The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 469. Finding Signal Against the Noise ｜ Piers Morgan

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00:00:57.420 Hello everybody.

00:01:09.660 I'm in London, UK today.

00:01:11.660 Just arrived this morning.

00:01:13.100 I had the opportunity to speak with Pierce Morgan.

00:01:15.960 I've got to know Pierce a little bit.

00:01:17.440 He's always treated me very fairly as a journalist, and also my daughter, who he's interviewed a couple of times.

00:01:23.920 And so we had a chance today to sit down and talk.

00:01:27.360 And Pierce has moved out of mainstream legacy broadcasting and into the online space.

00:01:34.560 And he's actually kind of a first mover on the European and UK side with regards to such a move.

00:01:42.160 And so he has a very popular enterprise, Pierce Morgan Uncensored,

00:01:48.320 which is actually kind of a hybrid between a legacy media news approach and the more free-flowing conversation and investigation that YouTube in particular enables.

00:02:01.100 And so we talked a fair bit about how he got to that point, the development of his career.

00:02:07.560 We talked a fair bit as well about Britain's Got Talent and America's Got Talent.

00:02:12.380 And the strict meritocracy that those shows represent and the implications for the value of meritocracy in the public landscape.

00:02:23.260 We talked about his orientation, his increasing orientation in relationship to his own curiosity,

00:02:30.480 his desire to change his mind and to learn,

00:02:32.600 and how that plays into learning to listen and into running an increasingly successful private news and public affairs operation,

00:02:42.360 which is what he has on YouTube, a very, very rapidly growing channel.

00:02:48.160 And we talked a little bit about the British political scene.

00:02:52.820 As most of you know, the UK people elected a new government only a few days ago, headed by Keir Starmer.

00:03:02.040 We had a chance to talk about that as well.

00:03:04.960 And that made up the bulk of our interactions.

00:03:08.860 So join us.

00:03:11.280 So tell me what you've been doing that's particularly interesting.

00:03:15.880 I'd like to know about your work online in particular.

00:03:20.960 You've really blown up as a journalist.

00:03:22.800 And so what do you think you're doing right?

00:03:25.520 And what have you been doing that's interesting?

00:03:27.840 I would say the most interesting phase of my entire career has been the last few months.

00:03:34.140 And the reason I would say that is I've run national newspapers for nearly 10 years in the UK.

00:03:40.440 I've judged massive talent shows.

00:03:43.200 America's got talent.

00:03:44.200 Britain's got talent.

00:03:45.560 I did CNN, replaced Larry King at CNN.

00:03:48.060 All of these jobs were fascinating.

00:03:49.920 Did a morning show over here.

00:03:51.660 But transitioning out of conventional linear television completely, because we were running with Piers Morgan uncensored, both a linear vehicle for it and also YouTube.

00:04:03.520 And what was happening was we were getting 100,000 people watching the big shows on the linear version.

00:04:09.520 And we were getting 10 million watching on YouTube.

00:04:14.760 And eventually I went, why are we bothering with the TV version?

00:04:18.420 There's the question.

00:04:20.240 Why are we bothering with the TV version?

00:04:22.140 It's like a global question.

00:04:24.160 And I think the answer in 10 years' time is nobody will be.

00:04:27.140 And I think people like yourself, people like Joe Rogan, people like Ben Shapiro, I think everyone has worked out that anyone under 45 doesn't really watch linear television.

00:04:37.280 They watch it for live sport.

00:04:38.560 They might watch it for a massive breaking news story.

00:04:42.320 But actually what most people under 45 do is they watch apps on their TVs.

00:04:48.080 And in America recently, 10% of American television watchers, it was revealed in a major study, now watch everything on their smart TV through the YouTube app.

00:05:00.840 So that's one in 10.

00:05:02.040 And that's going to massively, exponentially increase, I think, very quickly.

00:05:06.260 So to me, I joke about it, but in a way I feel like they're kind of Justin Bieber of journalism only very late in the day where he was a YouTuber who cracked the pot market.

00:05:16.460 And I think I'm now someone who's gone the other way, gone from a kind of slightly stuffier old version of doing things.

00:05:24.680 And I'm now doing it in a far more streamlined, quick, interesting, and genuinely global way.

00:05:30.520 And it's working.

00:05:31.860 Yeah, well, you're on the cutting edge of that in the UK in particular.

00:05:36.580 I mean, my sense of the UK YouTube market is that it's three or four years behind the North American market in terms of what's people's acceptance of YouTube as the primary, or at least online video, as the primary video source.

00:05:55.500 So, but you've also managed the transition successfully, which is, so you've managed a lot of transitions in your life successfully, right?

00:06:02.960 That's, that's, it's hard to be successful at one thing.

00:06:05.880 It's a lot harder to be successful at successive things.

00:06:09.120 And a lot of the things you've done have been quite different.

00:06:13.440 So what's one common thing?

00:06:16.060 Yeah.

00:06:16.760 I'm a journalist.

00:06:17.520 And actually, what is a journalist?

00:06:20.140 It's somebody who's curious, who's quite judgmental, who's interested in people, who's interested in talent, normally, or people who are able to display a talent or something.

00:06:31.260 I find most journalists are drawn to that.

00:06:33.580 They want to get to the truth.

00:06:34.700 They want to get to answers.

00:06:36.120 When I look at whether I was a newspaper editor, whether I was a talent show judge, whether I was even competing in Celebrity Apprentice with Donald Trump on his show,

00:06:45.560 whether I was doing a morning show, whether I was doing any of these things, or what I'm doing now,

00:06:50.640 the common thread of all of it are those, that skill set that I developed as a young journalist,

00:06:56.380 I think has held me in brilliantly good stead for every single thing I've done.

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00:08:36.380 And you think that that's been transferable as well to, like, Britain and America's Got Talent?

00:08:44.820 Because that seems like a fair departure from journalism.

00:08:47.740 Well, Simon Cowell hired me for America's Got Talent, which was the first one of the whole franchise. 0.96

00:08:53.800 Because he said, you're just as arrogant, obnoxious, and as judgmental as me. 0.95

00:08:58.260 Ah, ah, I see, I see. 0.95

00:08:59.460 What do you want to be with somebody who was going to be not afraid to give strong opinions, not afraid to be judgmental, but also had, as he put it, a journalist's eye for talent.

00:09:10.560 You're somebody, you said, who would put pop stars on the front page or television stars or whatever it may be, or politicians who were on the rise.

00:09:18.820 So part of your job every day was to look for the next big thing and to look for the next talented politician, singer, you know, entertainer, whatever.

00:09:26.720 And he said, I want you to apply that same discipline to judging acts on a stage.

00:09:31.760 And actually, he was completely right.

00:09:33.800 It's exactly the same thing.

00:09:35.340 When I saw all these acts, I've never been a juggler or a fire eater or, you know, had any experience of piano playing pigs.

00:09:44.200 Yeah, exactly.

00:09:44.800 I mean, everyone's tried, but I've never had any real experience of being any good at any of the things that the people in front of me were doing.

00:09:51.420 But what I was good at was identifying ones I felt a mass audience would like, that they would think were good.

00:09:59.740 So I was able to judge talent far better than I was able to do any of the things that they were all doing for me.

00:10:04.660 That comes down to the journalistic chops that I think were honed in me from a young age.

00:10:10.200 Part of a journalist's job, when you're running a newspaper, when you're doing a big CNN nightly global show, doing a loud, noisy morning show, part of it is identifying what you should be talking about and what you think other people would be interested in talking about.

00:10:26.940 So that, again, just comes down to having an instinct, which I think a lot of journalists have.

00:10:31.900 So I think the running thing is the journalism.

00:10:37.280 Yeah, well, it's that capacity to separate wheat from chaff.

00:10:40.480 I mean, I've watched Britain's Got Talent and America's Got Talent a fair bit.

00:10:44.220 I have a real soft spot for it.

00:10:45.520 It always makes me tear up.

00:10:46.940 And Simon Cowell is a very interesting person because he's a very strange combination of extremely sentimental and extremely judgmental.

00:10:55.800 And so you can really see, and it seems to me that his judgmental capability is actually nested inside his discernment, that he really does care that the people who are making an effort and who are genuinely talented rise to the top.

00:11:15.600 And the price you pay for that, obviously, is that the people who aren't genuinely trying or talented don't get to rise to the top.

00:11:22.320 And he's also, I would say, got more sentimental and less judgmental since becoming a father, which is interesting.

00:11:29.200 Because I've known Simon for nearly 40 years.

00:11:31.840 Testosterone decrease.

00:11:32.480 Yeah, before he had any commitments, he was wham, bam, take everybody down if he didn't think they were any good.

00:11:39.320 Now he's much more empathetic.

00:11:41.940 And I'm sure it's becoming a father that's done that too.

00:11:44.320 I've noticed it tangibly on screen.

00:11:46.680 And it reminds me of Sir Alex Ferguson, who was the greatest sporting coach in history, I would argue, who was the great Manchester United football coach.

00:11:56.000 And he always said that he loved to pick kids like 18, 19-year-olds because they played with utter fearlessness.

00:12:03.280 And he said once they started getting married, having kids, having responsibilities, their risk-taking and fearlessness started to diminish.

00:12:12.780 So the peak time for a lot of footballers in his estimation was 18, 19, 20, 21.

00:12:20.820 It makes perfect sense.

00:12:22.180 But interesting to have the greatest coach of all actually outlined that this was a real thing that he saw time and again.

00:12:29.220 It's interesting to me, again, to watch, say, those talent shows and see that that capacity for discernment is also very tightly associated with it's something like the desire to mentor, right?

00:12:43.620 And there's something about that that's very masculine because the masculine element of developmental facilitation is something like mentoring.

00:12:52.560 It's something like encouragement.

00:12:54.080 And you can really see that in Cowell.

00:12:56.500 And, well, everybody who works on those talent shows is actually quite good at that.

