Karl Deeter and Larissa Nolan talk Tourette’s, OCD and the BBC

12:54Larissa Nolan:Usually interesting Alright let's get to Carl you have Tourette's tell everybody and let's go back to the beginning what is Tourette's what is your Tourette's and what are the different symptoms of Tourette's and anesthetists

13:05Karl Deeter:Tourette's has a lot of different symptoms I got diagnosed almost by accident I was actually I was about 23 years old at the time and they brought up this new drug in America for quitting smoking cigarettes and I went along to get it to the doctor and he said you're making a lot of faces he says are you in any pain I said oh no I started doing that when I was like four or five, you know. He's like, oh, that's interesting. And he started asking me this other question, other questions. I was like, is that like for this drug that helps you stop smoking? Because it was a super mild antidepressant that it didn't actually make you stop smoking.

13:40Karl Deeter:But one of the byproducts of it was like 30 % of the people who took it who were smokers stopped. And that's actually how all the Tourette's style medicines work. They don't actually, they're not for whatever it is. Anyway, so he said to me, he said, he said I'd like to ask you about 25 questions would you mind no yeah sure you know once I get the thing then that's fine I was a heavy smoker so I really want to stop uh so we did it and he said I want to let you know something he said the question I asked he said I actually I specialize in this thing called Gilles de Tourette's and I was like good for you uh like what's that got to do with anything he said he said you have a thing called Tourette's syndrome is what it's commonly known as she said that's why you make these faces that's why you do these sounds that's why you do blah and then you start saying have you ever had this and this and all these different things when you're growing up and i'm like to me it was almost like going to a palm reader who had this freakish insight into your life like if he had said and was your dad's middle name joe or something you'd be like holy cow how did you know this and he's like because you are a bog standard candidate so i just figured okay fine i have this there's not much i can do about it uh usually it was just a source of people making jokes about you or saying stuff about you in public once or twice I think it saved my life because I'd sometimes catch the L train in Chicago home late at night.

14:54Karl Deeter:And instead of me getting mugged, other people get mugged because they think like that guy's something wrong with him. So, you know, it's a good defense mechanism. The fella twitching over in the corner acting weird. And anyone who knows me or who's ever seen me knows that I do all these faces and tics. And so that's what it is. Thankfully, what I don't have, because I actually do think it's funny, which is probably wrong, because I think if someone has the same as you, you're meant to default into massive empathy for them. but I actually do think the screaming curse words one is kind of funny.

15:22Karl Deeter:That's the only thing about Tourette's a lot of people know though, because you had the guy from the BAFTA awards, you had like Pete from Big Brother, and it's this thing called coprolalia where you scream what is effectively, just think about it instead of obscenities, more about whatever is inappropriate. So like if you went to go to someone's kid's christening, you might start shouting Satan in the church. If you met someone for the first time and it was their parents and she was your girlfriend, you might tell them, you know, I did such and such to your daughter that would be so wrong.

15:54Larissa Nolan:Is it intrusive thoughts verbalized?

15:56Karl Deeter:So, what it is, is it's, because I don't actually have that, I've never looked into it too deeply, but I do know, and, because I met one or two people who have it, that basically, they feel the way towards twitches, but for them it's like a word. So if you say to me, Carl, don't twitch, like, if I actually even say that to myself, I'm going to start

16:17Mario Rosenstock:going up the scales and so it's more of a compulsion than like i can't stop it yeah it's

16:24Karl Deeter:and and the ticks migrate and sometimes they're hitting you one way sometimes they hit you on another uh you know i used to have one where i wanted to like look right back over my shoulder which because i drive motorcycles was just a really bad one because it's just gonna fucking hit a wall one day or something but you know by and large it doesn't affect your life it doesn't cut years off your life but but you do have a lot of these other emotional issues that go with it OCD style thoughts quite often and sometimes I be quite obsessive about things again I try to use that as a superpower so I use it to try and practice music to try and work on something to focus on something so I don't see it as being all bad I'd really prefer not to have it and the things that you were talking about thoughts like I just have these five steps and I say this is just a thought thoughts are not real actions are real everybody has crazy shit thoughts now whether they do or not that's what I tell myself and the fifth step of trying to take this thought and compartmentalize is this thought will go away just like every other thought i've had in my life yeah and i'll go through those five steps again and again and i actually taught that five step rule to one of my kids who there's a genetic component to this and thankfully he doesn't have twitches but uh he has other things that affect him and so i teach him those five steps i'm always saying he's like dad what about like do your five steps like get into the habit of of letting it go down that conveyor belt so you can deal with it and then it doesn't become a thing anymore and so yeah the screaming curse words by the way so it's called coprolalia and basically it's not really about saying curse words it's about whatever is wrong which is why the other night at the baftas i can see why that guy started dropping n-bombs it's like what's the worst thing i could do right now i mean in a sense the baftas and like i said like i'm on his side because because i'm a fellow traveler on the tourette's wagon but like putting a guy who screams shit right up next to the microphones was that a wise choice.

