Is the Royal Family Racist? with Andrew Gold

[Music] hey everyone thanks for checking out the show my podcasts all have ads if you find the ads annoying then consider subscribing to the podcast with a subscription you won't hear any ads plus you'll have access to exclusive content only available to subscribers if you can't afford a subscription please write to me at admin Coleman hughes.org with a few words explaining why you enjoy the channel and how it benefits you we'll get back to you after a short period of consideration and will offer a subscription free of charge thanks again for watching and for all your support welcome to another episode of conversations with Coleman I just got back from my very first trip to the UK where I attended a great conference organized by the equiano project I'll have much more to say about that on the next episode but while I was there I took the opportunity to record a bunch of podcasts in person with guests that I could only access in the UK so you'll be noticing a disproportionate number of British guests in the next six or so episodes of the podcast which I'm sure my British listeners will love and to my non-uk listeners I can assure you that all the topics discussed will be of interest to you as well so my first UK guest is Andrew gold Andrew gold is an ex-bbc journalist and documentary filmmaker who now has an excellent podcast called on the edge Andrew focuses on weird and controversial people for instance Psychopaths former cult members exorcists and so forth in this episode we discuss Prince Harry and Meghan markle's decision to leave the UK and the accusation of racism they leveled at the Royal Family on the way out we discussed the israel-palestine conflict we talk about the prospect of immortality and whether it would be desirable we talk about the psychology of gender identity we talk about pop music social Bubbles and much more I really like this conversation because we dealt with so many seemingly unrelated topics which is a nice departure from most of my conversations which just focus on one topic and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did so without further Ado Andrew gold [Music] what do you think about Meghan Markle well I think that um you know obviously there's a perception of her in the public eye especially in Britain as narcissists social climber um someone who stirs the pot creates controversy draws attention to herself and and all the rest my guess is that many of these things are probably true at some level but they seem to be true of many of the Royals and so why is she being singled out as the and as the only one right from an American perspective we don't worship the crown obviously Brits do and I understand that but from an American year when I hear that an American woman goes over there joins the family and you know has her phone taken away and can't schedule a lunch with her friend I think to myself what is going on there it makes it only it only makes sense that she would Rebel and that she would try to get her Freedom back um but again that's from the point of view of someone that doesn't worship the crown to begin with so the irrational and and freedom constricting uh sort of habits and rules seem simply irrational to me whereas I assume for many Brits they it's part of the the value and the honor and the and and all the rest um is is all of that would be a worthwhile trade-off so my assumption about Megan has been probably yeah maybe some of the unlikable qualities about her may be true but at the same time if I were in that situation I would I would have wanted out in a similar way and in some ways I blame Harry for maybe not preparing her um as an American like you know like did he take her aside and say look you're in love with me I'm in love with you you want to get married but you have to understand this is going to change your life and it's going to be worse than you think it is are you really prepared for this yeah did he take her aside and say that or did he just say you know what mom's gonna love you and Blindside her with all that I mean there was something in his book about how she I just read the wiki summary how she didn't really know how to curtsy when she met the queen right if that's any signal of how prepared Harry uh made her then I'd blame him at some level for not uh for for setting her up to fail yeah you know what's not spoken about enough I think is um so much of how you feel about them I suppose has to comes down to her assumptions about how she actually felt and what her ambition was because if you believe that she married him to sort of marry up and to get the fame and the the value of being part of the royal family then it's hard to feel sympathy for her if she actually just met this Harry fella and fell in love with him and now she has to deal with all this it's a totally different story and I think I guess the people who don't like her think that it's the former and the people who like her say it's Galata which do you think it is I think it's the I think it's not really fair for me to say but I think it's the former that she married for the status I think so she talks in her episode her podcast episode with Serena Williams about ambition and she keeps saying like why do people hate ambitious women they hate ambitious women look at us we're so ambitious and she kept putting herself on a par with Serena Williams who's one of the most respected incredible people that you know in terms of her athletic ability and how hard she worked and her triumphs and stuff she's unparalleled and there are a few people in sports in any sport that are totally unparalleled to that extent like her you could talk about Messi the footballer or whatever but then there's Ronaldo and people like that there's always like one Federer than there's also Nadal you know uh Serena is just like apart and I just thought how it just felt but I already had this bias you know but it just felt a little bit like the arrogance to put yourself on the same level of Serena and I thought I want you Megan to tell us okay but what is your ambition I want you to lay it out for us what what is ambitious about you and what is it that people don't like in your ambition is that marrying into the crown is that an ambition and I think that's people can have that ambition you can want to marry up people do that I don't have a problem with that but I think the problem is then hearing about doing it and then not wanting to do the duties that come with that you know yeah so on the one hand she was a quite successful actress very much on the way up potentially I potentially but I mean I would have bet on her horse very much from having watched the show Suits did you watch it oh yeah okay was it good great show it was it was great and it was um it was both popular and beloved and her character in particular I think in another world she would have she would have some room to grow as an actor she would have been a winning racehorse you know in that world I'm quite certain which undermines the idea that it was just about ambition on the other hand being a c-list TV actor is nowhere near being in the crowd so it it it was quite a jump for her it was a massive jumper there's no understanding that and there's also um it's also very possible that the the dream of being a princess essentially was part of the attraction to Harry that's the thing about it is is you know to what extent are status and romance kind of Linked In subconscious ways to begin with right is there a clean distinction a clean line you can draw between loving someone for precisely who they are and loving them for their status I wonder about that yeah money stuff like that ambition you see like your girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever is ambitious it's uh it's exciting about them right maybe if they're rich that's exciting and people can like that's what I was saying people can marry you up or they can marry for money and I don't have a problem with it it just feels like if you're going to marry into this institution you've got to do as you were alluding to your homework and just a bit of homework you'd have seen how Diana who was another person who didn't really fit with the Royals how she was treated which wasn't very well but I sort of have to say I do have some sympathy for her and I have the same sympathy I suppose I would have for maybe a supermodel who uh is now talking about exposing the industry because everybody wants you to be skinny and that you know all the messages she's getting about you should be skinnier and that kind of thing and I I do have sympathy for that but I also feel like you you did sort of get into a very superficial industry um and that's I guess part of it most of us don't even have the looks to be supermodels with Megan's case most of us don't have the access to a prince or princess you know so I think that's where I find how much blame do you place on Harry a lot as well I think you make a really good point that he clearly didn't prepare her enough um I think he's not very smart Prince Harry I'm not a royalist I'm also not anti I grew up being anti-royal I think and then I started to see them more like the Kardashians that they are they don't have any real power I don't know the stats around how Brits feel anecdotally I could say that I think Australians and Canadians are even more into the royal family than us it's like the first thing they ask about and I grew up knowing relatively little about them and then you get to the crown came out the TV series and the whole Megan stuff obviously Diana as well and it became this huge thing um he really doesn't seem very smart I've read uh his book and I know it's ghost written and you can tell um and he seems like he's hearing a lot of uh Progressive stuff maybe ideas that we we know of from what culture he talks a lot about unconscious bias he there's a lot of catchphrases he comes