782 - What's the deal with BITCOIN with Anthony Pompliano (Part 1)

Transcript

UFOs, psychics, psychopaths, infidelity, pedophiles. I mean, I could go on and on. Andrew Gold, my guest today, explored these subjects and so many other weird, interesting, fascinating subjects in such a unique way. You just have to listen to his stories. I was captivated. Here it is. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. Andrew, so excited to have you as a guest. You do what I think a lot of people wish they could do. What I know when I was in my twenties, I don't know how old you are, I wish I can make a career out of doing what you do. And so I just wanna try to describe your career. It's very multifaceted. I mean, you're a podcast or you're documentaries. You've done stuff with a lot of major networks, including HBO and the BBC. Your podcast On the Edge is brilliant. You you could describe this yourself, but you basically took a collection of ideas you had pitched and, I guess, had been rejected and did them as podcasts, but you deal with everything from UFO Hunters to Psychopaths to Colts, forensic psychiatrists, psychics, pedophiles, the Will Smith apology, and whether it was sincere or not, and on and on and on. Like, let's start with a couple subjects first, then I wanna delve into how you got into all this stuff. But, you know, first off, the Will Smith apology, you were talking to a forensic psychiatrist. Was it sincere? I think it was sincere. And so I got on to that topic just because, as you say, it's just like a different topic every week, and I never wanna be pigeonholed by anything. And I think you know that feeling as well. So we're kindred souls in that in that in that. And and I think the world's been I mean, one thing that that drives me mad a little bit about the Internet is we're so quick to sort of jump on people. We we really wanna shame people and be angry at people. And, obviously, having a YouTube channel, I'm always talking because it's on YouTube as well, the podcast. I'm always talking to people who are there, and they're just angry. And I can always predict what they're gonna say about any particular person, and it's usually negative. Like, oh, they did mean it. Amanda Knox did kill the person. You know, whoever it might be, it's like it's it's rarely giving someone the benefit of the doubt. So I don't know if Will Smith is sincere or not, and I'm sure he doesn't even really know. We all think in 2 sort of minds. We all have this dichotomy of thoughts and double think. I'm sure part of him is sincere, part of him is embarrassed, and part of him just wants to be able to get back to doing what he does, which is acting and stuff. But it was interesting to hear that that was doctor Shahom Das, the forensic psychiatrist. I've done a few shows with him. He's really, really good. He works with a lot of murderers and people like that. And in his opinion, it sounded very sincere. I can't remember exactly why that was, but he's he's pretty sure, and that's that's enough for me. You know? What do you think? I think the first apology, which he did at the Academy Awards, didn't sound so sincere because he didn't apologize to Chris Rock. He just apologized to the Academy, and that was, to me, that was more him trying to save his career, which Sure. To your point, I hope he does because since the apology, I've watched a bunch of Will Smith movies, and I cannot believe how great an actor he is. Like, I watched the pursuit of happiness and King Richard, and I thought, man, he is good. Like, I was Yeah. Trying along with him. And the second one, I do think he had time to like you said, it's nuanced. Like, it's not black or white. I do think he had time to think. He has a lot of problems in his life, and he he probably was really since horrified in himself that he had did this. It, like, hit another man. You know? He's, like, 3 feet bigger than Chris Rock and just smacked him down. And I I would certainly like, I think it's hard to process that within the first half hour, which he was forced to do the first time, but after he had time to think, I think he was sincere. And that that same, psychiatrist talked about Joe Biden. We'll get into that later. I don't wanna get political. But, a lot of times again, just like the way you presented the Will Smith thing, you sort of recognize the gray in a lot of these issues, and I think that's how you sort of gain the trust. Like like, what was it like when you were, you know, with the you or how do you how do you get, like, people to trust you? Like, when you interviewed The Exorcist, the abusive exorcist, describe that situation. Oh, yes. So he was I was living in Argentina at that time. I I'd become sort of obsessed with learning languages and living in in different countries to do that. So Argentina was like my 3rd or 4th country, and I was there for a year or so. Well, I was there for 7 years in the end. But for a year or so, when I came across this Exorcist guy called Padre Manuel, and he was on every TV channel, every radio show, just telling, like, quite mainstream listeners and viewers about, like, how to prepare best for Halloween, you know, by stopping all the ghosts by having, like, the right kind of pumpkin and the right kind or, like, selling some sort of, olive oil that can cure breast cancer. Just utter nonsense. Yeah. Really scary stuff because of how mainstream it was. Like, Argentina is a really interesting place because it's so modern and well educated, but it also sometimes has this kind of thing that you might not expect in a western country. So I was just from that moment, like, beguiled by this guy. I was like, I've gotta go and meet him and see what he's all about. And I think I think what you're getting at is, like, trying to find the gray and stuff. It was really hard for me because I'm not somebody who believes in anything spiritual at all. And I have a lot of respect for people who do, so so I don't want people being upset with me for saying that they're welcome to their beliefs, and that's fine. But I don't. And I wanna go into every documentary and every podcast and everything. I wanna come out of it with a different view to what I had going in. That's really, really important. And I feel like I've done that in a lot of the different projects I've started. But with exorcism, it wasn't I knew from the beginning that this is too far for me. I'm not gonna go in and come out of it with any, any feeling of like, oh, well, unless, I mean, I actually saw, like, some sort of ghost or whatever, but I knew that wasn't gonna happen in my mind. So I had to find some way, and I think that's what I wanna do with documentary making is, like, find some way to be have my mind changed. And the way my mind changed and the way my mind was blown was that exorcism works quite fantastically. I mean, you performed an exorcism. Right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The first one we did. And and that was because I like documentary makers, a lot of the ones I grew up watching, like Louis Theroux or Louis Thoreau, as Americans might call him, the the cousin of Justin Thoreau and son of Paul Thoreau, the travel writer. So he's brilliant, and he often gets involved in the stories that he tells. And I thought, I'm gonna do that. And exorcism's gonna be funny and silly, and I'm gonna so so I rung the bells, which are supposed to ward off Satan over this woman called Natalia's head. Natalia was suffering with something like, which we might call, I don't know, OCD or, schizophrenia. I'm not quite sure. And she decided it must be a demon. So she was lying on the floor screaming and screaming for like an hour and a half, and I'm ringing the bells over her head. And that was the point where I thought, oh, this isn't actually as funny as I thought it would be. This is really scary and and not nice, and she's very vulnerable and in a having a mental breakdown in front of me. So after that, I decided, okay. The rest of the documentary, I'm not gonna take part because it's, like, not really appropriate for me to be doing this because it's it's quite a serious thing. But what happened to her? She got much better. I mean, this is a critical point is that is that you were doing this this is your point about exorcisms, and this is by the way, I I agree with you on the exorcism part. Like, it's total BS, but this is the way you got to the gray in it is that as a placebo, you're saying it worked. Yeah. It does. It does. I mean, there there's been loads about, obviously, placebo as you know, like even Parkinson's patients, for example, when they're given a placebo, even when they're told that it is a placebo, when they're given a placebo, even when they're told that it is a placebo, their brain starts to produce dopamine and different kinds of things that sort of make the symptoms go away or or make them a little bit better. So we know how amazing placebo is. I think we don't entirely understand it yet. There was a really popular therapy, I think, in the eighties called Primal Scream, which is, a very famous band in the UK was named after. John Lennon got really involved in that. So there was lots of him and Yoko screaming at each other, and they made some music based on that. And that was supposed to be brilliant, and it was gonna cure everyone just screaming, you know, just like an exorcism, I suppose. But I think the results were, you know, inconclusive, and I don't think it actually helped anyone. I I just wanna mention a scream is different than ringing a bell over someone's head. Yeah. I mean, if I were to just guess about this, the brain kind of observes what's happening around it, and screaming is kind of like a a almost a primal biological signal for danger and pain. So that's what the brain kind of sees as, oh, I'm in pain or someone around me is in pain. This is not good. Whereas ringing a bell is like a pleasant sound, and it's probably easier for that to be a placebo. Yeah. I think so. And and it's it's the myth around it as well of of what Exorcism is. I doubt that anybody who's gone to see him, The Exorcist, hasn't seen the film The Exorcist or at least, some variation of it. The interesting thing about exorcism is that it wasn't it was really popular about 2000 years ago, and then it completely went out of fashion and style. And almost nobody did it until the film, the exorcist, and then it came back in a big, big way. So this exorcist, he plays the music, tubular bells from the exorcist in his mass, and he's got, posters of the movie with his face superimposed over some of the characters. So he plays on the myth and law of exorcism on the Exorcist film in a big way. So that's also getting into people's heads, and they're feeling like they're literally having a demon removed from them. The thing is they all got worse again 6 to 12 months later. So it's a placebo that seems to work. But what a psychiatry psychiatrist I spoke to, there's a psychiatrist out there I spoke to who some of his patients have been sort of stolen from the by this exorcist. And he said that it can actually work, and a lot of people in their adolescence are really sort of malleable, and they can really, they can really change. And, you know, we all have things in our adolescence that sort of a lot of us, it goes away by the time we're 19 or 20 years old. So if you happen to catch someone exactly the right moment when they were really the whatever was ailing them in their, you know, in their teen years was going to end in 6 months or