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- [00:02]
Jimmy Carr
I think we're at the start of a revolution.
- [00:04]
Francis Foster
It's going to be a cheery episode, everybody.
- [00:07]
Jimmy Carr
While there are bloodless revolutions and there.
- [00:09]
Francis Foster
Are revolutions, how many bloodless revolutions can you name? Jimmy?
- [00:13]
Jimmy Carr
Look.
- [00:15]
It'S all, what if we were going to define a revolution, right? It's a replacement of the elites. The biggest drug in America is not fentanyl. It's not opium. The biggest drug is attention. You can be fantastically talented at something famous for that. You could be infamous or you could be a victim. And I see a lot of the, you know, the terrible problems that young people are facing. If you have a mental health problem, it tends to come from it's, you're alone too much. I'll talk about tax. I know a thing or two about tax. What if you just said under 30, you no tax. People are worried about the wrong thing. With AI, people are worried about losing their job, but I think you're worried about the wrong thing. And there's two other things you could really worry about.
- [01:02]
Francis Foster
Relax.
- [01:03]
Jimmy Carr
Relax.
- [01:04]
Chris Williamson
This isn't an ad. If you're not a fan of ads, but love trigonometry, join the thousands of Trigonometry members who get extended interviews. No ads. Early access and the ability to submit questions for upcoming guests. Sign up now@triggerpod.co.uk or click the link. In the description of this episode, the.
- [01:25]
Francis Foster
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- [02:24]
Jimmy Carr
Thank you very much indeed for having me. You're back from your big American voyage.
- [02:28]
Francis Foster
As are you.
- [02:29]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah, well. But congratulations. Amazing, amazing interviews. I thought when you were out there.
- [02:34]
Francis Foster
And most of them aren't even out yet, so.
- [02:36]
Jimmy Carr
Well, I mean, Even the early ones, like the, the Dave Smith one I thought was a, I don't know, like, I think, I think you could learn a lot from that, from the, not only the content, but how it was played. That was a wonderful conversation between people that don't agree about a lot of things. But it wasn't debate. I think there's a lot of conflation of the term debate and deliberation and debate is about owning someone else and it's about winning and deliberation is about getting somewhere. And I think like I, I, so I'm very, you know, positive about the world, I think. So 90 of people agree about 90 of things and then you have sort of 5% on the extreme right and left that think the other one is the problem. And then you get people that come together and want to have a conversation, want to kind of get somewhere and build something. And it felt really positive. I just, I loved it.
- [03:27]
Francis Foster
Well, we felt the same. And two things, two things. I would say there is one of them, there's a lot of credit for that goes to Dave. Yeah. Because you can only dance like that with a dance partner who wants to dance like that. Yeah, right. But the second thing as well is someone came up to us the other day and said, they said, you know what I love about you guys is what you do is you do sense making. And I kind of wanky term, what does that mean? What's it? And I said to them, what is the difference between sense making and, and expressing an opinion? And we, what we came out of it is sense making is when you actually explain how you got to your opinion, you explain the sequence by which you got to the views that you have. And then when you have someone like David comes along and there's two different opinions, they then both get tested and challenged and prodded in different ways. And then you can make sense of the issue by having listened to the different arguments.
- [04:16]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah, I think it's the analogy of the, the Overton window gets talked about a lot in politics and the idea of what's the most left wing and what's the most right wing thing you can say in polite society. And I think it's expanded in sort of both directions politically the last 10 years. It's gone to the right and it's gone to the left. You could now be there's neo fascists out there and there's people advocating for communism out there openly in the public space. Now, whether that's a healthy thing or not. I think maybe it is. I Think there's a huge opportunity in the center for someone to sort of take that, to take the liberalism in the kind of liberalism sounds very wishy washy, but it is a robust fight against authoritarianism which can come from either side, left or right. People seem to associate it more with the right, but it's the left as well. It's Michael Malice and the white pill and all the terrible things that can happen on the left, which is the forgotten lesson. We've only got one lesson from the last hundred years, that fascism is abhorrent. But the idea that communism is a terrible idea doesn't seem to sort of reflect in the same way. And I sort of view conversation in the same way. I sort of think you can apply the Overton window to things like comedy. Why go to a comedy show? Why come and see me in a. In a big arena other than, you know, please do. But that thing of like, why come and see a comedy show? Well, partly it's to. It's for the experience and you laugh and people release dopamine and serotonin and it's a variable reward system. And it's very fun to see a comedy show. Right. But the other thing is the conversation you have afterwards.
- [05:52]
Changes. Like the conversation between you and your partner afterwards is like, okay, we had a conversation like that. And then the conversation is like this. It broadens the conversation. It widens the Overton window of what you can and can't talk about. I think comedians coming out and talking about relationships and difficulties and sexual dysfunction or depression, it makes the conversation much more palatable. I think if you want to have a serious conversation, I think the sugaring the pill a little bit with some laughter is a very, very healthy thing. I end up kind of talking about quite serious things on stage on occasion. And it's kind of okay because the atmosphere is comedic. The lens we're looking through and comedy gives you a little bit of perspective. It naturally gives you perspective on something. It's Peter McGraw talks about this brilliantly. Have you ever had Peter on the show? No, I think you would love him. He's the guy that came up with the theory of benign violation. So this is the idea that jokes cannot be offensive because anything that's a violation. So a violation is something that's not the norm. It shouldn't be this way. Could be anything from tripping up to a genocide. Something bad has happened and you make it benign by making a joke about that thing. So those concentric circle or the Venn diagram overlaps and within that when something is a violation, and also you're making a joke about it, you're making that benign. You're making it okay. But by joking about it, you're processing that trauma.
- [07:15]
Chris Williamson
One of the things I particularly love, which is what you've touched on, is it broadens the Overton window. It expands what you can and can't talk about, but it also points out to you certain things that you didn't know to be true at the time. For example, now, this is in the 90s, so slightly dated. But Chris Rock had a routine about, there's no wealthy black people. And his friend pointed out, or it was an audience member who was like, yeah, but what about Shaq o'? Neal? Shaquille o'? Neal? And he went, well, Shaquille o' Neal is rich. He's not wealthy. There's a difference. He was like, well, what do you mean? He went, you know the man who signs Shaq's checks. He's wealthy.
- [07:52]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah, Shaq is rich. I think pound for pound, Chris Rock might be the goat. Yeah, I think he might be. He's one of the smartest guys I've ever met. I mean, he's extraordinary. He made this point about America just after. I think this was the night he got slapped. I don't know if you're aware, but he went to the Oscars and he got starstruck.
- [08:14]
But he made this point about the biggest drug in America is not fentanyl. It's not opium. The biggest drug is attention. And there's three ways to get attention. You can be fantastically talented at something famous for that. You could be infamous, or you could be a victim. What are people gonna go with? And then he built kind of a routine around that, but it was like, he's a. He's a philosopher. He's just. Just a brilliant, brilliant mind.
- [08:44]
Chris Williamson
And what's really interesting and what I love about comedy is it has the power to take on some of these complex ideas, simplify them, but because they're simplified, they're so much more digestible. And it's like a bullet. You just kind of whittle it and whittle it and whittle it and whittle it down to the point that when it has. When it's ejected, when it's propelled out of the gun, it will pierce you far, far deeper than just, you know, like an academic's broad point, like an hour lecture or something.