out with and it feels like it's the first time he's heard them and he's he's sort of telling the rest of us about this amazing thing he's heard about and the rest of us are like well we've known about this for years man like we've been living in the real world working jobs paying bills you've been sat there not having the best life I don't I'm not saying like he has the best life but I think if you are to finish my point here I think I would just say that the Royals in a really difficult position right now because they're trying to get modern sometimes I mean William said a few things as well they talk about mental health and these kinds of things and they're they're very you know Noble aspirations and whatever um they're in a bit of a bind though because it feels a little bit like the Tsar in Russia like appealing to the Bolsheviks they're trying to appeal to sort of the left and that's great and the left will like them more but ultimately the idea of a monarchy in on the left doesn't hold up so I don't know where they can go I wonder if the left will like them more though because sometimes if you make a concession to people that are fundamentally against you it actually backfires and they they ask for more like is yeah the the modern the monarchy and the Royals they can't by definition be modern they are a symbol of the old and that's I think where their power lies because we I mean humans have this tendency you could even call it a biasp to worship the old the older something is the more legitimate it is it's why we laugh at the Book of Mormon but not at the Bible yeah right um it's just time interesting um and and the the Royals have that as their main source I think of legitimacy is how long they've been around The Unbroken chain of succession and um and so you know I wonder how wise it is for them to try to modernize to try to you know I I just I'm not sure they can do it well because they're so clearly out of touch and that's not a criticism it's anyone if I were a royal I'd be very out of touch you can't not be Yeah by definition part of your purpose is to be out of touch um but when Harry says these things when he talks about unconscious bias and and so forth um it is quite clear that he's out of out of his depth and you know one part one thing he did that I felt quite wrong to me was in the Oprah interview and I think maybe again in a later interview he accuses an unnamed member of his family of sort of wondering about what the skin color of the baby would be how dark the baby would be now this to me the way he went about this was so suspicious to me um I mean if you think about this for one of two things is true either someone in the royal family made a truly heinous racist comment about not wanting the baby to be too dark or someone in the royal family just made a very innocent comment wondering what the what the mixture of them would look like which is something everyone who's ever had a baby has wondered about their forthcoming baby you know how how are these two different people going to blend into this new life so it's either totally racist comment or totally innocent comment now if it was a totally racist comment then he he did a Bad Thing by casting that uh accusation at the whole family and and just letting the Public's mind imagination wonder and go wild about who it could be rather than really holding the individual responsible who said that racist thing yeah or simply not saying it at all because you don't want to air your family's Dirty Laundry like that like either don't say it or name the specific person that said that heinous thing so that we know who in the royal family is really a hardened enough racist to not want a a baby to be as certainly light-skinned black as that baby is likely to be given that Megan is not very dark skinned to begin with right you have to be a real hard and racist to worry that that baby is going to be too dark right so either that's the case or it was a totally innocent comment in which case he also did a very bad thing by making the accusation vague Enough by basically playing it up and playing this card where it really was just maybe intended as totally innocent comment um and then casting that accusation of racism at the whole family it was very fishy yeah now if he if he had said this person said this and quoted them said this person said I don't want the baby to be too dark then I respect that um because it would be a horrible comment but the way he went about it in this strategic vague way is very suspicious and makes me think that the whole story is BS or um a kind of spin so as to have something to throw at them when they throw at him that he's a traitor and an attention seeker if he can make them racist then he is uh he's not the aggressor he's the victim would you be offended if somebody asked you about your child what skin color they might be no no I mean so again if they were saying oh God I hope your baby isn't too dark yeah I'd be like yeah [ __ ] off I'm never talking to you again even I mean even a racist would know not to say that to Harry presumably I mean I'm making assumptions here again but you'd think like yeah gosh I hope you know that doesn't it doesn't add up it I mean it does happen of course there are racist who say things but right to him why would they but if you know if someone just wondered oh what is the mixture of me and my girl girlfriend or my wife gonna look like yeah if we were of two different races that would be I'm sure it'd be something that we had talked about maybe it's Over The Line yeah to say it but it's not racist right so you have he he was vague he was he had a studied prepared kind of vagueness about the accusation which was the most wrong thing about it if you were going to accuse someone of being a pedophile right you would not say oh you know someone in my family talked about liking kids yep you'd be like hold on hold on a second be very specific with what you're saying name the person and say exactly how they said it did they say oh the the that kid from stranger things is cute like in an innocent way or did they say I'm sexually attracted you know so you have to is it you can't say the full thing there yeah Coleman Hughes exactly yeah so if you're going to make an accusation you you real accusation of something that serious you have to be specific with it and his lack of specificity to me was a big red flag about his character and his motivation in sort of going on the whole PR uh you know campaign that he's on one of the reasons you enjoy my podcast is because you get the information you might get from a non-fiction book in way less time blinkist is a great resource to solve that problem the blinkist app enables you to understand the most important points made in a book or podcast in just 15 minutes blinkist has thousands of books and podcasts in 27 different categories so whether you want to be a better parent smarter Communicator or a more impactful team member a savvier investor blinkist can help with the help of blinkus you can discover New Perspectives broaden your horizons and have more exciting and interesting conversations my dad for example loves blinkus and he often introduces me to books I hadn't heard of or potential podcast guests from books he consumed through blinkist plus blinkus has a new feature called blinkus connect which allows every blinkist Premium plan to be shared by two different accounts with no additional cost that means you can invite someone else to join your plan and if they accept your invitation the owner of that second account will get complete premium access to blinkist get 25 off blinkist premium and enjoy two memberships for the price of one start your seven day free trial by clicking the link in the description box yeah yeah I do have I do have sympathy for him uh I think sometimes we can be guilty all of us particularly me actually uh of being too black or white or you know excuse me because that's what we're talking about the the pun I suppose but too divisive like you either hate some you love them and he had a really difficult upbringing not compared to people who can't pay their bills of course but uh his his mum died when he was I think 12 uh got no love from his father grandparents um was sort of he speaks of the way he was expected like at his mother's funeral to sort of wave at the press and things like that and he was very much like his book says brought up as a spare there's even a reference to sort of the assumption that if if William needed a kidney or something he was he was the one to give it um William and uh and Prince Charles at the time you know they couldn't share a flight together but no one minded which flight Harry went on and that kind of thing will get you because you can only compare to the environment that you're in so I wonder if what's happening is he's thinking this has not been fair to me we've seen this in literature and things like over and over the one who feels spurned you get it a lot in Shakespeare kind of thing you're like spurned you don't uh and and so he it feels like he wants he's like right I'm done with this I'm I'm out I think I don't know how much money he had but I've heard it might be like he would have had 10 million pounds or something like that right which is a bit more in dollars um by doing all this you've got a hundred million dollars for the Netflix documentary he got 20 million at least for the book and I'm not sure how much they got for the Spotify series and I guess that's enough to live on that's enough for them to go okay we made it so it might be that they go off right off into the sunshine now I doubt it because they're ambitious and they want to be in the media and stuff but that I would understand why they would want to do that you know what is Harry's ambition to have enough money to live on independently of his family perhaps I don't think of that as ambitious no but it's but I suppose it's an