a year, and you do the exorcism and the placebo works for that amount of time, it can feel like you've completely cured them. So the exorcism can be beneficial. And so when you were doing this exorcism on this woman, and she and I could understand you're feeling like you're manipulating her for for content, basically. Yeah. And she should be told to seek medication and psychiatric help instead of having an exorcism. But she's the one who she had pre believed already in exorcism, better you than an abusive exorcist. She wasn't gonna go for medication at that moment anyway. I'm just trying to alleviate your conscience here. And, like, I think you probably did a good thing for her even though it probably felt bad. But, with this one case of this exorcist, he had basically had sex with one of his clients, so to speak, and you were kind of exposing that. And what what happened? Well, I don't know if he actually had sex. A lot is suggested. What was happening was that he was very close with one particular patient of his called Paula, who when she was, I think, 18 or 19, so it's not a question of underage or anything, but it's it's all very inappropriate, of course. It's like a almost like a patient doctor thing. This guy is in his fifties, Padre Manuel. And he did an exorcism on her, and it's all on YouTube, el exorcismo de Laura, because she goes by Laura or Paula. She sort of changes her name. And it's like his biggest hit. It's like 100 of 1000 of views. It, like, went mad. She went crazy, screaming and screaming and screaming. And then she became his assistant after that. Her family sort of disappeared to different countries. So she's just like on her own, seems to be living in the church upstairs with him. He takes her on holidays. And I started while filming all of this, I was going around asking some of the clergy in his church, because he has a whole little church, you know, what's the deal with them? And there was a lot of jealousy going on among the other sort of followers of of him, and a lot of them sort of hinting at things going on. And they went and told him that I was asking questions, and we ended up in a big fight. Just it would this was a his his monthly mass with the whole exorcism music playing, and it was, like, midnight out in the suburbs, middle of nowhere, and no one knew where me and my director, David, David Hayes' director, where we were. So I thought he was gonna kill me. He suddenly said, hey, you know, come in here. Come in this little room. So he took me into this little room, and he wouldn't let my director and cameraman come in. And he had 5 or 6 guys in there who just started saying, so, you've been interviewing us. It's our turn to interview you. And I was like, oh, no. What's happening? Oh my god. And he said, you've been asking, people about my relationship with Paula. Why is that? And I was like, ah, ah. So I was like, oh my god. Okay. Well and and all of this was recorded, but I was so scared. I didn't even remember that, but I had my, microphone on my lapel. So the cameraman, David's outside at this point, but he's left the camera on, so it's just like filming the wall that I'm behind. And I was just saying, well, it's interesting, isn't it? Because, you know, it's like your family now, isn't it? And I was just trying to get out of it. And he's like, yeah. Well, the family is a the family is a spiritual thing, but you're asking about my relationship with her and all this stuff. And he just berated me for, like, an hour and started screaming at me about the Falkland Islands because of the Falklands War between the UK and Argentina because he's Argentine, and all sorts of mad, mad stuff. And eventually, he let us go, and I which was a relief because, as I say, we hadn't even sold this to the BBC yet, so no one knew where we were. He could have just killed us, and we thought he might. What do you think his goal was in this? Like, obviously, he probably wasn't going to kill you. But, like, other than that, like, what was his goal in scaring you? You think he was sort of a a threat? I think for a few weeks, he'd been avoiding me a little bit because some of my questions, he came to realize I'm sort of poking fun at him a little bit. I was asking him about vampires and things like that. So I think it was a lot of rage that he has. He's clearly quite an abusive guy. We we caught him on camera shouting at some of his clergy quite a few times as well. He was a cult leader, I suppose, who had to make a show of something in front of the rest of his staff or his followers. That was really important for him. And I I guess it got him really worked up because when he went out to his mass, you know, his mass is huge. He gets thousands of people, and they're all sort of falling over one another, frothing at the mouth. They all think they're having some kind of an exorcism themselves. And he's then went and started screaming there, you know, the devil is in the house from Britain and all this stuff, and we just thought, like, he's gonna turn them on us at this point. So I guess it was just, like, restoring his place as as the alpha male with his with his team. You know? Wow. So, and, again, you did kind of get him to trust you for a while. I mean, you you kind of do projects on a lot of people who are either I will say evil, and I'm not I'm not using that in a black or or white term, but let's say, you know, I would think of someone like that as an a genuinely bad person. But, again, everything has has nuance, and I shouldn't say that. But but also people who are crazy or, you know, like, you know, when you kind of in you know, inserted yourself in with UFO Hunters, what were they like? And it and it reminds me of the Exorcist that that you just mentioned because, you know, when did UFO sightings start to happen? Well, after the World War 2 and, you know, the the nuclear arms program and the dropping of the atomic bomb, that suddenly we realized, a, the planet might people started to be afraid. The planet might be over. Maybe we need other planets. And, also, science and science fiction were on the rise right around that time, and so just UFOs became suddenly for the first time in history, people started seeing UFOs magically. Yeah. And and it happened to be over an American military base, you know, Area 51. And so what was what what did you do with the UFO people? What what you're saying reminds me as well of ghosts. So is that you never get a caveman prehistoric ghost. There always goes from, like, the gothic periods, which happens Yeah. From the time that people were writing about them. You know, it's not like some prehistoric ghost. And and yet, you're right. I'm always trying to see both sides of things, and and with that Exorcist by the end, I hated him. I really did actually, which but but he they talk about with these cults, people who, you know, eyes closed or eyes open, you know, meaning, are they aware that they're frauds, or are they aware that they don't have powers? And with The Exorcist, I can't possibly know. And I think, again, it's that thing of, like, he's probably in 2 minds where he partly believes in his own powers, but somewhere deep down probably knows he's a phony. That's what I'd like to think. And then at what point can I blame someone like that? You know, if they really sort of half believe in their powers, he thinks he's saving souls from the devil. So, you know, I get it. With the UFOs, again, the belief, like, what did it do for them? It was really interesting for me. So I went this was for HBO, some sort of, miniseries a few years ago, and it was some tiny village in the middle of nowhere in Argentina. Because, again, like, the UFO spottings tend to happen in the countryside where I you know, people don't always have as much to do, and they can see a lot of the sky and the stars and all sorts of things. So they're more open to, you know, imagining these things. And and and I'm also not saying because I know a lot of people do believe in the UFO stuff that's happened recently as a lot of, like, the navy in the US has released some stuff. What's the year, the the the Yeah. Navy or the US government publicly acknowledged for the first time that they there were unidentified flying objects, which it's important to kind of spread the abbreviation out because it doesn't necessarily mean space objects, but they did kind of admit that they saw a UFO that year. Yeah. Yeah. There's stuff they can't explain. But then if you've got, like, 10 you know, tens of thousands of footage, you know, hours of footage, there's probably gonna be some stuff you can't explain, like just weird stuff, weird camarory things. But it's interesting, and I think we should always be open minded. These particular people I found, it was a little village where they've got it's a bit of a tourist trap. It's like a lot of new age shops and people making money out of it. A little bit like the Exorcist, because the Exorcist had this, like, gift shop. Like, he doesn't charge for the Exorcism, but then you buy all the sort of new age crap that's gonna, like, heal you and and it gets caught. It's an extortionate, you know, fee that you have to pay for all this stuff. So it's the same with the UFO stuff, this kind of belief, and there's some people that are profiting off of it, but some people genuinely believe. So I went on these sort of expeditions at, like, 2 in the morning climbing mountains and stuff with these guides who definitely believed. You can tell they really, really believed. And they believe in aliens from the 5th dimension who live underground. And so we went to a spot, a beautiful spot somewhere, and we did some sort of singing. And then they said, can you see on the horizon? Look at those lights. Those are the, aliens. And I was like, well, they they could be aliens, but they might also be like car headlights because they look more like car headlights and street lamps and things. And they were like, no. Those are definitely aliens. And I was like, well, there's not much more I can do with these people. They think it's aliens, and I think it's cars. But, a a really beautiful thing that happened while I was there, I think, there was a beautiful story, which was this woman called Luz Lopez, who owns the UFO Museum. She's from Colombia. And I think people think Colombia and Argentina are quite near, but the distance is like it's like from England to Pakistan. It's just that north to south never seems as far. It's like it's crazy. Like, yeah, east to west on the map looks really far away. North to south for some reason, we're like, oh, you just jumped down there from Colombia to Argentina. So we That's really true. And and I'm sorry to interrupt, but I I've been to Argentina quite a quite a bit. I used to be married to an Argentinian woman. Ah. And, and I would always think, oh, at least we don't have to travel all the way to Europe because, you know, North and South America are right next to each other. It would be a 14 hour plane flight as opposed to, like, a 5 hour plane flight to England or a 6 hour plane flight, and I was always surprised how far away it was. But, anyway, UFOs. How funny is that? How it's you know, it's crazy though. Well, she speaking of crazy, and I don't wanna call her crazy because she was lovely, but she decided she was maybe a bit depressed or something. She was living in, I I think it was Bogota, and she decided to have this kind of cleansing thing where she didn't eat for, I think it was 7 days or something like that. And