Exorcisms, Rockstar Priests & Dangerous Taboos - Andrew Gold | Modern Wisdom Podcast 355

1. 0:00 – 0:24

   Intro

   1. AGAndrew Gold0:00

      ... where there are still thousands and thousands of these people all on the floor, screaming, crazy, and his voice I can hear booming through a microphone. He's now come out. They've lost their minds, and he's going, "The devil is in this church today, and he's trying to leave now." And we're going, "Oh my God, oh my God, they're all gonna kill us."

   2. CWChris Williamson0:20

      Andrew Gold, welcome to the show.

   3. AGAndrew Gold0:23

      Thanks. Thanks for having me.

2. 0:24 – 4:43

   Andrew’s Work

   1. AGAndrew Gold0:24

   2. CWChris Williamson0:24

      How would you describe what you do for work?

   3. AGAndrew Gold0:27

      I am (sighs) ... so the quick way of describing it, I would say, is like a, a, a, a much less famous and less talented Louis Theroux. Uh, for those who don't know who Louis Theroux is, or, or Lewis Theroux in America, uh, I like to document sort of weird and wonderful people and subcultures, quite strange, controversial people, nothing, uh, is too controversial, everything's on the table, uh, and trying to get to know why people think differently from, from why I do and from why we do, whether that's in video form, audio form or, or writing.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:59

      Didn't you manage the Page 3 girls for The Sun at one point?

   5. AGAndrew Gold1:02

      That is the best thing I've ever done, yes. That was when I started out, so I was like 21 or 22. Who got... I got in trouble for that recently, didn't I? Somebody was tweeting at s- (laughs) Oh yeah, somebody reviewed my podcast recently. They said, "I've really enjoyed the first tw- ten episodes. Then I heard he worked at The Sun. Not for me." And he'd just completely quit.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:22

      (laughs)

   7. AGAndrew Gold1:22

      And I thought, "How can you enjoy, you know, hours of stuff?" And then he found out I worked at a place he didn't li- obviously he was from Liverpool, and they've got a bit of a thing with The Sun. Um, (laughs) yeah, so it was my first job in journalism, um, and it w- I was working nights and, you know, the stuff I was writing was just so tedious and it was all like, "Rihanna poses without makeup," and I didn't even know who any of these people were. I knew who Rihanna was. And my- I was responsible at the end of the night for making sure the Page 3 girl, who, for those who don't know, that's the- they don't do it anymore, it was a woman on Page 3 of The Sun newspaper who had her breasts out. Um, and I had to make sure the 3D version of her went up on the iPad every night, which was, which was complicated because I had to- I was having these calls at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning with, like, uh, customer support or whoever it is off- or somewhere in South Asia-

   8. CWChris Williamson2:12

      Titty support.

   9. AGAndrew Gold2:12

      Uh, (laughs) titty support and I was just going like, "Look, the- it's not working and I can't go home for a bit."

   10. CWChris Williamson2:18

       "Sexy home facilities, they aren't here."

   11. AGAndrew Gold2:19

       (laughs) "There are gonna be a lot of people waking up in the morning who aren't gonna be getting their titties." And you could turn her around with your, your finger, you could sort of twist her around.

   12. CWChris Williamson2:26

       That is so fucking weird, man.

   13. AGAndrew Gold2:29

       (laughs) It's weird.

   14. CWChris Williamson2:29

       Like, that's the job that, as a 14-year-old, probably sounded amazing-

   15. AGAndrew Gold2:35

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson2:35

       ... and then as a 21-year-old wanted to- made you want to self-harm. Like, that's-

   17. AGAndrew Gold2:39

       (laughs) It did. It, yeah-

   18. CWChris Williamson2:40

       ... that's how I imagine the trajectory goes.

   19. AGAndrew Gold2:42

       It did, was like that, yeah. Yeah, it made me wanna, well, it made me wanna get far away from there eventually.

   20. CWChris Williamson2:47

       So what did you do next?

   21. AGAndrew Gold2:49

       Well, when I was there, um, (sighs) yeah, I had a bit of a... I had been studying in France before that a couple of years. I'd been getting really into languages, um, French of course, um, and I was just thinking, "I've gotta, I've gotta get out of this dreary The Sun place every night, you know, as we- you know, 5:00 in the morning, whatever." And I just thought, "Where's the place I can go that's the furthest away from any of this?" Um, and I wanted to learn a language so I thought, "Oh, well, I'll get something that's, uh, uh, similar to French, you know?" So Spanish was quite close, I thought, so where can I go? And I looked up Medellín in Colombia, because it's known as the City of Eternal Spring. So I thought, uh, it's like 25 degrees every day, blue skies, beautiful. So, um, yeah, I went out there. I just got- I got a f- flight, I couldn't afford it at the time, really. I got The Sun to give me, like, an article to do, to write about the flower festival in Medellín, and then I got, uh, an airline, I s- got in touch with all the airlines and I, I just, just on the off chance, I thought, "I wonder if this will work?" Uh, emailed them all saying like, "Look, I've gone, I'm doing this flower festival and I can mention your airline or whatever." And one of them gave me a free flight. So I got out there, and I wrote the piece and The Sun never published it, as far as I know, and then I just, uh, quit my job while I was out there and just stayed out there for a few months.

   22. CWChris Williamson4:08

       (laughs) See you later on, titties. I'm not dealing with you anymore.

   23. AGAndrew Gold4:12

       (laughs) Yeah, well, the titties out in Medellín were a whole different, uh, thing, 'cause I think it's like the, the plastic surgery capital of the world.

   24. CWChris Williamson4:18

       You're kidding me.

   25. AGAndrew Gold4:19

       (sighs) Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson4:19

       People flying out to Colombia to be robbed at gunpoint, get some drugs and come back with a huge pair of knockers?

   27. AGAndrew Gold4:27

       Well, the Colombians listening to this or people of Colombian heritage will not thank us for saying this, but yes.

   28. CWChris Williamson4:33

       It sounds like a good time, to be fair.

   29. AGAndrew Gold4:35

       (laughs)

   30. CWChris Williamson4:35

       Sounds like a fairly-
3. 4:43 – 19:45

   Meeting an Exorcist

   1. CWChris Williamson4:43

   2. AGAndrew Gold4:43

      Hmm, so I'd been in, um, after a year in Colombia I moved down to Argentina, which was, uh, a little bit more, uh, European. After a year in Colombia it was just like, "I need something a bit more like home." They have a different dialect as well and I wanted to get into that, uh, the Argentine Spanish. It's cool. It's like Italian and they do all the hand signals, the "Che, che, qué te pasa." Um, and yeah, I was there for, like, a year or two. I started making a few short documentaries about things like UFO hunting and, um, (sighs) what else? Infidelity. I got made fun of by Viggo Mortensen on the radio channel 'cause he's quite big over there. He speaks Spanish. Um, I went on live TV as well 'cause I, I had to defend this infidelity video I was making 'cause they were saying to me, like, "Why, why are you assuming there's more infidelity in Argentina?" So I ended up on live TV because of this Viggo Mortensen encounter I had in Argentina. Um, and-

   3. CWChris Williamson5:34

      So what you're doing, accusing Argentine people of sleeping around? Is there a lot of swinger clubs-

   4. AGAndrew Gold5:40

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson5:40

      ... in Argentina or something?

   6. AGAndrew Gold5:42

      Yeah, yeah. There, there were, there were at the time. Um, and there were nights, Thursday is known as, like, cheating night. It was just something I noticed and I thought-

   7. CWChris Williamson5:50

      Nationally? Is this like a national holiday or something?