- [09:14]
Jimmy Carr
I totally get you. Because that thing of, like, what remains. There's great quotes from history that have remained. And there are fables and stories that we tell each other that have remained that are thousands of years old. What remains? Well, there's a truth to them. There's a value in stuff.
- [09:29]
Francis Foster
That.
- [09:30]
Jimmy Carr
That Lindy thing, Lindy books, you aware of that concept?
- [09:33]
Chris Williamson
No.
- [09:34]
Jimmy Carr
So a Lindy book is something that, like, it basically says the value of something is how long it has lasted. And how long a book has lasted is how long it is likely to last. So if you think about Crime of Punishment or the Brothers Karamazov, yeah. You go, well, hang on, that's been around a long time.
- [09:51]
Francis Foster
I love the confidence of France. People are still that one. And take over pronouncing the Brothers Karamazov.
- [09:58]
Jimmy Carr
This guy won't know.
- [10:00]
Francis Foster
Next time you start banging on about Venezuela, I'm going to Hablo Espanol.
- [10:03]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, exactly.
- [10:04]
Jimmy Carr
But that thing of, like, going, how long. How long do those things? How long have they lasted and how long will they last? So that idea of going, especially in the culture that we live in now, where it does feel like something odd is happening culturally, it feels like we're reaching. I'm a big fan of reading.
- [10:22]
Mark Fisher and Zizek. So Mark Fisher was a great British sort of social commentator, really. He wrote a lot about culture. He said, the 21st century is just the 20th century on better screens. Like, what great stuff is being made at the moment? Because you go, there's something missing at the moment. There's very few, um, you know, my business. There's. Comedy's bigger than ever, but it's smaller than ever, right? So there's a weird thing going on where you go, great comedy movies aren't being made at the moment. I've just made a film and it's getting a release. And that is as close to a miracle as I've been, Right? That's an extraordinary thing, because people don't make movies that are funny for grownups anymore. But that used to happen 15 years ago. That happened all the time. And we still quote those movies and we still watch them all the time. And we kind of find it amusing that kids of 17, 18, 19 are rewatching Friends in the Office. But of course they are, because nothing new is being made in that space. That's very odd. And then comedians, which is, we're on our own, so we're not part of an institution. So when you look at something like the death of Late Night in America and the idea that Colbert is cancelled, you go, well, that's odd. That's an odd thing now and then. There isn't a generation of comics that are desperate for that job. Most comedians now at a level go, no, no, I'll just tour and do my thing. I don't want to be part of the institution anymore. It's a very odd cultural moment that we're in, and I think it's linked to sort of broadly our society. What's happening as we reach sort of the Fourth Turning now.
- [12:01]
Francis Foster
What is that?
- [12:02]
Jimmy Carr
Well, this is Neil Howe, who's brilliant academic, he's a demographer. He's the guy that came up with the term millennial. He's been around a long time, very influential, and he wrote a book, I think it was in 1996, I could be wrong about that, called the Fourth Turning. And they've just updated the book. And it's fascinating. It's about how history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. And he talks about cycles in history. A lot of people are very cynical about that. I like the idea. So his idea would be that 1929 and the Wall street crash is 2008 and the financial crash. And if you look at the Dust bowl in America and you look at the Rust Belt. The Rust Belt. But you also look at climate change, you look at what's going on with the environment at the moment, and you look at the Spanish flu, and you look at Covid, you say, well, history's kind of rhyming. And you look at that. That financial crash in 29 and 08 is the beginning of the end. And it's a period of revolution, for want of a better term. I think we're at the start of a revolution.
- [13:07]
Francis Foster
It's gonna be a cheery episode, everybody.
- [13:09]
Jimmy Carr
Well, there are bloodless revolutions and there are revolutions.
- [13:13]
Francis Foster
How many bloodless revolutions can you name?
- [13:14]
Chris Williamson
Jimmy?
- [13:16]
Jimmy Carr
Look.
- [13:19]
What is a. If we were gonna define a revolution, right. It's a replacement of the elites.
- [13:23]
Francis Foster
Yeah, yeah.
- [13:24]
Jimmy Carr
And I can see that in.
- [13:25]
Francis Foster
Okay, that's interesting. Yeah.
- [13:27]
Jimmy Carr
So the elites are replaced. Okay? So you look at something like the BBC and what they've gone through the last month, you're seeing that's an elite organization, and it is in turmoil, okay? They're having a crisis at the top. Everyone is. The tea lady resigned yesterday. Everything's gone. Right. So. And that's being replaced by this. By podcasters and individuals. And there used to be an elite that ran this country since 1945. It has been labor and Tory, and they swapped every couple of years, but of late, you couldn't get a cigarette paper between them and it feels like, I mean, we could be wrong here. A week is a long time in politics, never mind three years. But it feels like at the next election those elites will be replaced.
- [14:19]
And it feels like, you know, so that's media, that's politics. You look at academia, academia, there's a replication crisis in the social sciences and physics has stalled entirely. It feels like the elites are kind of falling and they're being replaced. And that's, on the one hand, that is a.
- [14:41]
Very scary time to live through. And on the other hand, you go, well, also history says, well, that destruction leads to, you know, you get this from the Hindu religion. You go, that destruction leads to rebirth.
- [14:56]
Francis Foster
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- [16:25]
Jimmy Carr
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- [16:55]
Francis Foster
And we need it. I mean, let's be honest, it's not coming a day too early. It's come to the point where I don't think these institutions and these structures, attached as we may be to them. I mean, Francis and I talked about the BBC. We've just had an episode out with a BBC whistleblower talking about it. We love the BBC, we want it to succeed, but it isn't succeeding. We might be happy with a 2 center left, center right parties that sort of keep everything status quo, broadly sort of well tended. But the status quo doesn't work anymore. It's producing results that are so incompatible with human flourishing in our society that I just think the time has come for this. Right. It's inevitable at this point.
- [17:40]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah, I mean, I get the feeling you're kind of, you're an accelerationist, right? You sort of think, well, this needs to happen faster. I think it'll like how fast it happens is quite, it's quite important, I think, because it's got to be, I think a slow shift is quite peaceful. And it's that thing of like you go, you know, with a lot of hot topics at the moment. Right. So what's the hottest topic in the world is immigration. Right. And my view on immigration is we've got eight and a half billion people on the planet and our lifestyle, broadly speaking, is available to half a billion people and everyone else the game is up because everyone's seen that on their smartphone in the third world and they've gone, right, I want a little piece of that action. And we either import huge numbers of people or we export our institutions. And I'm a great believer that our culture is downstream of our institutions. The best examples really are north and South Korea. Exactly the same people, different systems come into play and then suddenly you have different worlds. And then you look at east and West Germany and the same thing, exactly the same people, different systems, different worlds. You could apply it to companies as well. What's the difference between IBM and Apple? It's culture. There's an illusion that Steve Jobs did everything. The one man band. No, it's a culture that he helped create, created a very different world. You look at Ford and you look at Tesla, there's IBM and Apple. Those are some nerds. But the nerds had a different culture and very different results. Ford, Tesla, some engineers, mechanics, very different results. And I think that that idea of exporting our institutions is probably the way to go. And we Seem to have lost faith. I think the other thing that Neil Howe would sort of talk about in the fourth turning is the idea that you go, as you reach the end of a period of history, you lose faith in your foundation myth. And we have lost faith in our foundation myth. Our foundation myth is World War II. And you could see it crumbling the last couple of years. You can see people starting to. We think Kanye west is a very good tuning fork. He's a genius. He's a genuine genius.
