had to do nursing.

She was staying in student halls. She had four kids. I have two older sisters, one younger brother. So I don't come from a privileged background in the sense that people might, assume. But my family and my mum in particular has worked so fucking hard to get herself and pour everything into us to get ourselves to where we are right now, which is why, again, a lot of the language and a lot of the messaging that is being put out at the moment, I completely reject it

because it shrinks the real and very individual experiences of people globally. So yeah, again, do think my upbringing in Zimbabwe from a working-class family that wasn't in poverty or anything like that, but just regular people working in a Zimbabwe that was thriving and just took a nosedive and having to start again and having the privilege of coming to the UK at a time where it was much easier to come into the UK. Now, if you're coming from Zimbabwe into the UK, it's very, very difficult to even get into the country. So, yeah, there are. are so many threads to not only my story, but many people's story. And I think, again, repeating myself here, but the current narrative about race and identity and experiences, it just shrinks

all of that and makes everyone into just blobs, you know. So yeah. It's also about aspiration, isn't it? Because you can't see yourself as a victim and at the same time aspire to be something, or to, you know, to achieve something or to run a business. The two things are mutually incompatible because if you think that the world's against you you're never going to achieve anything, then you're never going to aspire. And that's part of my problem with this,

is that it says to people, oh, you're a victim. You know, the system is against you. You're never going to be able to achieve because you're of this, you know, you're in this group and you're oppressed. And to me, that just seems so toxic and harmful. Right. It just keeps people in the exact same cycle. So this is where I, what I call collective sabotage comes in because you're just getting in the way of your supposed goal.

But then I think to myself, actually, for most of these people, they don't have a fucking goal. No one talks about what is the actual goal here. No one ever offers solutions. And for me, that was, especially last year, another moment of awakening, just thinking, hold on. Why doesn't, for example, BLM, the organization, why don't they seem to ever offer? offer solutions. What is that about? Again, it's just a simple question. It's not me stating anything specific, just a question. And I think just introducing those questions to yourself can kind of just crack the veneer a little bit. It's a very good point. And you know your point about collective

self-sabotage? I really want to dig into that because one of the things I've done a lot in my life is personal development stuff. And I've tried as much, we talked to with Richard Grannon a couple of weeks ago about shadow integration. Yes. About dealing with the fact, hey, you've got demons and they need, and it sounds like you've been on that journey and you've kind of got your shit sorted out in many ways. But there's more. There's always more. And you have to keep working on it. But one of the things that having someone who looked into this deeply and looked into the impact of trauma and the impact of childhood experience and whatever on the things we seek out to look at and whatever, it was kind of always obvious.

to me that and to me it was easiest to see in that man-hating bit of feminism right because I just looked at and you you know if you've been enough if you've been around enough people you can start to see people's childhoods and traumas manifest themselves in the way they carry themselves the ways they talk the way they they carry themselves a lot of it was just I had a bad experience with men now the world must be a patriarchy so that my experience isn't just me having had a bad experience with one person, but rather it's the world. And now it makes sense. And at least I'm not the odd one out here. It's all women. All women are victims and all men are evil. And I'm just fortunate that my wife is really the opposite of that.

So it was easier for me to feel okay with that belief. Because that's a scary belief for a man to have in the modern world, you know, for a young man to have in the modern world. This idea that actually, you know, it's not what you're being told in many ways. And I think that collective self-sabotage is such a big part of this. Oh, isn't it? It really, really is because it also speaks to just the rejection of personal responsibility, which I know is very triggering for a lot of people. I think it's hilarious. But it's almost we've just, just, just, you know, just, made projecting normal, right? If I'm going through this very specific thing and if I see a post I don't like or a conversation that is happening that I don't like and I have a emotional and

physical response to it, I don't have to fucking deal with it. I'm going to make sure that everyone else fucking deals with it. I'm going to pour it out into the world and because we have channels like social media, you don't even have to, it incentivizes you to be as reactive as possible. You don't have to sit with yourself. And you can find your own little community and echo chambers where you can project your inner happenings and then you're likely to find people that are also in the exact same situation. Maybe they don't want to take responsibility for what's really happening

because that's also another really uncomfortable process. But we've rejected discomfort as an essential part of growth. And I always say that it's very different from pain. Discomfort is essential. You will feel it whether you like it or not, but are you going to deal with it? And people don't want to deal with it. So they project it outward.

