The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 295. A Conversation with Piers Morgan

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00:02:48.820 Hello, everyone.

00:02:50.280 I'm very pleased today to have with me Mr. Piers Morgan.

00:02:55.680 Mr. Morgan is an English broadcaster, although he's well-known outside of the UK as well.

00:03:02.340 He's a journalist, writer, and TV personality.

00:03:04.980 He began his career in the UK in 1988 at quite a young age at The Sun, the newspaper.

00:03:13.440 In 1994, at 29, he was appointed News of the World editor by Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul.

00:03:23.440 He was the youngest editor of a British national newspaper in more than 50 years.

00:03:28.440 From 1995 to 2004, Piers edited The Daily Mirror and then served as first news editorial director from 2006 to 2007.

00:03:39.860 On TV, from 2009 to 2021, Piers hosted the ITV talk show Life Stories, the CNN chat show Piers Morgan Live from 2011 to 2014,

00:03:53.860 the ITV breakfast program Good Morning Britain from 2015 to 2021,

00:03:59.940 and was a judge on both America's Got Talent from 2006 to 2011 and Britain's Got Talent from 2007 to 2010.

00:04:09.800 In 2008, he won the Celebrity Apprentice U.S., appearing with future U.S. President Donald Trump.

00:04:20.200 We're going to talk today about Piers' career, about being a journalist and a celebrity as well, about interacting with celebrities.

00:04:29.640 But I think we're going to start with a brief discussion about an interview that Piers conducted with me in the UK a couple of weeks ago,

00:04:37.440 as of the taping date of this interview and discussion.

00:04:40.900 So, it seems to have attracted a fair bit of positive attention, I would say, perhaps for both of us.

00:04:49.500 And what do you make of it?

00:04:52.360 Well, first of all, it showed me what my belief was before I interviewed you,

00:04:56.880 which is that you are an internet phenomenon in all guises.

00:05:00.760 The attention that the interview attracted online was, by our standards of our fledgling show and network of six months or so, absolutely staggering.

00:05:12.600 In fact, right up there with my first interview, which was Donald Trump.

00:05:16.840 So, I found that very interesting, to go into a world on YouTube in particular, in which you are so dominant and so well-known,

00:05:27.760 to see that an interview could be cut up in the way that we did it, with various clips,

00:05:32.780 and see each of them be watched by millions and millions of people.

00:05:36.740 And I found that very interesting.

00:05:38.560 It also played into my sort of sense that the most interesting interviews, actually, are with people who have something to say.

00:05:45.240 You know, you and I both know that we've interviewed lots of people over the years who often don't have very much to say for themselves.

00:05:52.200 And they could be the most famous people on the planet, but be incredibly boring.

00:05:55.660 I would rather take interesting, controversial, polarizing, perhaps divisive people,

00:06:02.000 or certainly the way that they are portrayed, perhaps, by the media, and interview those types of people,

00:06:07.660 because it makes for more interesting interviews.

00:06:09.520 So, I found the experience of interviewing you fascinating.

00:06:12.000 It lived up to every expectation.

00:06:15.920 It was surprisingly moving.

00:06:18.380 You got surprisingly emotional at one stage, which I wasn't expecting.

00:06:23.000 But I think that it also, I thought, showed you in an extremely good light.

00:06:28.340 And I don't mean that as false flattery.

00:06:30.020 I just think that you came over as, to me, very sincere when you showed that emotion.

00:06:34.480 And it also showed me that even someone like you that's been criticized a lot, as well as praised,

00:06:40.040 that certain things do permeate your skin and do genuinely upset you.

00:06:46.000 And I was surprised by that.

00:06:47.620 But I also thought that appeared to be very genuine.

00:06:50.020 So, I thought the whole experience for me, Jordan, was fascinating.

00:06:53.360 I think I said to you, my three sons, who are all in their 20s, they were the most excited

00:06:59.740 I'd ever seen them about an interview outside of Cristiano Ronaldo, our mutual friend from

00:07:04.860 the world of football, which I found very interesting, because they're three boys in their 20s,

00:07:09.240 all quite different.

00:07:10.380 But they all watch YouTube avidly.

00:07:13.200 And they perceive you to be the sort of king of YouTube up there with Joe Rogan and a few

00:07:18.180 others.

00:07:18.460 And so, they found it an utterly compelling interview.

00:07:22.900 And they were able to compare it to many that you'd done and felt that it was right up there

00:07:27.160 with one of the best they'd seen.

00:07:28.340 So, I was very pleased professionally that actually I felt I'd conducted a good interview.

00:07:34.620 But I do come back to the basic premise, I think, of any interviewer.

00:07:38.640 You're only really as good as the tools that you work with.

00:07:41.760 And in your case, you came, I think, prepared to be very open, to be very honest, to be

00:07:48.460 emotional.

00:07:49.680 And I found that actually very moving.

00:07:52.880 So, you said a couple of things there, I would say, on the technological front that I thought

00:07:57.740 were very interesting.

00:07:58.840 So, one of the things about YouTube, I would say, perhaps that distinguishes it in some

00:08:04.120 way from legacy TV, is that YouTube really rewards straightforward, untrammeled, and unscripted

00:08:12.800 discussion.

00:08:13.280 And it's really what people expect on the platform.

00:08:16.460 And the fact that the discussions can go for a long while without any of the somewhat artificial

00:08:23.600 constraints that are placed on the broadcast media means that people can and are more likely

00:08:29.580 to reveal themselves in all their positive and negative aspects.

00:08:33.600 And I think that's part of the reason that Rogan has become so popular, apart from the fact

00:08:38.400 that Joe always asks questions that are actually questions, right?

00:08:43.200 He's always, in some sense, honestly digging for information, rather than trying to set someone

00:08:49.940 up or play for a cheap laugh or a cheap takedown, which is something that's very characteristic

00:08:55.820 of a certain type of journalist.

00:08:57.580 And that doesn't play well at all on YouTube, interestingly enough.

00:09:02.560 It makes people infamous very rapidly.

00:09:05.200 And so, it's an interesting medium in that regard, partly because of the lack of restriction

00:09:09.200 on bandwidth.

00:09:10.400 And then you also mentioned the clips issue.

00:09:12.760 And one of the things that's quite remarkable about YouTube and makes talking there much different

00:09:18.400 than publishing a book, let's say.

00:09:19.980 Well, first of all, the audience is much broader on YouTube than it is on the publishing front

00:09:26.100 by an order of magnitude, likely, which is a lot.

00:09:29.440 But also, you can't sell a book by the sentence or the paragraph.

00:09:34.580 But YouTube videos are infinitely fractionable.

00:09:37.800 And you can clip one minute or three minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes.

00:09:42.140 And there's an independent market for every one of those length of clips.

00:09:45.720 And so, that's a very interesting new technological possibility to delve into.

00:09:51.720 And you've seen TikTok emerge and YouTube shorts and Instagram, all these social media platforms

00:09:57.540 that have their own culture that capitalize on that capacity to fractionate YouTube or to

00:10:04.240 fractionate video.

00:10:05.940 And so, it's very interesting to try to contend with all that.

00:10:08.440 I also thought, for what it's worth, that you talked to me in a very straightforward manner.

00:10:16.380 And I certainly appreciated that.

00:10:18.340 I had many people on my team who were concerned about the potential manner in which the interview

00:10:26.260 might proceed, not least because we've had plenty of fun with British journalists before,

00:10:32.000 although that often turned out well.

00:10:33.860 But you also said during that interview, or maybe it was before we talked, that you had

00:10:40.440 been thinking about listening in a way that was somewhat new for you, or at least new

00:10:46.400 in part.

00:10:46.900 I mean, everybody learns as they go along.

00:10:48.720 And so, I was curious afterwards about what exactly that meant.

00:10:52.100 Because I really felt that during the interview, you did listen to me and that we had, and

00:10:57.140 vice versa, hopefully.

00:10:58.320 And that, as a consequence, we had, we genuinely communicated.

00:11:02.720 And I think that that was part of the reason that made the interview successful.

00:11:07.600 Yeah.

00:11:08.120 I mean, actually, it was my middle son, who's a young actor and photographer, and listens

00:11:13.960 avidly to YouTube.

00:11:15.700 And most of your stuff he's watched in recent years, most of Joe Rogan's stuff he's watched.

00:11:21.780 And he said, Dad, look, you can't do your normal sledgehammer act.

00:11:25.440 You can't just go in and start interrupting every five seconds like you normally do, which

00:11:29.460 is a, it's a fault line of mine.

00:11:31.840 It works well, actually, when you're interviewing a politician who's trying to obfuscate or answer

00:11:38.000 different questions, or simply avoid the one you're asking.

00:11:40.960 Sometimes you do have to be slightly bully boy in the way you interrupt a politician to

00:11:45.440 get an answer out of them.

00:11:46.800 So it's a different technique.

00:11:48.580 But actually, the point that my son Stanley made to me was, he said, Dad, if you want to

00:11:52.300 get the best out of Jordan Peterson, he said, trust me, you have to listen.

00:11:56.520 And so that was constantly in the back of my mind.

00:11:58.080 He was actually at the back of a studio, as you know, with my youngest son, Bertie.

00:12:01.960 And he was adamant that that was the way I would get the best out of you.

00:12:06.020 And he was completely right.

00:12:07.180 And it was a learning curve for me.

00:12:08.780 And it might sound slightly odd that I'm getting to this stage of my life, 57 years old,

00:12:13.200 I've been a journalist for, you know, since I was in my early 20s, to suddenly learn the

00:12:18.000 art of interviewing, but I've been through many guises as a journalist and interviewer.

00:12:22.700 When you're a newspaper interviewer, as I was for many years, or I did big interviews

00:12:26.660 also for GQ magazine, often the interviewer can talk a lot to get a one-line revelation.

00:12:34.500 So you can keep talking, keep talking, keep talking, and then lull your interviewee into

00:12:40.960 saying something that maybe you were trying to get.

00:12:42.680 Yeah, it's a very different discipline on television or on any form of on-camera interview.

00:12:49.040 And I was also struck by the fact this wasn't the first person who'd given me the advice

00:12:52.860 to listen.

00:12:53.820 I remember the great Sir David Frost, who did with the Watergate interviews with Richard

00:12:58.520 Nixon, some of the great interviews ever seen in political journalism.

00:13:01.860 And he always said to me, the most powerful tool of any television interviewer is silence,

00:13:07.680 because the interviewee will always fill that void.

00:13:11.460 At some stage, after one second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds, an interviewee

00:13:18.540 will fill the gap.

00:13:20.200 They won't just sit there in silence too.

00:13:23.220 And sometimes the most powerful revelations you can get from people come when they have

00:13:27.920 their own moment to really think about what they're going to say, and they say it.

00:13:32.640 And if you're too busy, as you said earlier, and I've been very guilty of this myself,

00:13:37.040 of talking too much, expressing your own opinions, not really listening to what the person is

00:13:43.220 saying, then you can sometimes miss these moments of real gold, which come actually from the

00:13:49.320 power of silence.

00:13:50.720 So I think that, you know, I think the experience I had with you was really informative to me

00:13:56.320 of when you're interviewing somebody, obviously very intelligent, obviously very used to doing

00:14:00.020 interviews, perhaps coming with a slight sense of suspicion after what happened with you on

00:14:04.660 Channel 4 News.

00:14:05.800 And I watched that interview live, as I told you.

00:14:07.780 And I just felt in that interview, I know the interviewer, Kathy Newman, and I felt that she

00:14:12.120 didn't really know who you were, hadn't done quite enough research into what you really felt and what

00:14:18.100 you really thought, and had made a series of presumptions about you, which you were able to bat

00:14:24.440 away quite quickly. And it made for very uncomfortable viewing if you were a Channel 4 News

00:14:28.720 viewer, because it was quite clear that you were slightly on parallel lines. So I think that,

00:14:33.420 yeah, I found our experience really, really good, actually. I felt that had I done my political

00:14:39.940 interview technique with you, I think you would have clammed up. It would have been,

00:14:44.160 well, you wouldn't have clammed up, but I think it would have been a much more

00:14:46.480 confrontational exchange, which I wasn't seeking to get, because I actually agree with a lot of what

00:14:51.420 you say. So to me, it does depend who the interviewee is.

