Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / James Cary: Graham Linehan and the Power of Words || SLP603

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James Cary: Graham Linehan and the Power of Words || SLP603 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we weren't prepared for this.
• 0:09
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• 0:12
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• 0:18
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• 0:22
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• 0:27
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• 0:29
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• 0:35
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• 0:41
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• 0:48
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• 0:53
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• 1:00
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• 1:02
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• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there we go.
• 1:06
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• 1:12
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• 1:20
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• 1:25
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• 1:34
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• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right, well, that's responding to the rebirth.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Speak Life podcast.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Thomas Thorogood, media producer at Speak Life.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, you will hear Glenn Scrivener interviewing James Carey, Christian comedy writer, about the Graham Lineahan situation.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Graham Lineahan was confronted by five armed police officers when he landed in the UK over some tweets that he posted.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And in this conversation, Glenn and James get into the issues of free speech and comedy and the power of words and how Christians can sort of think about stewarding our words for the glory of Christ.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So some fascinating and timely issues here.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I will hand straight over to Glenn and James.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: On the 1st of September, Graeme Linehan was flying back into Heathrow from Arizona, where he has made his home.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: The comedy writer Graeme Linehan has very robustly held forth on issues to do with trans, and he is in the country at the moment in order to answer uh claims that he has uh abused and perhaps even assaulted a trans activist in the UK.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: But as he stepped off the flight in Heathrow, he was met by five armed police officers who detained him for 16 hours to ask him about three tweets.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh can you get arrested simply for saying hurty words, uh as uh many people are putting it?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the Free Speech Union here in the UK has said that 33 arrests are happening every day in the UK because of the content of people's social media postings.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Is that a high number?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: 33 per day.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: What should we think about this?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: And what should we think about people using jokes online when those jokes might end up offending people and falling foul of certain hate crime legislation?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: The first person I thought of when I thought of this topic was James Carey.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: He's literally written the book on the subject, The Sacred Art of Joking.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: He too is a comedy writer who has spoken with Graeme Linehan in the past, and uh he has all sorts of views about free speech and uh how to speak words of life into a culture that might not want to hear them.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: And he joins me on the line.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for joining us, James Carey.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm honored that you were the first person I thought of, or at least for saying that anyway.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: Oh no, you absolutely uh comedy writer, comedy writer, uh believer in in free speech and uh and not afraid of uh raising people's hackles.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and and when you were writing your book, The Sacred Art of Joking, certainly um spicy tweets and uh uh expressions of of free speech were certainly getting people into trouble as you were writing that book.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: What was what were some of the uh things in the news that made you write The Sacred Art of Joking?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um there was one high-profile case I've just gone back to the book and looked up.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: In uh there was a guy who tweeted about blowing up an airport and it was a joke.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was a guy called Paul Chambers on the 6th of January, worried about disruption from cold weather at Robin Hood Airport, now called Doncaster Sheffield Airport in South Yorkshire.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Chambers tweeted, crap, Robin Hood Airport is closed.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: You got one week uh and a bit to get your stuff together, otherwise, I'm blowing the airport sky high.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: That the word stuff is a different word, and I don't like swearing personally when it's me and I'm not quoting anybody else.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: I am quoting, we can get into that if you like.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, he said he was going to blow up an airport, and so this is something that law enforcement bizarrely took very seriously.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: He was clearly making a joke, it wasn't a terribly funny one, but he did get a visit from the anti-terror police unit.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't let common sense prevail.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: He was arrested and charged with charge with sending a public electronic message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene, and menacing character, contrary to the Communications Act 2003.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: He was found guilty, fined£385, ordered to pay£600 of costs.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: That tweet cost him a thousand pounds and he was sacked.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a public campaign from Stephen Fry, Al Murray, Graham Linehan, um and it failed uh to appeal to the High Court uh to get it overturned.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And um, one argument put forward by John Cooper QC was that if Chambers tweet had been menacing, so was John Betchman's poem about his plea for friendly bombs to fall on Slough.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: So um perhaps the estate of Betchman should be sued by Sloughing Borough Council.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: So and the other thing that has been recent, again, this we these things feel very hot at the time and then they go away quite quickly.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Jerry Springer the Opera?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Remember that old one?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: Stuart Lee and yeah.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so and that ran very successfully uh in the West End for quite a long time, and it only really became very contentious when the BBC got right to it, and then they broadcast it, and suddenly that triggered uh thousands and thousands of letters, partly coordinated, and so in a way, the reason I wrote the book was the fact that this this isn't going away, this just comes round and round and round.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, being a writer, I might as well try and make some money out of it and write write a book, and so I kind of go through those things, and the the arguments are are very, very similar.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, you've got two comedy writers there.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: You've got Graeme Linehan, who so fascinatingly was on the other side of the free speech uh debate when it comes to the the guy and and his uh communication about the airport.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but you've got Stuart Lee, uh a comedy writer, um, who very much wanted there not to be blasphemy laws uh and wanted to be able to speak his mind in Jerry Springer The Opera, an opera in which in the final act I think Jesus appears in a nappy, I think at the end of the at the end of it all.