| Recorded at | March 01, 2012 |
|---|---|
| Event | TED2012 |
| Duration (min:sec) | 17:28 |
| Video Type | TED Stage Talk |
| Words per minute | 201.48 very fast |
| Readability (FK) | 69.42 very easy |
| Speaker | Jon Ronson |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Occupation | journalist, writer, screenwriter |
| Description | British journalist and documentary filmmaker |
Official TED page for this talk
Synopsis
Is there a definitive line that divides crazy from sane? With a hair-raising delivery, Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test, illuminates the gray areas between the two. (With live-mixed sound by Julian Treasure and animation by Evan Grant.)
| 1 | 00:16 | The story starts: I was at a friend's house, | ||
| 2 | 00:19 | and she had on her shelf a copy of the DSM manual, | ||
| 3 | 00:23 | which is the manual of mental disorders. | ||
| 4 | 00:25 | It lists every known mental disorder. | ||
| 5 | 00:29 | And it used to be, back in the '50s, a very slim pamphlet. | ||
| 6 | 00:32 | And then it got bigger and bigger and bigger, | ||
| 7 | 00:34 | and now it's 886 pages long. | ||
| 8 | 00:38 | And it lists currently 374 mental disorders. | ||
| 9 | 00:42 | So I was leafing through it, | ||
| 10 | 00:44 | wondering if I had any mental disorders, | ||
| 11 | 00:47 | and it turns out I've got 12. | ||
| 12 | 00:48 | (Laughter) | ||
| 13 | 00:49 | I've got generalized anxiety disorder, | ||
| 14 | 00:52 | which is a given. | ||
| 15 | 00:53 | I've got nightmare disorder, | ||
| 16 | 00:55 | which is categorized | ||
| 17 | 00:57 | if you have recurrent dreams of being pursued or declared a failure, | ||
| 18 | 01:01 | and all my dreams involve people chasing me down the street | ||
| 19 | 01:05 | going, "You're a failure!" | ||
| 20 | 01:06 | (Laughter) | ||
| 21 | 01:08 | I've got parent-child relational problems, | ||
| 22 | 01:11 | which I blame my parents for. | ||
| 23 | 01:13 | (Laughter) | ||
| 24 | 01:15 | I'm kidding. I'm not kidding. | ||
| 25 | 01:17 | I'm kidding. | ||
| 26 | 01:19 | And I've got malingering. | ||
| 27 | 01:21 | And I think it's actually quite rare | ||
| 28 | 01:22 | to have both malingering and generalized anxiety disorder, | ||
| 29 | 01:25 | because malingering tends to make me feel very anxious. | ||
| 30 | 01:28 | Anyway, I was looking through this book, | ||
| 31 | 01:30 | wondering if I was much crazier than I thought I was, | ||
| 32 | 01:33 | or maybe it's not a good idea to diagnose yourself with a mental disorder | ||
| 33 | 01:36 | if you're not a trained professional, | ||
| 34 | 01:39 | or maybe the psychiatry profession has a kind of strange desire | ||
| 35 | 01:43 | to label what's essentially normal human behavior as a mental disorder. | ||
| 36 | 01:48 | I didn't know which of these was true, but I thought it was kind of interesting, | ||
| 37 | 01:52 | and I thought maybe I should meet a critic of psychiatry | ||
| 38 | 01:55 | to get their view, | ||
| 39 | 01:56 | which is how I ended up having lunch with the Scientologists. | ||
| 40 | 01:59 | (Laughter) | ||
| 41 | 02:01 | It was a man called Brian, who runs a crack team of Scientologists | ||
| 42 | 02:05 | who are determined to destroy psychiatry wherever it lies. | ||
| 43 | 02:09 | They're called the CCHR. | ||
| 44 | 02:11 | And I said to him, "Can you prove to me | ||