she started hallucinating at the end of this week, and she sort of dreamed of a shape. So when she woke up from this trance, she wrote down you know, she drew it out, the shape. And a friend of hers said, that's Capiche del Monte, which is the town where the aliens are in Argentina. So she decided to, like, hike down from Colombia to Argentina. She's like this is like a 45 year old woman. Goes down to Capiche de Monte, goes to the UFO Museum, and meets the owner and falls in love. And so they got married. And when I was there, like, I didn't realize this whole backstory, and she kept talking about this guy called Jorge Lopez. And she was like, and this is when Jorge discovered this, and this is when Jorge and, eventually, I sort of got a feeling. And I was like, did you did were you intimate with Jorge Lopez? And she was like, mhmm. He was my husband and this and that. And, you know, he had a heart attack last year. And now the aliens come, and every few months, they give me an update about, how he's doing in heaven and all this stuff. And I So she speaks to them, and she believes she speaks to them. Yeah. That's what she thinks. You know, I'm not gonna sit there and tell her that's bananas. You know? Like, even if I wanted to believe in something, I don't think that in my even if I wanted to believe in aliens, I don't think I could make myself believe I'm talking to the aliens. Like, how do you think that happens? Well, she's also I mean, she's somebody who's already hallucinated stuff. It's it's really interesting. You know, you go to, like, some of these mentalist people like Derren Brown. You know Derren Brown? Yeah. So I went to see him, and it, and he got me up on stage and did, like, loads of stuff on me. But I can't really be hypnotized, and I really want to be because I wanna know what that is to feel that. You know? I I was he does this stuff where he tries to get your hands, stuck together. And I I for all my might, I pushed my hands together, and I thought, please, I don't wanna be able to pull them apart because that's the whole point. I wanna experience that magic of what it is, the closest thing to magic that we've that we really have, hypnotism. Wow. And then I just moved my hands apart and it was fine, and it was a shame. But some people couldn't. Their hands are just stuck together. And apparently, this has it's nothing to do with your, intelligence or your gullibility. It's just it it just gets some people, and some people it doesn't. And I wonder if that person might also be more prone to to have those kind of, you know, the the dream that Luis Lopez had, and to also maybe hallucinate and dream things very vividly, like interacting with aliens and then to think that it was during her waking time. You know? It's it's so interesting because I've also read that the the people who most think they cannot be hypnotized are usually the ones that can be hypnotized. So I wonder if there's some kind of bias that causes you to be hypnotized as well. Like, you wanting to be hypnotized, the the the world doesn't want us to have what what we want, and so maybe that's a a a part of it as well. So I think so. Yeah. And and with the UFO people, like, how did they know that the aliens were from the 5th dimension? I guess, well, because they meet them and the aliens say. Yeah. Well, that's it. They have these kind of conversations probably in their dreams and things like this. God, I do wish that I I can imagine a world where maybe they're right. You know? And we sound like such idiots now. And it's like, oh, look at these 2 idiots talking about like, the 5th dimension aliens don't exist. And and the you know, wouldn't that be amazing? But, I mean, there's just no evidence for it, and it it's obviously not a real thing, you know. I mean, that would be amazing. Like, for all of the I wanna say millions, but it's probably more like tens of thousands of self proclaimed psychics and people who've talked to aliens and people who have experienced some other supernatural thing. If if it could just happen just once, that would be unbelievable. But the evidence is is that nothing has ever happened. Like, if there were psychics, for instance, there would be billionaires. You all you need to know is one day what's gonna happen to the stock market tomorrow, and you can make millions instantly. Like, if you just knew one day in advance what could happen, but you don't. No. But there's no evidence that that's ever happened because we would see it. There would be billionaires all over the place who are claiming to be psychic, and and no psychics are billionaires as far as we know. Well, that's not totally true. We we have met one person on the podcast who was a billionaire who strongly believes in all of this stuff, but, he didn't attribute his billions to to all of that. But, I I know I know a psychic, like a family friend of mine. My mom's best friend is like a psychic, and and she I I'm you know, you never know what's going on in someone's mind, but I'm convinced she's such a nice lady that she's not. She she's an eyes closed one. She's somebody who really believes she is talking to deceased people. She's not trying to take advantage of people. I have to believe that, you know, and she has no reason to want to scam people. She's in quite a good position, you know, in her life and everything. There's no reason to do that. So I think she really, really believes it. But as you say, like, if it were to if it were to be real and provable, and it would be the biggest news story ever. Like, forget Watergate, forget, like, whatever. I can't even think of big news stories right now. Forget anything. It would be like a real psychic, the biggest news story of all time. It would be amazing. So I I would love it to happen. One time a few years ago, and I I don't believe in any of the psychics out there, but this friend of mine calls me, and she basically says she visited a psychic. Her she came along at the last minute. She didn't have an appointment. Her her aunt brought her because her the aunt had an appointment. And the psychic said some pretty amazing accurate stuff about a previous relationship she had that was secret. And the reason the reason the reason was secret is because she was having an affair on her husband with this guy, and the psychic brought it up and brought specific details up about him. And how do you think sometimes it seems amazing? Like, do they just throw out enough stuff that it's something hits a wall and they have a good because they have so much practice, they're good at sensing what wherein the person's reacting, like, almost like a poker tell? It's a really good, and and, timely question because my latest episode was with a BBC journalist called Vicki Baker, who made a podcast for the BBC about a fake psychic called Lamar Keen, an American man, I believe, who was very active in, like, the seventies or something. And he admitted he was a fake later, and he wrote a whole book about how he faked everything. A lot of it is cold reading, you know, just guessing and whatever. But what none of us, I think, had predicted is that there was an entire mafia of psychics who would collect information about various clients, anything they could get, and they would put it in a central directory that all other psychics had access to. So I I don't know if that's still going on, and I'm not sure if that's what happened with your friend, but it's quite remarkable to because you wouldn't even think about it when a psychic comes to talk to you. But the thing is they they tend to use any trick, and and there's nothing that's too sort of lowbrow or or low for them. And I know Darren Brown uses some of those techniques. I know that when I was up on the stage, I I can't give away how he did some of the things he did with me, but I saw that they were actually I think he he uses a lot of misdirection, and I think he would probably be open about this as well. He uses misdirection to make it look like, okay, I'm not magic, because he says I'm not magic and I don't believe in magic things. But he makes it look like he's actually reading your face, that he's such a brilliant behavior expert that he can read your eyes and your and I'm sure he does have some of those abilities, but he's making you think that's what's going on. And there's usually something related to a stagehand or there's something a a little less mystical and enigmatic going on. Like like what? Can you give an example where you were surprised at what he did? Oh. You don't have to worry about a secret, but just, like, when were you when was the secret used? When I went up, he he did this thing where he got, like, 4 guys and 4 women on the stage who were who were in a couple. And the guys had to go on one side of the stage, and the women had to go on the other side. And, we all had our name tags on, and he was gonna guess which guy is with which girl. And, of course, you can say, well, you can sometimes tell because maybe one is particularly beautiful couple or whatever. But with all 4 of them, I think it is quite difficult, and he always gets it right, so there's something else going on. And what he would do is he got us to read out things, like, so so we would write things down, the boys, like things we don't like about our girlfriends. And one of the guys wrote, I I don't like that you eat crisps, which are chips in America, loudly. So all 4 of the guys had to go up and say it on the microphone. I don't like how you you eat your crisps too loud or whatever. And then he would suddenly go, ah, right. It's you. And he the implication is he saw something in our eyes that showed because he's so you know, that showed that we were angry and the crisp and the whole story was real. But that's not what's going on. It's more to do, I think and I can't be a 100% about this, but I think it's to do with things like where it was written down and how it was recorded and things like that. Or they could have, photographed everybody who walked into the theater, and stagehands are telling him, hey. These 2 walked in together. Mhmm. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, there's exactly. And then the misdirection is, you know, it's because of how you spoke. And and he's a fan he's he's a genius. And the genius is in his comedy because he's got you laughing the whole way through. And so, for example, the then the woman had to say something. 