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um and he wanted he wanted there not to be such blasphemy laws on the books, such that if you're offended by that you call the cops.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um you can certainly be offended by all sorts of things in life.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um you can declare things to be um out of court and not the sort of thing that people should say.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: You can you can say that certain expressions are vile and obscene, um, but calling the cops does seem to be a different kind of a thing to to treat sins as though they're crimes.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: But what's interesting to me is that Stuartley and Graham Linehan were both comfortably um on the liberal side of sort of the Metropolitan elite of London, they're both comedy writers.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um Stuart Lee at that moment was on the pro-free speech speech side.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: Graham Linehan was on on the the kind of well, let's be careful, you know.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: Careful now.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, he yes, because I mean, also although I think he was part of the this uh chambers guy shouldn't be prosecuted for a for a funny tweet.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, he was, okay, yeah, yeah, but he then flipped because um a guy called Count Dankula, the real name Mark Meachin, made a video of his girlfriend's pug dog, which he had trained to do a Nazi salute whenever he said a certain word that would probably get this clip demonetized, yeah, or a couple of words at least.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so a vile sentiment.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: He he yeah, yeah.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: An absolutely fascist Nazi sentiment.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: And because he thought, let's take this lovely dog and just ruin it.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and he thought it would be really funny, which technically speaking, he's correct.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: It is really funny.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then making so he put this on YouTube, he got this dog to do the salute by saying these awful words that would have resonance in the 1940s in a way that we would find very uncomfortable.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you see, we're we're we're adult, we're we're we're doing that now, aren't we?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're not censoring ourselves with good reason, not just because we'd be demonetized, but because do we need to actually say the words?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not I'm not sure we do on every occasion.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't, when we need to be clear or so, but I think in that case, uh Linahan basically said Dankila's quite right that he should be arrested and he was found guilty in a Scottish court of law for a cr the crime of hate speech, to which Lineahan said serves him right too, because he doesn't look like the kind of guy you want on your side.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the problem the people whose free speech you want to defend are rarely uh your friends, yeah.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it that sense of I don't agree with what you say, but we'll defend to your death your right to say it, is like wow, that often gets really heavily tested, almost to the point of destruction, because the pin-up people for um for jokes and taste and decency are very rarely the people that you would like to defend.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what they say is edgy and they live at the edges, you know, they they are fringe kind of figures, usually, yeah.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so to his credit, Linehan realized that he had really misjudged the Count Dankula case and that saying that this thing that he found offensive should be a crime, he sort of publicly apologised to him, which I thought is is impressive.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: People tend not to do that.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it came a bit late, but he to his credit made it he made a fulsome uh apology and he has been living firsthand this incredibly difficult world that we live in where anything can be robbed of context, put out there, and people can take offence and then call the police.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: And because of the completely idiotic law uh the Communications Act 2003, which is a truly terrible, lazy, ill-written piece of legislation, virtually anything uh can fall with under this.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that that's anything that's interesting or worth saying could probably be full fall foul of this.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: If somebody can take offence, then they w and if they do, even if they can are concerned that other people may be offended, yeah.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's enough.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's the test.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it this is the the subjectivity of it is terrible law and really does need looking at again.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, Nigel Farage, when he was in the US last week, he he he at least said that um it was well intentioned, the 2003 legislation, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's yeah, and and this is something that legislators should be very alive to, that whatever the intention that you have when you're legislating, there might be uh any number of unintended consequences.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: And uh some of this has meant the policing of speech such that about 12,000 arrests are made uh in this country every year over social media communications.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the three tweets Which was not in mind in 2003, two years after 9-11, and this bill uh became an act because it was trying to stop radicalisation of certain uh very popular religions in the world, yeah, um uh and a particular version of them.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: So it was brought in to combat one thing and then was immediately weaponized to to do everything else.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: So but they really could have seen that one coming.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's like that that really was at the time, people said.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think even Rowan Atkinson at the time, who's always been on the favor in in favor of free speech, he said this is a terrible mistake that we're making, and he was absolutely right.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, because one of the great dangers with the legislation is something must be done.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: This is something.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, do it.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Let us let us at least be seen to be doing it.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: And uh you there's there might be all sorts of collateral damage.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the three tweets that Graham Linehan said uh which fell foul of this legislation were back in April of this year.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um probably the first one is is the one that people uh are identifying as perhaps the one that uh that would have caused the most amount of questioning from the police.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: He says, if a trans-identified male is in a female only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: Make a scene, call the cops, and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: Now is that an incitement to violence, James Carey?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's uh take taken literally and also it's it's not obviously a joke, is it?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's it's it's not absurd.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like well you can't possibly this fellow threatening to blow up an airport was clearly joking.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: So on on on that, whereas what Linahan said is is much closer to that particular line, uh whether that constitutes a crime or not, uh I think is is much more questionable.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm all in favour of Twitter policing their own speech and just saying, oh, okay, you don't get to use Twitter if you're gonna do that.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's a private platform.