18:10Karl Deeter:Like a part of me thinks the BBC would have been kind of happy with it because they could be like, yeah, we did the right thing. We're like diversity, equity, inclusion. We have the disabled guy up the front screaming curse words. I wonder if that's part of why he was up the front. But if you have someone who you know does that, you know, I think the decent thing would be like we're going to set you in an exit because if you, because it's not like he's a spanner. It's not like he doesn't know what he's doing. You do know, but like, God, if you've got to escape, it's like, don't make him walk by the whole place.

18:36Karl Deeter:You know, give him an out. Give him something to offer relief.

18:39Larissa Nolan:All right. You started it off then so then roll us back a little bit Larissa what happened about the BAFTA yeah what is this incident

18:46Mario Rosenstock:yeah so there's this movie out called I Swear and Carl actually was wondering had you seen it yet maybe you haven't got to see it yet but the actor is called John Davidson and it's about his life with it's coprolalia isn't that right

18:58Karl Deeter:coprolalia yeah it actually comes from copro is usually the word for no for a copulices oh okay that's why coprofage like animals that eat poo

19:07Mario Rosenstock:oh interesting rabbits but stuff like that. So anyway, it's about his life. It's apparently amazing and it was being lauded and it won at the BAFTAs, I believe, or he won the actor over lots of other people. But when a couple of black actors were on stage, I think their names are Michael B. Jordan and Del Rey Lindo, but I'm not great on films so I'm not actually sure. Michael B.

19:27Larissa Nolan:Jordan would be a massive movie star, star of Creed. Sinners and stuff, was he?

19:33Mario Rosenstock:Ah, okay. Well, I'm glad you said that. One of the biggest movie stars

19:35Larissa Nolan:in the world now.

19:36Mario Rosenstock:I have a big gap in my knowledge when it comes to film there's loads of films I haven't seen and lots of actors I haven't seen but anyway these two were up on stage and before that he was shouting boring and bullshit which probably was more apt and then that's kind of fun like you can see you can see why there's some entertainment

19:53Karl Deeter:in that as well what might be good crag like that guy Pete on Big Brothers does anyone remember that series of Big Brothers where he was constantly shouting like wankers and he'd be doing these great and he was a great whistler for some reason he could do these wonderful tunes but it was like savage entertainment I only remembered him when you mentioned him but it's like non-stop from the outside you kind of look like a punk yeah adamant yeah and you know I can see like how if he didn't win you'd be like this show has to be rigged because there's something about that that just it's endearing with just how manic it is yeah you know and so like you've got this guy up the front but then you put the black guys on and it's like what's the worst thing I could do here yeah and that's the thing that will start to like just oh my god it's like if you tell me not to twitch I start to get this feeling almost like pressure building in a tube or something and eventually I can't I'll even cover my face and just do it behind my hands if I have to but you can't there's no stopping it So he had this opportunity

20:51Mario Rosenstock:of his lifetime when you think about it and then of course the two black men on stage and what's the worst thing and what's the worst word you can say in common usage at the moment of course that's what he's shouting my issue is with it is that you know surely if we're all lauding this film and understanding the disability and the dark side of the disability or the difficult side of the disability is that you just go okay there's no intent caused here the impact is maybe tough on the lads up on stage but there's no intent so we move on and that's what disability is but no it turned out to be a real controversy in that Jamie Foxx got online and said oh he meant to say that which is literally probably the worst thing you could say about something like this because that just feeds into all the stereotypes of it But one of the judges actually stepped down and said, oh, you know, black people aren't safe anymore on stage and all this kind of stuff, which is both terribly patronising to black people.

21:45Karl Deeter:That's radicalised victimhood though. Like you say that, oh, the use of that word. I have to be offended and it has to be the worst thing that ever happened. Like you look at some rap music awards, I guarantee you'd hear that word a lot. No one would say a word. Because the N-word, like I don't like saying it because I actually think it's an offensive term. But I don't think anyone should say it and I certainly don't think black people should be able to say it like, Like, oh, well, because we have that skin color. Like, we're cool. Like, we can just blast that into our music, blast it into our sentences, and it's all okay.

22:11Karl Deeter:But the second you say it, it's somehow this massive offense. When, like, you could have been living in Timbuktu when there was slavery. Like, you could have been anything. There's no way to say that you were somehow some institutionalized benefit of slavery, great life. You could be the poorest white trash, way poorer certainly than any of the people who are on the stage who are all millionaires or any people in the audience who are all millionaires or all at the peak of society. This whole thing about the way that works, it's just nonsensical, but it's radicalized victimhood, radicalized insinuation of racism.

22:44Karl Deeter:Like a guy who screams curse words, it's like taking him to church and if he screams Satan to say, that's the evidence that I have that he's obsessed by the, or possessed by the devil, you have to do a, what's the thing where you get the demon? Oh, the exorcism. Exorcism, yeah. You know, that's evidence of it. It's effectively a social witch trial.