00:13:00.440 But he seems to be genuinely interested in facilitating the development of the career of the people who are, in fact, talented and trying.

00:13:10.720 And goes out of his way to do that.

00:13:12.340 And I think it's part of the appeal of the show, you know, to watch him exercise that careful judgment that's also on the side of the person who's striving upward.

00:13:23.360 Yeah.

00:13:23.800 I mean, he used to say to me when I replaced or didn't replace him, he couldn't be on America's Got Talent because he was on American Idol.

00:13:30.760 So even though he created America's Got Talent, he wasn't able to be a judge.

00:13:34.680 And he said to me, look, here's the deal.

00:13:36.400 Remember, I was in dreamland.

00:13:38.500 And I'd been fired from my job as a newspaper editor thinking that's the end of my media career.

00:13:43.900 And literally a few months later, I'm on the Paramount movie lot in Los Angeles in my trailer next to David Hasselhoff's trailer and Regis Spilbin's trailer.

00:13:52.820 And I'm thinking I could get very used to this.

00:13:55.140 And then Cowell roared up in his Ferrari, whatever he had at the time.

00:13:58.500 And he came and had a cup of tea with me.

00:14:00.200 It's all very British in my trailer. 0.96

00:14:02.420 And he said, here's the deal.

00:14:04.380 You can be as judgmental as you want.

00:14:08.500 And he can be as brash as you like.

00:14:10.960 And he can be everything that I know you to be when you want to be that tabloid editor kind of mindset.

00:14:16.920 But you have to be right 80% of the time or more.

00:14:20.600 Otherwise, the act doesn't play with the audience at home.

00:14:23.400 If they're looking at you being mean, but you're wrong, and they don't agree with you, the act doesn't fly.

00:14:30.380 And that was very good advice because it concentrates your mind to think not just what are you thinking of something, but actually what are the audience at home likely to be thinking here?

00:14:39.100 And that particularly comes down to the empathy that you would want to show certain acts.

00:14:44.240 A good example would be Susan Boyle, who became probably the greatest breakout star of any talent show anywhere.

00:14:51.320 I mean, there was a 47-year-old spinster from a Scottish village who'd never performed outside of her little community, who suddenly became the biggest superstar in music in the world.

00:15:01.680 Sold 27 million albums.

00:15:04.820 And when the finale of the show took place live, there were news crews from NBC, ABC, CBM.

00:15:10.780 It was insane.

00:15:11.640 It was amazing.

00:15:12.680 Insane.

00:15:13.720 And we all, having initially been very judgmental in a way, if you look at the original clip, rolling our eyes.

00:15:21.800 Who's this?

00:15:22.400 Who's this?

00:15:23.020 This is going to be terrible.

00:15:24.560 The evolution very quickly of, wow, we've got something special here.

00:15:28.900 And then our desire collectively to then be very protective to Susan, because she'd had a tough upbringing.

00:15:35.880 She'd been starved of oxygen when she was born, and that made her a little socially awkward with a lot of people.

00:15:41.900 And we were determined that she would get protected.

00:15:44.840 And Simon was particularly determined.

00:15:47.440 It was his show.

00:15:48.460 This was one of his breakout stars.

00:15:51.060 And that's all part of it.

00:15:52.280 And I think that that is a side of him that people don't often see, but I saw it, his desire to protect Susan and people like her, who were just so unused to the limelight.

00:16:02.840 But she was extraordinary.

00:16:03.740 I remember going to the Rockefeller Center in New York.

00:16:07.140 It was snowing, literally like two feet of snow.

00:16:09.480 And they had an outdoor stage, and she was going to sing I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables, the one that she sang on the show, live at 8 a.m.

00:16:20.440 And she was vomiting in a dressing room 10 minutes before from fear.

00:16:25.620 Utterly terror struck.

00:16:26.960 And at 8 o'clock sharp, she was on that stage, now age 48, in the center of New York, on NBC's Today show.

00:16:36.140 And she absolutely sang it, completely thoughtlessly, in front of a big crowd outside.

00:16:41.980 Amazing.

00:16:42.380 And I remember looking at that and going, that's extraordinary.

00:16:44.360 That's for sure.

00:16:45.180 You never know what's inside people.

00:16:47.060 And she had something magical.

00:16:48.360 And the beauty of those talent shows is, you know, I always believe everyone's got something.

00:16:52.160 Everyone has a talent.

00:16:53.600 I genuinely believe that.

00:16:54.940 And, you know, I remember going to the Soweto Township, for example, in South Africa once.

00:17:00.200 And the kids singing and dancing and singing, some of them are thinking, I mean, you would literally win America's Got Talent if you sang like that on a stage.

00:17:08.040 And these are penniless kids in a township in Soweto.

00:17:11.520 So I think everybody has a talent.

00:17:13.740 You just have to find a way to unlock it.

00:17:16.920 Yeah.

00:17:17.320 Yeah, well, the other thing that's very interesting about that show, you know, maybe why it's received such incredibly,

00:17:24.820 broad-spread, widespread public attention is because it is strictly meritocratic.

00:17:33.820 Yes.

00:17:34.240 Right.

00:17:34.480 And there's such a ideological assault on the idea of meritocracy.

00:17:40.200 See, I was just watching a congressman from the U.S. today claiming that the critics of Biden after the last debate are ableist.

00:17:49.760 Yeah.

00:17:50.520 I mean, well, I don't even know what to think about that.

00:17:54.460 It's like, I see.

00:17:55.480 So now here's your theory.

00:17:57.320 Your theory is that it doesn't matter whether the president of the United States is able because all discrimination between being able and unable is a form of prejudice.

00:18:09.240 And that even applies with regards to the president of the United States.

00:18:13.600 And so that means that all the people who are concerned that there might be something astray with him cognitively that we're being lied to about at a level that's almost inconceivable are now equivalent to, like, KKK racists from the 1940s.

00:18:30.080 That's your argument.

00:18:31.300 And by the way, in relation to the same critique of his vice president, should you dare to criticize Kamala Harris, you are de facto a racist. 0.59

00:18:40.500 Yes, yes.

00:18:41.240 Gavin Newsom said that the other day. 0.86

00:18:42.420 Yeah, that the only reason that you would feel the need to criticize this black woman who's vice president is not that she's been completely incompetent in her job, which any impartial observer would conclude, but it has to be because of her skin color and her gender. 1.00

00:18:58.200 Even though that's why she was put in the damn position to begin with. 0.99

00:19:02.020 Joe Biden said publicly, I want a black woman, right? 0.99

00:19:05.800 And then he gets a black woman who is massively underperformed, which hasn't helped him at all. 1.00

00:19:10.680 But no one's allowed to criticize her because if you do, you'll be called a racist. 0.93

00:19:15.400 And I find that one of the laziest tropes out there in modern society.

00:19:20.520 It's a way of, I think we've discussed it before, but it's a way of stifling honest debate.

00:19:25.240 It's a way of censoring legitimate criticism.

00:19:28.780 It's a way of asserting moral superiority that's unearned.

00:19:31.660 That's a lovely way.

00:19:32.080 And actually, none of them really mean it.

00:19:34.460 I mean, it is the genuine epitome of virtue signaling.

00:19:38.080 What they're really, I mean, I remember the, you know, for example, I remember when the George Floyd murder happened.

00:19:45.520 It was a horrific incident, of course.

00:19:47.140 But I remember that soon after that, there was a Black Square Day announced on Instagram where everybody had to signal their virtue about this by doing a Black Square.

00:19:57.580 Now, I'd spent the entire morning on Good Morning Britain hosting debates about the George Floyd killing and showing enormous empathy and support for Black Lives Matter and what had happened.

00:20:10.600 And this was very early stages before a lot of stuff came out about the organization, Black Lives Matter, which put a rather different gloss on them.

00:20:17.660 But the principle that, you know, this had been a terrible killing, that this man should never have been killed, that it was possibly racially motivated, all that kind of stuff.

00:20:26.940 I was debating this with an absolutely open mind and being very empathetic to all these arguments.

00:20:32.300 We'll see you next time.

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00:21:32.300 But I didn't do my black square on Instagram.

00:21:38.320 And my son got in touch with me and said, Dad, you've got to do your black square.

00:21:42.780 I went, why?

00:21:43.620 We're getting criticized because you haven't done it.

00:21:46.020 And I actually had posted a picture of a bottle of rosé wine because I was having one in my local square.

00:21:54.380 And I hadn't given any thought to the rule that I had to signal my virtue about this thing.

00:21:59.760 And I then got absolutely annihilated by people saying, how dare you do this?

00:22:06.680 Where is your black square? 0.97

00:22:08.140 And I remember thinking, but all of you are going to go right back tomorrow morning to posting inane, self-aggrandizing photographs of yourselves on beaches or in nightclubs or in Ferraris or whatever.

00:22:19.140 None of this means anything to you.

00:22:20.960 Whereas tomorrow morning, I'll be back on air doing another three hours of debate about this to try and get the society in the world in relation to this issue back to a place of better racial justice.

00:22:33.360 Now, which one is going to have a better effect on influencing people's minds?

00:22:37.280 There you go.

00:22:37.780 Be an ableist again.

00:22:38.800 Right. And that's the point is that I found it such a trite and kind of pointless example of this cult of virtue signaling.

00:22:47.960 It's worse than that.

00:22:48.840 So I just finished a book, which is going to be published in November.

00:22:52.540 And I walked through a sequence of biblical stories trying to explain what they meant psychologically.

00:22:59.700 And I spent some time on the book of Exodus for obvious reasons.

00:23:04.440 And there's a commandment in there that people misapprehend.

00:23:08.920 So I think it's the third commandment.

00:23:11.980 Don't use God's name.

00:23:13.300 Thou shalt not use the Lord's name in vain.

00:23:16.040 And people think that means don't swear or curse.

00:23:19.800 And it sort of means that.