| 45 | 02:14 | that psychiatry is a pseudo-science that can't be trusted?" | ||
| 46 | 02:18 | And he said, "Yes, we can prove it to you." | ||
| 47 | 02:21 | And I said, "How?" | ||
| 48 | 02:22 | And he said, "We're going to introduce you to Tony." | ||
| 49 | 02:26 | And I said, "Who's Tony?" | ||
| 50 | 02:28 | And he said, "Tony's in Broadmoor." | ||
| 51 | 02:31 | Now, Broadmoor is Broadmoor Hospital. | ||
| 52 | 02:33 | It used to be known as the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane. | ||
| 53 | 02:38 | It's where they send the serial killers, | ||
| 54 | 02:41 | and the people who can't help themselves. | ||
| 55 | 02:43 | And I said to Brian, "Well, what did Tony do?" | ||
| 56 | 02:46 | And he said, "Hardly anything. | ||
| 57 | 02:49 | He beat someone up or something, | ||
| 58 | 02:52 | and he decided to fake madness to get out of a prison sentence. | ||
| 59 | 02:57 | But he faked it too well, and now he's stuck in Broadmoor | ||
| 60 | 03:02 | and nobody will believe he's sane. | ||
| 61 | 03:04 | Do you want us to try and get you into Broadmoor to meet Tony?" | ||
| 62 | 03:08 | So I said, "Yes, please." | ||
| 63 | 03:10 | So I got the train to Broadmoor. | ||
| 64 | 03:12 | I began to yawn uncontrollably around Kempton Park, | ||
| 65 | 03:16 | which apparently is what dogs also do when anxious, | ||
| 66 | 03:18 | they yawn uncontrollably. | ||
| 67 | 03:20 | And we got to Broadmoor. | ||
| 68 | 03:22 | And I got taken through gate after gate after gate after gate | ||
| 69 | 03:27 | into the wellness center, which is where you get to meet the patients. | ||
| 70 | 03:30 | It looks like a giant Hampton Inn. | ||
| 71 | 03:34 | It's all peach and pine and calming colors. | ||
| 72 | 03:38 | And the only bold colors are the reds of the panic buttons. | ||
| 73 | 03:44 | And the patients started drifting in. | ||
| 74 | 03:47 | And they were quite overweight and wearing sweatpants, | ||
| 75 | 03:51 | and quite docile-looking. | ||
| 76 | 03:52 | And Brian the Scientologist whispered to me, | ||
| 77 | 03:55 | "They're medicated," | ||
| 78 | 03:57 | which, to the Scientologists, is like the worst evil in the world, | ||
| 79 | 04:00 | but I'm thinking it's probably a good idea. | ||
| 80 | 04:03 | (Laughter) | ||
| 81 | 04:05 | And then Brian said, "Here's Tony." | ||
| 82 | 04:08 | And a man was walking in. | ||
| 83 | 04:10 | And he wasn't overweight, he was in very good physical shape. | ||
| 84 | 04:13 | And he wasn't wearing sweatpants, | ||
| 85 | 04:15 | he was wearing a pinstripe suit. | ||
| 86 | 04:18 | And he had his arm outstretched | ||
| 87 | 04:20 | like someone out of The Apprentice. | ||
| 88 | 04:22 | He looked like a man who wanted to wear an outfit | ||
| 89 | 04:25 | that would convince me that he was very sane. | ||
| 90 | 04:30 | And he sat down. | ||
| 91 | 04:31 | And I said, "So is it true that you faked your way in here?" | ||
| 92 | 04:34 | And he said, "Yep. Yep. Absolutely. I beat someone up when I was 17. | ||
| 93 | 04:38 | And I was in prison awaiting trial, | ||
| 94 | 04:40 | and my cellmate said to me, | ||
| 95 | 04:41 | 'You know what you have to do? | ||
| 96 | 04:43 | Fake madness. | ||
| 97 | 04:45 | Tell them you're mad, you'll get sent to some cushy hospital. | ||
| 98 | 04:48 | Nurses will bring you pizzas, you'll have your own PlayStation.'" | ||