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um the fact that people treat it now as some kind of communication arm of major corporations and that this is where journalists get their stories from and everything, I think there's a I think it sort of feels like it's part of the public square, which is now corporately owned, but actually it isn't, it is a private platform.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm really fine with people having all kinds of stringent rules within their own realms, but uh but yeah, so given the law as it is, I guess it's a crime.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying that this is clearly not what the laws are for.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think actually incitement to violence is uh a criminal offence and under UK law.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh it it's certainly uh there are other aspects of that legislation 2003 that this this could fall foul of, yeah.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it is it is a it it's not a great it's not a great tweet, but I don't for a moment believe that it requires five armed police to rest to to pick them up and the moment they step off a plane.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that just seems bizarre.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I I watch a number of American um YouTube channels and listen to people, you know, not even about culture, but about other things about authors and writing and publishing and that kind of stuff.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: We're a laughing stock.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're an absolute laughing stock.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And in America, free speech is obviously a very big thing, but they they are looking at the numbers of arrests and they're looking at all these statistics and looking at these high-profile cases and just thinking, what on earth is going on?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think that's I I think it is making us look really, really stupid.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: What are the different views though of uh America looking in on the UK and the UK looking to America?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Because I I think some of the greatest kind of miscommunications culturally are often um across those two sides of the Atlantic.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think if if a Brit was to direct the movie, you know, um America the movie, it would be uh all about people tearing, you know, tearing each other to shreds with AR-15s, just shouting, America! as people die on a hail of bullets.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: That would that would be America the movie.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think if Americans were to direct, you know, Britain the movie, it would be this sort of black and white futuristic dystopia in which sort of some grey-suited men called Ian with a clipboard are calmly requisitioning your children to belong to the people.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: While you sit at home in a bowl of hat drinking tea, you know, and there are all these conflicting stereotypes that don't seem to don't seem to match.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: And the parents of the children be, this is bang out of order.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think that would be Britain, the musical, as directed by the Americans.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: But like to to what degree uh has America got us right, and to what degree are they looking through some they are they have the most peculiar First Amendment kind of free speech lenses and sensibilities.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: And we we might like those sensibilities, but but actually Amer America is an outlier in in history and around the world.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is definitely, and and the more you look back at history, the more you just are amazed at how unusual it has been for us to have any kind of free speech.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've just been digging back into the um story of uh Bishop Hugh Latimer, who is remembered by the Church of England on Ox uh on October the 16th, um uh burned in the place where in which you were educated to a high level, Glen.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: And he said words.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And there were also certain words that he would not say, he would not go along with the with the Catholic version of translation of the mass.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think that really was the deal breaker, and uh there were dire consequences for doing that.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't really think there was I'm not aware of any campaign saying why on earth are we burning people, this is wrong.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: The idea of burning people was relatively novel, I believe it was only introduced in England in about 1401.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Again, to stop people translating the dangerous Latin Bible into English, because then everyone would uh draw the wrong conclusions and do all manner of uh things, and um they wouldn't listen to what they were told in church, and anarchy would ensue.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I think an awful lot of stuff is justified in order to keep the peace, and therefore, you know, during the wartime England speech was extremely regulated.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we've got this idea that we've got free speech, and that's somehow something to do with Magna Carta.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: A man should be able to smack did did Magna Carta did she die in vain?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've sort of had this very ignorant view of of a contract between the king and his people which contained a surprisingly large amount about fishing and fishing rights, and so I think we've had it pretty good, but also we've only and only recently, only in the last 20 years, have had completely unregulated forms of communication, by which I mean they were not that there were no gatekeepers.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: So growing up in the in the 1980s, the main place you get your news is newspapers, and who controls newspapers?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Newspaper editors and owners, and also libel laws and a whole lot of other stuff.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: You just couldn't print stuff that was wildly untrue and expect to get away with it.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think we we haven't quite worked out what to do with that freedom, and even in the 1660s, after the Civil War and the King was reintroduced, huge clamp down on printing and what you could say.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And this is you know, old England, it's like I think we just assume that we've been able to say whatever we like for centuries.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: We really haven't.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: No, but that that then led to um well, you're you're going to have a well with within the English Civil War, yeah, you're you're going to have a a a big free speech kind of movement that's sort of developing, and and you'll have people like John Milton and you'll have people like John Locke who start making these pleas for freedom of speech, and and then you'll have Puritans who are going to sail across the sea to America.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's incredibly historically resonant that Graham Lineahan left London and went to the United States in order to be able to say the sorts of things that he's been saying.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's just that the the inquisitors um uh of our day are not the same as the inquisitors of the 17th century.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: But but but these Graham, you missed the Mayflower.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it went without you.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't think you like the people on the and of course, this is the other thing that I'm I'm very conscious of is that uh Graeme Line, I think, is rather expected to be able to say what he likes without there being consequences.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now, again, I'm not sure whether they should be criminal consequences, but when he was one of the cool kids who'd just written Father Ted and was making jokes about the Catholic Church, which for me never landed because I'm not an Irish Catholic and therefore it just I I just thought it was a funny, very silly show.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, but I I'm aware that it didn't feel that way in Ireland, I would imagine.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: But um but when he was I don't know, was he president of the National Secular Society or something like that?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's always expressed himself extremely bluntly and that used to have no consequences because he was one of the cool kids and he was the father dead guy, he was big trained.