23:02Larissa Nolan:Absolutely. But was there a movement out there or a feeling out there that this, among anybody, that this guy had committed a racist offence?

23:13Mario Rosenstock:No, because everybody had to know about his scenario, except it seems Jamie Foxx, in fairness, who actually said he meant to say that.

23:20Larissa Nolan:Okay. Was Jamie Foxx then not informed that this person suffers from a condition called Tourette's?

23:25Mario Rosenstock:Well, I'm sure that he was because he was there for the whole thing. but this instinct to shame

23:30Karl Deeter:Well to give him the benefit of the doubt maybe he actually just doesn't know and maybe he just maybe he's just a bit thick I know like no it's possible maybe he's like or maybe he heard Tourette's and he thinks oh that's the thing where people scream stuff but when they scream stuff they mean being as generous to Jamie Foxx or whatever about him good actor but he can also be stupid people can like anyone can

23:51Larissa Nolan:or and ill-informed

23:53Mario Rosenstock:Yeah but to think that people actually underneath it all really mean to say these things is a complete misunderstanding of the condition because the whole thing is that it's stuff that is abhorrent and obnoxious and the worse it can be the better. So for me, it'd be like somebody saying to me, oh, you know the way you were imagining killing Mario there with the, actually there's no weapons in here I can use to kill you with Mario but with the, killing him with the mic stand. All the legs closed. A good way to do that. You really meant that though, didn't you? And you're like, no, this is the whole reason why these conditions can be tormenting is because people don't understand them.

24:26Mario Rosenstock:I mean like, everyone can't understand everything all the time. But for me, I think what it really showed was it was sort of the final boss battle of victimhood cultures coming together. You know, I mean, who's going to win? You know, is it... Black people with disability. Or is it disability?

24:41Karl Deeter:It's like the cripple fight in South Park. It's like, you know, Timmy versus the other fella. And it's so inappropriate to pit these two people against each other. But you are literally taking, you know, people who've had historic wrongs or maybe they didn't. You know, you could... There's loads of black people in the world who were never enslaved. And then you've got, you know, a guy who clearly is there for his disability doing what his disability does In good faith And you've now turned them into some kind of celebrity war

25:06Larissa Nolan:It was a perverse sort of celebrity death match I mean the only thing that was missing was I suppose that the winner of this goes on to play the guy who has black Tourette's

25:14Karl Deeter:Oh I want to get black lesbian Tourette's with Jewism But this is always the inevitable end point of this You are a sick boy The way you just come up with that boom boom boom there's something wrong with you I like it but like yeah we're fine

25:29Mario Rosenstock:it's Mario who's got something wrong with him

25:31Larissa Nolan:it's been hiding in plain sight for years guys I've been sort of passing myself off as this gentle satirist for years but actually it's Satan Lyrus I thought when you said you were exorcised about this that you were saying you were going to exorcise me so but because Satan is within me

25:48Karl Deeter:he actually needs the demons

25:49Larissa Nolan:so basically these two monoliths of culture the untouchable shields the untouchable shields mess against each other. Yeah. And what can we say about that? Can we say, can I ask who won?

26:01Mario Rosenstock:I think that it was maybe going on one direction for a while and then when the tide was turning it went the other direction. So here's the thing, I mean disability, especially neurodiversity lately is the one that we can, almost all of us can come in under. So that's been the very, the almost trendy one in the last while to be cheering for. You know, everybody's neurodiversity, you can't say anything to them because they may have something X, Y, Z so it was really hard when I'd say for the people who enjoyed this sort of victimhood identity battle they must have been like oh which side am I on here for me like I mean it's just as simple as this that's complete hypocrisy you can never there's no way that you can say this person over that person there's no picking sides I think it's terrible that black people I'm going to come around I think it's terrible he has two things they're right at the same time

26:46Karl Deeter:I actually think disability won fair and square and I'll tell you why though so you take the two things that were at odds on one is a person's race or skin color and you cannot control that and you can't change it. The other one is this guy's disability. He definitely cannot control it and he cannot change it. So you have these two unavoidable realities. And then you have this guy doing his thing and shouting racial obscenities. But then you have to bear in mind the black people on the receiving end or black people in general can say, I choose to be offended by that or not because it is actually a choice.

27:20Karl Deeter:And the reason I say it's a choice, which might seem unusual, is that were it a black rapper getting up there doing a song who mentioned the N-word 14 times and talked about maybe shooting some hypothetical other rapper and calling him the N-word none of this offense would have occurred but they chose to internalize something from a disabled person which again is an unavoidable reality of his disability and interpret it in that way and not only that but to do so while they are at the peak of all society looking at a guy who clearly in all the room probably doesn't belong there like this is the only film he's ever going to make unless he has a feature role in something where you scream in curse words, which is going to be a niche role on a good day.

