Trump is turning execution into entertainment

0:00We all have routines. I'm Jebron, and with diabetes, my was finger sticks. Sometimes I skip them because they hurt. The freestyle liberate 3CGM changed that. It gives me glucose insights without finger sticks. Learn more at freestylelibrate.us. Finger sticks are required if your glucose alarms and readings do not match symptoms. Or when you see check blood glucose symbol for the first 12 hours. The views expressed should not be used for medical diagnosis or treatment as a substitute for professional medical advice. Individual circumstances may vary. For prescription only, safety info found at freestylelibrate.us. This is a global production. Let's get into another episode of James O'Brien Daily. It's an hour of highlights every day from my LBC show where we deal with the stories that shift and mold our world the most. I hope you enjoy. I like you. Find myself responding to one story in the news with a mysterious combination of dread and confusion.

1:00Dread because I don't quite know exactly what it signifies. And confusion because I cannot for the life of me work out why they would or indeed, why anybody would do it. Do you remember Ken Bigley? Do you remember when I cis executed him on a live stream? And we were united in our conclusion that this was barbarism of an absolutely medieval dimension. Of course, Ken was an entirely innocent man and the man that Donald Trump is about to see executed on a live broadcast is a profoundly guilty man. But humanity is a universal concept. Thou shalt not kill. Probably the most confused and maligned of all the commandments that underpin the Christian faith because we kill all the time, whether in war or elsewhere. Thou shalt not kill. These people claim to be Christians and yet here they are essentially offering up a

2:00tribute act to ISIS, to Islamist fundamentalism, to the worst kind of terrorist barbarism. Before I ask you to tell me how this story is hitting you, I'll tell you how it's hitting me. I sometimes, in fact, I probably wonder now more in my 50s than at any other point in my life. I wonder whether we have evolved morally at all as a species. But when you see the guardrails coming down on a society, when you see the norms being removed, people cheering and celebrating, the dehumanizing of others, of their neighbours, whether it's under a parasol of immigration concerns or whether it is the way in which sections of your society treat calls for refugees to be burnt alive in their beds, you see these guardrails coming down. If you're like me and you might not be, if you're anything like me, you marvel at your fellow man, right, and woman.

3:00You sit here going, how can you countenance this? How can you do this? It's absolutely barbaric. And of course the words and the actions are different, but they are related, aren't they? I mean, you don't really get the actions unless you begin with the words, the process of dehumanizing begins with cheapening of other human lives, let them drown, burn them in their beds, it just begins with that. And they're entirely innocent people. So then when you have a guilty person against a backdrop of humanity diluted, you think it would be a good idea to broadcast a live execution by firing squad. And then, and this is why I say it's confusing, because it shouldn't be, but it is. Then you start, if your brain is anything like mine, then you start wondering why you're so disgusted by this, why you're so perturbed by it, because death penalties are commonplace

4:05in America. Many American states have executions, not anywhere near as much as they used to do, and normally they take place decades after the crime, and it's a convoluted and horrible process. And we still have, in the forefront of our recent memories, the botched attempt to execute a woman in America last week. So why does the live streaming element, the broadcasting element of it, feel so awful when we don't spend our lives, or most of us don't forgive me if you do? We don't spend our lives railing against the death penalty. We don't spend our lives railing against our lives that kill criminals. So the thing that makes this story is the broadcast element, right? It's the broadcast element. And the reason why I say I wonder, it sounds a bit pompous, perhaps, but I wonder whether we do evolve at all.

5:08Because it used to be a spectator sport in this country. Relatively recently, hangings would take place in public. In the French Revolution, the guillotine was a, I mean, an attraction. We have famously women knitting in the front row, wouldn't you? But hangings here in Tyburn and elsewhere were public events. People would crowd into squares, in cities like Edinburgh, to witness hangings. And do you ever read about that and think to yourself, what is it? What have been there? I read a lot of historical fiction, as you know, in the heroes and heroines of these books, if they attend to these public executions are always deeply discombobulated by them. She looked away at the final moment and gasped at the barbarism of the crowd, hoping for a collective intake of breath as just briefly, momentarily, the assembled throngs recognized the cruelty that they were complicity in. That's all a line, you know, so it is good people don't do this.

6:12But I think that's a bit simplistic. You have an execution, a thousand people turn up for it. There's no way they're all horrible, they're all fascists, they're all psychopaths, they're all evil, is that? It's just not possible. Well, is it? I don't know. Maybe I sound naive to you now. But it will happen again in the United States of America when this man is executed by firing squad, there will be people lapping it up, there will be people loving it, there will be people doing the knitting, cheering the moment. And I don't know why, it's the first military execution in more than 60 years. I don't know why the public nature of the execution is such a troubling element to it. I mean, I got two or three questions for you this morning. The first is pretty simply how you respond to this story. I do think it's a moment. America is our closest ally in so many ways, not in every way, but in so many ways.