   8. AGAndrew Gold5:52

      At least in Buenos Aires, and that's got sort of a big part of the population. I don't know much about outside of there. But they were (sighs) ...... yeah, I, you know, I wasn't judging. I just thought it was quite funny and quirky. You know, you're looking for things to make a documentary about. I didn't really care. But I ended up on a, on a radio channel, and there's a radio show there, um, where people call up, uh, to have affairs. So they'll call up and say, "Hello. I want to have an affair with my friend's mum." So they'll call the mum on the show, and they'll say like y-... the idea is, the concept is you have to say three normal things. So they would call, like, the friend's mum and say three things. "How, how are you?" "Uh, good. Yeah, I don't know why you're calling me, but, you know." Um, "What are you doing today?" You ask three things. And then you say, "Are you up for it?" Or some Spanish equivalent. And they have to say yes or no, and then they hook up. (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson6:39

      What's the success rate of that?

   10. AGAndrew Gold6:40

       (laughs) More than it should be, but I, I, I, I don't know exactly, but the ones I listen to, most of them are saying yes, including like friends' mums and stuff.

   11. CWChris Williamson6:49

       Interesting. All right, what about this exorcist?

   12. AGAndrew Gold6:51

       Yeah. Right. So I'd been there for a few years, um, and I saw him just sort of on the TV quite a lot, on the radio, this guy, and there was something about his face. He had like an arrogance about him, you know. He was telling everybody things like, "Right, you know, next week's, um, Halloween, so make sure you've got all your, uh, carrots and your this and that to ward off vampires," stuff like that, on quite mainstream TV channels out there. And I found it really frustrating. I'm an atheist myself, but even if you're not an atheist, you don't usually believe in that kind of nonsense. And, uh, people just took him at his word, and these, you know, professional presenters out there on TV, on the radio with him going, "Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah, tell us what else we can do, Padre Manuel, can we..." It was nuts. So, I got in touch with him and said, you know, "I'd like to sort of, uh, follow you around for a few weeks," not in a creepy way. (laughs) Um, and, uh, he let me come and film him.

   13. CWChris Williamson7:46

       I think even if you are religious, it might be even more insulting, like to have someone hijack faith.

   14. AGAndrew Gold7:53

       Hm.

   15. CWChris Williamson7:53

       Uh, 'cause, I mean, uh, I don't, I don't know for certain, but I imagine that the line between dousing yourself in, like, olive oil to ward off werewolves or something and, and creating s- crosses out of carrots and the Christian faith, I imagine that, that, well, there's probably a pretty big difference. I don't remember that from religious education in school, so I think, yeah, that's probably a bit of a piss take. All right, so you go see him, and then what's he like? What... Where is he?

   16. AGAndrew Gold8:18

       (laughs) He was, he was in the impoverished suburbs of Buenos Aires. It's really... Once you get out of the city, it's really, in some parts, quite, quite rough and, uh, quite scary out there. Um, but he... but also a lack of education, a lack of anybody that would tell the people out there that this guy was a fraud. Um, so he was either... He had thousands and thousands and thousands of followers, people who just turn up at his church and just, like, start fainting and convulsing on the floor. So I went to talk to him the first time, and there were just people around my feet, like, you know, frothing at the mouth. And I was like, "Oh, hello, mate," and he was like... He had all the time in the world from me because he saw me as English and potentially selling this to the BBC. He loved that. He, he was very PR-, um, prepared, you know. He had... Um, he played the music from The Exorcist, the Tubular Bells theme tune, that was in his masses. Um, he had posters of himself superimposed on, on, like, The Exorcist from the movie and other superhero movies around the church. So this was a guy who, who really liked the attention, so he loved that I was coming to interview him. He didn't at all expect that I might be quite, um, critical and look into his relationship with, uh, the women who had schizophrenia that he was, um, exorcising.

   17. CWChris Williamson9:32

       So is that what was mostly happening? Was it people with mental health problems that are seeking a supernatural solution?

   18. AGAndrew Gold9:40

       Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, I think that's, that's all that was happening really, 'cause un- unless you believe in the paranormal and stuff. Um, it, it so happens that (sighs) a lot of the myths and things that have been created around demons and exorcisms and all these kinds of things, um, are very close to real mental health disorders, which is... I mean, that's how that happened. That's how the idea of exorcism came to be, because over the centuries, uh, before modern medicine and modern views on mental health, people would be seen maybe shaking or having intrusive thoughts, whether it's OCD or schizophrenia, um, and that kind of thing. Um, anorexia, bulimia as well. If you don't have science-

   19. CWChris Williamson10:19

       I mean, imagine what, imagine what an epileptic fit must look like if you don't know what that is.

   20. AGAndrew Gold10:24

       100%. Exactly. And, and, uh, you know, what else are you gonna say hundreds of years ago, other than, "Well, it must be God is not happy. There's a demon. What can we do?" So (sighs) he was actually taking young women mostly, they were mostly young women, from a psychiatric ward nearby, um, who were suffering with schizophrenia. And I went and spoke to the doctors there, um, as part of this film for the BBC, and they said, "It, it happens all the time. It's not just this guy. There are people coming. They get in these people's heads. Uh, once they're 18 or 19, a lot of them are allowed to check themselves out, and they do so, and they go to the exorcist to be cured." The amazing thing is, they, they do get better generally, but it's a temporary fix. But it's, it's such a jolt of energy, an exorcism, it's just the... it's the most remarkable thing I've ever seen and witnessed. So, yeah, that's, that's the complicated thing about exorcism.

   21. CWChris Williamson11:18

       What's it like being in the room while someone's doing that?

   22. AGAndrew Gold11:21

       Scary as hell. Yeah. Can you swear in this? I just gonna say it's scary as-

   23. CWChris Williamson11:24

       Swear away.

   24. AGAndrew Gold11:25

       Scary as fuck. Um, (laughs) it was really scary and, and, uh, problematic in, in some ways as well, uh, because I had, you know, obviously grown up watching Louis Theroux, and I wanted to do this sort of, you know, sideways glance at it, and it might... I thought this would be funny. Um, so I went in just with my director, David Hayes, who's, you know, a good friend of mine since we were young, and we just thought we wanted to make this film together. And we were... we thought it was gonna be funny, so I decided I would take part in it. So the first exorcism, um, the exorcist handed me these bells, and he said, "These bells ward off the devil." So I'm standing basically above this woman's head. She's lying on the floor before me, and I'm ringing these bells, um, hoping to, you know, ward off the devil or whatever.... and all I was thinking was, "Wow, this is really inappropriate, actually. This isn't funny. This is somebody with a, a horrible mental health, health, uh, breakdown she's having." Um, and that's when I thought, "Right, from now on, any exorcists, if we film another exorcism, I'm not partaking and we can watch-"

   25. CWChris Williamson12:24

       You're not going to be complicit in this-

   26. AGAndrew Gold12:25

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson12:26

       ... weird ritual. So what happens from there?

   28. AGAndrew Gold12:28

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson12:28

       What, like, uh, roll the clock forward. So you spend some time with them, you start speaking to some of the, what are they, patients? Like, followers?