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Loved Big Train Series One of Big Train is just a majestic, funny, very weird sketch show.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: But now he's sort of saying things that are edgy, unpopular with some people and some people who have the ear of uh law enforcement and politicians and and the Green Party.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: And um it's really it's like, yeah, that this is actually welcome to the world, Graham.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you say things and they're incredibly rude to people and about people and suggest that people get punched uh in the Nether regions, well, what do you think's gonna happen?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um again, I I'm not convinced these are criminal charges, but right, right, yeah.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this was takes me back to, and if if I could write, if I could persuade someone to pay me uh proper money to write a proper book, it would be about words.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: It would be about the power of words.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem is, if you're a Gen Xer like you or me, the playground thing which was sticks and stones may break my bones, but names would never hurt me.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we're now deeply uncomfortable with the idea that words are weapons.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: We just think, oh, for heaven's sake, of course they're not.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sticks and stones, etc.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: We've just sort of we've assumed that sticks and stones is in the Bible.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is just self-evidently true that words can't hurt people, and yet, how does God create the universe with words?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, how is Jesus described at the beginning of John's Gospel?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: The word from whom does he draw his authority or how does he draw his authority?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: It is written, he says words, right?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Words, words, words.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: How is the gospel sent across the nation by words that have been uh enabled by the Spirit to reverse the Tara Babel through Pentecost with words, and so I think we're very naive about words and can just say, oh, he didn't mean it, or just it's like no, no, no.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: There are some words that once you've said a word, it cannot be unsaid.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and I think we haven't quite got our heads around the the the potency of words, because I could say something now that you would probably take out, but if I'd said a particular word now without context or a phrase or I just said a thing, I'm done.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um that word, it's like a magic spell.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's like um, is it in The Magician's Nephew, where uh Jadis, there's this word which basically destroys the world.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_04: Right, yeah, yeah.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's interesting, it's a word, isn't it?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's just literally one word, and it is a neutron bomb.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: It is a nuclear weapon that will just devastate everything.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: So the reason the reason to not criminalize speech is not that words aren't as powerful as deeds and actions and violence.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, words are more powerful for good and for ill.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: And therefore, we need we need the freedom to be able to sift and discern those words so that we can have true speech.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the the whole point of freedom of speech is not so that we can have edgy speech, um, but we tolerate edgy speech so that we can have the true variety um because it is more powerful than force in the world.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas I I don't think that argument gets heard among Gen Xers, as as you say, who who just believe that sticks and stones don't break, don't break your bones.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: But but also we need to forward this argument that words are more powerful, especially with the younger generation who are much more comfortable with saying words are a form of harm as well, and whose whole moral kind of disposition is that the the the minimization of harm and the maximization of pleasure is the only moral game in town.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: And therefore, if if your words to me can be as hurtful as you smacking me in the face, then the laws against your hurtful words should be exactly the same as the laws against you smacking me in the face.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think people don't really, because they they're just working with a care, care versus harm um maxim, and because they've been told by their Gen X and boomer parents that that words aren't that important, those arguments actually hold sway.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas what you're saying is words are more important than that.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's the harm over which we disagree is what kind of what constitutes harm and why is harm good and why is harm bad.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I'm really struck by how the words that people say about you live with you forever.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: I I now I'm not gonna stereotype, okay, I'm gonna stereotype here.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're an Australian man.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's no way you weren't beaten up at school at some point or punched or by British students when I first came to this country, yes.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: For being a foreigner, and I was told to go home every day of my life.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: No, not just a foreigner for being Australian.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm afraid I can't.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in I'm endorsing that.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: It could have been most other countries in the world.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing is, you just forget those bruises and it's just all part of it.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: And and boys just kind of punch each other, and it's sort of weirdly fine, and all that kind of stuff.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: But you'll probably remember what one teacher said about you.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, you'll probably remember what quite a few teachers said about you.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: You remember a school report, you remember something, you remember something that somebody said about you, and it was it's sort of devastating.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's still with you.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: You're still trying to prove a teacher wrong at your age, at my age.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a and that stays with you, and those are words, and they creep in, and in some ways, they make you a better person.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they are they're they're they're almost like a little uh vaccine kind of small dose so that you build up antibodies.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you believe in vaccines.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I don't want to get out that way.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh as a whole way of getting us demonetised just by talking about that because of the effects of if you undermine that word James, yeah.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you undermine certainty in 21st century norms, like everyone's all over it because it's just it's just not okay for people to talk like this because then this or this, and although this um expression about uh worries about sort of far-right speech is like, well, but but what if everyone starts to believe it?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's like these words are contagious and will turn people, and there'll be well, there won't be anarchy, there'll be tyranny because we know that words are effective.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you're quite right that the the the generation that says words are violence, word words cause harm.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, they they do, and your bad report is harmful, and um bad feedback or all that kind of stuff, criticism is harmful, but there's no way of improving without criticism, and some of it will be justified and some of it won't, and some of it will be justified.