| 99 | 04:52 | I said, "Well, how did you do it?" | ||
| 100 | 04:54 | He said, "Well, I asked to see the prison psychiatrist. | ||
| 101 | 04:57 | And I'd just seen a film called 'Crash,' | ||
| 102 | 04:59 | in which people get sexual pleasure from crashing cars into walls. | ||
| 103 | 05:03 | So I said to the psychiatrist, | ||
| 104 | 05:05 | 'I get sexual pleasure from crashing cars into walls.'" | ||
| 105 | 05:09 | And I said, "What else?" | ||
| 106 | 05:10 | He said, "Oh, yeah. I told the psychiatrist | ||
| 107 | 05:13 | that I wanted to watch women as they died, | ||
| 108 | 05:16 | because it would make me feel more normal." | ||
| 109 | 05:18 | I said, "Where'd you get that from?" | ||
| 110 | 05:20 | He said, "Oh, from a biography of Ted Bundy that they had | ||
| 111 | 05:23 | at the prison library." | ||
| 112 | 05:25 | Anyway, he faked madness too well, he said. | ||
| 113 | 05:29 | And they didn't send him to some cushy hospital. | ||
| 114 | 05:31 | They sent him to Broadmoor. | ||
| 115 | 05:33 | And the minute he got there, | ||
| 116 | 05:35 | said he took one look at the place, asked to see the psychiatrist, | ||
| 117 | 05:38 | said, "There's been a terrible misunderstanding. | ||
| 118 | 05:40 | I'm not mentally ill." | ||
| 119 | 05:43 | I said, "How long have you been here for?" | ||
| 120 | 05:45 | He said, "Well, if I'd just done my time in prison | ||
| 121 | 05:47 | for the original crime, I'd have got five years. | ||
| 122 | 05:50 | I've been in Broadmoor for 12 years." | ||
| 123 | 05:56 | Tony said that it's a lot harder to convince people you're sane | ||
| 124 | 06:00 | than it is to convince them you're crazy. | ||
| 125 | 06:02 | He said, "I thought the best way to seem normal | ||
| 126 | 06:04 | would be to talk to people normally about normal things | ||
| 127 | 06:07 | like football or what's on TV. | ||
| 128 | 06:09 | I subscribe to New Scientist, | ||
| 129 | 06:11 | and recently they had an article | ||
| 130 | 06:12 | about how the U.S. Army was training bumblebees to sniff out explosives. | ||
| 131 | 06:17 | So I said to a nurse, | ||
| 132 | 06:18 | 'Did you know that the U.S. Army is training bumblebees | ||
| 133 | 06:21 | to sniff out explosives?' | ||
| 134 | 06:23 | When I read my medical notes, I saw they'd written: | ||
| 135 | 06:26 | 'Believes bees can sniff out explosives.'" | ||
| 136 | 06:29 | (Laughter) | ||
| 137 | 06:31 | He said, "You know, they're always looking out for nonverbal clues | ||
| 138 | 06:34 | to my mental state. | ||
| 139 | 06:36 | But how do you sit in a sane way? | ||
| 140 | 06:38 | How do you cross your legs in a sane way? | ||
| 141 | 06:41 | It's just impossible." | ||
| 142 | 06:42 | When Tony said that to me, | ||
| 143 | 06:44 | I thought to myself, "Am I sitting like a journalist? | ||
| 144 | 06:48 | Am I crossing my legs like a journalist?" | ||
| 145 | 06:51 | He said, "You know, I've got the Stockwell Strangler on one side of me, | ||
| 146 | 06:56 | and I've got the 'Tiptoe Through the Tulips' rapist | ||
| 147 | 06:58 | on the other side of me. | ||
| 148 | 07:00 | So I tend to stay in my room a lot because I find them quite frightening. | ||
| 149 | 07:03 | And they take that as a sign of madness. | ||
| 150 | 07:05 | They say it proves that I'm aloof and grandiose." | ||
| 151 | 07:09 | So, only in Broadmoor would not wanting to hang out with serial killers | ||