   30. AGAndrew Gold12:35

       Hmm, I (laughs) I've, I struggled knowing what to say as well. Yeah, I say patients, I suppose, but that implies there's some medical thing going on. Um, yeah, well we've, we followed, um... The first woman was a woman called Natalia who had some form of schizophrenia, I think, and then there was somebody called Candela who was 17 years old slitting her wrists. She had bulimia, anorexia, a lot of stuff that happens in adolescence, that, that kind of, uh, peer pressure she had, and, and nobody to tell her that's common, you know, so she assumed it was exorcism. Um, after that, they have to look at themselves in some sort of holy mirror and the fact that they're able to actually look in the mirror, according to the exorcist, means that they're cured. He always wins. I asked him, "Do you ever not win?" And he said, "No, we always beat the devil." I said, "All right, fair enough." And, yeah, I suppose I was sort of making fun of him a bit still, um, I was asking him more and more outlandish, ridiculous things like, you know, "So there are vampires coming here?" And he's like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, we've seen a lot of vampires." Uh, sort of pushing to see at what point he might snap, you know, I, I, I enjoy doing that, I guess. As time went on, we realized that his assistant was this woman called Paola, who, um, was in her 20s or so, and she had been exorcised by him. We didn't realize this at first, and it was his most famous exorcism, it's called the Exorcism of Laura. She changed her name from Laura, or Laura, to Paola or Pola. Um, and she had stayed by his side since her exorcism, and now I've tracked down her, you know, doctor and everything, she had also had schizophrenia, she'd been, spent her teenage years, uh, living in a psychiatric ward, um, and now was just with this exorcist guy, and we didn't know what was happening with them exactly. Um, all I knew is that they seemed to go upstairs, which is where the padre or the father lived, um, and we got word from some of the clergy working at the church that they were a bit close, and this and that. And something very strange happened, which was that there was another journalist there at the church at the same time as me, but he was very much a friend of the, the priests, and he worked for the equivalent of The Sun, uh, in Argentina, so he's a loving reporter-
4. 19:45 – 27:28

   Pitching a Documentary to BBC

   1. AGAndrew Gold19:45

   2. CWChris Williamson19:45

      Fuck, man. All right, so how do you... Who... You... The BBC picked it up, right?

   3. AGAndrew Gold19:50

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson19:51

      How do you sell it to them? How do you say, "I've got this guy who might be crossing the boundaries of what a parishioner should do. Put it on your TV show"?

   5. AGAndrew Gold20:02

      Hm, well, I had mentioned to a couple of commissioners and things before, doing it, to see if they would commission it, you know, and, uh, they took a meeting with me and then they just didn't quite take it. It's very hard to sell, uh, ideas outside of the UK, or America maybe at a push, um, and especially foreign language stuff, which I think is a shame 'cause when we do have foreign language stuff on TV, documentaries and things, Stacey Dooley, Louis Theroux, whatever, they're talking through translators, and it's, you know, there's a lot that's lost there. You couldn't have that kind of argument we had, for example. Um, but they didn't want it, so fine. Um, once it was done, I, yeah, I got back in touch with all those people saying like, "No, no, no, you, you've got to see this." Me and David spent months editing it, putting it together. And like in, you know, all industries or whatever, you know, they just didn't reply. Um, it took about two years of just going on LinkedIn every day, finding the names of different BBC, Channel 4, like everyone, and guessing their email addresses, and just, I probably sent... You know, there's an old thing, isn't there, about like the Beatles, they got rejected five times or whatever, and Harry Potter was rejected five times before, you know, it got... And I just used to look at those sort of quotes and things, and think, "I got rejected five times before breakfast this morning," you know, every day for two years, and eventu- and I was looking at the Vimeo where we, where we uploaded the video, just looking at the stats. Nobody ever watched it. Like, one or two did, the head of Channel 4 did at one point at the ti- at the time, and then just said it was his- he was worried that I looked too much like Louis Theroux, which was a shame, y- yeah. Um, but the BBC eventually, somebody, somewhere on some team, I don't even know how, replied after two years and said, "Oh, thanks for this, I'll give it a watch." So me and David were like, (gasps) you know, two weeks just waiting like, you know, fingers crossed, "Please, please, please watch it." And we knew if he watches it, he'll take it, and, and that's... It wasn't arrogance like we're such good documentary makers. A big part of documentary making, particularly the gonzo style with presenters and things, is luck, and if something mad happens when you're filming, you've got it. So it was just luck, and we knew that nothing like this had been on TV before that was this crazy, just from the luck of the draw, from that crazy journalist saying those weird things that we'd done that we hadn't. Um, so yeah, they, they watched it, and two weeks later they said, "We'll take it," et cetera. And they offered us an incredibly low amount of money, which didn't even cover the legal fees that we then had to pay lawyers 'cause they get- they ask you to get all these lawyers involved to check everything through. So we didn't make a penny from it. They took all the rights forever, because they knew we were desperate to, to take it, uh, to, to get it on the BBC, and it's, it's such a great calling card for us that it was worth it. Um, but yeah, we got it out, and it was, it, it ended up it won some fi- film festival awards first, and then it ended up in the BBC's Best of the Year, uh, list, so it was, it was a great, uh, moment for us.

   6. CWChris Williamson23:01

      Have you been invited back to the BBC since?

   7. AGAndrew Gold23:04

      Uh, in the, in the sort of... (sighs) It was a funny one. Yeah, I thought that they would be, and I, I don't mean this arrogantly, I just, I just thought they would think like, "Oh wow, they've, these two guys have just done this on their own. That's unusual 'cause usually we'd give a budget of 50 grand or 100 grand or whatever, and they've done it for free. This, this is interesting. Let's see what they've got." Uh, and no- there was just nothing. The film came out and it was just like nothing at all. I then pushed a bit and I was saying, "Hey, can we have a meeting? Can we talk, you know?" So I went to a BBC Three meeting, uh, with one guy who seemed to be sort of the head of the team and three younger women, and I felt very much like they just, I felt like they hated me from the, from the get-go.

   8. CWChris Williamson23:47

      (laughs)

   9. AGAndrew Gold23:47

      They were just looking at me with these eyes like, "Who the hell are you?" You know?

   10. CWChris Williamson23:51

       What was wrong with you? What do you think was wrong with you?

   11. AGAndrew Gold23:53

       Um, (sighs) well, at the time I wasn't sure, but my experience since has led me to believe a big part of it is being a White man, being middle class as well, looking and sounding a tiny bit like Louis Theroux as well. Uh, especially BBC Three, you know, young people, it's supposed to be cool and edgy and young-looking, and I wasn't cool in that way.... they just hated me. So, I was just coming up with idea after idea like, "Hey, there's a bunch of vigilantes that make, uh, prostitutes stand on ant hills in Bolivia," and, uh, "There are these pedophiles in Germany where the, the, uh, clinics don't report them to police." L- I had, like, 15 ideas like that, just really quirky, bizarre stuff where I thought, "I speak the languages of these places. Um, I can do this." And everyone I said they were like, "Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, how would you do that?" I was like, "Well, I'd go... Mm-hmm." So, it w- it was really a dampener after th- the excitement that came before it. I really thought it would lead to more stuff. Um, and then I emailed... They, they did say, "Look, draw up a couple of pitches for us, uh, for a series or whatever, and get back to us in a, you know, with a... in a week or whatever." So, a week later I did that. I put a lot of work into it, sent it to the guy, uh, who was in charge of that team, who was the one who maybe had my corner, and he replied saying, "Oh, I've actually moved to a different team. One of these women has been promoted." So, I emailed her and, yeah, just nothing, no interest at all. Some of the, some of the s- ideas I pitched, not just to her, to other people, they were saying like, "Well, why should you do that? You're not from that particular, uh, background." For example, gay conversion was one of them I wanted to do in Ecuador, um, that... It's a really interesting... I, I'll just quickly go, but in E- in Ecuador, uh, they banned gay conversion. They, they took the step to ban it because it was such a, a big thing. And the, the weird thing was it got much worse because it, it got pushed underground, um, so then instead of just, you know, priests and whatever doing it, and therapists, it became, uh, you know, people would come in the middle of the night and kidnap someone and you wouldn't see them again for five months. They were forced underground, abused. So, I thought, "That's a great idea." And they were like, "Mm-hmm. Andrew, can we ask, are you gay?" And I was like, "Well, I don't know. No, no."