- [19:57]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, he is, but.
- [19:57]
Jimmy Carr
He is a. But that comes with a level of.
- [20:01]
A pinch of crazy, Right? So mad as a loon, but right about things. So he starts to. People start to question who's the goody and who's the baddie in World War II. The sort of most obvious thing you could think to ask. But people start questioning that and you go, okay, well, that myth isn't working anymore, that foundation. Why was America so successful in the 50s and 60s and actually in British society, why was it such a high trust society in the 50s, 60s? Well, because it didn't matter if you were left or right. You just worn the same uniform together. You had that thing where you came together. And it feels like, I don't know how you feel about this, but it feels like we oversolve now for the individual. In liberal democracy, we've oversold for the liberal, for the individual, and we don't have enough of the demos. And I see a lot of the, you know, the terrible problems that young people are facing.
- [20:56]
The mental health crisis, which is just. It's a. We should be talking about all the time. You know, there's a crisis out there.
- [21:06]
And I don't think you can solve that at an individual level. No, I think if you have a mental health problem, what you need to think about is your dispersed identity. None of us are living as individuals. We have a dispersed identity. You are who you are with your parents, with your friends and your peer group, your colleagues, you're all of those things. And if you have a mental health problem, it tends to come from it's. You're alone too much. Screens have not been the answer. No. We thought screens were going to be a proxy for proximity. We thought they were going to bring us together and it hasn't worked. And at some stage we need to face up to that and say it doesn't work in that way. Scott Galloway said a brilliant thing recently about talking about young people. He just went, they've got to go drinking. The damage to your liver is, is as nothing compared to the damage of social isolation, to get out there and have fun. I mean, you made a great speech a couple of years ago about. I think it was at ARC or something. I saw it online. I just thought it was fantastic. Because you talked about how we've got to deal in a younger generation. Of course, they've got to be part of this. They've got to feel like they've got skin in the game. I mean, I sort of think I'm fully in agreement. And my thing would be tax. I'll talk about tax. I know a thing or two about tax.
- [22:26]
But what if we didn't tax anyone in their 20s? What if we just said, under 30, you, no tax.
- [22:33]
Francis Foster
It's a great idea.
- [22:34]
Jimmy Carr
And you would say in that you would go, you're incentivizing people not to go to university and to get jobs. Okay. Which some people might view as negative. But university is a luxury item, and luxury items don't work if everyone has them. And 50% of people going to university doesn't strike me as equitable. It strikes me that university should be their elite. It's tertiary education. It should be for the elites. It should also be free. If you're studying something that grows corn, that adds to our society, which is, let's call it stem, right? If I was in, put me in charge tomorrow, I'd go, right? Go to university, study stem, and it's free. That would strike me as a very positive thing. You're dealing in the younger generation. You're going, okay, well, look, you guys are academic. You guys are going to go and do something else, but you're going to earn money and you're going to keep that money, keep all of it till you're 30. I think maybe tax between 30 and 60. And then we have to stop doing fantasy politics where we go, yeah, yeah, we're going to pay everyone's pension forever.
- [23:39]
Chris Williamson
We're going to.
- [23:39]
Jimmy Carr
We haven't got enough young people to pay for the pensions forever, so maybe over 60 you go, okay, again, no tax, no tax. Just do your thing. That would strike me as kind of an interesting way to cut it up.
- [23:51]
Chris Williamson
Do you know what comes to my mind when we're talking and the ideas that you're proposing, and I think why we have a crisis in the elites at the moment is that whenever I talk to my friends who are more of the, shall we say, traditional way of viewing the world, what strikes me is that they have an inflexibility of thought. And I say to them, have you ever Thought about this? Have you thought about this? Have you thought about this? Or this argument? They're like, no, no, no, no. That doesn't adhere to my worldview. But in this world that we're moving into, the one that you're talking about and the one that we're all seeing, you need a flexibility of thought. You need to be able to consider new ideas. You need to be able to understand that there's a technology coming in, AI, that is going to radically transform the way we live, the way we work, the way we interact with each other, the way that we see ourselves.
- [24:36]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah.
- [24:37]
Chris Williamson
And we're going to need to have to actually be flexible.
- [24:40]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah. I think that that thing about what's a revolution.
- [24:44]
Changes everything. Right. So if everything changes, how would you want to conduct your society? I mean, I don't understand. We'll come on to AI, because I've got some views on AI, but that idea of going, why don't we have a sovereign wealth fund? Why have we not got one in the uk? We're sitting talking on the day of the budget, and that would strike me as quite a radical thing to do. There are certain things that should belong to everyone, and one of those things is the oil and gas that sit under the UK and also the wind farms around the coast. All of that money goes to the Crown. Why that should belong to everyone. The mobile phone masts, that'd be a good thing, that you go, okay, I'm not a socialist, I'm not even for state capitalism. But the idea of going, well, that should belong to everyone. We should own that. And we should. And I'm not saying maybe we should restart the mining industry, but I would not mind it if our government said, yeah, we're going to mine for bitcoins. Our power stations just. They don't do anything at night. So we're going to mine for bitcoins. Great. New gold standard. Fine. Do something radical, something interesting with the finances of the country. Why does it all have to come from taxation? You know, I look at the Irish, I carry an Irish passport and I'm proudly Irish. The Irish just undercut everyone else in Europe on corporation tax to get the big tech companies to come there. Look, don't tell anyone Irish I said this, but why don't we undercut them?
- [26:13]
Why not? We left Europe. We haven't got any rules to follow. We're on our own. Why don't we just undercut and go, yeah, come here, start a company. It doesn't strike me as a crazy idea if We've got this new technology, AI coming then. This is precedented. This happened before the Industrial Revolution made our bodies obsolete. Because the Industrial Revolution said, well, we don't need you to plow the field anymore. We have a machine that will do that.
- [26:42]
98% of people worked in farming, and then they moved to the factories, okay? And now AI will. Any repetitive job that people have will be done by AI. Okay? So that's going to change everything. And maybe our minds won't be needed because AI will take everything. You know, you have people, and then you go, well, what are you left with? I don't know what advice you give young people now, but maybe be a preacher. It hasn't got to spirit yet. Be a priest. Very old school.
- [27:12]
Chris Williamson
And that's really what we need. And what I find.
- [27:15]
Francis Foster
Wait, what do we need?
- [27:18]
Chris Williamson
AI Priest? No, this kind of flexibility of thought that Jimmy is demonstrating. Because I look at, when I look at the left, I go, what are the new ideas? And they're basically going, well, we just need higher taxes. We need socialism. I'm like, that hasn't really worked. And you look at a lot of people on the right and a lot of. And they seem to be stuck in the same kind of limbo, which I think is why. Revolution, a type of bloodless revolution, political revolution.
- [27:48]
Jimmy Carr
But is that not the. You know, is it Zizek? I can never get his name right.
- [27:52]
Chris Williamson
Slavo Zizek. Yeah, I'm nailing it on the pronunciations today, mate.
- [27:55]
Jimmy Carr
I love his work. I think he's a really fascinating guy. I love that documentary, the Pervert's Guide to Ideology. It's like really fantastic movie. Look, he's a really interesting guy because he talks about. The future's been cancelled.
- [28:08]
Chris Williamson
Yeah.
