What do Trump, Johnson, Wilders and Milei all have in common? No, it’s not politics, it’s an eccentric and recognisable coiffure. Do these examples allow us to draw a theory between politics and hair or is it just a happy coincidence? If there is a connection, why might it exist?

In this week’s episode, we discuss populist hairstyles. We talk about the relationship between populism and hairstyles, data on hair and physical condition, the connection between shoes and personalities, signalling, Donald Trump’s hair, and Jordan presents a typology for populism. Finally, we share the people from history we most admire who have a distinctive hairstyle.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

• The Guardian: ‘Populism is all about hair’
• Hair Analysis in Health Assessment
• Cue masking and cultural signals
• Politico: ‘Boris Johnson’s hair shows he’s too posh to fail’

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Jordan Fermanis and Nick Hare of Aleph and this week we're discussing why populists have weird hair. You dare. Nick. No, you see. Nick, I've got hair, you're called hair.

Perfect. Although the first one of those statements is arguable. I've got some. Yeah, on your face.

Yeah, on my face, a bit around my ears. Go for it. What are we talking about?

Well, it's been noted in some corners of the, you know, commentariat that there seems to be a thing about sort of the new populist leaders having weird hair. And so I think that the latest weird hairstyle in this menagerie is Javier Mille, Argentina. I think he was elected in December or something. And he's got this kind of incredible bouffant.

He's a striking looking individual.

He is. He's an extraordinary looking person. And people have been saying, well, you know, you've got Donald Trump, famously unusual hair, Boris Johnson. I mean, how do you begin to describe that? And then you have people like here at Wilders who also has he's got this kind of platinum blonde pompadour. And people have then, you know, started adding other like Michael Fabricant, who's a Tory MP with incredible. He's got incredible hair. For a man in his 70s, he's extraordinary. It's quite a gallery. People like Rein Eppler, who is a he was noticed an Estonian MP, right wing MP in Estonia, incredible, strange hair. So anyway, I think people have noticed this and been asking, what's that all about? And it seems to be a thing associated with the right in particular. And people have alleged that this is something to do with populism. And so I think, you know, we want to talk about that is, is this a thing? Or is it just, you know, we, you know, we have to have the good fortune to happen to have a bunch of kind of unusually quaffed politicians or and if it is a thing, why might it be a thing?

I mean, just off the bat, and I don't want to jump too quickly to this. But the first things presumably that we're asking is, I'd be interested in exceptions. Are there plenty of demagogues out there? Are there right wingers with normal hair? Yeah. And also, I think probably even more to the fore than that is, is to what extent does it just happen is an accident? Or to what extent is it contrived? Is it planned? Yeah. Okay. Right. Nicely introduced. Take us a little bit further, if you would, Jordan.

Yeah. So I think if we think about it, populism is actually a highly contestable concept. Unlike environmentalism or feminism. It's more popular than that. It's more popular. And hardly anyone self identifies as a populist. There's no kind of global populist movement. There are no sort of key philosophers or theorists. And it sort of lacks a clear kind of historical reference point.

Kind of feels like actually populism is almost by definition doesn't have philosophers associated because then it would be elitist. That's the opposite of that.

And to make matters even more complicated, it's populism can appear from across the political spectrum. So from the far right to the far left. So I guess it's sort of what are we actually talking about when we're talking about populism? I came across a paper that made quite a convincing argument that we're actually talking about style. So populism is sort of a set of stylistic features that are common to leaders or politicians, commonly accepted as populists. So they set up this three kind of categories of style. Appealing to the people. So that's kind of like the will of the people, the elite, that kind of anti-establishment. Crisis, breakdown and threat. So that's like the idea that there's this perception of crisis that needs to be addressed. And then the other one, which I think is quite pertinent to this conversation is bad manners. So like using bad language, slang, political incorrectness, doing thing going against the

grain. So deliberately transgressive, deliberately transgressive, you know, by definition, because you are seeking to overthrow the elite who've imposed, at least in the populist narrative, kind of imposed those ideas of decorum on society. And when we think they're bad,

