Can we get an update on how he feels about Graham Linehan and the things that happened to Linehan after their friendship broke up? Does he think Linehan was right about anything?
Following Linehan on Twitter, back when he was relatively sane, was a key event in me peaking. I have/had a lot of sympathy for him in the way he was left twisting in the wind by former friends and collaborators, but he's allowed it to consume him in a way no-one else on the GC side has. It's a real tragedy in the classical sense - a talented man brought low by a fatal flaw.
I must say it suggests to me some form of unhappiness in his mind that has nothing to do with gender criticism, and the interest people have, including me, is just craning our necks to view a car crash and not much more.
It's difficult to reduce to one characteristic. Obsession? Narcissism? Insecurity? I remember briefly subscribing to his Substack and then unsubscribing because he used too much of it to prosecute his personal beefs. Anything short of full-throated support and agreement with everything he says or does is interpreted as a personal attack, as K & J have found.
That is the adult reply, though. He just is a jerk.
I got hired to work at a very good off Broadway theatre as a young person even though I didn’t major in theatre. They knew I could write and I was personable so they trained me for sales. You can be ANYone and have any problem and some corner of the arts world will give you a chance if you’re not an asshole
While I was at that theatre their lit manager offered to read anything I wrote. They pumped me up and were like have you thought about a masters in art administration
I wrote a joke musical and a coworker in sales (who has since become famous in a small way) was like this is GOOD. Keep going with this!
He didn’t steal the idea or make fun of it. He wasn’t toxically competitive
It is a very, very supportive world on the arts side. Even LA, LA can be cutthroat but if you’re a truly great actress, if you have cosmetic issues and you’re a broke daughter of Haitian immigrants, people will write a part for you. And they’ll talk you up to people at the showcase or staged reading etc. they’ll be like I wrote it for her because she’s the best she can do anything.
You can be a recovering Mormon, someone who was abused by your family, a gay Jew from Jersey, you can have been in jail as a teen, be a single parent, you can be a posh English person, whatever
What you CANNOT be is a jerk
When Robert Downey Jr or Mel Gibson or whoever had a comeback that’s because even though they had problems, at the most basic level they were good to work with and people would go to bat for them.
Glinner keeps trying to demand people go to bat for him which pisses them off more. People feel bad for him but they’re keeping him at a distance because he’s being terrible and vicious and you can’t tell what a guy like that will do
And how does this compare to Wesley Yang, whom I mostly agree with even when I think Linehan goes too far, but who equally gets criticized for his strong position on this issue. I haven't really followed Linehan but wonder if Ben Ryan or J&K would discard Yang with the same arguments as I think he clearly does not deserve it.
He’s mad his ex is successful and takes shots at the successful show she made with Holly Walsh, Sharon Horgan etc. He is bitter that he left after two episodes. (The show got a sequel/spinoff: it’s objectively successful)
Acting like the would be producers of a Father Ted musical didn’t offer him a fair buyout (in the 6 figures) theatre is really difficult as an industry, it could’ve been a total flop. He says they are holding his “pension” “hostage” which is just not true. I have no idea who’d see a musical about priests in 2026 in London, father Ted was inventive for its day but there’s much more on the pulse stuff being produced now
He casts himself as protecting women while asking them to work for him for free, and taking a lot of credit for a movement they started
I’m glad you’ve finally changed your stance on mutilating kids but that’s an unfair thing to say about Linehan, or Rowling, or fill-in-the-blank meanie face. They didn’t start out that way. Having the entire world tell you that the sky is pink and it’s always been pink and you’re a Nazi for saying it’s blue has a way of radicalizing people over the years. Did they overreact? Honestly, I think the public under-reacted.
Linehan has done a lot of incredibly shady things.
He turned down a buyout in the 6 figure range for his musical (and that’s £ not $, worth more than $) and went begging on gofundme type sites
He had women writing his Substack — which he paywalled — and didn’t pay them
He Tweets dozens to hundreds of times a day and people like his ex BIL have been like “we’ve been telling him for years that he needs help)
Entertainment is a really, REALLY forgiving field. You can be Mel Gibson and have assaulted your baby mama and spouted anti Semitism, and people like Jodie Foster will still have your back because you’re good to work with and they think you just need some help
Rowling gets shit talked, but HBO is making a new Harry Potter show. People still see the value in her output and even if they disagree with her they know how much she’s done for charity for women and kids
I mean actual players in Hollywood, not unemployed trans model/actors. If you’re good to work with, ok, they will overlook a lot. You don’t try to scam them in deals, you promote the project, you can be a psycho right wing Catholic. You can be a TERF. They don’t care.
Linehan is waaaay out in the wilderness and he did that to himself. There are some nice guys like Richard Ayoade who gave a non commital blurb for his book but no one apart from Rob Schneider is going to work with him again
He’s been really spitefully attacking people for years. The show his wife made with huge English & Irish comics, a show that got a sequel series, he has been saying “find out why it got bad after I left after the second episode.”
