Ricky Gervais calls to discuss Sam's monster joke from their last conversation and then other things happen... If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.
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|---|---|
| Hey, Ricky. | |
| Hi. | |
| Quick one. | |
| I've been thinking about your dream, your joke in your dream. | |
| And as we comedians say, I think it deserves more. | |
| A little bit more, yeah. | |
| Yeah, no. | |
| To actually make it funny. | |
| Yeah, it is. | |
| No, it is. | |
| It is. | |
| Sometimes it's funny for the wrong reasons and on a meta level. | |
| Well, first of all, it's funny that you told me it. | |
| It's funny that you, that you, right? | |
| And I was underwhelmed. | |
| And it's like you've been through that once. | |
| Because the funniest thing, of course, is an eminent thinker waking their partner up and going, I've just dreamt a great joke. | |
| That's funny already, right? | |
| Listen, you had Annika laughing at the phrase eminent thinker. | |
| Yeah, well, right, but, so it's good. | |
| This is what I want to talk about, right? | |
| So, it sounds like a joke. | |
| It sounds like a child's joke, even the premise, you know, what noise does a monster make, right? | |
| Now that's a simple, you think it's going to be a pun, some sort of play on words, what noise, but it's better than that because There's even a play on there in your joke, because we think it means a noise a monster consciously makes, a roar or a grrr. | |
| But no, it's the involuntary sound it makes, because it's big and it's heavy and it can't help that noise. | |
| It doesn't want to make that noise. | |
| So that's funny already. | |
| You've imposed this as this monster making this. | |
| Noise, but it's just because he's big and heavy, right? | |
| So that's that's funny, right? | |
| Because of course right and you and the other thing is you've learned that noise from Cartoons and theater productions because a monster doesn't make that noise. | |
| You've learned that from cartoons and theater productions Okay, and here's what's the funny bit for me is that I think I? | |
| You think that's funny in your subconscious sort of dreamy state, because I think you invented that. | |
| I think you think you invented that noise a monster makes, even though you've learned it from cartoons and theatre production. | |
| That's why I think you think it's so funny. | |
| Because I think subconsciously you think, well, that's a great play. | |
| That's a great play on, you know, what sound doesn't work. | |
| Ah, it's this one. | |
| And you think you invented that. | |
| I don't know. | |
| There's something there that you were excited about the cleverness of it. | |
| I don't know. | |
| Maybe. | |
| I'm very flattered that you've done an autopsy on my psychosis, but I would ascribe it to just the frank psychosis of the dream state. | |
| Literally, that was one of the funniest things I had ever heard. | |
| Of course, and you can't help it because, as we said last time, your brain just cut to the emotion of having thought of the funniest joke in the world without the workings out. | |
| You know, you hadn't gone through that process. | |
| You just got to. | |
| And Jane reminded me of one that she had 30 years ago. | |
| She woke up laughing, right? | |
| And she said, I just dreamt I told the funniest joke. | |
| And she was already out of it and knew it wasn't funny. | |
| But her trying to tell me the funniest joke in the world, because she knew how awful it was, really made me laugh as well. | |
| And again, it nearly works, right? | |
| The joke was, in her dream, that was the funniest joke in the world, the joke was, if there's two things in a pot of ivy, they're both leaves. | |
| That really does almost work. | |
| It almost works. | |
| That's much better than my joke. | |
| Because it's almost a dis on the ivy. | |
| That's all it's got. | |
| If you ask me what ivy's got, it's got two things. | |
| It's leaves. | |
| It's got more ivy, yeah. | |
| Oh dear. | |
| So yeah, that's what I've been thinking about. | |
| What can't you joke about? | |
| Because you go hard. | |
| I'm surprised. | |
| Occasionally I recall how edgy you are in certain contexts. | |
| Your Golden Globe stuff is just murder. | |
| You're murdering people in the room. | |
| Yeah. | |
| But have you course corrected in recent years? | |
| Is there anything you wouldn't do that you did a few years ago? | |
| I sense the things. | |
| I have a set of rules, you know, and that's depending on the forum as well, you know. | |
| I wouldn't do a kids party and talk about the things I talk about live, you know. | |
| In fact, I feel uncomfortable live if I'm doing something, you know, I try and make it, you know, 16 and over so I can relax that I'm not corrupting the youth, right? | |
| And, you know, I play by the rules of TV and, you know, the Golden Globes is a very good example. | |
| If you think about it, that was network television at peak time, 5pm that went out across America, and I didn't break any broadcast rules, so it couldn't have been that bad. | |
| How could you get away with Dame Judi Dench licking her... I forget the word... Okay, that's a really interesting one. | |