27:58Larissa Nolan:Or Scarface too.

28:03Karl Deeter:You're killing me. But you get what I'm saying? When you actually do all the logic trees down, it's like, you've got to be bigger than that. Let's for a start just realize the N-word is a word. Like I said, I don't like it because I think it's offensive, but it can only cut so deep. It can only do so much damage. and in particular when you're at the elite of the elite and you choose to internalize it that way from a guy who clearly is like has I don't want to call it like whatever like a neurodiversity I mean it's it's a pretty mental thing here's here's disability won all the way just pick up on something

28:39Mario Rosenstock:I was thought you meant a lot more online in the online battle did it win but the main thing for me it just showed was I think it just revealed a lot of people's ignorance secondly the hypocrisy of these kind of battles because it's like, oh yes, we're all for disability. We're all for disability until it comes up against something and we've no way of explaining that. But the other thing is, he has it every day. He's dealing with this every single day of his life. This was just one instant, a small amount of time. So I think there was, I just feel like there was a massive...

29:07Karl Deeter:Black folks would argue they're black every day of their lives and that comes with various other downsides. But I certainly, I would say that the people who live with those downsides are certainly not the people on the stage who choose to be offended or the likes of Jamie Foxx, who is a, you know, multi, multi, multi-millionaire. Like, I think there has to come a point where you say all that stuff. Like, those are the shackles of your past that you've risen beyond and no one really cares about anymore. It'd be like Irish people still crapping on about how we're downtrodden today because of the famine back then.

29:35Karl Deeter:Like, at some point, you've got to move on. And when you're the top of the top, I think you just delegitimize yourself by holding these, you know, ghetto views that are, you know, pretty much unfounded most of the time.

29:47Larissa Nolan:I just want something you said there, Carl. I'll tell you what's worse than the N-word. Sometimes you feel that there's, you know, you're being told that there is nothing worse than the N-word. It is the ultimate thing. I'll tell you what's worse than the N-word. The perpetuation of hundreds of years of social injustice and poverty and the grinding poverty that the actual class are subjected to. That's way worse than any word. Do you know what I mean? But of course...

30:10Mario Rosenstock:Yeah, the word is more offensive than what's actually happening. That's what I'm saying. This whole thing is just riven it's just riven with hypocrisy and you know I think like either you know either we actually stand up for minorities and people who are vulnerable or we don't like you can't just pick and choose whenever it comes up against something that you think oh that's more important like it's not you can't have you know victimhood priorities

30:35Larissa Nolan:Again but what it also brought this is a slight tangent but what it also brought to light again was the almost hilarious ineptitude of the BBC and the fatless nature of the organisation in walking into gaffes every single second week.

30:49Mario Rosenstock:I wonder though, as Carl said, I wonder did they do it on purpose in that they thought, you know, we can't be seen to sideline this guy even though he possibly needed to be in the way you were explaining Carl and maybe we can't censor him either.

30:59Karl Deeter:I would just, look, and I'm not saying that if you put him in the back of the room, I'm not, like maybe that was mean. I'm just saying that as someone that I know I can't control it, that like I love when I'm doing TV shows for instance, like I don't do too much of it anymore but I used to be on say different shows like news shows and things and there's cameras on you I used to love when they would just let me talk, but maybe like cut to other people because I know when I'm on there and I get going, like I'm twitching and there's just no way to stop it because if I focus on not twitching, it's like you trying to write a sentence and listen to a conversation and the sentence and the conversation are about two different things.

31:35Larissa Nolan:I have to do it. Your twitching is not annoying for anybody. It is to me. Except for yourself.

31:40Karl Deeter:Yeah, well, okay. Well, so I'm my greatest enemy and I have that in common with most people. Your biggest enemy is quite often you. all I'm saying is it is something that I'm saying I'm going to look back at this and you're going to look like the exact exactly what you don't want to look like you know the online comments don't help either and like it's not that it gets to me too much but it's still non-stop you know comments, sayings, blah listen to that guy look at him you know I'm going to give Carl

32:10Mario Rosenstock:a big compliment today just stand by for compliment I think Carl's Tourette's and ticks are helped by the fact he's so good looking.

32:17Karl Deeter:Love that.

32:18Mario Rosenstock:And, no, but seriously, do you know what I mean? Like, if Carl wasn't as handsome as he is, I think people would be like, oh, look at your man, you know, doing this and doing that. Being good looking

32:26Karl Deeter:actually is one of the biggest advantages you can have in life of any colour and that's actually a proven thing whether you're black, white or otherwise. Good looks is actually an advantage that is way beyond, like, you can be literally from the worst ghetto in Mumbai and if you're gorgeous, you'll rise up to, the odds of it are just amazing. it is a bit. Your odds of getting lighter prison sentences, your odds of getting raises. Like I actually wrote an article when I used to write for The Sun that said, let's not talk about racial inequality, let's talk about looks inequality because that's actually where the true piece of it is.