| 152 | 07:13 | be a sign of madness. | ||
| 153 | 07:15 | Anyway, he seemed completely normal to me, but what did I know? | ||
| 154 | 07:19 | And when I got home I emailed his clinician, Anthony Maden. | ||
| 155 | 07:22 | I said, "What's the story?" | ||
| 156 | 07:23 | And he said, "Yep. We accept that Tony faked madness | ||
| 157 | 07:27 | to get out of a prison sentence, because his hallucinations -- | ||
| 158 | 07:30 | that had seemed quite cliche to begin with -- | ||
| 159 | 07:33 | just vanished the minute he got to Broadmoor. | ||
| 160 | 07:35 | However, we have assessed him, | ||
| 161 | 07:37 | and we've determined that what he is | ||
| 162 | 07:40 | is a psychopath." | ||
| 163 | 07:42 | And in fact, faking madness | ||
| 164 | 07:44 | is exactly the kind of cunning and manipulative act of a psychopath. | ||
| 165 | 07:48 | It's on the checklist: cunning, manipulative. | ||
| 166 | 07:51 | So, faking your brain going wrong | ||
| 167 | 07:53 | is evidence that your brain has gone wrong. | ||
| 168 | 07:56 | And I spoke to other experts, | ||
| 169 | 07:57 | and they said the pinstripe suit -- classic psychopath -- | ||
| 170 | 08:01 | speaks to items one and two on the checklist: | ||
| 171 | 08:04 | glibness, superficial charm and grandiose sense of self-worth. | ||
| 172 | 08:07 | And I said, "Well, but why didn't he hang out with the other patients?" | ||
| 173 | 08:11 | Classic psychopath -- it speaks to grandiosity and also lack of empathy. | ||
| 174 | 08:15 | So all the things that had seemed most normal about Tony | ||
| 175 | 08:19 | was evidence, according to his clinician, | ||
| 176 | 08:22 | that he was mad in this new way. | ||
| 177 | 08:24 | He was a psychopath. | ||
| 178 | 08:26 | And his clinician said to me, "If you want to know more about psychopaths, | ||
| 179 | 08:29 | you can go on a psychopath-spotting course | ||
| 180 | 08:32 | run by Robert Hare, who invented the psychopath checklist." | ||
| 181 | 08:35 | So I did. | ||
| 182 | 08:36 | I went on a psychopath-spotting course, | ||
| 183 | 08:39 | and I am now a certified -- | ||
| 184 | 08:43 | and I have to say, extremely adept -- psychopath spotter. | ||
| 185 | 08:48 | So, here's the statistics: | ||
| 186 | 08:51 | One in a hundred regular people is a psychopath. | ||
| 187 | 08:56 | So there's 1,500 people in his room. | ||
| 188 | 09:00 | Fifteen of you are psychopaths. | ||
| 189 | 09:05 | Although that figure rises to four percent of CEOs and business leaders, | ||
| 190 | 09:10 | so I think there's a very good chance | ||
| 191 | 09:12 | there's about 30 or 40 psychopaths in this room. | ||
| 192 | 09:17 | It could be carnage by the end of the night. | ||
| 193 | 09:20 | (Laughter) | ||
| 194 | 09:24 | Hare said the reason why is because capitalism at its most ruthless | ||
| 195 | 09:29 | rewards psychopathic behavior -- | ||
| 196 | 09:32 | the lack of empathy, the glibness, | ||
| 197 | 09:37 | cunning, manipulative. | ||
| 198 | 09:39 | In fact, capitalism, perhaps at its most remorseless, | ||
| 199 | 09:42 | is a physical manifestation of psychopathy. | ||
| 200 | 09:47 | It's like a form of psychopathy that's come down to affect us all. | ||
| 201 | 09:52 | Hare said, "You know what? Forget about some guy at Broadmoor | ||
| 202 | 09:55 | who may or may not have faked madness. | ||