He’s coming for his ex — the mother of his children — in extremely nasty ways. And also: that show did well. They got actors like Joanna Lumley. It’s objectively successful, he’s just being a whiny bitch
He keeps demanding people support him, saying people ‘owe’ him, taking credit for the whole movement (Julie Bindel has been doing this for years) and whining that everyone else cost him his life and that’s just not true. He did this to himself
A LOT of people are actually being nice about him. They’re saying things like, this is very sad instead of telling him to fuck off publicly. A lot of really prominent English podcasters, comedians, comics are just saying ‘it’s terribly sad what’s happened to Graham’ and blocking him and like: they’re being nice
He’s been an absolute sociopath for about the last 3 years. He had a kernel of a point, he has been scamming women, taking credit for women’s work, claiming to know why ‘his country’ should end immigration when he hasn’t lived there in decades, etc
I have a slightly different question which is: does Ronson think it was the content of Linehan’s activism or the way he went about it that caused the most problems for him?
Hugh Laurie got into a Twitter spat with Linehan the other day, saying he agreed men shouldn’t compete against women in sports but also calling Linehan out for being a dick, basically.
Is it that Linehan was saying the trans thing needed to be examined? Or is it more things like he was insisting some huge stars ‘owed’ him for castjng them in something 20 years ago, things like that. Because those seem demonstrably untrue in some cases: someone was going to scoop Graham Norton up for something based on his live comedy. Is it that Glinner fundamentally misunderstood what a friend is and how the media industry works and offended everyone? Or is it that the political position was too hot to touch, or both?
Because I suspect Hugh Laurie will be just fine, and I think he would’ve been fine too if he’d said this years ago. I suspect this is more about Graham Linehan’s lack of social skills & selfishness that that has cost him his career & family than anything else. He was doing things like having women blog for him and not paying them even though he had paid subs.
I just find it a real head scratcher that Linehan can’t imagine why so many people were put off by him or didn’t want to be seen to join up with him in particular. He has been a massive, massive, poo encrusted asshole to a lot of people in recent years
Well, coming back to this thread - I initially thought that he probably wouldn't want to talk about Graham and was fed up with it all, however now I realize that I was wrong, he apparently does have more to say!
You mean Justine Sacco? “She's now the director of corporate communications for the wildly successful Match Group, which owns most of the dating apps you've heard of (Tinder, Plenty of Fish, Match, and more).”
You, and Louis Theroux in a similar vein, have given us interesting and challenging perspectives on a range of issues by being inquisitive and open to understanding the background and context of your subjects.
Why then, over one single issue (i.e. Trans), does it seem there is a complete lack of intellectual or moral curiosity? I'm not expecting you to take a particular perspective, but as a long-time fan of your writing it feels like a betrayal of what made your compelling in the first place.
I was trying not to presuppose an answer. Jon has never had too much of a problem upsetting people - he was happy to write a regular column humanising an Islamist in the UK (which became much of the basis for Them) at a time when this was very politically unpopular in the UK. And if there's a family, surely easier to just be honest? "I've a family member, this isn't a topic I'm prepared to get into the weeds on...".
I'm genuinely curious, and I want to assume good faith.
Why did he ignore the Michfest double murder? …. Just realised .. it was a triple murder. Same question … why ignore this particular outcome of inclusion?
And don’t let him claim “it was about the early 90s.” The prog goes right up to the GRA in 2011 and the closure of Michfest in 2015.
Yes, ditto. Jon Ronson seems to be a coward about gender extremism altogether, yet it is a prime example of being cancelled for crazy reasons. Loads of women cancelled, but I guess Ronson’s not so interested in women altogether. Just not part of his largely blokey world …
No. Keep it a mystery. There are some things Americans should never be allowed to understand. What happens in Timperley stays in Timperley. OK. Sometimes it goes as far as Altrincham, but that’s it.
Bit of a tangent but...Mark And Lard were the best example of why the BBC is worth it. Commercial radio would never produce them. It might produce something superficially similar, but they wouldn't be as proficient, as connected, as able to take risks.
And obviously I don't know who's on Radio One now, I'm 51 and riddled with debt and exwives and gout, but I know my kids still listen to it, even with all the online world to choose from. They still need curators. And you don't get them from fucking Red Rose FM or Radio Tosspot AI
Sorry, not sure if this has been covered elsewhere, but what are his actual views on women's rights / whether trans women should be treated as women in all respects?
Why did Jon retract his book endorsement/blurb from Andrew Gold and was it because (as Gold says), Gold had interviewed Kellie Jay Keen on his podcast?
Jon, you’ve often in your career had the opportunity to get to know people most of society would view as crazy, unhinged, loony, etc even if they haven’t been clinically diagnosed with any mental disorders. In your experience, how much of their behavior do you believe is an inherent character trait, how much is attributable to being “one shot” by bad ideas or bad experiences, and how much is sort of an intentional act? As an example, had Alex Jones never read that Gary Allen book as a teenager, could he have lived a more conventional life and maybe become a dentist like his dad?
I’ve heard his work is excellent and I want to check it out, but I don’t think I could trust someone who’d leave out the murder of that family in his Michfest podcast.
Does he have a habit of doing that with other subjects or just this one? Is this a Jon Stewart and John Oliver situation where normies eat it up but anyone who knows anything about a topic will see the glaring omissions from a mile away?