32:57Mario Rosenstock:I have a question though, actually, this is one part of the two things where they're different. I think exposure therapy is one of the things that you get for OCD. So actually the little five-step program that you were saying you tell your children is nearly what they tell you in cognitive behavioral therapy, which is what you get for OCD. But one of the therapies is exposure therapy. So the more that you're exposed to situations, say for example, if you're afraid you're going to murder someone, the more you're exposed to situations like the more you go out in your car and don't run someone over, the more you, you know, cook in your kitchen with big blades.

33:28Mario Rosenstock:I still don't have blades around my kitchen. I haven't been able to move forward.

33:32Larissa Nolan:It's the alcoholic who covers his bedroom wall in alcohol. I had a relation, I had a friend called Tom and he was an absolutely chronic alcoholic. Oh, I see what you mean. And we went to visit him in Austria once and we flipped a coin in Munich and we said, heads for Austria, tails for Berlin. And it came up on heads. And so we drove under the Brenner Pass and everything and out to Austria. And we met Tom, my uncle, who worked for the United Nations in a very kind of normal job, actually in the drugs area, but a normal job within the drugs area. But he had always been a chronic alcoholic. And I went to his house and he went, Mario, so good to see you.

34:14Larissa Nolan:Come on in. Oh, you've brought your friends. Your young 21-year-old friends. Great. Come on in. Have a look around. And I went, it was wall to wall. Like every bit of the wall was taken up with alcohol.

34:25Mario Rosenstock:Wow. I went, interesting.

34:27Larissa Nolan:And he went, oh yes, that. Yes, yeah.

34:29Mario Rosenstock:So he was doing exposure therapy to the extreme.

34:31Larissa Nolan:Exposure therapy, basically. I know that if I can avoid touching this.

34:35Mario Rosenstock:Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're untouchable, really. I mean, that's cool. He was like a total control freak, almost, in a way. but like I remember having to go through that in the beginning I remember going I can never do this like I have to sleep with knives under my bed and all this stuff under my pillow they actually do this quite crazy stuff I remember saying to the therapist what happens though if I just go mad and like kill everybody and then they'll be like oh well you know we've told her to sleep with knives under her bed and she was like but you're not going to that's the whole point of what you have and I said imagine I did because that's all I ever did and she said well then you move into a different category of patient and I thought oh that's reassuring well actually but you know it kind of is weird back over I'm thinking I'm crazy and actually one of the things I found helped me as well was thinking out things to the absolute worst degree and then going right I've thought the worst thing now it's happened I can move on from it and I'm wondering about exposure I was just wondering

35:21Karl Deeter:the exposure for Tourette's is like when you wake up I don't have a way to like do that unless I unalive myself there are things that turn it off when I play music I don't know if actually Larissa came to see me play a show there the other week

35:33Mario Rosenstock:amazing

35:35Karl Deeter:and when I'm playing music I actually it stops or when I play video games I understand.

35:40Larissa Nolan:So I do actually... It's a bit... That reminds me of the stammerer, your man Gareth Gates. A lot of stammerers stop stammering when they sing.

35:48Karl Deeter:Yeah. Yeah. Actually, yeah. And it's... I'm not sure why that is. I never actually looked into it, but I do know my Twitch has turned off.

35:55Larissa Nolan:I think it's because a different neural system is engaged when you're doing this. It obviously is. I mean, without myself being an expert. But the one thing that this week has taught me is that the world has a difficulty and needs to be taught a little bit more about retaining two different thoughts in your head at the same time. Right? So like, you could say, right, we need to, you know, you can be against racism, of course. But of course, you need to protect the guy who had the Tourette's Syndrome. Yeah. And, you know, some people would believe as well that you can see the deposition, the deposing of an Ayatollah in a repressive regime being positive, but not necessarily the means or the person that was there to do it.

36:40Mario Rosenstock:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally.

36:43Larissa Nolan:I wanted to see if either of you watched this sketch. Oh, Saturday Night Live, yeah. Saturday Night Live did a sketch on this and it's been interesting how it's gone down and I haven't said anything to you about this sketch. I would just like to see if there's anything you could say about it. So this is the beginning of the sketch so it might make sense or it might not. This guy is playing Mel Gibson and he's looking into camera.

37:03Karl Deeter:Hi, I'm Mel Gibson and as I probably should have pointed out decades ago, I too suffer from Tourette's. Which explains a lot of the things I've said or yelled through the years. Am I proud of what I said? No. But I am very proud for you to know it was because of Tourette's.

37:19Larissa Nolan:Unfortunately, I'm not alone.

37:22Karl Deeter:Hi, I'm OG real housewife for New York, Jill Zarin.