| 203 | 09:57 | Who cares? That's not a big story. | ||
| 204 | 09:58 | The big story," he said, "is corporate psychopathy. | ||
| 205 | 10:01 | You want to go and interview yourself some corporate psychopaths." | ||
| 206 | 10:06 | So I gave it a try. I wrote to the Enron people. | ||
| 207 | 10:09 | I said, "Could I come and interview you in prison, | ||
| 208 | 10:11 | to find out it you're psychopaths?" | ||
| 209 | 10:13 | (Laughter) | ||
| 210 | 10:14 | And they didn't reply. | ||
| 211 | 10:16 | (Laughter) | ||
| 212 | 10:17 | So I changed tack. | ||
| 213 | 10:19 | I emailed "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap, | ||
| 214 | 10:22 | the asset stripper from the 1990s. | ||
| 215 | 10:26 | He would come into failing businesses | ||
| 216 | 10:28 | and close down 30 percent of the workforce, | ||
| 217 | 10:30 | just turn American towns into ghost towns. | ||
| 218 | 10:33 | And I emailed him and I said, | ||
| 219 | 10:35 | "I believe you may have a very special brain anomaly | ||
| 220 | 10:38 | that makes you ... special, | ||
| 221 | 10:40 | and interested in the predatory spirit, and fearless. | ||
| 222 | 10:44 | Can I come and interview you about your special brain anomaly?" | ||
| 223 | 10:48 | And he said, "Come on over!" | ||
| 224 | 10:49 | (Laughter) | ||
| 225 | 10:51 | So I went to Al Dunlap's grand Florida mansion. | ||
| 226 | 10:54 | It was filled with sculptures of predatory animals. | ||
| 227 | 10:59 | There were lions and tigers -- he was taking me through the garden -- | ||
| 228 | 11:03 | there were falcons and eagles, | ||
| 229 | 11:05 | he was saying, "Over there you've got sharks and --" | ||
| 230 | 11:08 | he was saying this in a less effeminate way -- | ||
| 231 | 11:10 | "You've got more sharks and you've got tigers." | ||
| 232 | 11:16 | It was like Narnia. | ||
| 233 | 11:18 | (Laughter) | ||
| 234 | 11:21 | And then we went into his kitchen. | ||
| 235 | 11:24 | Now, Al Dunlap would be brought in to save failing companies, | ||
| 236 | 11:28 | he'd close down 30 percent of the workforce. | ||
| 237 | 11:30 | And he'd quite often fire people with a joke. | ||
| 238 | 11:33 | Like, for instance, one famous story about him, | ||
| 239 | 11:36 | somebody came up to him and said, "I've just bought myself a new car." | ||
| 240 | 11:39 | And he said, "Well, you may have a new car, | ||
| 241 | 11:41 | but I'll tell you what you don't have -- a job." | ||
| 242 | 11:46 | So in his kitchen -- | ||
| 243 | 11:47 | he was in there with his wife, Judy, and his bodyguard, Sean -- | ||
| 244 | 11:50 | and I said, "You know how I said in my email | ||
| 245 | 11:53 | that you might have a special brain anomaly that makes you special?" | ||
| 246 | 11:56 | He said, "Yeah, it's an amazing theory, it's like Star Trek. | ||
| 247 | 11:59 | You're going where no man has gone before." | ||
| 248 | 12:01 | And I said, "Well --" (Clears throat) | ||
| 249 | 12:04 | (Laughter) | ||
| 250 | 12:06 | Some psychologists might say | ||
| 251 | 12:09 | that this makes you --" (Mumbles) | ||
| 252 | 12:12 | (Laughter) | ||
| 253 | 12:13 | And he said, "What?" | ||
| 254 | 12:16 | And I said, "A psychopath." | ||
| 255 | 12:17 | And I said, "I've got a list of psychopathic traits in my pocket. | ||
| 256 | 12:21 | Can I go through them with you?" | ||
| 257 | 12:24 | And he looked intrigued despite himself, | ||
