Megan thinks that I tend to go for the joke
rather than the truth in a conversation. -That's because I'm afraid of her.
-Not true. My name is Craig Ferguson. I'm a stand-up
comedian, actor, writer and talk show host. Darling? I'm also the husband of a very beautiful and clever woman called Megan Ferguson. She is my best friend
and the love of my life. But we don't agree on everything. I
sometimes wonder if we agree on anything. -You don't say, "That guy's a..."
-"Psycho-pathy"? Well, you don't say, "He's a psycho-pawth." Thirteen years ago we started
a conversation, and it has never stopped. -I think you're wrong.
-No. Sometimes it stops for a bit, for sleeping. In this programme, we try really hard
to get new perspectives on our discussions. Food is the new Internet.
You'll make plenty of money. -The universe is alive within us.
-This is magical! We get the facts
straight from the horse's mouth. And by "horse's mouth", I mean expert.
Not an actual horse...obviously. News today: Two murders and a robbery in less than 24 hours. -Do you hear this on the radio, honey?
-What? -Another awful thing happening to someone.
-Here's how you avoid it: turn the radio off. I know, but it just seems like every time
you listen to the radio or turn on the TV... Are you 100? Why do you always go
on the radio? Go online, look at your phone. -Why do you have to look at the radio?
-On the phone, online, is even worse. Psychopaths everywhere. Now they have
a place to communicate: the Internet. -"Breaker, breaker! I'm crazy."
-I think there's an abundance of... -...psychopathy.
-It's not "psy-chopathy". It's not. It's "psycho-pathy". If it was "psy-chopathy",
then it would be a "psycho-pawth". You can't have a "psycho-pawth".
It's "psychopath". Therefore, "psycho-pathy". Didn't someone talk about this
in "Late Night"? Jon Ronson. -He talks about the psychopath...
-The psychopath test. -I think he wrote a book with that name.
-He wrote a book based on a test... ...by a psychopath. Everybody is fascinated by psychopaths.
That's the whole serial killer movie thing. "Do you hear the lambs, Clarice?" That kind of thing. It's scary! But Jon talks about psychopaths. Maybe we could talk to him and find out
what the facts of being a psychopath are. -Why? Do you think I'm a psychopath?
-Give him a call. I'll call him on my special magic
show business telephone, shall I? Show business? Get me Jon Ronson. I can't believe it's "psy-chopathy".
You don't say "hippopotamose". -Some people might.
-They can't pronounce "hippopotamus". -How do you say...? I say "aluminum".
-I say "alu...minum" too. "Aluminium". No, but it's not
"psy-chopathy" - "psycho-pathy". -"Psychopathy".
-No! It's not a "psy-chopath". -How do you say...?
-"Psychopath", "psycho-pathy". -How do you say "capillaries"?
-"Ca-pillaries". -Exactly!
-Not the same. Don't you feel a little bit smarter
saying "psy-chopathy"? No, I don't. I think if I say "psy-chopathy",
people will be like, "Is he an eye doctor?" -Follow my lead.
-I will. -Aha! Ron Jonson.
-Jon Ronson. -We have a question.
-How do you spot a psychopath? Jon Ronson is a Welsh journalist,
author and documentary film-maker, whose works include "The Men Who Stare
at Goats" and "The Psychopath Test". In the latter, he talks to alleged psychopaths
and mental health professionals. He's an idiosyncratic journalist, a cross between Hunter S. Thompson
and John Waters. He's very interesting. Jon is the best person to talk to
about psychopaths, because he hasn't got a medical agenda.
He's interested and wants to report it, but he's not trying to force his point of view
onto the subject. I trust him in a weird way. -It is "psycho-pathy" or...?
-"Psy-chopathy". -It's "psy-chopathy".