- [28:08]
Jimmy Carr
He talks about this idea that you go, yeah, we're talking about communism on one side and fascism on the other side. We're relitigating the 1930s. What we need is new ideas, new ways of doing things. So you look around the world and I kind of think I'm very positive about life. And I go, lots of places have got this right over the years, and they've got bits of it, right? So why don't we just take those bits? If the UK is independent, if we go, well, why don't we take those. The bits that work and try those. It's also that thing of, like, going, it's a big country that we live in. And I like. I got an awful lot from British cycling over the years. Weirdly, in my comedy career, I don't like cycling. I find it very boring to watch. But I like the idea of incremental improvement. The idea that British cycling went, look, we can't get 10% better, it's just not possible. But we can get half a percent better if we, I don't know, shave our legs or if we, or if we wear heat packs on our thighs so we never cool down between the heats. And it was these tiny little incremental things that they did that just improved it just a little bit. I think comedy, I think life is a bit like that. It's not about repetition, it's about iteration. It's about changing things just a little bit every time and split testing. So you might have an idea that's crazy or you might have an idea that's like out there. Universal Basic Income, right? You might go, well, I think Universal Basic Income might be a very bad idea because it might away. Might take away purpose from people. And really, if you were going to design. Morgan Housel was talking recently. He's one of my favorite writers. I think he's incredible. But he was talking about happiness. What's a good design for happiness? And you go, well, independence and purpose. If you have those two, pretty good recipe, you're going to have it, right? So the idea, I think Universal Basic Income might take away purpose from people. But not sure, wouldn't mind testing it. We've got a lot of towns in Great Britain. Why don't we take a bunch of people and say, why don't we, why don't we try that? Try it for five years, see if it grows corn, see if it works. If it works, fantastic. If it doesn't, okay, we tried it. Like the idea that we have to have one system everywhere and not try anything. It's that thing of like, you want a mix of these things. You want like.
- [30:13]
A conservative, right? What do you want to conserve? Well, I want to conserve the traditions. What's a tradition? Well, a tradition is an experiment that worked. Okay. It's a progressive thing from the past that just worked, just worked for us. Great. And I also want to be progressive. I want to try new things and see what works in the future as the world changes. I want to see where do we end up with this. I think having.
- [30:39]
A sovereign wealth fund for the UK would be a great idea. I think having.
- [30:46]
Investing in infrastructure, but in power. We still don't know what's going to happen in the future, but you're pretty sure power is going to be important. We're pretty sure, we're going to need it. And anything we don't need, we can mine for Bitcoin or set up a data center here, whatever we're going to do. So the idea of going, well, we should be building nuclear power plants. I talked about it last time I was on your show. We should be building those nuclear power plants. And the idea that that should be a government bond you could buy, it'd be easy to raise the money, people would want to invest in that.
- [31:14]
Francis Foster
But this is why we need that process of rapid change. Maybe not rapid. We can discuss about the, the speed at which it should happen, but this is why you have to have the transformation happen, because you are talking in very creative, inventive ways, whereas the entire system feels very stuck. You know, they're just arguing about tax rates at this point, and it's about how high they should be, and they really should be as high as possible.
- [31:41]
Jimmy Carr
Well, I do think that there's been a radical shift, and I don't quite know where it happened, but there's been a radical shift in our politics in the last couple of years. And the radical shift is, I would trace it back to Hillary Clinton calling people deplorable. So people talk about a lot about gentrification and what they tend to talk about is like, oh, Islington used to be a working class area and now it's super fancy. And there used to be a Greggs there and now there's a Gales. That's gentrification. Very boring level of gentrification. Right. Buildings, whatever a neighborhood. I think there's been a gentrification of the Labor Party. That party used to be the party of the working man, and it isn't. The white van man now votes for. Would vote for reform, a party that's to the right. When did that shift occur? When did that happen with the Labour Party? That used to represent kind of the average working guy and it shifted. That's a big shift. And that's happened in America as well. So that's kind of. It's the. I don't want it to be end of liberalism, but, you know.
- [32:51]
Might be.
- [32:52]
Chris Williamson
Do you think, do you think that's what we're actually seeing here, Jimmy? Because I'll be honest with you, I don't want to see the end of liberalism. I think liberalism has many wonderful ideas contained with that umbrella that, I'll be honest with you, I think we take for granted in this country.
- [33:06]
Jimmy Carr
Well, I mean, that's the. Taken for granted is the. Is the theme of political Discourse at the moment. But it's the Robert Frost line, isn't it? The civilization is a clearing in the forest and everything needs to be re litigated, Everything needs to be looked at again. I'm a huge fan of multipolarity. Do you ever listen to those guys? Philip Pilkington.
- [33:28]
Francis Foster
Oh yes, I remember you recommending him, actually.
- [33:32]
Jimmy Carr
His book is fantastic on this. I think it might be the death of liberalism. Someone can google it, but it's a great read about how, look, this won't survive much longer because how can it survive much longer? That thing of you go, well, 1929, that financial crash ended in World War II. And you look at what's happening now, well, there's no world war, but there's lots of conflict going on. If you look at the Middle east, if you look at Ukraine, if you're watching this in six months time, if you look at Venezuela and Taiwan, you know it's happening. And why isn't it a world war? Well, there's different views on nuclear weapons, aren't there? Some people think they were used twice and it was the last shots of World War II. And then it's people like me that think it was the first shots of the Cold War and that nuclear weapons have been used every day since.
- [34:31]
That's why we haven't had total war. We can only have these little proxy wars. You look at what happens when people get nuclear weapons. You know, look when Russia got nuclear weapons and we had the Korean War and then China got nuclear weapons and we had Vietnam. It's like something like the power structure changes, the dynamic changes and we've gone in our lifetimes from a bipolar world. And then the Soviet Union fell and we were in a unipolar world for 20 years. And as that happened, tax Americana shrunk. Like the American Navy stopped investing in the same way because it was no longer in an existential crisis with an enemy. So it became smaller. And then you are looking at this multipolar world now, which is fascinating but terrifying. Jimmy, don't know where the cards are.
- [35:26]
Francis Foster
Going to lie, so just sidestep from the conversation for one minute. But we've become friends since I think the first time you were on. So I'm aware you have an incredibly busy schedule. You've got a young family.
- [35:37]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah.
- [35:38]
Francis Foster
You're doing two gigs a night often. You know, you've got a cold, you power through. You've got podcast appearances, media, etc. I'm sure you have businesses to run as well when you have Time to read all this.
- [35:50]
Chris Williamson
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- [37:15]
Jimmy Carr
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Chris Williamson
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Jimmy Carr
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- [37:47]
I've got nothing else to do. I like them. I like reading. I like keeping up with this stuff. I like, I like, like taking an interest. And I think there's.
- [37:55]
I don't know, I suppose that thing of like going all we have is time and attention. All we have in life and where are you going to put that? And I think a lot of things are.
- [38:05]
I find it fascinating. I find it like a. And I like.
- [38:11]
I kind of like. I don't know, this kind of. The podcast world has really. I suppose it's given me great access because you listen to a podcast and someone's fantastic on it. I heard, I can't remember where I first heard Philip Pilkington, but I just thought, this guy is right. This guy's incredible. And then you start listening and you get the book and you check it out. Or like, I remember, like, hearing Scott Galloway on someone's podcast, it might have been your podcast, and thinking, the only.