we want to overthrow them. So just to clarify, are you saying that those are the different types you get, or you always get these are common things? You always get these. You always get

these within people. Yeah. Yeah. I guess the one that we're looking to drill down into in that formulation is bad manners is like physical appearance. So like this could be clothing, fashion. This could be the way you speak. Give me just the labels of each three again. Just crisis, breakdown and threat. Gotcha. Make America great again. Yeah. And bad manners. Okay. Okay. That's basically how I think is a good way of framing what we're trying to talk about, because I don't think this conversation is going to be about like populism as an ideology or, you know, like democracy and those sort of things. It's more about like the style of populists. And, you know, they wear their hair in a certain way. And yeah. Why would they why would they choose to

do that? Maverick. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that is that is it is important to think about what populism is meant to be saying. I suppose, you know, that as Jordan says that it is is interesting, the lack of a philosophy as such. It's almost it's populism in as much as it's a thing sets itself up in opposition to stuff. You know, it's gone. Society's gone wrong. Thanks to these leaders. We need to overthrow them. It's not very positive. It's very it's a negative idea. You know, it's now it's up to us, the people to wrest control of the government of this corrupt elite. That's the message you always get with populism. And it always works a great, great message, particularly in times of in times of, you know, perceived crisis. However, I actually think we do need to spend some time looking at hairstyles, because I don't think I think we might be constructing a narrative out of almost no data at all. So let's start forbid. No, I know. Well, look, so let's start with the but why? Sorry, I know that's what caught our attention is the

hairstyle was our way in. But why would we want to concentrate on hairstyles? Or are we just using

that as a device? Well, I suppose I want to slightly challenge the idea that this is a thing. So let's start with the let's start with Javier Millet. He's the latest one of these. His nickname is the wig. One thing I've discovered, actually, is that hairstyles don't have a very coherent taxonomy. I thought I could find somewhere a list of hairstyles. So I could say, right,

Javier Millet, he's got this one. Unfortunately, we don't live in North Korea. No, exactly.

But it but it's all they really is. I mean, especially for men, it seems not a kind of, you know, taxonomy that we can get to say that's that hairstyle. So Millet, so his nickname is the wig, although it is real hair. And I would classify it based on my very rudimentary knowledge of hairstyles as a kind of layered bouffant hairstyle. And it's big. It's like big and round and puffy. And it's hard to see where it comes out of the head. It almost floats like a dome above his head. What is his politics? Before we start saying, look, he's a populist. He certainly I don't think you could classify his politics as being, you know, particularly sort of traditionally right wing. I mean, he's an anarcho-capitalist and a minarchist. You know, he's a small government libertarian. So so, you know, in that respect, his politics are small. You know, he wants there to be less government and that sort of thing. So let's move over to let's talk about Boris Johnson. Famous hair. How would you classify it? I think it would be described as tousled. You'd think of it as bed hair. Now, what's his politics? I don't think he I would say just a classical liberal, you know, stroke one nation conservative Boris Johnson. He's certainly not a kind of modern right winger. You wouldn't put him in the same basket as Millet.

I just want to head you off for a minute. Because didn't we say we're looking for commonality in terms of ideology. Right. But didn't we say at the beginning that one of the things that defines populism is it kind of doesn't have an ideology is in itself. Well, so we are kind of a false.