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: You hated it at the time, and only now, decades later, do you realise they were absolutely right, and you probably owe them an apology or a letter or or something.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um it feels like we need to to convince a a fresh generation of free speech.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: We kind of need to to kind of fight a war on three fronts at least.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: That that sins Only three.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: Only three.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like sins are not crimes.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: Important distinction that is often lost, definitely.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: And sins can be worse than crimes, far, far worse than crimes.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um Adultery is not a sin.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, adultery is a sin, it's not a crime.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Adultery is a crime.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, adultery, yeah, in terms of sins you can commit, there is almost nothing that will devastate your children more than the act of adultery.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a crime.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: Not not in the not in Protestant legal traditions, you know.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um interestingly, in some state legislation, even in America, um, adultery has been a crime on the statute books, but um generally in the Anglosphere and and um generally you can sort of trace back a a Protestant genealogy of ideas, uh, you know, a more sharp distinction between church and state.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um but yeah, sin there is a category for sin, so we need to teach people that and the the things that are worse than crimes called sins, but they are not the same things.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're against God.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um they're against and they're against God and against image bearers who bear his his image, and therefore sins are incredibly serious.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, some of them are also crimes.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them also crimes.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: And they should be.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: And some of them, but but for some of them, the correct response is not call the cops.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: And adultery might be one of those, and and perhaps hate speech might be another one one of those.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: So like sins are not crimes, words are words are not violence, um, even though they can harm and harm more in those ways that you've just you know explained about your childhood.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: You know, some some words uh have left deeper scars than than punches have from my childhood, sure.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: But but we're talking in different categories about words and violence.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: But I th but I think the sort of the war on the third front is is that um care versus harm is not the only game in town.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and that moving through awkwardness and and pain and struggle and deep wounding could actually be the part the path of blessing.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and therefore a a vision of life that actually embraces suffering, um, and and that embraces um a life in which no alarms and no surprises is not the goal.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but that forthright, robust contending for truth might be the arena in which life is and flourishing is truly found.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think we need to sort of fight the battle on on on that hand.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: But I think also I do think among free speech advocates, another battle needs to be fought, which is that freedom is not just a negative thing, right?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: Isaiah Berlin sort of famously characterized between positive liberty and negative liberty.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: And negative liberty is what you usually think of when you think of liberty.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm free, baby.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: Don't tread on me.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm free from oppression, I'm free from constraints.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: So just let me get on and do what I want to do.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: But we don't have so much of what Isaiah Berlin called, you know, positive liberty when when we think of freedom, which is your freedom for.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: And how do we use our speech in such a way to open up an arena in which you invite discourse?
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: At which point I think Graham Linehan, okay, I want to defend his right his his right in the negative liberty sphere.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: He should be free from cops arresting him.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: But what about is is he really the avatar for freedom of speech?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: I would say no, because so much of his speech actually shuts down the kind of dialogue that we want to have if we truly believe in speech.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: And therefore, I think we need to find other champions of a more positive vision for free speech.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Would you agree?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: I would agree.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: However, there's a forefront, yeah, which is the besetting sin of modern Christians, which is winsomeness.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Let us make sure that we are winsome.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, Jesus' own ministry do not pass that test, and therefore, I know we're not Jesus.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I've come to accept that.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it's when you look at I was just looking at how harm and offense and these things operate in John 3, where Jesus says, I'm you you you must be born again, which Nicodemus says, What what?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's mad.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus doubles down.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Nicodemus says, How can this be?
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus says this, you're Israel's teacher, and you don't understand these things.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's that's kind of harsh, isn't it?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's like he's saying blindy, you don't get it, and you you're the person that should know.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: In one sense, Nicodemus doesn't need to take that personally, he's sort of you're what you are Israel's teacher.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: He's not saying you are the one teacher of Israel, but it's super interesting that this is the speech in which he says the most famous verse, which is for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: And isn't it amazing that in John's Gospel at the end, who's there when the body is taken down?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's not just Joseph Aramrathia, it's Nicodemus.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: So this challenging way of speaking clearly did the trick on Nicodemus.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and therefore, uh they were able to have a robust conversation where Jesus completely bamboozled him and he kind of got over it, um, and it had the right effect halfway through John's Gospel as well.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: You can hear him kind of prevariegating about about it and almost publicly defending Jesus to his his his fellows, and um so I I worry that this positive form of public discourse still feels like it's plain ice, everyone.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the problem is for some people that is their natural way of speaking.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, so my voice in terms of comedy and writing and blogging, and I blog a lot, you know.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've got basically two blogs and a podcast, and I'm generally a glass half-full positive person, and I tend to emphasize positive to the point where that it's almost weird and uncomfortable, and that why are we still clinging on to all of these things with this world when blah blah blah?