00:23:21.320 There's peripheral meaning that is associated with that casual use of the sacred, let's say.

00:23:27.400 But that isn't what it means.

00:23:28.700 It means don't claim divine virtue when you're working for your own purposes.

00:23:35.880 And the same thing happens in the gospel account, say, because the Pharisees, who are Christ's primary enemy, are the people he accuses of utilizing the sacred, the deepest.

00:23:49.680 So you could say compassion, even given its proper place, for their own self-aggrandizement.

00:23:58.880 They're praying in public.

00:24:00.040 They're trying to occupy the best seats in the marketplace.

00:24:02.920 They want the best seats in the synagogues, etc.

00:24:05.540 That's the accusation. 0.99

00:24:06.840 And so that virtue signaling, it's not merely, it's an expression of an unbelievably deep and ignorant narcissism, right?

00:24:16.580 It's part of the victim-victimizer narrative, first of all, which explains all of history with no cognitive effort.

00:24:23.280 And then it's these performative gestures that make you morally virtuous, right?

00:24:29.520 And one of the consequences of that, too, is as soon as you're morally virtuous like that, you get to specify the victimizer who's your enemy and tear them into shreds.

00:24:39.040 And that's actually a moral act.

00:24:40.820 And, I mean, you saw a bit of that, you said, with the black square. 0.92

00:24:43.880 Yeah.

00:24:44.040 But it's an unbelievably pathological...

00:24:46.960 But it was fascinating to me that my own children, all in their 20s at the time, that they were being contacted by friends saying,

00:24:54.080 why has your dad done this picture of a bottle of wine?

00:24:56.860 Where's his black square?

00:24:57.820 Yeah. 0.89

00:24:58.380 And they were kind of damned by association.

00:25:01.000 Yeah.

00:25:01.280 And were keen for me to rectify this problem.

00:25:04.000 Yeah.

00:25:04.320 And I had to say to them...

00:25:04.880 But there's a tribal signaling there, too.

00:25:06.800 Yeah, and I said, guys, I'm not going to do it.

00:25:08.160 I'm sorry.

00:25:08.600 I'm just not going to feel bullied into doing something that I think actually is pointless and trite,

00:25:14.160 and that all the people doing it don't really care much about this cause,

00:25:18.240 and will be very quickly back to their normal work on Instagram,

00:25:22.140 which is pumping themselves up and showing off and all the things people do on Instagram.

00:25:25.900 I said, I'm just not going to play this game.

00:25:28.420 Well, there's no cost to doing it, right?

00:25:30.420 To putting up a black square. 0.98

00:25:31.740 Right.

00:25:32.060 You can indicate someone's commitment.

00:25:34.080 That's exactly right.

00:25:34.940 There's no sacrifice.

00:25:36.000 There's no hard work required.

00:25:37.240 Why did you use sacrifice as that?

00:25:38.580 Well, because I think that to really support a cause, whatever that cause may be,

00:25:44.960 at some point you have to show a bit of sacrifice to that cause.

00:25:48.420 You have to commit time or money or resources or whatever it may be to support reputation.

00:25:55.500 Put your head over the parapet.

00:25:56.840 There has to be an element of risk and an element of sacrifice.

00:26:00.360 Now, if all you're doing is following the hashtag trend of the day, there's no sacrifice.

00:26:07.320 There's no risk-taking.

00:26:08.240 In fact, it's the opposite.

00:26:09.900 It's actually more courageous to say, I'm not going to do that.

00:26:13.220 What I'm going to do is I'm going to do this.

00:26:16.080 And it's a far more tangible and effective way of trying to get racial injustice to a better place,

00:26:23.180 which everybody should share that desire.

00:26:25.040 And I just feel that it comes back to what you said earlier about the victimhood generation.

00:26:31.900 The one common theme of the people who play that victim card all the time

00:26:36.060 is they almost never show any sacrifice for anything.

00:26:40.920 It's all about themselves.

00:26:42.740 It's all about how can I get pity?

00:26:45.580 How can I be showered in sympathy?

00:26:47.660 How can I become almost famous for failure and celebrated for it,

00:26:52.080 rather than the way I was brought up, which is you celebrated success,

00:26:56.460 you drowned your sorrows with failure,

00:26:58.520 and you didn't let it take you down or destroy you,

00:27:01.080 and you dusted yourself down and got back on with it.

00:27:03.640 But the idea of celebrating failure,

00:27:06.160 the idea of celebrating coming last at the school sports day,

00:27:10.160 the idea that everyone had to get a participation prize,

00:27:13.500 even if they were terrible at something, no.

00:27:16.300 I wasn't very good at athletics at school.

00:27:18.480 I was very good at cricket.

00:27:19.420 I was one of the best cricket players, age 12, in the country.

00:27:23.820 And my dream was to be a professional cricketer.

00:27:25.900 I never made it.

00:27:27.240 My other dream was to be a journalist.

00:27:28.760 I made that.

00:27:29.960 But I was terrible at athletics.

00:27:31.280 My two brothers were brilliant at athletics.

00:27:33.100 They used to win everything.

00:27:34.140 But I used to always win the non-finalist race.

00:27:37.440 And I was very happy about that.

00:27:39.460 Because what I said to my...

00:27:40.780 What is that?

00:27:41.500 Well, so everyone who didn't win a race got put in the non-finalist race. 0.72

00:27:46.000 So you were the kind of lepers with the most fingers, right? 1.00

00:27:50.220 For want of a crass phrase. 0.99

00:27:52.780 And the point was that you were competing against other losers,

00:27:57.780 but you could still win something. 0.91

00:27:59.860 And I thought, yeah, I'm going to be the best loser. 0.99

00:28:02.620 Because I'm crap at this. 0.92

00:28:04.140 I can't really run or hurdle or throw javelins or anything like that. 0.69

00:28:08.940 But I can beat this lot.

00:28:11.180 And I was proud of that.

00:28:13.880 But I never mistook it for actual glory or winning.

00:28:17.520 And I think people that...

00:28:18.980 You know, I see people on social media that say,

00:28:21.120 I'm so proud of myself.

00:28:22.660 I just passed my driving test at the 11th attempt.

00:28:25.500 And I'm like, why would you want anybody to know that?

00:28:28.880 Why would you want anyone to know that you're so completely clueless at driving?

00:28:33.080 That you took your 11 attempts to pass your driving test?

00:28:35.920 And what do you want me to do?

00:28:37.200 Do you want me to send you champagne?

00:28:39.560 Do you want to, you know, do you want to be trending number one around the world

00:28:42.380 for being the worst driver in the world?

00:28:44.500 What are you celebrating here?

00:28:46.240 If you passed your driving test at the 11th attempt, I'm pleased for you.

00:28:49.980 But I'm not proud of you.

00:28:51.760 This is not something that should instill pride in you.

00:28:54.780 And I think that that's where society is so warped now.

00:28:57.980 We celebrate failure.

00:29:00.420 We also celebrate pride.

00:29:01.880 And pride.

00:29:03.400 Like formally.

00:29:04.500 Right, exactly.

00:29:05.460 And we also, we've started to feel bad about winners.

00:29:10.120 We don't really feel comfortable with winners anymore.

00:29:12.920 You know, especially if they're a little bit self-confident.

00:29:15.380 And yet, I think they're the best possible role models out there.

00:29:18.920 People that can perform in the cauldron of great sport or entertainment,

00:29:22.780 whatever it may be.

00:29:24.080 You know, I watched all the sort of jealous sniping about Taylor Swift, for example.

00:29:27.720 And then I went to her concert at Wembley.

00:29:30.060 Absolutely mind-blowing experience.

00:29:32.760 It's not because she's the best singer in the world, or the best dancer, or the best actress,

00:29:37.420 or the best pianist, or the best guitarist, even though she does all those things. 0.90

00:29:41.580 It's just I've never seen an audience so at one with a performer,

00:29:44.780 where she gave them what they wanted.

00:29:46.840 Three and a half hours of banging hits on a massive stage with huge theatrics.

00:29:52.880 Every kid there, including my 12-year-old daughter, had a fantastic time.

00:29:57.560 But the sniping, she doesn't sing every song live. 1.00

00:30:01.980 She's this, she's that.

00:30:03.560 She's written all these songs herself.

00:30:06.220 She's grossing $2 billion on this tour.

00:30:09.880 Pro Rata, the biggest tour in the history of music.

00:30:13.420 Bigger than the Beatles when they played Shea Stadium.

00:30:16.700 And yet, the natural reaction of a lot of people is to snipe.

00:30:20.140 Whilst pretending, you can almost bet they all have hashtag be kind in their ex-bios.

00:30:27.520 In other words, I'm a really kind person.

00:30:30.120 I'm a tolerant person.

00:30:31.760 I'm a nice person. 1.00

00:30:32.980 And I'll destroy any of you fascists who deviate from my woke worldview. 1.00

00:30:37.960 But when it comes to Taylor Swift, I'm going to bitch all over her. 1.00

00:30:40.920 I'm going to trash her. 1.00

00:30:42.400 I'm going to be envious and resentful and jealous. 0.77

00:30:46.020 And all these things, which flies completely in the face of what they're pretending to be.

00:30:51.800 And it's that complete double standard that I see with so many of the, for want of a better phrase, the woke brigade, as I call them.

00:30:59.440 But it is, as Elon Musk has said, it's a mind virus.

00:31:03.920 And they are actually leading lives and behaving in a way that is completely the opposite of what they are masquerading as.

00:31:12.560 And I find that deceit and that fraud actually pretty offensive.

00:31:18.300 And it's like, it just exposes them for what they are.

00:31:21.020 Well, I think to bring it back to the talent shows, I think that that's all dramatized in America's Got Talent and Britain's Got Talent, right?

00:31:29.940 Because it's people come out there and they can't help in some sense, but show who they are very rapidly.

00:31:36.400 Yes.

00:31:36.800 Right.