7:12Donald Trump's depravity has been non-negotiable now for years, hasn't it? Even though some people still cling to the notion that Richard Little John, who wants him to be the governor of this country, wants him to govern this country, a sort of a daily male columnist, just hanging on both fingertips after having one of his columns taken away from him. But he's still there and presumably still cheering on this sort of stuff. And people will, and people do. People in the, I don't know what room you're in now, what room are you in now? You at work, are you in company, are you on a bus? It's not just who would watch it because there is a grim sort of slowing down for a car crash element to this, isn't there? It's not just who would watch it. It's who would enjoy it, who would relish it? And listen, I can think of a criminal. I don't think it would be helpful to name them, but there's no prizes for guessing the kind of crimes that we're thinking about. I can think of a criminal whose execution would not trouble me too deeply,

8:15but intellectually, that's an emotional response. Intellectually, I recognize that it is a, it's a zero-sum game. You either do it or you don't. And once you do it, you don't get to control who else it can happen to. So today, it's an evil terrorist or a pedophile or a hideous rapist. Tomorrow, so whoever a government decides it's going to be. Now, confident would you be that if Donald Trump had free reign to decide who gets executed in public, that the process would end with the very worst criminals? I mean, spoiler alert, that was supposed to be the deportations when he got elected for a second time. It was supposed to be confined to the very worst criminals, but guess what? It ain't, because he was lying about the scale of that particular issue. I do very occasionally find myself contemplating a story about which I am just interested in what you think. And today is one of those days, so tell me. And then I wonder, and this is a very kind of, it's a very arse kind of question this, and I hope it's not inappropriately,

9:15I think it's not a luxurious question. The luxury of being able to pontificate about these things, but I think it matters. The first instance is why, well, actually two questions, underpinning the central invitation to you to just talk to me about what this story is, what it does to you. The first is, why do you think they're doing it? I asked a couple of colleagues this morning, and the best I got was, well, they're psychopaths. But that doesn't quite go the distance for me. Why do you think they're doing it? Why on earth would you decide to break this particular taboo? I mean, hegseth is a hideous human, being Trump is morally depraved. We know all of this, but why are they doing this? This action at this moment, why are we doing this? And then the two slightly more nuanced questions. That's one of them.

10:16And the other one is, are we being a bit hypocritical? Not in the context of the terrible things that happen all over the world all the time, and the fact that we, as a country, as a people, possibly even as individuals don't, and don't do enough to stop them or do enough to object to them. That's a slightly obvious position to adopt. It's not necessarily wrong, but it's not relevant to the conversation that we're having today. I just wonder whether we are being a bit hypocritical if the only time that we feel the full horror of humans killing other humans in this way is when it is live-streamed, when it's broadcast. It is it. I think it is, but you could disagree or I could be wrong. The turning it into a public spectacle somehow makes it immeasurably worse than doing it in private.

11:17And you see, I feel that in my bones, right? But I don't know that I can justify it in my brain. Why does turning it into a public spectacle make it worse? So question number one, how are you dealing with this? How are you responding to it? Question number two, why do you think they're doing it? Why do you think they're doing it? And question number three, is it actually... morally consistent to be more disgusted by the public spectacle element of it than you would be if it were happening in private? I think it is, but as you can tell, I'm thinking out loud this morning, responding as you are to a story I never thought we'd be talking about. You know, the Iranians execute people in public and we're pretty clear about the barbarism of that regime. And ISIS executes people in public.

12:17Does Putin, I presume, I don't even know where the Putin executes people in public. But all right, you know, this is the United States of America. This is the land of Ronald McDonald and Waffle House. And now they're executing people in public, essentially, on live stream. It's this is Coriolainous snow, isn't it? This is a Hunger Games. This is extraordinary. But, and I think now the more I think about it, the more I think this is what I want you to help with most, is it worse by dint of doing it in front of a camera? It is, isn't it? But why? Why is it worse? I think it's only worse because it makes us frightened of ourselves and it makes us frightened of each other. Doing it in front of a camera makes us frightened of how people are going to react. It maybe makes you frightened of how you're going to react. You're going to tune in, you're going to watch it. Why? Why does the broadcast element of this?

13:17Why does the live stream element of this make it so very, very different from all the other executions that unfold in all? Because, yeah, that's, yeah, I don't need to say anymore. That's the question. So, number one, what do you make of it? Number two, why are they doing it? And number three, what is it about the live stream element of this? Hibiya's story that justifies a sense of moral outrage that is different from the moral outrage we feel at other executions. Of state murder, you could call it whatever you will, but why does the camera make it also different? Hugo is in North Leech in the cops' walls. Hugo, what would you like to say? I had to pull over because it was one of those things I was listening to it this morning when the news broke, maybe I've been a bit delayed. I just couldn't, I just genuinely couldn't. A lot of people telling me this is the first they've heard of it. Yes, yeah, I mean, from my side, I mean,

14:18I think it's awful that they're going to be sharing this, but I mean, I've got a lot of friends who are in the military, and I would think, imagine if they told me that they had been told by their commanders that they're going to have to go on live TV and execute someone. Yeah. It's one of those things that I'm just genuinely think is just one of the most awful things. And these poor guys or women are going to have to go out and do this live on TV. And then what is going to happen? You know, their face is going to be broadcast. Well, they'll probably have their faces covered. So, you know, there'll be more echoes of hideous footage that's been posted on the internet by hideous people in recent years. I mean, what you're describing is something I've missed, which is once you start dehumanizing, you don't get to control where it goes, because in a sense, as you speak sympathetically about the soldiers who'll be charged with doing this, and I imagine that we've volunteers. I imagine you'll be allowed to say no, but they become dehumanized as well, don't they? Absolutely. I think, you know, it comes into question kind of their service and everything like that. I mean, you know, I wouldn't imagine any of my friends have joined up