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I've kind of got that, and I think that's kind of my voice, and it's kind of quite Chestertonian in that sense.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: And GK Chesterton is a great inspiring uh example, although some of his short stories by Father for Father Brown I'm reading at the moment, they're really not that good.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just say it that you're always hoping that they're going to be like an Agatha Christie short story, and they're not.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they are quite strange, um, but you know, in interesting nonetheless.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: But he was immensely popular in his time because he did have a positive way of speaking.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: He wasn't the bad cop, he was the good cop.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but he he wasn't afraid of those withering intellectual elites like George Bernard Shaw, who basically usually shamed people like him into being quiet.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why Jordan Peterson became wildly famous because Cathy Newman tried to shame him into being quiet, and it almost always works.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't work on a Canadian clinical psychologist who refuses to use pronouns and literally have words put in his mouth, so he said, Oh, I'm not doing this, and that that kind of went mad.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's this worry that we need to be, you know, we need models of positive speech, and I think that's fine, but I think there are different different ways of doing it.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, um, you or I, I think the other day, or somebody else I was speaking to on my podcast, we mentioned the stuff that Danny Kruger said about us needing to return to Christianity in an almost completely empty chamber of the House of Commons, and he said some quite rude things about secularism and about how uh believing in certain things is essentially believing in fairies, uh, assuming you don't believe in fairies, which I I kind of do.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: But um the but he was kind of winsome but quite caustic.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think and and that's his voice.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I think sometimes we apply, well, you shouldn't have said that, and it's like, well, actually, this sort of person can kind of get away with that and it works for them, but you don't need to be a potty mouth bully that works for somebody else.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think we sort of want this kind of universal standard that is actually not really necessary or appropriate, and it's partly your gifting and your context as well.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's a whole other kind of piece uh that we're kind of pulling on threads here, and everything's coming apart in our hands.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm awesome our our words haven't just disappeared into into treacle and that this recording is ground to a halt.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it has.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, I th I think you're right.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and when I say that speech should um open up conversation, um yeah, I I don't mean vanilla speech because that that might just bore everyone to tears anyway.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um but so it it absolutely in in some sense needs to have an edge to it and it needs to be robust.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um Christians are very quick to say, oh, but that was mean.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh, okay.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: But in so therefore, in order to have uh a true belief in free speech, James Carey, what do we need to do?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: So what do what do you and I need to do?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: We've we've got platforms in which we we speak a lot and and get words out there, but what what would the everyday Christians and what the everyday people need to do to speak well?
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think weigh your words carefully.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think we've devalued words because we think that again, another very popular expression, a picture is worth a thousand words.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, I I know what you mean, but that rather implies that words are not worth very much because pictures are so visually arresting, but of course a picture only gives you a snapshot of of one particular thing and it creates emotions in you and stuff, but actually words are I genuinely do think the source code of the universe.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, how do you use your language?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think it you know, the gospel's always looking in on you.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: And but as for me, what you know, what how how do I how do I live?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: How do I speak?
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: How can I be an example?
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: How can I not be a hypocrite?
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: So do I just fire off texts and emails?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: Do I just shoot my mouth off and expect people to and and I and I I think we just need to weigh our own words very carefully and you know, type an email, feel better, great, delete it, no one else needs to see that.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um are you gonna send a text now?
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, why don't you send it in the morning?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think because speech is so easy, not just spoken, but also written, it means that we are very quick to say things um that don't need to be said.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if we were just a little bit more careful in how we spoke, and a lot of it is just poor judgment in the moment and lack of prayer, you know, lack of accountability.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: Is anyone actually holding us to account?
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if I wrote something, and I mean we know each other pretty well, Glenn.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: If I wrote something on my blog and you emailed me just to say, you said this, and I I really don't think that's right, or can you explain what you mean by?
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, again, questions really help.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, can you explain that?
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because I did I read that wrong?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: We can be charitable in our um in the way in which we speak, and I think asking questions is a really good thing to do.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think that and that's the other thing that Jesus does continually respond to people barrel up to him and expect him to essentially give a verdict on a case.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: Tell my brother to divide his inheritance with me, and or what what must I do to inherit eternal life?
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: Good teacher.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, you call me good.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: Why why why is that?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it starts as a conversation, whereas we just want chapter and verse, just tell me the tell me the law so I can obey it rather than uh show me how to live so that I can love, so I can I can love uh my neighbor and follow Christ.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so but we love rules, we just love rules.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: What can and can't Christians say?
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: What should they say?
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: What it's like, well have you got anything worth saying?
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure I'm sure at the BBC you had sort of approved lists of words.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um there were one or two words where so I did a show called Bluestone 4 2, and that had some very industrial swearing in it because it's about soldiers, and when soldiers um blow up, are blown up um by bombs that detonate or function, they don't go off, cheese goes off, bombs function.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: I was told by a military expert.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um again, he was very picky about the words, yeah.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, so uh we know it's kind of messing around as well.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but when they function, they don't say bother.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: No, they don't.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: They they use other words, and those words sometimes need to be signed off uh by someone very senior at the BBC.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how that process works now.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is sort of 10 years ago, but I'd imagine it's probably fairly similar.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because that word when it hits you, particularly words when it hits you, just kind of has this effect on you.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that's right, you know, that's how they talk.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I I don't talk like that, and you shouldn't either, but that's how they say, and again, it's we want the rule of so when can you say it and when can't you say it?