00:31:37.080 They're on stage and they're naked on stage, right? 0.72

00:31:39.920 And then they're judged.

00:31:41.060 And if it's done well, then the cream rises to the top and everybody's thrilled about that, thrilled about that.

00:31:47.120 Now, you said something right at the beginning that I'd like to return to, too.

00:31:51.760 You talked about the shift that you've made into online journalism.

00:31:56.760 And so you're, I presume, much more autonomous.

00:31:59.740 But you also said that you're having the most interesting time of your career.

00:32:04.820 Okay, so what exactly has, I mean, you had some positions where you presume that you had a fair modicum of editorial freedom and so forth.

00:32:13.460 So what's the cardinal difference with what you're doing now in terms of its effectiveness publicly, but also in terms of its effect on your own motivation and your quality of life?

00:32:24.740 I would take the Israel-Hamas war as an example of why I feel this is a very exhilarating time for my career. 0.99

00:32:34.140 And it was because for some reason that we weren't really sure why this was happening.

00:32:40.220 Very early on, we started getting gigantic numbers on YouTube for our debates about the war.

00:32:46.260 And I interviewed people like Bassem Youssef, and 22 million people watched that interview on our YouTube channel.

00:32:51.620 And this carried on, lots of different voices, from Andrew Tate to the Palestinian ambassador to whoever it may be.

00:32:59.000 But I had people from both sides of the divide arguing very passionately.

00:33:04.800 And then I began putting them together.

00:33:06.600 And I became almost a ringmaster, a sort of fulcrum for really smart, passionate debate by intelligent people who were diametrically opposed about a big issue.

00:33:17.260 And it really resonated with people.

00:33:20.720 And then I began to realize it was resonating globally.

00:33:23.100 So we were getting a massive audience in America for these debates, massive audience in the Middle East, massive audience in Australia, massive audience in a lot of Europe.

00:33:32.540 And so we then did the same again with the US presidential race, exactly the same.

00:33:37.180 So what it showed me was that almost every media outlet in conventional mainstream media now has a position.

00:33:45.800 They have their tribe, you know, and they don't really deviate much.

00:33:50.980 They don't allow too many open debates between people who vehemently disagree.

00:33:56.220 They would rather reaffirm their bias to their audience.

00:34:00.040 They're going for the sure thing there.

00:34:01.500 They're going for the sure thing, which they believe is the thing.

00:34:03.620 I think what we've done, and listen, it's something you've been doing for a very long time.

00:34:07.380 I'm not professing to be the only person that does it.

00:34:09.080 But probably what's unusual about what I've been doing is this.

00:34:11.480 Yes, I do the big one-on-one interviews with lots of interesting people, from Donald Trump to Cristiano Ronaldo to you to whoever it may be.

00:34:19.080 Kevin Spacey recently was a very powerful interview.

00:34:21.420 But actually, I think that if people, you ask them, what is Piers Morgan Uncensored on YouTube about?

00:34:26.280 It's about bringing people together for a proper, animated, passionate debate.

00:34:33.120 You also have the stomach for that, eh?

00:34:34.920 Yeah, which is not easy.

00:34:35.820 It rhymes with conflict, fundamentally, you know, and so, but you, you're, you kind of remind me of Douglas Murray in that regard, is there are people who are, well, it's probably, I don't know if you've ever taken my personality test at understandmyself.com, but it, I did one test that said I was borderline psychopath.

00:34:57.120 Well, I'd be interested in, I'd be interested in your agreeableness scores, you know, because, well, and it's also with, with Cowell, because it takes a certain degree of emotional stability.

00:35:07.180 So low neuroticism and a certain degree of disagreeableness, which is, and those are very masculine traits, low neuroticism and, and low agreeableness to be able to, well, first of all, even tolerate conflict.

00:35:19.260 But also, you know, with Douglas, for example, there's an element of him that really enjoys it.

00:35:24.400 Like, he likes that combat.

00:35:25.820 I do, I do too.

00:35:26.780 Right, right.

00:35:27.420 See, I find it.

00:35:28.360 And I get it from all sides.

00:35:29.380 I mean, Douglas obviously has a position about that war where he's very, very pro-Israel and take on all comers about it.

00:35:37.080 I'm a more nuanced sort of ringmaster to people with strong views on either side, including, I've had Douglas a few times, very powerfully.

00:35:44.820 Yeah, yeah.

00:35:45.000 But I like having people on both sides.

00:35:47.380 I did one last night, which was very, actually, it was about an hour long.

00:35:51.720 It was very animated.

00:35:52.880 Two pro-Palestinians, two pro-Israelis going at it.

00:35:55.920 And it was a really interesting hour of debate.

00:35:59.260 And I, at the end of it, will get accused by people on social media of supporting both sides.

00:36:05.780 Right, right, right.

00:36:06.560 Right?

00:36:06.840 I'll get the usual flurry of death threats.

00:36:09.200 I'll get the usual abuse and everything else.

00:36:11.760 But I think it's a price worth paying to actually, what I think is, is rebuild an atmosphere in democratic countries of a genuine democracy.

00:36:24.900 You know, places where this kind of vigorous open debate can take place.

00:36:30.500 And at the end of it, actually, I can thank everybody and we can all go back to reasonably civil lives and not want to kill each other.

00:36:39.060 Yeah, yeah.

00:36:39.640 And I really feel, you know, I wrote a book last year called Wake Up.

00:36:44.200 And at the start of it, I told the story of several thousand years ago, people existed in tribes.

00:36:49.580 And they all had the same haircuts.

00:36:52.120 They all had the same clothes or whatever, you know, loincloths they were wearing.

00:36:55.520 They all had the same attitudes to life.

00:36:57.820 They all had the same kind of foods and drinks.

00:36:59.620 Because that's what the tribe did.

00:37:01.560 And there were lots of these tribes.

00:37:02.920 And then they ventured out eventually from their area and their tribe.

00:37:06.760 And they met other tribes who dressed differently, sounded differently, had different attitudes, looked different. 0.94

00:37:11.840 And their instinctive reaction was to try and kill each other.

00:37:15.280 And through social media, I felt we went, we regressed back several thousand years to those days of tribes encountering each other.

00:37:24.220 And their natural visceral reaction was to try and destroy each other.

00:37:28.600 And so everyone on Twitter was just screaming all the time.

00:37:32.280 And what I want to do with Uncensored, as the name on the tin says, is actually try and make people understand.

00:37:38.720 It's fine to be passionate.

00:37:39.940 It's fine to argue your case with great emotion.

00:37:43.200 But what you shouldn't do is be deliberately in denial about facts, right?

00:37:49.620 Truth matters.

00:37:51.000 Not my truth or your truth.

00:37:53.480 The truth matters.

00:37:54.900 Facts matter.

00:37:56.200 You can have an opinion about facts.

00:37:58.340 But what you can't do is ignore obvious, clearly provable information, which should change your opinion about something.

00:38:06.040 Simply because you've decided you're so embedded in your tribe that to do so is somehow disloyal.

00:38:12.660 And that's where we've gone.

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00:39:22.580 So have the debates been the most popular thing that you've been doing?

00:39:27.320 Yes, I mean look, the really big interviews will always blow big.

00:39:30.440 Yeah.

00:39:30.680 But actually the consistent power of our debating, whether it's about Trump and Biden, whether it's about Israel, Hamas, whether it's about the royal family, whatever it may be.

00:39:40.740 Getting smart people on, and I don't want dummies on.

00:39:44.880 I don't want people who can't articulate themselves. 0.94

00:39:47.560 I wouldn't have Joe Biden on right now in his current condition.

00:39:50.980 That's because you're an ableist.

00:39:52.540 Exactly, exactly.

00:39:53.700 But smart people who have passionate, informed views about the subject, but I want people from both sides.

00:40:02.440 And I want to be there to try and forge an atmosphere consistently of the kind of atmosphere I had in my local village pub when I was a kid.

00:40:11.240 When I first started going to the pub, we had a few beers and a big old argument about something.

00:40:16.260 I used to get chucked out of my local pub for being too opinionated when I was 18.

00:40:20.200 That's hard to believe.

00:40:21.080 Very, very hard to believe.

00:40:22.400 But you know, 10 pints of scrumpy and off I'd go.

00:40:24.620 And I was just as opinionated then as I am now.

00:40:27.000 And the landlady, Mary, would throw me out. 0.93

00:40:29.700 But she'd always forgive me and let me back in because I'd turn up with some flowers or something.

00:40:33.040 And so I knew how to turn things around.

00:40:35.120 But that's been a consistent theme of my career, actually.

00:40:38.280 But actually, you know, in those days, there wasn't social media to kind of whip everyone up into tribal frenzy.

00:40:46.220 And people, there wasn't understanding that facts were facts.

00:40:49.600 And you have an opinion about facts and interpretation of facts that are different from other people.

00:40:54.640 But you can't have your own set of facts which aren't facts.

00:40:57.440 You know, Ben Shapiro's, I think it still is, his pinned tweet is facts don't care about your feelings.

00:41:04.320 We're now a feelings-led world where people feel that the power of their feelings can supersede actual facts.

00:41:11.200 People talk proudly about my truth.

00:41:14.360 What does that mean?

00:41:15.420 What do you mean, my truth?

00:41:16.340 It means do what I want.

00:41:17.200 Yeah, my truth means it may not be true.

00:41:19.960 But because I feel it, it is actually a form of truth.

00:41:24.260 And I find that a ridiculous concept, which doesn't make any sense.

00:41:30.720 And yet a lot of people fall for this.

00:41:32.920 And it's fueled again by social media.

00:41:35.080 So what I want to do, I genuinely want people to come together, have a good old tear-up.

00:41:40.080 But at the end of it, you know, metaphorically, they're often not together.

00:41:43.940 But just to metaphorically shake hands.

00:41:46.000 And the thing I like most is doing a big debate.