Everyone else is the problem. There's always some kind of system. And I do think there are systems that we need to question. But not everything needs to be broken down. Not everything can be answered by it's the system. It's the patriarchy. It's whiteness. There are so many intricacies to all of that.

So what that happens is that it just becomes a collective game. Everyone is just sort of dancing in this disillusionment. And again, I'm so fascinated by that. And I'm more interested in understanding what's really happening there than just making it a woke or anti-woke conversation. I think it's much more useful to think, okay, we seem to be sabotaging ourselves as a collective. We seem to kind of want the same thing.

We just have different ideas about how to get there. We seem to have a lot of people that are emotionally unstable. Right? that again. Right? This is something as well that I'm researching and speaking to different just activists as well. Because it's so easy to get famous, to have a platform, someone might put an idea out into the world. I agree with you, especially seeing it around 2018 in terms of just people outwardly saying kill all men, hate men, etc.

And then that goes viral. Now you have a brand. It's just a young person or a young girl, someone who's disgruntled or someone who's disgruntled, they've experienced something very real, but now they have a brand, and now they have to perform according to that very singular message that made them who they are, but now they have 200,000, 300,000 people following them,

and now it becomes a collective game, right? Yeah. And I remember especially at that time, you had people, I won't mention who the particular influencer of this was, but now she's huge. She had a very successful book. People divorcing their people, their partners, breaking up with their boyfriends, because she's telling them to, right?

But it's someone who's not qualified. And it's highly unethical. That's something that I also like. How unethical all of this is. But yeah, it's people who are very emotionally unstable. Most of the time, they need genuine mental health support. But then they find these very attractive messages that tell them that they don't have to take responsibility. It's everyone else. Do you think we're weaponising guilt a lot of the time? Oh, for sure.

Guilt and shame and a lot of other things, but I would say guilt and shame, especially. Yeah. Because this is what, one of my friends that actually said this to me, we were talking about wholeness, and he was an Asian guy and we were talking about it. And he was just like, oh, well, it is, it's just weaponizing white, is, is, yeah, weaponizing white guilt. Was it, was it weaponizing or, yeah, he used that term. Yeah, that's all it is. Right. That's all it is.

And you know who speaks about this very well? I don't know if you've spoken to him already. John, John McWhorter. We're speaking to him very soon. Oh, gosh. And his book, Woke, Racism, How a New Religion Betrayed Black America. I really appreciate that book because it's not just your typical woke or anti-woke conversation. He really deles deep and look at how this is becoming a religion.

And I've heard many people speaking about how it's very much like a religion. But the very simple way in which he breaks that down, I just think it's very interesting for anyone who's curious, even just to see some of the conversations he's having just around this, I think it allows all of us to have language to what's happening without thinking, oh my goodness, this thing is sudden, it's come out of nowhere. You start to think, actually, this might be a bit more ancient than we think.

It's just presenting itself in the modern world, just in a very different and very unique way. Well, we're just eight with smartphones, really, aren't we? And so a lot of this stuff, it's difficult because... That's a bit racist, actually. I said we. I have a smart phone. I said we, we.

Suddenly I'm going to be the only one hosting this show. That's all we are. And so, you know, one of the things that I often think about very carefully is the moment I see myself going down one of these paths where it's like, oh, if I just go a bit further, I can get a few more retweets or whatever. I instantly slap myself in that moment when the moment I start to notice that. And it's unfortunate that it happens and it happens a lot.

We've seen people sit in that chair, you know, who go from on the similar journey to you, but their end point is way off the deep end because they get caught in that process. They get that loop of. oh, if I just tweet this, you know, and it can take people. It can take people on a journey to a bad destination as well. Yeah. Oh, that's such a good point to bring up, because another question I get quite often, and I speak about it quite often, is just to make sure that you're not leaving one echo chamber just to step into another one. Because something I do see, especially with a lot of the

anti-woke conversations, anti-cancel culture, it's the exact same thing as before. It's just dressed up differently. And I think that's something to be really mindful of, which is why I find it so refreshing, which is why I love that I sat down with both of you and we're having this conversation because it touches on all the other parts

that maybe people are not seeing, because all they've done is just step out of one echo chamber into another one, it reinvent the exact same thing. And your ego starts to get, to really thrive off the attention that you get from being purposefully, either controversial or saying things for the sake of external validation, etc. Which is exactly what we're trying to. Right.