15:19to kind of publicly execute people on a live stream, but then, you know, it's America. It's a different America. And it's under Trump's America. And I think that's probably the issue. Why do you think they're doing it? I think they're doing it because they're worried about their midterms. I think they're looking like they're going to get an absolute pasting and what better way to distract the whole world and the whole of America than to execute someone live on TV and say, look, this is what we're doing. We're absolutely fantastic and amazing. We're sorting all these problems out. Don't worry about the midterms because look what we do to terror it. 2000, 2000 years ago, it would have taken place in a Coliseum. And it would have been lions, not guns that were used. Absolutely. And people are paid for it. But now, you know, it's just one of these things. And you know, one of the other points you made, sorry to waffle on a little bit, but one of the other things. I wouldn't worry. You get, you know, you look at the, you know, I go on social media quite a bit and sometimes, you know, you might be doing scrolling late at night and you do actually see really horrible videos of people being executed. And I'm not looking for that. That just happens to pop up and suddenly I'm seeing that.

16:20So when they say it's not their policy, I'm very surprised if they won't be showing it or people will clip it. And then, you know, how kids who are definitely should be seeing that. They're suddenly going to be watching American soldiers execute people on Instagram and Facebook and things like that. Time for a short break now afterwards. The best callers in the business. You're listening to a quick ad. You know what else is quick? Selling your car on Carvana. Just put in your vehicle information and we'll give you an offer. Done. No hassle, no negotiation, no guy from an online listing lowball in you. Which means by the time I'm done explaining this, you could have basically done it. Still haven't started? Hey, better late than never. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. It's talk to Jacuz and pit lockery.

17:21Jake, what would you like to say? I'm an American visiting here in the UK and I'm actually hearing about this now for the first time. And I'm embarrassed. I'm ashamed and it's something that's bothered me to see. I think you said it best earlier that it's a hunger game. It's cheating. We're streaming death in 4K as if we haven't had enough. Wow, I put it like that. It sends a shiver down my spine actually. And that is an answer, isn't it, to the question of why are they doing it? And they're doing it because they think people will like it. In my country, the death penalty, I don't know if you guys have it here. I try to follow. No, we haven't had it for decades. And there's plenty of states in the United States that don't have a state death penalty. And having a federal death penalty has never really gone away. I probably have the country if maybe more,

18:21probably agree with it. That's democracy. If more people agree with it, then this is what we have to do. But public, you were mentioning it being public earlier. Yeah. Public executions mean that members of the public can get there. It doesn't mean that it's streamed live on television. Every execution is put out so that every person in the United States can watch it. It's usually a select group of people, sometimes the people who were injured by the party, who did it. Yes. I personally don't agree with the death penalty. I kind of think imprisonment for the rest of your life is a far more suit punishment, actually punishing somebody, knowing you are imprisoned forever. Death is almost their way out of punishment. Why does the broadcast element create such a different level of disturbance? Is it because we are processing consciously or subconsciously? It's dystopian, isn't it? It's what dystopian.

19:22It's dystopian, isn't it? It's undergame. Yes. But why? Yeah, but why? Because it's happening in private. And yet when it happens in public, when it happens, and I'm going to use your phrase in 4K, it moves us differently. And it's because we're frightened of how our fellow man reacts, I think. Is that not what we're frightened of? We're frightened of the people who will love it. I would agree with that. You're the people who are all four. Because I would say that I don't know that I'm necessarily in the minority, but I might not be in the plurality. Josh is in Tumblr as well. Josh, what would you like to say? Yeah, I was listening to your introduction, and I was mulling did of a book I recently read called The Faithful Executioner. Go on. And essentially, like it kind of just documents an executioner's experiences back in, I think it's like the 1500s in Germany. OK. But what was interesting in the book is that it talks very much about how public executions were a performance. Yes.

20:24And how really that performance was a kind of a necessary evil for maintaining a degree of control amongst the population. And by doing absolutely kind of barbarous or full kind of disgusting torture and execution, it exerted control. And so, but if it was a crime that many people might be minded to commit, then the deterrence argument gathers some pace, doesn't it? I mean, we used to in this country, in this city, where I'm speaking from. We used to, I don't know if it happened in Tombridge, Wells-Jos, but it definitely happened in London. They would hang it. They would quarter and draw people. They would cut them open and pull out their guts while they were still alive. It was, it was, they were like different levels of punishment for executions. It just a few hundred years ago in this country. But this isn't, I don't think, sending a message to anybody. Is it not a message of deterrent? Terrorists are usually suicide. Anyway, is limestereous, usually suicide, anyway.