| So what happens is, I think usually I was told by the production team of the Golden Globes, they like me doing it because I'm easy. | |
| I turn up with a scrap of paper with 20 jokes on it. | |
| And they said usually presenters have like a team of 20 writers for like six weeks before. | |
| And you know, they have to, they're worried about it and they keep changing it and things happen. | |
| I turn up and go, I'm doing these. | |
| Are these all right? | |
| But what you have to do is, the day before, it has to be lawyered. | |
| And what do you call it? | |
| We call it taste and decency. | |
| You call it something else. | |
| Standard and practices? | |
| Yes, exactly. | |
| And what that usually means is, you know, that you can't do gross Things that people might find offensive. | |
| Language. | |
| Libel. | |
| Of course, I don't want to libel anyone anyway. | |
| I think I can work around the language thing. | |
| If you can't, then there's probably something missing. | |
| Although, we talk about that as well. | |
| I want to address the people that say anyone can get a laugh swearing. | |
| I want to go, alright, okay. | |
| Let's sell the tickets. | |
| Go out on Wembley Arena and just swear. | |
| See how funny it is, mate. | |
| And usually, I've done it when there's one person, one lawyer, just looks down and goes, yeah, that's all right, that's all right, that's all right. | |
| This time, I don't know why, I don't know whether it was a reflection of the times. | |
| They had the dream team of lawyers? | |
| Oh, there was 17 people in the room. | |
| 17 people in the room. | |
| But it was, you know, it was execs, some of the writers wanting to come down just to see what I'd done. | |
| You know, you had scared the shit out of them from previous years, right? | |
| This is your, like, third year running or something? | |
| Yeah, for the fifth year. | |
| It was the fifth year running over a 10-year period. | |
| So I think some of them were sort of excited at the prospect, you know, because it usually always gets quite a reaction. | |
| And, you know, there were the people who write the other stuff. | |
| Because there's, apart from me, there's people who write all the other intros, if you know what I mean. | |
| So there was those guys there. | |
| There was the exec producers, producers, and lots of lawyers. | |
| There's about 15 people in the room. | |
| And so, tough crowd. | |
| So I did my monologue exactly as it went out. | |
| So you actually perform for that room full of lawyers? | |
| Yeah. | |
| I mean, I'm not giving it everything, but yeah, I do it. | |
| I read the jokes as well as I can so they get them. | |
| There's a mild performance. | |
| But that's the other thing about the Golden Globes. | |
| Stand-up, and obviously the narrative stuff I do, it's much more about the gag. | |
| They have to work. | |
| I haven't got time to work it in over six weeks. | |
| It's more like a piece of poetry. | |
| It's more like a you know, a formula. | |
| It's gotta be fast. | |
| It's gotta be set up, punchline, laugh, you know. | |
| Otherwise it's too nebulous. | |
| It won't get the laughs that you do when you've got a worked routine. | |
| So you want 20 zingers, really. | |
| Even then, I still try and do a little bit of a narrative. | |
| I still try and, you know, how I edit my jokes for that. | |
| Oh, I've done two about him. | |
| That's not fair. | |
| Or that looks like I've got something against that person. | |
| Because, you know, you might have three jokes about someone. | |
| You go, what's the best one? | |
| You know, so you try and keep it fair. | |
| I try and make it about the people in the room and that event. | |
| I try and make it like it couldn't be in any other place at any other time in any other room. | |
| Right. | |
| I try and do the classic court jester of punching up. | |
| I have a go against the, you know, the broadcaster, the Hollywood foreign press, and the richest, most powerful people in the room. | |
| Right. | |
| But, I mean, the place where you really just eviscerated the whole room, and one person in particular, was the When you went after Tim Cook and Apple for running sweatshops, and they obviously cut to Tim Cook just sitting there at a banquet table, and then you pivoted to telling everyone in the room that they were in no way entitled to be sanctimonious because if ISIS created a streaming service, they would call their agents immediately. | |
| I did that on purpose because that was the sort of theme of the year. | |
| I thought it was quite zeitgeisty that it felt right that people had had enough of Hollywood, you know, and being lectured to. | |
| And I even think, I think we've talked about this before, that I even think Trump getting in was almost a protest vote against that authoritarian liberalism for the last 10 years. | |
| So I sort of addressed that without, again, without taking a side. | |
| I don't think I took a side. | |
| But for instance, your slamming Tim Cook there, was that actually a lawyered line? | |
| They knew you were going to do that? | |