I used to love his work, and I fully understand why he would want to distance himself from Linehan, but his side of the conversation we saw there was so cowardly, I lost so much respect for him. There was no moral or intellectual integrity, just "Please stop trying to make me talk about this".
Omitting the murders from his Michfest podcast was also incredibly spineless, and has made me reflect on what else he's left out of his previous projects because they would be uncomfortable or inconvenient for him. I felt he was a great investigator and journalist. Now I don't trust that he ever gives the full story he knows: just what he can make work nearly and without drawing any ire.
I think I remember it in "things fell apart", this is the women's festival that banned trans-women, who then protested it, years ago before trans was a big issue. Something like that. When I searched youtube for "Michfest podcast jon ronson" this came up
Graham is certainly ranty, but he does claim that one of the protesting transwomen ended up murdering 3 of the women and Ronson failed to mention that. This does seem like a charge we might hear Ronson's response to.
Honestly I’ve found this question to be nearly as boring and tedious a thought terminating cliche as “Trans women are women”
Even as someone who thinks that biological sex is the most reasonable way to define woman/girl vs man/boy in nearly all contexts, I would still have to reply that “well, it clearly depends on the context since in some jurisdictions you’re legally a woman if your ID says “F” on it, and there are multiple avenues for that to happen”
Like GC world likes to say - unless you can describe a problem you can’t fight it. You can’t just pretend that trans women aren’t legally women in some places. You need to successfully promote the argument that this should be changed.
eh whatever. I’m just sick of seeing this stuff everywhere.
How about a more productive question like “In what contexts, if any, should the law consider gender identity to supersede sex, or the reverse? And In what contexts should sex/gender be considered relevant vs a sex/gender blind model?”
Because it’s BARPod, and half the point is to mock cliches and revel in the irreverence of doing so. I think you took a wrong turn in the way to the Ezra Klein substack.
Alas, Ezra’s commentariat would not be that friendly to this type of nuance, they are still stuck on the other end with the other thought terminating cliche (along with its bastard child, “why do you even care there’s only 5 of them in the NCAA”)
I think another interesting question is "Do people have the right to keep their biological sex a secret from other people, and, if so, in all contexts or in some contexts but not others? Which?"
I explained the whole shitpost thing in my other comment, about how it’s not necessarily meant to kick off some deep academic exchange. Unlike your response. Not trying to be combative, just pointing out why this may have been directed at you. If it’s so tedious and boring just move on, lol.
I suppose a joke isn't funny anymore if you have to explain it, but Jon Ronson has done so much re: cancellation that I'd really enjoy K&J asking him such a minefield of a question, where some side is inevitably going to be pissed off at the answer, and the exchange that would ensue - because it's BARPod, and it would be hilarious.
And while I think as BARPod listeners we all understand there's a level of nuance to things - the point of that question is to define woman so that there's a level of consistency with jurisdictions, laws, and spaces - not to hem and haw because a group has defined it in a way that suits them.
This is like claiming a question about what is a person that is clearly focused on whether aliens or apes can claim to be person is limited by the fact corporations are legal persons. Like obviously (even if wrongly) some men are able to be defined as legal women, but that doesn't mean they are actual women, which is clearly what the question is about. And indeed why I think Cassie Pritchard's piece was valuable is she addressed this -- one can be convinced to agree with the TRA (ish, since I don't consider her TRA entirely) position on issues like pronouns (I mostly do) and bathrooms (I do) and prisons (I most certainly do not), etc. without agreeing TW are ontologically women, which I think the vast majority think they are not.
I think that the question “what is a woman” can reasonably be understood by a listener as asking “who do you think should be legally recognized as a woman”
I don't, since only TWAW types think that some men should be consistently and always considered legal women and as Cassie acknowledged most people do think that even TW they are open to accommodating in most spaces are not actually women. They just think it's mean or hurts the TW to be honest about that, or in many cases would cause a negative blowback against themselves.
If we speak broadly of letting TW be legal women (as if that meant in all respects) that realistically/honestly does not allow for a coherent answer for most people and makes something like allowing the changing of IDs much more fraught. When is legal recognition as a woman necessary other than to be present in women's only spaces? (It is not necessary to protect against employment discrimination or the like as Bostock shows.) A woman's only bike repair class? Sure, who cares. A woman's only changing room or nude spa or prison or competitive sports team? I care a lot.
I generally agree with most of what you’re saying, but I can imagine there are people who have a different viewpoint, and favor one of the following scenarios. Each of these is logically consistent way to organize society and people are allowed to argue for them and debate the pros and cons.
1) trans women who have had bottom surgery should be treated as legal women in all respects, including spaces (swap for trans men as men)
1A) trans women who had male puberty suppressed and have had bottom surgery should be treated as legal women in all respects (swap for trans men as men)
1B-Z) insert whatever gatekeeping (or no gatekeeping) you want.
2) women/men only spaces should be abolished completely as their very existence perpetuates sexism (in this case the idea is that differences in male and female behavior will equalize so eventually no one will even bother to make distinctions between male and female except for reproduction.
3) a libertarian model where individual businesses/schools/organizations should decide how they want to divide things up based on their users needs. As long as this information is transparent, then the government has no role other than the enforce rule violation when asked by the business. In this case legal sex doesn’t really matter, except in the way it currently does, but trans women can use some “women’s” spaces but not others.