21:26So that doesn't deter them. No, I suppose. I think for me, it just strikes me that knowing what Trump and his kind of regime and his kind of associates are up for doing, it strikes me just that this is just another form of, of kind of an exerting a subconscious degree of control on the population. And I think more so moving the territory, more into a sense of look what we're prepared to do, look what we're prepared to start with, and publicly demonstrate our power and our impunity with absolutely no qualms. Is there complicity as well? Does he make everybody, is this a suggestion from Brendan? He's asking us to be complicit in his depravity, subliminally sharing the guilt at a sense of self-loathing that obviously runs through these men like Blackpool through a stick of rock. And they think if they can prove that everybody is as awful as them, then they won't hate being themselves quite as much as they do. I think that's in there's got to be a sense of kind of confirmation

22:32in the sense that if you've got a degree of the population who undoubtedly are going to be kind of more than happy in bang for the blood of like, you know, this guy who's going to be executed, that does suggest that they want a degree of complicity and that they're happy with the result that if, you know, there's people who are subliminally sharing for what they've done, it confirms that they're kind of world view. Richard is in Barnes Green. Richard, what would you like to say? In the 1980s there was an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie called The Running Man. I think they've really made it. They have, it's quite a good remake, actually. So I remember after the movie had finished that some friends might have been watching it, were fairly aghast, not at the movie itself, but what it portended. And I've seen America's been on that slippery slope for a long time. I see in the future the will be shows where the public are watching a criminal hunted and executed on television.

23:34Why did they do it? It's ratings, isn't it? You're going to live stream and execution? It's more than ratings. It's like, I mean, that might well be part of it. And this is literally the story of a television program in which, I mean, he's been framed for a crime. He didn't commit in the classic of these genres, but it is a huge national, it's like the traitors times a million. And the ultimate end of the program is death, actual real death. He will, I mean, the plan is that he will get killed. You get ratings for lots of things. And the thing about, I mean, you'd get ratings for Series 1, but by Series 20, oddly, you wouldn't. There's something else going on here. There's something political. It's not commercial. They want, they are sending a message to America. And I'm not quite sure what the message is. A part from nothing matters anymore. It's a little redundant, isn't it? I mean, if you're going to kill a terrorist, which is what they want to do, now you're going to make a martyr of him.

24:35Yes. He gets 67 virgins, which I find baffling, because surely after 32, you want a pro. And then you've just done a service. And you've raped the approach of the supposed enemy. That's the bit about the Hegsith comments that might be worth listening to again that I find so difficult. The idea that he seems to be boasting about the capacity for barbarism being even greater than that of the terrorists in this case. Markson, Chelmsford, Mark, what would you like to say? I'll be honest, it really hit me because I didn't think that we would be having this conversation in 2026. No, nor did I. So me, I think you asked the question, you know, why, why, why they are allowing this or doing this. And I think for me, this is the values of the people of Trump and his administration. I think it's always been the values of Trump and his administration. But I think now, for the first time,

25:35there is potentially a appetite for this sort of thing within the general public. And I think we've gotten to this point because, in the last, I would say five to 10 years, the world has become a far more violent blood-sirfee place. Humanity, sense of humanity is on the decline. And you know, this man that committed this atrocity in all these murders, I don't think he deserves any humanity. But I think it's the representation of where the people in charge have taken us. I'm a bit bleaker than you. I know these are just words that you used when you said it couldn't happen. I, more I think about it, the more I think it can always happen. And that's why systems, societies, politicians, lawyers, judges, that's why. They are dedicated to keeping a lid on this kind of thing. If you let the dog see the rabbit, so to speak, all bets are off. If you let a population celebrate the killing of another human being publicly at a party,

26:38then all bets are off. These are like the guardrails of civilization itself. So it's a bleak reading of humans. It's not rose tinted. It's really weird to see it from this end of the telescope. All the things I consider valuable, I don't really believe I need. I don't need rules and regulations in place that outlaw incitement to violence. I'm always going to condemn violence, whether it is directed at a politician that I really don't like, or whether it is directed at a refugee, or a theoretical child drowning in the English Channel. These guardrails and norms that I consider to be deeply valuable, I don't think I need them. They're needed for the people that can be tempted to attack a woman on the floor of a political party conference, or call for refugees to be burned alive in their beds, or think that it's fine to see barbarism being directed at people as long as it's the enemy, the political enemy. And what everybody has to agree on. It's like the ultimate footballification mark.

27:38Everybody has to agree on the things that are unacceptable. And that's what's gone in the last 10 years, is that they've started saying, oh no, that is acceptable when we do it. Or that is acceptable when it's directed at them, whether it's refugees or women at the Reform UK conference or murderers. It's acceptable when it's them. Some things have to be never, ever, ever acceptable, ever. And here we are, accepting it. Absolutely. And you do have to wander, and you've made a really great point, and you do have to wander if these are the views and the thoughts that people have held for a long time anyway. I think it's there. I think the capacity's there. I always remember reading, is it in Taylor Two Cities, and Dickens describes a public execution. I've read about a lot of public executions, factual and fictional. But there's always that wonder at the humans who were there with their kids, you know, and then you see the people turning up at the R&LI, protests and handing loud hailers to their children to chant, let them drown, let them drown. It's always there, mate.