| Yeah, but don't forget, I don't think I mentioned his name, I don't think I knew he was going to be there, and I certainly didn't know they were going to cut to him, so they made it. | |
| Oh, I don't know who they're going to cut to. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I don't plan that. | |
| But no, the joke was real. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So I thought the funny joke was, this is a lovely programme. | |
| And do you know what? | |
| I don't even know that that's true. | |
| I don't know that it is Up itself or pretentious or anything like that. | |
| You know, I've heard great things about it. | |
| The joke being that I decided to try and put in a list to make my case to make the joke funnier. | |
| And of course, you know, I went after the biggest corporations. | |
| I've got nothing against those corporations. | |
| I did check that, you know, I was factually right. | |
| And the lawyer said, yeah, that's fine. | |
| You know, they quickly Google it and say, have we got a case here? | |
| But there's no malice. | |
| I haven't really got anything against anyone in the room. | |
| Do you know what I mean? | |
| It's all for the joke. | |
| If the joke was better the other way around, I would have done it the other way around. | |
| This myth that every joke is a window to the comedian's true soul, I'll flip it. | |
| I'll pretend to be left wing, right wing, no wing. | |
| I'll pretend to be anything to make that joke better. | |
| I'll decide halfway through I should take the other side because it makes the joke better. | |
| I do think you are landing a deadly earnest blow against At least Apple there, because we were aware that they're outsourcing the production of iPhones to Foxconn, and you literally have people jumping to their deaths from the rooftops of those factories because their lives are so intolerable. | |
| I mean, that story had been in the news. | |
| And, I mean, you could, in a more recent vein, make the point that, you know, Apple is evading taxes by basically running its trillion dollar business through a post office box in Ireland, right? | |
| I mean, it's just, it's incredible. | |
| Right. | |
| But I'm sort of saying to people, I'm not your man. | |
| If you think that I'm, if I, if you think I'm Che Guevara of the, of the capitalist modern world, you're wrong. | |
| They would, they were jokes. | |
| And my private life might happen to align with the jokes, and of course you want to be on the right side, unless... | |
| You're saying the wrong thing for a funny reason. | |
| As I say in a lot of my stand-up, I play the right wing bigot for comic effect. | |
| Irony is a lovely tool to deliver the right message that sounds like the wrong message. | |
| You have to really look at Look at the joke and look deep. | |
| But in general, I'm not this social justice warrior. | |
| For either side, it's how good is that joke? | |
| And of course, the more truth there is to it, the more awkward it is. | |
| Or, you know, it wouldn't be fair if it wasn't true. | |
| If none of that was true, It just wouldn't be fair. | |
| Do you know what I mean? | |
| I've put jokes out. | |
| I've looked into it and I go, oh, it's not true. | |
| It's an urban myth. | |
| He didn't do that or that. | |
| So I don't do it because I don't want to add to the myth and legend when it's bad or it gives someone a bad day. | |
| And even if it's a joke, there's a certain power, particularly on that stage. | |
| And people make their own minds up. | |
| Sometimes, and what you're trying to do. | |
| But, I read the jokes out, and everyone was laughing, thought, great, great. | |
| And the head lawyer went, oh, just one thing. | |
| He said, when you say, so this is the joke they picked up on. | |
| I start off with, we got to see James Corden as a fat pussy. | |
| He was also in the movie Cats, but no one saw that. | |
| And the reviews, oh, I saw one that said, this is the worst thing to happen to cats since dogs. | |
| Dame Judi Dench defended the movie, saying it was the role she was born to play, because she likes nothing better than plonking herself down on the carpet, lifting her leg, and licking her own minge, right? | |
| So, first thing he says is, uh, when you say pussy there, you mean because he was in Cats? | |
| I went, yep. | |
| Right, I went, okay, I thought this is easy. | |
| This is easy. | |
| God, okay. | |
| Right, let's have some more of this then. | |
| Any other questions? | |
| And then I said, is minge okay? | |
| I went, yeah, it's a funny little euphemism. | |
| It's an English word. | |
| I said, they won't even know what it means. | |
| I don't think Americans even use it. | |
| And then someone looked up and said, oh, it says vulgar term for vagina. | |
| I went, Well, of course, it's a vulgar term for vagina. | |
| If you're not, if you're not a doctor, and you're saying, of course, it's a vulgar term. | |
| If you want to use it, it's going to be a vulgar term. | |
| Everything's a vulgar term for vagina. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And they were worried them just because they looked up and it was like, You know, the definition, vulgar. | |
| I went, right. | |
| I said, well, what can I say for vagina? | |
| And the lawyer went, you could say vagina. | |