00:14:55.460 It might depend too on, well, it might also depend on

00:14:59.020 exactly what the purpose of the stage is. So if you're a political actor, let's say, and you're

00:15:06.060 acting instrumentally, so you have a purpose in the interview that's a priori, then you're going

00:15:13.600 to be inclined, as the person being interviewed, to craft your words and to make sure you don't step

00:15:18.560 in anything toxic and to deflect anything that might be too penetrating. And so what that seems

00:15:25.680 to me to necessitate on the part of an investigative journalist is a much more adversarial and antagonistic

00:15:33.040 stance, because the journalist is going to be required, especially if the interviewee is obfuscating

00:15:41.080 or deceiving, to have to dig with a relatively sharp blade. And so I can really see that there's

00:15:47.420 utility in that adversarial stance, when what you're trying to uncover is a web of intrigue and

00:15:54.180 self-serving instrumentalism and deception. And this also segues quite interestingly, I think, into

00:16:01.140 one of the main topics I want to talk to you about today, which is something approximating temperament

00:16:07.080 and fame. And so one of the cardinal personality dimensions is agreeableness. And agreeable people,

00:16:13.860 it's really a maternal dimension. And agreeable people are compassionate and polite. They're very

00:16:19.480 interested in people and in serving people. And it's likely a dimension that maximizes the capacity

00:16:25.200 to take care of the weak and the infirm and infants and the outsiders. Now, the disadvantage to being

00:16:32.700 agreeable is that you can be taken advantage of because you can't stand up for yourself very well,

00:16:38.320 partly because of your self-sacrificing nature, let's say. And so you can be a pushover and then

00:16:43.880 become resentful and angry and bitter and feel that you're in an unfair world, giving all the time and

00:16:50.400 never receiving. On the other side, you have the disagreeable temperament, which is more masculine.

00:16:56.520 And I say that because women are reliably higher in agreeableness and men reliably lower. And that's

00:17:02.580 true cross-culturally. And it maximizes in egalitarian countries. And so what happens in

00:17:08.680 journalism is that journalists tend to be selected for two personality traits, perhaps more, but at least

00:17:17.500 two. They're extroverted because they like to talk to people and they like to talk and they have lots to

00:17:21.760 say and they're verbally fluent, but they're also disagreeable. And the problem with those two

00:17:27.140 traits, extroversion and disagreeableness, is they tilt people towards narcissism.

00:17:33.000 So, and it's, what was it, Nietzsche, I think the German philosopher said, great men are seldom

00:17:38.300 credited with their stupidity. And so you need these traits of extroversion and being disagreeable

00:17:45.500 to put yourself in the public eye and to enable you to be adversarial. But there's a set of

00:17:51.500 probable sins that go along with that. And those include the sins, let's say, of narcissism.

00:17:57.900 Now, if you're conscientious and you keep your word, you can ameliorate that. Like, I like having

00:18:02.480 disagreeable people around because they tell you what, they will tell you what they think.

00:18:07.000 They don't pull any punches. And that can be harsh and even callous at times, but at least you get the

00:18:12.180 damn information. Whereas agreeable people are always trying to keep the peace at any cost,

00:18:16.460 including the cost of their own well-being. So you, so in your situation, this is what I'm very

00:18:23.220 curious about. You have to be adversarial and you have to be antagonistic to the degree that you're

00:18:28.060 uncovering deception and obfuscation and those sorts of things, to the degree that you have to

00:18:35.240 counter the tricks that people are bringing to bear on the situation. One of the things I guess that

00:18:40.580 makes YouTube different and Rogan in particular is, I don't think Rogan, Rogan almost never talks to

00:18:47.080 people who are doing that. Right? He just, like he, I've talked to him, for example, about speaking

00:18:53.660 with politicians and he tends not to speak with them. And I think the reason for that is that he's

00:19:01.000 not interested in that adversarial discussion. And he doesn't want his platform to be used for

00:19:07.240 people who are trying to score political points now. And fair enough. And that's worked very well

00:19:11.860 for Rogan. And I understand exactly why he does that. And I don't like to conduct adversarial

00:19:16.680 interviews either, but it's still the case that there is a need for that adversarial conduct

00:19:22.980 on the journalistic front. If part of the role of journalism is to keep dishonest narcissists as,

00:19:31.440 as honest as possible. And so obviously one of the things that you're

00:19:37.240 attempting to calibrate properly, I presume is, well, how much you listen and allow the

00:19:43.600 conversation to unfold and how much you dig without digging too much and without being an

00:19:48.500 utter prick about it. Right? Because obviously it's possible to go too far on that front. And so,

00:19:53.920 and my suspicions are that you also have the temperament to be able to engage in a fight.

00:19:59.560 And without that, you can't be adversarial. So how, you said you're still learning to do that.

00:20:05.260 The silence issue is interesting too, because I think that's particularly tough on broadcast TV,

00:20:11.100 because you're called upon in some sense to fill every valuable second. And then to let a pause

00:20:17.580 occur, you have to be willing to risk the potential price of dead space. And that's quite

00:20:24.820 intimidating if you're, while using up valuable broadcast space, which isn't such an issue on

00:20:32.000 YouTube, let's say. But there's very weird constraints in broadcast TV that people aren't

00:20:37.160 aware of when they're just watching it. And so, so tell me about the adversarial relationship and,

00:20:43.640 and how you think you've managed that positively and also negatively.

00:20:48.960 Yeah. I mean, I'll give you two great examples, I think, where I got it right and then got it wrong.

00:20:53.340 One was when I was at CNN, and Sandy Hook happened, the mass shooting at the school. And I'd been editor

00:21:01.360 of the Daily Mirror back in the UK in 1996, when the Dunblane school massacre happened in Scotland,

00:21:08.240 where 16 young children were killed by a lone gunman. And so I, at the time, campaigned in the UK for much

00:21:17.600 tougher gun control measures, which all were passed by a combination of left and right wing

00:21:23.580 governments, John Majors, and then Tony Blair's. So it was much easier here to affect change,

00:21:29.320 because very few people actually had guns. So I was under no delusion that America is a very

00:21:34.200 different culture to be waging a similar campaign. But what it brought back to me when Sandy Hook

00:21:39.060 happened, were the emotions I had, when Dunblane had occurred, and how horrific it was, and how just

00:21:45.520 this idea of 16 in Dunblane and 20 children in Sandy Hook, having their lives snuffed away by some

00:21:52.460 maniac with a gun, that it seemed to me unconscionable that any society could not want to affect some

00:21:58.460 change to stop it happening again. And yet recently in America, we had another mass shooting in a school,

00:22:03.540 almost identical in the way that it was carried out, and nothing had been done since Sandy Hook.

00:22:09.460 So if you take the apocryphal, I think it was, Einstein quote of definition of insanity as doing the same

00:22:14.940 thing over and over again, expecting a different result. Well, also, I would say the definition

00:22:19.380 of insanity is doing nothing again and again, and expecting the same thing not to happen. So

00:22:23.980 when I blew up at CNN at the time, against the NRA, for example, it came from a position of real raw

00:22:32.820 emotion. I can think of only a handful of times in my career when I've been rendered to tears by a

00:22:39.800 news story. Dunblane was one of them, and Sandy Hook was another. So I was being driven by genuine raw

00:22:45.640 emotion, no question. And I think in the early stages of my coverage of that story on CNN, it really

00:22:54.680 resonated with people. People thought it was very powerful, it was compelling, and I was broadly right

00:23:02.280 that something had to be done. But I would say I slightly over-egged the emotional souffle.

00:23:09.840 And I think it began to have the opposite effect to what I hoped. So I hoped to genuinely affect

00:23:14.760 change, but I couldn't stop being over-emotional in the interviews I did with some of these

00:23:19.540 pro-NRA, pro-gun people coming on the show. And I ended up shouting at them, losing my temper with

00:23:26.220 them, slightly straying into performative art, perhaps even straying into a dash of narcissism myself,

00:23:31.840 where you start to believe your own hype. You start to read the media saluting what you're

00:23:37.460 doing. I was getting emails from Barbara Streisand congratulating me and so on. It's all very

00:23:42.300 intoxicating, but of course it can, if you're not careful, and I think it happened to me there,

00:23:47.840 it can lead to you actually achieving the complete opposite to what you hope. And in the end, I think

00:23:53.520 all I managed to do with my over-emotional response over time was probably sell more guns in

00:23:59.420 America, which was the complete opposite effect to what I wanted. Because people thought this guy

00:24:03.340 is the new George III. He seems to have forgotten we got rid of the Brits with guns. We don't want

00:24:08.220 a guy with this accent telling us how to lead our lives, et cetera. And I would say similarly,

00:24:13.400 in the UK, in the pandemic, in the first wave in early 2020, I built up a reputation pretty quickly

00:24:21.100 for skewering British politicians on air in a very, very aggressive and volatile manner,

00:24:27.180 in which I felt they were completely dropping the ball collectively as a government, making a series

00:24:32.980 of catastrophic and deadly mistakes. And I saw it incumbent on me to try and almost hammer them

00:24:38.980 into making better decisions. And for a long time, I think I would say that I did a very good job of

00:24:44.080 that. But again, I think towards the end, I overdid things a little bit. And when I look back at some

00:24:49.680 of the later interviews, I was perhaps trying to recreate the theatre of what had gone on before,

00:24:56.080 which was very organic and real. And when you start to recreate something that's organic,

00:25:00.640 it ceases to be organic. And so I think those were two good examples where a lot of people would

00:25:07.000 have been cheering me on. But also, in both cases, what happened there in the UK was the government

00:25:13.280 actually pulled all their ministers from any interviews with me for eight months,

00:25:16.640 they just did a complete blanket ban. And that doesn't help anybody, because then my viewers

00:25:22.940 don't get served by anything. They have no ability to hear from people in government about what's going

00:25:27.860 to be happening. So I felt in both cases that I let myself down in the end, albeit with the right

00:25:34.040 intentions. And the danger line for anyone that does that kind of interviewing is where it strays

00:25:40.300 into performative art rather than organic anger and emotion. So I don't regret the early emotion

00:25:46.940 and anger, but I do regret the way it strayed into something a little different. And I think that's a

00:25:51.900 really interesting lesson for people. If you're going to do those kind of slightly more volatile

00:25:56.660 interviews, and I do think sometimes you have to as a journalist, I like passion in journalists,

00:26:01.240 I like emotion, but never lose track of actually what you're doing and how you're feeling.

00:26:07.020 And never, never try and replicate something that you've done before, because it will always come

00:26:12.580 across as slightly fake. Okay, so, so let's take that apart a little bit. So the first thing is that

00:26:19.400 the first thing you said there was that when you're being lauded by a lot of people for your actions,

00:26:27.980 first of all, we might point out that it's useful to take that seriously, right? Because

00:26:33.660 one of the things you want to see in someone is that they are responsive to social response.

00:26:41.740 The person who's not social responsive to social response is either completely unskilled

00:26:46.900 or psychopathic, or maybe is in a different category altogether where they can handle public

00:26:53.640 response appropriately, which is very, very difficult. So you had every reason if people

00:26:58.840 were responding positively to you to assume that what you're doing was broadly regarded as positive,

00:27:04.840 and therefore might even be positive. But then you said it enticed you in an egotistical direction

00:27:13.580 to some degree. So one of the, I spent a lot of time trying to understand Adolf Hitler psychologically,

00:27:21.000 and in some sense, I would say trying to develop some sympathy for him insofar as that was possible.

00:27:26.300 And I think you develop sympathy for people by putting yourself in their position. And that's

00:27:31.760 very difficult to do with someone like Adolf Hitler. First of all, it's very unpleasant to do that,

00:27:36.840 but it's also very challenging because at minimum, he had a very complex life. But you imagine,

00:27:43.000 here's the statement, you can tell me what you think of this. If 20 million of your countrymen are

00:27:48.160 telling you that you're the savior of their country, who are you to disagree?

00:27:52.060 And so you wonder why someone like Hitler could have his ego blown up to the proportions that it

00:28:00.580 became blown up to. And the answer is, well, do you really think that you'd be able to resist

00:28:05.540 the positive blandishments of so many people? Because that in itself could easily be a form

00:28:10.900 of egotism, right? I don't care what people think. It's like, well, yeah, you probably do,

00:28:14.780 and you probably should. And then the question is, well, how do you keep yourself straight

00:28:18.880 when you are the target of positive adulation? And so one of it, you said you should know what

00:28:25.520 you're doing. So one possibility is, and I think I learned this mostly from Carl Jung,

00:28:29.940 is that you need to distinguish yourself from the principles for which you stand,

00:28:36.140 right? Because so one of the things that happens to me quite often is that people tell me how helpful

00:28:41.260 my work has been. And I think, to the degree that I can think this, I think, well, it's not surprising

00:28:48.100 that it's been helpful, in large part because it's not exactly my work. A lot of the things I've

00:28:54.380 learned, and perhaps the vast majority, no doubt the vast majority of the things that I've learned,

00:29:00.000 I've learned because I've studied great thinkers, who in turn had studied great thinkers. And so

00:29:04.960 I've been able to derive a certain amount of wisdom, and I'm able to communicate that. But I'm

00:29:11.220 doing my best to ensure that I separate myself from that wisdom. And that's a hard thing to do,

00:29:20.180 because, of course, here I am as a person as well. And the ideas that are being transmitted through me

00:29:27.740 are focused on me at that moment for that reason. But it's very difficult. That's the idea of rendering

00:29:33.680 unto God what's God's and unto Caesar what's Caesar's, in some sense, right? Is that you have to...