Of course people can argue for any particular answer they want, but typically the position taken by someone unable to answer the "what is a woman" question isn't any of these. (In fact, the insistence that TW = legal women in all respects would contradict the libertarian one where businesses get to determine who counts as a woman.) Pretty much no one but Brianna Wu seems to be taking the position that TW with bottom surgery should count as women but not those without. In fact, my understanding is that that was broadly the position that Korean spa tried to take (no penises) and they got sued and lost.
What pieces of his reporting and writing for Them does he feel was most predictive of our current politics and environment and what ideas/beliefs/orgs has he been surprised have withered?
In the Michfest episode of Things Fall Apart, there was no mention of the fact that one of the trans activists involved went on to commit a triple murder. I think this was a missed opportunity, because there's a myth that the murders were connected to Michfest despite the fact that there's no evidence that the lesbian victims ever attended it and it would have been a good chance to debunk it. Plus, it leaves a pretty big elephant in the room to those in the know and I'm pretty sure that Graham Linehan has spread the myth and it would've been a great way to show him up.
By saying it would be good to discuss a trans identifying man carrying out a triple homicide as a way to somehow embarrass Graham Linehan. Like I said, not your best point.
The topic at hand is Ronson's reporting and his upcoming discussion. If the murders are unrelated to the subject of his podcast obviously there's no reason he should have discussed it. But if they are related, as Linehan appears to claim, that seems like a substantial omission. I would like to know. If it's an outrageous false accusation on the part of Linehan then Ronson is within his rights to just ignore it, but, you know, it's going to get filed away in the back of my mind now, I can't help that.
I don’t know if that’s relevant? A lot of activists believe they’re special and have access to a ‘truth’ other people don’t have. Sometimes they then switch to basically an opposite ‘truth.’ They’re kind of flaky & extreme in general. Like Lierre Keith was a vegan activist and then became the organ meats activist lady. She is or was a TERF but I feel like her position on that could change too
Activists are mostly people who don’t have real jobs and aren’t very stable. They actually are the kind of untethered person who commits violence it’s kind of the same profile in a way
The other thing, I know Linehan gets love here but he’s not well. He’s taking phones from people and refusing to give them back, posting on Twitter picking fights with more famous people all day etc
Linehan could be someone who snaps and does a triple murder. He’s swung to the opposite side of the political spectrum. He’s lying to himself about his career both before this started and now (a Rob Schneider show made in AZ is probably not going to make any money) etc. This is the exact kind of person who snaps; always feels insulted, only marginally employed, no family support network etc.
You do not seem to be able to understand the point I am making. By all means get Ronson to talk about the fact that a trans identifying man killed two lesbians and their son and then was housed in a female prison. I would very much like to see how he attempts to engage with that. I suspect with the same glib smugness that characterises most of his work.
Which of your books was the most interesting to research and write? Which was the most challenging? I’m guessing The Psychopath test and so you’ve been publicly shamed but could be wrong.
Also which is your favorite medium to work in if you had to pick one (writing or audio)?
Do you think public shaming has evolved in the 11 years since you wrote your book on the subject? And are the people targeted by shaming handling themselves differently?
1) After writing The Psychopath Test, did you come away thinking psychopathy is a real underlying condition that we imperfectly measure, or a label that creates the illusion of a much cleaner category than actually exists?
2) Do you still catch yourself mentally scoring people on the Hare checklist?
Can we get an update on how he feels about Graham Linehan and the things that happened to Linehan after their friendship broke up? Does he think Linehan was right about anything?
Graham is such a nightmare. He has dug his own grave and does nothing but continue digging.
Following Linehan on Twitter, back when he was relatively sane, was a key event in me peaking. I have/had a lot of sympathy for him in the way he was left twisting in the wind by former friends and collaborators, but he's allowed it to consume him in a way no-one else on the GC side has. It's a real tragedy in the classical sense - a talented man brought low by a fatal flaw.
I must say it suggests to me some form of unhappiness in his mind that has nothing to do with gender criticism, and the interest people have, including me, is just craning our necks to view a car crash and not much more.
Yup
What's his fatal flaw? Not abandoning his position on something he feels very strongly about to appease the masses?
It's difficult to reduce to one characteristic. Obsession? Narcissism? Insecurity? I remember briefly subscribing to his Substack and then unsubscribing because he used too much of it to prosecute his personal beefs. Anything short of full-throated support and agreement with everything he says or does is interpreted as a personal attack, as K & J have found.
Thank you for an actual adult reply as opposed to "he's a total jerk".
I mean that with the utmost sincerity. I have rarely met anyone more ill tempered. His behavior and his manner count against him.
That is the adult reply, though. He just is a jerk.
I got hired to work at a very good off Broadway theatre as a young person even though I didn’t major in theatre. They knew I could write and I was personable so they trained me for sales. You can be ANYone and have any problem and some corner of the arts world will give you a chance if you’re not an asshole
While I was at that theatre their lit manager offered to read anything I wrote. They pumped me up and were like have you thought about a masters in art administration
I wrote a joke musical and a coworker in sales (who has since become famous in a small way) was like this is GOOD. Keep going with this!