- [38:38]
Francis Foster
Interview we've done with him is coming out soon.
- [38:40]
Jimmy Carr
So, you know, okay. But he's like, maybe Chris might have been on Chris Williamson's. And just thinking, oh, that's interesting. I wonder what he's got.
- [38:46]
Francis Foster
Yeah, we're having a great conversation.
- [38:48]
Jimmy Carr
I love that. I mean, I, you know, but I'm not that busy. I mean, I'm in comedy, so it's. It's quite an easy business in a sense, because you know what the work is. You know, okay, I'm in need jokes. And any success I have is a lagging indicator of work I did three years ago. So you write the jokes and you, you sort of split test everything with an audience and you see what works and you put show together. And I don't know, I'm in the service industry and I make something that people like, I make them happy. They don't remember the jokes, they just remember how you made them feel.
- [39:24]
Francis Foster
That's very true.
- [39:24]
Jimmy Carr
So that thing of, like, going, like, tonight in Brighton, I've got 4,000 people coming out, but it's an advert for the next time I'm in Brighton. I've already got the money for this evening. I'm fine. Checks landed. We just stand and do nothing. And then it's that thing of, like, the thing that's taken off for me the last year. And it was a really interesting lesson in life of the difference between jealousy and envy. Like, I think jealousy, the politics of envy, it depends whichever word you want to use. But one of them's about not wanting someone else to have something. And one of them is about telling you what you want, telling you what to aim for. And I've always thought, like, wishing wells work, but not in the way that people think. Not the magic of you get the wish, but making the wish. Knowing what you want is such a huge thing in life. And I watched a couple of guys, it's about 18 months ago now, I was watching, like, Matt Rife and Andrew Schultz. I was watching them and, like, I'm looking at them playing arenas and thinking, wow, these guys are like, incredible. And then there was like a little bit of like Green Eyed Monster going, what I'M a good comic. I put a shift in. This is why are they. And then I thought, oh, look at how they're using social media. Look at how they're putting their stuff out there. And then I hired a videographer and I started filming things same way that they did. I basically said, okay, let's do that, and then started filming crowd work. And it had a real. It's had a huge effect.
- [40:56]
Francis Foster
I see your clips all the time now because of it.
- [40:58]
Jimmy Carr
It's really fun. It's a really fun. And it's a really fun mix of like, going, because I'm very careful to put out, like it's 10 funny to 1. Serious is my ratio of going. But actually that's kind of in the show as well. I like to have a few serious moments. It's really nice to have that light and shade and for it to feel like a live event where this is just happening here. This is something that we're all experiencing in the moment. And the screens are not a good proxy. Like the idea of going, the clips are great and they're fun, and I bet you smile when you watch them. But you come and see a show and you laugh and you release that dopamine. And the great illusion is I'm the only one performing. Actually, everyone in the auditorium is. It's a performative thing, being in an audience and everything we care about. I mean, I've talked about this before, but everything we care about is play. Everything, whether it's sports or comedy or theater or movies, sitcoms, this, podcasts. It's a spirit of play that we're sitting down, we're playing. And I think our whole society is built on that. I think play is upstream of cooperation, and cooperation is what it's all built on. That famous Drop one guy in the jungle, you fed the animals. Drop 10 guys, you got the apex predator. We're great when we're together and we learn how to do that through playing. And I think actually the social media stuff has been a real. We're not playing in the same way. Like, there's social media, weirdly, just lacks the social.
- [42:28]
Chris Williamson
It's a very profound point. I remember when I was drama teaching and seeing social media come in, we talked about this with Jonathan Haidt year on year, because a lot of what you do as a drama teacher is you teach kids how to do group improvisational work. So you give them a stimulus and you ask them to create performance around the stimulus, whatever the stimulus may be a painting or a. An event or a Prop, for instance, the.
- [42:50]
Jimmy Carr
Yes, and.
- [42:51]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, exactly. And so the kids go away, they get 20 minutes and you give them the tools in order to be creative and they put on a performance. And year upon year, I saw the kids become less able to do that because as social media came in and they were more on their phones, they were less able to listen, they were less able to disagree, they were less resilient and ultimately they were more focused on self. And when you take all of those things in, you're not going to be able to work cohesively as a group. And ultimately what you produce isn't going to be as strong because when people go to us about trigonometry, why is it successful? It's successful because it's the two of us and it's the team. And the moment any one person goes, it's all about me. It's over, it's finished. It's like any team.
- [43:38]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah, well, that's, I mean, it's kind of a worry, isn't it, that that's kind of the way things are going, that people, they're not just working from home, they're getting food delivered to their houses and they're watching things at home, not going to the cinema. I mean, like Ian was saying, I got a movie out, I, I, you know, made a movie with some friends and we wrote this thing together. I wrote it with my younger brother Patrick and guys called the Dawson Brothers. Great comedy writers. And we wrote this movie.
- [44:05]
Francis Foster
What's the movie?
- [44:06]
Jimmy Carr
It's called Fackham Hall. It's a good title, Fackholm Hall. But it's basically, I suppose, like movie maths wise, we just kind of went, right, okay, so we've got, we do period drama very well in the uk, but it's kind of slightly pompous and we do comedy very well. And everyone loves Richard Curtis. So we've basically done a Downton Abbey meets Airplane.
- [44:28]
Chris Williamson
Yeah.
- [44:28]
Jimmy Carr
And we've sprinkled a little bit of like Richard Curtis is just like, you go, you know, that kind of rom com thing. And it's, it's a really fun movie. I mean, I'm not like, I'm not a grifter. Like I would never sell something that I wouldn't consume. And I go, well, this is, I would go and see this movie. This is a fun date night. Like romp 90 minutes. You don't have to think about anything else. It's really silly jokes and I'm kind of, I suppose it's what's missing in our culture. Like People are. Not that my movies are the answer, but I want more movies for grownups that are funny in the cinema. I want people to go to the cinema. I want people to see it in the cinema with other people there. That's the aim of this thing. I mean, great if it's a hit online, down the line, but kind of. There's a lot of stuff online. I want people to go to the. To have that experience of going out and seeing something because it seems so valuable to me.
- [45:20]
Francis Foster
That's a very good point, and it's interesting. I.
- [45:24]
Couldn'T work out why I was so obsessed with it, but I joined the gym recently, a different one, and it's a fairly small one, so there's not a huge number of members. And because of that, particularly like in the spa air where I go to the sauna a lot, et cetera, everyone is super chatty and super friendly. And I've actually found that initially a bit startling, but then I've really, really enjoyed it in the way that I just never imagined. I am someone who used to go to the sauna to be by myself. I'd have my headphones in, right? Blah, blah. I wear the Russian sauna hat on my head, blah, blah, I'm with you. But now I'm the opposite. I'm like, oh, there's a person here, let's chat. And I think it's partly because we are just all actually deeply craving that human connection because we feel like we're connected, but at the same time, we're incredibly disconnected by these devices in our hands.
- [46:14]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah, it's. Tim Minchin said something. Tim Minchin said something. Brilliant isn't unusual. He's always walking around saying brilliant things. But he said this thing about.
- [46:24]
Road rage. If I bump into you on the street. Ah, okay. Sorry, man, My mistake. But, like, people tend to be cool if you bump into someone on the street. If someone cuts you up in traffic.
- [46:39]
Like, everyone's going, you know, people go nuts. And it's road rage. And that's just two screens. And then we've multiplied that by a billion. And everyone's kind of talking and things. And, you know, I don't know.