1 of the women had to say something about the men. And the man who it happened to be that she was talking about, he was he had his hands over his his genitals just by chance, you know. He was just standing, like, with his hands like that. So Darren straightaway went, right, that's you. Look how you're standing. You're defensive. And and we all laugh because it's like, oh god, he doesn't it's like he's being attacked in the genitals. That's why his hands are protecting him there. But that's what's really going on is is either the writing or what you say. There's things being directed to him. So it's it's still genius because he's quick enough in the moments to be able to make that joke and to make everybody laugh and to misdirect us in that way. I mean, I think the key to a lot of magic is that the trick should be good so good for the magician that for him or her, it's it's easy. So for instance, the way I described it may be photographed every couple who came into the theater, He already knew the answer as soon as they're coming onto the stage, so it gives him more energy to find something funny to say, and he doesn't have to think too much about how to solve the problem, just more how to you know, part of the misdirection is so people don't think of, oh, how did he do that, is he starts getting everyone laughing right away and Exactly. You know, move moves to show on. But, yeah, that is that is very interesting. And with, that's fascinating about the fake psychics all sharing information. So they're all basically acknowledging they're criminals, and there's some incredibly valuable website out there with all this information of tricks and information and whatever for fake psychics. And and, I mean, have you ever visited that site or Well, this so this was a this was a historic story. So it was actually before Internet. So I'm not even sure where this central directory of information was, but he writes about it, Lamar Keane, and how they all shared it with each other. Who knows what's happening today where we do have the Internet, where we do have the dark web? We do have all these hidden corners of the Internet where, you know, you could only be a member and you have to be trusted and that kind of thing. It is possible that psychics are colluding with one another to get information about potential clients. Yeah. I'm sure. Like, if they were doing it before, it the Internet only magnified, so they're doing it now. You should try to be a fake psychic and and, document the whole thing about how you become, like, England's greatest psychic. Yeah. Man, I'd just the idea of standing in front of an audience of people and knowing that this could go wrong is terrifying for me. That that I might get guess the wrong thing or say the wrong thing and be exposed as a fraud. I would lose sleep over a thing like that. So I do wonder if psychics, especially ones who know that they're fake and who stand up in front of a huge audience, I wonder where they get that. Like, I don't know what word apart from chutzpah to to think of where they really get that from because, maybe they even need to be psychopathic to an extent to to not be nervous or anxious about getting it wrong. You know? Well, we'll get to psychopaths in a in a second, but it reminds me of stand up comedy. Like, when somebody goes up on stage and you basically have to make people laugh every 15 seconds or so, or you're embarrassed. Like, it's horrible. If if if you say something and there's complete silence, not even heckling, that's just the worst feeling. And so even though you're not breaking a law or doing something unethical, like maybe that kind of even heightens it the for psychics, it's probably similar to that kind of chutzpah. Like, you need a reaction or else you're a failure. I I saw I saw a hypnotist because I had to give a speech about journalism at the Humanist Society and the idea of just going up in front of a crowd and having to give a speech. For some reason, I'm very calm here in my studio with the camera and everything. But when I have to go on TV, I gotta do any of these things, I am just like a mess. So I saw a hypnotist for that to to sort of help me with my fear around it. And I think he helped, but I didn't really feel hypnotized, but he gave me confidence as visualization techniques and things. But when I was there, I noticed that anything that was potentially funny that I'd written to sort of say in the speech, I downplayed it. I sort of quickly went over it because I didn't wanna go in with, like, this is me telling a joke, and then risk nobody laughing and put myself out there like that. So I just went and just went straight over the joke so that some people weren't even sure if it was supposed to be a joke anymore because that is a scary thing to do. Put yourself to say, I'm telling a joke now. Are you guys gonna laugh? Oh, no. Well, I think that's why, like, you look at, you know, speak we were speaking about Chris Rock earlier, but Chris Rock's technique is first off, at the beginning of every year, he starts off fresh, no material because he does a special a year. And he'll go to a club in New Brunswick, New Jersey, near where he lives, and he'll just literally, off of a notebook at the club, he'll just say with no affect at all, he'll just say the joke. And if people chuckle a little, he'll mark it down. And then though he knows those are the jokes to work on. And then he builds them up. And by the end of the year, after saying them the jokes 100 or even 1000 of times and moving in, you know, experimenting, moving in certain ways or saying things with certain inflections, he knows almost as a scientist which jokes will work. Because if people laugh once, they're going to laugh again if you do roughly the the same things. And so that's how that's how they do it. Like, I don't think there's there's very few comedians who have their whole, let's say, 1 hour special just riffing it. Like, that just doesn't happen as much. Maybe with Dave Chappelle, but not with any other comedians. But, but, yeah, but even in a speech, you kinda have to say the joke and see if people laugh, and then you know, okay, I'm gonna keep this in the in the talk. You have to give lots of talks for that that to work. So That's good. You have to be willing to handle the embarrassment of it not working. But then you have to there are tried and true methods of something not working. You could say, okay. I guess this was a joke only for, like, English people, you know, if you're speaking in u the US. So, you know, you make a joke about the not the joke not working. You call out what's what's in the room. So that was just my 2¢ of advice about that. No. It's good. Yeah. You need thick skin though to do that Chris Rock thing. You know? You need you need thick skin to the to start that the 1st few months of the year or whatever that he's doing when he knows that some of these jokes are gonna fail, and they have to fail for the whole process to work. The whole point is he needs to know that some of them work and some don't. I mean, that's, yeah, thick skinned. Yeah. No. Absolutely. I've been I've I did stand up comedy for 6 years, and I've interviewed a lot of comedians. And it's I kinda have to stop doing painful things to myself. So I only get interested in things, it seems, that cause great pain for me. But, on to psychopaths. You spoke to a neuroscientist who realized he was a a psychopath. Like, what was that like? Yeah. One of my favorite podcast guests. And and I would say that I mean, I've also spoken to a psychopath a couple of times called Emmy Thomas, and she she's more anonymous, and she's written a book called Confessions of a Sociopath. And the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath depends on who you're talking to. Everybody has a different opinion about what that is. Some say it's you're born one and you become the other. Some say they're just synonymous words. Some say that psychopaths are aware that they're what they're doing is wrong and sociopaths aren't. There's loads of theories and everyone no one seems to be able to land on one. There's no consensus. But I love talking to psychopaths, and I think part of that is the, the lack of empathy and the fact that they've admitted to that. Because I think sometimes there's a bit of a status game going on, and there's somebody called Will Store who wrote a great book about the status game, which is that, you know, we try to get status through dominance, success, or virtue. So virtue is one of the main three ways we try to get success, which is showing how empathetic that we are to one another. We're you don't have to actually be more empathetic or righteous. You just have to be able to convince other people that you are to gain status. In a tribe, it would have been like show showing that you share your food so other people would give you more food. Today, it would be showing that you care about certain social causes more than other people, and it means that you will get more praise for that. And that's nice, and it's really important for a functioning cohesive society. It's really important that we feel compelled to show and to perform empathy, because then some of us do feel empathy through that. But when you talk to a psychopath, there's none of that. So you don't have to have that I I feel like I can say anything and and what I really think. And I can be a human being who has human horrible disgusting desires without the person across from me judging me because they have no empathy and they've admitted it. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Because on the one hand, I'd be nervous about that though because it's it's as if they're seeing through all the like, you just described virtue in this very status sort of way. Like, the only reason people are are nice ever is to achieve status. It's almost like a psychopathic way of of describing virtue. And I would be nervous that the guy is seeing through any bulls**t and kind of calling me out for my real reasons for doing something, whether I believe those reasons or not. Yeah. I love that. Nervous talking to a psychopath because he would just see right through me. That's the other thing that I'm a psychopath. Like, I worry that maybe he's saying that I'm a psychopath, but don't know it. Well well yeah. But but isn't that nice as well, like, to finally not to finally finally and it's the only 2 times in my life or 3 times interviews I've done with psychopaths where I didn't feel like I had to, like, say a nice thing and to worry about whether I really meant it or not. I could just be mean. Right? And I could have very human thoughts. And and humans are selfish. Humans are mean. We're mean to each other. We want to dominate, but we also do really nice things. So that to me is a relief when I can sit down and have a conversation with somebody. And and and there are a lot of people who, you know, who who would would be honest about this and says, we're human, and we don't have to all aspire to this unrealistic, righteous, puritan way of being. We all mess up, and we all have horrible thoughts. And I think that's if we don't admit to that, it can cause a lot of, stigma and and, isolation to people who think, oh god, am I the only one who has these bad thoughts sometimes? You know? And you can you can do experiments with this if you ask friends and say, how many people would you be willing to let die, who you don't know, just people on the other side of the world, so that you could save your leg. Right? And people are every time I ask this, people are pretty willing to let a lot of people they don't know die to save an appendage. And then you can you can make it like 1,000,000, and people are like, I really don't wanna lose my leg, though. And and, you know, and you can say, okay. What if it's just your toe? And people are like, oh, I suppose I'd lose a toe, but I'd be pissed off the rest of my life that they've this person doesn't even know I've saved their life and my toe's gone now. You know? So and that's great because we're we're not perfect. The other person I really enjoyed speaking to for that reason was Amanda Knox. And and and I don't think and and for those who don't know, Amanda Knox was accused of murdering, her her roommate in in Italy when they were studying there. And she's American, and the roommate was English. And Amanda Knox went to prison for 4 years in Italy and, then was acquitted. But a lot of people still think she did it. And I don't think that she did it. But her talking to her, her reputation has taken such a knock. So many people have said so many horrible