-I hate that! This has been the big question. Would you like to come to the room
where I talk about psychopaths? "Psy-chopathy". Why isn't is "psycho-pathy"
if it's "psychopath"? "Psy-chopathy"... "Hippo", "hippopotamus". Now I'm thinking it might be "psycho-pathy". No, I'm kidding. It is "psy-chopathy". But no one's gonna kill you. I mean... A psychopath might.
But are all psychopaths killers? No, no, no. Most psychopaths aren't killers. The definition of a psychopath is
a 20-point checklist. Of those 20 points,
only one or two of them allude to violence. Is this checklist recognised by law? Yes. It was invented
by a man called Robert Hare in the '70s. He's a Canadian psychologist. And yes, in most courtrooms, Hare or one of his people will come in
and read the checklist. Because a high-scoring psychopath
is much more likely to reoffend. The figure for regular high-scoring
psychopaths is that 60 % reoffend. Because they have no memory
for punishment and no empathy, and that includes no empathy
for their future selves. -They're not thinking things through.
-Oh! OK. -Ah!
-Yes, ah. So they can't think that... -You can't play the long game then, right?
-No. A few items on the checklist have got to do
with them not playing the long game. One of the items is impulsivity.
You're impulsive. Another one is poor behavioural controls.
You lash out, you don't think things through. However, one of the items
is cunning and manipulative. Which is playing the long game. Can you say that if you want it to...?
It's like statistics. If you want it to tell you a story,
it'll tell you the story you want it to tell. This is the problem, and this is why many people find the Hare checklist
admirable and important, but then there's a lot of other people
who think it can be misused. Really misused. When you learn how
to spot psychopaths, you go power mad. -You start spotting them everywhere.
-OK. You'll wanna have that looked at. Did you start to analyse
people close to you? -All the time.
-Right. Oh... I'm trying to think if Craig has anything. Because of course you're like,
is anybody in my life a psychopath? Anybody close to me? Is my husband?
First I was like, am I a psychopath? No, I don't think.
Is my husband a psychopath? I don't know. I want to know if psychopaths
are aware that they're a psycho? Do they know that there's a problem? You could say somebody is a psychopath,
but how many have we talked to and said, -"She's a psycho"?
-Yeah? Notice how you say "she". -You don't have to do drop-off at school.
-I know who you're thinking about. -I do drop-off every morning.
-The soccer moms. -Psycho soccer moms.
-"That ## is trying to destroy me." Hey, you know what? Maybe... Maybe thinking other people
are psychopaths is a little bit psychopathic. Well... What's the difference
between psychopathy and narcissism? It's a really interesting question. Because the manifestation
of both of those things is quite similar. Lashing out, grandiosity... But I think
there's a huge difference at the core of it. A psychopath acts the way that they do because they have no empathy
and no emotions. But people who suffer from narcissistic
personality disorders are the opposite. There are too many emotions. They're
kind of broken. That's why they lash out. Can I tell you
how I got interested in psychopaths? Yes, please! How did you find this? I met a woman called
Mary Turner Thomson. She's from Edinburgh in Scotland.
She was Internet dating. And she met this guy who was like
really gallant, he'd open the doors... She's about to marry him and realises there
are things she doesn't know about him. He keeps vanishing off,
it's kind of annoying... She looks him up on Companies House,
a website where you learn about people. She discovered that he owned a house
in Gullane, a seaside town in Edinburgh. So she drove to the house,
and it was a mansion with antennae
and satellite dishes on the roof. -Like that guy who lives down the street.
-I know. So she confronted him.
"What's this house?" He said, "Look... Wait a minute." He was pacing up and down
for an hour outside on the telephone. And all the while her phone kept on beeping, and this message would come
on her phone that said, "ODCI Relay." He came back and he said,
"I've had permission to tell you." "I was recruited to the ODCI out of college." The ODCI is the CIA. He's American. He said, "That house in Gullane
is a CIA safe house." Was it all proved to her? Yes. He had
an office in the Houses of Parliament. Sometimes, she'd be going to the theatre
and he wouldn't turn up. But somebody would say, "I'm afraid
your husband can't make it." And then leave. One day she got a telephone call
and the voice said, "Are you Mrs Jordan?" She said "yeah". The voice said,
"I am the other Mrs Jordan." -All that time...