| 258 | 12:26 | and he said, "Okay, go on." | ||
| 259 | 12:28 | And I said, "Okay. Grandiose sense of self-worth." | ||
| 260 | 12:31 | Which I have to say, would have been hard for him to deny, | ||
| 261 | 12:34 | because he was standing under a giant oil painting of himself. | ||
| 262 | 12:37 | (Laughter) | ||
| 263 | 12:41 | He said, "Well, you've got to believe in you!" | ||
| 264 | 12:45 | And I said, "Manipulative." | ||
| 265 | 12:47 | He said, "That's leadership." | ||
| 266 | 12:49 | (Laughter) | ||
| 267 | 12:50 | And I said, "Shallow affect, | ||
| 268 | 12:53 | an inability to experience a range of emotions." | ||
| 269 | 12:55 | He said, "Who wants to be weighed down by some nonsense emotions?" | ||
| 270 | 12:59 | So he was going down the psychopath checklist, | ||
| 271 | 13:01 | basically turning it into "Who Moved My Cheese?" | ||
| 272 | 13:04 | (Laughter) | ||
| 273 | 13:07 | But I did notice something happening to me the day I was with Al Dunlap. | ||
| 274 | 13:11 | Whenever he said anything to me that was kind of normal -- | ||
| 275 | 13:13 | like he said "no" to juvenile delinquency, | ||
| 276 | 13:16 | he said he got accepted into West Point, | ||
| 277 | 13:18 | and they don't let delinquents in West Point. | ||
| 278 | 13:21 | He said "no" to many short-term marital relationships. | ||
| 279 | 13:24 | He's only ever been married twice. | ||
| 280 | 13:26 | Admittedly, his first wife cited in her divorce papers | ||
| 281 | 13:29 | that he once threatened her with a knife | ||
| 282 | 13:31 | and said he always wondered what human flesh tasted like, | ||
| 283 | 13:34 | but people say stupid things to each other | ||
| 284 | 13:36 | in bad marriages in the heat of an argument, | ||
| 285 | 13:38 | and his second marriage has lasted 41 years. | ||
| 286 | 13:41 | So whenever he said anything to me that just seemed kind of non-psychopathic, | ||
| 287 | 13:45 | I thought to myself, well I'm not going to put that in my book. | ||
| 288 | 13:48 | And then I realized that becoming a psychopath spotter | ||
| 289 | 13:52 | had kind of turned me a little bit psychopathic. | ||
| 290 | 13:55 | Because I was desperate to shove him in a box marked "Psychopath." | ||
| 291 | 14:00 | I was desperate to define him by his maddest edges. | ||
| 292 | 14:05 | And I realized, my God -- | ||
| 293 | 14:06 | this is what I've been doing for 20 years. | ||
| 294 | 14:08 | It's what all journalists do. | ||
| 295 | 14:10 | We travel across the world with our notepads in our hands, | ||
| 296 | 14:13 | and we wait for the gems. | ||
| 297 | 14:16 | And the gems are always the outermost aspects | ||
| 298 | 14:20 | of our interviewee's personality. | ||
| 299 | 14:22 | And we stitch them together like medieval monks, | ||
| 300 | 14:25 | and we leave the normal stuff on the floor. | ||
| 301 | 14:30 | And you know, this is a country that over-diagnoses | ||
| 302 | 14:33 | certain mental disorders hugely. | ||
| 303 | 14:36 | Childhood bipolar -- | ||
| 304 | 14:37 | children as young as four are being labeled bipolar | ||
| 305 | 14:41 | because they have temper tantrums, | ||
| 306 | 14:43 | which scores them high on the bipolar checklist. | ||
| 307 | 14:48 | When I got back to London, Tony phoned me. | ||
| 308 | 14:52 | He said, "Why haven't you been returning my calls?" | ||