things to her that she has no bother anymore about, like, her virtue status. People literally call her a murderer every day, and she's just gone, yeah, fine. Okay. And then you can have a really relaxed and open conversation with her about, like, pedophiles without her worrying that people are gonna, oh, but what if they think she's sympathizing with them or whatever? So so I think that's it. The key is, like, having conversations with with with people who are either devoid of empathy or who just have lost any interest in in being, vulnerable. Right. So that's the question. Like, on one side, it's like a genetic thing. Like, they were someone's born as a psychopath without the brain functioning to feel empathy. On the other hand, someone's like a trained psychopath. Like, they they it's a learned behavior. Like, Amanda Knox has been beaten down so much that, you know, there was a a title of a book in the sixties, been down so long. It it looks like up to me. Like, there's nothing that can get her more down. And Yeah. Well well, I wouldn't say she's necessarily a psychopath. I just I just it's just that It's just that she's no longer concerned with seeming, great to people because they've just take her her status took such a hit anyway. I'm sure she still does lovely things in her private life. But let me ask you this, and and then I still wanna get back to the psychopath guy that you spoke to. But Yeah. I don't know much about I there was a bunch of documentaries about Amanda Knox. I didn't watch any of them. There were podcasts about it. I maybe read briefly, like, an article about this woman in jail in Italy. But what I remember reading, she seemed pretty guilty. But, again, I have no I never trust what I read in the news anyway, so I don't make a judgment on it. But, why do you think she was innocent? Like, the way it was always presented, at least, was that she and her friend or her boyfriend were doing something, and and it was like some sex thing and killed the roommate. Yeah. There's a great book about this, Malcolm Gladwell talking to strangers. And he does he devotes, like, huge portions of the book to Amanda Knox. It's really interesting. A lot of it is about body language and and people reacting the way we expect them to. There's a lot of YouTube stuff about, you know, behavior, and and and this idea. And I think for the same reason that we like to believe in psychics and exorcisms and things like that, and we like to believe that Derren Brown is looking at our eye movements and he can tell things from it, we're actually pretty opaque. And there are things, of course, that we do that give us away. I I I don't want people to misinterpret what I'm saying. There there is some use to behavior analysis. But Amanda Knox was a I guess she was like a teenager or very, very young, and her roommate had just been murdered. So we expect her we want to see her on the floor in in a heap crying her eyes out. But she didn't even know this girl that well, firstly. Secondly, she's got a 1000000 cameras in her face. She's really young. She hasn't quite you don't really develop a full I mean, your brain doesn't stop developing till you're 25. She's got her boyfriend there who was sort of kissing her, which everybody took as like, look, they're being romantic in this moment. What a psychopath. Now to me, a psychopath would do the opposite. A psychopath would be hyper aware and would be fake crying all over the place. She was just acting to me like a scared person who froze. And then from then on, she was just manipulated and abused by Italian police, abused psychologically. She got caught in certain poses. People saw that she was doing yoga in her prison cell or something like that, and everybody took everything to mean that she did the murder. Now her DNA was almost not found at all in Meredith's room. The DNA that was found was a burglar who had been known for burgling in the area, who his his was all over the room. And it looks like he'd broken in, enters, and, you know, killed her. Now people now accept that to be true, but they say, but Amanda Knox was part of it with this guy. And that just doesn't ring true to me. But, look, I wasn't there. So maybe it was. The Netflix documentary is great because it goes all the way to convincing you she did it about halfway through, and then it pulls the rug out from under there and says, this is why she didn't do it. And that that convinced me enough. And she's been, you know, very pleasant and nice in correspondence with me, and I think she's fine. How does she put her life together after that, after after something like that? Like, is she married now? Is she family? Like, what's what's she doing now? She's married, and I'm doing some PR for her now. She's got a podcast, called Labyrinths about all sorts of weird and, you know, being pulled back from the dead or from sticky situations exactly like what you just asked about her. It's about different people with those kinds of stories and how they've sort of moved around and changed their lives. So she's doing the podcast. She's just had a child, and she's yeah. But she just seems to be getting on with it. She's quite friendly with people like Jon Ronson, the journalist who who wrote about psychopaths as it happens. And, yeah, very nice. But that's by the way, the psych you know what you were saying before about the psychopath brain. So doctor James Fallon, who was on my podcast, he's a neuroscientist, and he was studying brains, you know, his whole life. And he was worried that his wife was suffering from dementia, something like that. So what he did was he got a bunch of samples of or scans of all of his family's brains together in a lab, and they didn't have the names on because he didn't wanna be, you know, he didn't wanna be partial or biased. He wanted to be able to just, like, look at each one and see if there was any evidence of dementia. And he came across one scan, and he said, oh my god. This is a this is a really bad psychopath. This this so he could see from the brain scan, this is a psychopath. Oh my god. This person needs to be off the streets. I need to find out who How could he see that? Like, what was missing? I'm not entirely sure, actually. I can't remember what he said about that. Like, did he know what here this is what the brain scan of a psychopath looks like? Have there been studies on the brain scans of psychopaths? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. He he did. Look. Again, I gotta take everything. He you know, this is what he's telling me. You know? And he's a he's a neuropsychologist. I gotta believe him. But, you know and so he went and asked his team, you know, hang on. So whose brain was this? Because I need to warn everybody about this person. And they said, this is your brain. And he was like, oh. Yeah. So and he said, like, it was a it wasn't that much of a shock. He was like, I get it. And he told his wife, and his wife was like, yeah. Yeah. It makes sense. Just just the craziest thing. So you can I guess you are born a psychopath? No. And I saw, like, pieces of your interview with him. He really does seem kind of cold in his answers to you. Scary. Really scary. Yeah. It's like, what did you think of him when talking to him? But, I mean, you're you're biased because you pre knew that he was a psychopath. Yeah. Yeah. Well, of course. Yeah. There's there was one moment where I said, like, because we're doing this in an office. Yeah. I'm in a different office from him, and we're doing it on camera. And there's not even that much eye contact, really, because we tend to be looking at the screen rather than into the camera. So you shouldn't be that scared, really. But there was a moment when I said to him, so, you know, okay. So if you're a psychopath, why is it you haven't gone out and murdered people? And he just went quiet for a bit, which made me look up. And he was just looking there there was a stare. And then he just waited a bit, and he said, how do you know I haven't? And it just scared the bejesus out of me. And there was another point during the conversation. I often yawn. And it's not because I'm tired or bored. I just sudden I need to yawn. And part of it is me thinking, oh god. If I yawn now, that's gonna be terrible. It looks like I'm bored, and that makes me yawn. And I managed to stifle it usually. And with him, I did stifle the yawn, and just slightly there was a slight movement in my nose, and he stopped talking. And he just said he said, am am I boring you? Do you want should I change subject? I mean, no. No. He says, well, I saw you stifling a yawn. You he he just knew straight away. He's so perceptive. He saw it instantly, and that scared me as well. Very scary. So to your point earlier, he does seem to be able to read body language very well. I suppose so. Yeah. He might not know necessarily whether I murdered someone or not. He might not know those kinds of things, but he's spotting stifling a yawn. He's spotting little things. But you know what? It it's not necessarily body language as much as like you said, Amanda Knox. Like, if she was a true psychopath, she would be hyper aware of what she needs to do at that moment and coldly calculate, oh, I need to cry. And so you she would do fake crying, and it would be so real that you wouldn't know it was fake crying. And so maybe he's just very much an understanding of how people would act when they're trying to achieve certain goals. Like, so he's very he he assumes every action is goal oriented as opposed to just a natural, like, oh, this person's naturally, has empathy or naturally is crying. Like, he has a lot of practice figuring out the goal behind every movement. Exactly. I think I think you're spot on there. It's really interesting talking to them because they're just you know, the the other psychopath, Emmy Thomas, I I said to her, so if you're a psychopath and you don't have empathy for people and you can't empathize with other people's feelings, then, you know, do you watch movies? Can you enjoy movies? And she said, yeah. She loves horror films. And I was like, well, you know, how how is it that you can enjoy a horror film? Because don't you have to empathize with the characters who are being chased around and dying and stuff. And she was like, no. You don't you're missing the point. So, yeah, you can learn a lot from these psychopaths. She's like, you're missing the point because there are jump scares. When you're watching it, you like to think you're empathizing with the characters and like putting yourself in their place, and that does happen sometimes. But a lot of the time, you're just scared because the tone is scary, because the images are scary, and sudden things that jump out are scary. Her favorite film ever was Vertigo, and she likes it. It's a Hitchc**k film from the sixties. She really likes it because the director is manipulative. Because halfway through and I I'm sorry for the spoiler, but it it was 70 years ago. It came out 60 years ago. But halfway through, you think someone's dead, and they're not, and it was a fake death. And so she's she loves she's, like, smiling. She's like, I just love how he manipulated us. You know? And so she can appreciate another, like, fraudster, you know, another huckster. Well, I guess if you think about it and that's fascinating because in in any movie and in any TV show, it's all fake. Right? So if someone's crying because their mom died on the story, The crying is not real because the mom really didn't