| I went, I'm not going to say vagina. | |
| That's so much worse that I'm actually now literally discussing Danny Judi Dench's vagina. | |
| No, it's got to be, it's got to have some sort of funny twist to it and silliness. | |
| Minge is a funny word, too. | |
| Yeah, minge is a funny word. | |
| It's a euphemism. | |
| It's like, I didn't say it. | |
| I thought it would be safe, because Americans would guess what I meant, but they wouldn't be offended by it, because they'd just have learnt that word. | |
| If I make up a word for vagina, it's not offensive. | |
| If I suddenly go, clabba-clab, and you know that means vagina, you're not offended by it, because you don't use it. | |
| I went, oh what can I, what can I use then? | |
| People were saying box. | |
| I was going, I'm not going to sign box! | |
| They were coming up with much worse things! | |
| The lawyers are pitching you! | |
| Well, everyone was chipping in. | |
| I'm not going to say that. | |
| And so I said, what about flange? | |
| We say that as well. | |
| And I like that word, minge and flange. | |
| I like those N-G-E words because they're nice and funny and soft. | |
| And like, you know, I've used them in my book, Flanimals, for kids. | |
| I say blunging, you know, and munge fuddler. | |
| It's a funny nge. | |
| Nge is a funny syllable. | |
| They went, uh, yeah, that's fine. | |
| And then someone looked it up, one of the execs, and went, oh, it means it's a slang term for something in a sink here. | |
| So that confused them. | |
| I went, right, okay, right. | |
| And so we went through it, right. | |
| And we're going through all the things, and I'm not going to say that, that's worse, I'm not going to say that, that's worse, all this sort of stuff, right? | |
| One said quim, and I went, I'm not saying quim, that's really horrible, God, I'm not going to say quim! | |
| I don't actually even know that word, I've never heard quim. | |
| Yeah, I think it's an old Anglo-Saxon word, maybe. | |
| But anyway, it's a, no, it's our worst connotations. | |
| It's like a real bro word. | |
| You know, it's horrible, right? | |
| So I wanted a playful, silly word for it, right? | |
| The important thing was, I was talking about her being a cat and what cats do. | |
| It's not, you know, we were getting sidetracked here, right? | |
| And so I convinced them that I said, you will not get one complaint for the word minge. | |
| Why would you get a complaint? | |
| They'd have to They know what I mean, right? | |
| Licking their own minge, but they won't know exactly what it is. | |
| They won't complain, right? | |
| And they went, okay, okay, same minge. | |
| And I went, but you won't bleep it, will you? | |
| Because I thought, if you bleep it, that sort of ruins the joke. | |
| People go, what was that? | |
| No, we won't bleep it. | |
| So we went with Minge. | |
| They did bleep it anyway. | |
| They did? | |
| Oh wow. | |
| I heard it online and it was unbleeped. | |
| Right, no. | |
| They bleeped it, right? | |
| But I knew they would, so I pointed. | |
| So I thought, I still won. | |
| Wow. | |
| This is quite a game of chess. | |
| I didn't realize that you had that going on just to get to that podium. | |
| I often have to talk people down. | |
| All my career I've talked people down to when they're worried about something. | |
| They go, oh, that. | |
| And what they're worried about is writing a letter. | |
| And very often once you explain to them what the joke is, because again, everyone's human, and you know, execs and telly are no different, they sometimes mistake the subject of a joke with the actual target, and they're nervous, because their job's on the line, they don't want to complain, they don't want to get... I've never had a complaint upheld. | |
| In my whole career. | |
| What about personally, with respect to the people you, do you know? | |
| No, I don't want to. | |
| I don't want to. | |
| No, but I'm pretty sure I give her the benefit of the doubt that she'd have a sense of humor. | |
| What have I said that's so horrible? | |
| The joke is she acted like a cat. | |
| And cats lick their own bits. | |
| It's as simple as that. | |
| That's what's funny, that you leave those bits out of art. | |
| It's quite a funny trope. | |
| I'm sure every adult cartoon who's shown a cat or a dog is shown doing something that cats and dogs do, unlike children's cartoons. | |
| It was no big deal for me. | |
| But yeah, I've often had to talk people down and explain to them why it's okay. | |
| I've said, I've offered to write the letter. | |
| And sometimes they just want someone to, you know, take charge and tell them why it's okay. | |
| If memory serves, I think they cut to Tom Hanks looking shocked on your punchline there. | |
| Yeah, that became a big meme that people thought that he was Disgusted enough himself. | |
| I'm not sure. | |
| I just thought he thought, cool. | |
| Didn't expect that. | |
| And did it, you know, did a nice face when the camera came to him or, oh, that was a bit, that was a bit warm for these nice. | |
| Well, I don't think he was being particularly damning of me or I don't know. | |
| I have no idea. | |