I am not. Well, where I'm going is I'm not sure there is much that links the weird hair people. But let's tackle the big daddy. Right. Donald Trump. Yeah. What hairstyle has he got? Actually quite again, it's sort of a comb over. But I think also with a duck tail thrown in. Yeah. And actually, I would say slightly bouffant. Yeah, bouffant. Yeah. But what is his politics? Now, he's a classic populist, isn't he, Trump? He doesn't really if you were to say what are his policies quite hard to describe. His policies are, you know, getting elected and saying things that get him elected. And I think that's I think that that's it with him. And anyway, you know, here will there's another one who's often mentioned in the same in the same sort of hair analysis. He's he's a right wing liberal. And he's got a sort of platinum blonde pompadour. When I looked for a list of like, tell me all the other people who are, you know, populist stroke right wing and big hair. That's it. It's like the same four names. A few people get adduced in there. So but but I don't I think basically we might be we might be sort of making a big narrative out of almost no real data. It might be that these are just four individuals with weird hair who have to be around right more or less. I mean, because I don't think there's very much I know, if you're on the left, you might be tempted to put them all in the same basket because they're all in inverted commas right wing. But I don't think you'd find very much in common at all between Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, for example, it's very difficult to say there's a kind of common set of values or policies there. So I think we should put that out there. Before going into more detail on either populism or hair. Yeah, but we need to put out there that I think I'm not sure. I mean, so when we when we let's say that you propose, I mean, this is kind of general rule, you propose a hypothesis that two things are linked in this case, populism and hair. There's always a number of hypotheses you need to consider, which is that being a populist causes you to have weird hair. You must also consider that having weird hair might make you a populist. Right. And that is not totally implausible. It might be let's say that you've got weird hair. You find yourself generally rejected by society and scorned. It might make you want to overturn the elite as a result. Then it could just be a third feature causes both. So perhaps the same set of characteristics that we don't see personality factors cause you to want to have unusual hair and to want you to be a kind of maverick right winger. And then there's well, maybe it's a coincidence. I think for the purposes of this podcast, we should pretend that there is a connection and talk about why that why it might exist. Yeah, otherwise we haven't got a podcast. Well, exactly. But I suppose what I'm saying is there is only in my mind a probability that there's a relationship. There isn't. It's not to me a certainty. It's not like we've got. Okay, well, there's here's 200 world leaders, 100 right wingers, all with weird hair, 100 left wingers, all with sensible hair. We don't have that kind of correlation here. So just, you know, warning caveat out there.

I want to push this a little bit in a couple of directions. And although I want to adopt a half kind of analytical approach and a half, let's just, you know, go with what I feel about this. Which is just I was a couple of right wingers and just thinking about their hair. So Jair Bolsonaro recently of Brazil.

Yeah, well, he's allegedly got weird hair and I've looked at his hair and it's not weird. Same with Victor Orban is sometimes put in this basket. He does it from some angles. He looks like he's got a little tiny hair perched on his big head. His hair is pretty normal. Exactly. I don't think.

He wouldn't walk down. If you walked into a room with him there, you wouldn't be thinking you've got odd hair, mate. You wouldn't be thinking that. And you probably wouldn't be thinking that with Bolsonaro. But he's on the edge. But also Putin, who I think we could maybe call right wing, but definitely a populist. And he's got pretty well, he's got not much hair, not much hair. So. So and also the other one, a lady, Cristina Fernandez Kirchner. She's definitely a populist, but it's hard when it's not a man, you know, because.

Well, we'll get on to that because I've looked at hair related research. Yeah. And it's interesting. Yeah. So I guess men and women.

Yeah. I guess my point is, and I think it's not controversial, is there are plenty of right wing populists who don't have weird hair. Yeah. All I can say is kind of instinctively. This is all I've got is my instincts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think that's important.

Is it does feel that the whole hair thing is somehow definitely tied up with the whole populist thing. And it's definitely a part of it, this maverick thing. I think Trump is interesting, let's say, because he had a long career before politics and he's always had pretty weird hair, but it's got weirder.

Yeah, I think we would need to analyse the Trump situation, but that's right. I mean, it's not like, you know, he suddenly decided to change his hair because he wanted to get elected or anything like that. I mean, he's basically had the same hairstyle as in our life. He's just got older.

I think it's a bit of both. Right. Which is that part of their, I mean, they are the kind of person who sort of go their own way. And a part of that is they tend to, you know, their appearance, whether it's hair or other stuff, they'll go with that. Well, yeah, I'm not sure I totally agree with that. And then it kind of feeds on itself and becomes part of their appeal as well. Anyway, these

are my round things. Where do we go with this, Jordan? My feeling is that the hair is kind of all about the theatre and the performance of populism. Eccentric hair is a kind of symbol that represents an independent mindset, I guess. A kind of fearlessness, someone who's afraid to plot their own course, go against convention, that kind of thing. But I think it's also like it's a branding exercise, I think, as well. I think it's actually kind of an application of marketing techniques in politics. It's an element of contrivance. And I think you can even tell it with the Donald Trump thing, right? He came from The Apprentice, where his image was very well crafted and choreographed. And then he kind of took that into politics. And apparently also the Goethe-Wilders example, he's got famously quite platinum blonde hair, but he dyes it because it's got Indonesian heritage. Oh, really? But he does that to kind of achieve a physical appearance that's closer to the people that he wants to represent, which is...

