Category Archives: Interviews

Individual Responsibility and Social Justice — Café Filosófico Interview

Below is a Theodore Dalrymple interview with Eduardo Wolf of Café Filosófico in Brazil from September 2018 that was not previously posted on The Skeptical Doctor. There are portions of the program that are in Portuguese only, but the good doctor does speak (in English) for close to half the total time. It is a pleasure to see that the writing and ideas of Theodore Dalrymple are having some impact in the largest country in South America.

Britain’s Vanishing Culture & Character

Theodore Dalrymple’s November appearance in a half-hour interview on The New Culture Forum’s ‘So What You’re Saying is…’, hosted by Peter Whittle, is below. Thank you to our reader, David, who brought this excellent discussion to our attention. It is always refreshing to see and hear the good doctor expounding on his favorite topics at length.

Elite Medical Journals and the Criminal Underclass

The good doctor makes an appearance on the City Journal‘s 10 Block podcast to discuss his new book, False Positive: A Year of Error, Omission, and Political Correctness in the New England Journal of Medicine, with Brian Anderson, the editor of the journal. The 20-minute conversation offers some personal moments from Theodore Dalrymple as he reminisces about the quarter-century of writing for the City Journal.

Daniels’s latest book, False Positive, brings a critical eye to one of the most important general medical journals in the world: The New England Journal of Medicine. Daniels exposes errors of reasoning and omissions apparently undetected by the Journal’s editors and shows how its pages have become mind-numbingly politically correct, with highly debatable arguments allowed to pass as if self-evidently true.

Why do they kill?

What drives a person, all too often a young Muslim male, to kill innocents in their midst? And what does this mean for our efforts to combat these kinds of terror threats?

So asks Tom Switzer, the host of Between the Lines, in an interview of Dalrymple on Australia’s ABC Radio. The interview addresses Dalrymple’s recent Wall Street Journal piece on the subject.

Dalrymple says the motivating factor is partially just a stupid ideology:

Of course, evil and stupidity have always appealed to quite large numbers of people. And the mere fact that something is self-evidently stupid doesn’t necessarily mean that it can’t spread or doesn’t spread… It has to be constantly attacked, because if you don’t attack it, you half accept it, and unfortunately many of our leaders are halfway to accepting it.

Listen here

Theodore Dalrymple explains how Britain went down the drain

As Dalrymple continues his tour of Australia, journalist Kevin Chinnery of The Australian Financial Review hosts Dalrymple for dinner and an interview — and reports on both. The opening paragraphs:

He’s the psychiatrist who broke a taboo. In 1990, Theodore Dalrymple, prison shrink, slum area hospital doctor, and freshly appointed magazine columnist started telling the awful truth about Britain’s poor. Long before motormouth welfare queen Vicky Pollard became the butt of a national joke on the television show Little Britain, Dalrymple was warning of a native underclass utterly impoverished not in money, but in language, ideas and ambition.

His books, essays, and columns for The Spectator, The Times and the New Statesman, have been compared to Orwell in their observations of Britain. But the plight of Orwell’s working class, stricken by the Depression and the collapse of employment is moving and dignified in a way that Dalrymple’s post-welfare state underclass is definitely not. He shows a new Gin Lane, a Hogarthian horror show of self-destructive behaviour: drink- and drug-addled deadbeat parents, feral children, random violence and chosen idleness. Chaos and ignorance, encouraged by the welfare and education systems, and treated as both normal and unavoidable…

Dalrymple hits the airwaves in Australia

Ahead of his speaking tour of Australia, which begins tomorrow with an event in Brisbane, Dalrymple has been appearing on various television programs (telly programmes?) in the country, earning far more mass media coverage than he’s probably ever received in his native Britain, where he often feels as popular as a rattle snake in a lucky dip.

First was an appearance on the ABC program The Drum, where he gamely answered questions about contemporary Australian political issues.

Next was an interview by Tony Jones on ABC’s Lateline program where a cheery Dalrymple described his general view of the modern British bogan. Readers who have rarely seen him speak in public might be surprised by his demeanor here, but to many of us Tony Daniels is one merry bloke.

Readers “Rie” and “David R” brought our attention to this appearance on ABC’s Q&A program, where Dalrymple participates in a panel discussion that also includes feminist Germaine Greer. David R notes that Dalrymple and Greer even (crikey!) agree somewhat, although when Dalrymple attributes most modern domestic violence to extreme jealousy caused by the breakdown of traditional mores, Greer just about goes off like a frog in a sock.

And lastly, Rebecca Bynum, publisher of the New English Review and an all-around sheila, kindly posted this piece on Dalrymple by Adam Creighton from The Australian (hat tip to a dose of Theodore Dalrymple for posting the original, subscription required).

After Brisbane, the speaking tour continues with events on April 18 and 21 at the Sydney Opera House and in Melbourne, respectively. Not exactly out in woopwoop!

Dalrymple promotes new book on visit to U.S.

Dalrymple has spent the last few days making the rounds in New York and Washington, D.C. promoting his new book, Admirable Evasions: How Modern Psychology Undermines Morality.

He spoke at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. The video is here. The action doesn’t start until the 21:30 mark. (Update: the video has now been edited.)

On Thursday he visited the Wall Street Journal and recorded two short video interviews. In this one he addresses Islamic extremism, and here he discusses his book’s thesis that psychology has been a generally useless attempt to avoid the reality that “the permanent condition of mankind is dissatisfaction”. (H/t Michael G.)

On Thursday evening the New Criterion hosted a launch party in New York City for the book, and your humble correspondents (along with Skeptical Doctor reader Adam) enjoyed seeing the good doctor once again. He spoke for a few minutes, humorously sharing the titles of the psychology-inspired self-help books he noticed in the bookstore of DC’s Union Station.

tony

Other attendees included his old City Journal editor Myron Magnet, Roger Kimball and James Panero.