00:41:48.040 And at the end of it, I see four smiling faces because I've said something to sort of,

00:41:51.920 thank you all for being such a great panel.

00:41:53.200 Oh, thanks, Piers.

00:41:53.920 And we all go our separate ways.

00:41:55.880 I don't want people ending debates and thinking, I want to kill that person because I don't agree with them.

00:42:01.580 Well, free speech is supposed to be the substitute for war.

00:42:05.440 Yeah.

00:42:05.820 Right? 1.00

00:42:06.120 You either let your stupid ideas die or you die. 1.00

00:42:09.000 Those are kind of the rules. 1.00

00:42:10.700 Yeah.

00:42:11.000 So now, in terms of, you talked about your motivation too, that you're at a particularly exciting stage in your career.

00:42:18.700 Particularly because of the way that you're approaching things online.

00:42:21.920 And so what has that done for you that you didn't have, do you think, in the other positions that you've held?

00:42:27.440 I just have noticed a massively larger number of people coming up to me all the time, skewing young, who are really grateful for what I'm doing.

00:42:38.660 I've never had that.

00:42:40.300 Oh, oh.

00:42:40.400 I've had people talk about stuff I'm doing and say, that was, you know, I enjoyed that or enjoyed this.

00:42:46.480 That was funny, the talent show guy or loved your celebrity apprentice going after, you know, so and so.

00:42:51.920 And all that, I've had all that kind of reaction or I hated your views of this or all that.

00:42:56.800 Yeah.

00:42:57.060 It's perfectly normal.

00:42:58.600 To have a lot of younger people come up and say, what you're doing is really important.

00:43:03.460 There's nowhere else I can see this kind of thing.

00:43:05.880 I don't get it.

00:43:06.840 That's a good deal.

00:43:07.600 I don't get it at school.

00:43:09.020 I don't get it at university anymore.

00:43:10.860 Yeah.

00:43:10.980 You know, there are no people on the other side of the argument allowed in university to talk about it if they're on the conservative right, for example.

00:43:18.640 And I like the fact you get everybody on.

00:43:20.180 I can make my own mind up.

00:43:22.260 That's a great feeling because that, to me, is the bedrock of a democracy, which we've been in real danger of losing.

00:43:29.220 So if I can be part of restoring the genuine ethos of democracy to a democratic country like the UK or the US, whatever it may be, that is a great thing to be involved with.

00:43:41.660 You know, I think you're part of that.

00:43:43.700 Joe Rogan's part of that.

00:43:45.080 You know, people that allow people to come on from all different guises and have their say and be challenged and talk about what they believe.

00:43:53.000 But ultimately, that we genuinely do believe in the power of free speech and people are not afraid to say what they think.

00:44:01.880 You know, it's so weird.

00:44:02.920 Or they say it anyways, even if they are afraid.

00:44:05.020 Or they do what Donald Trump...

00:44:07.280 And like Susan Boyle.

00:44:08.520 Right, right.

00:44:09.220 And it's also why people like Donald Trump are so popular.

00:44:11.720 Yeah.

00:44:12.060 He's popular because he says what he thinks. 0.62

00:44:14.300 He doesn't give a damn.

00:44:14.680 I know he can't even help it. 0.99

00:44:15.820 He made an erection joke during the presidential debate. 0.97

00:44:18.640 Of course. 0.98

00:44:19.020 I mean, that takes a lot of gold.

00:44:20.500 Of course.

00:44:20.720 And I know I watched him.

00:44:21.560 I thought, he can't even help it.

00:44:23.240 That's one of the things that's very interesting about him.

00:44:25.420 He is insanely funny.

00:44:27.540 And, you know, this is also...

00:44:29.220 I don't think that people with dictatorial tendencies are marked by their sense of humor.

00:44:35.740 No.

00:44:36.380 You know, so now, you know, Trump...

00:44:39.020 Does Trump make jokes at his own expense?

00:44:41.080 See, I don't know that.

00:44:42.120 No.

00:44:42.240 But he's very...

00:44:42.880 No.

00:44:43.380 Okay.

00:44:43.580 I've never heard...

00:44:44.200 Well, he might if he thinks it actually makes him look good in the long run.

00:44:48.000 Okay.

00:44:48.300 But I think that Trump is not a great self-joker.

00:44:51.500 Uh-huh. 0.99

00:44:51.700 He is a narcissist. 0.96

00:44:53.080 I've got no doubt about that. 0.59

00:44:54.280 But he is very entertaining.

00:44:55.960 Very.

00:44:56.120 And I will say to people, if you watch a Trump rally speech for two hours and you don't laugh

00:45:00.720 once, you've got a problem.

00:45:02.720 Yeah.

00:45:03.040 Because he can be very, very funny.

00:45:04.720 Very funny.

00:45:05.140 Now, it's a sharp humor.

00:45:06.420 It's a brutal humor.

00:45:07.620 Very.

00:45:07.760 It's a New York trader kind of humor.

00:45:10.100 Yeah.

00:45:10.360 Most New York real estate guys are like Trump.

00:45:12.400 You know, it's the environment he grew up in.

00:45:15.960 And you're a product of your environment to a large degree.

00:45:18.600 But he, you know, I've known him a long time.

00:45:21.320 Yeah.

00:45:21.460 He can make me laugh like very few people.

00:45:23.780 I mean, he's genuinely laugh out loud funny.

00:45:26.220 Yeah.

00:45:26.500 Yeah.

00:45:26.600 I remember talking to him about Theresa May, who was then British Prime Minister.

00:45:30.260 And by common consent, extremely boring.

00:45:33.120 And when she left office, he'd been president when she was Prime Minister briefly.

00:45:37.680 And he called me for a catch-up conversation.

00:45:40.560 We were having a chat.

00:45:41.740 He said, by the way, what happened to Theresa May?

00:45:43.600 I went, well, funny enough, I'm just reading a story this morning that she's now on the

00:45:47.380 speaker circuit.

00:45:48.600 He went, what?

00:45:49.920 I went, yeah, she's getting £140,000 a speech. 0.99

00:45:54.500 And Trump, are you effing kidding me?

00:45:57.120 He said, I'd pay £140,000 not to hear a speech.

00:46:01.700 Now, that's just funny.

00:46:03.340 Now, I wrote about that.

00:46:04.620 And she then ripped me very amusingly at a magazine. 1.00

00:46:08.160 The Spectator magazine had an awards thing.

00:46:10.900 And she tore me to pieces over that and got a big laugh herself.

00:46:13.840 Good for her.

00:46:14.640 There were no losers here.

00:46:15.940 But the funniest work came at my expense when I was having a laugh with President Trump

00:46:20.400 about how boring she was.

00:46:21.360 So, good, well done her.

00:46:22.680 But the point being, it was a funny line.

00:46:25.520 He's a naturally sharp, funny, quite witty guy.

00:46:29.420 Now, he's got lots of faults.

00:46:30.580 But if you try and pretend he hasn't got that in his armory, you will never understand the

00:46:35.740 appeal of Donald Trump.

00:46:36.580 That's for sure.

00:46:37.200 Which is, he's not like any other politician. 0.86

00:46:39.800 He shoots...

00:46:40.040 Well, and working class humour tends to be rough.

00:46:42.240 Yes.

00:46:42.520 And so Trump pulls that off extremely well.

00:46:44.620 Yeah.

00:46:44.960 Of course.

00:46:45.120 Of course.

00:46:45.640 Definitely.

00:46:46.280 Definitely.

00:46:46.520 No question.

00:46:47.120 I mean, I come from a village of working class people predominantly when I grew up.

00:46:52.700 And that's absolutely the humour.

00:46:54.960 It's sharp.

00:46:55.920 It's brash.

00:46:56.680 It's in your face.

00:46:57.840 Right.

00:46:58.260 It's the worst thing you can say and the worst thing you can take.

00:47:01.620 Yeah.

00:47:01.780 That's kind of the judge of character.

00:47:03.400 Yeah.

00:47:03.600 And it's a very fun game.

00:47:04.960 It's something I really missed as I sort of climbed up the actual ladder.

00:47:06.960 Are your best friends people that you laugh at or with or people who laugh at you?

00:47:14.540 Yeah.

00:47:14.700 In other words, have you got the ability to laugh at yourself as much as others?

00:47:19.660 I look at my friends and I think, actually, most of my best friends, if they didn't have

00:47:24.240 the ability to laugh at themselves, I couldn't really be friends with them.

00:47:27.140 Right.

00:47:27.320 Right.

00:47:27.420 Right.

00:47:27.700 Of course.

00:47:28.280 And if they couldn't let me mock them in the way that I'm quite happy to be mocked myself,

00:47:32.820 which I am, I'm not sure I could be a friend of someone like that.

00:47:36.740 Because I think it's such a key component to surviving life. 1.00

00:47:39.960 That's how you transcend your own stupidity. 1.00

00:47:42.160 We're all pretty absurd, right? 1.00

00:48:14.700 Because actually, none of us are normal.

00:48:16.320 The beauty of being a human being is we're all slightly abnormal. 0.98

00:48:19.160 We're all slightly nuts. 0.97

00:48:20.320 I think everyone has it in them to be slightly nuts. 0.88

00:48:23.560 But the common thread of my friends and people that I gravitate to is an ability for me to 0.87

00:48:29.820 take the piss out of them and they laugh.

00:48:31.340 And you can only really be like that if you yourself can take it, which I can. 0.57

00:48:38.020 There's very little that would ever upset me or that I wouldn't laugh at if it's a joke

00:48:41.900 at my expense.

00:48:42.560 And I think that can be a disarming quality with people.

00:48:45.500 So let me ask you, I've done a couple of interviews of some of your increasingly famous,

00:48:56.560 internationally famous UK subjects.

00:48:58.500 So I talked to Nigel Farage this week and Tommy Robinson.

00:49:02.860 So I want to ask you about a number of people on the UK political front.