Yeah. So, yeah. Well, we all have to fight that. Yeah, it is within ourselves. But it's also a deeper thing, isn't it, in that we all just want a tribe. Yeah. We just want a tribe. And the moment you step out of your tribe, you're terrified.

you're on your own, you know, your people who, where your support network are no longer there. So you think to yourself, oh, there's a new tribe. I can... Right. And then you're right back where you started, just in a different way. Yeah.

The good thing about it for me is, I don't want to be part of any fucking tribe. Just get your tribes away from me. I don't want to be part of your work tribe. I don't want to be part of your right wing or anti-wark tribe or whatever is. I'm interested in the truth. Yes.

I'm interested in an honest discussion. And an honest discussion will never be right or left wing because an honest discussion requires nuance. And nuance is inevitably by including both sides in that conversation. That's why we're moving in the direction that we're moving. We never wanted to be an anti-woke show. It's never been our intention. Never been our intention.

And it's not interesting to us. We are not in favor of wokeness, but we're not going to bang on about it endlessly. I think, like you said, there's a lot of people now speaking about it and there's more interesting conversations to be had, like the one we've had today. Yes, I love that. And we were saying that, actually, before we started recording that, it's not about rejecting the importance of those times,

where it was essential to express the frustration around what we know as wokeness. But then you get to move on from that. I think that's what some people don't remember, that you don't have to stay stuck in that. Even if that is what maybe got more attention at the time, and what was current and what people needed. You don't have to stay stuck in that. You can also evolve,

which goes against the very nature of everything we're being told that people don't change, that who you were 10 years ago, five years ago is who you are right now. I think we get to disprove that by shifting the way you do approach conversations. And I think you're both doing that very, very well, very well. And it just shows the problems with labels.

Immediately you put this label on or you use this label, you get given certain values which you have to ascribe to. Then you were in a tribe and then like I said, we don't solve anything. Yeah. We need to step out of the tribe and actually be honest. And it goes back to integrity and start saying what we think and what we feel and realizing that people might disagree with us. But if we ally so closely with a particular group,

we're never going to be able to do that. Yes. Yeah. Africa, without noticing it, we've been talking for way longer than we normally do, because, as you can tell, I think we've all enjoyed it. But our time is up. We're going to ask you a couple of questions for our locals-only supporters. But before we do, we've got one final question.

Are you vaccinated? No. I have a fake card. Our actual final question is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that you think we really should be? Can it be anything? Anything you want?

I think we need to revisit how fucking good the Sopranos is. I've been watching it again. And it's a really good study on human behavior. And for me, it's a good study on goodness, right? How conflicted you can be on, is someone good or are they bad? Isn't holding multiple truths about a person, which is what we really need to be doing at this moment in time. I think we've got really stuck in binary thinking good or bad.

when actually we can hold multiple truths about someone. And for me, I've been watching, I mean, I love cinema. I think cinema is a very good way to kind of just be able to even answer certain questions you have around just existing in general. And The Sopranos, for me, is one of those. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people find your work online?

Yes. So the only social media I have is Instagram at this moment in time. Twitter. I don't know how you both do it. I love it. You can find me... Africa, think about it. Like, I've got what, like, 95,000 followers.

I can piss off 95,000 people. You can. And the press of a button. Gosh. Isn't that incredible? Your resilience must be... Actually, it is. It is.

I think people that are on Twitter and can be on there and be okay. You need to be a very resilient person, so I do admire that. But I'm not on there yet. Just Instagram. It's at AfroS. I have two podcasts as well.

My podcast beyond the self is all about the individual. It's about how to focus on what you can control. But it's not self-helpy, abstract stuff. It's really practical. And I think you'll get a lot out of it. And then I have another podcast called Unfiltered with Africa Brook, where I look at collective sabotage. And it's about finding middle ground in a divided world.

And I think your viewers especially will really I'm sure they will check it out. Thank you guys for watching and listening. We'll see you very soon with another brilliant interview like this one or a raw show, which even very cool people like Africa watch. So make sure you tune in for one of those. There's three of those a week, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. We'll see you very soon. They always go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. We hope you've enjoyed this incredible interview. Remember to subscribe. and hit the bell button so that you never miss another fantastic episode.

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