   12. CWChris Williamson26:04

       Also not a pedophile or a prostitute though, so...

   13. AGAndrew Gold26:06

       (laughs) As far as you know, I'm neither of those things. No. But (sighs) e- exactly. That was my point as well. So, that was BBC Three, and then I had meetings, endless, endless meetings for about six years with production company after production company, and every single one, about halfway through or three quarters of the way through, they would say, "Wow, these ideas are really exciting and we'd love to pitch them to BBC and Channel 4. The only thing is we would just need somebody from a minority ethnic background to be the onscreen presence, and for you to be behind the camera. You don't mind that, do you?" And I was like, "Well, it, it is my story that I spent years looking into and getting all the contacts. I would like to quite, you know, be the journalist who interviews them." They were like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. W- we'll just sort of... W- we'll do that, but we'll have a presenter from a minority on screen." And I was like, "Well, I'm not doing that." To this day, I've never said yes to that because it's just so ridiculous. But that's how it's gone.

   14. CWChris Williamson27:03

       Why wouldn't you let someone from a minority group present the idea instead of you?

   15. AGAndrew Gold27:09

       Well, whoever it is. You know, they could have just said, "Uh, thanks for the idea. We're gonna get Louis Theroux to present it." Um, and I would have said, "This is my story." I mean, it's a big thing for journalists, and it's the same reason if it's a written story. Uh, you wouldn't then want somebody else's name to be at the top of it, you know? So, yeah, it was just that.

5. 27:28 – 36:10

   Problem with Diversity Quotas

   1. AGAndrew Gold27:28

   2. CWChris Williamson27:28

      What do you think is the reason... Like, what's the justification behind this? Is there a potential that you're not the right man, that you don't have the talents for it, and they, th- they're trying to palm it off in some other sort of way? Or do you think that there's an agenda, there's something more going on here?

   3. AGAndrew Gold27:43

      Um, you've got to be open to everything, you know? Um, and (sighs) it's, it's so hard to s- self-judge, isn't it? So, I wouldn't want to say if I'm good or bad. Uh, (sighs) it's, it's hard, isn't it? It's hard to know. Uh... (banging noise)

   4. CWChris Williamson27:58

      Well, it's strange to hear... It, it's strange for me to hear that coming out from a meeting. Like...

   5. AGAndrew Gold28:03

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CWChris Williamson28:04

      To hear that said sort of, so flagrantly feels a bit icky to me.

   7. AGAndrew Gold28:13

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson28:14

      Um, whether you want... No matter what your sort of goals are, if I was a mixed race presenter, I wouldn't want to hear that the only reason that I'd got this job doing this interesting story was because of a diversity quota.

   9. AGAndrew Gold28:28

      Yeah. Well, I've had people get in touch because they've heard me talk about this before on my podcast, uh, and people have gotten in touch saying, you know, "I'm not even a presenter and I was emailed saying like, 'You know, I've heard about this thing you're involved with. Do you want to present this for TV?'"

   10. CWChris Williamson28:40

       No way.

   11. AGAndrew Gold28:41

       So, yeah. So it does, it does happen. Um, and, and yes, I und- some people might think as well, "Well, yeah, maybe they just didn't think you were good enough." And that's fair enough. I mean, it's, it's so subjective as well. Um, but, but, but yeah, it's just... The thing w- the thing was, it was said... It wasn't even like 99% of meetings. It was every single meeting this was... this came up. It was a di- it was the same reason. It was a diversity thing.

   12. CWChris Williamson29:07

       What do you think we should do about this sort of situation?

   13. AGAndrew Gold29:11

       Hmm. (exhales) It's so complicated, isn't it? It's so complicated. The thing is right now, um, on TV, uh, in the last six years, the Diamond Diversity Survey, that's like the closest... that's like the most accurate survey that people use. All the TV channels use it. That shows that people from minority ethnic backgrounds are the most overrepresented, um, group of people on screen in all British TV over the last six years. Um, and when you tell people that they say, "Okay, but what about off screen?" and, and all that. And I say, "Well, that's not what we're talking about though." So it, it does sometimes feel like these TV channels are in a rush sometimes to push diversity on the screen while not paying attention to what's happening behind the screen. So it's just-

   14. CWChris Williamson29:56

       Oh, so you think it might be a bit of a smokescreen almost?

   15. AGAndrew Gold30:00

       ... so for show. Yeah. Un- until... Although the thing is, when you look at the actual off screen staff, divers- the diversity is we've got 13% of the UK is, is supposedly from a minority ethnic background. Um, 22 or 23% of onscreen TV people are also from that. So that's... it's almost double. Off screen, behind camera, it's 12% or 12.3%. So, it's not a big difference from that to 13%. And, you know, it depends on, on your political ideology as to whether you think that more needs to be done about that.... and I would say that the belief is that higher up it is a bit more white, so the top directors and the top CEOs and stuff like that. And as you say, smoke, it could be a smokescreen because I often hear this from the top BBC guys who are, like, these white guys, and I'm thinking like, "Well, you're where, if there is an issue, that's where the issue is, it's you guys." It's not down at the bottom as, you know, presenters on TV.

   16. CWChris Williamson30:55

       So they could be perhaps protecting their jobs by doing that. But I mean, what if, what would you say if it turns out that the public respond better to a minority background presenter if they are, I think, the same way as, um, ASOS recently have been very, at least on the men's side, have been very heavily using mixed-race guys. A lot of them have had tattoos, they've got piercings. All that they're looking at is how many clothes does this model sell-

   17. AGAndrew Gold31:26

       Hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson31:26

       ... of this particular garment? They're able to attribute success a lot more tightly, right? Because it's just click, clicks and conversions. But I imagine there must be a s- something similar there with the BBC, i- it might be the case that putting somebody from a minority background who's the presenter might result in higher viewing figures or better retention or better reported happiness-

   19. AGAndrew Gold31:46

       Hmm. Well-

   20. CWChris Williamson31:46

       ... after watching the show or something.

   21. AGAndrew Gold31:48

       ... if that were the case, then w- we wouldn't need diversity officers and all this kind of thing, because it would suggest, well, there's no racism in the UK if the minority ethnic, uh, presenters perform so much better across the whole country. So they wouldn't need to be spending extortionate amounts of money on new diversity officers to up the diversity. This feels more artificial than, than what is best or not best for the, for the show. And then on top of that, I would just, I would just think that, you know, the people who discover the stories, as long as they're okay at it, as long as they're pretty, you know, you don't have to be thorough, you don't have to be the most charismatic person ever. As long as you're pretty good at what you do l- I think you should be able to present that story no matter who you are. Uh, and it's, I think I do find it sad that we're looking so much at who every single person is, what they are. If you apply for a job at the BBC now you don't just have to say what skin color you are, what, this ethnicity and stuff, you now have to talk about your parents' jobs, you have to talk about your parents' university experiences, um, your sex, gender, orientation, all these things where I'm like, "I can't bel- why are you asking..." You know. I also do get the other side's to an extent, but it, it, it... (sighs) it's, uh, it's complicated, isn't it?

   22. CWChris Williamson32:57

       Well, it is, especially after a period where certain groups might have felt underrepresented. If you haven't-

   23. AGAndrew Gold33:03

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson33:03

       ... had many gay presenters, lesbian presenters, trans presenters on, there is a, uh, justification from the other side of the fence that says, "Well, we've been underrepresented for a long time."

   25. AGAndrew Gold33:16

       Mm-hmm.