die, and it wasn't his mom anyway. He's crying because that's what the script says is now hear you cry, and a good actor acts the crying so that we can't tell. So so I guess to some extent, they would be a really good judge of writing, directing, and acting because they could tell, oh, that seems like fake crying to me. It's not real crying. Whereas other people I forgot what it's called when you buy into kind of the the story. A lot of other people are just riding with the story, and they don't they're not they're not going any deeper. She's probably able to go really deep on not only is this a good story, but is this a good actor? Was the crying justified here? Were they really sad? Did the director set this upright in the goo in a right manipulative way, or is it too easy for me to tell he's manipulating? Like, that that seems like you would be a good analyst of fiction. Yeah. I think to be a really good actor, you probably have to be an either extremely empathetic or not empathetic at all. I heard Louis CK describing actors as, empty coffee cups or it was he was you know? And he says you meet so many of them in person who just, like, are just nothing. And basically, a director is pouring all this beautiful coffee into them, and they're just like he said it's an incredible gift, that being able to just replicate it in the way that the director wants. But often, he says he'll meet an actor who did this, like, amazing film about, I don't know, some sort of Nazi or whatever, like some complicated character, and then he's like, oh, the amazing job you did, like and and they're just like a blank canvas. They don't have any opinions about it. They just did their job. And that you know, maybe those people are devoid of empathy to an extent. Yeah. Maybe or may or may and and, again, like, they could just have a really good skill of generating tiers so that other people can tell that they're that they're fake. And, you know, probably there are some actors with a lot of depth and some actors without a lot of depth like like the human race in general, and they just happen to have these really good skills in some cases. But but I like this your the psychopath that you interviewed, I like her point that she's able to see who's acting and who's not, and is the director appropriately manipulative too much, not manipulative enough? Because because the average viewer won't notice because they want to go along for the ride. They'll believe it, just to go have fun at the movies and go along with the ride. Like, you know, and and I think analyzing that, it doesn't necessarily make you a psychopath, but maybe you like analyzing movies, but it's interesting that that was her her viewpoint. Like, I was watching a a show just yesterday, actually. This is the only reason I was thinking of the example of someone whose mother dies. So in this show, someone's mother dies, and he goes on and on about how he doesn't feel a thing. And so you start to think, is this guy a a psychopath? Maybe I was thinking about the podcast I had to do with you today, but I was thinking, you know, are they saying this guy, Roger, is a psychopath? And then later in the show, the janitor dies and Uh-huh. Roger starts crying. And so and my thinking was, oh, this is him really crying about his mother, but he he didn't wanna cry about his mother, so he's crying about the janitor's death. Yeah. So, but then I started thinking, is that poor writing then that it was too easy for me to figure that out? And, you know, so it's just like or maybe now I'm thinking I'm a psychopath, but, it it just seems to me like that's that viewpoint is a good way to to an again, you're always analyzing it seems like a psychopath is is not buying into anything and always analyzing what are the goals for this action, instead of the action being a natural reaction to some event that's happening. So it's it's it's interesting. And to to your question of like, why doesn't that guy murder things? Well, he doesn't murder people for because of status. He wants to be seen as a successful neuroscientist, not as a murderer. So That's right. Why would he murder? It seems like a psychopath doesn't necessarily mean to be a bad person, just someone who is very clear about what is needed to be done and will do anything to get their goals. And if their goals are to, make a lot of money by killing people, maybe that's what they do. Or if their goals were to be a top neuroscientist, murdering people would be the last thing they would do. Right. And this it goes back to that that will store theory. And I'm sure before will store, I'm sure there were talks a bit with other people who've spoken about it, but of the 3 main, status sort of channels being, dominance, success, and virtue. So he's obviously gone through success, and he can show everybody that he's a big neuroscientist. Dominance, if if if if you feel like success is is sort of cut off to you, you're you're not somebody who's good at I mean, success was important in, again, in tribes because if you could if you were somebody who could, you know, make fire or kill a pig or whatever, you were a successful person, you had high status in that tribe and people would give you more of the food and stuff like that. If you were dominant, that's the same thing. And if you were virtuous and nice, it's the same thing as well. So if you're a psychopath and and you're not good at stuff, they're not good at being successful, you might try and be dominant and you might become a murderer in some sense. And then, obviously, the third the third one of virtue, I I believe there are a lot of a lot of virtue signal or people who are who are very sincere and, you know, and a and a lot of them are probably psychopaths as well who know that that's an a fairly easy route to to gain some status. And it could be all 3 of them. Like, when the psychopath called you out on, am I boring you, or you could why don't you finish your yawn, or you just stifled a yawn, that's a way of asserting dominance over you. Like, he basically called you out for something, which is a way of asserting status. You wouldn't call out something negative about someone if you were their employee, but you would if you were their boss. Right. And, so he's, you know, and that's a hierarchy, boss employee. So he's basically putting himself higher than you on some hierarchy in his that he thinks exists. Yeah. Yeah. He he scared the hell out of me. Yeah. And and again, it's interesting that he noticed it in a brain scan, and I and, I wonder if I think psychopath in the in the murders everybody thing might be, you know, that's, like, socially learned. Like, the person doesn't have empathy because maybe no one had empathy towards them, and they're so angry about it that they start killing people. And maybe that's the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath. I have no idea. But, it seems like those are 2 different things, so maybe there's some different words to describe them. I I don't know. You know, I I was curious about one thing. You also did a whole thing on infidelity. I'm just curious. What did you find from that? Yeah. Well, that was that was something I was doing, for again, it was for HBO, and it was this short thing. And, I was in Argentina, and I found that a lot of people were more open about cheating. I don't think they necessarily do cheat more, but they there was more sort of open talk among guys, among girls, among in in open public conversation. And then I found out that Thursday nights were not che de trampa or cheating night. So Thursday nights in Buenos Aires are very much like, there are clubs that are open, and I went around just meeting people who said, yeah. I'm this is this isn't even my boyfriend, and and his girlfriend's at home, my boyfriend's at home. Just in normal bars. These were not like swinger clubs or anything like that. And they were all like that when I didn't have the camera. But then when I did have the camera, it became a lot more, difficult to film people and get them to come on camera and talk about it. So they weren't as open as I'd hoped. But just to have that, you know so then I got talking to Ashley Madison, which is that company where you can the website. But they they got, hacked and, you know, released all the all the information of people who were cheating on their spouses was released. So I got speaking to them, and then I went on the radio in Argentina because there's a radio show in Buenos Aires, called, which I don't know what the translation would be, but it's like give to be given or whatever. And you basically call up and you say, I really am attracted to my friend's mom or whatever it might be. There's always these weird ones like that. And so they get you to call the mom on live on the radio, and then you're like, it's the you have to ask a few questions first, and then you have to say, like, everybody knows the show, and they know what it means. And an an an an amazing amount of times, the person who picks up the phone who knows that their husband might be listening or whatever says, like, yeah. And then they, like, meet up and supposedly have sex, or I don't even know what happens after that. But that's, like, the most popular radio show and has been for years, in Argentina. So I went on there and, like, fielded calls from people and sat in on it on it happening, you know, that kind of thing. It was quite quite fun. And and do you think what what do you think? Do you think our, Infidelity is more prevalent in Argentina than other places because of the openness, or do you think it's probably the same everywhere? And, also, I'm just curious. Do you think men cheat more or women cheat more? I think it's probably the same everywhere. I don't I got a lot of I got shouted at a lot on Argentine TV. I went on some TV shows to promote it and stuff, and everyone everyone went crazy at me. And I was like, alright. You know? And Viggo Mortensen, the actor, he happens to be in the radio studio when I was there, and he was telling me what a stupid like, on the radio, he was like, what a stupid thing. This isn't true. You all cheat just as much in England. And because because he speaks he he grew up in Argentina. He's a Danish American actor that grew up in Argentina, so he speaks, like, Spanish with an Argentine accent. And that, like, made all the news there, because I'm like, they don't know who I am. But when Viggo Mortensen had a go at this English guy who was saying they all cheat, that, like, made all the news stuff, and people were shouting at me on the street and all of that kind of thing. So, yeah, I I don't know. Apparently, again, like, the evolutionary thing is that, like, men cheat for physical pleasure, and and what women obviously do as well for that reason, but it's also often to either get back at her husband or and and I don't know if that is being a bit, patronizing to women and sort of suggesting they don't have their you know? It's it's a similar thing to I did a lot of work looking into pedophilia, which I've gone I've always have to get that in and talk about pedophilia. Yeah. You, like, stayed with a group for 2 years that there was, like it was like a therapy for Yeah. Like, you don't call out the pedophile. You don't have them arrested. You just I I don't know. You work with them in some way, and and, hopefully, that that therapy cures them. That's right. So that was in Germany. And the the reason I'm linking it to to what I was just saying is, like, you don't tend to get, many