ambition outside of um what he would have had which is just sit there yeah and be the spare right no I I I totally get that I think um I mean it was clearly extremely frustrating and unlucky of him to be born into to be born constantly compared to the brother which is at some level something everyone deals with but it is magnified when you're in the public Spotlight and there's such a big difference between the firstborn and the second born in a sense that one is literally going to be king and one is is not that's a that's a psychological complex that could screw with anyone at the same time I I do wonder if you know by adulthood you are you are supposed to begin to take responsibility for your own mental health and stop blaming others and try to become a well-adjusted and non-bitter human being and I'm not saying that he is I again haven't read them he is he's very bitter yeah he's very defensive any interview any interview you see when people I feel like one of the reasons he's gone to America is because he's getting a bit of an easier time there in the UK they're pushing it probably because of what you said it is a bit more pro-royal or I don't know what he's getting a hard time from people and he's like he's pouncing before the questions even been asked whenever anyone's shed any doubt on his story yeah but we know that feeling you know that feeling right when you're when you're defensive particularly when it involves your your wife or girlfriend or whatever it might be I mean I'm I don't have like an aggressive bone in my body but I remember like the only time I got like close to being aggressive I was playing soccer like a mixed game with my my girlfriend and we all played together in like Argentina and this guy was being too rough like because it was a mixed game it was just supposed to be fun and he was like pushing me a lot he was pushing her and I lost my temper yeah and I remember I went up and I went and I pushed him like and he didn't move he was like much stronger than me and he just like was completely still which is very embarrassing for me because I didn't know in front of my new girlfriend at the time but it's so different like when you know there is that sort of testosterone comes out the teeth start to bear and he's getting that from like the world he feels are having a go at his girlfriend and that they're being uh racist right I mean I I totally get that and I think Americans I mean I don't think we care that much about Harry I don't think my perception is we're neither prone or anti and probably like I said there is an you know that there's definitely a level of Sympathy for the racism accusation in America I was talking to a um a black British friend the other day and Point she made is that in Britain Megan's light skin color among many black people would disqualify her from owning the black identity right many would say you are too light-skinned you do not actually know what it's like to be black and to be dark and you should not go around playing the race card like you do Now in America black people would not have that attitude despite Megan being very light-skinned no one would have a problem very few would have a problem identifying her as black and allowing her to identify as a black woman and so forth and that just has to do with the different ways that race has evolved in in both countries the social history of where that boundary has been drawn it's totally contingent what do you think that is well in America uh there has been intermixing between blacks and whites for hundreds of years since slavery so they're for a very long time there have been millions of people that are Meghan markle's skin complexion who were for you know up until 1964. categorized as black many of whom were categorized as black and therefore subject to second-class citizenship so we have a long history of seeing lighter-skinned people as black as just as black as darker skinned people whereas the UK doesn't have that history the UK has more recent immigration um from the Caribbean and from West Africa and a smaller population and therefore fewer mixed race people and also no history of a formalized apartheid system where lighter-skinned black people were legally and socially black so it become it makes more sense to to not necessarily accept that a mixed person is black whereas that's the inertia of American Social history it's so complex isn't it because I didn't know she even had uh any minority status at all for the first like two three years until the accusations came out and most people I've spoken to have said the same thing it appears the Press did know and that's where it gets murky because the accusations against the Press still stand it doesn't matter the rest of us didn't realize I thought she could have looked you know I grew up with a lot of Jewish people she could look Jewish to me right she could look uh Latina to me I just didn't even care yeah but obviously the royal family is this institution of very white it's the Church of England it's religious white group uh The Firm they call it and it's it's I think it's a little bit cult-like as well so it's it's not beyond the Realms of possibility that there was some level of racism coming from either them or or the Press do you think actually that it was I mean if you make the comparison with Diana's treatment who is as wide as it gets um and is the closest comparison case do you think that racism was involved in that into Meghan Markle I think there's two possible there's two possible um routes we can go down so one is that racism was part of the cause of some of the hatred towards her and some is that there's hatred towards her because she is somebody going into the royal family and not wanting to do the duties like Kate does and just like Diana did and that sum a small percentage of people in the media have said things that are a little bit racist so it wasn't the cause of it of the hatred or whatever but they've there has been some racist some racism in the Articles written about them my guess is that if it were not Meghan Markle but an analogous White c-list actress that came in a bit clueless about the crown and had the same kind of infights that probably 90 of the hostility would have been the same yeah so it's just that tiny extra percent and they weren't there are racist people you know because I think you and I have both spoken a lot against some of the Progressive Movement we call it woke but you're not supposed to call it woke anymore because it's sort of simplifying the whole thing uh and this accusation of um just like everything's racist right um and I went maybe quite far with that and I'm starting to have not second thoughts as such because I still feel that way but I've gone on a few more podcasts that are a little bit to the right and I've seen some of the comments and the chat just because I'm Jewish I don't even know how they know half the time and you come back from like so so Tim Paul is quite he's even like center right I don't think he's that far or anything you come back and you look at the comments and every other one is he's a j word he's a this he said that and I think oh okay there are a lot and even if it's only one percent of the world right or one percent of America it's still what three and a half million people who who would do that to whether a Jewish person a Latino person person whatever you know yeah no it it is definitely a big problem I don't know if I would call it Tim pool center right at this point I think he's yeah maybe drifted and and there may be in my view an audience capture phenomenon there because the kinds of topics he was dealing with five years ago compared to now seemed to have narrowed down to topics that only the right likes yeah unless he used to have yeah that's I mean that's a problem that all of us content creators can face yeah and some deal with it differently than others some go completely they get sucked fully into the the beam of attention and so forth and others manage not to as much um yeah I made 50 videos about Tom Cruise 50. yeah I think 50 or related to Scientology so maybe 20 of those what about Tom Cruise because they just did so well we had brought in subscribers yeah and people liked it and then you get people in the comments saying like you're obsessed with Tom Cruise I'm like no you are you guys are you're obsessed with Tom Cruise you're obsessed with Meghan Markle maybe we are maybe we're not but like you know I I remember when I used to work at um my first ever job I was 21 I worked at Harbor Collins uh book publishers and I was a bit snobby at that age just out of University had done my English literature degree so I was all into that stuff and um I was really upset to learn that some of these really nice books that I liked were actually losing money and this one that was Justin Bieber who like it was a picture book of like Justin here's Justin with a motorcycle it was Justin doing something else and that was like the biggest seller of all time times 20 for Harvard Collins it was like killing it it smashed like Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings all that stuff it just went way past that and I was because I was quite snobbish and you know new and out of school just I was like really upset and I remember speaking to my boss and saying what's what's the deal with this how can we do and she said like look you've got to forget that because that stuff is what allows us to print the really nice stuff right you've got to do it so I just said to myself right I'm going to keep doing all the interesting weird culty things and the the psychological stuff but you know Tom Cruise to me the beaver Paradox is the best example of of how thick all of our bubbles are right the most popular artists in the world and I've never met a single fan so what does that say what that says is the set of people I meet in day-to-day life is highly non-random highly