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, why are you looking for rules here?
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: But there are patterns, aren't there?
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's interesting, it's interesting to talk to you as a as a comedy writer, because I've I've sort of noticed that um it can be it can be a lazy way at the end of a punchline to get a laugh, to use a swear word.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: But perhaps the swear word that that packs the greatest punch at the end of the punchline is to say the name of Jesus Christ.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um have you ever sort of have you ever thought about why that kind of blasphemy actu actually lands heaviest?
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: It does, and I I hate it.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: My writing partner on that show uh wasn't uh is not a believer, and he would write in blasphemy, and I'd replace it with swearing.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: And uh people people look at the script and say, Oh, it's really offensive, or you know, Christians might watch it and be shocked.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you should have seen it before I got it.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: Could have been worse.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: You would have liked you would have liked it even less.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of moved it away from that, although the the There's a padre in the show, and jokes are made at her expense.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I wrote some of them, um, because that's kind of like you know, she she has theological beliefs that are that that could be challenged.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, no, there are but actually quite often the the words are then there in your head already.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favourite lines in the whole series is uh when truly terrible things happen and something explodes, and the lead character just says, Oh dear.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because it's just so much funnier just to say, oh dear, or I think he he gets concussed at one point, and there's a huge firefight going on with the Taliban and everything.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: He pops his head out the back of um the Mastiff and just says, uh, um, it's everything all right, loves.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a lovely moment of understatement.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I just think those counterpoints are much more interesting.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: But you're right, I mean, sometimes uh a bit of Anglo-Saxon just kind of elicits the laugh.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: But it's again, it's like just shoving, it's like having an average cake and shoving it, shoving loads of icing on it.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, icing's great, it's delicious, but it's like you don't you need more than icing.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: You want that balance, you want that sort of thing, he says, having just started the new bake-off series.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um so But it but again, it's about the word the words have weight.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's not that it's not that words are ephemeral, um, and therefore let's not let's not criminalize them.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's the words words are so important that they need to be dealt with in in different ways.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um so therefore, the the the reason that this is not a storm in a teacup, is it, in a way?
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: This is a this is a big deal, and I think we're going about this the wrong way because we're saying that it's just words.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and it's like, yeah, yeah, it's just words.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: They're so precious and important and impactful that we don't really know how to handle them.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we've got it all wrong.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: And do you want to defend a fellow comedy writer as well on the point that so so Graham Linham, when he was um interrogated, if you like, when he was questioned by the police, um they were asking him about the punch punch them in the balls kind of comments at the end of that tweet, and he said um words to the effect of it was a serious point made with a joke.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um and let's let's stand up for satire for a moment.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um and let's let's talk aloud about ways in which comedy can make points that that mere prose cannot.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: What is the power of comedy?
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess in one sense, this the satire particularly it depicts types, attitudes, people in a way that is depersonalised because often it is it is um like a it describes things.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the I I loved The Thick of It, which was a uh I my favourite show is Yes Prime Minister, that's the classic for me, but the thick of it had a completely different energy, very, very shouty and sweary about the chaos of government and what it must be like to be constantly in the glare of rolling news and and everything.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was able to hold a you know, hold a mirror up to society and just go, This is what we've done with politics, this is what it is.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: Are we happy about that?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think satire when it when it works really well, it it is it's it's it's it's depersonalized, but it's it's really potent because no one person necessarily feels or you know, and this is the other thing if you create a comedy character, and if I if I created a character who was an evangelist with a YouTube channel and uh and I describe them in a particular way, yeah, it it's not un it's it wouldn't be ridiculous for you to just go, oh I know someone exactly like that.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because people don't see it in themselves, they they don't they don't actually often take it as personally as maybe they should.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: With with sort of slightly thick armor on on those sorts of things.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you know, you might have there might have been a boss at work who watched the office.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, my my wife used to work with somebody in an office and they thought the office was hilarious, and this guy said, Oh, the office is really hilarious.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: He was an awful boss, and he was exactly like he said, Oh, I used to work for a guy like that.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, no, it's it's you.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's you.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: So have I ever told you that I I I wrote for a um a sketch comedy show on Oxygen FM while while I was at Oxford.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I I did this weekly sketch comedy show with a co-writer, and uh one of our um returning characters was called the inept evangelist.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: This is wow.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_02: This is this is in my sort of wilderness wanderings years when I was far from church and and wanting to um put as much distance between me and Jesus as possible.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm writing this character called the inept evangelist.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: And we even had a theme tune.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: He stands on the street getting sore feet, he's one of those geezers who tells you about Jesus, the inept evangelist or the inept evangelist.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: And and every kind of little uh sketch was was about one more encounter with the inept evangelist.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, this my co-writer found me on on Facebook uh a couple of years ago and said, Oh, do you remember the times of uh Oxygen FM?