28:39It's just that society and civilization is designed to keep a lid on it. And Trump's knocking the lid off. Heik's, that is unscrewing it. Yeah. People are allowed to voice this kind of thing now. And I think another part of it that bothers me is that we've always been able to treat the worst of the people in our society with a baseline level of dignity, whether they deserve it or not. And that has been comfortable for the rest of us, because it's shut a precedent if those people can, you know, if their human rights can be upheld, and they can be treated with a level of dignity, then surely the rest of us who are just good, law-abiding citizens, good people will, you know, will be okay if we stay on the right side of it. David's in Maidenhead. David, what would you like to say? I've just been reading, as you do on a Friday, meditations by Marcus Arale. Oh, yes. And it just came to me. But Trump's doing exactly what I think

29:39Commodus was the Emperor after Marcus Arale. Did what several of the Empress did? Gave the Populous when they were rowdy and unruly bread in terms of Trump's version of that. It's the Czechs, the rebate checks and the Czechs of Oting. And games, blood and entertainment, entertainment, so is the wrong word. So I think in the Latin, originally, it translates as circuses, doesn't it, bread and circuses? Absolutely. And I don't think it has the cerebral capacity to think too deep, but it just struck me. Well, it does brilliant, actually, because if you actually are utterly atavistic, you know, if you... So we're talking about all the things that society and civilization are designed to keep out, to keep nailed down. If that's who you are, then you would do this. You understand the very worst of humanity, better than anybody does, because you are the very worst of humanity. And I think, I think,

30:39a comrade, as one of these two, actually, get involved in the games himself and pretend he was one of the old Roman dots. And that is very much, you could completely imagine Trump doing that as well. I love the Roman comparisons. I mean, because he is, isn't he, like, one of those emperors who, I think it's a myth that Nero made his horse a senator or something like that, but you could easily imagine Trump if he had a horse, making him a senator or begging him up on it. If Trump made a horse, vice president, he's got one already to be fair. It wouldn't surprise me in the least. We're going to take a short break now. Then we're switching topics. I've got another one of the big stories in today's news to dissect and discuss. So do stay with me. It's been a long time coming, hasn't it? There's a tendency among the worst people, really, to pretend that suffering isn't real.

31:42It's not entirely unlinked from some of the stuff we talked about in the last hour, like men who are in real pain and dedicate their lives to pretending that they're not convincing them. So I'm strong. I'm tough. I'm not vulnerable. And of course, our society often encourages to go down that road. But if you are one of those people and you end up in journalism, and there is an explosion of mental health problems among young people, then you are almost hard-wired to respond by saying, nonsense, it wasn't like that in my day, I'm absolutely fine. And then they go home and drink half a bottle of whiskey every night to dull the pain that defines them. So I mentioned that because where streeting fell into the trap of trying to appease these people, shortly, when he was health secretary, his defense secretary now, and he talked about overdiagnosis with no basis whatsoever for that. And he has subsequently apologized for it. And some of the coverage today would give you the impression, if you weren't paying attention, that Professor Peter Foneg is investigation into the mental health crisis and the diagnosis of various conditions,

32:48had also concluded that there was overdiagnosis when he has not concluded that at all. He said that there might be a danger of it, but there's currently no data to support that conclusion. You wouldn't know that from looking at some of the front pages, or indeed some listening to some of the commentary. It's been nine months coming, and the first thing it does is absolutely explode the snowflake caricature. And this is really important. I don't know why I find this so moving and so powerful, but I just do. It completely dismisses dismantles and demolishes the idea that young people today are weak, or snowflakey, or exaggerating, or simply to blame for their own conditions. The prevalence, the steep rise in the prevalence of mental health problems,

33:51such as anxiety and depression, is real. That's the first line, metaphorically speaking of his conclusions. It's real. And of course, if you begin from there, you will end up in a completely different place, from where you would end up if you began from either the conclusion that they're not real, or that some people might be telling the truth, but most of them are swinging the lead. It is real. How many politicians have you heard in this studio? Not when I'm on air, but in this studio like Mel Stride and people like that talking about how people are robust enough or are committed enough for whatever word they use to disguise the fact that they don't understand the reality of these conditions. And if the conditions are real, then the distress and difficulties that they cause are real. And he identifies drivers of it, cultural and social drivers. We took touch on this yesterday in a slightly different context, COVID Disruption, Financial and Housing Insicurity,

34:54Competitive School and Social Stresses that are exacerbated by social media. And then, as is often the case when we're examining things that have gone horribly wrong in our country, Osborne's razor kicks in and we go back to George Osborne's tenure as Chancellor and remember that he got rid of Shore Start Centers. He got rid of youth clubs, all of these things of which there were not many left, were swept away during austerity and the consequence of that is phonychee has concluded more loneliness, more loneliness. He was himself, I didn't know this, a severely depressed teenager in 1960s London, something that he reveals in the forward which Patrick Butler in the Guardian today describes as unexpectedly tender and it really is unexpectedly tender. Perhaps because we've been gaslit by so much coverage of these issues, in a 80% right wing media ecosystem, 80% of the coverage we've seen would have been subscribing to the Snowflake School of Thought. The idea that the kids just need a good kick up the back side or a firework up their proverbial

36:00and then they'd soon learn or they'd need to cancel their Netflix subscription. You know what I mean, they're really, really lazy, knee-jerk nonsense that typifies so much media coverage of young people's problems in this society. He writes in this forward to the report, I am in awe of their courage. Young people are contending with more powerful forces than I ever faced. They are not fragile, they are outnumbered. Wow. Simple answers, he writes in a echo of where we've gone on this programme repeatedly in recent years. Simple answers are rarely adequate. There are warnings about the rising prevalence of ADHD or autism and, and indeed mental illness, having real world consequences, public services, can't cope, people are suffering because they can't get the support and people who can afford to go privately, particularly with ADHD and autism, are going to secure advantages that