selected based on who I am what I like and and I don't I think it was slate star codex Scott Alexander who who had this analogy that we are all basically living in Dark Matter worlds where it's like we're all in the universe but dark matter is like it's all there but you just can't see it yeah um that's what it that's what it's like to be in the world like we're all in these very thick social bubbles I meet people all the time on the street who you know are a fan of me and to them I'm a famous person right and they think that I'm getting mobbed on the street all day long but no I'm just famous in your bubble right like I I'm not a famous person I I could you know I I set this up misleadingly because I don't get stopped all the time right but when I do people assume that I get stopped all the time yeah of course um which is totally not true right I've never been stopped ever but there are certain you know if you were to get in a room with your hardcore podcast fan base many of them would assume that you are 10 times more famous than you are yeah because we all forget to correct for our bubbles that's true I get I get email and I reply and I try and it's getting harder of course but I try and reply as much as possible yeah and then people reply to that saying this must be a bot or an assistant writing for you this can't be D Andrew you're right it's a complete bubble thing um I find that I mean I was just watching Elvis last night the the movie and I thought exactly what you just said about Justin Bieber of course it's a little bit different but I I said I don't think I've ever met someone who I'm like hey what are you listening to and they're like just just some Elvis whereas Frank Sinatra yeah yeah mentors Rolling Stones me too stuff from the classical music Tchaikovsky fine I've never heard someone listen to Elvis you never heard someone listen Elvis never every 20 minutes set the clock again um so I mean that I'm very ignorant about Elvis's music so what I'm gonna say might be very ignorant but there may be some element of that uh which is that Elvis's music may not have aged as well as the Beatles and Sinatra yeah I think there is a big dynamic in music and art which is that what uh I mean I call this the Flo Rida effect right that song Low do you remember that song we should just do this yeah so like that's that that song when I was about 10 years old felt like it was number one for like two years yeah and I'm only exaggerating a little bit if you actually look at the it was number one for like wow a year yeah no one gives a [ __ ] about it now no one gives a [ __ ] about Flo Rida um and yet there are some there are Beatles songs there are you know Michael Jackson is a perfect example right you show a five-year-old Michael Jackson today odds are they're going to love it if you show Michael Jackson a five-year-old even more yeah sorry everyone yes Mike Jackson you're right that's lost so yeah there's you can't always tell in the moment which music is timeless and which music is attractive because of a cultural moment that's going to change some some music appeals to human nature mainly to quote a Michael Jackson song and others appeal appeal to cultural fads and trends that once they fade look very strange in hindsight there were some Elvis fans listening to this we're gonna disagree what do you mean hound dogs are beautiful yeah that actually could be wrong my general Point still stands even if Elvis is not an example you know what's an interesting one is uh Robbie Williams have you heard of Robbie Williams exactly so Robbie Williams and again people are you know always disagreeing or whatever listening I can imagine them all shouting in their cars what are you talking about is probably he's the most famous pop star on the planet and you've never heard currently possibly currently but definitely 10 years ago okay right there snow Robbie Williams I know you were in Australia right so you know one of the biggest pop stars in the world yeah okay Americans no one's heard of him but I'm not saying like it was a British sensation I'm saying like Argentina anywhere I'd leave Colombia you could go to like I don't even know like the depths of some obscure place and he is like like Madonna times 10 in terms of how famous Justin Bieber levels right nobody in the entirety of America and I think probably Canada has heard of him strangest thing ever yeah what's going on social bubbles yeah I don't know what it is if it's like his name was too similar to Robin Williams yeah I mean that's the first thing I thought of yeah I asked I got to interview Robbie a few for this poker biggest moment of my life I I cannot because I grew up as a you know he was my Justin Bieber you know when I was 15. right uh and I liked all the high you know the more the the radioheads and all those kinds of things but I was just like I went for a phase of being um proudly populist and I just loved him and it was just over the years I came to learn like no one in America knows who that guy apart from people with like Latino parents and lineage and stuff like that sometimes have because because he's so big in in other South American Central America but uh I had him on I was so excited but most of my audience are American so everyone was just like oh another episode right and I wanted to be like no this is like my thing with like you know much more famous than Justin Timberlake but Justin Timberlake guy and yeah no one cared you should have titled it more famous than Jessica I probably would have offended him but Americans would have clicked he's had like more number one albums in the UK than he's had the most ever and like some more than um The Beatles more than Elvis um The Rolling Stones like Matt but a pop star yeah I mean Americans we tend because we know we're the Hub of entertainment for the world we don't really pay attention to too much that comes from the rest of the world I mean it has to be incredible and Incredibly branded to really break through splicing America Spice Girls worked parasite that was yeah that movie was really really good I'm thinking of British Bands That Make It in America I think there are quite a few though aren't they yeah there are those of them but just Robbie didn't for whatever reason but even the British bands that made it in America they they almost sing with an American accent or an accent that is is not identifiably British like there's a lot of British bands you wouldn't know they're British from from the action that's that's what they sing with yeah that's that's like certainly you never know Adele was British that's called something I don't know what it is but it's like well firstly there's that Transatlantic accent you know that one that doesn't exist you know that accent in the it's in the movies 1940s ah what do you mean hey you're talking to me my name is George Bailey God Bailey you say wow wow that's an interesting name and obviously yeah no one spoke that way and I think there's something to that in music as well it's somewhere in between the two sometimes when especially when English people are singing uh and we I think I you know I like to sing a little bit and I used to sing uh a little bit American as well yeah and then we go through like a phase when you're 17 where you're like Auntie that and you sing really British uh so I don't know if you heard I mean the Arctic Monkeys yeah they've they sing not just in because it almost becomes like you almost like so it starts being a bit nationalistic almost so you've got Lily Allen generally Allen she's yeah so she sings very English as well but then there are even the Arctic Monkeys are singing Regional they're from Sheffield yeah and well when people sing English they don't sing posh English right they tend not to know because that's not cool it's just not cool yeah well hello I am having yeah there must be someone there must be some there must be something they're not thinking of who are like they sing really partially yeah the Beatles you I don't think sometimes they would sort of talk sing and you heard the scouse yes and yeah Liverpool accent uh The Beatles is that kind of thing would come out but uh Arctic Monkeys really do that without a Sheffield I bet that you'll work good on the dance floor yeah that kind of thing um but yeah what do you think of Trevor Noah um you know I haven't followed his work in a long time I did his podcast years ago and um argued against reparations and uh I I don't you know I'd love to go back and listen to that I don't know I I think he's you know he's pretty funny he's pretty smart and um I don't know what why do you bring him up he's made like headlines around here at the moment because he said that Britain is a racist country uh about the whole Megan as opposed to all the other countries yeah I think so he seems to be focusing on it he's from South Africa man you know like uh-huh like wow it it gets people's back up it backs up a bit and he's oh he said that like he said something about Megan but also about um Rishi sunak the prime minister at the moment is of Indian or Asian Heritage I'm not sure exactly where actually um and he said oh I don't know it just frustrates me because he put out like a thing saying like oh look at the backlash to this it shows that we're still living in a racist society and I've not this hasn't been any backlash I think as far as I know but this is a problem on both sides of sort of cherry picking the tiniest things um but yeah that's Trevor Noah for you when you give to charity how much impact will your donation actually have this question can be hard if not impossible to answer most Charities can't tell you how your money will be used or how much good it will accomplish you may know it could theoretically help a cause but how or more importantly how much if you want to help people living in poverty with evidence-backed high impact Charities I recommend you check out givewell