Transcripts For RT Going Underground 20240711

The other side is cheating even here in america the Democratic Party internally had this same kind of argument that there was cheating against Bernie Sanders in favor of the candidates both in 2016 in 2000 and so i think its more of an american thing where we dont trust is more like our sport we believe the other side is deflating the balls so that they can cheat in particular with our present outgoing president we know that he tends to have more tangent than normal that has no relation to the Electorial College we are technologically advanced and just simply count the votes i feel as if weve only scratched the surface the time has beaten us our programmes are starting in moments i want to thank you all the block at jones democratic strategist and lawyer william my robinson professor of sociology at university of california Santa Barbara where is benedict founder of libertarian booster p a c thank you all for coming on the program thank you ok if youd like to have your say on thoughts or any of this over stories why not leave a comment or 2 on our Facebook Page always good to see how youre thinking out there see you soon. They were going underground as the 73rd World Health Assembly resumes amid a coronavirus pandemic that has killed well over a 1000000 people worldwide and could reshape the Global Economy away from washington dollar dominance coming up on the show with former Goldman Sachs banker richie soon at running the u. K. Finances join the pandemic we look at the culture that spawned not only him but also the 2008 financial crash with 2 former bankers turned t. V. Writers whose new show industry exposes the arguable class war at the heart of the city of london but what drives those who make it to the top of the world of banking we investigate the real american psychos as well as those crushed by modern capitalist society with the man behind killing dr mark freestone all of the more coming up in todays going underground but 1st coronavirus has arguably shine a light like no other on the relative responses of capitalist and neo communist societies to pandemics here in britain economic protection is under the thumb of a former banker bailed out Goldman Sachs Boris Johnsons chancellor regime but whats it like to work in the city a new drama premiering tonight in the americas on h. B. O. And here in britain on b. B. C. 2 tomorrow focuses on the lives of bright graduates who enter the bailed out city of london for money their behavior in just acting with geopolitics like a potential u. S. China war its called industry and paints a tragically vivid and had mystic portrait of a dystopian source of neo liberal inequality industries to writers former bankers making down and conrad kaye joins me now from london thanks so much for coming on a lot of people loved it and the editor used to work in sport f. X. Said it was accurate and the city of london being empty because of co read tell me about industry and how it somehow goes in the micro of graduate employment to war in the South China Sea in anticapitalist demonstrations. Well that it was false as he said it was bought from lawsuits our own experience has been correct left out so that in 2910 and everybody felt the pressure of getting a good job was there and we wanted to finance it and i personally found out very elsies to it very very quickly come around last slightly longer but what it did spot was this 1st script rewrites riverside right lets get it which was a really poor attempt to try to capture the role that it was missed by me clearance experience sitting at room about a mix yet the key to a lot it was writing from the experience of people who were at the very very bottom so i feel like it was this because it was a slip sure about this world was so deals that people didnt know what we thought interesting i found interesting about it well is that its never really easy to the tryst with people who have at least our very into if the 1st im. Gradually iraqs capital and while its my pleasure to congratulate you on this placement and what to stay here starts now weve seen your vouches for you the impression that you make on clients will all be evaluated in 6 months time on risk day thats reduction in force youll be standing in this room telling all of us why you should be hired permanently to your desk and make he was making films conrad you directed hamlet university so clearly before you went in the city intentions were or were under the plane but you are very conscious of not trying to glamorize as has been done in the ninetys arguably the city of london which actually is in the news for making money out of covert arguably you didnt want to glamorize it make it set up of its to be perfectly honest we didnt have a very mean mikie sort of out of the out so were very clear that we didnt want to make it so ideologically driven show about what necessarily our kind of take on that world was i think what weve chosen to book on the on screen. Because when i get away from what me and sort of think about it but i think its pretty in bedded in the subtext of the shower rather than the text of the show. And you know i think. What were really interested in really as writers was the kind of a lot its this this place still oh not 6008 search for a certain type of person a certain type of graduate but as mickey says its really you know its a soup inside a real world and for a lot of people its a real black box but we thought if we could sort of crack it open to the president these 5 characters who are all in some way ive a socioeconomically or gender wise or racially that you know that some variant of as an outsider we thought it out give a kind of a kind of universality to it to people could appreciate people who worked on it some people who didnt what lets get rid of the need to ask