| And I, you know, you see the cut later and you, I can't remember what he actually did it to. | |
| I think, I can't remember what bit he did it to. | |
| I think it was, it was on, it was on your delivery of Minge. | |
| That's it. | |
| Go right to Hanks, there's somebody in the control room saying, Hanks has got something in his mouth. | |
| It is a good word. | |
| When I got, I remember, After it, I got home, and James said, oh, you should have said clunge. | |
| I thought, oh, I should have said clunge. | |
| It's perfect, clunge. | |
| Because that's the same. | |
| It's English. | |
| But again, they would have probably looked it up, and it would have said the vulgar term for bits and pieces. | |
| But I think it's non-specific, clunge, as well. | |
| I think it's men and women. | |
| It's just stuff you shove into your pants, whether you're a man. | |
| That's your clunge. | |
| These are esoteric terms. | |
| I don't know half of these. | |
| You're deep in the euphemism game over there. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| I'd be pretty good at euphemisms because they are a fine tool to get round things. | |
| But the best thing is, you know, make them up. | |
| Make a word up. | |
| It's good if you really don't want to get a complaint. | |
| The English are great at euphemisms and innuendo. | |
| We've got a whole strand of British comedy based on innuendo and that can be anything from bad puns. | |
| There's a spate of films in the 60s and 70s called carry-on films where it was all that. | |
| It was all matron. | |
| Someone would come in and see a building and go, what's the unsightly erection? | |
| You know, it's that sort of, that sort of bawdy. | |
| And then there would be things like a door would shut and you'd hear, which was, you know, euphemistic for them. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So we, and we have a thing called pantomime, which I don't think you have, which is, you know, an old Cinderella or something, but done with modern jokes, with, you know, modern sort of stars and actors. | |
| And it's all in jokes and puns for the parents that the kids don't get. | |
| So, you know, quite a vaudeville, sort of on two levels, you know, naughty innuendos on the face of it. | |
| So, yeah. | |
| All right, so back to the question which you've neatly evaded. | |
| Is there anything that you won't do now? | |
| So, for instance, you went after Caitlyn Jenner hard a few years ago. | |
| Well, did I though? | |
| That's the thing, because obviously the thing that was picked up out of that was the possible transphobia. | |
| But again, I addressed that in Humanity. | |
| No, my point is that I don't go out there and say, I'm allowed to be transphobic. | |
| I deny I am transphobic, because I'm not transphobic. | |
| Just like, I'm not racist when I joke about race. | |
| It's like, I'm not pro-cancer when I joke about cancer. | |
| See, this is the thing, people get that. | |
| They see people in the audience, they see a joke, they go, he's joking about famine, he's joking about cancer, he's joking about AIDS, oh, that's my thing. | |
| You know, again, in humanity, I did a I did a thing on Jimmy Fallon, a joke. | |
| I say I was on a flight and the announcement came over, someone is fatally allergic to nuts, so we're not handing out any nuts on this flight. | |
| And I go, it's about me being selfish, and I go, I never wanted nuts more. | |
| They are infringing on my human right to eat nuts. | |
| And I go, I wish I'd brought my own nuts on. | |
| The joke being that I'm so selfish that if I bought my own nuts on, I would eat them and this person would die, you know? | |
| And I go, so... And I had to spend a whole day on that plane just because someone would die if I ate nuts. | |
| I go, to avoid that having to happen again, what I do now before I fly is I rub myself down in nuts. | |
| Right. | |
| So the joke being that I'm that mental. | |
| I can't have nuts, but I can still kill this person. | |
| Right. | |
| So clearly a joke. | |
| And it never happened. | |
| Obviously, none of that ever happened. | |
| And I did it on Jimmy Fallon. | |
| And laugh at the next day. | |
| On Twitter, I'd wake up to about 10 tweets from this woman and go, how dare you joke about food allergies? | |
| And I was like, what? | |
| She goes, I've got a daughter who is slightly allergic to nuts. | |
| There's no laughing matter. | |
| It's disgusting. | |
| Do you know how many people die? | |
| And I thought, ignore it. | |
| And then she starts adding in Jimmy Fallon and NBC. | |
| I thought, ignore it. | |
| And then she said, you should never joke about food allergies. | |
| So that was really weird. | |
| So I sent back, I joke about cancer, AIDS, famine and the Holocaust. | |
| And you're telling me I shouldn't joke about food allergies. | |
| And she sent back, yes, but the Holocaust didn't kill children. | |
| So she's so consumed with how important her thing is, which is human. | |
| We're all like it. | |
| She can see the jokes. | |
| She can see the jokes about the Holocaust famine. | |
| She gets it. | |
| She gets the joke. | |
| She gets the irony. | |
| But she can't see the wood for the trees because it means something to her. | |