-I just got goose bumps. That house in Gullane was his other
wife's house, where he had five children. He told her he couldn't have children. Altogether he has thirteen children
from six different wives. But why would you do this? He impregnated women to rip them off for
money. He took 200,000 pounds from her. He was a paedophile,
a bigamist and a con man. So I said to her,
"Whoa, you must have been upset!" And she said the most amazing answer. "Does the wildebeest feel upset
when it's being chased by a lion?" "The wildebeest knows it's not personal.
He's a psychopath." "He's like a lion. He's like
a predatory animal. It's not personal." Here's a statistic: 25 % of the prison population
is a psychopath, but they're responsible
for 60 to 70 % of unrest in prisons. -Really? ## stirrers.
-25 % are psychopaths? According to the experts. Even give or take 5 %,
that's still an enormous amount. But would you call that
an epidemic of sorts? Can you treat it? No. Right now, there's no...
There's no cure for psychopathy. 1 % of the general public are psychopaths,
but 4 % of CEOs and business leaders. But what I've noticed from my daily life,
and I wonder if you have too, is that if you're working for a boss
who's kind of psychopathic, everybody else has to act psychopathic
to keep up. What do you do if someone in your family,
someone close to you, is a psychopath? -Or you think they are.
-This is bleak. I once said to a psychopath researcher
called Martha Stout, "If you're married to a psychopath,
what should you do?" "Leave. You can't hurt their feelings
because there aren't any feelings to hurt." -I thought what you thought: whoa.
-Shocking. -I can't offer that advice to people.
-No. I definitely know I'm not a psychopath.
That would be awful. It's a little creepy. Just that there are
so many of them around. Chillingly hearing that if you're married
to a psychopath, the best thing is to leave. Because they don't have feelings.
There's nothing you can really affect. I mean...how could you not know
somebody was that disconnected from you? It was a chilling thing to hear. There's something called
"the psychopath test". -Right. Where you test psychopaths.
-Maybe one of us should look into that. -Maybe that person should be you.
-No, I'm not taking it. Why should I take it? What if we found out I was a psychopath?
Whenever I kill someone, I feel remorse. So there's that proof. I feel terrible for days! So bad I had a cup of coffee
and thought about it...by the beach. -Do you have to pee in a cup?
-No. All right,
I'll take the test if you do that thang... -With my finger? OK. You got it. Deal.
-No, not now. Now that Craig has finally agreed
to take the psychopath test... I call it the "psycho-pawth" test. -I don't know how he's going to score.
-That's... It's so... It's dumb. -You know me better than the test.
-It's one of those little quizzes. You make me do these quizzes anyway.
"What kind of house are you?" "A thatched cottage
or a giant country mansion?" "Build a bagel sandwich
and we'll tell you a secret about your soul." It's fun! So this is just that but, like, sciency. -Amped up a little bit.
-It's not sciency. -Sure!
-A little bit. You have to answer these questions
completely honestly, and you have three possible answers
to each question: 0, 1 or 2. Megan, you answer it
as you think Craig should be answering it, and you answer it
as you should be answering it. And... I feel like I'm on double-double test. It's all a joke
and everyone's playing on the ouija board, and suddenly the hand comes out of the
grave! I don't think so, but it might happen. OK, I'll start with some easy ones. Do you lie easily? Do you find it hard to feel deep emotions? Would you call yourself
an impulsive person? -2 was "totally irresponsible"?
-Yeah, totally irresponsible... No, no. Just double-checking.
It doesn't mean that I answered that. The reason that I focus so hard
on Craig taking the psychopath test is to deflect from the fact
that I should be taking it. Make a big noise over here and no one
will notice what your as is up to over here. Next question: Would you call yourself
"sexually promiscuous"? -You know...