37:27Larissa Nolan:You might have seen the video I posted this week where I said Bad Bunny did the worst halftime show in history and why was it in Spanish and where were all the white people? But what you didn't know is that I suffer from severe, long-winded, monologue-style Tourette's, a condition that affects nine out of ten people on Long Island. Hi, cuties. I'm Armie Hammer. Not many people know this, but one of the most common side effects of Tourette's is cannibalism. And on and on it goes, all these different celebrities saying this. But a few people, this is just my own interpretation, but a few people, like people who eminent, fairly eminent people posted online going, this is not only not funny, it is disgusting and it is trivializing Tourette's.

38:19Larissa Nolan:Me, when I watched the sketch, I thought what it was, was satirizing the ability of celebrities who have been in trouble to try and find a bandwagon to jump on to excuse them for their transgressions. Yeah. That's what I think it is.

38:36Mario Rosenstock:I mean, for me, what it is as well is that there's a second layer to it, which is the kind of satirising, the broadening out of, and the labelling of everything to become some form of a condition that you could literally have anything that you can put a name on it. And then you can use that as a shield. So I think it's...

38:52Larissa Nolan:A shield for misdemeanors.

38:54Mario Rosenstock:Yeah, or for anything, in fact. And so, like, actually, when you broaden things out to that degree, I think then what you do get, though, is just complete ignorance about, real illnesses or real conditions which is why probably we didn't but some people don't understand Tourette's

39:09Larissa Nolan:Some of the commentary was and I mean some people I won't mention their names people with very very people mainstream commentators

39:15Mario Rosenstock:Okay in Ireland

39:16Larissa Nolan:or abroad? UK and America were saying look at this and shame it because this sketch is basically equivocating Tourette's with let's say racism

39:28Mario Rosenstock:I think that's a misunderstanding isn't it? Maybe a dumer

39:31Karl Deeter:I watched that clip and I did actually laugh at a few parts of it maybe you know I'm just at a point in my life where I can find Tourette's funny too maybe you're not meant to laugh at it if you also have it I think objectively it's actually a funny clip I didn't but there are parts of it by the way that I would say are basically you know the kind of the left woke ensuring that it gets scoring points in on certain people they had to go with JK Rowling to say oh and this is why I have you know trans Tourette's in order to blah blah

40:01Larissa Nolan:they'd use

40:03Karl Deeter:they're on target there was another guy in the middle who was like and so this is why I'm allowed to say things that are completely socially inappropriate because I'm a racist and I was like okay so you have to get the points going in why can't you just be funny like you were at the start they had a bit where Bill Cosby was and then I was like my god you're here flying close to the sun on that one and it was pretty mental but I'm able to laugh that clip made me laugh at some parts and in other parts be like you're so obvious why do you do that

40:26Larissa Nolan:exactly but from a person who writes sketches I was going you know the closest thing to the bone obviously if you even want to say that is the Bill Cosby thing because it's so raw and horrible. But again, in my comic mind I was going, exactly, perfect. Bill Cosby and his ilk would use anything they could to try and get off.

40:45Mario Rosenstock:Yeah, but that's what you get when you create a system whereby if you say you have something you get off everything. That's what they're saying. For me, that was what I got. The humour was it. Yeah, that's what I got. It was misinterpreted

40:55Larissa Nolan:by some people.

40:55Mario Rosenstock:Yeah, some people don't like it.

40:57Karl Deeter:I'll be honest with you, there's another part of humour where if somebody's not offended you probably aren't doing the job right. Like, like there's good clean humor, don't get me wrong. And there's a whole area of that I think you do a pretty good job at. But if you want to be like the raw edge humor, someone's always going to be offended. Is Frankie Boyle funny? I would say objectively, yeah, he is. Does he say some crazy stuff that like is definitely going to upset some people? I utterly guarantee. Jimmy Carr, comic genius. Does he say stuff that offends people? 100%. Like,

41:24Larissa Nolan:I'll just do the flip side to that. There is a skill in not doing that.

41:28Karl Deeter:Oh yeah, no, it's a separate talent. Like,

41:30Larissa Nolan:you remember, You remember that guy This is what I have to spend my whole life doing I know I would say How at 15 in the morning do you slyly hint at something without saying it?

41:37Mario Rosenstock:Yeah

41:37Larissa Nolan:But still some people understand what you're kind of getting at

41:40Mario Rosenstock:I have the same issue Murray Remember that guy who used to wear the red hat and he's like

41:44Karl Deeter:just like that and he used to do the magic tricks and make them go wrong and then he died on stage and people thought it was Oh Tommy Cooper Tommy Cooper Like genius in that and humour throughout the 50s and 60s it was genius levels of clean humour because dirtbag humour was really only in the comedy clubs But when people

41:59Larissa Nolan:had to subvert the Hays Code in films, for example, it made them much smarter. Oh, yeah. In creating...

42:04Mario Rosenstock:What does that mean?

42:05Larissa Nolan:What? What's the Hays Code? The Hays Code was a censoring code throughout Hollywood for many, many years, which meant you couldn't do certain things in film. Like, for example, no kissing with tongues, no certain thing. Okay. No saying of certain things. Like, they used to have... You probably could say

42:24Karl Deeter:the N-word string, you know.