He didn’t steal the idea or make fun of it. He wasn’t toxically competitive
It is a very, very supportive world on the arts side. Even LA, LA can be cutthroat but if you’re a truly great actress, if you have cosmetic issues and you’re a broke daughter of Haitian immigrants, people will write a part for you. And they’ll talk you up to people at the showcase or staged reading etc. they’ll be like I wrote it for her because she’s the best she can do anything.
You can be a recovering Mormon, someone who was abused by your family, a gay Jew from Jersey, you can have been in jail as a teen, be a single parent, you can be a posh English person, whatever
What you CANNOT be is a jerk
When Robert Downey Jr or Mel Gibson or whoever had a comeback that’s because even though they had problems, at the most basic level they were good to work with and people would go to bat for them.
Glinner keeps trying to demand people go to bat for him which pisses them off more. People feel bad for him but they’re keeping him at a distance because he’s being terrible and vicious and you can’t tell what a guy like that will do
There’s something seriously wrong there
I’ve looked at it and it’s mostly paywalled
But yes he’d have full blog posts and hype it as a big noted controversy and it wasn’t at the level of a real news story
It was someone disagreeing with him on Twitter and he was trying to get all his subscribers to pile on them or something
He complains about being cancelled but he participates in stuff like that
He’s a total jerk.
And how does this compare to Wesley Yang, whom I mostly agree with even when I think Linehan goes too far, but who equally gets criticized for his strong position on this issue. I haven't really followed Linehan but wonder if Ben Ryan or J&K would discard Yang with the same arguments as I think he clearly does not deserve it.
He’s probably undiagnosed autistic
He thinks people “owe” him things
He’s mad his ex is successful and takes shots at the successful show she made with Holly Walsh, Sharon Horgan etc. He is bitter that he left after two episodes. (The show got a sequel/spinoff: it’s objectively successful)
Acting like the would be producers of a Father Ted musical didn’t offer him a fair buyout (in the 6 figures) theatre is really difficult as an industry, it could’ve been a total flop. He says they are holding his “pension” “hostage” which is just not true. I have no idea who’d see a musical about priests in 2026 in London, father Ted was inventive for its day but there’s much more on the pulse stuff being produced now
He casts himself as protecting women while asking them to work for him for free, and taking a lot of credit for a movement they started
He’s a creep
I’m glad you’ve finally changed your stance on mutilating kids but that’s an unfair thing to say about Linehan, or Rowling, or fill-in-the-blank meanie face. They didn’t start out that way. Having the entire world tell you that the sky is pink and it’s always been pink and you’re a Nazi for saying it’s blue has a way of radicalizing people over the years. Did they overreact? Honestly, I think the public under-reacted.
Linehan has done a lot of incredibly shady things.
He turned down a buyout in the 6 figure range for his musical (and that’s £ not $, worth more than $) and went begging on gofundme type sites
He had women writing his Substack — which he paywalled — and didn’t pay them
He Tweets dozens to hundreds of times a day and people like his ex BIL have been like “we’ve been telling him for years that he needs help)
Entertainment is a really, REALLY forgiving field. You can be Mel Gibson and have assaulted your baby mama and spouted anti Semitism, and people like Jodie Foster will still have your back because you’re good to work with and they think you just need some help
Rowling gets shit talked, but HBO is making a new Harry Potter show. People still see the value in her output and even if they disagree with her they know how much she’s done for charity for women and kids
I mean actual players in Hollywood, not unemployed trans model/actors. If you’re good to work with, ok, they will overlook a lot. You don’t try to scam them in deals, you promote the project, you can be a psycho right wing Catholic. You can be a TERF. They don’t care.
Linehan is waaaay out in the wilderness and he did that to himself. There are some nice guys like Richard Ayoade who gave a non commital blurb for his book but no one apart from Rob Schneider is going to work with him again
He’s been really spitefully attacking people for years. The show his wife made with huge English & Irish comics, a show that got a sequel series, he has been saying “find out why it got bad after I left after the second episode.”
He’s coming for his ex — the mother of his children — in extremely nasty ways. And also: that show did well. They got actors like Joanna Lumley. It’s objectively successful, he’s just being a whiny bitch
He keeps demanding people support him, saying people ‘owe’ him, taking credit for the whole movement (Julie Bindel has been doing this for years) and whining that everyone else cost him his life and that’s just not true. He did this to himself
A LOT of people are actually being nice about him. They’re saying things like, this is very sad instead of telling him to fuck off publicly. A lot of really prominent English podcasters, comedians, comics are just saying ‘it’s terribly sad what’s happened to Graham’ and blocking him and like: they’re being nice
He’s been an absolute sociopath for about the last 3 years. He had a kernel of a point, he has been scamming women, taking credit for women’s work, claiming to know why ‘his country’ should end immigration when he hasn’t lived there in decades, etc
This is kinda when I want him to answer this question. I want to see if we can get a clear reading
I have a slightly different question which is: does Ronson think it was the content of Linehan’s activism or the way he went about it that caused the most problems for him?
Hugh Laurie got into a Twitter spat with Linehan the other day, saying he agreed men shouldn’t compete against women in sports but also calling Linehan out for being a dick, basically.