you did someone close to you guys are very upset im sorry if you lost but if you do that here they dont use newburys well one of those new you know like regional knocked up security thank you security if you can we just hope we just do that for you to clean our stuff in your face you see what youve done is actually arrest a billboard to how go he well i want to get back to intersection out in class in a 2nd but. Time and time again we dont want to give away the plot the i hear optics comes out it seems that your fictional Investment Bank be a point obsessed by what it looks like to the outside presumably because the reputation of bankers is a bore because the show a contemporary show that sort of set possibly even the world last 3 years but what weve been trying to do in the 1st season there are bits in a season which people could suggest that maybe slightly sensationalized and thats true and you know there are things that im practices that have been the show is probably when we have to get away with in todays lot of climate but what we try to do in this are serious basically dramatize that culture share from what you were talking about as an individual isnt a collective its a collective as well youre sort of thinking about the situation think about yourself that your own bottom line and the idea that you know its pushing a gray young graduates the point where some of that mental have. The house has been strained to their physical health is drained its no longer acceptable so i feel like. Wife still sort of you know it is unlikely to say those things have done surely future upticks but i feel i know it would be probably a disservice to the industry it is just that only to use them since i think there probably is probably a little bit more that last year than the more from trying to see that space go through more i think they realize they need sort of a comparative reaction changed and clearly conrad the brain drain element of the attraction of Financial Institutions because they pay more money over the dreams and ambitions of young people are what they really want to get out of life make clear on the current through the plot i think the truth is i mean the thing that ive always found interesting about this one wont speaking to a mickey talked about as well in terms of cultural change and right in these institutions bringing themselves up with the kind of the work climate in 2020 or around you know what attitudes to gender sort of toxicity bullying all that sort of stuff you know i think you know as much as these institutions change theres still this inherent. Contradiction in them which is basically you know we might be you know all of that itch to talk about being a meritocracy and about being more and more of a collectivist thing where all calling us and direction but the metrics and evaluation is still very much the same as a bad debate and so you sort of every february january your boss takes around the slides member and you get renumerated based on your comments appealing americal thing so i think i mean that kind of practice well obviously thats been also as a reformer on biases and stop the kind of thats that kind of the kind of the opium effect the bad light of like living in living that paycheck and so i still think really applies to all these people who work in this industry and making the script is so brilliantly observed you use america terms like work capitalism and spin that reagan fatter thread through and theyre important to i mean arguably it has been written before the idea of banter in the office and identity politics very important to you that the issue of class was there in addition to race and sex discrimination. I think so i think its something that just so president s and president s in British Society and it would be innocent d in doing a disservice to the show if we hadnt touched on it and i feel like and it may encourage it was attracted to that question about you know what makes us from what makes someone from the from is a class and whether money can be something thats or stimulates even appreciate it because of where you were born and and also theres a reality of the american attitude to a class for us the british one and whether the american see the possible to give money in your d job and your sort of material stuff in the british one which is basically about where you were a school where you played and your parents why did you read younger a fair chunk for the least amount of applicants the year before. Its a marginal gain about marginal goings putting on the back dont. I play thank you to do you think is and i want this. To just christ Margaret Thatcher who went east on the ones recently which here is a carpenter and conrad is it a particularly exciting thing to write and a lot of fun to write given american reviews of talk about news room and other comparisons but he have things as mundane as buying lunch at the office right up to a possible war between the u. S. And the South China Sea and not conscious about the human casualties of that just conscious of making money out of the war yeah no totally i mean look the cornerstone for the show to mimic he was always. Given the fact that we came from that world we thought we were just it would be to not render as accurately as he could only as much thats it this is we could end it wouldnt it wouldnt be true its the drama of it i mean for us i mean i dont know at this is just personal taste i know a place and it is always my partner is like we find as much drama in the kind of small and moments and the kind of you know whatever it can be as mundane as getting you know going to the coffee room or you know sort of happenstance encounter with someone in an elevator but those that those little small moments the drummer kind of office life is all about and we want it you know theres something