42:25Larissa Nolan:I had a film once about a fella who was gay, right? Right. and they went they had to rename the entire film going why didn't he ever marry starring Joel la la la he never wanted to marry

42:38Mario Rosenstock:Neil Shea Poster as they say yeah

42:40Larissa Nolan:but I mean it was basically everybody who went to see it knew what we were talking about but you couldn't say it

42:44Mario Rosenstock:yeah okay so that was the Hays Code you've learned something today how about that

42:48Karl Deeter:I mean I remember one of my favourite one of my favourite skits in comedy is called Who's On First yeah I don't know

42:53Larissa Nolan:I've ever heard in Costello

42:54Karl Deeter:yeah Who's On First and he's talking about a baseball team and he's saying who's on first and he's like, okay, who's on first? He's like, that's right. And then he's on, and if you watch it, it's like, it's just genius.

43:04Larissa Nolan:It is genius. It's one of the most, it's a seminal comedy sketch.

43:07Karl Deeter:Yeah, but the point I'd be making is there was an era where that was at the peak and then, and that talent is a talent. It's a recognizable one. You've got it. A lot of people don't. Like, you probably couldn't put Jimmy Carr on an early morning show. And then there's like the stuff that's the edgier stuff. And I think that's where comedy is at the very edge of what it's doing, with the edge of what's acceptable. And you might be able to do that live, but you can't do it on radio. You probably can't do it on a podcast on this particular distribution. But that's the thing, is that I do believe if you're at the edge of inventiveness, you probably can't do it in a clean manner because there were so many years of that being done so well that really what you can just do is very good.

43:49Larissa Nolan:In the live context, I love messing with people's preconceptions of what they think might be controversial or not by just messing with it. The other day I was talking, the other night I was doing a show and I was just, I was in search of a word and I was describing how, I was trying to describe how Irish rugby supporters in Ireland go from a state of utter ecstasy in one moment to utter devastation and catastrophisation in the next moment. Yeah. At the base of one week where the best team in the world were the uselessest team in the world, right? And I described, I said there was this thing was bipolar.

44:22Larissa Nolan:And I could hear an audience, the audience going, ooh. Really? Yeah. And the only reason was I used the word bipolar Which to them Triggered something in them

44:33Mario Rosenstock:That's amazing

44:33Larissa Nolan:In other words Hot topic Don't mention it Then that's a word that's But I was talking about Two poles

44:39Mario Rosenstock:So that's now Yeah but that's now Taboo obviously It doesn't even use the word

44:43Larissa Nolan:It isn't taboo I'm saying No that's wrong for Larissa

44:46Mario Rosenstock:But is it not for them They think it is They think it is That's what I mean Yeah until You have to tell them No Yeah it's not It's actually a word Like bilateral

44:54Larissa Nolan:Stephen Fry has a very interesting thing on YouTube where he talks about the word rape. And rape, he says, is slowly becoming an unusable word. Oh, again. No, no. The word rape is becoming an unusable word, almost a taboo word.

45:10Mario Rosenstock:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

45:11Larissa Nolan:Whereas the word rape has multi-different uses, right? To rape the land and all this sort of stuff. And it has always had multiple uses. but because it's been pigeonholed to one

45:26Karl Deeter:but that's actually why in America they have a thing called canola oil that doesn't exist there is no thing called a canola plant yeah there's the rapeseed plant yes and it's called rapa oh okay that's all it is yes but the Americans will not call it that yes so they invented a new name for it called canola oil yes yes yes so the Nirvana

45:42Mario Rosenstock:wouldn't get released in the certainly

45:45Karl Deeter:in gamer world although I don't I haven't actually heard it in a while now that you mention it you'd be like oh yeah in that last game we got raped and that's just saying that you got like really you know got devastating and lost whatever you were doing

45:59Larissa Nolan:I have a problem with that one I would have a problem with that one because I think what you're doing by using that word there is you're direct you're directing you're direct you're directly conjuring the image of sexual violence yeah and I think that it's heavy loss in both in both a male on female or a female on female or particularly a male on on male in a...

46:22Karl Deeter:It would be male, most gamers are guys.

46:25Mario Rosenstock:But you're talking more like rape the land or something like that. No, no, no.

46:28Larissa Nolan:That word is one of the least, I mean, that word is a huge word in the English language. Yeah. Which should not be owned by people who think it's just about sexual...

46:40Mario Rosenstock:But essentially what you're saying there, Mario, no, I wasn't saying it's a taboo word, I was saying that people are beginning to start applying this must be a taboo word. They're almost afraid of certain language. If they're afraid of the word... What I'm saying,

46:50Karl Deeter:you can even be afraid of how it sounds. like you will never hear people use a certain word for a small light chuckle that rhymes with bigger. Yeah.

47:01Mario Rosenstock:That is his Tourette's. Blame it now.