00:29:38.820 So you remember, it's okay to attract the positive attention because it reflects well on the principles

00:29:46.580 that you're trying to espouse. But as soon as this becomes about your status and your specific success

00:29:53.640 and your instrumental maneuvering in the world, then you replace what is being praised with yourself.

00:30:02.140 And that's a sin of pride. And the consequences of that is that you'll definitely fall into a pit.

00:30:08.600 On that point, it's interesting. You've made me think of something very specific, which I think

00:30:12.580 is a good example. Tony Blair was a very successful British prime minister for many years. He was

00:30:18.820 elected for three terms. But I remember after 9-11, he flew to the United States and he spoke to

00:30:27.020 Congress and said we would stand shoulders to shoulder with the American people. And Congress

00:30:32.320 gave him a lengthy standing ovation. And it was an image that went around the world. And I could

00:30:38.200 almost see Blair in Congress standing there taking this extraordinary adulation from the most powerful

00:30:45.400 room in the world. And then basking in the glory of his position here as the great supporter and

00:30:52.260 defender of the United States at the most difficult hour. And it was almost like he puffed up visibly

00:30:57.360 in front of us like a peacock. He was loving this attention, albeit in a very serious time.

00:31:03.580 And then you cut forward to the Iraq War within two years. And I am absolutely convinced that Tony

00:31:10.980 Blair's ego drove him to wage that war, to go along with the Iraq War, when every part of his legal

00:31:17.440 brain, he was a lawyer, and his slightly left of center political brain would have told him this

00:31:23.060 was insanity. That actually, to go it alone without a United Nations Second Resolution, which would be

00:31:29.080 endorsing military conflict, that without that, this was mad. And I had many conversations with him

00:31:35.280 at Number 10 Downing Street in his flat, where we literally would share a beer and have a chat about

00:31:39.740 all this. And I could see that it was the problem he'd dug himself was that he, from that moment,

00:31:45.780 he became the peacock, opening his wings proudly to soak in the adulation of the United States,

00:31:53.480 that he then felt almost a duty to go along with whatever action the United States government took,

00:31:59.900 even if it was against the British national interest, and even, as it turned out, if it turned

00:32:04.680 out to be pretty much a disaster, the Iraq War. And I genuinely think it was the process you've just

00:32:10.800 described, where the initial instinct of going to Washington, standing shoulder to shoulder with

00:32:18.040 America was absolutely correct. So the praise that he was getting was completely justified.

00:32:23.440 But it then turned him into something which I think, looking back, he must surely regret. He probably

00:32:29.520 would never admit that. But I saw it happen to him, where the ego needed to continue to be praised

00:32:37.020 by America. And he had to make a calculation, do I go with the Americans on this Iraq War journey? Or do

00:32:44.300 I do what the British people want me to do, which is to not go on that war? 1.7 million people marched

00:32:49.460 through London, many of them carrying placards, which I had produced as editor of the Daily Mirror,

00:32:54.660 which was the Labour supporting newspaper, and he was a Labour Prime Minister. And these placards said,

00:33:00.260 no war. And you'll see, if you go back and look at the footage, you'll see thousands of people

00:33:05.260 clutching Daily Mirror placards. So he and I had a real split over this. And when I look back,

00:33:10.880 it was exactly the way that you just described that process, where initially correct, and then

00:33:17.400 sucked in through ego, and perhaps a bit of narcissism into a place he would never have instinctively

00:33:23.600 wanted to be.

00:33:24.280 Right. Well, okay. So let's talk about this politically and theologically for a minute.

00:33:30.060 So I was in the UK, in London, when Queen Elizabeth passed away. And it was quite remarkable to see

00:33:37.140 the response. It was quite something to see the Brits put on this amazing show, which happened very

00:33:44.880 rapidly, which is extremely well-organized and very, very, very well done, very beautiful,

00:33:51.500 and which I believe attracted more viewers on TV than any event in human history, which is really

00:33:56.160 saying something. And I really like the monarchical system, because I think the Queen serves a

00:34:02.700 confessional role for politicians. She'd reigned over 13 different Prime Ministers. And you could

00:34:08.760 imagine that it would be very useful for someone who's in a position like Tony Blair, or any other

00:34:13.980 Prime Minister, to have to go face this woman who's seen everyone from Churchill to the President

00:34:21.060 or to the President, present Prime Minister, Liz Stas, and to feel themselves in some sense less

00:34:31.260 dominant and less powerfully positioned than at least someone in the room, and to have to do that

00:34:37.480 on a regular basis. And that strikes me as a replication in the secular realm of what confession

00:34:45.460 and the search for redemption and atonement was when it was practiced religiously. Let me tell you a

00:34:51.620 story. So, back in ancient Mesopotamia, the Mesopotamian emperor was required to undertake a

00:34:59.880 ritual at New Year's. And I believe that a fair bit of our New Year's ritual mythology, you know, the death

00:35:07.960 of the old year, the old man, and the rebirth of the baby, they're echoes of this Mesopotamian

00:35:13.620 structure. The idea that the old year is coming to an end and the new year is going to be rekindled

00:35:19.000 with all the possibilities that go along with it, and the fact that people make resolutions, which

00:35:24.800 are some sense confessional. I did these things wrong, and here's how I could improve in the future

00:35:29.940 when there's a new year. The Mesopotamian emperor would be taken outside the walls of the central

00:35:36.360 Mesopotamian city, so out into no man's land, right, outside the safety of the community. And then he

00:35:42.360 would be required to strip himself of all his kingly garb and kneel, and then a priest would slap

00:35:49.080 him. And then he would be reforced to recount all the ways that year he wasn't a good Marduk. Marduk

00:35:55.660 was the monotheistic deity of the Mesopotamians, and he had eyes all the way around his head, and he

00:36:01.780 spoke magic words. And so, Marduk was a god of careful attention and proper speech. And so, the

00:36:08.580 Mesopotamian emperor had to reflect on how he hadn't upheld the proper principles of

00:36:15.340 sovereignty as a consequence of being humiliated before, what would you say, a transcendent power

00:36:22.580 that was greater than his. And when I said earlier that you have to remember that it's not you, but

00:36:28.600 the principles for which you stand, that is something like the proper ordering. And so, it would have been

00:36:34.340 reasonable for Prime Minister Blair to be very pleased with the fact that the UK was standing

00:36:41.860 in solidarity with the United States, but not pleased, not appropriate for him to be pleased

00:36:48.520 that Tony Blair was on the side of the Americans. Because it's actually not about Tony Blair. And so,

00:36:55.480 and getting that confused, and then you've got to have sympathy for people too, because it's not

00:36:59.600 surprising that people would get that confused. I mean, one of the things I've noticed about

00:37:03.540 celebrities, and it's a big danger. Imagine, you become famous, and as a consequence of that,

00:37:10.380 now you have a persona. And that's you defined by the social crowd. And there's a certain

00:37:18.420 brand significance that goes along with that, a reputational significance, and a value, even an

00:37:24.080 economic value. But the problem is, is it can become a trap. Because if you can only be what you've

00:37:29.920 already been, then you can't be anything new. And that's where people fall into this trap that you

00:37:35.340 described of something like self-mimicry, right? This worked for me before. Look at the effect it

00:37:40.660 produced. I just will do that again. But then you're instantly false, eh? You're instantly false when you

00:37:46.000 do that. It's like you're sacrificing your future self for whatever your past self once attained.

00:37:52.380 And then you lose that spark that actually is likely the driving force of whatever made you

00:37:58.720 attractive to begin with. Yeah, I completely agree. And I always say to my sons, really,

00:38:05.520 my basic rule of life is try never to go back full stop with anything. It's never the same. There's

00:38:12.100 always a reason that you've moved on from whatever it is. And to try and replicate previous behaviors,

00:38:18.200 to try and replicate previous relationships, to try and replicate perhaps a job that you once loved

00:38:23.380 and lost, to try and go back, I think, you often forget why you left in the first place or why things

00:38:30.120 didn't work out. You read it and see it all the time. Memory tends to sugarcoat things. And it's only

00:38:38.040 when you actually, if you do allow yourself to fall back into these previous habits or behaviors or

00:38:43.400 whatever it may be, that you then realize it wasn't what you thought. And the mind, I think,

00:38:48.340 plays tricks with you a little bit. So I think that I do think particularly with politicians,

00:38:53.740 particularly with sportsmen, entertainers, that you're right about the brand thing is they can

00:38:59.820 very quickly get pigeonholed as to this or that or this. And then they start to play up to the thing

00:39:06.340 which they were originally identified as being. And maybe it was what they're actually like,

00:39:10.720 or maybe it wasn't. But either way, it becomes a very difficult thing to then escape from.

00:39:15.160 You become tagged with that. You know, I know pop stars who are still seen as the nicest people

00:39:20.140 in showbiz. I know them to be utterly horrific. Conversely, I know, you know, people I've met in

00:39:25.640 business or politics who have terrible reputations, but actually are very nice people. So it's an

00:39:31.160 interesting thing that the public branding of people can be instantaneous and very long lasting and

00:39:36.900 often completely wrong. But the danger for any public figure is to try and play up to your

00:39:42.940 caricature. Now, I think the one saving grace you can have is self-awareness. To me, there are two

00:39:50.080 types of public figures, those who've got self-awareness and those who don't. I think that

00:39:54.800 I have a big persona, big, perhaps slightly caricature persona sometimes. I like to deliberately

00:40:02.700 antagonize and create debate and so on. But I always do it with a sense of self-awareness.

00:40:08.340 And the times I described to you earlier, where I've certainly lost the plot and become a

00:40:12.800 performative theatrical artist, if you like, rather than a proper journalist, of when I've

00:40:17.440 forgotten the self-awareness streak, when I've been driven by adulation and praise, usually,

00:40:24.180 into thinking that somehow, right, this is the new me and this is great and I'm going to be

00:40:28.900 this person, rather than just being honest with yourself about who you are. I think I'm pretty

00:40:33.380 aware of who I am, warts and all. And some of the traits which other people see as being in me

00:40:39.340 disagreeable, I'm very relaxed about. In fact, I'm less relaxed about some of the more positive

00:40:44.320 traits. When people say, oh, you're such a nice person, it sounds almost brand damaging to me.

00:40:49.320 I don't want to be just nice. I can't think of anything worse than being nice. I'd rather be

00:40:54.460 challenging. I'd rather be-

00:40:55.760 Right, right, right. It's a shallow version.

00:40:57.320 Yeah. And why would you aspire to just be nice? It seems to me that people who are inherently

00:41:02.300 known as nice people, A, they rarely live up to that brand, in my experience, in terms of high

00:41:08.340 profile people I know. And it must be an unbearable pressure to constantly wake up every day and think,

00:41:13.120 I have to be nice all day. When in fact, your natural and more honest instinct may be to be

00:41:19.020 disagreeable from time to time, because that's what you're actually feeling. And often you'd be right,

00:41:23.420 by the way, to be feeling disagreeable about something. So I do think that, I mean, I think,

00:41:28.620 I was struck by something you told me when I interviewed you, that you felt as you've got older,

00:41:33.140 you've evolved and you've learned things about yourself. And I feel exactly the same way. I'm

00:41:38.740 not the same person I was. I think I still have the same sense of virtues, which perhaps were instilled in

00:41:46.980 me when I was a child by my family. I had a very strong family, a very strong upbringing. But I do

00:41:51.580 think I've evolved as a person. And I do think if you don't evolve as a person, I'm not sure what

00:41:56.400 you're doing here. It's, you know, the world's a tough, difficult, complex place. And you should

00:42:02.440 evolve emotionally as you get older, and hopefully in the right direction.

00:42:06.040 I think you turn into an actor. So I spent a lot of time, I've spent a lot of time analyzing pop culture.

00:42:13.340 And I focused a lot, as many of the people who are watching and listening to this will know, on

00:42:17.940 analyzing the great Disney animated classics, which were extraordinarily influential, popular

00:42:24.700 productions. And one of the movies that has struck me most particularly, although I don't think it's the

00:42:30.780 greatest of the Disney movies, is Pinocchio. And there are a number of, so Pinocchio is a puppet.

00:42:37.420 So someone is pulling his strings, right? There's forces behind the scenes that are making him who he

00:42:43.320 is. And he's unconscious. He doesn't know it. But he has a good father, who is a very positive figure,

00:42:49.180 who sends him out in the world to free himself of the behind-the-strings marionette players.

00:42:56.600 And he faces a number of temptations. And there's four cardinal temptations, which I think are

00:43:03.400 extremely well laid out. One is hedonism, narrow and shallow hedonism. And that's played out in the

00:43:11.020 scenes of Pleasure Island. And the consequences of becoming a narrow hedonist is that you end up as

00:43:16.680 a voiceless slave. That's how that, you end up turned into a donkey that can do nothing,

00:43:22.520 bray, sold as slaves to work in the salt mine. So that's the fruits of hedonism.