   26. CWChris Williamson33:16

       "It's, it, it's now time for us to have our time in front of the screen." It's a, I think it's... What's really interesting is looking at how, if you were to distribute how much money gets paid across the entire BBC or ITV, the guys that are at the absolute top, you only need five of them to probably cover an entire couple of seasons worth of teams that run TV shows. And I would love to see the statistics around how many of these groups of people that are being brought in at the front end are actually then working their way up, because that's very typical. I remember, um, I grew up in Newcastle with the Geordie Shore phenomenon-

   27. AGAndrew Gold33:55

       Mm-hmm.

   28. CWChris Williamson33:55

       ... and a lot of the showrunners, because we would see them, uh, twice a year, they'd film every six months, essentially, they'd come and do about a month and get a season out of it, and do a month and get season out of it.

   29. AGAndrew Gold34:06

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson34:06

       So I would see this, um, sort of iterative, uh, uh, presentation of how TV works. So you'd see there would be just a, like, crappy little runner Season 1, then Season 2 maybe he's like an assistant runner-
6. 36:10 – 43:05

   Accepting Differing Opinions

   1. CWChris Williamson36:10

      disgusting. All right, so you, didn't you look at an abortion lady as well? Didn't you go and do some stuff with her?

   2. AGAndrew Gold36:15

      (laughs) Yeah. So straight after, um, (sighs) that film, because I was getting all these nos about next stuff, and I thought, "Well, screw it, I'm just going to go and make a film." I'd been in contact with this woman that was known out there as the crazy baby lady. And she was just this really... I'm, I'm really drawn to very eccentric, uh, bizarre types. So I'm, I'm drawn to you, Chris. So, um, (laughs) yeah, it was something I wanted to do, and she was just this woman who goes around protesting, um-... of, of, of people getting abortions, right? Uh, and I'm quite pro-choice personally, but you're supposed to sort of keep that out of the documentary. And I went and sort of lived with her. And (sighs) this, this is the thing from doing this kind of journalism, and I'm sure you found the same thing talking to people from all different kinds of, uh, ideologies and backgrounds and things, um, you start to... Often, you quite like the people you're with. So, I went in thinking like this is probably gonna be this horrible pro-life, angry, conservative, religious Catholic person who has different views about abortion and liberal things than I have. Um, and I hung out with her. We went on the school run with her, picked up her six kids, and she was very funny, witty, and we got on like so well, and it was so nice, um, but ended up arguing because again, she didn't like my line of questioning and I pushed her a lot about some things and she hates me now and won't speak to me, which is, uh, really sad actually. But, uh, but, but what it did was it helped me as a documentary maker to sort of realize, you know, when, when you go out to film people who really believe that there's a demon inside them or really aggressively believe about, you know, pro-life or pro-choice or whatever, then you come home and people are just saying things like, "Can you believe people voted for Trump?" Or, "Can you believe of Brexit?" Or whatever. And I'm like, "Well, of course I can. I've literally just been out with somebody who thinks the devil's inside them." I mean, to believe... That's nowhere near as much of a push, um, as voting for Brexit or Trump or something. So, that was just a really fantastic experience for me to, to, to fully understand where the, the human mind can take us and how far it can go 'cause I think it can, it can heal its... It can heal diseases if you believe strongly enough in narratives we create in our minds. That blows my mind. That's incredible. And, and it also makes me think there's no point ever debating anything because people's beliefs are so strong.

   3. CWChris Williamson38:30

      (laughs) Yeah, it's, um... There's a story from Johann Hari's book, Lost Connections, about depression, and in that he talks about this guy who had (laughs) a special wooden wand thing, like a big stick wrapped in a special type of metal that had electricity running through it. This is in the 1800s, something like that. And he would promise people that he could fix them, that he could get rid of their, like, arthritis or something, like something like not just mental stuff, like physical problems as well, I think. And he'd wave it over them and these people would stand up, and it turned out they stripped it back. So this, they, they started doing, um, uh, a replica of that particular research and took away the electricity and then took away the metal from outside of the stick and then had untreated wood and then took the stick, and then got rid of the stick. And the same effect just continued. So you're right, like the placebo effect, if you could bottle it-

   4. AGAndrew Gold39:27

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson39:27

      ... it would be a panacea 'cause it fixes absolutely everything.

   6. AGAndrew Gold39:30

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson39:31

      And here's another cool story. So I learned that people that were catatonic during World War II, these, um, psych, uh, ward patients, right? They hadn't moved for years, perhaps. Some of them were just completely out of it. When the bombs started landing and they desperately needed people to drive the ambulances, these m- men and women, I think it was mostly men, uh, got up from catatonic states of years, years sometimes-

   8. AGAndrew Gold40:00

      Wow.

   9. CWChris Williamson40:01

      ... and went and drove ambulances picking up survivors-

   10. AGAndrew Gold40:03

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson40:03

       ... and drove fire trucks and stuff like that. So, the change that you can have when there's a, a sufficient external stimulation and the right type as well, you know, you have a purpose, you have a meaning now, this is something that... And it can bypass people that had been totally like comatose for five years.

   12. AGAndrew Gold40:24

       That's belief. And it, it's the most extra- extraordinary thing. That's, that's incredible. That, isn't it? Derren Brown sort of does a lot of that stuff as well, um, and shows why it's nothing to do with religion. It's all about belief and the power of it. But it, it, it's also why we all disagree on things so much. And people always say, uh, "Critical thinking. You need to teach critical thinking." But that's, that... There's a problem with that, which is that even the smartest people in the world who have amazing critical thinking still totally disagree with one another. They're s- they're still led to different paths, and some people really far astray. And a, a good example is, is like, um, Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote Sherlock Holmes, um... And I had... I had David Robson on my podcast the other week, who's a, a journalist who talk- who wrote The Intelligence Trap, about how the smartest people in the world (clears throat) , often their beliefs lead them one way and their intelligence sort of keeps them fur... They, they're, they're able to, um, explain anything 'cause they're so smart. They can, you know. And Arthur Conan Doyle, he's supposed to be sort of the master of deduction and things like that, 'cause that's what Sherlock was. He's incredibly smart, and he believed in fairies. Um, and, and obviously it was a different time, but nobody believed in fairies then. And he ended up falling out with Houdini, the magician, because of his just mad beliefs.

   13. CWChris Williamson41:35

       Arthur Conan Doyle was friends with Houdini?

   14. AGAndrew Gold41:39

       Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, until they fell out. They fell out over that, and because, uh, while having these sort of arguments and things, Arthur Conan Doyle said to Houdini, "Listen, you know, your mum's just died. I'm gonna take you, uh, to my wife, who's gonna help do a seance. We're gonna have a chat with your wife now, uh, with your mum." Sorry. And so he was like, "Ugh, okay, right." So Houdini turns up and they do this seance and, you know, there's all this stuff coming out about Christianity and this and that. And afterwards, Houdini said, "You know, my mum was Jewish." And the whole thing was just... You know, and they fell out. I think, I think they didn't talk again after that. But, you know, he believed in these fairies because there was a well-known, um, uh, a, a prank by these like 15-year-old girls who just did these cardboard cutouts of fairies and took a photo of it. They're very clearly fake. If you... You can see them on Google. They're just absolutely fake. Uh, you can see like a pin in the stomach that's supposed to like hold it up on this wooden background or whatever. Um, and he was just like, "Well, that's clearly the umbilical cord. So fairies can have children." Now, this is the master of deduction, and this is somebody who's fantastic at critical thinking, which is why, yeah, I just can't be bothered to argue with anyone anymore because...... myself included, our beliefs will take us anywhere. No matter how good we are at critical thinking, uh, it's, it's not gonna help us agree or even find truth or object to truth. So, that's what the, um, abortion crazy baby lady taught me.