female pedophiles. I did meet one who again, it was like, maybe I was being patronizing because I kept saying to her, like, are you sure, though? Because she was this 25 year old girl who seemed perfectly normal. Like, you wouldn't she's just like, could be your friend. You you wouldn't know. And she's like, yep. And I'm like, you're sure you are attracted to children? And she's like and and I couldn't grasp it. And it and it might have been some sort of latent sexism in me because I was seeing women as, like, these maternal people, you know, that it was just impossible for them and and that they they didn't have the kind of sex drives that men have. So she was really offended, which is a funny thing because I was like, you're not a pedophile. And she was like, I am. And we got into this weird conversation where I just didn't believe her, and she was trying to prove it to me. Like, obviously, you know, just by telling me about her child and as she grew up and she got into manga, Japanese anime, And that's how it started. And that she by the way, I should just say she's this this person never ever offended, never did anything about it, and never would, but she can't form attractions to adults, which can you know, makes her very lonely. But as you say, this is a state sponsored therapy for pedophiles in Germany where I was living for a few years, because I wanted to learn German. This seemed like the right kind of story, because otherwise, what am I gonna do? Nazis? Like, everyone's done that. You know? And it's the only country in the world where their therapy never reports their patients to authorities. And, obviously, the goods and this is why I like the gray area. The the good side of that, it means that, these people are encouraged to go to therapy before they offend in the hope that it will lower the offense rate, which they don't know if it has done or not. The bad side is it means that trained clinicians are sending people they know to be dangerous back onto the streets, you know, who could potentially go and offend. So it's a really complicated one, which to me was like, okay. I've gotta do this. You know? And was that weird seeing all these guys, I guess, who who you knew were pedophiles? Probably some of them had offended and and done something, and maybe some hadn't. But, like, was that weird kind of establishing friendships with them and and living with them? Yeah. Well, so so I didn't live with them, but I went and met, with their you know, I went and sort of, embedded myself in their communities and and sort of, I don't wanna say hung out because I it was always very clear, like, I'm the journalist, and you're the pedophile. And that's an awkward thing in itself. You know, we talk about hierarchies and things. And the pedophile, whether they've offended or not, is the lowest of the low. I've spoken to on my podcast, I've spoken to several prisoners who always talk about the glee that they get when, like, a new batch of pedophiles are sent in because it gives them someone to compare themselves to in terms of status, to to look down on, no matter what they've done. They could have done some pretty gruesome things themselves. They some of them will be child killers, but who didn't, you know, get involved sexually. And they they would then look down on pedophiles who sexually abuse children, which, you know, just just whenever I talk about it, I always wanna say it's the worst thing that anyone can do to to children, and it it ruins their lives. And and that's why these these pedophiles need to go into therapy, because a lot of them think of themselves as good people, and they don't wanna do bad things. But the problem is if they don't go to therapy, they just talk to one another on, like, message boards and stuff, and they can then get themselves to a position where they convince one another that it's okay, that it won't harm the child. So that's why they've gotta get into therapy and be disabused of that notion. But as for whether it was weird, yeah, it's weird because of yeah. I'm the journalist. You're the pedophile. And one guy turned up with a couple of kids that he was babysitting. So that was like and I was like, what are you what are these kids doing here? And he was like, I'm babysitting them. And I was like, you know, that's that doesn't seem right to me. And he was like, why not? I haven't ever abused anyone. Why why can't I? You know? And I was like, yeah. It's a very good accent, by the way. Thank you. I was living there for some time. And and again, please, anyone listening don't think I'm I'm making light of such a serious topic, but that just was how his accent sounded. And he was like and it is a weird one where I'm trying to explain to him. I'm like, yeah. But you have those kind of attractions. And he's like, yeah. But I haven't done anything, so why can't I babysit children? I'm like, well, I don't babysit children. Like, what are you doing babysitting children? Do their does their mom know about your condition? And he was like, yeah. And I was like, I don't believe you. And he said, yeah. And he gave me her number. And then I went and met the mom of these children, these little girls, and I went over to her house. And I was like, what the hell are you doing? You're letting your kids go out with this guy. And she was like, well, he hasn't done anything. I was like, no. It's still not right because the kids are gonna know forever that you left them in the care of a pedophile. And he was taking them like swimming. You know? So it was infuriating, and you're dealing with these people who, again, don't see themselves as bad people. They just have the thoughts and the attractions and stuff. And most of them have never offended as that's what they tell me, of course. You know? I don't know. And like I say, this is the issue right now. It's like either we let them go to therapy or we leave them to one another, where, as I say, they convince themselves of their biases, and then they even good people do really, really bad evil things. Man, I can't I can't even imagine. But, I mean, you know what's interesting? It's sort of as you describe each insane thing, you you always qualify it. Like, you always say, just to be clear, I'm not making judgment on this. Or just to be clear, I'm not spiritual, but people could have their beliefs. Oh, yeah. And so so you have, like it's almost like a filter of what makes a good story is if you have to clarify your own stance beforehand because this is such a a third rail or a hot topic Oh, yeah. That, you have to separate you have to make sure you verbally separate yourself from the subject matter. So and with that, I'll say, I am not political at all, but what did your forensic psychiatrist say, about Joe Biden's potential for dementia? Good segue. And you're right. And and you know what? I when you've got a podcast, I'm sure you feel the same way. You gotta have thick skin again. You gotta just get used to people misinterpreting and being angry and especially because my mine is on YouTube. I put the podcast. I know you've got a YouTube channel as well, but you don't always put the podcast out on it, I don't think. But you must get a lot of messages of people from people. Well And I've I've been writing for for 20 years professionally, and I used to write for the a call weekly column for the Financial Times, for instance, and, I've written a lot of books, and I write a lot of articles. And I always feel you should like like, you were describing when in Germany, don't do something on the Nazis because everyone's done that. In order to write or do something interesting, it has to be something that nobody's done before. Do it in a way that no one's done before, and that's gonna create you're not trying to be controversial. This is just something that interests you, but, and you have something to say about it, but people misinterpret all the time. I get hate mail or hate messages every single day. Because of after 20 years of writing things, I've built up quite a number of topics that people strongly disagree with me about. And, of course, they'll be angry, and then, you know, most attacks are sort of just stupid attacks like Amanda Knox noticed. And, you know, I'm not comparing myself to her. Just to be clear, I'm not, you know, a accused killer of anything. But, You're doing what I do. You're qualifying it. Yeah. I know. I did that on purpose. So so so, yeah, it's just something you have to get used to if you're gonna write and or or video things that are interesting. Like, that's your your competition is a million extremely talented kids on TikTok, and they're fierce competition for people's eyeballs, so you have to say things that are, you know, interesting and potentially controversial. Yeah. Well, you wanna be interesting as well. Even if no one's listening, Even if it's just a couple of friends talking, like, you don't wanna have a boring conversation. If if me and you were not being recorded now and we're sitting somewhere, it's not like we would now turn to safer topics to be in in fact, would go the other way, I imagine, because no one's listening. Yeah. It's just us. We'd say awful, crazy, really controversial, horrible things, and and that would be great and much more exciting for the 2 of us having the conversation. I just so so you do get a thicker skin and you do stop caring because you get hate mail every day. I get the same in the comments. Sometimes it's anti semitic stuff. Sometimes it's just they don't like my face. What whatever it might be. And, like, I I stopped caring so much, but I do feel like if you at least qualify some things, it's gonna stop some of it. And and I I just I can't be bothered now to get an email from someone saying, oh, right. So you think it's okay when when pedophiles attack children? It's like, no. I didn't say that. I couldn't have been clear. And there still will be some. You know? There still will be some. You know? And then people write and they say, they're all terrible anyway. And I go, I well, alright. Well, I don't I'm not there. Like, you know? I don't care. Tell them. I I I just did a thing, and I've reported on them, and I found it really interesting. That's it. But, yeah, what what was it? Oh, yeah. Biden. Yeah. Oh, the political stuff. Yeah. You told me off air. You're really no. You didn't really, political. Biden oh, wait. But that was just that was some yeah. Doctor Shahamdas again, and he was just, again, I think refusing to be too drawn on it because, again, sleepy Joe and all that stuff. I don't like Joe Biden, and I really didn't like Trump, and I don't didn't like, you know, Boris Johnson, and I don't like Trudeau. I mean, I think you have to be a psychopath to to imagine that the country needs a leader, and of all the millions of people, it should be you. Like, I think you've gotta be a a real weird person to to want that. Right. So I don't like any of them. And I'm happy to jump on any of those trains of, like, you know, making fun of these people. It's just that I always found the stuff about Biden really boring. Again, just boring, just like he's old. And it was the UK, you know, even the left wing shows, they would make the jokes about that he's old. And it's just like, what a easy target. How boring is that? So I was actually happy that he didn't go down that route as a, you know, trained forensic psychiatrist of just being like, yeah. He definitely has dementia. He was like, it's very possible that he has some very, very, very early, like, symptoms. But