00:43:28.360 Another scene that perplexed me for a long time was that Pinocchio is enticed into being an actor.

00:43:34.880 And I thought, what in the world does that mean? Because the people who made this movie were

00:43:38.980 obviously Hollywood types. And what's so wrong with being an actor? But the answer is to be found

00:43:45.920 in the discussion that we were just having. If you're playing a role and you're doing it

00:43:50.360 as a fictional character, and you're playing a role in a movie, let's say, and everyone knows

00:43:56.360 that what you're doing is fictional, that's one thing. But if you're an actor who's attempting to

00:44:02.260 play a role for your own egotistical gratification, then that's a catastrophe. And what happens in the

00:44:08.220 Pinocchio movie is that he is enticed into going on stage as a puppet. And he does a wild dance and

00:44:14.480 tangles himself up in his own strings and ends up face down in front of the crowd and then also

00:44:19.880 enslaved. One of the other temptations, just interestingly enough, because it's germane to

00:44:25.840 our current culture, is that the fox and the cat, who are agents of Mephistopheles, essentially,

00:44:31.700 also entice Pinocchio into playing the sick victim. And so that's actually how they entice him

00:44:40.380 originally to go to Pleasure Island to become hedonistic. They tell him that he's sick and

00:44:44.560 unable and has been victimized and needs a break. And as a consequence of his poor victimized

00:44:51.200 position, it's perfectly okay for him to be narrowly and self-servingly hedonistic.

00:44:57.220 And so it's a lovely narrative layout of the sort of plethora of moral problems that beset people as

00:45:04.700 they try to transform themselves, let's say, into real boys. Because, of course, that's what the movie's

00:45:09.380 about. And it's very interesting to sketch out the nature of those temptations, this acting

00:45:14.680 temptation. You see celebrities become their own mimics. Like Elvis, in some sense, became an Elvis

00:45:20.580 imitator by the time that he ended, you know, he came to near the end of his life. I mean, he could

00:45:26.980 still put on a wicked performance, but you could see that immense pressure, the category pressure

00:45:33.220 building around him. And you can imagine how intense that is, especially perhaps at the time he lived,

00:45:38.980 because he was a singular celebrity. There's lots of celebrities now, but there were much fewer back

00:45:44.100 then. And the pressure to abide by the way you've been defined must be almost overwhelming. And it

00:45:53.220 isn't obvious that we really know how to rectify that. I think the confession idea is a good one,

00:45:58.120 is that you need to keep your inadequacies foremost in your mind, and you need to serve

00:46:03.220 some principles that are higher than yourself. But that's easy to say in the abstract. It's not

00:46:09.160 so easy to actually do it when you're the one being tempted. Yeah, I think you also rightly said

00:46:14.080 you have to have people around you who perhaps are disagreeable enough to be completely bluntly

00:46:18.720 honest with you. You know, whether it's my mother or one of my brothers or my sister or my sons in

00:46:26.260 particular, I've encouraged them to be very independent-minded and to let me know if they see or hear

00:46:31.320 something I do which they think is wrong and explain why. And they do that regularly. And I find that

00:46:37.700 litmus test from people who really know you better than anybody else. So they really understand when

00:46:43.580 you're making a fool of yourself or just behaving like a bit of a dick, right? You just see someone

00:46:49.440 who doesn't tell you. And one of the big problems with modern celebrity is, because I've interviewed a

00:46:54.100 lot of very famous people, is that they often surround themselves with pure sycophancy, and they

00:47:01.180 don't tolerate anyone drifting outside of sycophancy. All the teams around them are so fearful of losing

00:47:07.200 their very cushy jobs that they render themselves as useless sycophants permanently to avoid upsetting.

00:47:14.580 So they may almost be almost wrongly second-guessing the people they work for who might be perfectly

00:47:19.600 okay people, because they think if they're not sycophantic, they're going to lose their job. So

00:47:23.500 there's constant kind of pressure to blow smoke up the derriere of these people, which doesn't help

00:47:29.720 the stars themselves. It certainly doesn't help the people who work for them, who are behaving in such

00:47:34.020 a ridiculous manner. And the celebrities I know who I think really thrive over a long period of time,

00:47:41.140 they always tend to have people in their entourage who are straight talkers, who literally will say to

00:47:46.360 them in front of people, stop behaving like a dick. Literally. And you need those people. Because

00:47:52.000 if you don't have those people in your entourage, or whoever it may be, a manager, an agent, I had a

00:47:57.380 fantastic manager who sadly died of pancreatitis three years ago. And he's one of my closest friends.

00:48:04.480 And he transformed my career. He was the one that put me on Celebrity Apprentice, which I won. And that

00:48:08.500 led to joining CNN and replacing Larry King. And then the morning show, he did all these things for me.

00:48:13.000 And we were very, very close. And he died literally four days after getting ill with pancreatitis. It was

00:48:18.020 horrific. But he was the one, really, who would call me sometimes, having watched me on the morning

00:48:25.560 show, watch me in LA at 11 at night. And he'd see or hear me do something, which he felt he had to say

00:48:32.280 something about it. And he'd call me and say, you shouldn't have said that. That's not you. That's not what

00:48:39.040 you believe. I know it isn't. And the way you phrased that, the way you went after someone,

00:48:43.040 he hated if they ever felt like I was punching down, not up. He thought I was at my best when I,

00:48:48.100 he thought I was at my best when I was basically producing Robin Hood TV, where I would be the

00:48:54.260 Robin Hood figure looking after the downtrodden against the sheriffs of Nottingham, be they from

00:48:59.680 energy companies or political parties or, you know, corrupt tycoons, whatever it may be. He said,

00:49:05.620 you're at your absolute best when you're Robin Hood. And when you start to behave like the

00:49:10.360 sheriffs of Nottingham, you're, A, it's not you. It's not what's in your heart. I know you.

00:49:15.940 And B, it's performative bullshit, which you shouldn't be drifting into. And it doesn't work

00:49:21.400 on any level. Now, I really miss that in my life, that guy, having those kinds of conversations,

00:49:27.200 because, you know, A, I have to respect the person to want to listen to it. So when you lose someone

00:49:35.040 like that in your life, it's really difficult because I had such huge personal respect for him.

00:49:40.000 And I knew we'd been through an awful lot together. He nearly died 10 years before he'd been in Cedar

00:49:45.380 Sinai hospital for three months with a staph infection. He'd been in a coma. He wasn't expected

00:49:50.260 to survive. He'd had the last rites and so on. And when he came out, he got fired when his company merged.

00:49:55.340 And I was the only one of 50 clients who went with him. So he went from being one of the biggest

00:50:00.900 power agents in Hollywood to one client, me. And then we rebuilt things very successfully.

00:50:06.900 So we had a real bond professionally and personally. But I think everybody needs someone like that,

00:50:12.660 who knows you, who knows you and knows when you're not being yourself.

00:50:17.460 Well, that's a beneficial adversary. That's the translation, by the way, for the word that God

00:50:23.060 uses to describe Eve in the Garden of Eden. Help me means, in the original Hebrew, it means

00:50:28.000 beneficial adversary. And it's someone to have around. This is what a marriage can do for you

00:50:32.820 too, if you're fortunate, because you have someone there who can help you calibrate your aim as a

00:50:39.480 consequence of continued disagreement in some real sense, because there isn't much difference

00:50:44.380 between disagreement and thinking. This brings us to two things, I would say.

00:50:48.120 Okay. So there's an immense push in our society right now to insist that identity be entirely

00:50:55.020 subjectively defined, right? Which means that, as God said to Moses, I am that I am. And that's a very

00:51:03.820 difficult, that's a very dangerous thing for people to take upon themselves to say, I am to be treated only

00:51:10.040 the way that I define. And we just spent a fair bit of time outlining why that's so wrong, because

00:51:16.640 you're, what keeps you sane, this friend of yours, this agent you had, he was part of what kept you sane.

00:51:24.000 So you're moving up the status hierarchy. And it might not even be obvious to you while you're moving up,

00:51:29.760 when you're punching up and when you're punching down, because your relative position is actually changing.

00:51:33.940 So I've run into this problem. I criticized a swimsuit model on the cover of Sports Illustrated

00:51:39.360 and an actress, actor, who had undergone a sex change publicly on Twitter. And I got kicked off

00:51:45.680 of Twitter for the latter criticism. And one of the criticisms I faced was that I was punching down.

00:51:51.420 And it didn't really occur to me when I was making those comments that I was punching down, because

00:51:56.240 the actor or actress that I criticized was quite famous in, now I'm having pronoun trouble,

00:52:02.720 in his, her own right. And I was also irritated that the fashion spread that was conducted after

00:52:10.160 the sex change operation got 1.5 million Instagram likes, which didn't strike me as all that socially

00:52:15.440 useful. But it's not easy to figure out when your own position is shifting, when you're going after

00:52:23.360 someone, let's say, at your level of influence or higher, and when you've even accidentally entered

00:52:30.800 into the fray that you shouldn't be entering into and brought too much force to bear on the person,

00:52:36.260 but also, what would you say, undermined your own authority by doing so. And so having these

00:52:42.160 disagreeable people around who say, you know, you're not being who you are, and you're not who you think

00:52:48.420 you are, and you're not aiming properly. That's actually how you stabilize your identity. And so

00:52:53.800 identity is actually socially negotiated. If you're healthy, identity is socially negotiated all the

00:52:59.700 time. And in that has to be a fair good leave-in of criticism, because it stops you from getting

00:53:06.200 above yourself if you're fortunate. And so you have to listen to how other people define you.

00:53:11.360 But then you run into the adulation problem, perhaps. And then if you listen too much to how

00:53:16.300 other people define you, well, that's its own egotistical trap. So, but having people around,

00:53:21.660 I'm fortunate, A, because my wife is very sensible, and she's an astute, beneficial adversary. And

00:53:29.100 my kids are like that too. And I have a lot of very good friends who are, what would you say,

00:53:35.040 they're forces in their own right. And they're perfectly willing to tell me when they think that

00:53:41.400 I haven't conducted myself according to the standards that I would like to abide by. And it's

00:53:48.180 unbelievably useful while navigating a complicated situation. And it is, in some sense, the definition

00:53:53.860 of sanity, right, is to have enough feedback around you that's balanced so that you move forward on the

00:54:01.560 right path. But that is not subjectively defined identity. That's one of the things that's so

00:54:05.980 pathological about that insistence, because that just, that just swallows you up in a, the ultimate

00:54:11.540 egotistical solipsism. If you can be whatever you say you are from moment to moment, and no one has any

00:54:17.240 right to object, how do you think you're going to turn out? You're going to inflate like mad until

00:54:23.140 you burst. That's definitely the case. Speaking of disagreeable people, you worked on America's Got

00:54:31.120 Talent with Simon Cowell. And I really like Simon Cowell for what it's worth. I mean, he's got this

00:54:38.460 tremendous capacity to give credit where credit is due, which he does very well. And as far as I can

00:54:44.960 tell 100% genuinely, I think, and I'd sure like your comments on this, that America's Got Talent,

00:54:51.140 the Got Talent platforms have brought a tremendous amount of ability to light. And it's really quite

00:54:56.060 remarkable to see him flip from this disagreeable critic who puts up with pretty much zero nonsense

00:55:01.960 to someone who's completely floored when someone comes out and is genuine and truly talented.

00:55:07.360 And I really like the shows, the Got Talent shows. I watch them quite a lot. They often bring me to

00:55:13.140 tears, which turns out not to be such a difficult thing, but it's quite something to see people

00:55:17.780 suddenly reveal something about themselves that's so utterly stellar. And I really like watching Simon

00:55:23.780 impose his discriminating judgment, especially in a world that thinks that all discrimination and

00:55:30.240 judgment is pathological. And one of the consequences of that is that he can bring all this talent to

00:55:35.060 light, this true talent. What did you enjoy working with, with the Got Talent shows? And why did you do

00:55:41.520 that? And tell me about the judge process. I'd like to know more about the whole background enterprise.

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00:56:53.680 Yeah, so I'd known Simon a long time, from when I was the show business editor of the Sun newspaper,

00:57:04.200 doing a lot of pop culture stuff. And Simon was trying to basically be a record company,

00:57:09.340 A&R man, flogging records and trying to get a paper to write about them. So I got to know him,

00:57:15.620 liked him very much. He was a great force of personality. He wasn't on television then.

00:57:18.900 No one knew who he was outside the music business. Then he becomes the biggest TV star

00:57:23.480 on the planet with American Idol. I mean, like stratospheric fame, which happened,

00:57:28.160 interestingly, not in the first series or season, but the second season, it suddenly exploded.