7. 43:05 – 47:09

   The Power of Belief & Lived Experience

   1. CWChris Williamson43:05

      Are you ever scared that one day you're gonna wake up and have just absorbed one of these mental views? 'Cause, uh, Arthur Conan Doyle, you think, "Yeah, totally rational guy, totally normal," and then one day he just fancies waking up to believe in fairies. Like, tomorrow, me and you could wake up and have some... in s- with the exorcism thing, you know, or whatever, standing in anthills, whatever it is that we gotta do. I, I, I don't know. I don't want, I don't want that to happen.

   2. AGAndrew Gold43:30

      (laughs) I think, I think what I'd be more worried about is that, uh, and what is more likely, is that you and I already have those beliefs, and that certain people listening, probably not to your or my podcast, but, you know, will, will think that. I, I don't think we'd wake up and suddenly have a different view, but our views, you're right, they do change, don't they? And I think that's a good thing. I think totally different stuff to what I thought when I was 18. I, I think you do as well. I looked through your reviews on your, on your podcast, and they're very different from the beginning towards the more modern o- recent ones, where some people are like, "He's changed the people he's had on." And it's like, "Well, you should change. You should develop them-"

   3. CWChris Williamson44:04

      You know my, you know my business partner recreationally goes through the one-star reviews in Apple Podcasts just for fun-

   4. AGAndrew Gold44:13

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson44:13

      ... because he likes to go through, (laughs) he likes to go through and see people shit-talking me because he's a bastard. Here's another thing, man. You know like people's, a lot of people, especially on the right, they like to criticize the term lived experience-

   6. AGAndrew Gold44:25

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson44:25

      ... because what, what most people, or what s- they, uh, propose people that use the words "lived experience" mean is unfalsifiable evidence that only exists inside of my head.

   8. AGAndrew Gold44:36

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson44:36

      But a lot of these beliefs, I don't think that the people that were getting exorcised don't believe what happened to them. I think that the padre perhaps was complicit, and he is aware that he's probably not doing what he says that he's doing, but the people that were working with him, they believed it, and the people that were being conned, they believed it, and the people that were paying and donating money, they would have believed it as well. You know, 10,000 people in the street don't come out for something that they don't believe in. You know, they weren't all there filming a Gonzo-style documentary, certainly. And it kind- it kinda makes me think, well, the limit of using the term lived experience is actually quite idiosyncratic, isn't it? Ev- everyone's life is so different and so peculiar, and yet it does make it very... I mean, it's a fucking miracle that anyone's able to speak to anyone and have a civil conversation ever.

   10. AGAndrew Gold45:32

       I think lived experience as well, I agree with you, and it's, it's loaded as well. There's, there's a... It's not only that sort of, uh, (clears throat) "I've experienced it, so I'm right. I win the argument. I've had lived experience and you can't say anything." It's also, "If you do dare to say something, I'm gonna get very emotional because an emotional thing happened to me." The... It's like the same with a lot of the PC and the woke stuff. A lot of it comes from really good places, and if you've got a friend or you meet someone and you're at lunch with them and they tell you about a traumatic thing that happened to them and they went to an exorcist, well, it's probably polite to just let them think it, especially if it's helping them, you know. But there are times when (clears throat) we as a society, it's, it's not enough to accept lived experience. We've all got lived experience, and all of our lived experience is so different from one another. If you go to a therapist, uh, couples' therapy and things like that, I know a lot about that as well because in Argentina where I was living, I was there six years, it's the world capital of therapy. Everyone and their dog has a therapist. Not really dogs. (clears throat) So, uh, every single person, you can get, it's like 10 quid to go or whatever. But therapists will... One of the first things they'll tell, like, a couple is, uh, "Look, you've got your lived experience, but you've got yours as well, and there's the truth in between." So, so they will tell you, "The lived experience is not the truth. It's someone, someone's subjective experience," and you should respect it. It's good to respect that and go like, "Hey, that's your lived experience." It doesn't mean that's science. It doesn't mean that's true. And again, when you've had your job, which is interviewing all sorts of weird and wonderful people, (laughs) how would you possibly know what's true from everyone's lived experiences? So, they're

8. 47:09 – 53:30

   Undercover in Amazon

   1. AGAndrew Gold47:09

      all different.

   2. CWChris Williamson47:10

      What about, you, you spoke to a guy that went undercover in an Amazon warehouse. What's it like working for Amazon?

   3. AGAndrew Gold47:16

      Horrific. Horrific. Yeah, that's James Bloodworth, who's, uh, a fairly, uh, lefty journalist, uh, s- which, which I was happy to have on, because I had quite a lot of righty or, you know, uh, James Lindseys and those kinds of, uh, Helen Pluckrose and the... uh, and sometimes you wanna sort of redress the balance a bit. Um, and he... although he's quite anti-woke, I should say, uh, despite being very left. And for him it was about the workers. That's what being left-wing was about, about labor, actual labor. Um, and (clears throat) yeah, he was there for six months, and it was horrible. He said he walked enough that his feet were bleeding by the end. He wa- you know, he worked out that within a week he could have walked from like Manchester to France or something, the amount they have to walk, because they can't take toilet breaks, um, a- and, and the place is so big because they have to cover a certain amount of ground every day. Uh, if they don't, if they don't do things quick enough or fast enough, they get points. And once you get five points, you're fired. That's it. No questions asked. You get points for like, yeah, being in the toilet, for spending more than 10 minutes having lunch. You get a point for, you know, answering back to someone.

   4. CWChris Williamson48:25

      This is in the UK?

   5. AGAndrew Gold48:26

      Yeah. He was at, um... I can't remember the name of... It was... He went to sort of this really, uh, industrial town somewhere in the Midlands, um, where basically, you know, there was not much going on and the Amazon factory-

   6. CWChris Williamson48:39

      50% of the people are employed by Amazon.

   7. AGAndrew Gold48:42

      Yeah. I think that's the kind of place. And it was just miserable. A lot of Polish and Romanian, uh, immigrants and stuff, maybe half of them, and then half sort of English working-class people that he was working with, and they just lived in squalor, the amount they were being paid. And what really sort of boiled my blood hearing about that...... it was that (sighs) it's one thing to say, if you want, if some people get, uh, you know, very capitalist minded, I, I am myself, and it's one thing to say, "Look, well, you, that's the job that you're p- you know, skilled for, and that's what you took, and you knew the conditions when you went in there." The problem is that from, from James Bloodworth's experience, um, they don't pay. They don't pay on time, and they don't pay what they're supposed to pay and what was agreed. So, he said he found himself time and time again just spending hours knocking on the doors of his manager going, "I was supposed to get 120 quid this week. You've given me 17. How..." And he said like, "The point is, when you're living in, in, in poverty like that, that's the difference between being able to eat and pay your bills and being homeless. And it's not on." And, and so, it did make me angry. It did change how I thought about Amazon. And the irony, unfortunately, was that, you know, I ended, I ended the podcast saying like, "And if you want his book, uh, you can find it on amazon.co.uk. What can you do?"

   8. CWChris Williamson49:53

      It's the problem with becoming too big to fail, isn't it? Like that. And I suppose, I mean, why do you think it is that the UK, a place that has fairly robust legal system and employment law, how come this is being permitted? So why isn't, shouldn't it only take one case and then you could roll that out across the entire country?

   9. AGAndrew Gold50:14

      It's just not on people's, uh, priority list at the moment. And I guess, you know, the, the Tories aren't that interested in, um, stopping Amazon from getting away with what they get away with. I don't know if there are backhanded, you know, bits of money going to people, into people's pockets. I have no idea. And on the left, they used to be much more bothered by that stuff. Uh, but recently, particularly in the Corbyn era, they weren't talking about working class lives really, they were talking about quite popular, uh, university politics, you know.