givewell spends over 30 000 hours each year researching charitable 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the the claim that British that Britain's a racist country the UK is a racist country I mean when people say these things I think you know the only way that that's a meaningful sentence is if you're saying it's more racist than your average country um or especially racist relative to the rest of the world which to me is nonsense I mean I if you travel the world if you study if you get out of the West Western Centric viewpoint America English-speaking Western Europe Western Europe Centric viewpoint and study attitudes towards race in China and India in Russia in South America in Africa and you were to try to rank the countries in terms of how racist the average person is right and there are some studies that have tried to do this there's a global values survey about 10 years ago that was published in the Washington Post which just asked a representative sample of Earth's citizens everywhere how do you feel if a person of A different race moved in next door the finding was not that Britain in America were the most racist countries by that metric the finding was that were the least right and it makes sense that we are the least because in America's case um and in Britain's case I think we first of all there's Enlightenment values there's there's a um a goal of treating people as individuals even though it's not always lived up to in many places in the world that goal does not even exist that value the value that makes you a hypocrite when racism does surface doesn't exist right there's no hypocrisy to be had because there's no goal culturally or politically to not be racist bigotry is just so the norm and so accepted in most parts of the world whereas in our societies we have tried and made mistakes along the way to fight it um and then secondly you know we in America at least we've dealt with the challenge of trying to be pretty much the first large multi-ethnic democracy with no ethnic definition of what it is to be an American and most countries throughout history have said what it is to be a citizen of this country is to be is to speak this language and to be of this ethnic group that's so taken for granted that's what the concept of a nation-state is it's to make a state out of a Nation a people wow um America because of historical circumstances went a different route which is this is not a estate comprised of an ethnicity this is a state where anyone can be an American and that's a very difficult thing to do because then you get into tensions between people right it at some level it's much easier to say actually just we're going to put a fence around my ethnic group we're going to make it a country and good fences make good neighbors right yeah that's what borders are that's the logic of borders it's why they can help create peace because you're putting a wall between people that would otherwise fight and sometimes they still do fight but is the UK like the states in that sense um no not quite it is now more and more yes I suppose Church of England is the is that the head of the states right um yeah the UK is is is a different example but it's not it's certainly you know America has had this goal since the Inception sure um Israel is an interesting one isn't it because that's a nation state yeah and a lot of people anti-israel when I understand that and then I I am coming from a Jewish family and that kind of thing obviously I've seen over the years a lot of uh anti-Semitism or whatever you know like people everyone has of their own minority or whatever but it makes me keenly aware that or linked gives me a feeling that if Israel weren't there it could get worse things could get bad they might not if Israel were in their expensive deterrence a deterrent to to Global anti-Semitism or yeah just to something bad happening yeah you know my sister had to go to a school in in English went to Jewish school and I didn't go to school like that and I don't agree with having segregated schools like I don't like that uh or faith schools um but she did and it's like the security is like mad like barbed wire and stuff like that and it's like you know and when she's come out she's been chased down the streets uh by people shouting you Jewish this and that and again it's like it's it's so rare it's such a small percentage of society but it's there but there are definitely problems particularly like in France it gets really bad um and it can't there is a there's like a conflict between sort of some parts of like the Muslim population and the Jewish population that can happen sometimes so in France and in parts of the Middle East and stuff and where I don't know there's a fear and it might be rooted in nothing oh it might be rooted in a lot of evidence I don't know but there's a fear among a lot of Jewish people it could happen again uh that they get sort of grouped up and you know and there's just a feeling like no but that's not going to happen because Israel's there well that was the logic of Israel's creation yeah and it made sense uh that I mean the zionists from the 1880s onward decided that because of the pogroms in Eastern Europe that no one is going to protect us we cannot rely on the World to protect us we have to protect ourselves and that's why they founded the state of Israel and in the wake of the Holocaust the the world had quite a bit of well uh um of Sympathy For That rationale I mean what had just happened is that the world had essentially let Germany genocide the Jews and most countries had you know turned away Jewish refugees right like the world let that happen so the world could not then turn around and say actually no you guys don't need your own State at that time it made perfect sense and Aliyah made perfect sense right like that the notion that any Jew anywhere in the world that feels unsafe can come here and they will preferentially get citizenship over yeah people of other ethnic groups in most situations that would look like a racist immigration policy right in the situation of a group that has just narrowly escaped total annihilation while the world you know um while the world watched did did far too little uh too late that looks like a very sane and understandable policy now does that make does that policy make sense today I had Benny Morris on my podcast recently who's an Israeli historian um a preeminent Israeli historian and uh a big defender of Israel and would nevertheless said at this point Alia is not a policy he any longer supports because um you know the historical context where it was born is is no longer true I mean yes there is anti-Semitism in various places but at the time that policy was um sort of conceived it was realistic to expect another Holocaust in the short term right like there was no guarantee in nineteen 45 that it wasn't going to happen again in a year right we can we know with hindsight that it didn't but there was no prospective guarantee that you know a research in Germany or somewhere else wasn't just going to finish the job yeah yeah it's it's complicated as well I think because I think you might one might have a different perspective living in either America or Israel in Israel everyone's Jewish and it's sort of you know and in America it's really fascinating as a Jewish person from outside of America not everyone's Jewish 80 or something I imagine yeah yeah sorry uh but I mean like lots of people around you are and of all social Stratus is strata strata you know in every level of Jewish people you know uh going to America is great and fascinating yeah as a Jewish person if I'm outside of there because it's sort of really got into the culture in a way that it hasn't done in other countries what has Judaism Larry David Woody Allen total Seinfeld people you hear people who are not even Jewish say like calling someone a schmuck and everyone knows what that means and that is not an experience that those of us from outside of America have ever experienced you know we don't people they would know the word schmuck but that's that's about it um and especially outside of London so so I grew up in North London which is where most Jewish people grew up but as soon as you move away I went up to study in Leeds in the north of England and I they've never a lot of them there are Jewish people out there of course but a lot of them have never seen a Jew before people would make jokes when I got to University it was like where are your horns and where are you and all this kind of thing I was like okay again you know why oh you you can't think I'll say them that is actually the same in America about the rural oh right yeah so I grew up in and around New York City I grew up I mean I think the high school I went to was probably 30 Jewish I went to like six bar mitzvahs in seventh grade yeah um and but it was in a town called Livingston and they used to call it living Stein right that's what the Jewish kids used to call it sure um so I was very familiar with and I knew all the Jewish holidays I knew the song I knew the bar mitzvah songs I was very you know um it seemed very didn't seem like a strange thing to me interesting but if you go I mean there's many Jews I think Mark Cuban talked about this who grew up in other places you know outside of New York City which is where the vast majority of American Jews live in and around maybe a little bit in La a little bit in Miami but if you live anywhere else it's like you're encountering people that have never met a Jewish person and make all those crazy jokes about the horns and the money grubbing all those you know messed up jokes um and at the end of the day Jews are only one percent of the American population maybe two Less in the UK less than most is that right I think yeah wrong on the podcast but I think so yeah it's weird so I I feel like so that's when I guess a Jewish person living in Israel and New