| So her emotions overwhelm The critical aspect of this, why, you know, if she's had her own way, all those other jokes are okay, but not that one. | |
| And everyone's a bit like that. | |
| I've had it before. | |
| I did a routine on an early thing about Anne Frank when I joke about I say, I've been watching a lot of Discovery Channel and the History Channel, ask me anything about sharks and Nazis, right? | |
| And I say about how amazing, I'll go, sharks are amazing, Nazis, horrible. | |
| Sharks are amazing, they can sense blood, one part in a million. | |
| I do all these things about sharks. | |
| A shark would have found Anne Frank like that, right? | |
| But the Nazis, so stupid, every day they go, what's that noise? | |
| What's that tapping? | |
| And I mime the typewriter. | |
| I go, nothing, rats, move on. | |
| And anyway, I do this routine that the Nazis can't find Anne Frank. | |
| She's up there just typing away. | |
| And I got a letter from a Jewish society in America saying, we enjoyed the show, we enjoyed your stand-up, we enjoyed everything. | |
| We were very disappointed about your jokes about Anne Frank. | |
| I sent back and said, but you know I was joking about famine and cancer. | |
| Yeah, I went, well, I'm joking about that. | |
| I've got nothing against it. | |
| I think it's a terrible thing. | |
| And I explained to them, I go, you know, I joke about the terrible things. | |
| It doesn't mean I condone them. | |
| I, you know, I'm the same person as you. | |
| And they went, oh, thank you for your explanation. | |
| And it's like they've never worked that out. | |
| Yeah, it's amazing that that would actually have been information to them. | |
| Exactly. | |
| But I get it. | |
| I get it. | |
| It's hard. | |
| It's hard to, you know, divorce yourself. | |
| And what people, you know, I've done it on Twitter before. | |
| I've said, what should never be joked about? | |
| What should never be joked about? | |
| And people, nice, normal people, sincerely answer. | |
| And of course, every answer is funny. | |
| Because they've imposed this, like one person said, Losing two children. | |
| Yeah, setting the bar at two rather than one. | |
| Yeah, and my brain was thinking, has he lost two children? | |
| This is very specific. | |
| He could deal with it. | |
| It's mind-blowing with the confidence that they say. | |
| Losing three children is funnier. | |
| Yeah, I know. | |
| But also, between them, they listed every disease. | |
| And any specific disease is funny because they didn't list all the others. | |
| Why didn't they list all the others? | |
| Right. | |
| So no, there is no stuff that I won't joke about. | |
| There's a real irony here. | |
| I guess irony captures the shape of it. | |
| Some of the same people, so like when I think about, let's say, hiring someone and having to worry about their history of tweets, right? | |
| Is there something in this person's history that is going to blow back on me or them and become a problem? | |
| Arguably, I shouldn't think much about that. | |
| I don't tend to think much about that, but that is something that many people think about now. | |
| You could hire someone who has been convicted of murder, right, serve their time, and you are now part of their redemption story. | |
| And the same people who would try to destroy you for having hired someone who's trailing some bad tweets would celebrate you for hiring someone who killed a family and has been brought back into some sphere of redemption and forgiveness. | |
| Well, that's the thing, isn't it? | |
| I think, same as you, I'm I'm an atheist. | |
| But there's a couple of things I quite like in the Bible. | |
| And one is, you know, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. | |
| I think people have forgotten that, particularly on social media. | |
| I've never seen such vindictive people wanting blood and wanting to destroy people because they're on the wrong side. | |
| And again, it's tit for tat. | |
| People are doing it. | |
| Well, if you're doing that, I'm doing this, you know. | |
| And I did a tweet A couple of years ago, there was a tweet about freedom of speech, and it was a quote from Churchill. | |
| And someone said, you know he's a white supremacist? | |
| And I tweeted back, not in that tweet he's not. | |
| There's nothing to do with it. | |
| The quote has nothing to do. | |
| And it's not enough now. | |
| If someone doesn't like you liking someone for some reason, they'll find a completely different reason why you shouldn't like them. | |
| Because they're not on the right side. | |
| No one looks at an argument anymore. | |
| They look at who's saying it. | |
| And if they're on the wrong side, they're discredited. | |
| There's no nuance. | |
| You know, like, I did a tweet, you know, I'm a typical old-fashioned lefty, socialist, you know, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic kind of guy. | |
| But if I tweet about freedom of speech, I'm suddenly alt-right. | |
| And it's true because it's odd. | |
| That that's become a right wing thing, because some people think that because free speech could allow you to say awful things, that the concept of speech is the wrong thing. | |