inherently true about the watchability of people at work you know thats like good workplace dramas always seem to work and for us as in terms of writers we were always very keen to honor those smaller moments in the drama as well because i mean you know all of our favorite work place dramas are all about the kind of the breath of the office and what it actually feels like to be in those places and we tried in terms of everything from that there in the sound design to the set the Production Design mimic you are obsessed with the small details like if you look at peoples desks in the show youll find that you know what they happen to have on the desk is like the but theyre biography a lot so for us that the show kind of lived and died by its needs also we were very militant about all of us. And making how does it differ from when you were in the city presumably your colleagues didnt sit around they want to kill are talking about power clubs. And coersion and class war. While youre having lunch i mean i would say the very boring part the bank that got the bank the but the dawson heritage to is work unless they were going to expend their time. Sitting in front of a computer doing excel spreadsheets and power presentations as it was getting very very tight in the process interesting read all other other power drinks are available. How late you talk about what mickey was just saying but we do have a chance or the exchequer recent act who used to work in to vestment bank bailed out Goldman Sachs i mean if someone watches your show and then thinks about the Different Things reasons to nag is doing to help the economy how can we fit in the idea that he may may have worked in the kind of 1000000 depicted in this show rather not mean i think i think what the show manages to do and i hope that majesty is to not trade in stereotypes i think you know a lot of the a lot of the depictions of this well classically on some level get a lot of it right in terms of the level of sort sociopathy and psychopathy at the top of these institutions and im not going to states that in just the states its what tends to be put on screen quite a lot while we were hoping to do is show 5 pretty flawed pretty human pretty vulnerable characters who you know very very young very impressionistic and show on some level how they vary so its these places that on some levels of these places are very corrosive to the light as i said before me and mickey were never really interested in writing something that extracts about why banking never seen anyone for their i. Q. Want to see before. How many of these have you had 94 new york far here and ask. Where you hear them well its not a very political answer but. I think mediocrity is too well hidden by parents who hire private tutors. Im here on my own yeah i mean i shouldnt shouldnt think this is a deep academic tome on the path. That in fact there are there are a lot of of course a lot of drugs involved in the program dont know whether youd say that that was accurate i have only seen 4 of the episodes havent seen the other 4 do you think the bankers understood while they were taking all the cocaine that the supply of drugs is about supplied the mondavi drug. Smuggling let alone Foreign Policy of the drugs market a wider irony there hanging over the entire plot i think was not really succeeded people generally have their problems and. So i think there is a risk an irony about where this is. Used. I think in the memory. To get off. I didnt i always had the thought that if you if you took it could be some sort of weird reality experiment where you put all the people who were brutalized by the supply chain of cocaine into the room with the people who happen to be doing the drug but that still be there but it still end up doing it and i would think they probably wouldnt. Make it down conrad kay thank you after the break from bankers to assassins we ask the doctor who inspired killing eve about the making of a psychopath and if those deemed psychopaths by society are really just a product of it all the more coming up in part 2 of going underground. Welcome back in part one we heard from to form a bank has turned t. V. Writers who talked about psychopaths in the city of london that featured in the new show industry another t. V. Show that draws from reality for its psychopath is killing eve and the doctor behind its lead character villain l. Dr mark freestone is catalogued not only psychopathy and i finance famously depicted in. American psycho but those who have been crushed by a society that arguably created them his new book making a psychopath is out now and he joins me from london mark welcome to going underground so what is a psychopath the Great American writer Norman Mailer equated it psychopaths with rebellion against totalitarianism. Hyacinth thats an interesting definition i think such a path research has moved on a lot since since the sixtys and seventys and now we understand its like a pos have a problem with the wiring in that brain means that they dont really process in motion and importantly risk in the same way as other people do they they dont realize emotions other people they cant see things like sadness or fear and they cant really make very good judgments about decisions that might be not in their best Interest Rates so they tend to be if you take very high risks with the situations that they do in everyday life but thats financially high risk decisions or high risk relationships with drug taking things like that and thats because we think of as i said some folks who are in the bright well given your famous for killing eve is an image much of the in the very book youre written you say media portrayals of psychopathy are often one dimensional when youve got to give credit to figure well a bridge in that the killing a team for bringing me on to try and