The guest
Graham Linehan: Irish comedy writer behind hit British sitcoms Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd, winner of several BAFTAs. Now a controversial gender-critical activist who says his career collapsed after he spoke out on women's rights and trans issues.
What this episode covers
Graham Linehan recounts how, after a celebrated career writing Father Ted and other British sitcoms, he became a pariah for publicly questioning trans ideology and defending single-sex spaces. He details lost work, a canceled Father Ted musical, police visits, lawsuits, divorce, and an upcoming UK trial, arguing the press and institutions like WPATH, the BBC and Wikipedia have suppressed the story. He and Joe frame the phenomenon as an internet-driven mass delusion akin to a religion or the COVID-era hostility. The back half of the conversation widens out to AI's coming impact on film, writing and society, declining birth rates and microplastics, and a long appreciative riff on Kubrick, the Coen brothers, Phil Hartman and live comedy.
Recommended on this episode
BookRecommended
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
James Nestor
“great book called Breathe. For anybody who's fascinated by breathing techniques”
“Nester. Yes. He's got a great book called Breathe. For anybody who's fascinated by breathing techniques and how much it can help you”— Graham Linehan
MediaRecommended
Unforgiven
Clint Eastwood
“I think it's the best western of all time”
“that's Unforgiven. I think it's the best western of all time because I think it's probably the most accurate about how up life was back then.”— Graham Linehan
BookRecommendedISBN verified
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry
“You got to read Lonesome Dove”
“He's a Texan author. You got to read Lonesome Dove. There's something that happens about page 100 and you will not be able to put it down”— Joe Rogan
MediaRecommended
The Shining
Stanley Kubrick
“the movie is so good, man. It's such a good movie”
“the movie is so good, man. It's such a good movie. It as a whole is amazing.”— Joe Rogan
The guest's own work
BookBy the guestISBN verified
Tough Crowd
Graham Linehan
“I brought out my biography a few years ago uh called Tough Crowd, which I should uh I should plug.”— Graham Linehan
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Coddling of the American Mind
Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff
“You've read Jonathan Hate's uh Yes. book about uh I can't remember which one it was. Oh, cuddling of cuddling.”— Joe Rogan
BookReferencedISBN verified
Irreversible Damage
Abigail Shrier
“Abigail Shrier wrote the most important book about transitioning, uh, the transitioning of young women, irreversible damage”— Joe Rogan
BookReferencedISBN verified
Count Down
Shanna Swan
“There's a woman Dr. Shana Swan from Harvard who wrote a book on this about phalates and every person carries like literally a spoon of microplastics”— Joe Rogan
MediaReferenced
Sin City
Robert Rodriguez
“if you think about Robert Rodriguez when he did Sin City, there's a lot of that that didn't look real, you know?”— Graham Linehan
MediaReferenced
Reservoir Dogs
Quentin Tarantino
“uh you know what's a good example Steven Soderberg's early movies Tarantino with the with Reservoir Dogs right”— Graham Linehan
MediaReferenced
Grand Theft Auto
Rockstar Games
“if you look at a game like Grand Theft Auto now, you're going to be able to have generative dialogue from from the characters”— Graham Linehan
BookReferencedISBN verified
Empire of the Summer Moon
S. C. Gwynne
“I went through a whole book series of Wild West books that I read um after I read uh Empire of the Summer Moon.”— Joe Rogan
MediaReferenced
Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David
“I personally I prefer Seinfeld to to curb your enthusiasm because for me the strictures they had under the studio system were so tight”— Graham Linehan
MediaReferenced
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Larry David
“I prefer Seinfeld to to curb your enthusiasm because for me the strictures they had under the studio system were so tight”— Graham Linehan
MediaReferenced
No Country for Old Men
Joel and Ethan Coen
“I still love the movie. It's amazing up until that point, I think.”— Joe Rogan
MediaReferenced
The Hudsucker Proxy
Joel and Ethan Coen
“the Hudsucker proxy which is basically a Preston Sturgeis film um with all the fast talking dames and all this sort of stuff”— Graham Linehan
MediaReferenced
A Clockwork Orange
Stanley Kubrick
“Malcolm McDow felt a bit betrayed by him when he finished Clockwork Orange”— Graham Linehan
MediaReferenced
Full Metal Jacket
Stanley Kubrick
“then he he shoots Vietnam on the London docks. He did that full metal jacket.”— Graham Linehan
MediaReferenced
Hairspray
John Waters
“John Waters, he made all these films in Baltimore. He made what did he make? Hairspray. That was his most famous.”— Graham Linehan
MediaReferenced
NewsRadio
Paul Simms
“that's the other thing I wanted to talk to you about, which was uh news radio, because you you of course are a veteran of uh studio sitcoms”— Graham Linehan
ProductReferenced
Perplexity
Perplexity AI
“I had a conversation with Perplexity uh which is a apart from this a really good uh platform. it has all the AIS in one search box”— Graham Linehan
Big reveals from this episode
- Linehan says the moment he started talking about women's rights, awards bodies and colleagues stripped 'absolutely everything' from him.
- He has been fighting and litigating over this issue for roughly eight years and has been visited by UK police multiple times.
- A Father Ted West End musical he calls his 'pension' was canceled after years of work.
- Producers offered him 200,000 pounds to walk away from the musical with a 'clean break'; he refused.
- Cites the 'WPath Files' by Mia Hughes, alleging the trans-healthcare body linked to a site hosting castration fiction tagged as minor.
- Says he is moving to the US and is on trial in the UK in August over another activist's police complaint.
- Reveals Rob Schneider brought him to the US to work on film projects, helping him secure a three-year visa.
- Both Joe and Graham are 57; Graham says he tried stand-up and was effectively blacklisted from sitcom work.
Worth remembering
- The Harry Potter series has sold over 600 million copies, rivaling Bible sales but in one author's lifetime.
- Linehan explains the historical 'urinary leash' that kept women near home before single-sex public toilets existed.
- Joe cites Dr. Shanna Swan's research that people carry roughly a plastic-spoon's worth of microplastics in their brain.
- Joe recounts the Rolling Stone ivermectin/ER hoax story illustrated with a misleading stock photo.
- Tony Hinchcliffe was 'saved' during the racist-joke controversy because he had a recording of the entire set.
- Kubrick shot Vietnam scenes for Full Metal Jacket on the London docks because he was afraid of flying.
- For The Shining, Kubrick had an assistant type the full 'all work and no play' manuscript, plus versions in four languages.
- Joe describes an AI experiment where a model 'obsessed' with owls transmitted that obsession to another AI using only numbers.
- Father Ted's lead actor Dermot Morgan died the day after the final episode was shot, while the show was still being edited.
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