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: And do you remember the inept evangelist?
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, Oh yeah, I and I'd kind of forgotten completely.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_02: He said, So what are you up to now?
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing, amazing, yeah.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I think but again, Jesus does this because you would because you would think that Jesus, and he does, have the authority for literally he says to his early disciples, follow me, and they just get up and they follow him.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: He has the power to do that.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, he tells stories.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: The parable of the good Samaritan is satirical, uh, because it's saying that the the priest and the Levite walk on by on the other side.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's a stereotype, but you know, the boot fits pretty well, doesn't it?
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody seemed to have a problem with believing that that would have happened.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody's jumping in just going, oh, that's ridiculous, that would never happen.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, no, that's so I think again, if we look at how Jesus speaks, I think there's plenty of room for that.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: And what is he doing?
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's helping us see the wild injustice that's going on, the prejudice, um, but also the fact that the bit that's often missed uh is that the man who'd been beaten up and left for dead was powerless to help himself and needed a saviour to come.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: And what an unlikely saviour than a hated Samaritan, right, or for example, somebody born uh in uh in Bethlehem, uh, but right, you know, or whatever, whatever it is.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's um the the story, there's a there's a bit of I think I did a a joke about it uh on my Wycliffe papers thing when David uh is told the story by Nathan about the about to say, Oh, this is just what's happened, and he told tells him the parable which makes him feel ashamed of of what he's done with um with Bashe uh with uh with Uriah the Hittite, doesn't he?
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just imagine Nathan the prophet just going, Blimey, I I don't think I can tell this story, it's a bit on the nose, isn't it?
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: And David completely full of falls for it.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is an outrageous story.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me who has done this thing, it's a terrible thing.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh Blyme, you didn't wow, you really didn't see that one coming.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: I thought that was a bit blatant, but still.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what satire is able to do, it's what stories are able to do in in that you you're in the audience having a look at this caricature, and but you can see things more clearly because it's it's not directly you, it's it's this type.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: I see the type, and then I'm invited to identify with with the type, and I think that's that's how Nathan approaches David, and I think that's that's so much of what satire can do.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_02: You in caricature form, you see the type, and then you're you're perhaps able to having had a bit of distance between your ego and that type, because the type is out there.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_02: Now I see the type.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_02: Now I'm invited.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, don't you see yourself in that?
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, but perhaps that's part of the power of satire, I guess.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: And also because it's creating an awful lot of story and character and situation and context and everything, when you do get it, an awful lot happens at once, and there's quite a visceral power of when when everything falls into place, I I think that can be that that can be very impactful.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, the the the flip side of that is um I used to know a guy called Pete Sinclair, who's a very good comedy writer, still writes but writes with Jack Dean, people like that.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: And he was a he pro is still is a proper socialist guy who used to do sort of punk poetry back in the 70s and ended up writing on spitting image, this massively successful show in the 80s of puppets taking the rip out of particularly the conservative government and Margaret Thatcher in particular.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: And every year they made her more and more and more monstrous, and she kept winning elections, and there was nothing they could do.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: So they they they felt completely impotent that they were getting literally tens of millions of people watching their show and saying this woman's a monster, and people watching just going, Yeah, it's what this country needs.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm vote for her again.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so it it sort of didn't really have the effect that they were hoping for.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so satire is a great idea, but it's it's it's often not terribly effective.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it makes you feel better if you've written it, right?
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: But uh you can do anyway.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_02: You yeah, you need Nathan to follow up with you are the man and this is what the Lord says.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh ideally you don't, but sometimes you do.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right, right, right, right.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: So you mentioned the Wycliffe Papers.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um let us know, James, all the ways that people can uh keep up with you.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_02: There's also if people are really interested in uh hearing us talk more about comedy and uh and the truth.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there are all sorts of ways that they can tune into that.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, James, how can people keep up with you?
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: The two main things of that pertain to this conversation beyond the sacred art of joking, which is a book you can still get on Amazon, um, is to uh look at so I so I've got a podcast called The Sacred Art.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: My podcast is called The Stand Up Theologian, that's me.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we have just recorded an episode talking about the life of Brian, and my special guest is a Mr.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: Glenn Scrivener, and we have an interesting chat about what also the gospel, according to Brian, actually is, and that that's kind of at the heart of that movie and what it means, rather than getting too hung up on the controversy of the movie, so people can go and listen to the Stand Up Theologian podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then this other thing I do I mentioned called the Wycliffe Papers, which is essentially like the Babylon B, but without jokes about Trump and guns or the Democrats, because I don't think people in the UK are terribly interested in any of those things.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm fine with Babylon B, I think it's really funny.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I just wanted to double down on Bible and church history stuff.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want to go and look at the Wycliffe Papers, then every Thursday lunchtime, if you subscribe, you will get three funny headline jokes and some funny bits and pieces and all that kind of stuff.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what I do.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's very funny.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_02: Please, people go and uh subscribe to both James Carey.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for joining us.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: Lovely chat.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks very much.