Is it that Linehan was saying the trans thing needed to be examined? Or is it more things like he was insisting some huge stars ‘owed’ him for castjng them in something 20 years ago, things like that. Because those seem demonstrably untrue in some cases: someone was going to scoop Graham Norton up for something based on his live comedy. Is it that Glinner fundamentally misunderstood what a friend is and how the media industry works and offended everyone? Or is it that the political position was too hot to touch, or both?
Because I suspect Hugh Laurie will be just fine, and I think he would’ve been fine too if he’d said this years ago. I suspect this is more about Graham Linehan’s lack of social skills & selfishness that that has cost him his career & family than anything else. He was doing things like having women blog for him and not paying them even though he had paid subs.
I just find it a real head scratcher that Linehan can’t imagine why so many people were put off by him or didn’t want to be seen to join up with him in particular. He has been a massive, massive, poo encrusted asshole to a lot of people in recent years
On that note, Richard Ayoade has received some criticism for not being willing to condemn Graham.
Good for Richard Ayoade, he stands by people who've helped him.
He gave a very non committal blurb about his book. Which was a nice thing to do.
But no one should be encouraging Linehan right now. He keeps self destructing and he needs some kind of rehab.
He has been an absolute monster to a lot of people for no goid reason
Well, coming back to this thread - I initially thought that he probably wouldn't want to talk about Graham and was fed up with it all, however now I realize that I was wrong, he apparently does have more to say!
Can you give us updates on some of the canceled people from So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed? Especially the woman who had the ill-fated trip to Africa.
You mean Justine Sacco? “She's now the director of corporate communications for the wildly successful Match Group, which owns most of the dating apps you've heard of (Tinder, Plenty of Fish, Match, and more).”
https://creators.yahoo.com/lifestyle/story/the-first-career-destroying-tweet--and-the-path-to-redemption-160759564.html
Doesn’t mean she deserved what happened to her, of course.
Thank you for this update!
You, and Louis Theroux in a similar vein, have given us interesting and challenging perspectives on a range of issues by being inquisitive and open to understanding the background and context of your subjects.
Why then, over one single issue (i.e. Trans), does it seem there is a complete lack of intellectual or moral curiosity? I'm not expecting you to take a particular perspective, but as a long-time fan of your writing it feels like a betrayal of what made your compelling in the first place.
I suspect the answer is one or both of the following:
1. a close friend or family member is trans
2. He is too afraid of running afoul of the Kind People.
I was trying not to presuppose an answer. Jon has never had too much of a problem upsetting people - he was happy to write a regular column humanising an Islamist in the UK (which became much of the basis for Them) at a time when this was very politically unpopular in the UK. And if there's a family, surely easier to just be honest? "I've a family member, this isn't a topic I'm prepared to get into the weeds on...".
I'm genuinely curious, and I want to assume good faith.
Excellent question
Why did he ignore the Michfest double murder? …. Just realised .. it was a triple murder. Same question … why ignore this particular outcome of inclusion?
And don’t let him claim “it was about the early 90s.” The prog goes right up to the GRA in 2011 and the closure of Michfest in 2015.
Yes, this. Thought it was an act of absolute cowardice to ignore this
Yes, ditto. Jon Ronson seems to be a coward about gender extremism altogether, yet it is a prime example of being cancelled for crazy reasons. Loads of women cancelled, but I guess Ronson’s not so interested in women altogether. Just not part of his largely blokey world …
Great one.
Jon, please attempt to explain Frank Sidebottom to Jesse and Katie. You know you should. You really should.
No. Keep it a mystery. There are some things Americans should never be allowed to understand. What happens in Timperley stays in Timperley. OK. Sometimes it goes as far as Altrincham, but that’s it.
⬆️⬆️⬆️ This
Also, tell the Chris Evans van driving into London story. So simple but cracks me up every time...
Argh 2am and now I am off down a Mark and Lard tangent 😭😂
Instant subscribe.
Bit of a tangent but...Mark And Lard were the best example of why the BBC is worth it. Commercial radio would never produce them. It might produce something superficially similar, but they wouldn't be as proficient, as connected, as able to take risks.
And obviously I don't know who's on Radio One now, I'm 51 and riddled with debt and exwives and gout, but I know my kids still listen to it, even with all the online world to choose from. They still need curators. And you don't get them from fucking Red Rose FM or Radio Tosspot AI
To this day I can’t go to London without saying “I’m off to London village, I’ve heard they’ve a shop now”
And without Frank, no Mrs Merton.
A golden age of northern comedy so good even those of us on t’other side of the Pennines appreciated it
I am now imagining Mark and Lard doing an impression of Jesse and Katie. And now you are too.
Enjoy!
💯
Didn’t Piccadilly Radio have sumat similar?
Exceptional question!
Sorry, not sure if this has been covered elsewhere, but what are his actual views on women's rights / whether trans women should be treated as women in all respects?
Why did Jon retract his book endorsement/blurb from Andrew Gold and was it because (as Gold says), Gold had interviewed Kellie Jay Keen on his podcast?
It was because Andrew had interviewed Graham Linehan
Gold said otherwise but either way, seems a very silly reason to cut Gold off!