00:57:32.960 And so when he took me out for lunch after I lost my job editing the Daily Mirror,

00:57:37.820 and it had all been a big controversy here. We'd published some photographs of

00:57:42.380 British troops purportedly abusing Iraqi civilians illegally, which had just followed the Abu Ghraib

00:57:50.020 scandal in America, where their troops had been doing the same thing. The government and the

00:57:55.080 regiment said these were fake photographs. I was fired. I'm still not sure exactly what those

00:58:00.100 photographs were, but that was the end of my career as a newspaper editor after 10 years.

00:58:05.180 And Simon took me for lunch, very near where I'm talking to you, actually, in Kensington and West

00:58:09.740 London. Went for a nice meal, and he pulled out a napkin and put it on the table. And he said,

00:58:15.400 do you know what's really missing in world television? He said, the old gong show in America

00:58:20.440 and a very similar show in the UK called Opportunity Knocks and then New Faces. And they

00:58:26.800 were basically, he said, any talent, not just singers, but any talent. And he said, my idea is we'd

00:58:33.080 have three judges. You'd have a tough meanie who keeps everything, you know, honest. You'd have a

00:58:39.680 slightly crazy person. He said, like, Paula Abdul was an idol with a big heart, but slightly crazy.

00:58:45.780 And you'd have someone, probably a comedian, who would make people laugh. And you'd have the

00:58:50.580 perfect judging panel. So then we did a pilot for this show. It's quite interesting genesis of the

00:58:56.200 story. Britain's Got Talent was originally going to be called Paul O'Grady's Got Talent,

00:59:01.240 who's a British entertainer. But he had a huge falling out with the network and left. And then

00:59:07.820 Simon said, well, unfortunately, we're not going to do it. So it was all shelved in the UK where he

00:59:12.340 was intending to launch it. Six weeks later, I'm thinking my brand new primetime TV career is over

00:59:17.960 before it even started. And I get a text from Simon saying, Beers, I've just sold the rights to

00:59:23.120 Got Talent to NBC in America. They want to repackage it as America's Got Talent, which I

00:59:27.960 immediately thought was a brilliant idea to sort of wrap the flag and the country and patriotism

00:59:33.460 around this show. And he said, I can't be on it as a judge because I'm on American Idol. So I need

00:59:41.300 to find somebody as arrogant and as obnoxious as me and judgmental. And your name has immediately sprung

00:59:47.260 to mind. So long story short, he flew me straight out to Los Angeles. I met with some

00:59:52.980 NBC executives. Managed to bullshit my way through quite a long meeting with them. And

00:59:58.800 three weeks later, I'm on the Paramount movie lot in Hollywood. I've got my own trailer next

01:00:03.880 to David Hasselhoff and Regis Philbin. And I'm the judge of America's Got Talent. And

01:00:09.100 I'm the new Simon Cowell, which was not a place I ever thought I'd find myself. But it was really

01:00:14.900 interesting. And Simon came to, I remember, never forgot this. On day one, he pulled up in

01:00:18.740 his brand new Ferrari outside my trailer. And he came in and said, right. And I was like,

01:00:23.760 this is fantastic, son. I can't believe this. I'm living the dream. And he said, look, here's

01:00:28.320 the deal with our kind of shtick. You have to be right 80% of the time. And if you are,

01:00:34.940 and the viewers agree with you, 80% of the time, you can be as mean as you like, right?

01:00:39.380 He said you can be a straight, blunt, honest, mean, whatever you want to call it. You can be

01:00:44.340 whatever you want to be. You just have to be right 80% of the time. Because if you're

01:00:49.480 mean, or tough, or ruthless, and you're wrong a lot of the time, the act doesn't work.

01:00:55.040 Right.

01:00:55.520 And it was an act in a way. In a way, talent shows are up, theatre. Obviously, you've got

01:00:59.500 people performing on stage and whatever. But I always tried to be, and I think this is

01:01:03.940 a key thing, I think, about public life generally. I always tried to be authentic. And I think Simon's

01:01:09.500 always authentic. He might be guided by a producer. Hey, this is a really good act. But

01:01:14.680 he doesn't feel it. And he'll say, I didn't like it. So he was always authentic. And I

01:01:19.500 picked that up. And I always tried to be very authentic, whilst being pretty blunt, pretty

01:01:23.780 British, pretty full on. But I was always mindful of, just call it exactly as you're actually

01:01:30.180 feeling it. Really, just be honest with yourself, never mind the audience. And if you are, normally

01:01:36.980 you're going to be right, because it's what they're all feeling at home, then you have to have that

01:01:40.540 ability to gauge what an audience might be thinking. But ultimately, be authentic. And if you ask me

01:01:45.640 what is the number one tool of really successful people, it's authenticity. They are true to

01:01:52.180 themselves. The most successful people I've encountered ultimately are authentic. They don't

01:01:58.220 get drifted or pulled into places where it's not them, where they're playing an act. You do get some

01:02:04.260 that come through, who I think are completely fake and wing it and get away with it. But broadly

01:02:09.700 speaking, and the same applied with the talent shows. So you could have all these acts. And a lot

01:02:15.880 of them are faking it. A lot of them are trying to be somebody. They were trying to be Beyonce. They

01:02:20.440 were trying to be Madonna. They were trying to be a dance troupe, whatever it may be. They were trying

01:02:24.240 to be somebody else. The most successful acts that I ever saw on the British show and the American

01:02:30.420 one were the ones which were truly authentic. And I'll give an example. A guy on the second season

01:02:35.700 of America's Got Talent. It's actually quite a funny story behind this because Simon Cowell owned the

01:02:41.460 rights to the show and he had the rights automatically to manage any of the winners of the show. And I think

01:02:47.240 even the top 10 finalists. That was built into his contract. So the second season, first season,

01:02:53.980 number one summer show in America. So my life has changed dramatically. Second season, there are two

01:02:59.600 standout early candidates for potential winners. One is a white reggae star who was fantastic and a

01:03:06.420 beautiful singing voice. And Simon literally was radiating the word ka-ching every time he heard

01:03:13.380 him perform because he thought this guy is a money-making machine right in front of me. He looks

01:03:17.660 the part. He sounds the part. Amazing singer. Carries himself great. But I was more drawn to the

01:03:23.320 complete opposite, which was a guy called Terry Fater. And Terry Fater was a slightly overweight,

01:03:31.060 permanently sweating, ill-fitting suited guy who had gone up and down America for 20 years in his van,

01:03:39.280 earning 500 bucks a week at most, doing a ventriloquist act. And he'd had an extraordinary

01:03:46.220 turn of fortune shortly before he applied to be on America's Got Talent. Where his act used to be

01:03:51.700 that he would sing impressions himself. So he would sing Roy Orbison, crying, for example.

01:03:58.760 And then he would talk through puppets, a turtle, and so on. And he went to do one gig and two people

01:04:07.100 turned up. There's a real lesson here for everyone. Two people turned up, but he still gave them the

01:04:12.020 best act he could. And one of them turned out to be a talent agent. He said to him,

01:04:16.500 have you ever tried doing the singing impressions through the puppets? Simple thing. It changed this

01:04:23.060 guy's life. So Terry Fater went away and found he could actually throw his voice through the puppets

01:04:28.320 as a singer better than he could do it from his own mouth. And at that point, his whole act changed.

01:04:34.800 So he then applies to America's Got Talent. Comes on stage. And I immediately find him very endearing

01:04:40.980 as a personality. And I love his backstory. He's the ultimate kind of, this guy's been going 20

01:04:46.120 years, wanting the break. This is the moment, maybe. And as he progresses through the competition,

01:04:52.660 and I keep supporting him, Simon's on my case. Stop being so supportive. He's going to win. I can't

01:04:57.960 make any money out of a ventriloquist. Go with the other guy. Go with the reggae singer. I was like,

01:05:02.960 Simon, this guy's what this show's about, this ventriloquist. Anyway, he ends up winning,

01:05:09.480 mainly because I'm so effusive in my support. And by then, the American viewing public had viewed my

01:05:14.660 opinion, rather like the Cal one American Idol, as the one that was most significant as far as

01:05:19.280 I was ever concerned. So he wins. And Simon, in a fit of pique, says, I can't make any money out of

01:05:24.180 him. So I'm not going to manage it. So the guy is left without a management. So he disappears.

01:05:30.600 And a guy who used to work on the Rolling Stones management team, and was now working on his own,

01:05:36.200 heard about this guy, had a chat with him, and took him on. Decided to manage him and just try

01:05:42.100 his luck. And a few months later, literally three months later, Danny Gantz, all-round family

01:05:47.140 entertainer in Las Vegas, one of the biggest stars on the strip, drops dead. That's it. And the casino

01:05:54.460 where he operated had to fill a massive gap in their schedule. They didn't have an all-round family

01:06:00.440 entertainer. The Rolling Stones management guy who'd picked up Terry Fater recommends Terry Fater.

01:06:06.340 Terry Fater does a three-month trial. He sells out every show. Because grandmothers love him,

01:06:13.440 mothers love him, kids love him, dads love him. Everyone loves Terry Fater. He's now got 50

01:06:18.740 puppets. He's singing all these amazing songs through these crazy puppets. And on the back

01:06:24.600 of the three-month trial, he signs a five-year, $100 million contract to be the biggest star on

01:06:30.880 the Las Vegas Strip. Which, if Simon Cowell had kept the management rights, would have earned him

01:06:35.540 $20 million. So if you want to really piss off Simon Cowell, just say, hey, Simon, how much money did

01:06:40.740 you make out of that ventriloquist? So that story, in many ways, it has a lot of useful things to go

01:06:49.060 with, I think. One is, the old don't judge a book by its cover. You know, if you took them purely on

01:06:54.620 aesthetics, you'd go with the white reggae star every day. But there was something about this guy's

01:06:59.720 personality and the uniqueness of his act. And the fact that he'd taken advice from someone who was

01:07:05.080 one of only two people in an audience. So never give up. Always give every, always give everything,

01:07:11.260 everything, because you never know who's watching. I say this to my actor son, if there's not a big

01:07:15.300 audience in one night, you don't know if in those 20 people, there's a guy that's going to change your

01:07:19.960 life. Absolutely. So I think, you know, all these lessons from the Terry Fater story, he's still on the

01:07:25.200 Vegas Strip now. You go to, I think it's the Mirage or whatever he is. He has his own theater named

01:07:29.960 after him. He signed another $100 million contract. He's the most successful breakout star in the

01:07:35.740 history of any talent show ever. And that's his backstory. And it was, to me, it was a, that was

01:07:41.640 what the show was all about. Rather like Susan Boyle. Yeah, right. I remember Susan, you bet.

01:07:47.140 That was amazing. Never, never, well, she never sang outside of her village. Yeah. And was 47-year-old

01:07:53.280 spinster. Yeah. You know, who'd been starved of oxygen at birth and had slight issues because of that.

01:07:58.520 Yeah. And yet she came on stage. I'll never forget this. Again, never judge books by their

01:08:03.260 covers. She came on stage in Glasgow. I can remember it like it was yesterday. And I'm with

01:08:07.800 Simon on the British show. We're both judges on the British show with another judge. And Susan Boyle

01:08:13.220 comes out and we're talking to her. What are you going to do? I'm going to sing from Les Miserables,

01:08:17.360 A Dream A Dream. And we all start rolling our eyes. Yeah. Yeah. And we're like, my, my God,

01:08:22.460 you've got to be kidding. It'd been a long day. We'd seen some terrible talent. Yeah. Yeah. And she began,

01:08:27.300 she began to sing. And in that moment, the magic happened. It turned out she was an unbelievably

01:08:33.200 good singer. She went on to sell 30 million albums. I interviewed George Clooney. Yeah. I interviewed

01:08:39.560 George Clooney for CNN and halfway through, he says, by the way, how's Susan? Which I have to say,

01:08:45.460 she was very chuffed about. Yeah. Robin Williams. I did the Tonight Show with Robin Williams and my

01:08:52.500 manager, my late great manager. And Robin Williams bangs on the door. He's the other guest. And he

01:08:57.840 comes into our dressing room and does a 15 minute act, which was basically half Mrs. Doubtfire,

01:09:04.740 half Susan Boyle. Oh, cool. So he was Susan Boyle, but as Mrs. Doubtfire, just for the two of us in our

01:09:10.620 dressing room. Oh, fun. So these two stories to me, Susan in the UK one and Terry Fater on the

01:09:17.500 American one, they personified actually what the shows should be about, what the American dream and

01:09:23.980 the British dream are really about, about chasing a dream and never giving up, about having a talent

01:09:30.300 and making it work. All these life lessons really were encompassed in these two stories.

01:09:36.000 And they could have been ignored. They may not have entered and their lives would have,

01:09:39.900 you know, been what they were. Terry Fater's made, I don't know, $300 million.