make a sock of half you is at least superficially illegal because they have that the traits that accurately represented in things like the psychopathy checklist the psychopath test we can apply to delineate but but. But she also has a more interesting backstory as well you know shes a child. From a broken family and shes in syria a lifestyle that really pushes had to take account of risks that we have a psychopathic very happy to take regardless of the consequences so i thought it was really interesting that they wanted to make such a plausible character. Even though maybe some of it is a little bit. Like to call it unicorn and the unicorn features is not someone that youd be very lucky to meet in your life ever i dont think you know hopefully not he you you go through case studies i might ask you about a couple of them in a 2nd but you do quote robert have one of the founders of psychiatry segment of that that talks about psychopaths he said the modern corporation has the. Actress tics of a psychopathic way particularly interested in the individual psychopaths not the systemic ones because of course famously. Said that if youre in a Psychopathic Society its normal to be a psychopath the outliers or the non psychopath well lets just show you i think my interest has been alive i was a sociologist working with. Patients in high secure all spills and prisons thats how it came into this line of words and i was a supposed quite struck by how bad we were as a society and they bring out what you do you get stuck at scouts are not necessarily good approach but provide a minute garments within which they have any realistic chance of flourishing because if somebody isnt very good at making decisions or raking in princes about other peoples emotions and they are very good d at deciding what it is a good level of risk is taking you know financially. Risky decisions or deciding what to do with their lives they call it a loose end and we always try to of us like say that you know its one of the last 5 years that we dont particularly want psychopaths at random or in our society so when we think about what are we going to do with these people we need to have a solution for those people who committed crimes provides them with a way back into society but at the same time we know the psychopaths you comes your criminal comes through the Mental Health system tend to reinvent even if theyve been rehabilitated so whatever it is that were doing or it isnt really working i would never really thought that was good enough i think that we needed to work a lot harder to try great environments where such a class can actually have a meaningful and productive life and the book is kind of a buy a house just sort of past quite a quite regular basis i think and what proportion of psychopaths in society maybe maybe around this team making going underground oh he talking about one of the scale of this. So it ensured the general population i think probably about one in every 500 to one in every 1000 people would meet the criteria for a robot has psychopathy checklist which is quite a high power off and most people in the population in the u. K. Have no psychopathic traits so they might have maybe one trait and that could include things like being a bit impulsive or taking risks or being dependent on other people being sexually promiscuous so its not necessarily the case that you have the core features of cycle but if we understand that somebody whos conning a manipulates if you use grandiose whos. Remorseless and callous in that the way that they treat other people so its not common to meet psychopaths in the general population its very unlikely that you work with them although we know also from bob has research that there are some professions such as stockbroking and chief executive officers that tend to attract psychopaths more than others but its not likely youd meet one in your you every day life whereas in prison we know that up to 15 percent of the prison population would be diagnosable its like a passer very different environment to work and i want to get to that class dimension in a 2nd be you dont think theres a danger then of before you get into the case studies of physiologically understanding psychopathy you mention the brain the make dilla the prefrontal cortex big pharma loves things like that they can give medicine for it you firmly on the side of the physiological element of psychopathy rather than the class and societal. Context of like a psychopathy im not i think the evidence for. The problems if only one in a fast people is a psychopath you havent got a big sample to understand how people with this diagnosis fit into society you dont really understand what the needs of the Research Evidence is for the way that psychopathic brain. Operate is pretty good we have some genetic evidence some Genetic Research as well that suggests that as a assess it genes that seem to be linked to the way that people develop as children and that some of those children with those genes will then go on to become sort of past that not all of them i think as a surprise its more interesting to think about well. If there are these all side of us have these brainwashing to function what they all in prison want they all criminals and theres a an interesting case of professor jim fallon hes a research a psychological researcher and United States as part of a study scan his own brain using a technique called Positron Emission Tomography pet scan and he didnt realise what he done but hed actually put its own brain scan into the sokal he was looking at and he realized that this person who scanners are can have very hard if all of the physiological in the case of psychopathy but he lived to a normal life and this was his brain he did the normal life he had a successful Career Research and yet he had all of that is logical