37:03are denied to people who can't afford to go private. He talks of a risk of overdiagnosis, though says there is no evidence of it happening at scale, a bit of a wake-up call there for some of the usual suspects, no evidence of it happening at scale. And he's scathing about the growth and reliability of some unregulated private providers. And where that takes him is really interesting, because it takes into a place where he says you shouldn't need a diagnosis to get the clinical support. You shouldn't need a diagnosis to get some of the special education or need support in schools, or indeed access to disability benefits because that encourages unfairness. Those who can afford private diagnosis have a higher chance of getting support. So the problem with this, always with this, with these conversations, which we have a lot on this programme, and we'll continue to do so because we know we're right. And someone like Professor Peter Foneg, who comes along and confirms it, and unfortunately it doesn't mean that all the

38:04people who are wrong will suddenly change their ways or start reflecting reality or telling the truth. They can't. It's how they're wired. Someone vulnerable appears, they have to blame the vulnerable person for being vulnerable because to do anything else to display compassion or empathy will be to open the door to their own vulnerability. It would be to open the door to their own pain and they've spent their entire life keeping that door locked shut. That's simple and heartbreaking, but sadly very, very common. But the problem we have is that they are such completely different things, and not only is there a variety of mental illness, but ADHD and autism are very different things, and lots of people have both of them anyway. So we're talking really about support without knowing in many of our cases what that support actually means. If you get an EHCP, then your school is required and funding is provided to give you one-on-one support that might be denied to the child sitting next to you in the classroom, who is in exactly the same situation

39:08that you're in, but hasn't been able to secure the EHCP because their parents perhaps are not quite as well informed or their elbows are not quite as sharp. That's the way it goes, the squeaky wheel, I think Professor Fonegier's saying gets the most oil often in our society and in these systems in particular. I could just sit here and read that line again and again and again because I don't know who needs to hear it, but I do know that we can all sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that the world is exactly as it was when we were in it at that age, or the world is exactly as it appears to be through the lens of our own eyes. So, you know, I was a very naughty child, therefore I understand the importance of discipline, or I was a very lazy child and I just needed a kick up the backside, or I thought I was depressed, but I turned out I was just sad. And this lifelong, I think it happens in every generation, this invitation and temptation to conclude that the problems of a younger generation are made up because, well, we had problems and we did fine.

40:12There's two problems with that. You didn't have the same problems and you quite possibly haven't done fine. You just put an awful lot of effort into persuading yourself and everybody around you that you have. I am in awe of their courage. Young people are contending with more powerful forces than I ever faced. They are not fragile. They are outnumbered. I've taught myself out of a topic here. I'm so profoundly moved by that. I don't really want to talk about anything else, but I can't see what question I can ask you in response to that simple line, those three beautiful sentences. Young people are contending with more powerful forces than I ever faced. They are not fragile. They are outnumbered. I think it's a conversation, isn't it, about the importance of recognising it, to be clear. I fully understand how you could have arrived at this conclusion from a good starting place. It's not a lazy or an unkind position. This is not a story

41:16about increased recognition. Obviously, there are more and more people being diagnosed than ever before. That is partly because we know what to look for now and people who've spent their entire lives wondering why X, Y and Z keeps happening to them can now find out. But the report, the review is clear that many of the drivers, particularly of mental issues, and that would be most obviously anxiety and depression, are cultural and social and real. The kids that they are exposed to things that we were not exposed to. But it's to the ADHD angle that I want to turn your attention and probably autism as well. I just think it's worth taking another moment to wonder what difference a diagnosis makes, whether it's late in life or whether it's for you as a child or your child. Because our heads around that and we can begin to understand what Professor Phonigy wants to happen even absent, even without a diagnosis. It's about how the system becomes

42:22a better place for all of these children and therefore everybody else because of the dedication of resources and the distractions and the time available, the time needed. He wants the education system to become a place that accommodates these children without them needing the expensive, pains taking and difficult business of getting a diagnosis. But we need to know what happens when you get a diagnosis in order to know what is needed. Tell me about your children as well. Parents who go down that path because I think, correct me if I'm wrong, the first thought is stigma. They've destigmatized some of these conditions. To a point now where there are arguments and Professor Phonigy addresses some of them, where you're seeking a diagnosis because it gets help and special treatment. The stigma I think has been successfully diluted

43:24or successfully reduced. But it's still there. The first time an adult tells you that there's something, quote, wrong end quotes with your child and it's not wrong. It's different or divergent and you as a parent. Probably don't want to believe it, right? And yet the nut that needs to be cracked is the nut that necessitates acknowledging the condition in order to access the help that the child needs. So, talk me through what that's like. But the question that underpins all of this, it's pretty simple. What difference does it make for a child in the first instance? But also, perhaps for an adult. There's a balanced Sebastian song that for anybody who is looking at late life diagnosis, I think that this song, you would find it absolutely heartbreaking to listen to this song by a balanced Sebastian. And it's called the Boy Done Wrong Again. The Boy Done Wrong Again. I don't know what your childhood was like, but if it was ever involved thinking, why am I in trouble