00:49:07.040 So let's start with, well, let's start with Keir Starmer.

00:49:11.020 So in Canada, we have a liberal government, although it's not a liberal government.

00:49:16.920 It's a radical socialist government.

00:49:19.860 Trudeau is farther to the left by a large margin than our leftist political party has

00:49:25.660 been traditionally.

00:49:27.200 And I got to tell you, it's a bit of a disaster, you might say.

00:49:31.820 Canada now has, our GDP is 60% per capita of that of the US, right?

00:49:37.600 We have real estate prices that are twice as expensive.

00:49:40.260 And those are just the things we know about.

00:49:42.320 And so I would say the leftist tilt in Canada over the last nine years has been a much worse

00:49:48.820 disaster than we even know yet.

00:49:50.560 And now I can understand why people here turfed out the conservatives because, well, by my estimation,

00:49:57.800 they weren't conservatives at all.

00:49:59.100 But God only knows what sort of pack they've brought in.

00:50:02.800 So what are your thoughts about, well, what do you think's on the table for the UK for

00:50:07.660 the next four years?

00:50:08.640 Well, I've interviewed Starmer a few times.

00:50:10.080 I've done it for my Life Story show, which is like a two and a half hour interview.

00:50:13.760 And I think, probably like you probably believe, that if you interview someone for two and

00:50:17.780 a half hours, they can't hide the entire time.

00:50:19.740 You're going to work out really what they're like.

00:50:22.360 I think he's fundamentally a decent guy.

00:50:25.040 I think he's a kind of regular guy.

00:50:27.600 There's nothing particularly flamboyant or special about him.

00:50:31.280 He's a self-made man.

00:50:33.100 He had a very tough upbringing.

00:50:34.300 His mother was very ill for a very long period of time.

00:50:37.060 And he effectively was her carer a lot of the time.

00:50:39.400 A bit disenfranchised from his dad.

00:50:41.460 No money.

00:50:42.760 And he rose to become a top of the legal profession, Director of Public Prosecutions,

00:50:46.860 the top lawyer in the country.

00:50:48.520 And now he's risen to be the top politician in the country, to be Prime Minister.

00:50:52.340 That's a pretty remarkable achievement.

00:50:53.860 Yeah.

00:50:54.380 He's no silver spoon guy at all.

00:50:57.540 He is somebody who drifted out to the far left in the Jeremy Corbyn era, said he thought

00:51:06.720 Corbyn would make a good Prime Minister.

00:51:08.680 That's a blotch on his thought process, because Corbyn would have been a total mad far left

00:51:14.580 disaster.

00:51:15.560 But interestingly, and I think encouragingly, Starmer is not so intransigent in his views

00:51:21.940 that he's not prepared to change.

00:51:23.160 The example being the issue of trans women in women's sport.

00:51:28.040 You know, he started off by saying that, you know, women, all trans women are women and

00:51:33.300 should be treated as such. 0.90

00:51:34.260 Even the violent rapists. 0.63

00:51:36.080 Even.

00:51:36.940 You know, it's a problem.

00:51:38.260 Exactly.

00:51:38.460 Those edge cases.

00:51:39.320 You and I completely agree about this.

00:51:41.500 It's obviously preposterous.

00:51:43.100 But it's interesting to watch him change the position. 0.99

00:51:44.660 I think he now says 99% of women don't have penises, was his last statement on the thing. 0.99

00:51:52.560 He's come a long way, right? 0.98

00:51:54.120 So, you know, I think he understands that to be successful in Britain as a politician,

00:52:00.020 you've got to occupy the centre ground, really.

00:52:02.560 Historically, almost every leader we've had in modern times effectively has been in the

00:52:08.420 centre ground.

00:52:09.020 From Blair to Thatcher to, you know, you go back and you pick any of them.

00:52:13.560 They're all pretty well hovering in this kind of area.

00:52:16.780 And then you have the extremities who create a lot of noise, but never actually get elected.

00:52:20.460 And I think that Starmer's done very, very well, notwithstanding the uselessness of his

00:52:25.920 opposition, to bring his party more to the centre.

00:52:29.460 And he's understood he's got to, he's got to have middle England feeling he's not a threat.

00:52:34.540 Now, the challenge for him is there's no money.

00:52:37.260 You know, we're a pretty bankrupt country at the moment in terms of money to spend as

00:52:41.300 a government.

00:52:42.180 He's already ruled out three quarters of all tax revenue potential, saying he's not going

00:52:46.900 to do this, not going to do that, not going to do this.

00:52:48.580 So he's left really with a tax the rich strategy.

00:52:52.460 He's going to hammer people like me.

00:52:55.000 He'd hammer you if you were in this country.

00:52:56.860 He's going to come after, you know, money from the houses, money from schools.

00:53:01.540 He wants to put VAT on private schools, independent schools, etc., etc.

00:53:06.080 He's going to raise tax for the rich and so on.

00:53:08.580 I don't like politics of envy, generally.

00:53:12.420 And I don't think it works.

00:53:14.700 So he's got to have more tools in his box.

00:53:16.960 He's banking on the economy improving.

00:53:19.240 He might get lucky.

00:53:20.740 But you've got to have growth to do the things he wants to do about public services.

00:53:24.420 Our health system is crumbling.

00:53:25.800 Our education system is crumbling.

00:53:27.820 Crime is soaring.

00:53:29.680 You know, you go through almost any metric.

00:53:31.700 The seas are full of sewage.

00:53:33.840 You know, it's like everything is wrong right now.

00:53:37.180 But to fix it, you've got to spend significant sums of public money.

00:53:40.360 If you're going to do that without taxing three quarters of the country, you're going to end up just taxing people who may say, you know what, I'm going to leave.

00:53:49.220 Yes.

00:53:49.540 Or their money is going to leave.

00:53:50.660 Then you have a brain drain of the creative bosses who might be employing thousands of people.

00:53:55.960 And then where you left.

00:53:57.200 So I think he's got a lot of challenges.

00:53:59.340 But I wouldn't underestimate him.

00:54:00.780 I think anyone that's seen off the far leftist he's done with his party.

00:54:05.060 You think he's done that fairly effectively?

00:54:07.020 He was pretty courageous in the campaign when he supported Israel pretty emphatically, despite the fact that there were a lot of, I mean, there's five million Muslims in this country, most of whom would have been persuaded to probably vote Labour.

00:54:20.400 Yeah.

00:54:20.860 And there's no doubt that would have hurt him in the Muslim communities.

00:54:24.320 I think he factored in that let us do the right thing and we're still going to win anyway.

00:54:29.120 And I think that's, you know, there's a bit of moral courage shown there.

00:54:31.820 So I don't underestimate him.

00:54:33.400 What about the people around him?

00:54:35.260 I think he's got quite a smart cabinet, actually.

00:54:38.140 Oh, you do?

00:54:38.660 I do.

00:54:39.120 And I think they've hit the ground running in quite a smooth way.

00:54:41.180 Look, his whole strategy is going to be don't scare the horses and the children, right?

00:54:44.940 Let's just steady as we go.

00:54:46.660 And it may be that Britain's ready for that after a very turbulent five prime ministers in five years.

00:54:51.720 The chaos of Boris Johnson, the madness of Liz Truss.

00:54:56.160 And Rishi Sunak really got a horrible hospital pass.

00:54:59.320 I think we're ready for a bit of just calm stability.

00:55:02.000 And you think he could offer that?

00:55:03.180 I think he can offer.

00:55:04.000 I've already seen signs since he became prime minister of a well-organized man with a well-organized team who seem to know what they're doing.

00:55:12.220 He've got a plan.

00:55:13.640 And whether it works or not is another issue.

00:55:15.380 Part of the conservative problem was everything they promised they didn't deliver on, from stopping the small boats coming over from France, from the raging legal migration, which has gone from tens of thousands to 700,000 people last year.

00:55:31.200 Net legal migration.

00:55:32.440 Completely unsustainable.

00:55:33.520 The Tories kept promising we're going to take it back down to tens of thousands.

00:55:36.700 They never did.

00:55:37.940 They said they'd sort out the NHS waiting lists.

00:55:40.980 They're the worst they've ever been.

00:55:42.400 You know, my mother had a heart attack eight, nine months ago and was left on a trolley in accident and emergency out in the corridor for seven hours, having been diagnosed with a heart attack.

00:55:55.040 And there were 35 other people on trolleys out with her.

00:55:59.080 Oh, that's the state in Canada, too.

00:56:01.180 This is modern-day Britain. 0.92

00:56:02.660 Yeah.

00:56:03.080 Now, he's not a Trudeau.

00:56:05.060 You know, I watched a clip of Trudeau when he's with students and someone says something about mankind.

00:56:09.780 He went, oh, no, no, no, we say people kind.

00:56:13.240 He would literally change the most iconic line in the history of modern.

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00:57:36.600 World, which is one small...

00:57:38.220 Well, he would also insist that you change it, too.

00:57:40.360 Right, but one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

00:57:43.940 Neil Armstrong, the first lunar landing, would now have to be one small step for a person, one giant leap for people kind.

00:57:52.240 Yeah, that's so poetic.

00:57:54.080 That's the world that Trudeau wants.

00:57:55.440 He is insanely woke.

00:57:57.780 And the truth is, if you are like that, it doesn't work, as Canada sadly is saying.

00:58:02.400 I don't think Starmer's like that.

00:58:04.480 I think he's much more pragmatic.

00:58:06.380 I also think you don't get to be director of public prosecutions in this country.

00:58:09.620 The number one lawyer in the country, if you're not a smart person.

00:58:14.420 And I think he is a smart person.

00:58:16.200 But can he somehow navigate us to a better place?

00:58:22.140 Possibly.

00:58:22.820 Is he going to be a transformative prime minister where we all wake up in two, three years and think,

00:58:28.380 wow, the Starmer revolution?

00:58:30.720 I don't think so.

