This week on The Podcast Network
The return of Cosimo de Medici! Berkshire Hathaway Annual General Meeting! The rise of Lucius Aelius Sejanus! And we dispel more antivax claims! Check them out here!
A quantum origin for spacetime
Interesting theory – that “spooky action at a distance”, aka quantum entanglement, creates spacetime.
It’s Time To Play Politician Personality Disorder Bingo!
Well it’s officially election time once again in Australia, so pull out your official Politician Personality Disorder Bingo cards and see which politicians match the personality disorders from the DSM-5!
Is ScoMo more Histrionic or Narcissistic?
Is BarJoy more Dependent or Antisocial?
You be the judge! No psychiatric qualifications necessary, as this is the national sport that replaced two-up. Winners will get a free trip to Canberra on May 18 to watch both the winners and the losers put the full force of their disorders on public display. Second place will get a free copy of my book The Psychopath Economy. Fun for all the family!
The First Second Generation Podcasters?
My eldest kids, Taylor and Hunter, have launched their own podcast – UNTWINED. I think they might be one of the first second generation podcasters, which is a nice poetry, as I was one of the first of the FIRST generation. Definitely check it out. I’m impressed with how they are embracing their naïvety to try to work out how the world works. In the third episode, they interviewed my good mate Tony Kynaston, a multi-millionaire professional investor, about his journey from poverty to being worth a few bucks (and generously supporting some of my crazy projects). Worth a listen.
Messiah Update
Principal Photography Completed!
Last weekend we *finally* got the principal photography completed for my first documentary, MARKETING THE MESSIAH. I shot all of my scenes to camera down in Melbourne with the lovely crew from Ignition Immersive. Now we’ve just got to edit it all together and sell it. For those of you who don’t know what the film is about – I’ve done interviews with biblical scholars, ancient historians and academics from around the globe to get them to help me tell the actual, historical story of how Christianity went from being a fringe, Jewish cult from the remote regions of the Roman Empire, to becoming the state religion. It’s the story from about 40 CE – 400 CE. It’s a secular film, not a faith-based film, but not an attack on Christianity, either. I’m just fascinated in the real history behind it.
While I’m on the subject of things I’ve finally finished, my new book THE PSYCHOPATH ECONOMY is also finished. It only took me SIX YEARS. Now I go looking for a publisher.
The Doctor Is A Psychopath
Update to original post:
I originally posted this in Oct 2018.
Since then, The Guardian invited me to write some stuff about the latest series. They edited down my full comments, so here’s the full version:
For fifty years, The Doctor, even in his most pleasant of incarnations, has had a singular trait – he is a psychopath. Not the serial killer type of psychopath, which psychiatrists report are a very small percentage, but the Steve Jobs type. He’s a benign psychopath. He’s a psychopath who, for reasons as yet unknown, has decided to use his intelligence for the benefit of others. And that is a large part of the joy in the character. A quick perusal of the PCL-R test for psychopaths (or what the DSM V might classify as an Antisocial/Psychopathic Personality Disorder) will suggest a list of behaviours that the Doctor definitely exhibits. For a start, he’s a complete narcissist. He always assumes (and insists) he is the smartest person in any room – and with good reason, because he is, of course, correct in that assumption. He has an extreme appetite for risk, always throwing himself (and, often, his companions) into danger, usually with a high degree of confidence that he’ll come out of it unscathed. He doesn’t really understand people or emotions and often needs a human to explain to him what emotions he should be feeling – or, at least, pretend to be feeling. During the Classic era, he would sometimes abandon a companion or other hangers-on without a moment’s thought for what that will do to them.
I was personally very excited to get a female Doctor. I loved Chibnall’s work on BROADCHURCH and hoped he’d cast Olivia Colman as The Doctor. Whittaker was a great second choice. I loved the outfit they chose for her and the overall look. I was very excited when I first saw the “key” teaser and had high hopes that Chibnall would bring the show back to its glory days, feeling like Moffat’s run with Capaldi was huge waste of the latter’s immense talent.
Unfortunately, from the very outset, I felt like Chibnall either doesn’t get the fundamentals of the Doctor’s inherent psychopathy, or has decided to write it out of this regeneration, making her a kinder, gentler, touchy-feely, kid friendly Doctor. Which is fine – he’s the show runner and it’s his prerogative to make the Doctor the way he wants her to be. But after a lifetime of Doctor Who fandom, at nearly 50 years of age, having to justify to my American wife why I continue to watch the show even during the poorly executed episodes (“because when it’s good it makes me cry! – don’t even mention the Van Gogh episode!”), I’ve given up and decided to sit out the rest of the Chibnall era. His Doctor doesn’t talk or act like the Doctor I have been watching since I was a child. She is full of self-doubt, indecisive, and wants a hug. That’s not my Doctor.