-Not in the least. -OK.
-Still a scale though, I mean... OK. Do you find it hard to accept responsibility
for the bad things that you've done, or do you always find a way
to blame someone else? It's always someone else's fault
with you, Craig Ferguson. I fear you're leading the witness! OK, next question.
It's poor behavioural controls. Do you go from 1 to 100 in a second? I don't think I have poor behaviour controls.
I control my behaviour pretty well given the circumstances, like having
to take tests that I don't wanna take. I have good self-control. Look at me.
- Quiet, dogs. Quiet! Shut ##! No, I'm fine. Finally... I've left the big one to the end. Would you say
you have no empathy for other people? So if the answer is, "No, I can totally see
the world through other people's eyes," give yourself a 0. It's 0, everybody! And that's it. That's the checklist. Whoa! And you're still married to him? Come on... I am gonna let you know how psychopathic
you are after adding up the numbers and email you my conclusions... It seems unnecessarily cruel! My guess is it'll show
that I'm a perfectly nice person. Sometimes. All the time. I have a film of a psychopath.
It's really interesting. I was trying for years
to get hold of this footage. In Canada in the 1960s, there was an experimental treatment centre
for psychopaths... In a place called Oak Ridge.
I have footage of Oak Ridge. Why do I find the idea of a Canadian
psychopath even more frightening? It just seems so un-Canadian.
Canadians are like... They're lovely! Unless you give them a hockey stick. This is a psychopath.
What's so interesting when you watch it is... An item on the checklist is shallow affect,
inability to experience a range of emotions. When he tells his story, it's almost as if he's desperately searching
inside himself trying to find emotions, and getting frustrated that he can't find
any emotions. OK, so here he is. Really,
I don't feel any guilt about people I kill. They mean nothing to me. It's like
reading about somebody in a newspaper. I can't even remember
what they look like or anything. I... I regret doing it,
actually committing the bad thing. I... Because it was such a waste. Here's two innocent people that I've never met. They weren't bothering me.
They were good people as far as I know. And I just shot them, you know. If these people would have given me
a really hard time... I have to honestly say that I think,
you know, I can't quite justify it. The idea is that looking for emotions,
he just can't find any emotions. That was filmed inside Oak Ridge.
The guy who was in charge of the unit was called Elliot Barker. This is in the '60s, so he was
a massive fan of naked psychotherapy. -What is that exactly?
-Basically, it happened in California. -Obviously.
-All these kind of blah people would... All these fancy Californians
would sit around in a circle naked... -Is this like "The Joy of ##"?
-Yeah. Paul Bindrim. People had to sit in the middle
of the circle with their legs in the air, and everybody else had to stare
at that person's ## for hours while Paul Bindrim pointed at them
and shouted, "This is where it's at!" So Elliot Barker... Not if you're a Scottish Protestant.
This is absolutely not where it's at. This is the last place you're gonna find it! -But what is it meant to do?
-Elliot Barker's idea... The problem with psychopathy was that
it's buried beneath the veneer of normality. So if you could, through these radical
sessions, get the madness to the surface, you could treat it.
So he gave them massive doses of ###... -I was waiting for the ###.
-Oh my gosh... The ###. That's the bit. Whenever I've taken ###,
it makes me so more willing and reasonable to let you know my emotions. Huge amounts of ##, naked for weeks
on end... These went on for weeks. After a while, they begun to be more
empathetic and they were released. Years later, two Canadian psychologists
did a study of the recidivism. -How many had gone on to reoffend?
-The "Where are they now?" Exactly. So, in regular circumstances, 60 % of high-scoring criminal psychopaths
when they leave prison go on to reoffend, but the ones who had been to Elliot Barker's
naked ## field psychotherapy sessions... 80 % had gone on to reoffend.
It had made them worse. -Yeah, absolutely.