| That's what's weird. | |
| And you need the only way you fight a horrible, hateful speech is nice speech, proving the hateful speech wrong. | |
| If you curb free speech, it's an absolute fundamental right that all other rights rely on. | |
| And it seems odd to me that people are willing to make exceptions And they come up with strange, nebulous terms. | |
| Like, yeah, not hate speech. | |
| I want to go, what's hate speech? | |
| Well, it turns out that hate speech is something that anyone doesn't like. | |
| They don't want to hear it, you know. | |
| Right, except there are people, so for instance, and I've gotten some pushback for my position here, but I don't know how closely you followed the de-platforming of certain people, like obviously Donald Trump is the big one, but before him, Alex Jones. | |
| You know, I was certainly in favor of kicking Alex Jones off Twitter and everywhere else he got kicked off of. | |
| Right. | |
| Because of what he was doing. | |
| I mean, the fact that, I mean, to be manufacturing lies about parents who have just had their kids murdered... Well, ah, hold on, wait a minute, now, now, we're getting into it now, because there are loads of caveat to free speech already, right? | |
| There are loads, and I agree with them all. | |
| I think I agree with every single one of them. | |
| As I said, from libel, to slander, to food additives, even to watershed and private places. | |
| I agree with them all. | |
| But the one I don't agree with is someone's right to not hear something they don't like. | |
| That's what we can't do. | |
| That joke is unpleasant. | |
| Well, it might be, but, you know, it's that thing, you shouldn't pave the jungle, you should put on better boots. | |
| You know, you can walk away, you can turn it up. | |
| The best form of censorship is your right not to listen. | |
| And people get confused what freedom of speech is. | |
| They think that freedom of speech is their right to be heard and understood and taken seriously. | |
| It's none of that. | |
| You know, it's a very delicate thing, but it is written. | |
| There are rules, and all you have to do is look them up, and then you'll know something. | |
| We have different rules, too. | |
| I mean, you are governed by... things are far more restrictive in the UK, and whenever I hear about these specific cases of people being brought to the attention of the police for having said something that was offensive to public morals, or however it gets phrased over there, it sounds frankly insane to me. | |
| Well, I mean, that's the problem with the Internet, isn't it? | |
| That it's global, but rules are local. | |
| But, you know, it's been going... people muddy the water, you know. | |
| There's one side that thinks some people want free speech so they can go around saying awful things all the time. | |
| Well, that's not true. | |
| And even if it was, let's look at that. | |
| And then the other side, they do want to say awful things all the time to annoy the other side. | |
| So it's this horrible, you know, vicious circle. | |
| But that's why we're not in charge. | |
| That's why we can't decide whether someone has the death penalty or not. | |
| It goes to a court of law. | |
| Otherwise, we do things, you know, if one of our friends is murdered and they ask us on the street, what should we do with him? | |
| You go kill him. | |
| But law takes that out of it. | |
| Takes out this seeing through, you know, anger and all those things. | |
| The de-platforming, taking Donald Trump, I'm still torn about that because I'm the same as you. | |
| I'm no fan of Donald Trump, never have been. | |
| But Twitter saying he's breaking our rules is one thing. | |
| But then I think the delicate thing about that is, is don't they become a publisher as opposed to a platform? | |
| So aren't they then responsible for everyone? | |
| Can I now sue people for saying something horrible to me on Twitter? | |
| Can I sue Twitter? | |
| It's very complicated. | |
| I think there are edge cases, certainly, where it's... I mean, first of all, Twitter has, for this whole time, been deplatforming people for ridiculous things. | |
| So, by that standard, Donald Trump should have been deplatformed years ago. | |
| I mean, he's literally threatened nuclear war on Twitter. | |
| Every single case, you could go down a rabbit hole and argue about it forever. | |
| And that's why we have to have principle. | |
| And I think people are confused by principle. | |
| I think it's a genuinely confusing thing. | |
| I get it. | |
| I always get it. | |
| I get it when someone backs down because they lose their livelihood, or their friends, or their career, or their family. | |
| You know, integrity can cost. | |
| That's why it's a valuable sort of asset, because integrity can cost people everything. | |
| And, you know, I get it. | |
| I get it why people are scared to say the wrong thing, because they can lose a job. | |
| And it's easy to say, well, they shouldn't. | |
| But then someone will say, what about this guy? | |
| And you go, well, that's different. | |
| That's a different principle. | |