44:26again? Why am I queuing up outside the headmaster's studies to get beaten again? The Boy Done Wrong Again. I was reading Simon Pegg, who's had a late life adult diagnosis of ADHD yesterday and he was saying suddenly lots of the things that have always plagued me made sense. It's a lovely thing. It's a liberation. Time for a quick break now. Then you're going to hear some of the most insightful callers in the history of phoning radio, as ever. The standard today was incredibly high. Mike is in Chichester, Mike. What would you like to say? I wanted to talk about the fact that I was diagnosed quite late. So I'm 16 now, nearly. Yeah. And I was diagnosed when I was 55. And actually what you just said about the balanced Sebastian song is really touch me. Yeah, I thought it would. Not you personally, but it would touch people who've been through what you've been through. Yeah, because it's less the Boy Done Wrong Bad Again. It's sort of that's the

45:30description of most of my life, to some extent. And I think when you get a late diagnosis, it's really quite helpful to understand and put in place, much more of a compassion for yourself in this situation. Tell me what that means. Well, in my case, and I know in other people that have ADHD, that there's a voice in your head that is constantly telling you you're failing. And I know everybody feels that to some extent, but it's a very persistent voice. And when it's confirmed, I was saying to your producer that I was held back a year at school, in primary school, because I was regarded as one of those is incredibly bright. If you just knuckle down and did the work instead of playing the fool, he would be fine. And I often think, now, you know, that holding me back a year probably just made me incredibly bored with school throughout the whole process. It's a brilliant example of making a situation worse by not

46:35recognizing the divergence. Exactly. And I took to my mother about that now, and in a bus, this is 86. And so it's minus me. One of the most powerful things about having ADHD is you develop a superpower to diagnose everybody else. Right. And I saw in my mother had ADHD, and I love a answer, which is, well, it didn't exist when I was a child. But she's got two sons that have been late diagnosed with it. So you kind of get, yeah, well, why did you want to diagnosis? I didn't. I was, you know, the most remarkable thing is I was just driving back listening to you from having a COVID job. Right. And during the lockdown, I went for a COVID job, and I turned up at the wrong location that my doctor's, and she said, well, you need to rearrange that. I'll do that for you. And she booked me an ADHD questionnaire test instead. Really? I don't know. I don't know what she saw or reception, but it was genuinely a bureaucratic sort of crossover. And I thought, well, what should you do in delivery? Well, I've got nothing else to do. I will fill out this questionnaire,

47:40and I got about five questions in because the system that my GP used was one that you had to fill it in with somebody that lives with you now, and somebody that lived with you when you were seven. Okay. And I started filling it in with my brother, who obviously knew me when I was seven, and he just said, three questions and you went, oh, God, you got ADHD. It's the case. And I think with a lot of people in my life, it's an explanation that they now understand and I understand, increasingly. Is that, you know, I built, I think I can't remember the exact quote from the report, so I wouldn't want to use it. It was that beautiful thing that you've been saying about the fact that they're just outnumbered. I think there are hundreds of thousands of people going through life with a brainwired the way mine is. And they're doing an incredible job if they're undiagnosed and they don't know what the problem is. They're doing an incredible job of performing human being.

48:42Because we look at the rest of the world and we go, I don't work like them. Why don't I work like them? And you beat yourself up about it all the time. You go, God, I'm clever, I'm smart, I'm creative. I didn't even believe you. I'll be different this time. I'll be different today. I'll just work, I can't do it. I won't be lazy. And the thing is it's not lazy. It's literally that your brain gets incredibly bored without the dopamine hit. And you know, I've gone through life being able to prepare a PowerPoint presentation for an important meeting two hours before the meeting. When I've had six weeks to prepare, and the thing is that you need that dopamine hit to actually, you need the dopamine hit. That's fear. Yeah, that's fear. Yeah. And it drives your creativity. I think it's a super car. You know, I'm a cartoonist and I write books and things and I think it drives it. But I need to create that false deadline for myself to make it actually work. And do you still, I mean, now that you know what's going on, you still because you've not medicated then.

49:45I nowadays I self publish. I am medicated at the end. That doesn't change the dynamics lightly on the sort of deadline relationship. I don't believe in false deadlines because I'm convinced they're false. I've created them. So you still need everything to the last imaginable minute. I have to set an external deadline. So what I'll do is say, okay, I'm going to publish a book on this day. Right. Okay. And then everybody wants that to happen. They can see the deadline and I have to do it because I've got an external pressure on me. And you need that. And we look at people because I think I'm very like that as well in many ways. We look at people who don't need that. And we think that they're just... That's a dissimilar approach. I mean, you say a response. I was going to say weird. You just said some people who finished their homework before it was due in. But they can't... They just go back to my mate Paul's house in the holidays. We used to play five day test matches of cricket. I remember going around a second week of the summer holidays to do a five day test match in his back garden. And he'd finished the holiday

50:48work. And I didn't believe him. I said, you've finished it. Why would you do that? Why? Well, I will be doing it on the night before we go back to school. And also one of the things that I discovered about this is what you do tend to do is when you start thinking and focus... You know, the important thing about ADHD is the hyper-focus bit because that's the super power. And the way that I describe it, I don't know how up with the Marvel universe you are, but Cyclops, the character that has to wear a visor to prevent him from killing everybody with a crazy thing. I just watched Craven. I'm not fully up to date with Marvel. Well, there's a guy that has to wear a visor to control the lasers that come out of his eyes. Right. And I kind of see it like that. But if you ask me to hyper-focus on a subject, I can. I can spend 24 hours. I will learn everything I need to know. In my head, I think I could learn to fly a plane in 24 hours. The reality is I just find it incredibly difficult to focus. I find it