-The reason why... The child murderer Peter Woodcock
was asked why it made him worse. He said, "It taught us how
to fake empathy better." Bleak story. Yes, but thank you for sharing it
in such an uplifting fashion. I had what I thought was an interesting idea,
to list and think about people from history, fictionally, historically...well, real people, that might be psychopaths. What we're saying is that you can't make
that claim for somebody who will sue you. -Right.
-So if they're fictional or dead... -Nobody can come after us.
-Exactly. -Teflon Fergusons.
-There you go. OK, I'm gonna give you
a list of fictional characters... -Bless you.
-Let's have a guess... ...an educated guess, psychopath or not. This person is not fictional,
but he's dead and he's certainly an as hole. Hitler. Psychopath? -OK, Hitler was definitely an as hole.
-Yes. When I started writing
"The Psychopath Test", I read this book... Somebody was diagnosing Lyndon Johnson
retrospectively as bipolar. I read this book and I thought,
I hate this book. Now, it's less unlikeable to diagnose Hitler
as a psychopath than to diagnose Lyndon... No one will be mad if you say Hitler was a
psychopath, but maybe if you say he wasn't. I presume he was a psychopath... He was an unmitigated ###,
whether or not he was a psychopath. -He was a ###.
-Winnie the Pooh? I know that there's a conspiracy theory
that Winnie the Pooh is a psychopath. I think it's a stretch. But I'll tell you
who I think is a psychopath. -Eric Cartman from "South Park".
-I've got Eric Cartman right here! Cartman is a psychopath. I know Matt
Stone, one of the creators of "South Park". I said to him, "When you were devising
Cartman's character," "did you look at a psychopath checklist?" He said, "No, but we did think about
the worst human being possible." It's interesting that somebody imagining
what the worst human being possible is... ...comes up with a psychopath. A character that somebody
who is not a psychopath has played... I may get skewered a little bit
by '90s women everywhere. I think Carrie Bradshaw
from "Sex and the City" is a psychopath. -Carrie?
-Interesting. Carrie spends all of her time trying
to figure out what other people are feeling. It's always her in another situation. Is it for her own manipulative ends or
out of genuine curiosity about other people? Good point. I still... That's my whole thing.
I think it is a type of human being. -It's not a pathology, it's a description.
-It's not a disease, it's a type of human. Since you have been drawn
to analysis of this condition, these people, this thing, this world,
have you become attractive to psychopaths who have read "The Psychopath Test"
and diagnosed themselves, perhaps? It's happened once or twice. I got
a couple of emails from a guy who said, "I'm a psychopath. I hate you
for teaching people how to identify me." -"I'm gonna kill you."
-Wow. My description of a psychopath before
talking to Jon was closer to narcissism. But Jon said a narcissist has
all of the emotions underneath, and it's just so loud they don't know
what to do, so they act out in that way, whereas a psychopath has nothing.
No connection. They can look at somebody who's
screaming and crying and just not feel what they're feeling.
That's impossible for me. But I feel like I've come across those people.
And it's a little scary. ...to your beautiful ranch. Sean Thornton.
That's the one I'm going for now. -Good to see you.
-Lovely to see you. -Enjoy your horses.
-Enjoy your horses. Good luck! OK, goodbye! Phew! Screw that guy.
Jeez! He's a psychopath. -Well... That was that day.
-Yeah. -I liked him though.
-I did too. He was good stuff. -Beautiful little hat.
-Yeah. OK, so it looks like I have
the results from Jon here. And I have scored you at an 11
on the psychopath test. -That's not a lot, right?
-No, I don't think so. I think you'd have to... -You have to be like 27...
-27 to really be in the red zone. What did I score me at? -It turns out you scored yourself at a 10.
-Oh! -So, oh, look... Best friends forever!
-Yay! I can't believe it's "psy-chopathy". -Never stop learning.
-Never stop learning. How do you say "caterpillar"? Subtitles: Jenny Gregory
www.btistudios.com