Jon, you’ve often in your career had the opportunity to get to know people most of society would view as crazy, unhinged, loony, etc even if they haven’t been clinically diagnosed with any mental disorders. In your experience, how much of their behavior do you believe is an inherent character trait, how much is attributable to being “one shot” by bad ideas or bad experiences, and how much is sort of an intentional act? As an example, had Alex Jones never read that Gary Allen book as a teenager, could he have lived a more conventional life and maybe become a dentist like his dad?
I’ve heard his work is excellent and I want to check it out, but I don’t think I could trust someone who’d leave out the murder of that family in his Michfest podcast.
Does he have a habit of doing that with other subjects or just this one? Is this a Jon Stewart and John Oliver situation where normies eat it up but anyone who knows anything about a topic will see the glaring omissions from a mile away?
I used to love his work, and I fully understand why he would want to distance himself from Linehan, but his side of the conversation we saw there was so cowardly, I lost so much respect for him. There was no moral or intellectual integrity, just "Please stop trying to make me talk about this".
Omitting the murders from his Michfest podcast was also incredibly spineless, and has made me reflect on what else he's left out of his previous projects because they would be uncomfortable or inconvenient for him. I felt he was a great investigator and journalist. Now I don't trust that he ever gives the full story he knows: just what he can make work nearly and without drawing any ire.
neatly*
This is the first I'm hearing about a michfest podcast, I'll look into it. Thanks for the tip!
I think I remember it in "things fell apart", this is the women's festival that banned trans-women, who then protested it, years ago before trans was a big issue. Something like that. When I searched youtube for "Michfest podcast jon ronson" this came up
https://youtu.be/qz3QevYx-Lk?t=211
Graham is certainly ranty, but he does claim that one of the protesting transwomen ended up murdering 3 of the women and Ronson failed to mention that. This does seem like a charge we might hear Ronson's response to.
What is a woman?
Honestly I’ve found this question to be nearly as boring and tedious a thought terminating cliche as “Trans women are women”
Even as someone who thinks that biological sex is the most reasonable way to define woman/girl vs man/boy in nearly all contexts, I would still have to reply that “well, it clearly depends on the context since in some jurisdictions you’re legally a woman if your ID says “F” on it, and there are multiple avenues for that to happen”
Like GC world likes to say - unless you can describe a problem you can’t fight it. You can’t just pretend that trans women aren’t legally women in some places. You need to successfully promote the argument that this should be changed.
It’s a shitpost.
eh whatever. I’m just sick of seeing this stuff everywhere.
How about a more productive question like “In what contexts, if any, should the law consider gender identity to supersede sex, or the reverse? And In what contexts should sex/gender be considered relevant vs a sex/gender blind model?”
Because it’s BARPod, and half the point is to mock cliches and revel in the irreverence of doing so. I think you took a wrong turn in the way to the Ezra Klein substack.
Alas, Ezra’s commentariat would not be that friendly to this type of nuance, they are still stuck on the other end with the other thought terminating cliche (along with its bastard child, “why do you even care there’s only 5 of them in the NCAA”)
Still, a question more suited to Ezra than BARPod.
I think another interesting question is "Do people have the right to keep their biological sex a secret from other people, and, if so, in all contexts or in some contexts but not others? Which?"
Yes! Another good way to phrase it.
In what contexts should a man pontificate about what it is to be a woman …?
When they identify as one, of course.
It was her idea to ask “what is a woman” in the first place
I explained the whole shitpost thing in my other comment, about how it’s not necessarily meant to kick off some deep academic exchange. Unlike your response. Not trying to be combative, just pointing out why this may have been directed at you. If it’s so tedious and boring just move on, lol.
I suppose a joke isn't funny anymore if you have to explain it, but Jon Ronson has done so much re: cancellation that I'd really enjoy K&J asking him such a minefield of a question, where some side is inevitably going to be pissed off at the answer, and the exchange that would ensue - because it's BARPod, and it would be hilarious.
And while I think as BARPod listeners we all understand there's a level of nuance to things - the point of that question is to define woman so that there's a level of consistency with jurisdictions, laws, and spaces - not to hem and haw because a group has defined it in a way that suits them.
This is like claiming a question about what is a person that is clearly focused on whether aliens or apes can claim to be person is limited by the fact corporations are legal persons. Like obviously (even if wrongly) some men are able to be defined as legal women, but that doesn't mean they are actual women, which is clearly what the question is about. And indeed why I think Cassie Pritchard's piece was valuable is she addressed this -- one can be convinced to agree with the TRA (ish, since I don't consider her TRA entirely) position on issues like pronouns (I mostly do) and bathrooms (I do) and prisons (I most certainly do not), etc. without agreeing TW are ontologically women, which I think the vast majority think they are not.
I think that the question “what is a woman” can reasonably be understood by a listener as asking “who do you think should be legally recognized as a woman”
I don't, since only TWAW types think that some men should be consistently and always considered legal women and as Cassie acknowledged most people do think that even TW they are open to accommodating in most spaces are not actually women. They just think it's mean or hurts the TW to be honest about that, or in many cases would cause a negative blowback against themselves.