York might feel in some ways a bit sort of safer and those of us outside it's just stories about like getting chased and getting shouted and you think oh God thank God it is it is a comfort that Israel exists that doesn't mean that what is what does is right most of the time it's government and the the way they settle you know a lot of the stuff they do is awful uh I just like to explain it because most of especially on YouTube but online is like so anti-zionist and to be Zionist is like a bad word now and I'd like to explain just from I guess in a to sort of to sort of play or not play on but and what's the word invoke Inspire some empathy from people it's like I'm not saying Israel's great it's just like for us it's like thank God it's there and it is a weird thing like you say it's a weird like this nation state because it is a state that is I guess racist in a sense it is like you get preferential treatment if you are Jewish yeah if they were to just like say become one state with Palestine and to let um those people who are not Jewish in if it became more than 50 not Jewish then the state wouldn't be a Jewish State anymore they wouldn't vote for Jewish politicians so that's one of the craziest things going on today in like a non-racist world that we strive for you've got a country that clearly is and I sort of defend that do you know what I mean I do I mean I so I think we should acknowledge the fundamental good luck that our Nations live in which is to say the United States is not surrounded by five or six nations that are not a barely historical kind of sometimes to some degree current enemies that have invaded us multiple times within living memory um that what we're not facing I mean like the history of Israel since its Inception has basically been the history of being invaded and attacked um you know like you can talk about the the specific start and end dates of each war and each intifada and each you know Global campaign to you know hijack planes with Israelis on them right but if you look at a bird's eye view it's just it's just basically a constant state of deterring of combating threats right and and it flares up and it flares down but it just never goes away and it's surrounded and it's the size of New Jersey and so if you ask what is it that has caused Jews in Israel to Rally so much around their Jewish identity and to there's no separation of of you know synagogue and State there so there are aspects of the government that do privilege and that do privilege Jewish uh religious um you know practices they asked what is it that has caused that is it that they are more ethnocentric than you know Western European and American states or is it the fact that they are besieged and have their attitude towards group identity has been shaped by constant need for group survival it's something I mean analogy uh I think about my my friend who makes uh is that you know consider how America and Britain to some extent reacted to just two planes right hitting our bit we invaded and destroyed two countries yeah went on a 20-year sort of Forever War um you know imagine how we would react if that were just like a yearly occurrence right this is how people react when they are threatened you know 24 7 with rocket attacks with terrorist attacks with full-blown Wars and uh you know Israel has managed to defend itself extremely effectively especially in the last say 50 years um but the you know the consequences of its successful defense have been global Pariah status yeah I think there's no greater sort of there's no greater push towards sort of racism and things like that than the threat or like I think I saw some study where they got rid of they were able to mute scientists would collect sort of mutual amygdala the threat sensor in the brain uh and they did it on people who held racist views and while it was being sort of numbed uh they didn't hold those views anymore about immigration and things like that they were much more welcoming and accepting right so the threat is really that's the thing that's basically fear by another name yeah let's look at you know the the pandemic the start of it the way people we just lose our Humanity which is and we all do and this idea oh look at those people in that country how they're behaving with you know when you've got statistics of that that high you've got millions of people in a place where acting one way it suggests that there's something human about it that we would all that we would all do right so that that is my perception of Israel is there's the Paradigm of racism that people put on the situation and there's a paradigm of security and self-defense I I don't think that racism is the best way to understand uh Israeli treatment of Palestinians okay or or Israeli treatment of Arabs I think that we in the west because we have um a history of racism we we tend to graft that analysis onto situations that are quite different I don't think that the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians is very similar at all to the situation between black and white Americans historically or between white South Africans and um black South Africans I think what has happened in Israel is is a result of the you know constant threat of annihilation since 1947. yeah yeah well then so then I can hear people again like screaming listening to the podcast saying but they stole they stole the land that wasn't theirs and that reminds me as well as something that you've spoken a lot about which is reparations for slavery uh and that that involves sort of trying to balance Things societally based on the past I mean where do you where did you where have you where did you stand on that and has that have things changed over the years well I mean the first thing I I would I understand people say they stole the land that's not actually true historically the land was purchased largely purchased first from the Ottoman Empire and then from Arabs during British mandate Palestine so it wasn't stolen or or I mean not not initially and then land claimed and defensive Wars is not quite the same as stealing I think um but the larger point is that at some point you know every border that we take for granted on the map today almost all of them were ill-gotten in some ways there were many of them were the result of expansionist wars all over the globe um how did China expand this is its borders how did how did Russia I mean these are these were all bloody Empires that expanded their borders via conquest and rape and Theft and this is our um this is a history we're trailing as a species it's only very recently in the history of our species that we have viewed conquest and War as a bad thing so either we are going to litigate all of history in the court of of modern public opinion or we have to have some statute of limitations where listen yes many generations ago people did horrible things to each other but we have to while acknowledging that and taking it seriously and apologizing for it all of those symbolic gestures I think are very important those symbolic acknowledgments we cannot be holding people today responsible for the sins of their great great grandparents it reminds me a little bit of um the situation we have with the fog in Colombia and the IRA and Ireland where they ended up holding a referendum in both those countries do we just forget their crimes and you know blank slate and then they'll stop terrorizing us and I believe I'm right in saying that the eye with the IRA that's what happened to stop it going on in Colombia um that it didn't go that way so the fog can continued because the Colombian people voted not to forgive what they'd done so they continued in in action so it's that thing of do you just wipe a clean slate now and say let's go on I suppose what's Difficult about that well again I'm just thinking of the other side The Devil's Advocate people are saying yeah but because of those things today there are ramifications there are consequences there were people who there were certain groups who are less well-off than other groups because of that history and that needs to be addressed I don't know how you'd even go about doing that in any kind of Fair Way I don't think there's any scientific or real way to show how slavery affected any individual yeah my ancestors were slaves in America if I gave you some story about how that affected me that would be a BS story in other words it would be historical fiction I don't no one knows how these things affected you right yeah um but did you have did you I have no idea did you have quite a middle class upbringing yeah so so other people say well maybe not you but what about I'm just playing Devil's Africa well then what about my dad what about my grandpa you know what determines whether one person if you want to go down that road you you start getting into very weird hypotheticals like what if I hadn't my ancestors had never been brought as slaves to America and I grew up instead in Nigeria hmm so do we want to be going down hypotheticals of who has benefited and who has not benefited from history's crimes I think you know to the way on my dad's side my ancestors got to America was via slavery and the long-term results of that is that I was born in America which is the wealthiest nation in one of the nations with the highest social Mobility the ability to go from poor to rich um so is is this something we really want to is this a question we want to be pretending we know the the answers to in any individual's case you can't really say how these things affected in the long run and I think it's I think that people create stories um I mean people create stories and the truth is that we just don't actually know in any individual case do this thing is the reason I'm poor from 400 years ago my family we don't we don't really know much about beyond my grandparents my great grandparents and they would have been in Eastern Europe and we don't