characteristics of a psychopaths its not the case that everyone with these deficiencies ends up in prison and some of them can be quite successful but we do know that yet the majority of psychopaths that we encounter are in Prison Service is Mental Health services and usually that for quite a serious crime and that effort quite a long time as well i dont be flippant but tell me about your favorite of the 1000 cases i mean theyre all quite grim but maybe just briefly tell us about one of the i suppose theres a character in the book called tony who is the closest to a successful psychopath he had a very successful career but unfortunately career is based almost entirely on the conning and defrauding the people around him and he has a very sort of his father was a very successful con man who was never as far as we know trying to get it. And he was. He was a sort of International Playboy he used the proceeds of his cons to fund its very lavish lifestyle and tony tries to do this but hes simply not quite as good and he also has some quite deviant sexual tastes involving power control and. And sadism and his eventual crime hes cool side abusing a sex worker quite seriously so he sort of you know he. He plays the lifestyle of but then hes cool sad and the interesting part of this is that the reason hes cool is not because he committed the crime but rather because he pays the sex worker the check from his own personal bank that he sets up with the proceeds of the various other fortune activities hes engaged in the past few years and then hes forgotten to top the bank account up with funds so when sex worker goes to cash that check it bank says and at that point the police are involved and the terrifying thing about that case is that it shows that this is the tip of an iceberg that there are men like tony who regularly commit crimes but not all of them a detective maybe this speaks to the idea of a brief press and alices book american psycho that some people a supported by network were a sort of social consensus that people who appear outwardly successful then have to be as accountable for their actions as some other of us do and i think tony was just such a fascinating karats it because he managed to maintain such composure and sort of poise all the way through his incarceration he never really gave away that he was involved in a sort of very unpleasant sleazy crime and you always saw himself a superiors of the rest of us working with him so he i think personally he remains one of the most interesting cases in that for me anyway well how ironic then the aside from the what you say in the book about if youre eating Mental Health provision as to his networking in his own community and ultimately community and that sense of belonging you believe could be a therapeutic approach to rehabilitation for psych about absolutely thats a really good point i think that psychopaths we know dont really respond to punishment and its interesting that the response of most of our societies to a psychopathic who breaks the law is to punish them and punishment quite severely and in the United States whether you score high on the psychopathy checklist or not can be a bear of whether you are. For Capital Punishment or whether you are excluded from Capital Punishment depending on the the jurisdiction youre in so i think if we were if we were able to focus on what is the role of somebody with these traits in society because in i think theres. A good theory of by i think its more so she passed by and merican psychological john lives the way he proposes that theres a gene that these people carry that goes into very very effective in situations where not taking other peoples emotional needs into account is actually quite effective and uses the example of hunter gathering societies or vikings where being a warrior whos remorseless and relentless in your pursuit if you are desires and goals is actually quite helpful but in a modern society but were all supposed to be networked in part of social groupings around each other being a sort of lone wolf whos not accountable and doesnt really think about other peoples emotional responses to our actions isnt very valuable and actually gets you labeled as a psychopath and a deviant and a widow but if we were able to find a way to sort of encouraged psych to pass through a process that rather than punishment encouragement to try to get in to identify more prosocial girls and to understand how other people will respond to that more unappealing social traits that say that that sort of callous behavior is for the people i think that would be a very productive way forward and theres been some work in creating social microcosms in the Prison Service and the forensic Mental Health services the high seas here mental hospitals in the u. K. To try and create the social life because as wet psychopaths work with other psychopaths and stuff to try and create a Community Energy community that allows them to explore more prove prosocial goals than the offending that theyve been so used to in their lives so thats promising im none of its got great evidence yet but nothing as far as like a pass go you get does really the ultimate refund thank you and making is like about my journey and if im dangerous my that now that im the show. Well be back on wednesday and never miss an interview by subscribing to our channel on you tube and joining the im going to Twitter Facebook instagram and. Armenia russia and azerbaijan to reach an agreement to cease hostilities over the disputed. Region. Azerbaijan the launches an investigation after admitting to shooting down a Russian Military helicopter over armenian airspace moscow has since welcomed an apology over the incident which killed 2 of the 3 crew on board. Onto the u. S. Election now supporters of President Donald Trump take to the streets