01:09:43.080 And everyone else's life would have been lesser. Well, Simon and the other judges and the show are

01:09:48.500 very good at separating the wheat from the chaff. And one of the things I think that makes Simon so

01:09:54.160 attractive, especially in our culture, is that his fundamental virtue isn't being nice. Now he's,

01:10:01.360 one of the things that makes him heartwarming, weirdly enough, for such a rough character is that

01:10:08.320 when someone does well, he's, he's floored by it. And you can see that constantly. And it's one of

01:10:14.040 the lovely things about watching the judges, period. I mean, the judges have their personality

01:10:19.360 peccadillos. And the fact that you have assembled the judge panel to reflect a variety of different

01:10:24.660 personality types is very interesting. And you can see that the judges have had long days and that

01:10:29.460 sometimes they're a bit more initially critical and suspicious than they might be, but that makes

01:10:35.420 it human. But to see everyone on the panel truly light up when someone knocks it out of the park,

01:10:43.220 that's so cool. And it's so, I think it's such a service to people, not only the people who,

01:10:48.580 whose talent is being revealed, but to everyone that's watching. It's not surprising to me that

01:10:53.100 the show has become so popular. It's extraordinarily well done. And I think Simon, his ability to,

01:10:59.460 like or love talent so much that he's willing to state forthrightly when it's not there, which was

01:11:07.940 also the role that you were playing, that's, that's truly something to be commended. I also think that

01:11:13.540 part of the reason that this show is so popular is because that ethos of extraordinarily penetrating

01:11:21.140 criticism and separating excellence from falsehood or sheer lack of talent, that's very disagreeable.

01:11:28.740 because these people come to the show and they're hoping sometimes genuinely and sometimes

01:11:35.160 narcissistically that they're going to have their dreams validated. But if they're talentless and

01:11:41.260 narcissistic, they're going to hit a brick wall very hard. And it's not that easy to be that brick wall.

01:11:48.700 No. Now I knew if I had a friend who taught me something, he's a very disagreeable person. He took my

01:11:54.600 personality test, huh? And he was like the most disagreeable person in 10,000. So he's a rough

01:12:01.540 character. He looks like a pirate. I like the sound of him already. Yeah, yeah. Well, absolutely. Well,

01:12:06.800 corporations used to hire him to go in and clean up when things had got messy. So he would start at the

01:12:12.760 bottom of the company and he would ferret out people who were taking all the credit when anything went

01:12:18.760 right and then distributing all the blame when anything went wrong and stealing people's ideas

01:12:23.540 and not doing their job. I talked to him one day. I had to deal with some issues in my lab. I had

01:12:28.700 students who were underperforming and the higher performing students who were doing their job were

01:12:34.440 getting demoralized because of that. And so I had to do something about it. And I really don't like

01:12:39.780 firing people. I'm not someone who likes conflict at all. I tend to, I don't like it at all. I don't

01:12:48.760 like it prolonged and I won't engage in it in the long run. So I tend to settle issues right now

01:12:53.600 because I don't want it to propagate. But I was talking to my friend about firing people. I said,

01:12:59.540 I really can't stand it. How do you manage it? Because you fired hundreds of people. He said,

01:13:04.040 I really like it. And I thought, oh, well, I've never heard anyone say that before. And he said,

01:13:08.480 yeah, I go into these companies and I find these people who are exploiting everyone around them and

01:13:13.700 making life miserable for everyone and trying to gain credit where no credit is due and being

01:13:18.760 narcissistic and manipulative. And I ferret them out and I stopped them and it's just fine. And I

01:13:24.280 thought, good for you. And his career has been very interesting because he has his own independent

01:13:29.120 business and he's very good at it. He's an engineer, but he's moved from corporation to corporation

01:13:33.740 playing this role. And he starts in the lower rungs and then moves up. And then as soon as he

01:13:38.420 moves up high enough to start to, what would you say, threaten the powers that be, who also might

01:13:45.720 be behaving in a corrupt manner, they fire him. Then he has to go do that at a different place.

01:13:50.320 But he's also one of the people I have around who's been very useful at, let's say, calling me out when

01:13:56.280 necessary and who will definitely make his opinion known when it's necessary to make it known. And he

01:14:02.660 does that in search of excellence, you know, and that's the thing that's so cool about America's

01:14:07.000 got talent and Britain's got talent. Simon said to you that you had to be right 80% of the time.

01:14:12.160 And you said in order to do that, you had to rely on your authentic judgment. And people will forgive

01:14:17.420 judgment and see that it's necessary if it's authentic and not self-serving. And I think those

01:14:24.340 shows have really fulfilled the mandate of bringing hidden talent to light, which is a very noble cause,

01:14:31.780 maybe the most noble cause in some ways. You can also have moments in there where people,

01:14:39.500 you know, I can think back to one example. There was a young lady who did a rock violin act where

01:14:46.020 she played electric violin and danced and sang. And it was all pretty crazy. Very unusual. I like the

01:14:53.380 unusual part. I didn't think she was quite ready yet for fame and fortune. Her name was Lindsay

01:14:58.040 Sterling. And I was pretty mean, actually, probably unnecessarily. And I said that whilst I found her

01:15:05.680 act interesting, I did think at points she sounded like, I think I said, a sack of rats being strangled,

01:15:11.980 right? So it's pretty full on. That's a little, yeah. Pretty mean. And everyone's booing and she's

01:15:17.380 like... You could have said kittens, a sack of kittens being strangled. Yeah, exactly. The fact it was

01:15:20.660 rats, it made it even worse. So it all, you know, it was all very sort of dramatic. And it was a quarterfinal,

01:15:26.320 I think, and she left and she was upset. And afterwards, I was a little bit like, maybe I went a bit far,

01:15:31.060 blew up on Twitter and so on. But she's now a really successful act, like incredibly successful,

01:15:36.340 touring around. And she now has a tombstone on her stage act with my face on it.

01:15:42.300 So she never forgot the strangled rats line. And it's RIP Piers Morgan. I flash up a couple of times,

01:15:51.700 it gets a huge ovation from the crowd. They all know the backstory. And in a way, sometimes you

01:15:57.540 could see that, that you could be very mean on people. And sometimes in life, you could be mean

01:16:02.280 on people who can't take it. And you might regret it because it has a negative impact on them. When I

01:16:06.960 was a newspaper editor, I could be pretty tough, pretty ruthless, sometimes with stuff if I felt they're

01:16:11.300 underperforming. But I learned over time, there are certain types of people who respond well to

01:16:17.960 criticism, even to very tough criticism. And there are certain types of people who just don't.

01:16:24.320 And you've got to work them out because actually, they can all be talented. There's just some people

01:16:28.680 can take it and some people can't. Some people thrive and fuel off it. You know, I just played a

01:16:33.660 pro-am golf tournament called the Alfred Dunhill Lynx up in Scotland. And it's probably the after,

01:16:38.840 along with Pebble Beach in America, the most prestigious pro-am. You're playing with

01:16:42.100 professionals in a four million pound tournament. And for the first two days, I played the most

01:16:47.420 shocking golf probably seen in the history of the tournament. Haven't played much in the last few

01:16:51.300 months. Been working too hard. It was all a nightmare. And on the last day, I played with a

01:16:55.800 Belgian professional called Thomas Peters. And he said, Piers, how do you want to play it today?

01:17:00.640 How do you want to get on? I said, just sledge me, which is criticize me harshly. Every time I play

01:17:07.280 a bad shot, I want mockery. I want taunting. I want laughter. I want you to be all over me like a

01:17:14.980 cheap scent. So he did. He reveled in his role. And I played the best round of my week because actually

01:17:23.100 what I needed was somebody to do that rather than somebody politely going. So when I myself worked

01:17:32.180 for an editor, he was a pretty infamous newspaper editor called Kelvin McKenzie at The Sun. And he

01:17:37.980 said the most annoying trait about me was he could give me a monstering, as he called it, where he would

01:17:44.000 scream abuse until his neck bulging. And an hour later, I'd bounce back into his office with a hot

01:17:51.680 story and a smile on my face. And he found that completely annoying because it was not what he

01:17:58.380 wanted to do. He wanted to trample me down for a few days. But he then said he knew then I would have

01:18:03.440 what it took to be a newspaper editor. And I do feel in society, we have moved so far away from that kind

01:18:11.020 of atmosphere now in workplaces. But I do wonder, what about people like me who genuinely thrive and get

01:18:18.160 fueled by harsh criticism? Is that happening anymore? Are there any workplaces left in the world

01:18:24.500 where anyone is allowed to be exposed to tough critiques? Have all talent shows now gone way too

01:18:31.540 soft? Do you ever see a really harsh, strangled rats critique, which might fuel the contestant to

01:18:38.460 then go and be a huge star to prove you wrong? In other words, I really feel this with my old

01:18:44.300 talent show hat on. Things have moved so fast, and have gone so much softer, and in my view,

01:18:51.140 so much weaker. And that's not because I don't think some people can't take it, because some people

01:18:56.440 can't take it. So you've got to be mindful of them. But what about the vast swathes of people who

01:19:01.200 actually revel in that kind of atmosphere, who revel in noise and aggression and passion and

01:19:07.760 criticism? It fuels them, inflames them, makes them better people, makes them better at work,

01:19:13.160 makes them better perhaps in their lives. I don't know the answer. But I think the pendulum has swung

01:19:18.040 way too far. And we're now becoming such a saccharine, uninspiring, unpassionate, collective

01:19:26.120 workplace in particular, where the slightest joke told out of turn leads to you being frogmarched to

01:19:32.240 human resources. I just feel like it's gone way the wrong way. And the talent shows actually have

01:19:38.200 moved with that. But everyone on a talent show now is great, even when they're terrible. I scream at

01:19:42.860 them. And I catch them occasionally. My daughter loves watching Britain's Got Talent. She's 10.

01:19:48.140 And she said, Dada, they're terrible. Why are the judges all saying that was great? I went,

01:19:53.380 because they feel they have to. Because if they don't, someone's going to say, well,

01:19:58.500 you're damaging my mental health. Well, fine. I can respect mental illness. But come on,

01:20:04.140 you're going on a talent show in front of millions of people? And you want me to respect your mental

01:20:08.360 health by not criticizing you? If you're not talented and you go out on the public stage,

01:20:13.640 eventually, that's going to catch up with you and devastate you. And so it's better to have an

01:20:17.720 early warning. Well, speaking of disagreeable people, let's talk about Donald Trump.

01:20:23.400 Now, you've known Trump for a very long time. And you worked with him. Now, did you meet him for

01:20:31.080 Celebrity Apprentice? And what was that like? And tell me about Mr. Trump and let me ask you some

01:20:37.760 questions, if you would. So you have a very lengthy experience with him.

01:20:42.560 So I met him first on America's Got Talent. He appeared as a guest star, I think, introducing

01:20:49.840 one of the shows. And I met him briefly backstage. And he was intrigued by me because he knew that

01:20:55.900 Rupert Murdoch, who was somebody he greatly admired, had made me the youngest newspaper

01:21:02.340 editor for 50 years. So he knew about that part of my background. And that was all he was interested

01:21:07.140 in, really. It was like, oh, so Rupert, you're one of Rupert's guys, right? So that's how we had a sort

01:21:10.680 of immediate early connection. Then I entered Celebrity Apprentice, which he was obviously

01:21:15.840 the host of. And it was a pretty fascinating experience, looking back, because night after

01:21:20.840 night, I ended up winning the show, pretty much by behaving how I thought Trump would want me to

01:21:25.660 behave. So I read The Art of the Deal, his book, about four times before I went out there, and just

01:21:30.680 played it tough and hard and to win, which I knew would be all traits he would find impossible to

01:21:36.060 say were not good things. To the degree, actually, that when I won, his last words were,

01:21:43.680 Piers, you're arrogant, you're obnoxious, you're possibly evil, but you beat the hell out of

01:21:48.260 everybody, you're my Celebrity Apprentice. When he won the presidency, I sent him the same note.

01:21:53.220 Oh, right, right.