00:58:32.560 Well, you know, that's better than it might have been.

00:58:36.260 Well, I spent quite a long time working with Democrats in the U.S.

00:58:42.800 And I got very disillusioned about that, partly because they showed zero propensity to draw a line between the moderate Democrats and the radicals.

00:58:54.200 Or even to admit that the radicals existed.

00:58:56.940 Or even to admit that by equity they meant equality of outcome.

00:59:01.500 It was really quite stunning.

00:59:02.740 And I've talked to, I don't know how many reasonably high-ranking Democrats, but plenty.

00:59:09.360 And it was the same thing all the time.

00:59:11.140 And so, and then I also saw it in the Liberal government in Canada that the radical leftists really took over the joint, let's say.

00:59:19.060 And so, I'm very concerned that the same thing is likely to happen in the U.K.

00:59:26.440 It won't.

00:59:27.180 Well, that's good.

00:59:28.000 Okay, that's good.

00:59:28.680 That I can say with some certainty.

00:59:30.760 I just don't think Starmer's going to do that.

00:59:33.000 Okay, okay.

00:59:33.800 I do think he's going to operate a tax-the-rich mindset across the board.

00:59:38.460 And I am concerned about the brain drain that might cause.

00:59:40.920 Yeah, yeah.

00:59:41.620 But I think in terms of what you're talking about, I don't think he's going to fall into that trap.

00:59:47.280 I think he's seen what's happened with the Democrats.

00:59:49.200 He's seen what's happened with Trudeau.

00:59:50.360 So, I don't think he sees that as something he wants to be doing here.

00:59:54.220 Now, I hope I'm right.

00:59:56.020 But I don't sense that with him.

00:59:57.880 At his heart, I think he's a pragmatist.

01:00:00.500 And he's a well-organized guy.

01:00:02.560 He's intelligent.

01:00:03.600 He's thoughtful.

01:00:04.800 He's never going to light up a room with his presence.

01:00:08.180 Now, maybe that's okay for a while.

01:00:09.520 But we're kind of done with the Boris Johnson, you know, shtick.

01:00:13.220 Yeah.

01:00:13.420 You know, the guy bouncing in with the scruffy hair, cracking jokes, and everyone thinks it's hilarious.

01:00:18.180 It's hilarious right to the point you have a pandemic.

01:00:21.760 And he turned out to be completely useless and ended up having lots of illicit parties

01:00:26.680 while locking everybody else up in their homes.

01:00:29.820 You know, it's that kind of one rule for me, one rule for you mindset is what killed the Tories in the end.

01:00:35.740 And I think that Starmer certainly won't be that.

01:00:38.760 And he will want to deal with things like poverty in this country in a way that the Tories, I think, have neglected.

01:00:45.780 He will want to rise people up rather than kick them down.

01:00:50.260 And I think he's got the right kind of mindset for that.

01:00:53.980 I just worry there's not enough money to pay for this.

01:00:57.480 Nigel Farage.

01:00:59.520 You know, I used to get on well with Nigel. 0.98

01:01:01.340 But I discovered, to my personal cost, he's a treacherous little snake. 0.93

01:01:05.400 Ooh, that's rough. 0.75

01:01:06.600 Mm, it was rough.

01:01:07.720 And I was disappointed in him.

01:01:09.520 And the very short version is that when he was working for GB News, I was working for Talk TV.

01:01:15.560 We were billed as rival new networks, even though I didn't see it that way, but we were.

01:01:20.040 And he was the figurehead for them.

01:01:21.620 I was the figurehead.

01:01:22.280 So we were kind of rivals.

01:01:23.820 And I was three months away from launching my show on the new network here.

01:01:29.240 And he was already on GB News.

01:01:31.320 They were already up and running.

01:01:32.500 And he interviewed Trump, who he knows as well as I do.

01:01:35.880 And I sent him a text message.

01:01:37.800 I still have it.

01:01:38.900 Congratulations on your interview with Donald.

01:01:41.340 I thought it was terrific.

01:01:42.220 Well done.

01:01:42.700 He went, well, thank you.

01:01:43.480 That's very gracious of you.

01:01:45.500 You know, honor amongst rogues in the world of broadcasting.

01:01:48.800 And then three months later, I got an interview with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

01:01:55.400 And I went down to the big team, a lot of money it cost to set everything up there.

01:01:59.700 About to start, when someone comes and said, we have a problem.

01:02:02.760 I said, what's the problem?

01:02:03.640 And they showed me three pieces of paper.

01:02:05.680 And on it were all the most critical things I've said about Trump in the previous year.

01:02:10.320 On air, in columns.

01:02:11.780 And I criticized him a lot about the way he handled the pandemic, about the stolen election claims, about January 6th.

01:02:18.400 I've been pretty critical.

01:02:19.740 But he'd always known I was someone that would praise him if I felt he deserved it and criticize him if he didn't.

01:02:24.700 That's why he made me a separate apprentice.

01:02:26.300 I was that.

01:02:26.800 It's my personality.

01:02:28.700 And right in the middle of all these quotes were two positive quotes from Nigel Farage,

01:02:37.600 which raised alarm bells with me about where this all may have come from.

01:02:41.780 And sure enough, it later emerged very quickly.

01:02:45.280 Nigel had sent this to him.

01:02:46.900 He'd had dinner with him at Mar-a-Lago two days before, heard I was coming.

01:02:50.960 And his response to my graciousness in congratulating him on his interview was to try and sabotage mine.

01:02:57.480 And I only pulled it around by going to see Trump in his office.

01:03:01.560 And he was effing and blinding and shouting and raging at me.

01:03:05.620 Understandably, because of the way this had all been edited to make it look like this was all I said about him, which wasn't true. 0.90

01:03:12.280 And I thought, wow, what a snake.

01:03:14.820 What a snake to do that when I'd actually gone out of my way to congratulate him on his.

01:03:20.420 And I don't like people that do that.

01:03:22.100 So I thought I knew Nigel Farage quite well.

01:03:27.140 And I was mistaken.

01:03:29.360 I take people exactly as I find them.

01:03:32.160 And I find it very, very difficult to forgive when people do that kind of thing.

01:03:36.460 And he did it very deliberately to sabotage my interview.

01:03:39.920 So, yeah, not a fan.

01:03:44.420 So what do you think?

01:03:46.140 And I would also extrapolate that, that I think that's part of his, to me, part of the smoke and mirrors thing with Farage.

01:03:53.900 Farage is he's great at saying, hey, we can do this, this, this, and this, and this.

01:03:59.300 And then when it happens, he disappears.

01:04:01.780 And it doesn't happen.

01:04:02.940 Brexit.

01:04:03.760 He was the architect of Brexit.

01:04:06.040 And then he just disappeared.

01:04:07.660 He only ran this time for Parliament because I was on BBC's Question Time show with him.

01:04:13.760 And kept calling him out for being a bottle job and bottling it and not running.

01:04:18.160 And the audience got on his back and he looked really uncomfortable.

01:04:20.840 Two days later, he announced he's running.

01:04:23.120 And it's actually been a successful election for him, a successful campaign.

01:04:27.480 I think the whole reform thing is smoke and mirrors.

01:04:29.880 I don't think they can deliver any of the pledges and promises they've made.

01:04:33.660 I know they can't.

01:04:34.640 So, to me, he's a bit of a straw man.

01:04:37.560 It all sounds great, but he's a bit of a straw man who couldn't possibly deliver on a lot of what he says he can.

01:04:44.400 And on a personal level, I found that he was not to be trusted.

01:04:49.820 So, I'm not a fan.

01:04:52.300 And so, what do you think the reform movement's relative popularity indicates for the Conservative Party in the UK?

01:05:02.100 It indicates the Conservative Party had a complete breakdown in trust with the electorate, particularly with Conservative voters.

01:05:09.340 Farage is a very good communicator.

01:05:11.040 He's by far the best communicator in British politics right now.

01:05:14.980 He knows how to, you know, hold a crowd.

01:05:18.420 He knows all the right things to say.

01:05:19.780 He knows the points he's going to get applause at.

01:05:21.800 He knows how to sell himself.

01:05:24.000 All those things, he's very, very skilled.

01:05:26.680 Far more than most of the other politicians in the country.

01:05:30.040 He will clearly now have a big influence over the Conservative Party going forward.

01:05:34.460 Will reform end up doing a deal with the Conservatives?

01:05:37.400 Possibly.

01:05:37.720 Will they have to tilt to the right to make that deal happen?

01:05:41.160 Many Conservatives say they should be doing that.

01:05:44.860 What do you think a tilt to the right would look like in Great Britain?

01:05:47.720 Probably like a more old-fashioned Conservative Party.

01:05:50.400 I mean, part of the thing about the Conservative Party hasn't really felt that right wing.

01:05:54.240 And I don't mean right wing as a stigma or a badge of dishonour.

01:05:57.960 I just mean that if you go back to the...

01:05:59.720 Well, net zero is not a Conservative policy, for example.

01:06:02.540 Exactly, exactly.

01:06:03.860 And I think that, you know, go back to Margaret Thatcher.

01:06:06.260 It was a very divisive Prime Minister in many ways.

01:06:08.820 But that was, you know, she had Conservatives pouring through her blood vessels. 0.92

01:06:14.220 I've not felt that with the Conservative Party for many years.

01:06:17.840 They weren't a Conservative Party, really.

01:06:20.120 They were trying to be people-pleasers and ended up pleasing nobody.

01:06:23.220 And Margaret Thatcher never even read the newspapers.

01:06:25.420 She would get a report, a one-page report, what was in the papers.

01:06:29.940 And most of the time, didn't even bother with that.

01:06:32.280 Because she believed that newspaper headlines would divert you from doing the right thing.

01:06:36.260 So she would just do what she believed was the right thing and be judged accordingly.

01:06:40.520 And she was a three-term Prime Minister.

01:06:42.620 Tony Blair was similar.