51:49difficult to generate that 24 hours of hyper-focus. And you could flick a switch. You could flick a switch in the back of your brain. You could be Cammy Badernotkmate. You could climb mountains. You could conquer universes. You know, if you could just flick that switch, but you can't. You can only flick it. The switch only flicks. When you're right up against it, Susie is in Manchester. Susie, what would you like to say? I have ADHD. I'm also a psychotherapist. We've spoken before. And I work with women with ADHD. I also have a child who has ADHD. And I think, you know, whilst it is important that we are talking about, you know, medication or we're talking about support in the schools, I wanted to talk about the kind of emotional impact of getting a diagnosis. Please. And how it can help families talk to each other with a shorthand and a better understanding. And, you know, there are so many links between ADHD and other things such as a propensity to depression

52:52and anxiety, a propensity to fall foul of the clutches of addiction. And so if we think about, you know, all of those other factors that if we didn't know that we would be in a much more difficult position in terms of understanding why we are experiencing mental health issues, why we are experiencing difficulty in getting, you know, other aspects of our lives supported. And so when you get a diagnosis and when your child gets a diagnosis and then my husband who doesn't have a diagnosis, we can all start to understand and work together as a team to help each other emotionally, to help each other practically. And for me, you know, that will prevent all of my clients coming to me in 20 years time because they had the absence of that. That's extraordinary, isn't it? I mean, because you're describing the third or fourth step on a path being avoided as a consequence of recognizing the first step. So what do they do? The people that

53:58don't get the diagnosis, they beat themselves up to a point where they become depressed and anxious or they think that there's something wrong with them. All of these are passports to anxiety, aren't they? Absolutely. And I think to your point about previous generations, when yes, they didn't have, you know, the same landscape as we do today, but they absolutely did stuff with trauma, depression and anxiety. They just didn't call it that and they just had different coping mechanisms. And I think now, because we can talk about things, we can actually prevent them from happening or we can minimize the impact of doing that. And so yeah, I just think it's really important because a lot of people are talking about ADHD separate from anxiety and depression. Where is actually it could be that we have all of it, but a lot of it is going to be, I call it like turning the volume down, if we can get clarity on something else. Do you know, I keep reading about how the younger generations do not consume alcohol or drugs on the scale that their parents did or the older

55:02generations did. And just for the very first time listening to you, there, I wonder if there's a link there. I wonder if this massive increase in diagnosis and recognition and the thing you've just described about it, easing the oiling, the wheels of conversation and comprehension, means that they don't have to turn down the noise by smoking a joint or having a drink. I think there is a massive connection between those two things. I think because we have, in many cases, kind of destigmatized talking about mental health or talking about neurodivergence, then we are better equipped to choose healthier coping mechanisms. And I think there's a safety thing, though, as well, with kind of the younger generations not turning to kind of drugs and alcohol. I think that's actually kind of linked to other things around things like sexual violence, which is the thing that you and I normally talk about. But I do think it is because they are

56:03better informed. And I think the issue that we have in a sort of society that is becoming increasingly binary, we are having to get back to the report and wouldn't it be nice if we have this lovely comprehensive kind of supportive environment, rather than a you-needed diagnosis, so that you can get this type of support. But I think I do feel that it's not just a public person argument why we're trying to slow things down. I do think it's also that we're starting to get a bit more stigma again because we're trying to say you're either this or you're that. And actually, we're much more complex than that as individuals. Yeah, I mean, it's a bit tricky this, isn't it? Because the benefits of a diagnosis are clear, but also the dangers then become clearer. So that phonographies set themselves this extraordinary task of challenging the narrative that says it's not real. And also saying, but equally, you shouldn't need the diagnosis to access the help that you need. That's the bit where I struggled. Do you see that more clearly than I do?

57:05I don't know if it's more clearly than you do, but I think I wanted to point out that there's something about, you know, the way you were struck by introduction about the compassion in that. And you said a week ago on a completely different topic if every child was loved enough, there would be no far right. Yes. I think having a diagnosis or having more compassion and an environment that is much more flexible to cope with our needs actually leads families to be much more able to provide that love and compassion to their children because we are all informed. But at the moment, it does feel a little bit like there is a sort of system that is against us. And it's difficult, you know, saying trauma doesn't exist doesn't mean that it doesn't, and it doesn't mean that it doesn't cost the health of it. So that's the first thing that's the first brick in the wall then, isn't it? Of rebuilding Jerusalem, so to speak. The first brick in the wall is compassion and empathy and from compassion comes comprehension. And if you create an environment in which these things are recognised, then you begin to create an environment in which

58:12the people who have got these conditions are neither alienated nor excluded. I keep thinking back to the first call of being held back a year when it was the last thing that he needed and a compassionate care and comprehending system would have treated him very differently. Suzy, thank you. That's what it's about. Of course, analysis and evaluation galore. Thank you for listening and thank you of course to all of today's contributors. We're back on Monday from 10 on LBC or right here shortly afterwards. Have a fantastic weekend. This has been a global production.