01:21:54.340 You're arrogant, you're obnoxious, you're possibly evil, but you beat the hell out of everybody,

01:21:58.220 and you're the President of the United States. So we had that little thing going. But on Celebrity

01:22:02.600 Apprentice, what I remember most vividly was that he was a very different character in those

01:22:07.280 boardrooms for three hours a night than I ever saw when he was president. When he was president,

01:22:12.500 he was the ultimate alpha male, I believe, playing a role. I believe we didn't see the real Donald

01:22:18.440 Trump. We saw the disagreeable side of him most of the time, the bully boy, the braggart, the alpha guy

01:22:27.920 who would never apologize for anything because it's too weak. He was abusive. He was disrespectful

01:22:33.540 and so on. In the boardroom for hour after hour, he could be very heartfelt. He could be very

01:22:40.320 moved by people. He could be very funny. He could be very warm. I remember all those things. I'm

01:22:49.580 thinking, what happened to that guy? Why don't you show the world any of that stuff? Because if you did,

01:22:55.040 it would be incredibly disarming. So I won the show. I then went back into Celebrity Apprentice

01:23:00.700 each year as one of his boardroom advisors for a few years. Then I joined CNN, interviewed him 30,

01:23:06.320 40 times at CNN. Then he becomes the President of the United States. And suddenly, I've got this guy

01:23:12.120 that I've become pretty friendly with, who used to ring me every three or four weeks for a chat about

01:23:16.280 life. And now he's the most powerful man in the world. From a loyalty perspective, which I think is a

01:23:22.480 trait overlooked with Trump, when he became President, I rang him. And I said to him,

01:23:30.540 well, actually, first, I would say when I left CNN, he was one of only three or four people in

01:23:34.460 America who bothered to contact me afterwards. And he contacted me every month for a few months.

01:23:40.320 How are you doing? Are you okay? Can I help you? Right now, people might say he had a vested interest

01:23:46.100 in case you popped back with a big job. Or maybe, but so did lots of people. And he was one of only a

01:23:51.100 handful of people that bothered to actually contact me regularly to check I was okay and

01:23:55.920 could he help. I never forgot that. Similarly, when he won the presidency, I rang him. And we had

01:24:01.400 a chat about a week later. And I said, I just have one favor. Of course, champ. He used to always call

01:24:06.960 me champ because I won his show. Of course, champ. What is it? I said, I just want to have your first

01:24:11.500 international television interview. I know you're going to do a domestic one in America, but first

01:24:16.440 international. Done. Done. And a few months later, I was at Davos in Switzerland, a 45-minute wide-ranging

01:24:22.480 interview with the president of the United States, which was spectacularly good for my career. And he

01:24:27.100 kept his word. So Trump, if you were loyal to him, was very, very, very loyal back. You know,

01:24:33.140 I've fallen out with him recently because I just can't buy into all this stolen election nonsense.

01:24:38.920 And I've told him to his face. And he just want to hear it.

01:24:41.800 Well, I think part of the reason—I'm going to lay out some theories, and you tell me if I'm wrong,

01:24:46.780 okay? I think part of what happened to Trump was that that tough part of him played well,

01:24:57.080 especially to working-class people. And I think that there was an element of that that was

01:25:00.680 very genuine, especially contrasted with Hillary Clinton and the Democrats'

01:25:06.080 what would you call it, patronizing attitude towards working-class people.

01:25:12.820 And Trump could speak to people directly, and he had that bluntness that disarmed them in some sense

01:25:18.120 and made them believe that he was, at least in many ways, dealing an honest hand.

01:25:23.580 Now, he suffered a tremendous amount of assault through vitriol when he was running for president

01:25:31.120 and when he was president, probably more than any president that I can remember, including Richard

01:25:36.040 Nixon, who I think might have run second for having most abuse dumped on him. Whether or not

01:25:42.260 that's deserved is independent. I think in Trump's case, it was over the top in quite a remarkable way.

01:25:48.500 And so I think that that probably elicited more of that bullying behavior that might be perhaps a

01:25:56.600 weakness. I've been trying to understand him. And the bullying, the last interview you did with him,

01:26:01.580 I believe, one of the things I noted about Trump was that he would do something about every 10 minutes

01:26:06.960 that was markedly out of the ordinary conversationally. And so I watch for that because

01:26:13.240 I'm a clinician. And so I always watch people talk to see when they're going off script, let's say,

01:26:19.300 because there's always something underneath that. And one of the things Trump does,

01:26:23.060 and I don't know how much of this is conscious and how much of it is reactive and how much of it

01:26:28.280 has become habitual, is he'll make statements that are way over the top. So I think he said,

01:26:40.880 for example, when you were interviewing something like, I tell the truth more than anyone ever has

01:26:44.840 in history. And then he said about 10 minutes later, something like, I've run the best administration

01:26:50.020 in American history. And they're over the top preposterous statements. And they have this

01:26:55.240 self-aggrandizing element that's got a juvenile flavor to it. And I'm not doing a global critique

01:27:01.140 of Trump's personality, because I suspect, as you've already indicated, that he's a multifaceted person.

01:27:06.300 But there's an element of him that's, he's got this 10-year-old bully part of him that also has a

01:27:13.920 compensatory element. And so to say, you know, I tell the truth more than anyone has in history,

01:27:19.560 or something along those lines, I think, well, like, who are you comparing yourself here

01:27:24.580 to exactly? Like, you tell the truth more than Jesus Christ. You run a better administration than

01:27:30.680 Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. And it's marked because people don't generally do that

01:27:36.440 in conversation, right? They don't come out with a preposterous statement about how remarkable they are

01:27:42.160 with some degree of regularity. And now it seems to me to be associated with some other tendencies

01:27:48.400 that he has. Like, he has a tendency to nickname people. And he has unerring accuracy in doing that.

01:27:53.540 And it can be devastating. And that also reminds me of someone who's like a very professional 11-year-old

01:27:59.080 bully. And a few of them can bring a teacher to their knees if their attacks are targeted. And they

01:28:04.540 can certainly do that with their classmates. And so I wonder with Trump, if he's been, so he's pushed

01:28:09.620 into a corner because of all the vitriol. The bullying and braggadocio tendency has become

01:28:15.480 exaggerated. Maybe he's more surrounded by sycophants now than might be helpful. Now, I don't know that

01:28:22.420 for sure, but it looks to me like something like that is happening. And he's trying to calibrate

01:28:28.600 himself, even during your interview, because he comes out with these statements, something like,

01:28:32.980 well, look at how wonderful I am. And I think, well, maybe if he would have got credit for some

01:28:38.700 of the things that he did that were actually pretty positive, like not having America dragged

01:28:42.680 into a war and like also fostering the Abraham Accords, that he wouldn't be so inclined to be

01:28:48.340 compensatory in that manner. And then that bullying tendency seems to me the inverse of that is this

01:28:53.780 victimization routine, which he's wandered into. Now, Trump claims the elections were stolen

01:28:59.060 by corruption. And I would say part of the reason people find that credible is because

01:29:04.360 the American left-wing establishment and the liberal establishment, for that matter,

01:29:09.240 were unbelievably vitriolic to Trump and stooped pretty much to anything in order to devalue and

01:29:16.880 criticize him, no matter how unfair and how over the top. And that generated a fair bit of sympathy on

01:29:22.300 people's part. And I think it generated a sense that he was, in some global sense, treated unfairly.

01:29:29.060 But I can't see that there's any legal evidence that's been compelling that he's been able to

01:29:33.860 bring forth that the elections were legally conducted in an improper and corrupt manner. And so then what

01:29:41.500 I see happening with Trump is that he's fallen prey to the very victimization narrative that he

01:29:46.260 purports to stand against. And so he's gone off-brand. It's like, well, Mr. Trump, you're the winner.

01:29:52.660 You're the guy who doesn't have things stolen from him by callow fools. You're the leader of the free

01:30:00.120 country. You can stand up to the dictator of North Korea and to Vladimir Putin himself. You're a winner.

01:30:06.180 And that's your brand. And yet the election was stolen from you. And now your story is it was stolen

01:30:13.020 and everything's corrupted. All the institutions are corrupt, which is exactly what the left-wing

01:30:17.700 radicals are saying. And there's very little positive messaging tied up in that. And it's

01:30:22.720 hamstringing the Republicans. And so, well, that's how it looks to me. And so I'm wondering,

01:30:28.900 you know Trump very well. Am I not giving the devil his due in this situation? Am I off in my analysis

01:30:35.300 in some important way? No, I think you're spot on. And I think some interesting points you raised there.

01:30:40.760 And I've always thought Trump is a unique character in that he has the thickest skin of

01:30:44.700 anybody I've ever seen in public life and also the thinnest skin. So he'll react with ridiculous

01:30:50.740 oversensitivity to every slight and come out punching. But he's able to withstand the kind

01:30:57.280 of pressure or scandal that would engulf and destroy every other politician I've ever encountered.

01:31:02.800 So he's a unique hybrid of thick and thick skin. I think that his book is very educational,

01:31:09.580 The Art of the Deal. It's a really entertaining read and actually has a lot of good business

01:31:15.000 stuff in it. So I recommend people if you just want to read it. It's quite fun.

01:31:19.560 Remember, he's a real estate tycoon in Manhattan. His whole persona for 50 years before he became

01:31:26.240 president was to show off, embellish, and exaggerate everything. Every one of his buildings,

01:31:34.080 you can imagine the pitch, this is going to be the greatest building New York's ever seen.

01:31:37.800 That was in his DNA. So it's perfectly normal for me that he would take those kind of natural traits

01:31:44.340 to the presidency and continue to be self-aggrandizing in the way he was about his

01:31:49.700 buildings. He'd done it for 50 years. That's how he squeezed big prices for his buildings.

01:31:54.620 Everything was the best and the greatest ever seen.

01:31:56.980 Yeah. Well, that's part of that American salesman routine, right? I mean, that's deeply embedded in the

01:32:01.880 American DNA.

01:32:03.060 Right. He's not the only New York real estate tycoon who's like that. Trust me, I've met a few.

01:32:07.800 But I also think that he also in the book says, if somebody punches you, punch them 10 times harder.

01:32:15.140 That was in his DNA too. Trump has come from a rough old school of New York business people

01:32:20.080 where the ones who survive and thrive are the ones who, if they get hit metaphorically or perhaps

01:32:25.920 even physically, they hit back 10 times and harder. That's always been Trump's way. So if you insult him,

01:32:31.840 he'll come for you hard, hard. And if you can survive that, well, good. But many people,

01:32:37.960 including all the candidates in 2016 on the Republican side, they couldn't withstand the

01:32:42.600 nicknames. I mean, the nickname was fascinating. To watch him call Marco Rubio, little Marco,

01:32:47.520 and you suddenly thought, wow, he is quite little, isn't he? Low energy Jeb, Jeb Bush. But Bush couldn't

01:32:53.080 work out whether to be, to carry on being himself and potentially radiate low energy or what he ended up

01:32:58.980 doing, which was being sort of like a hyper bunny going way too far the other way to contradict the

01:33:03.880 rumors of being low energy. And he looked completely insane. So Trump was able, and lying Ted about Ted

01:33:10.080 Cruz, crooked Hillary, simple tags they found very hard to struggle. Yeah, yeah. He was very good at that.

01:33:15.460 He's a brilliant marketer. He knows how to sell things. He knows how to market things. And he knows

01:33:22.000 how to do it in a very damaging way to opponents. And he is a, you know, look, he always said to me,

01:33:26.880 people want me to change. Because I said, why don't you dial down the Twitter rhetoric

01:33:30.700 a little bit? You know, just try to be a little bit more appealing to middle America, to the

01:33:35.880 independents, perhaps, who are not like diehard MAGA fans. And he said, why should I dial down

01:33:42.220 anything? I've become the president of the United States, despite being the most underqualified

01:33:47.100 candidate in history. Why should I change? I've just beaten, he said, the most qualified candidate

01:33:53.400 the country's ever seen, Hillary Clinton. I kept being told, I was the least qualified,

01:33:58.420 she was the most qualified. And I've beaten her to the White House. Why should I change who I am?

01:34:03.660 And what you're seeing now, I totally agree with you about this, with Trump. He's becoming

01:34:08.600 the very thing he hates most, the biggest, sorest loser in the world. Yeah, right.

01:34:13.500 And I've tried to, and I've tried to tell him, this is just, you've got to leave 2020. Nobody cares.

01:34:19.400 Everyone's looking forward to 2024. And if he was able to pivot, you know, I think Trump's real

01:34:24.740 problem. Well, he's become his own mimic, right? Just this, this problem that we talked about at the

01:34:30.340 week, to begin with, is that people tend to fall into the, the image, and then they can't escape from

01:34:35.280 it. And he loves doing the rallies where he has tens of thousands of people who, you know,

01:34:40.780 buy into his greatest hits of being what Donald Trump was in 2016. But I do think his real problem

01:34:46.800 now is that he can't let it go. He can't let the past go. He keeps wanting to relitigate the 2020

01:34:52.620 election. And I think it ultimately will cost him any chance of winning again. When in fact,

01:34:57.580 if he'd been able to pivot slightly, I think he would have had a good chance. And I'll give another

01:35:01.580 parallel. One of the reasons I fell out with him in the pandemic period was when he said that,

01:35:06.800 you know, from the presidential podium, that you should use bleach, household bleach to zap

01:35:13.220 the virus out of your body, which is clearly a stupid and dangerous thing for a president

01:35:17.240 to be saying of any country, let alone the United States of America, when so many people were dying.