- [46:53]
It'S not great for the kids, not great for us.
- [46:56]
Chris Williamson
It's really not great for us. It's actually one of the things that I love this podcast. It's because I get to sit down with my friend, talk to another friend, and we have a laugh and a good time, and I learn something, or I have my ideas challenged, or I push Myself. And all of these experiences where in real life I don't get to do that nearly as much as I should.
- [47:22]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah, where's the space for that now? You know, because people aren't going out in the same way that they used to. You know, I don't know what. I don't think we've recovered socially from COVID from that lockdown, from that isolation. You know, it's tough. And to find your group of friends is like. It's a difficult thing. There's a lot of people that are incredibly isolated.
- [47:42]
Chris Williamson
It's difficult, you know, But Eric Weinstein has. I was talking to him about this, about the loneliness epidemic, and he said one of the most dangerous things about cancellation that people never talk about is the fact that when a lot of people get canceled, you remove their friends from them. And at that point, human beings become very dangerous because they're like, well, there's no way back now, so what do you want me to do?
- [48:06]
Jimmy Carr
Well, it is. I mean, that's. Yeah, it's a terrible thing about cancellation that. Because most of it happens not to famous comedians. It's like, really, don't worry about me. I'll be all right. It's happened a few times now.
- [48:19]
Francis Foster
Have you ever seen that meme of the guy with the noose around his neck standing next to another guy and he goes, you're the first time.
- [48:25]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah, that's what it feels like. That's great. I haven't seen that. But that idea of going, you don't invite friends round when your house is on fire.
- [48:33]
Francis Foster
Yeah.
- [48:33]
Jimmy Carr
And when you get canceled, it feels like your house is on fire. So it's difficult for people to reach out. But most cancellations are. It's regular people that have, you know, misspoke or said something wrong or whatever, and you go. And it's. We don't have, you know, we're not good at dealing with that. We're not good at. There's certain things that religion does much better than the secular world, you know, so forgiveness and, you know, shunning and shaming we've nailed online, but it's. We haven't nailed forgiveness and welcoming people back and, you know, letting people get on with stuff.
- [49:06]
Chris Williamson
And it's also that. That community element that we just need. Like, if you're going through a really hard time, it's such a human bomb to sit down with someone, just go, mate. I'll tell you, it's just rough. It's just. Yeah, we need that. And if you remove that, then I think that's when people get really desperate.
- [49:26]
Francis Foster
Yeah, yeah.
- [49:28]
Jimmy Carr
It's. It's friendships. It's. It's that thing. And it's also, you know, relationships. You know, your relationship with your other. I would say, okay, this is a guess, But I'd say 90% of arguments between couples are one person saying to another person, you are not enough people. Because we expect our other half to be everything to us in the modern world. And actually, it takes a village not just to raise a kid, to live a life, it takes a village. You need your friends and you need your colleagues and you need people that you see all the time. And it feels like you could go through life and not have that.
- [50:05]
Francis Foster
It's so funny you say that, because I think I've told this to people. I've said this to people privately, but it was only. It wasn't until my son was born and it had been around for a while that I suddenly. I found myself. I never in a million years would have uttered the phrase, my in laws are coming to stay for a month. Thank God. Like, that never would have occurred to me before. The difficulty level goes up and you suddenly realize what. Like, what families for, in a way.
- [50:33]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah.
- [50:34]
Francis Foster
Because it's about, you know, up until.
- [50:37]
Jimmy Carr
It's very interesting, though, that you say family, because I think a lot of people ask themselves in the world that we live in, do I want kids or not? And I think the part. The reason I don't want taxation for people in their 20s is because I want them to be able to buy houses and I want them to be able to have kids. And I think if you ask people, do you want kids or not, it's like, well, maybe I want kids, maybe I don't want kids. I mean, the issue is everything great about having kids is immeasurable. And everything that's terrible about having kids. There's a metric for, you know, you can wear something on your wrist. It will tell you you didn't get enough sleep.
- [51:09]
Francis Foster
Yeah.
- [51:09]
Jimmy Carr
And you will know that you didn't have enough time and that you didn't see your friends and that you didn't get to watch the TV show. And there's lots of things you can measure that are terrible. And all of the good things are the smile, the thing, the connection, the big things. But it's. I suppose it's resume points that you lose and you gain eulogy points. And ultimately eulogy points is what you want. You know, it's that thing of, like, you go, you spend a lot of time working towards the perfect cv, the perfect resume, but goes to nothing. What do you want people to say when you're gone? And it's like, I'm not a religious man, but I think there's something about having kids.
- [51:48]
Chris Williamson
It was.
- [51:48]
Jimmy Carr
Eric Weinstein said this to me at lunch. He said, I was talking about how much I'm enjoying being a parent. And he said, as he does silence. And he went, you will die.
- [52:02]
And you will be reborn as someone else and you will love them. And I went, oh, it's like a bulb went up. I went, all right. I kind of get what reincarnation is now. There is an afterlife and it's the kids.
- [52:15]
That's the whole thing. That's the purpose of this. And you go. Once you have that, and that's. That's a gift. Now the idea that there are people that are. If you want to have kids. Sorry, if you don't want to have kids, I think that's absolutely fine. Great. Make that decision. Great. My worry is people that are involuntary, childless, and we talk a lot about women that don't have kids, and it's involuntary, childless. We don't talk a lot about the guys. And I think the sadness is the same. I want that for people. And how do we create a world, a society where that can happen? And I think we need to change certain things about how we operate. You know, it's like the house building thing is really interesting because you go, why is China? But someone wrote a brilliant book about this recently. I just started about how why are the Chinese so good at building and we're so bad? Well, everyone in the west in politics.
- [53:14]
Everyone in America in politics went to law school. Most of the guys in Westminster, lawyers. And in China, everyone's a civil engineer. They don't think anything can't be solved with an engineering project. Very different mindset. So we just put up barriers and admin. And rules and laws. I mean, we need to get rid of some of those. We need to. I care about the green belt. I do. I want the countryside to flourish and I care about bees and all of that stuff.
- [53:47]
But trust me, much f. Ing less than I care about people. I care more about people than any of that stuff. And then certain things, you just. I don't know, the big swings in politics, they're not taking energy seems to be the big thing. They're not taking seriously because you go, it's built into everything else. So it's just naturally inflationary. We're paying four times more for our energy than anyone else. Because we're making, because we exported our sins. We basically went, okay, we're not going to mine for coal, we'll shut down all the coal mines, open them up.
- [54:20]
Chris Williamson
Again, get the northerners working. Jimmy.
- [54:22]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah, well listen, I'm sure there's people that would object to that. And you go, but on the longer term I would go, well, that should be what pays for a nuclear revolution. I think all Britain can be is an example to other nations. We're 1% of global output of carbon. So whatever we do is not going to make any difference at all. And I don't think we can stand here and say to the Third World or whatever we now call the third World.
- [54:52]
But that thing of like you go, whatever we do, you can't ask those people not to want to be.
- [54:59]
Prosperous.
- [55:00]
Chris Williamson
Yeah.