know just we know there was some vague story passed down about pogroms and things and they they were impoverished and they came to the UK and it took like four generations to sort of have some footing in the country um but we don't know because it gets like wiped and I'm fascinated I asked my grandpa uh before he died a few years ago like what was our name because it wasn't gold and even my dad was was Goldstein and he changed it to Gold because of like the anti-semitic attacks and stuff but gold is still quite obviously Jewish um but before that it was some Russian name and we don't know what it was and I asked my grandpa if you could like remember and he came up with some word and I didn't I asked my dad later I was like yeah grandpa said that was the word that's what one name was and he was like now Grandpa's you know doesn't remember that that's a Yiddish word that means idiot right so it was like I would definitely that's not our name then so or maybe it was you know because people did used to get named after their professions maybe my family were idiots I don't know but yeah so um we don't know and I'd be fascinated to know do you know I'm just I'm just out of curiosity do you know about your your lineage and your your people before you yeah my my ancestors in a in on my dad's side were uh slaves on Thomas Jefferson's Plantation Monticello The Gardener was named warmly Hughes and he's my six or seven greats grandfather and the only reason I know that is because it was Jefferson's Plantation they kept very close records wow wow do you think about about that do you do they seem part of you um I suppose you don't think six Generations ahead in the future do you no I mean I'm sure they couldn't have conceived of of me not I don't think about my sixth generation that's it yeah awesome which is a thought you know and that's something that I I feel sometimes about climate change now that's just me being really honest uh because everyone's upset and worried about it and they're right to be right it's it's this is bad if climate changes and the world goes away but a selfish part of me is a bit like okay well I want my kids to inherit a nice Earth if I have kids and then my grandchildren I can't really conceive of them but of course yeah I hope they're happy and hey I don't want my grandkids kids to be living in a desert but beyond that like does it I don't exist anymore and so nothing exists you know what I mean well then it's hard to be emotionally attached to the world that far in the future yeah but that's where philosophy and uh ethics I think can help you think about what is the right attitude to have because we should care about the long the long run future but the other's gonna die one day anyway sure but maybe by then will our technology you know Elon Musk will be seen as a caveman by the standards of the day and will be able to colonize a whole other star system would you want to live forever hmm in my current 26 year old body in a healthy enough State yeah Define healthy enough healthier than you are now I'm joking um yeah good like like you yeah why not 20 you're 26 or whatever in a robot body that's made good or whatever probably yes what about a 60 year old person's body ask me when I'm 60. yeah I think what happens is you start you know that there's that Beatles song when I'm 64. will you still feed me so uh it's so funny to watch like my or talk to my dad about that that kind of thing because like he grew up with them he's obsessed obsessed with the Beatles I mean like who from that age isn't uh how funny it must have been to be like a 20 year old like rocking along to that I mean Paul McCartney wasn't that Rocky you know but Rocky Raccoon but to to listen to that and then like they're past that age and my dad's like approaching 70 now and he says still like I don't I don't feel old yeah right we think at our age you're 22 I'm 33 and I think we think at our age like gosh being 60 you must you must but I don't I don't think that ever happens no I don't think I'll feel that way when I'm 60 I think I'll feel like up I want a lot more I want many more years yeah the one crucial caveat would be do I have to watch everyone I love die or are they Immortal too that's that Robin Williams film Bicentennial Man have you seen that he's a he's a robot who looks suspiciously like Robin Robin Williams you know because it's because it is him and he lives forever and over the years he keeps getting Opera as the technology Advance it's a fantastic idea it just wasn't well executed which is why you've probably not seen it because it didn't do that well years ago it was and it was Robin being very mawkish she gets quite you know and those sometimes he's funny and silly and sometimes he's very morkish uh like in Goodwill Hunting or something so he was like that kind of uh thing and it was and it was I liked it markish that's a word I've never heard uh I'm scared I'm getting it wrong now but I think Mork is just like over the top um saccharin or like when a movie is like come on like they're trying they're putting the music on so yeah he can be a bit morekish sometimes so can Jim Carrey right but but sometimes it's just right when they're rained in by a director yes it's just beautiful like in The Truman Show just if the director tells Jim Carrey you know no no stay still just don't overdo everything he's great um and so yeah he Robin what was my point oh yes over the years technology advances and so he gets like a more human arm and then a more human this and that and eventually he's basically a human but can still live forever so he has all the thoughts and cares of a human and his family his original family eventually died like 300 years previously but he gets close to each member of the family you know he was sort of like uh the house robot that was the thing so he got close to them all and they all died and it's such a fantastic and fascinating uh concept yeah and eventually he decides he wants to be human even though he knows that will be uh and it's not a spoiler because you're probably not going to watch it so but it is otherwise it is but he decides he wants to be human and has a real like heart and he you know the next day slowly dies uh you know which is quite sad um but yeah he has to watch everyone he knew and loved die so would you say no then to it to live in forever it would give me a lot of pause yeah because I don't know you know would I just grieve deeply every time or would I learn to become hardened enough not to grieve would I learn to not connect after a while or would I just get used to seeing to living with people and watching them die and still to enjoy it the first pleasure yeah I mean that would that would definitely give me pause yeah that's living in a world where just no one no one around me is even within 200 years of the world that I grew up in um maybe if my brain were like neuroplastic enough to really just always be adapting and always feel like I'm of my world yeah and I'm always up to date with how the dialect is changing I don't sound like I'm from 200 years ago I'm not crystallized in the time that I originally was a young man maybe then I would but somehow somehow I worry that the human brain may not be built to last that long and yeah adapt forever yeah and so I may just feel like I'm out of place in the world and life might not be worth living after a while I'd still take it though you still I'd love to live forever I don't know well the thing is like I think we've developed loads of coping mechanisms for the fact that we know we're going to die and one of them is to lie about how much we would prefer to be yeah Immortal right people don't talk about that enough yeah that drives me mad all the bad guys in literature want to live forever and they're portrayed as greedy uh even Voldemort that's that's the whole Harry Potter thing right into Harry Potter yeah I love it yeah that's like the first book and you're supposed to read it like what a greedy guy but I'm reading it like ah where's the stone yeah I need this Stone to live forever and Meanwhile we're we're like often trying to extend our lives as much as physically possible yeah while saying well that would be all right I don't stop short of immortality right yeah every like loads of people I've asked have always said like I think I'm just going to be ready to go and I'm like another question like that which I think is I think it's like too convenient is if you ask any man or woman whether they'd rather be a man or a woman they will almost always answer that they'd rather be what they are multi thing that means well it like can't be a true reflective answer on the question it can't be that you've actually like objectively thought about it if it can't you know it's too much of a coincidence that everyone says yes I'd rather be exactly what I am but it'd be better to be exactly what I am I think it's just because um it's what you know isn't it better the yeah the devil you know yeah yeah it's a it's a widow I'd love to be a woman for a day but if they answer that then I would say that's an honest answer I'd rather the devil I actually don't what you're saying is I actually don't know which is which is better to be yeah but I'm gonna stick with the devil I know I think part of me is quite sort of quite um it's quite an exciting idea to be around for the for a few hours yeah yeah maybe a few days yeah maybe a few days if I'm a few days you're risking you're risking adjusting to it and actually yeah a few days risks the per wanting to be it permanently and as a young woman if you've only got a few days you those few days have to fall on the right time of the month right you don't because if you've got those three days and it's your one time and you're bloated the whole time oh man the pain although at least then my fiance could be happy because it's like I've experienced that that's right because she goes around like punching