01:35:22.000 And he hated me saying that and unfollowed me on Twitter, which, given he only followed 50 accounts,

01:35:27.320 was quite a big deal. And when he rang me eventually to sort of seal peace, a few months later, just before

01:35:34.380 the election, I said to him, do you mind if I just speak frankly to you? He said, sure. I said, look,

01:35:39.900 the thing you've lacked this year, and it may be you just don't have this valve, so be honest with me,

01:35:45.560 but you've lacked empathy. You've lacked empathy over the pandemic. You've made it all about yourself

01:35:51.620 and the stock market crashing and made it look like you're taking it all personally. You haven't

01:35:56.520 been the comforter in chief. You don't seem to have that tool in your armory. You just want to be

01:36:00.800 the strong commander in chief. I said, on the George Floyd killing, same thing. No real empathy

01:36:07.000 for what a lot of Americans were feeling. And I said, that lack of empathy is going to cost you

01:36:12.060 because you're up against Joe Biden, who everybody knows from his own personal tragedies, has huge

01:36:17.360 amounts of personal empathy for people because he lost his wife and baby daughter in a car crash.

01:36:21.820 He lost his son to a brain tumor. And I said, I just think you should show a bit more empathy.

01:36:26.460 And it would go an awful long way. But then I watched him go out the next day and do some

01:36:31.000 press thing. And he was just exactly the same as normal. So he sort of agreed with me on the call,

01:36:36.540 but then wasn't able to deliver it. I don't think he really has an empathy valve.

01:36:40.660 Well, he's capitalized on being disagreeable, which is part of what we've discussed through

01:36:47.900 this whole show, is that if you're in the public eye like that, and you're a critic,

01:36:52.180 and you want to say what you have to say, and you want to separate the wheat from the chaff,

01:36:56.200 it's useful to be disagreeable. But you can't be disagreeable all the time. One of the things that

01:37:02.260 happens to people as they mature, maybe they start out disagreeable, but as they become more

01:37:08.720 sophisticated, they're able to incorporate agreeable and compassionate virtues and skills

01:37:15.360 into their personality. And then they can use them when that's necessary, and they can be

01:37:20.100 disagreeable when necessary. And then you have a personality that's extremely broad and capable of

01:37:25.740 dancing with every situation. And so I do see, it does look to me like this is an Achilles heel for

01:37:32.580 Trump, this tendency to devolve into a very effective but somewhat juvenile bullying. And an inability,

01:37:42.520 well, and then combined with that, this proclivity to play the victim, which I really think is

01:37:47.720 stunningly off-brand for him. I can't see that that's going to be a successful ploy, because it

01:37:53.800 leaves everyone on the conservative side in the same position that the radicals on the left want

01:38:00.600 to put conservatives, which is to abandon all faith in the credibility of institutions. And then what do

01:38:06.960 you have? All you have is blind faith in the leader. And then, of course, the leftists criticize that for

01:38:12.820 being the worst of populism. And in some sense, they've got a point. Now, I think in Trump, the

01:38:19.020 leftists and the liberals, for that matter, had a large hand in creating their own monster, because

01:38:25.280 they chewed on him so hard. And I especially saw this with the Abraham Accords, because when the

01:38:33.700 Abraham Accords, which brought a fair bit of peace to the Middle East, for those of you who are listening

01:38:37.860 who don't know, a historic signing of a peace accord between Israel and a number of Islamic states,

01:38:45.520 Muslim states, Morocco among them, and Sudan and the United Arab Emirates and others, with the Saudis

01:38:53.700 apparently fully on board, although not exactly signing the treaty. This happened when I was ill,

01:38:58.560 and I didn't pay much attention to it. But when I recovered and I saw what had happened in the

01:39:02.900 Abraham Accords, it just floored me that this had received almost no attention and no credit,

01:39:07.980 because it's a really big deal. And so the devil was never given his due in Trump's situation. And

01:39:14.960 I think that made him a much bigger devil than he would have otherwise been.

01:39:18.380 Yeah, I totally agree. I think I always said that. I wrote about 120 columns for the Daily Mail

01:39:24.700 US website about Trump during his presidency. And after he left, I worked out about half of them had been

01:39:31.680 supportive of things he'd done or said, and half of them were critical. And I felt that was a much more

01:39:37.640 accurate take, actually, on the Trump presidency. A lot of the things he did, albeit delivered often

01:39:43.840 with very blunt and unappealing rhetoric, were right. You know, he was right about a lot of things. He was

01:39:50.520 absolutely, has been proven right, about Europe's over-reliance on Russian energy. Completely proven right

01:39:57.160 about that. He was right about a lot of European countries not paying their proper dues to NATO.

01:40:02.740 And he was completely correct to call them out on that. I think he was right in many things that he

01:40:07.860 did. The problem with Trump was all- Well, he was right to call out the sanctimony of the Democrats.

01:40:13.120 Yes. And there's no doubt he did get treated in a ridiculously over-the-top way by his opponents.

01:40:20.160 There's also no doubt he fueled that by constantly going into battle with them.

01:40:24.420 My real problem with Trump on the rhetoric was not that he could be blunt and aggressive. It was

01:40:28.820 when people like Colin Powell or John McCain died. Just basic instincts should tell you,

01:40:35.980 if you've got nothing good to say, probably don't say anything, right? Because these were two American

01:40:41.400 war heroes, regardless of politics. And he came out on both occasions within 24 hours and criticized

01:40:47.840 them in tweets, as they were basically a few hours dead. And I felt that was just unbelievably graceless.

01:40:55.940 And I don't think most Americans are graceless. I just don't think they are, in my experience.

01:41:00.540 And I think what I would have grated was a lot of Americans who may have been tempted to

01:41:06.120 go with Trump's policies, but just thought, the guy just, how can you do that? It's just not American

01:41:11.840 to do that, I don't think. So he lets himself down a lot, actually, with stuff like that.

01:41:16.340 But you shouldn't, you know, I don't think we should move away from that. A lot of his

01:41:19.280 instinctive gut feeling about policies were correct. And I could see a situation where

01:41:25.180 someone like DeSantis, the governor of Florida, ends up winning the Republican ticket because

01:41:31.580 he basically pursues Trumpian policies, but without all the stupid rhetoric and the silliness

01:41:38.280 and the scandalous stuff, which goes with being Donald Trump. And he might well end up being

01:41:43.260 president. A presidency Trump could have won if he'd looked back at his first four years

01:41:47.660 in office and pivoted to something more agreeable. Instead, he's done what you and I said at the

01:41:52.800 start of this interview. He's made the mistake of going back to what he was before and tried

01:41:57.440 to replicate it.

01:41:58.540 Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the problems too, which is quite surprising for someone who's as sales

01:42:03.220 oriented as Trump, and perhaps this is maybe a sign of exhaustion, because it could be,

01:42:08.420 is that he hasn't formulated a positive vision. It's all predicated on this idea of corruption and

01:42:16.880 theft. And as I said, that casts him as a victim, which isn't a good look for him at all or for his

01:42:23.040 supporters. I've been quite surprised because I've had a lot of interactions with conservative

01:42:28.620 politicians in the United States and Canada and throughout Europe. And it is difficult for

01:42:33.960 conservative types to generate a positive vision because they tend to stand for tradition.

01:42:39.400 And it's not that easy to generate a compelling, forward-looking story when you're fundamentally

01:42:46.180 reliant on tradition. It can be done, but it's very difficult. But it's sad and upsetting to see

01:42:52.760 that Trump hasn't been able to reinvent himself for this next election. And I do think that one of the

01:43:00.220 best possible outcomes might be that DeSantis can take some of the energy that Trump generated and

01:43:07.220 move forward in somewhat the same manner with less of the juvenile overlay.

01:43:15.680 Yeah, the key thing I'd say about DeSantis, which I've noticed, apart from the fact his resume is very

01:43:20.520 impressive. This guy went to Yale and Harvard Law School. He was the senior legal counsel to the

01:43:26.560 commander of SEAL Team 1 in Fallujah during the surge, which was the year that America lost most

01:43:32.420 of its soldiers in that war. He's an incredibly well-qualified guy. He also has a strong personality,

01:43:38.720 but he has a respect for the system. He has a respect for the presidency. When Biden has had to deal

01:43:48.560 with him on disasters and things, there's a mutual respect there, which I just never saw with Trump,

01:43:53.520 really. He would rather shoot himself than be like that. And I think that he has a respect for

01:43:57.460 the office. I think if DeSantis lost an election, he wouldn't spend the next few years claiming it

01:44:01.440 had been stolen. So I think that he has a respect for democracy, which Trump doesn't have. Trump has

01:44:07.700 a respect for it as long as he's winning. Yeah, well, so that's an example of putting not yourself,

01:44:14.680 but the principles for which you stand forward. And it is necessary, if you're a politician,

01:44:20.380 to have due respect for the institutions and traditions that you serve, because they are

01:44:25.660 larger than you. And if you don't believe that they're valid, although they need to be modified

01:44:31.740 in the details, if you don't believe that they're valid and they gave rise to you, then there's an

01:44:36.420 internal contradiction there that's not trivial. And so, well, it'll be interesting to see if the

01:44:41.400 Republicans can negotiate this through the next election cycle coming up very, very quickly

01:44:45.860 without shooting themselves in the foot over the schism in the Republican side over Trump.

01:44:52.500 So I guess we should probably bring this to a close. We've been talking for as long as we're

01:44:57.300 supposed to talk. And so it's good to end, I think, on the DeSantis note and to end with that

01:45:02.680 analysis of Mr. Trump, which I hope was relatively even-handed and productive. I would like to thank you

01:45:10.340 very much for, first of all, the interview that you conducted with me, which I was very, well,

01:45:16.180 was I pleased about it? I thought it went extremely well. I thought I had an opportunity to say some of

01:45:21.220 the things that were necessary to say. And I enjoyed very much talking with you and meeting your sons as

01:45:26.520 well and appreciated the opportunity that you presented to me. And I appreciated the opportunity

01:45:31.920 to talk a little bit about the so-called incels, you know, these disaffected young men. I was talking

01:45:38.860 to a friend, what would you call it, an associate, someone who has knowledge of Olivia Wilde, who

01:45:45.780 had recently made comments about me being king of the incels. And it's probably worth pointing out

01:45:50.620 that she married a multimillionaire prince. And so, right, so she's the absolute epitome of female

01:45:58.320 hypergamy, that hergamy that makes females very judgmental in their choice, as they should be.

01:46:04.580 But for her to have nothing but contempt for men who are struggling forward to try to make

01:46:09.280 themselves attractive to women is a sign of a kind of deep narcissism that, on the female side,

01:46:16.860 I would say, that deeply affects our culture. And so, it was good to have an opportunity to clear

01:46:21.640 some of that up. You know, I've talked to lots of young men around the world about how they might

01:46:26.420 make themselves more attractive on the friendship and career and dating front. And that usually has

01:46:31.700 to do with telling them that, well, they have to subject themselves to that harsh judgment. And if

01:46:35.840 all the women are rejecting them, either because they're too timid to put themselves forward,

01:46:41.460 or they don't have anything truly to offer, which is something like productive, stable, wise,

01:46:47.800 judicious generosity in the highest order, why would they expect a woman to make herself vulnerable,

01:46:53.760 especially on the childbearing, especially on the childbearing front, to them? And so, if everyone

01:46:58.920 is telling you that you don't live up to the necessary standard, well, then you can demolish

01:47:04.460 the standards, or you can put yourself together. And one of the things that's been really heartening

01:47:09.460 on that front is that many of the young men who have been listening to the ideas I've been generating

01:47:17.200 and promoting have, in fact, put themselves together. And they come to my shows, and they're standing up

01:47:22.100 straight, and they're dressed in often a three-piece suit. And now they frequently have a girlfriend

01:47:26.480 with them. And they say something like, you know, I decided to start being authentic and tell the truth,

01:47:31.660 and I decided to adopt some responsibility and to grow up. And all of a sudden, everything's better,

01:47:36.580 and the problems I had are going away. And so, that's the solution to the incel problem. And

01:47:41.640 demonizing people for being lonesome and isolated is not exactly helpful, because it's actually quite a

01:47:48.260 tough problem to solve. So, anyways, it was a pleasure meeting you and talking with you, and

01:47:53.100 say hello to your sons. And... I will. They'll be thrilled to hear that.

01:47:58.440 Yeah, you can thank them on both our behalves for their wise counsel.

01:48:04.820 And I've tried very hard again to listen in this conversation. So, Stanley, in particular,

01:48:09.540 will be very happy with that. You'll be taking all the credit.

01:48:11.900 Well, for two extremely noisy people, we probably listened a reasonable amount.

01:48:18.600 Exactly. I've already enjoyed it.

01:48:20.500 Well, thank you very much, Piers. It was a pleasure meeting you.

01:48:23.700 Hello, everyone. I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guest

01:48:28.580 on dailywireplus.com.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - October 10, 2022

295. A Conversation with Piers Morgan

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