Do we know that that's why he does it? Or is it merely hypothesised?

That's a hypothesis. But I mean, it's an interesting fact that it's not his natural hair colour that he's choosing, but it's sort of giving him his distinctive look. So I do think there's something calculated in it. I don't think that it is just a coincidence. I think there's some sort of advantage to it. Even though it's a small set of people that we're talking about, there does seem to be quite a strong...

Yeah. So I think there's two sort of approaches we could... or two families of theory here. One says that, if you like, there's a kind of deep connection, which is that hair is actually correlated with something important. So it's not just, well, we think of people with that kind of hair in a certain way, but there is actually a connection, like that there's a cause and effect going on that links your actual performance or some deep characteristics of you to your hair. And then there's kind of superficial theories, which are, this is just about, like, perceptions, and the if there is a deep theory, that's true. Does hair correlate with real stuff, right? Does your hair, is there a correlation between your hair and your personality, for example? Well, I'm afraid I don't know, because I looked for studies, and there's a lot of interest in this topic in Korea, and I don't know why. In Korea? Korea. The Koreans are obsessed with hairstyles. Like, all of the studies that I found... They're all in Korea. Are Korean, and I don't know why. Maybe a separate podcast, why are the Koreans so obsessed with hair? But the other thing is, they're all focused on women. I couldn't find any studies that were trying to correlate men's hairstyles with men's personalities. And even the ones that are, so I can talk, we can generalise from the, you know, the studies into women. But there are also things we can draw on looking at, looking at other aspects of appearance, which I'll talk about in a minute. But it's slightly more straightforward, is the connection between hair and your physical health, and so on, right? So hair and personality, disputed, we'll talk about it. But hair, your physical condition, much more straightforward. So the first thing is that your hair is a really useful indicator of your environment, for example. So, like, elements in the environment... Is this going to get into biology, and like, we're getting traces of pollution in your hair and stuff? Your hair is part of your body, so we can't avoid biology in this context. Your hair has about 50 to 100 times higher concentration of, like, elements from the environment than in blood or urine, for example, which is why hair tests are often used for kind of habitual drug use, you know, detecting that. But mainly, sort of, the condition of your hair is a definite sign of, well, first of all, obviously, scalp afflictions. So if you've got, you know, if your hair is falling out, it could indicate a scalp problem. But mainly, of course, age, particularly in men. Greying, so you've got the hair colour, but also how much of it you've got, alopecia. Could you tread carefully around this, please? I can't avoid it, Fraser. You look old due to not having any hair. I can't believe you just said that. Stress, as well. There is a thing called Cushing's syndrome, which is too much cortisol. Cortisol is produced when you're stressed out. That might be associated with grey hair. And then there's also various, you know, thyroid diseases, anaemia, protein deficiency, which can appear in sort of thin hair. Now, that gives us, I think, the beginnings of a theory as to why a politician might be concerned about

their hair. Is there a phrase, he's got a healthy head of hair or something like that? Yeah, right?

Yeah. So, you know, health, whether we like it or not, is something that people look for in leaders. It's just you look at Biden, you look at Trump himself, you know, talking about he's going to be the healthiest president ever elected, which he made that claim. You can understand why you would want your hair to seem, you know, lustrous and full, because it suggests that none of those sort of indicators of frailty are present. Yeah, yeah. I've got an interesting statistic on this.

Okay. So, 40% of men over the age of 40 show signs of male pattern baldness. Okay. However, the US has not voted in a bald president since Eisenhower in the 50s. And the UK hasn't had a hasn't had a bald prime minister since Winston Churchill.