   10. CWChris Williamson50:45

       It definitely did seem like that, that the original liberal s- sort of slant on politics was all to do with class, right? It was all to do with differences in wealth inequality between the classes in order to facilitate the labor to move up. And, uh, yeah, I mean, it's been a very long time since you've had... It's mad to think that you hear conservatives talking about that, th- those sort of rhetorics now more than you hear that from Labor.

   11. AGAndrew Gold51:15

       Yeah, more, but I think, I don't, I don't know what the stats are, but a lot of working class people voted Tory recently, didn't, didn't they? They've moved over.

   12. CWChris Williamson51:21

       Yeah, I mean, Ashington, which is not far from me in Newcastle, that changed, and then Hartlepool, which was this sort of bastion that Labor had had for ages. Yeah, it's an interesting one. I don't know, man. I, I, I feel like with Amazon, there, there has to be something complicit going on behind the scenes in, with regards to the government, because I've seen the, is it We Are Not Robots? Amazon union?

   13. AGAndrew Gold51:46

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson51:46

       So, they, uh, they always have, you know, the little robot, it's like a cardboard box made out to be a robot. It's one of Amazon's mascots.

   15. AGAndrew Gold51:51

       I think so, yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson51:53

       And they've, they've repurposed that, and I've seen these picket lines or whatever, workers unions, and then I saw a video the other day talking about, it was a training for Amazon managers for how to spot potential unionizing behavior.

   17. AGAndrew Gold52:08

       Hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson52:08

       So, it was if you see your-

   19. AGAndrew Gold52:09

       Wow.

   20. CWChris Williamson52:10

       ... employees using these sort of terms.

   21. AGAndrew Gold52:13

       (laughs)

   22. CWChris Williamson52:13

       If you hear them talking about this, if you notice groups of people that weren't previously friends, it's super, super scary and authoritarian.

   23. AGAndrew Gold52:20

       That's scary.

   24. CWChris Williamson52:20

       Yeah. Terrifying.

   25. AGAndrew Gold52:22

       Wow.

   26. CWChris Williamson52:22

       And, um-

   27. AGAndrew Gold52:22

       Have you seen Nomadland, the movie?

   28. CWChris Williamson52:24

       No, that was what won a ton of-

   29. AGAndrew Gold52:26

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson52:26

       ... Oscars this year, wasn't it? What was that about?
9. 53:30 – 1:00:49

   What Really Matters Today?

   1. AGAndrew Gold53:30

      the, it just seems like we squabble on Twitter about these little things, uh, you know, JK Rowling this, and, uh, like we were talking about before, though, what's the perfect rate of, um, of minorities to be on TV? And meanwhile, there's just this insane stuff going on. And a lot of us, again, if you're a capitalist, you don't mind, you go, "Look, I have no problem with rich people getting richer because that's the system that we have." It's not the best system, but it's, it's not the worst either. However, that's, that's fine as long as they're playing by the rules and they're not-

   2. CWChris Williamson53:58

      Rich people getting richer fairly. Yeah, yeah.

   3. AGAndrew Gold54:00

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson54:00

      Precisely. Well, I had, uh, Yeonmi Park, the North Korean-

   5. AGAndrew Gold54:05

      Yes.

   6. CWChris Williamson54:05

      ... refugee, I had her on the show recently, and, um, man, she's talking about levels of suffering that hopefully the vast majority of people on the planet are never even going to be able to be aware of.

   7. AGAndrew Gold54:16

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson54:17

      It's one of those things, it's so harrowing, and then she was saying that the Uighur Muslims in China, uh, they were given what w- they were told was multivitamin shots, which has now reduced the fertility of that entire group by half, so that the-

   9. AGAndrew Gold54:30

      Jesus.

   10. CWChris Williamson54:30

       ... fertility has gone down by 50%. Like, that's genocide. That's like-

   11. AGAndrew Gold54:34

       (sighs) .

   12. CWChris Williamson54:34

       ... legitimate genocide that's happening within the last two to three years, and yet we're being caught up... Like, the smartest minds on the planet are either debating about genders or getting people to click on ads.

   13. AGAndrew Gold54:48

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson54:48

       Those are the only two things that they do at the moment.

   15. AGAndrew Gold54:51

       (laughs)

   16. CWChris Williamson54:51

       Or maybe there's a couple of accountants that are working out how to get more businesses into Dublin, I don't know, but yeah, it's, um...

   17. AGAndrew Gold54:57

       Well, there was a time when the smartest people believed in fairies, you know? So-

   18. CWChris Williamson55:00

       That's true as well.

   19. AGAndrew Gold55:01

       ... just step up and laugh.

   20. CWChris Williamson55:01

       Arthur Conan Doyle, yeah. I don't know, man, but I-

   21. AGAndrew Gold55:04

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson55:04

       ... do you think... How much do you think of the sort of current culture wars and what we're seeing at the moment, how much of it is, um, genuinely generated by the UK and the US, and how much do you think is planted stories by bad actors from nations like China and Russia? Have you thought about this?

   23. AGAndrew Gold55:22

       Mm. I've thought about it a bit. I mean, I don't know enough about it to really comment, ex- except to say, I read a great, uh, article in The Times the other day about suffering and how much we need to suffer. And, uh, I guess if you were born in Korea, you can come away with a totally different way of thinking of like, "Thank God I don't have that level of suffering." Uh, but the best, uh, you know, the best eras of, of movies, of creativity, of art, when humans have created beautiful things, a lot of it comes from suffering. Um, if you look at Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the point is... I mean, we're always looking, and, and we do it in our podcast as well. We talk about, we have people on to talk about how to be happier, right? Well, what does happy mean? If you're re- if you're really happy, in Brave New World, everyone's happy because they're taking a drug that makes them happy, but there's no creativity, there's no literature, there's no beauty in the world. You need some suffering, obviously not on the levels of Korea or something like that. Um, and I think the smartest people in the, in the world that you refer to who are currently, you know, uh, yeah, talking about all these, like, ridiculous things, they're trying to sanitize the world of, like, get rid of any level of being uncomfortable, of being bored, of being a bit sad sometimes. Obviously, people have very serious mental health conditions that have to be taken seriously.

   24. CWChris Williamson56:35

       Bionics .

   25. AGAndrew Gold56:35

       But if we... Yeah. Well, for example. But sometimes it's like, well, you need to be a bit sad for now, because you'll feel much better for it later. So, I don't know how much is... I mean, there must be some level of bad actors involved, 100%. I also think it's a natural human impulse when everything is perf- you know, not perfect, when everything is good compared to North Korea, compared to the, the entire, the entirety of history, to look for, um, problems, to find, like, "Oh, yes, but you should ne- why are you depressed? Why are you bored?" And, like, I'd almost have thought that-

   26. CWChris Williamson57:08

       Mm-hmm. I would have thought that. I would have agreed with that if it hadn't been for COVID.

   27. AGAndrew Gold57:11

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   28. CWChris Williamson57:11

       If it hadn't been for the last year, I would have said, in the absence of a real crisis, we create our own, and in the presence of one, we reset our values onto what really matters. But then you have probably the most globally traumatic thing to have happened ever to so many people. There's never been a single-

   29. AGAndrew Gold57:27

       Mm-hmm.