If we speak broadly of letting TW be legal women (as if that meant in all respects) that realistically/honestly does not allow for a coherent answer for most people and makes something like allowing the changing of IDs much more fraught. When is legal recognition as a woman necessary other than to be present in women's only spaces? (It is not necessary to protect against employment discrimination or the like as Bostock shows.) A woman's only bike repair class? Sure, who cares. A woman's only changing room or nude spa or prison or competitive sports team? I care a lot.
I generally agree with most of what you’re saying, but I can imagine there are people who have a different viewpoint, and favor one of the following scenarios. Each of these is logically consistent way to organize society and people are allowed to argue for them and debate the pros and cons.
1) trans women who have had bottom surgery should be treated as legal women in all respects, including spaces (swap for trans men as men)
1A) trans women who had male puberty suppressed and have had bottom surgery should be treated as legal women in all respects (swap for trans men as men)
1B-Z) insert whatever gatekeeping (or no gatekeeping) you want.
2) women/men only spaces should be abolished completely as their very existence perpetuates sexism (in this case the idea is that differences in male and female behavior will equalize so eventually no one will even bother to make distinctions between male and female except for reproduction.
3) a libertarian model where individual businesses/schools/organizations should decide how they want to divide things up based on their users needs. As long as this information is transparent, then the government has no role other than the enforce rule violation when asked by the business. In this case legal sex doesn’t really matter, except in the way it currently does, but trans women can use some “women’s” spaces but not others.
Of course people can argue for any particular answer they want, but typically the position taken by someone unable to answer the "what is a woman" question isn't any of these. (In fact, the insistence that TW = legal women in all respects would contradict the libertarian one where businesses get to determine who counts as a woman.) Pretty much no one but Brianna Wu seems to be taking the position that TW with bottom surgery should count as women but not those without. In fact, my understanding is that that was broadly the position that Korean spa tried to take (no penises) and they got sued and lost.
What pieces of his reporting and writing for Them does he feel was most predictive of our current politics and environment and what ideas/beliefs/orgs has he been surprised have withered?
Great question!
This was what I wanted to ask too
In the Michfest episode of Things Fall Apart, there was no mention of the fact that one of the trans activists involved went on to commit a triple murder. I think this was a missed opportunity, because there's a myth that the murders were connected to Michfest despite the fact that there's no evidence that the lesbian victims ever attended it and it would have been a good chance to debunk it. Plus, it leaves a pretty big elephant in the room to those in the know and I'm pretty sure that Graham Linehan has spread the myth and it would've been a great way to show him up.
Not sure that’s your best example to reassure women that we have nothing to be anxious about concerning trans identifying men.
Where did I say that?
By saying it would be good to discuss a trans identifying man carrying out a triple homicide as a way to somehow embarrass Graham Linehan. Like I said, not your best point.
The topic at hand is Ronson's reporting and his upcoming discussion. If the murders are unrelated to the subject of his podcast obviously there's no reason he should have discussed it. But if they are related, as Linehan appears to claim, that seems like a substantial omission. I would like to know. If it's an outrageous false accusation on the part of Linehan then Ronson is within his rights to just ignore it, but, you know, it's going to get filed away in the back of my mind now, I can't help that.
I don’t know if that’s relevant? A lot of activists believe they’re special and have access to a ‘truth’ other people don’t have. Sometimes they then switch to basically an opposite ‘truth.’ They’re kind of flaky & extreme in general. Like Lierre Keith was a vegan activist and then became the organ meats activist lady. She is or was a TERF but I feel like her position on that could change too
Activists are mostly people who don’t have real jobs and aren’t very stable. They actually are the kind of untethered person who commits violence it’s kind of the same profile in a way
The other thing, I know Linehan gets love here but he’s not well. He’s taking phones from people and refusing to give them back, posting on Twitter picking fights with more famous people all day etc
Linehan could be someone who snaps and does a triple murder. He’s swung to the opposite side of the political spectrum. He’s lying to himself about his career both before this started and now (a Rob Schneider show made in AZ is probably not going to make any money) etc. This is the exact kind of person who snaps; always feels insulted, only marginally employed, no family support network etc.
You do not seem to be able to understand the point I am making. By all means get Ronson to talk about the fact that a trans identifying man killed two lesbians and their son and then was housed in a female prison. I would very much like to see how he attempts to engage with that. I suspect with the same glib smugness that characterises most of his work.
Which of your books was the most interesting to research and write? Which was the most challenging? I’m guessing The Psychopath test and so you’ve been publicly shamed but could be wrong.
Also which is your favorite medium to work in if you had to pick one (writing or audio)?
Do you think public shaming has evolved in the 11 years since you wrote your book on the subject? And are the people targeted by shaming handling themselves differently?
Is there another area (like The Butterfly Effect) that is taboo that you'd like to explore as a journalist?
Equally important- do we need to soap our legs directly in the shower or can the flow from the torso simply do the work? [this is important]
I hate when people's legs smell.
I don't believe I've ever had smelly legs.
That was my [sarcastic] point.
1) After writing The Psychopath Test, did you come away thinking psychopathy is a real underlying condition that we imperfectly measure, or a label that creates the illusion of a much cleaner category than actually exists?
2) Do you still catch yourself mentally scoring people on the Hare checklist?