he said that people are underestimating quite how much dementia would have taken him by now, you know, quite how much it would have affected him if he really had it, you know, in in any serious kind of way. Yeah. So that was his again, and it's not what people wanna hear. People wanna hear, yeah. And he's mentally ill, and we need to have and I think, you know, instead of that ad hominem stuff, just say, hey. I don't like his policies. I think that's that's enough. Right? You know, it's interesting because I do think, you know and it's almost a cliche to say this, but social media has made us more black or white on on every issue. Yeah. Like, you can't and you can't just say, like what you just said. Oh, I don't like Trump, but I don't like Biden, and I don't like Boris Johnson. I don't like Trudeau. And it's it's true. Like, I I actually, I don't even think a country needs one leader. Like, that notion seems seems even weird to me. Like, most of the time, the the president of the United States in the constitution is really just supposed to be a figurehead. Like, they have very few responsibilities in the constitution, but over the decades and centuries, they've taken more power for themselves. It's probably similar to the prime minister of of England. Mhmm. But I hate how politics has distorted all our views on what medicines are good and what medicines are bad. And Yeah. Every issue now is is a political issue. And, also, my kids just informed me, you're not allowed to be silent either. Oh, no. Silent, that's bad. So you have to have an opinion. You're silent. So we That's like if you're not actively anti racist, then you're racist as well. Right. And, like, I I had to tell my one of my kids that, listen, in the constitution, we have the right to vote, but it's not mandatory to vote. So that's an important right we have, and it's enforcing things is starting to be the definition of fascism when you force people to go along with a a particular philosophy. What did your kids say to that? Nothing. She was silent. And she has that right? Yeah. Exactly. So I didn't argue it. But but anyway, Andrew Gold, I wanna thank you so much. These are, like, incredible stories, and you have a book coming out. When's it coming out? The Psychology of Secrets? Yeah. Not for a while yet. It's, like, still I'm still writing it. It's stressing me out. It's just stressing me out because I've got the the Don't don't sweat it too hard. What you should do is get the transcripts of all the critical podcasts and interviews that you did and, edit those. I am I am sort of doing I am sort of doing that. But it's it's with, like, a publisher called Pan Macmillan, and it's I think it's gonna be out in about a year or so. What what people should do is, like, follow me on the the podcast on the edge of an because on the edge of Andrew Gold, because then I'll I'll, talk about it when it's when it's out. But it what what happened was, like, people kept telling me their secrets. Have you found this? Have you had people getting getting in touch with you, people who listen to your podcast and just telling you everything about themselves? Yeah. I mean, it happened more, again, with with writing. Like, I started writing, about times when I've gone broke. Like, I I I have this tendency to be very volatile, go from a lot of money to dead broke and in debt to making it again, losing it again. And I had all sorts of weird experiences along the way. And people would literally make fun of me on Twitter when I would post the article, then contact me privately, and it was like, yeah. I did this, this, this, you know, myself. I know what you're going through. And and they would tell me things much more horrific than anything I was going through. And, but it's just everybody's everybody's got a story, and that's when I wanted to start a podcast because everyone literally, everyone has some crazy story. So but most of the time, it's bottled up. You're absolutely right. And I think because of the topics, of course, you were writing about, you know, poverty and finance and stuff, so those are the stories people got in touch with you about. So because I've done a lot of podcast episodes about pedophilia and psychopathy and stuff like that, People would just email and, like, not even say hello or introduce themselves and just, like, just, like, start with my first memory was my grandfather doing this to me or that to me. And put you know? And I was like, Jesus. Oh, I didn't expect that just because I've been doing this as a profession doesn't mean I can just, like, be confronted with it while I'm eating my dinner. Like, oh my god. Like, the stories. And then some people wrote, one woman in particular, there was one who was cheating on her husband. It's like, why are you telling me? And another woman who killed someone. Right? And and it was a self defense kind of thing, but they just flee the scene and nothing happened. And she told me all about it, and I could trace it down to, like, the newspaper clippings and stuff like that, and I could see it did happen. And that got me thinking so many things about secrets. Like, why am I the one person they've ever told? What is the reason for that? Right? And there's several reasons if you think about it. I mean, one is what they call parasocial interaction, which is that, like, talk show host thing that, you know, I've had a whether I know it or not, I've had a relationship with them for 2, 3 years of them hearing my voice 3 times a week in the episodes. Another is that I don't know their friends, so I'm not gonna, like, let it out to people. Another is that they've they've heard me interview people about even worse things and not be judgmental. So there's, like, a million different reasons, and I thought, okay. I can tell a lot of these stories as well as the stories about exorcism and pedophiles. All of these people have had to keep secrets, and I wanna know what it does to someone when they keep a secret, what it does to you. Yeah. Go on. You know, I think also they want help. So they want you to say that one because you've interviewed all these people and they can't tell anybody in their lives about what their secrets are. They want that one magic word from you to that's gonna help them Yeah. Because you know. And you've been there. You're you're in the trenches with them, and there's no one at home they could talk to. And so please give me that one word that will that will help me, that one sentence that will help me. I find that a lot of people, it's like a cry for help almost or a confession. They just wanna be able to tell a good story, and they have no one to tell it to. Yeah. So it's one probably one of those things. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. There's something as well called, like, the fever model, which is like your when you're holding on to too many secrets I mean, the the the the science is and I don't I never you know, I don't know how far this goes, but you can end up with heart attacks. You can end up with ulcers. There's all sorts of things that happen to you if you keep too many secrets. But the the point is that the brain the brain sort of creates an atmosphere a little bit like, with a fever, like getting too hot, you know, to kill the fever when you've got a secret. It's pushing you to reveal it. And the the theories are that, again, evolutionarily, you know, the tribes and things is better. A tribal function better if things are out in the open, if everybody knows more about each other and the information is more freely available, that those tribes would have survived. So something about our minds pushes us to expel that information, but that's constantly battling with the other side, which is if I reveal this information, I might be societally, ostracized. So they're battling with that. And if they just tell us, we're not gonna tell their friends or anything. So they're not gonna have any social ostracization. They're just gonna be able to get rid of that fever for a moment. So that's all part of it. Yeah. I could I could believe that also. Like, it's very stressful to have, a secret. Yeah. So, like, for instance, if you're going broke and this has happened to me before, you don't want everybody to know because it's embarrassing. It's shameful. Yeah. And, you know, but it's like you said, you feel this urge to talk to someone about it, but you just can't. Absolutely. And or probably same thing with all the sexual stuff and and, everything else. But, look, I that's why I really I you know, it's funny. I, in the nineties, did a project for HBO about some of these things you're discussing right now. So, who did you deal with at HBO? Oh, god. It was so it it was it wasn't it was initially made for oh, shoot. Not Univision. It was another Fusion. It was Fusion TV channel who then sold the series to HBO, and I think there were people who were sort of working on both for both, but they they all had Latino names. But I don't think it would be anything that was for the 90s. There's, like yeah, there's, like, HBO Latino. So it's like a whole division of HBO. They're pop Univision is probably dealing with them. Yeah. Yeah. So so, well, anyway, Andrew, thanks so much. And definitely, I'm gonna ask you to come on again. You have so many great stories and so much so many things to learn, and and I can't wait for your book. And people have to listen to your podcast On the Edge with Andrew Gold. It's it's great and that you should listen to it. There's so many interesting stories and check out Andrew if you look up Andrew on Andrew Gold on Wikipedia or not Wikipedia, where did I read about all of your things? What did you I don't know because you gotta be careful because there's a singer with my name who died, unfortunately. He was really young. He was 51, Andrew Gold, and he sings thank you for being a friend and lonely boy, and he played with the Beatles. And he also he made the tune for Mad About You, that series from the nineties, the sitcom. Oh, really? Okay. And his name is Andrew Gold? Yeah. Which is which is, you know and and it's a funny thing because a name is so silly. What does a name mean? It's nothing. Right? But my whole life, I've been hearing about him and people sing his songs at me, and I feel a connection to him because of that. And a funny thing, like, a couple of times on Twitter, his, widow still uses his Twitter account sometimes to just check on things said about him, which is, again, it's really sweet and it's it's heartbreaking, really. And quite a few times, like, he's been tagged in my thing or whatever. And so she and I have spoken a little bit, and it was very emotional and moving even though a name is just nothing. What is a name? I feel some sort of connection to that singer, Andrew Gold. But, yeah, I think I don't know what you read about me. It might have been just on my I had a web I don't even use it anymore. Andrewgold dot I'm just checking what is I mean, there's lots of projects. You have Yeah. Project Darkfield. You have the the HBO thing, that was a a miniseries, I think, outpost. There's all sorts of video clips with you that are outside the podcast, but but On the Edge with Andrew Gold, watch the podcast, listen to the podcast, and, Andrew, I look forward to to chatting again. Thank you so much for for coming on the podcast. Thank you, James. It was it was a pleasure. I'll have to get you on mine at some point when you're not too busy or anything. Yeah. I'd love to. Any anytime. Yeah. Would do it.