- [55:01]
Jimmy Carr
You know, because there's two different things here. There's the politics of envy, which is about the inequality in our society, which has never been bigger. And then there's also absolute poverty. And I'm much more interested in solving absolute poverty than the the politics of envy because we can't. Some people are going to be rich, some people are going to be poor. Okay, fine. But I want everyone to get to a minimum standard where they're looked after, where they have a roof over their head and they have good schools, good medical and they have the hope of having kids in the future. That just seems like that's the minimum standard and we should have that globally.
- [55:38]
Francis Foster
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- [57:06]
Chris Williamson
And what we need to do, and what I think you're talking about, is we need to make young people more of a priority in our politics and we simply don't.
- [57:13]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah, I mean, look, there's a thing about, like, if you have a conversation with someone about immigration, they'll often bring up, yeah, but look at all the doctors and nurses that we bring up for the nhs. And I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'll stop you there. That's a terrible thing to do. Right, on two reasons, right? Firstly, the people here that are from overseas working in the nhs. Incredible, right? And we need them, but we only need them because we haven't made a good decision at the moment. Right? So the good decision I would make is I would say medical school should be not a quota of 11,000 people a year, which is what it is currently. It should be a standard. And if you reach that standard academically, you go to medical school, don't even have an interview. If you're not very personable, you can work in the morgue, don't fucking worry about it. If you reach that standard. Because there's two things going on. One, we're robbing young people of their dream of being doctors and nurses, okay? Because we're importing cheaper ones from overseas. It's cheaper not to grow them yourself. Yeah, but ultimately, what's society for?
- [58:13]
Francis Foster
It's cheaper in the short term, but in the.
- [58:16]
Jimmy Carr
In the long term, right, you bring people in, doctors from the Third World. Then if you bring in a doctor from, I don't know, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, wherever you're bringing them from, it's not because they've run out of sick people there, it's not because they've gone up. You know, everyone seems fine, everyone's really taking care of themselves here. I guess we should go somewhere. Where are they? Sick people? The uk, I hear. It's not that. So you go, it's two things that those doctors are needed there. We need our, you know, to train young people here to do something. And the idea that we go, we're not. And you want to expand that, you go, okay, well, I guess. I guess maybe let's take summer gender studies budget away.
- [58:57]
If it's not. If it's not. If it's not growing corn. I'm not saying you get rid of the department, but you get rid of some of it.
- [59:02]
Francis Foster
Yeah, well, not, not to inflate our very good friends ego too much. To quote Eric in the same interview twice, but he, something he mentioned, actually I think it's 100 true, which he said there's no such thing as a labor shortage in the market economy. If you raise the salaries of doctors enough and if you create the opportunities for them to be educated into the profession. There's plenty of British people who are capable of being very good doctors and will do so provided the conditions are appropriate. And if you don't import cheaper people from outside, the conditions will be right for British people to become doctors. And then we've solved those two problems that you identifying it isn't actually rocket science, but we have become addicted to importing lots of things and also exporting lots of things in a way that just doesn't make any sense, as you said about carbon emissions and everything else.
- [59:50]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah, well, I think that thing about the energy being kind of the energy is prosperity. So to get that right seems to be kind of the baseline level. But you kind of need statesmen to do that, not politicians that are on a five year track because you need people to kind of plan for something and go, right, well how are we going to build that infrastructure? But I think if you had a government bond that was like, okay, well we're going to build these plants and you can buy this thing, I think people would be interested in it.
- [60:16]
Francis Foster
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean we've come full circle in the conversation because when you're talking about statesmen, maybe you just need a different elite consensus. I mean that's really what's been the problem. Right. There's been an elite consensus about things like net zero that doesn't work. And if you have, if we are at this point when things are changing, then the new elite consensus can be something else. And I think you actually put your finger on it, which is it's about putting human beings and our fellow countrymen and country women first. Putting human beings first.
- [60:46]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah. I mean, I think it's also about, you know, Derek Parfitt's very good on this Philosopher.
- [60:53]
Reasons and Persons was his book. And he, you know, talks a lot about how we owe a debt to people temporally and spatially. So everyone in the world, you want everyone to flourish and you go, but you but you also, you go, well, this. This little bit is our bit. How are we going to do that? How are we going to make it? I think not stealing doctors from elsewhere is probably quite a good idea. Let's go to where you need it. Doctors Without Borders is a wonderful organization, but it shouldn't be necessary. If there's doctors over there already, we haven't taken them.
- [61:23]
Francis Foster
Right.
- [61:24]
Jimmy Carr
And temporally, I think we owe people in the future something. And we owe people the opportunity to be dealt into society, to go, well, you can buy a house and you can do something. I think that some of it's quite sort of classist as well, the idea that everyone needs to go to university. Okay, but do they. Can some people get. Can some people do vocational training? And in general, I think the Germans do that really well, the vocational training jobs. And I think increasingly you're going to see that more in. In America.
- [61:53]
Francis Foster
Well, it brings us to AI as well, because, I mean, you talked about what you tell young people nowadays. Francis and I had a conversation. I don't know if you saw. Kind of wrapping up our America trip. It's one of the things we talked about because, I mean, look, terrifying, not terrifying. I don't know what the right word is because no one knows how it's going to go. But we went to San Francisco. We were there for a few days. A third of the cars on the road don't have a human in them. They're just driving around by themselves. They're weighing those, you know, the big AI stuff is moving. I don't know how quickly it will manifest and things that replace human beings, but it's moving pretty quickly. And when we're in New York, I don't know if you saw it when you were there, giant billboard in Times Square or somewhere there saying, stop hiring humans. The age of the AI employees here. And I thought that was pretty badly thought through, personally.
- [62:39]
Jimmy Carr
Wow, that's really Orwellian, isn't it?
- [62:41]
Francis Foster
A little bit. And also kind of stupid if you're that company, because you're putting, you know, a big mark on you, on yourself, I would think, in many people's eyes. But my point being, the world is, is going. I think the vast, vast, vast majority of people, including myself, until we went there, have absolutely no idea what's coming. And I think even now, after having been there, I don't think we know exactly the way it's going to take shape.
- [63:05]
Jimmy Carr
Well, it's the one rule of history, unintended consequences.
- [63:09]
Chris Williamson
Right?
- [63:10]
Jimmy Carr
So you go, okay, so the people are worried about the wrong thing with AI, in my humble opinion, people are worried about losing their job. Perfectly valid thing to worry about, but I think you're worried about the wrong thing. There's two other things you could really worry about. Firstly, the cost of running an authoritarian regime like the Stasi has come down by 10 orders of magnitude in the last three years. If you had to run the Stasi, if you're in East Germany back in the day, that was like 20% of GDP on spying on people and keeping an eye out. Okay, that's now you've got a bunch of cameras, you've got AI, everyone's got a phone on them, and we're tracking everything at all times. Okay, that's a worry because we live in liberal democracies and we're very lucky to. But our leaders, how long will they resist that temptation?