| 309 | 14:55 | I said, "Well, they say that you're a psychopath." | ||
| 310 | 14:58 | And he said, "I'm not a psychopath." | ||
| 311 | 15:00 | He said, "You know what? | ||
| 312 | 15:02 | One of the items on the checklist is lack of remorse, | ||
| 313 | 15:04 | but another item on the checklist is cunning, manipulative. | ||
| 314 | 15:07 | So when you say you feel remorse for your crime, | ||
| 315 | 15:09 | they say, 'Typical of the psychopath | ||
| 316 | 15:11 | to cunningly say he feels remorse when he doesn't.' | ||
| 317 | 15:15 | It's like witchcraft, they turn everything upside-down." | ||
| 318 | 15:19 | He said, "I've got a tribunal coming up. | ||
| 319 | 15:21 | Will you come to it?" | ||
| 320 | 15:24 | So I said okay. | ||
| 321 | 15:25 | So I went to his tribunal. | ||
| 322 | 15:28 | And after 14 years in Broadmoor, they let him go. | ||
| 323 | 15:33 | They decided that he shouldn't be held indefinitely | ||
| 324 | 15:35 | because he scores high on a checklist that might mean | ||
| 325 | 15:39 | that he would have a greater than average chance of recidivism. | ||
| 326 | 15:44 | So they let him go. | ||
| 327 | 15:46 | And outside in the corridor he said to me, | ||
| 328 | 15:48 | "You know what, Jon? | ||
| 329 | 15:50 | Everyone's a bit psychopathic." | ||
| 330 | 15:52 | He said, "You are, I am. Well, obviously I am." | ||
| 331 | 15:57 | I said, "What are you going to do now?" | ||
| 332 | 15:59 | He said, "I'm going to go to Belgium. | ||
| 333 | 16:01 | There's a woman there that I fancy. | ||
| 334 | 16:03 | But she's married, so I'm going to have to get her split up from her husband." | ||
| 335 | 16:07 | (Laughter) | ||
| 336 | 16:11 | Anyway, that was two years ago, | ||
| 337 | 16:14 | and that's where my book ended. | ||
| 338 | 16:15 | And for the last 20 months, everything was fine. | ||
| 339 | 16:21 | Nothing bad happened. | ||
| 340 | 16:22 | He was living with a girl outside London. | ||
| 341 | 16:24 | He was, according to Brian the Scientologist, | ||
| 342 | 16:26 | making up for lost time, which I know sounds ominous, | ||
| 343 | 16:29 | but isn't necessarily ominous. | ||
| 344 | 16:32 | Unfortunately, after 20 months, | ||
| 345 | 16:34 | he did go back to jail for a month. | ||
| 346 | 16:36 | He got into a "fracas" in a bar, he called it. | ||
| 347 | 16:41 | Ended up going to jail for a month, which I know is bad, | ||
| 348 | 16:44 | but at least a month implies that whatever the fracas was, | ||
| 349 | 16:47 | it wasn't too bad. | ||
| 350 | 16:50 | And then he phoned me. | ||
| 351 | 16:53 | And you know what, I think it's right that Tony is out. | ||
| 352 | 16:58 | Because you shouldn't define people by their maddest edges. | ||
| 353 | 17:01 | And what Tony is, is he's a semi-psychopath. | ||
| 354 | 17:05 | He's a gray area in a world that doesn't like gray areas. | ||
| 355 | 17:11 | But the gray areas are where you find the complexity. | ||
| 356 | 17:16 | It's where you find the humanity, | ||
| 357 | 17:18 | and it's where you find the truth. | ||
| 358 | 17:21 | And Tony said to me, | ||
| 359 | 17:23 | "Jon, could I buy you a drink in a bar? | ||
| 360 | 17:27 | I just want to thank you for everything you've done for me." | ||
| 361 | 17:30 | And I didn't go. | ||
| 362 | 17:32 | What would you have done? | ||
| 363 | 17:35 | Thank you. | ||
| 364 | 17:37 | (Applause) |