01:06:44.080 You know, he was a three-term Prime Minister.

01:06:47.220 And, you know, he instinctively understood the mood of the country at the time,

01:06:51.560 as did she for a long time.

01:06:53.120 And both of them became quite divisive, if not hated.

01:06:56.640 But for a long time, they understood the mood of the country.

01:07:00.460 I don't think this Conservative Party has any idea what the mood of the country is.

01:07:05.360 And Farage was able to tap in with reform into a lot of the things that people are really concerned about.

01:07:12.020 But does he have the answers?

01:07:13.600 I don't think so.

01:07:15.000 So I think it's smoke and mirrors with him.

01:07:16.540 Could he be effective in reshaping the Conservative Party to be a more effective political force?

01:07:22.360 Absolutely.

01:07:23.120 And in that case, I would be pleased to see that happen.

01:07:27.940 Because, you know, he's a good politician.

01:07:29.980 There's no question of that.

01:07:31.000 He's just not someone you trust with the family silver.

01:07:33.960 Well, let's close this section with this.

01:07:37.900 What are you doing in the future?

01:07:40.860 What's your plan, for example, for your online media?

01:07:44.520 Well, what I want to do is actually do some of the things you've done, which is one thing I want to do.

01:07:49.540 I've been really struck by there's a whole new world out there of going on tour.

01:07:54.340 Taking your show and what you do and these interviews to a big stage with a big crowd.

01:08:00.120 I want to do that.

01:08:01.640 And I want to do it around the world.

01:08:03.640 I want Uncensored to be a really much bigger brand.

01:08:06.700 I want to have other people under the Uncensored umbrella.

01:08:11.340 I want to start developing it into a proper business.

01:08:14.400 So I think that we've captured something that's reasonably unique in the space and the way we do our debates and stuff.

01:08:21.160 And I want to maximize that and exploit that to build a much bigger business.

01:08:27.260 And I think it's really very possible.

01:08:29.220 Well, there's something about the live space that's made even become more important as the AI revolution continues.

01:08:37.460 Because it's going to get harder and harder to discriminate between what's real and what isn't.

01:08:42.540 And one of the things that you do have...

01:08:43.900 Live is live.

01:08:44.280 Well, that's the thing.

01:08:45.660 It is live.

01:08:46.580 And I also think that people are starving for that to some degree because they're...

01:08:51.260 Well, the social media immersement is too abstracted.

01:08:55.660 And the live events really go a long way.

01:08:58.180 I've seen your stuff.

01:08:59.580 I've watched it online.

01:09:00.520 But I've seen you do massive arenas and things.

01:09:03.080 And there's a crackling energy to it.

01:09:05.640 And obviously, it's lucrative from a business point of view.

01:09:08.760 But it's also serving a real need from the public who actually do want to hear unfiltered, uncensored opinion and debates about things that they're kind of curious or feel too ill-informed about.

01:09:22.460 Yeah.

01:09:22.640 And they want to hear smart people talk in a smart way.

01:09:26.020 And whether it's, you know, you doing it or, like I say, Ben Shapiro, people like this.

01:09:30.120 There's no reason I can't do that from my own perspective.

01:09:33.220 And to host big debates in front of a big audience, I think they'd be very popular.

01:09:37.140 So I think that I want to do that sort of thing around the world.

01:09:39.580 I'm doing another book.

01:09:42.360 I have done a lot of crime documentaries, actually, which I quite enjoy doing where I interview serial killers and psychopaths and things like that.

01:09:50.520 That's another string to my bow that I've enjoyed doing for many years.

01:09:53.340 But I think, generally speaking, I've hit on something that really suits me, which is uncensored.

01:10:00.260 You know, I would love to be known as somebody that really dragged the debate back to proper debate.

01:10:06.240 Somebody who will have everybody on and let them all thrash it out and leave the viewer at home better informed and in a better position, hopefully, to make a more considered, informed view about what they think.

01:10:20.040 And not be afraid to express it.

01:10:21.620 You know, the number of young people who come up to me and say, you know, I won my debating thing the other day and it was because of you.

01:10:28.860 Yeah.

01:10:29.140 You know, I just decided, no, I'm going to say what I think.

01:10:31.380 I love that.

01:10:32.160 Yeah.

01:10:32.540 I love that.

01:10:33.600 Yeah, I can understand that.

01:10:34.940 I was in my debating society at school.

01:10:36.980 I love debating things.

01:10:38.680 I've got a letter from Margaret Thatcher when I defeated a campaign for nuclear disarmament person debating against me.

01:10:46.520 And I wrote to her to tell her, and she wrote me a congratulations letter.

01:10:49.820 I've got that somewhere.

01:10:51.620 And I, you know, that was what I think a democracy is about, actually.

01:10:56.880 And we've got to get back to that.

01:10:58.500 I think one of the reasons that that comes up with young people, it's something I've seen a lot talking to people, say, after my lectures or on the street, for that matter, is that people die without meaning in their life because life is very difficult.

01:11:15.040 And so then the question is, where do you find genuine meaning?

01:11:17.940 And one of the things that I've come to understand is that there's genuine meaning in the truth because you don't know what's going to happen.

01:11:25.800 If you tell the truth, all sorts of weird things happen because you have to let go.

01:11:30.060 If you're just going to say what you think, you have to let go.

01:11:32.280 You can't plot the outcome.

01:11:34.200 You have to assume that you're going to say what you think and something's going to happen.

01:11:38.180 And whatever that is, well, it's the consequence of telling the truth.

01:11:41.640 And so even if it doesn't look like it to you, it's the best thing.

01:11:44.700 And by the way, Mother Teresa could be on Twitter if she was still alive and she could tweet, I want an end to child poverty. 0.89

01:11:51.340 And she would get trolled.

01:11:53.160 Right.

01:11:54.040 She would enrage people. 0.96

01:11:56.360 Mother Teresa, if she said she wanted an end to child poverty.

01:11:59.920 You're only saying that because of this.

01:12:01.980 What about you?

01:12:02.960 You once bought a ring, you know, all that.

01:12:06.900 It was the instinctive reaction of the mob.

01:12:08.840 And what you've got to have in this modern era, you've got to have a pretty thick skin.

01:12:14.740 Again, it's one of the things I like about Trump is he not only has the thinnest skin of any human being I've met, he also has the thickest.

01:12:21.940 So he reacts to absolutely everything by going to DEFCON 3.

01:12:26.160 But he can soak up even more extreme DEFCONs in a way I've never seen any public figure do.

01:12:33.360 That would break anybody.

01:12:35.220 And he just barrels on through.

01:12:37.460 And actually, that's part of existing in life and making the most of it.

01:12:42.500 You know, it's not good just to survive in life.

01:12:45.220 You've got to thrive.

01:12:46.400 You've got to find your thing that allows you to thrive.

01:12:48.880 The point you're making, at least in part, is that you're going to pay a price for whatever you say.

01:12:54.680 Yeah.

01:12:54.880 And so, at least the advantage of saying what you think is, well, first of all, you figure out what you think.

01:13:00.700 And second, it's a relief.

01:13:02.480 But it's also, that's also you being expressed.

01:13:06.480 And so the consequences of your speech are, I think the consequences of your truthful speech are indistinguishable from your destiny.

01:13:14.460 And I think your destiny is an adventure.

01:13:16.860 Yeah.

01:13:17.060 And people say to me, what's the, like, it was a guy who started here doing television for the first time.

01:13:23.180 He's a journalist, a print journalist.

01:13:24.680 And he asked me for advice.

01:13:26.420 I said, well, I've got one bit of advice.

01:13:28.640 Be authentic.

01:13:29.940 Be you.

01:13:30.940 Don't try and be me.

01:13:32.280 Don't try and be somebody else.

01:13:33.540 Don't try and be someone you've seen on TV.

01:13:35.720 Be yourself.

01:13:37.240 And if you are you, and I know him, he's a charismatic, funny, smart guy.

01:13:42.580 It'll take you a while to get used to the environment of being a television presenter.

01:13:46.680 But you will bring an audience with you because they'll like you.

01:13:49.360 Right.

01:13:49.560 But they'll like you, not because you remind them of somebody else.

01:13:54.000 And I think authenticity, whether it's TV presenting or anything in life, is the single most powerful weapon you have.

01:14:01.720 To thine own self be true.

01:14:03.080 And it follows that I can't be false to any man, to borrow the words of Shakespeare.

01:14:09.740 Well, that's a good place to end this part.

01:14:12.380 So everybody who's watching and listening, I'm going to continue this discussion on the Daily Wire side.

01:14:17.380 And so I think I'll dig a little bit more into, well, issues of truth and free speech, I think, is a good topic that we could continue developing.

01:14:28.380 So if you want to join us there, you're obviously more than welcome to do that.

01:14:32.300 Thank you, Pierce.

01:14:33.440 It's very good to see you here in London.

01:14:34.740 Always good to see you.

01:14:35.400 It's been lovely to do this in person.

01:14:36.820 We haven't even talked about your jacket, which is absolutely magnificent.

01:14:39.740 My crazy suit maker.

01:14:40.700 Thank you.

01:14:41.200 Yeah.

01:14:41.400 Well, he made this for my tour.

01:14:43.040 And so we who wrestle with God.

01:14:45.020 When I do my tour, I want to talk to your jacket maker.

01:14:47.480 Well, I will introduce you to my suit maker.

01:14:49.840 I'll introduce you to my suit maker.

01:14:50.600 We can have Arsenal footballers on mine.

01:14:52.340 Well, you can have the lining custom made as well.

01:14:58.700 All right.

01:14:59.300 Well, thank you very much.

01:15:00.280 It was real good talking to you.

01:15:01.200 Pleasure.

01:15:01.220 Pleasure to see you.

01:15:01.600 And so join us on the Daily Wire side, everybody.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - August 05, 2024

469. Finding Signal Against the Noise ｜ Piers Morgan

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