- [64:02]
Digital id. What happened during COVID Digital ID is terrifying. There's lots of lessons from history about digital ID that we should take very seriously. Because even if the good guys are in charge when it comes in, well, at what point does the world turn and people vote for a bad guy and then they have the power. More Jews died in the Netherlands than in France. You know why? Better records. Holland kept better records. So they knew where everyone was. That's terrifying. You know the idea of you go, digital id. Yeah, great, fabulous. Give them all the information. Great, fine. We don't know what's coming down the pike. I think that that thing about. It's about. And Thomas Sowell gets quoted a lot, rightly so. A brilliant man. There's no solutions, only trade off. You know, safety and freedom. Where do you want to be on that line? You need a little bit of both. So I mean, that's one thing for AI is okay, the job, fine. You might be worried about your job, but you've got transferable skills. And if you've got critical thinking and you're a smart person, jobs for life is gone. But you'll find something else to do. You will find something else. Great. You'll be all right. Trust in that. Trust in your independence. That if you don't work for that company or work for a different company, you'll find something. You have some belief in yourself and then the idea that you go running a authoritarian regime becomes very cheap. So we have to resist that. That civilization is a clearing in the forest. We need to stand very firm against any authoritarian regime, whether it comes from the left or the right, whether it comes from a good place or a Bad place. We have to resist that. The other thing is physics. So this is Peter Thiel's point, but minus the screens from any room were living in the 1970s. Right. So nothing's happened in physics since 72. String theory has not got us anywhere. But if you take the compute power of AI and point it at physics now, everything else in science is stamp collecting. Right. Physics is the real thing that gave us everything. Every bit of technology that we have comes from the physics department. And.
- [66:21]
What happens when you point AI at that?
- [66:25]
That feels to me like something that people aren't really thinking about and is incredibly. Could be incredible. We could have a world of plenty of where there's no, you know. If we increase productivity by 50 times and there's a human flourishing. Fantastic. I hope that's the world we live in. But it could go another way.
- [66:48]
Francis Foster
Indeed it could. Jimmy, it's been great having you back. We're going to ask you some questions from our supporters.
- [66:54]
Jimmy Carr
Lovely. I'm one of the supporters.
- [66:56]
Francis Foster
We know you are.
- [66:57]
Chris Williamson
Yeah.
- [66:57]
Jimmy Carr
I like this show.
- [66:58]
Francis Foster
Well, we love you. Before we do though, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?
- [67:05]
Jimmy Carr
I don't know. I think we need to triage the world's problems. I think we're very self obsessed in the west and there's a couple of things that I think we should address that would be relatively easy to fix that are huge global problems. One would be burning biomass. So people burn fuel in their homes in Africa and the east and that kills 3 million people a year. And that strikes me as it's an easy fix. We don't do that here and we let other people do that and we pretend it isn't a problem. It's a huge, huge problem, both environmentally and 3 million people a year, it's horrific. The other thing that's really boring, smoking. It's like Kaiser, Soze, tobacco companies. The greatest trick they ever pulled was making us believe they didn't exist. Because it's not a problem here, is it? People don't smoke as much here.
- [67:54]
Chris Williamson
No.
- [67:54]
Jimmy Carr
Or in the States. Yeah. Globally.
- [67:57]
Francis Foster
Oh yeah.
- [67:57]
Jimmy Carr
Worse than it's ever been. And it's a. It's. That's an easy fix, right? It's worse than it's ever been.
- [68:03]
Chris Williamson
Really. Oh yeah.
- [68:04]
Jimmy Carr
More people are dying now from smoking than there were 20 years ago. But we're not. So I guess no one gives a. You know. And that's an easy problem. To fix it from a utilitarian point of view that would Be a great thing to do. Like let's. There's some low hanging fruit, there's some easy stuff that maybe we could fix. That'd be good.
- [68:24]
Francis Foster
All right. If you're watching this in the so called third world, stop smoking and head on over to Triggerpod.
- [68:31]
Jimmy Carr
Oh, are people talking about my arena tour? Maybe people.
- [68:34]
Francis Foster
Well, before we go to. I was gonna ask you about arenas. It's a bit of a like insider baseball. But I was just curious because I've always imagined that a theater between 2 and 500 is kind of the optimum venue for comedy in terms of intimacy and whatever. Or is arena, the more the better?
- [68:51]
Jimmy Carr
I think it's, there's, there's different ways of doing it. So I learned from the best. I did some gigs with Chappelle in Australia and we played in the round and we were doing a 15,000 seater and it felt intimate, felt like a theater. Also the, the moment of walking out. Maybe the greatest moment in show business when you walk out and it's like a boxer because you've got to walk out to the middle of the room. No one is more than 2,000 seats away in the arena, you know, so you've got that intimacy and you just kind of turn. You got the screens above. It feels like a very intimate space. But it's about how you play it. If you're end on, it can be quite kind of in the distance, but it's. Yeah. And I do a lot of crowd work, so it's very important to me that people can join in and I can see the whites of their eyes and I can, I can make it fun. But yeah, no, it works.
- [69:39]
Francis Foster
They look really fun. The clips. I see clips, like I said, all the time. And it looks like you're having a good time. The crowd's having a good time.
- [69:45]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah, I think it's.
- [69:45]
Francis Foster
There's an occasional serious moment as well, a little touching moment.
- [69:49]
Jimmy Carr
You know, there's lots of serious stuff. I think that thing of like people. I'm open to that. I'm very open to the idea of going. Especially when people like text in or shout out whatever. If, if someone's, you know, comes to a gig and they're, they're going through something, I, I like talking about it.
- [70:03]
Francis Foster
I think it also works because when I'm watching you, I'm expecting a pedo gag. So when one doesn't come and it's actually you being genuine.
- [70:11]
Jimmy Carr
Oh, no.
- [70:12]
Francis Foster
Oh, I'm actually touched.
- [70:13]
Chris Williamson
And then you get the P dog.
- [70:15]
Jimmy Carr
I think people, I think People, though, everyone contains multitudes, right? And it's that thing of like going, since the, the pandemic happened. And I wrote a book and it was kind of, you know, Eckhart Tolle for Dummies. It was like a self help book that I wrote and I liked it. And I like that thing about going, look, I love coming on the pod and chatting about serious stuff and. But it's also, it's that thing of like, I'm so aware that I have a job to do and I'm in the service industry and someone's bought a ticket to my show and they go, right, I want to laugh for two hours straight and not think about the world. No problem, I got you. And within that there might be five minutes of, you know, a moment with someone. But even that's going to have, it's going to have that same spirit of play and fun within it.
- [70:56]
Chris Williamson
Bill Burr talks about that when they asked, when I can't remember the interview that asked him, what do you want people to take away your show? He said nothing. He goes, I just want to give them their money's worth.
- [71:06]
Jimmy Carr
Yeah, it's great.
- [71:07]
Chris Williamson
Best way to do that.
- [71:08]
Jimmy Carr
That's such a great line, right?
- [71:10]
Francis Foster
Pay five pounds, go to triggerpod.co.uk and you're gonna get five pounds worth of Jimmy answering your questions.
- [71:16]
Jimmy Carr
All right, I'll do my best.
- [71:19]
Chris Williamson
Are there any subjects or topics you wouldn't go near with a barge pole or is everything fair game in your amazing comedy brain?
- [71:48]
Francis Foster
Hey, this is Sarah.
- [71:50]
Jimmy Carr
Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and, well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling.
- [71:56]
Francis Foster
Even kind of cheesy.
- [71:57]
Jimmy Carr
But I like it.
- [71:59]
Francis Foster
Sure, you met some of my dietary.
- [72:00]
Jimmy Carr
Needs, but they've just got it all, so farewell, Oatmeal.
- [72:04]
Francis Foster
So long, you strange soggy.
- [72:06]
Jimmy Carr
Break up with bland breakfast and taste. AMPM's bacon, egg and cheese biscuit made with cage free eggs, smoked bacon and melty cheese on a buttery biscuit. Ampm Too much good stuff.