| People, as I say, People are confused with principle because they have a million examples and all those examples are wrong. | |
| But on the face of it, they look the same. | |
| Someone got fired. | |
| Why? | |
| Well, people don't accept there's a sliding scale of morality. | |
| I think that's the problem. | |
| There's this weird sort of binary sort that if anyone has done something wrong and you don't like them, they're Hitler. | |
| It's as simple as that, you know. | |
| Who's that got in trouble? | |
| Someone got in trouble for... What's that actress who got fired from Disney for saying conservatives are like... Gina Carano? | |
| From The Mandalorian. | |
| She said something like conservatives are now like the Jews under Hitler or something like that. | |
| The Jews during... Yeah. | |
| In the run-up to the Holocaust. | |
| I actually don't like, obviously I don't support that comparison, but this idea that you can never make a comparison to Nazis or Hitler or the Holocaust. | |
| No, this is what's weird because, you know, people on the other side were saying Trump's like Hitler, so surely that's as bad. | |
| And yeah, it is a fucking stupid thing to say. | |
| Also a bad comparison. | |
| And it's a ridiculous exaggeration. | |
| But that's what metaphor is. | |
| That's what analogy is. | |
| In poetry, people say, you know, I would die for you. | |
| If you start taking everything literally, there is no poetry anymore, or metaphor, or You know, exaggeration, exaggeration. | |
| Comedy is exaggeration. | |
| Comedy is exaggeration. | |
| So it's very difficult and sometimes it comes down that people aren't smart, you know. | |
| But I think sometimes there's malice. | |
| I think people sometimes get it but they don't care. | |
| They won't defend someone they don't like on principle because they just want to see him go down. | |
| Yeah. | |
| This is all too common, yeah. | |
| The primary sin I've been seeing now for years is that the people who don't like you have added a rule to the rulebook that they deem ethical, and it's obviously unethical. | |
| If they can figure out the worst possible construal of the thing you said, even when it's obviously not the intended meaning, they will seek to hold you to that and defame you on the basis of that. | |
| So, for instance, you know, in this case, Gina Caranos is being reacted to like she's completely disregarding the horror of the Holocaust and thinks that what's happening to conservatives in Hollywood right now is Exactly as bad as rounding people up and putting them in the gas chambers. | |
| Now, obviously, I mean, in our defense, what she said was just lazy and idiotic, but no one actually believes she believes that, right? | |
| No, I know, but if stupid was a crime, we'd all be in jail, you know? | |
| Yeah. | |
| But yeah, and I understand there's degrees of damage and, you know, and sometimes old people want to You know, it's different when an individual shouts it out of a window and when people think that they're given a platform. | |
| If she was a presenter and she was saying that on the BBC News, I think there'd be much more of a case. | |
| So, you know, why is that? | |
| Right. | |
| Of course, yeah. | |
| This is irresponsible. | |
| I really do think it... I'm uncomfortable talking about these issues. | |
| I'm uncomfortable talking about freedom of speech now. | |
| I'm uncomfortable. | |
| Because it seems so unjust that if you defend it, you're labelled right-wing. | |
| And, you know, I can say, just, you know, pointing out whether someone's left or right-wing doesn't win the argument. | |
| But you know what? | |
| It does to them. | |
| Someone who thinks it's fundamentally Wrong. | |
| And let's not forget, the people on all sides think they're right. | |
| They actually think they're right. | |
| They've convinced themselves that, you know, everything on this side is right and everything on that side is wrong. | |
| Or they've gone, look, not everything on this side is right, but if we can take down one of their generals, we'll win the war. | |
| You know, some of it is tactical. | |
| It is tactical. | |
| And I don't want to be caught up in it. | |
| I don't want to You know, be fired or hated or for something I said that I didn't mean. | |
| But as you say, it doesn't matter how clear you are, they take it out of context and they decide your motives. | |
| But the most frightening one is, easily in 10 years time, this conversation could get us both fired. | |
| Well, I hope to have a good laugh when that happens. | |
| I'll see you in two hours. | |
| Yeah, I'm going to have a tea now. | |
| I mean dinner. | |
| Tea means dinner? | |
| Well, I think it's a working class thing. | |
| I used to say breakfast, lunch, and tea. | |
| Tea was like six o'clock, but I think past people say breakfast, lunch, and dinner at eight. | |
| It's funny, as I get older, Yeah, I'll eat at, sort of, seven. | |
| I'll be in bed at half ten. | |
| We watch some, like, European dramas, and they're saying things like, I'll see you at dinner tonight. | |
| Yes, I'll pick you up at ten. | |
| I want to go, fuck off, will you? | |
| I'll be in bed then, pissed. | |
| Yeah, you and Pete Diddy. | |
| Great, alright then. | |
| Brilliant. |