me in the stomach for like three days every month right she doesn't really do that if you've seen those videos where they hook up a guy to yeah what is that what's it doing is it punching them or I think electric sharks or something it's never going to be the same no it's never gonna I would love I would love to experience the 26 or so days of the month that aren't that those days how long would you go I'm a scientist I can make Coleman Hughes a woman and what what is the amount why I say wait where you go that's too long I would say maybe four days is too long so I'm giving you the chance of a lifetime three days you can experience being the other sex yeah and I'm going but but it's got to be five days well if those are the only two options I think I probably would do it so we've got to get on to trans stuff then I guess the reason Tran stuff doesn't make sense to me and that that's not me saying I I don't you know respect and whatever empathize and all that stuff is because I don't identify as as a sex I just sort of am and I do like a verb and I don't know how do you feel that way I don't feel like I'm being I'm being man now no I think I disagree I think I I think because my biological sex and my self-concept align very neatly 99 of the time I think I don't there's nothing there's no dissonance to notice so it's easy to think that I don't have a self-concept for my gender right but I think if you if you force me into a dress right now I'd be extremely uncomfortable and why would I be uncomfortable it wouldn't be because I just have some like General aesthetic dislike of dresses I love dresses on women it would be because my the image I projected is feminine and and suddenly the dissonance would be unignorable I'd be I'd be crawling out of my skin wanting to get back into man clothes but that's cultural societal it's not it's not inherent and you'd get used to it uh no I mean it's it's cultural but it's also it's it's a fact that I do have a gender identity I think you think you do okay it's just very easy not to notice it when it's also in sync with how everyone else views you and with the genitals you have yeah yeah it's so hard because you might be right it's like I have it and I don't realize I've got it and that's what's hard for me to understand about people who want to be the other well you'd never notice it it's like a fish in water right you never notice what's around you until you experience something different just so much of it I mean one trans person I spoke to um Debbie Hayton or if anyone everyone just started calling me she all of a sudden I think it pissed me off I might note to everyone if you want to piss off Coleman keep calling she but wouldn't that well that wouldn't bother you yeah well I just like again it's beyond the Realms of my very very limited imagination because I can't see a set of circumstances in which people start to say what about her to me and I'd be like what yeah it would shock me but again it's about a lot of it's about the perception of others so this person Debbie Hayton who is a physics Professor who identifies as a woman I believe uh and you know and I sometimes do have a problem with it because it's like you know by growing hair long ago and stuff like that and it's like what is that what it means to be a woman having long hair and things like that and but then what she because she wants to be she it says about that is that um it's about it's about the feeling of the perception of others it's about how others view her she wants others that's what it is for her that was interesting to me and obviously all trans people gonna feel things differently but it's really interesting to be like oh it's about how others view you and then there's someone else I can't remember her name now someone Bornstein who used to be a Scientologist and a trans person as well who who said she did loads for like trans whites and stuff and then once she got to 70 she said like I don't really feel that anymore like it's like I'm still a she or whatever but I'm not I'm not that involved in my body my my boobs or whatever they are have sagged I I don't care about what my body looks like to other people so I'm just doing and being and that I related to that because I just felt like okay like I'm used to my genitals or whatever but if it's just I woke up one morning like a kafka-esque thing and it's like oh my God okay be a shock yeah and then yeah get on with it you know yeah that's interesting I mean I wonder that there's an analogy to people that have this what's the condition called where you don't think your arm is yours oh yeah uh I don't know what that's ghostly something like that yeah like having a ghost limb I mean there's been weird situations in life where just for me for like a Split Second you know I my right hand felt like my left and my left hand felt like my right I've had these just little flashes of yeah of of moments where certain strange things have happened where parts of my body don't feel correct and my guess is that I don't know what causes that but it's just a flash of what if it were extended all day would become a kind of dysphoria a deep dysphoria not a gender dysphoria but a literal like I don't think that my arm is mine is that thing not to get crass but when people talk about self-love there's that thing of like the people say sit on your hand for a certain amount of time before doing so because then it doesn't feel like it's your hands Coleman looked at my hand when I said I haven't done that remind me not to shake your hand off I never did that but I've heard people say that I've also heard people say I'll use the other you're less used hand again for that same sensation because ultimately a lot of that self-love thing is about pretending that especially when people are watching porn is to pretend that they are the other you are trying to almost be have that dysphoria feeling that you are you're you're uh living vicariously like self-love you mean masturbation yeah I was worried about the YouTube algorithm but you've said it now mate it feels so weird calling that self-love what could you say that wouldn't like kick off a a censorship thing on YouTube playing with yourself I don't know yeah that's that's too like um uh very British tickling the general I'm in the UK that's strumming the guitar yeah yeah that kind of thing so there you go well yeah I mean I'm trying to imagine if I actually woke up fully in the in the body of a female I don't know I mean I think I would be super alarmed but after a while I would have to accept it and I think I mean I think you know you'd be you'd be surprised what you can adapt to I think that's what I think yeah I'd be too tall yeah that's my bare women astrology it wouldn't look good yeah some six foot four as you can't be a no you just made some women very angry oh no no but that they look beaut they oh shh you're right I'm actually worried about that maybe take that bit out um we should we need to wrap up because we've got like four minutes left all right um where do you want to send are we putting this out on each other's podcast yes we are where do you want to send my audience to go so you can go to at coldx man on Twitter you can check out my podcast conversations with Coleman and you can go to Coleman hughes.org to become a subscriber fantastic uh I will send your people to also people should check out your rap stuff man yeah I I'm not a rap person right but my word is it good thank you phenomenal thank you and it keeps saying so until you feel you know what to say it's ridiculously good and the production the video so even if you're not a rap fan the videos are like worth watching you know you can check out Blast for me on YouTube blasphemies and I have an album coming out in early February called Amor Fati so check that out on Spotify so Apple music wherever you listen to music so good so good and then my thing is on the edge with Andrew gold we've interviewed many of the same people commonweisers a lot of the cultural War stuff as well I'm not quite as philosophical as or well spoken as in fact I don't want to put people off yeah come and go I am I'm really good look at that no it's a great podcast I love I mean there's so much so many interesting people from the fringes of various you know Cults former cult members former Scientology um just all of these very interesting you know people that you get so no I think you know fans of me would probably be very interested in it there'll be an overlap totally my favorite episode was a guy who um and he was in a plane crash over the Andes from Uruguay to Chile and uh had to eat his friends that's my favorite ever episode so that's it's only on the audio one so it's not on YouTube you'd have to find it on the other people find it on Spotify and all that but it's uh uh episode 53 and that blew my mind that one so there you go well on that note yeah thanks man thanks for coming on thanks for having me and thank you for coming on thanks for having me that's it for this episode of conversations with Coleman guys as always thanks for watching and feel free to tell me what you think by reviewing the podcast commenting on social media or sending me an email to check out my other social media platforms click the cards you see on screen and don't forget to like share and subscribe see you next time [Music]

Channel: Coleman Hughes

Views: 13,784

Keywords: politics, news, politicalupdates, policies, currentaffairs, political, society, highsociety, modernsociety, contemporary, intellectualproperty, debate, intellect thoughts, opinion, public intellectual, intellect, dialogue, discourse, interview, motivational, speech, answers, Coleman Hughes, talkshow, talks, ethics, intelligence, discrimination, music, Harry, MeghanMarkle, HarryandMeghan, AndrewGold, Israel, Palestine

Id: DiIyQvk8Sto

Length: 83min 27sec (5007 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 27 2023