   30. CWChris Williamson57:27

       ... incident in all of human history that's affected as many people as the last 12 months has, or the last 16 months. Um... And yet, it seems to have further pushed us into discussions about stuff that doesn't matter. I, I... Part of me thinks with that, it's the information overload, that there's so many sources of information at the moment that working out what is in good faith, what's in bad faith, what do I dispense with, what do I need to retain, it's essentially impossible, because for the first time in all of human history, we have a surplus of information. M- for all of our revolutionary history, we would have really looked for information because that was... We were like information foragers. We were looking-
10. 1:00:49 – 1:19:15

    Infiltrating a Pedophile Network

    1. CWChris Williamson1:00:49

       What about... You infiltrated a group of pedophiles. That's been one of your more-

    2. AGAndrew Gold1:00:52

       (laughs)

    3. CWChris Williamson1:00:52

       ... recent ones. What happened there?

    4. AGAndrew Gold1:00:54

       Speaking of so bizarre.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:00:55

       Yeah.

    6. AGAndrew Gold1:00:55

       Yeah. Well, you know, I was looking for controversial stuff, and, uh, I got to Berlin. My girlfriend and I, we wanted to move back to Europe. She's Argentine. Uh, and I've, I fancied going to Europe and learning another language. German was my fifth one. I got all excited about that. Uh, and when I get to a new place, the first thing was like, "What can I do that's really controversial and weird and bizarre and, and try and sell that, you know, somehow?" Um, and it turned out that Berlin has the, uh, the world's only sort of pedophile clinic.... that doesn't ever report them to authorities. Uh, so they can come in, a patient or whatever could come in and speak to the therapist and say, "I did these terrible things yesterday. I'm worried I might do it again," and they will not be reported to anyone. Uh, and that's obviously very cont- controversial because it means letting these guys go back onto the street to potentially offend again. But the other flip side of it, and the reason it's actually pretty popular in Germany among, you know, the locals, is that it's seen as the only way to guarantee these people actually come out from the shadows and actually attend therapy, because they know that no matter what they say, they're not gonna be reported and stuff, and they can get help. So, the idea was like, "Okay, I'm gonna look into that and either write a book or a radio documentary or, or, or a video one." So, I filmed some stuff but I think it's gonna be too difficult because no one wants to be on camera, of course. Um, so I've written most of a book about that, um, and I've met all sorts of, you know, the patients and things. Um, recently, a 25-year-old woman, for example, that fascinated me because female, uh, pedophiles are so rare, um, particularly ones who will talk to camera. So, I took a train out to the middle of nowhere in Germany, uh, some little village, and met this woman, and she's got a 27-year-old boyfriend who is also a pedophile. Both of them are non-offenders. They, they both believe that it's... A- and everyone I've interviewed has said to me they're a non-offender. I haven't, I don't, I'm not very int- I'm not interested in talking to someone who is an offender. I don't want to-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:02:52

       How much do you believe them?

    8. AGAndrew Gold1:02:52

       ... back there. Um, 90%, probably. Um, this, this woman I, I'm, I believe more because I, I just, maybe because she's a young woman, it just didn't, it just didn't fit the narrative. Um, and, and she was so angry when she spoke about other pedophiles who had offended, um, and so was her, her boyfriend. And they, the idea is that they both have that view and they want to raise a family together, which is a scary thought. But what can you do? I mean-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:03:20

       This is a (laughs) , this is such a minefield. Wow.

    10. AGAndrew Gold1:03:25

        Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Look, one, one percent of men are thought to be exclusive pedophiles. Now, obviously one percent doesn't sound very high, but in the world of seven billion, what's that, 700 million is it in the UK? In most countries, it's, you, you have, you know, more male pedophiles than you have people in the army. You know, it's, it's a lot of people. And those are exclusive pedophiles, so it gets scarier. I mean, the more I looked into this, and I apologize, apologize to any listeners because I, I've become a little bit desensitized because I've been looking into this for two years, and I know this is quite scary stuff to even think about and talk about. Um, but there have been some studies, I've looked at some surveys that have shown up to 20% of men responded to saying they had some attraction to minors, uh, or maybe even it was to children. I need to, need to check that. But they are not exclusive. Uh, so most of those people, you don't have to worry about them. They will never offend in their lives. They know it's wrong and they just don't worry about it. That one percent, they can't form a physical attraction to adults. They just can't, for whatever reason. And that's scary because they might say, as you s- as you rightly point out, "How much do you believe them?" They might say like, "Oh, I would never do that." But we're thinking, "Yeah, but what if you're drunk one day? What if you're feeling low?" And this is the-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:04:44

        People say they're not gonna cheat on their partner.

    12. AGAndrew Gold1:04:47

        Exactly. That's the issue. And that is why we have such an issue, because everybody asks me, the first thing they say is like, "How much do you trust them?" And the reason we don't trust them is because we don't trust ourselves, and the vast, the 99% of us thank our lucky stars we don't have that attraction and would like to think we wouldn't do that anyway. But, and I'm not speaking about myself in particular, but we cheat at an alarming rate. I d- I don't know the actual rates for cheating, but everybody knows somebody who cheated at some point, you know? Most couples, there's some bits and pieces of cheating going on. So, we don't trust ourselves, so it's very hard to trust the pedophiles. And that is a problem for the non-offending community, and there is a big community of them. Um, and they want to say, you know, "We're not like those people. We would never do it." But they can't say that without us going, "Oh, we don't quite believe you, mate."

    13. CWChris Williamson1:05:35

        Yeah.

    14. AGAndrew Gold1:05:35

        So that's the, you know, that's what they have to navigate. And that's, that's the line I'm navigating while talking to these people.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:05:41

        It's such a challenging subject, man. I've become really fascinated about the ethics of it. I've had a bunch of conversations over the last few years. I remember there was this girl I went to uni with, and, um, her friend gave a talk at U... And this must have been 2010 or something, so like a while ago. And, um, he gave this talk basically saying, "Can you imagine, um, how terrible it would be if you were born with an affliction that meant that you could only be attracted to people that are too young to have sex?"

    16. AGAndrew Gold1:06:13

        Yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:06:13

        And, uh, it always stuck with me. And I had this conversation with a neuroscientist, a guy called Dr. Jack Lewis, he's been on the-

    18. AGAndrew Gold1:06:19

        Mm-hmm.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:06:19

        ... been on the BBC. You should speak to him. He might get you on. And, um-

    20. AGAndrew Gold1:06:21

        Yeah.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:06:22

        ... he, uh, he wrote a book about the science of sin, and they-

    22. AGAndrew Gold1:06:25

        Yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:06:26

        ... they put, uh, people of varying sexual preferences into FMRIs with arousal sensors, and they showed, uh, people that were, um, non-pedophiles every different type of imagery that they could, including, uh, above and below the age of consent, and registered what the response was mentally and in terms of, uh, arousal response. And then they did the same to the people that had said that they were attracted to children. And the people that were attracted to children, they literally couldn't elicit any response from them by showing them any type of adult porn. So-

    24. AGAndrew Gold1:07:06

        Mm-hmm.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:07:07

        ... the sentence that he said that stuck with me, i- I- I said, "Look, do we have any conscious control over the things that we're attracted to sexually?" And his answer was, "No, there is no conscious control over that." And that, that makes for a really difficult ethical situation, because you think, well, people didn't choose to be this way and...... only, what, 70 years ago that Alan Turing was medically castrated-

    26. AGAndrew Gold1:07:35

        Mm-hmm.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:07:35

        ... for being gay? Because-

    28. AGAndrew Gold1:07:36

        Yeah.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:07:36

        ... that was seen as something that was unacceptable. Now, there is a huge line between being gay. It's not only a difference in degree, it is a difference in kind because you can't get consent, and there's a whole manner of-

    30. AGAndrew Gold1:07:48

        Yeah.

Episode duration: 1:30:42