47:06Larissa Nolan:No, that's exposure. That's my exposure there.

47:09Karl Deeter:No, but you know, and someday we might not be able to talk about a fruit called a grape because it has... Harold's weird crosswords. No, I'm just saying it right.

47:18Mario Rosenstock:But you can't, you know, like... What else can we not say actually in recent years? There are certain things that come up that you're like oh you're not allowed to say that now.

47:26Larissa Nolan:That's our next podcast guys. Not sure. Larissa do you have anything to finish on this? Did you get it all off your chest there?

47:33Mario Rosenstock:Yeah I mean I suppose I just want to say to people like that obviously you go in you get your diagnosis for this kind of thing when it's causing you extreme distress and once someone tells you because I didn't know what it was once someone tells you ah this is a thing that people get it's a really severe form of anxiety lots of people have it you know it's not normal to have it but it's normal in a therapy setting to have it or in a psychology or neurology setting to have it. So I think just the same to people not want to sound like Bresi now as much as I love Bresi but I'm just saying like that if you felt that you had it or it was tormenting you thoughts like that like you can get you can get the diagnosis.

48:03Mario Rosenstock:Some people work well with medication. I needed it at the start. I didn't take it after that. I wouldn't be keen on it myself. I prefer to go down the therapy road but you can get all these basically it can be controlled and you can deal with it and I think Carl's five-step programme for intrusive thoughts is probably the most effective thing you could do.

48:21Larissa Nolan:And have you just been left in a situation with this incident with John Davidson, the star of the movie, I swear, where you just threw your eyes to heaven?

48:29Mario Rosenstock:No, I thought that the reason why it's so frustrating having a condition like this is that people fundamentally misunderstand it. And the whole basis of it is that you don't mean these things. You are thinking the most obnoxious thing or most abhorrent thing. It's not what you internally feel. And I think that for me, what kind of what upset me is too strong a word but what exercised me about it was that this idea was that oh he somehow internally meant what he said the whole point of I think Tourette's and OCD is that you don't you know you don't mean what you're saying you're just saying something that's obnoxious

49:04Karl Deeter:I think we have to get to a point where we talk about you know getting back to the idea of sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me there is a certain level of of fortitude that I think people need to have and I think we've moved away from that and Yeah. And, um, you know, just my part in Gambit would be that like, is there someone out there listening to this and you're like studying Tourette's and you find something interesting, you can reach out to me. Or if you happen to have a cure, I'll take it. But you know, but if someone that you know or love, like, like does things like ticks or twitching and things like that, it might be Tourette's.

49:35Karl Deeter:It could also just be a tick disorder, which is cool. But if it is just understand like that people might make jokes about you, but it's not going to hold you back. Like you can actually own your future. so just tell people if you are

49:47Larissa Nolan:because there's always there's a lot worse thing there's a lot worse thing than words and there's language a lot worse thing than words and language and the other thing I would say is you say have a bit of fortitude sticks and stones would break my bones but I think also people should extend each other the benefit of good faith and good will the idea that if somebody you hear something or you give something don't cry wolf before you you know investigate one was it really meant malevolently or in class and two check it out

50:15Mario Rosenstock:Yeah.

50:16Larissa Nolan:You know, like, was it real?

50:18Mario Rosenstock:Yeah, it's intent over impact or impact over intent. If you're going to let your emotions

50:22Karl Deeter:go to a place where you feel you have to talk about this, then at least let your logical mind go to a place where you find out about it. Yeah. And that's what we try to do

50:30Larissa Nolan:in this little episode. So, Larissa, thank you for being the producer of this podcast.

50:36Mario Rosenstock:Thanks for having us on, the two headbangers.

50:38Larissa Nolan:Yeah. And it is fantasy too. Larissa OCD and Carl Tourette Dieter.

50:45Mario Rosenstock:fuck off you have to get one in there

50:48Larissa Nolan:yeah you have to finish with the big F off

50:50Mario Rosenstock:I was actually wondering would he make it through

50:52Larissa Nolan:the episode you know what I didn't like about that it was just such light humour for a guy with Tourette the best you could do is I should have gone with the C-bomb oh yeah the C-bomb I should have been but of course he's only

51:05Karl Deeter:see I'm not sure what you can and can't do I'm still when I'm in this building I'm in radio mode so I just I don't know how far you can go on a podcast

51:12Larissa Nolan:ok so that's

51:13Karl Deeter:Brendan O 'Connor saying goodbye to all of you now. One of my easiest impressions. So good luck. I'll think the same things.

51:19Mario Rosenstock:That's a great one.

51:22Larissa Nolan:And my thanks to Carl and Larissa for calling into the Mario Rosenstock podcast, joining me and having a great chat about that issue. If you want to contact me, of course, it's mariorosenstock at gmail.com about anything that's on your mind at all. And if you can, tell one other person that's all about this podcast. See you same time next week.

51:46We'll be right back.