That's shocking. I mean, this is the kind of hidden discrimination that you baldies have to face. And no one's talking about it. Yeah, no one's talking about it.

Yeah. But again, it begs that question of is it that people with hair are megalomaniacs and just want to get into power? Or what it immediately suggests is that people only vote for people with

hair, right? Well, but what it might suggest is that if you're a baldy, you're probably old and knackered, and you haven't got the drive anymore. All you want to do is sit at home with your

slippers on listening to Radio 3. You know, wishing that you had hair.

So, so I think, so this, this, Jordan mentioned that it's very interesting statistic about how people are perceived. So there's been this study by Nancy Blaker and various other people looking at balding leaders in general. So bald or shaved headed men are perceived as older. In fact, having having a shaved head slightly attenuates that. So if you do shave your head, you don't look as old as you would if you would if you were just balding, right? But it still makes you look older than if you had lots of hair. So definitely, like people's perception of your age is heavily hair related. Bald or shaved men, interestingly, are perceived as more masculine. And having a shaved head makes you look more dominant. However, this is the interesting thing that apparently people do not prefer these more masculine, more dominant men as leaders. So, you know, actually, people always prefer hairy men. In times of war, right? Shaved headed people are slightly preferred over just balding guys. But at any time, people still prefer the hairy, hairy headed leader. So, so, I mean, I think what we're saying, well, for you and your political career, but I think, you know, but but I think, you know, you can you can say, well, look, if politician if it's true that politicians are thinking about their hair, and making it big and making it a thing, then they actually they're onto something because it turns out that it works, if you like. So there is a sort of thought that testosterone and hair loss are connected. And I know you probably tell yourself this. Yeah, I try. Yeah. But apparently that's now disputed. Yeah. And it's probably not significant. I asked friend of the podcast, Susie, psychologist Susie, what she thought she suggested that actually, it could be so. So obviously, we know there's a kind of intrinsic connection between hair and youth. But actually, particularly these politicians would have grown up in the 80s, when young, when big hair was in. So, so you're, there's a kind of subconscious association with these leaders with youth and big hair in particular. So and I think, you know, as Jordan says, there's this kind of branding thing as well, that it's not even so much big hair or any other, but weird hair definitely can be part of your brand. I think Boris Johnson is a big part of him. Yeah, definitely. But but anyway, so so I think that's just a quick whistle stop tour through sort of theories of the connection between hair and, I guess, trying to make it into something real, like actually, it makes sense. We like young leaders, young leaders are, you know, going to be hairier, ergo, having more hair makes you more electable. Yeah, I think that, you know, that's true. But anyway, I think we can, but we haven't touched on signalling yet. But I think we

will need to cover that. So look, a couple of things. Who knows where this is going to take us. The first thing is, in case you're worried about me feeling downcast, I've got four words for you. The first one is Yul Brynner. That's the first two of it. Right. The second two is, you know, the deal winner is Sean Connery, you know? Yeah. So I don't feel bad about all this, you know, and I think there's definitely a link there, you know, with masculinity and baldness.

And I think if nothing else, you could... Well, look, I mean, if you're bald, you're overwhelmingly likely to be a man. Exactly. If you're hairy, you know, you could be either a man or a woman. Yeah, because... So right away there, there's a thing. Really, only men could be sort of naturally bald. You know, obviously, you can have a... The balder you are, the more manlier you are.

...alopecia, but apart from that, we can all agree on that. Yeah. Yeah. That's the first thing. Maybe we can pick that up. And the second thing is, I don't... What are we adding to this at the moment? I do feel that when some of the stuff you set out earlier, Nick, is really digging into this correlation and, you know, looking at the data... Yeah, is there a real connection between

your, like, your characteristics and your hair? And I think in some respect there is, right? Yes. But I think we haven't really talked in detail about the signalling aspect of this. And I think this is... So, you know, we just... As a refresher, I know we talk about signalling all the time, but a signal is something which isn't the thing you're interested in, but it's a thing that is easier for one type of person to do than another, right? So, you know, your... So the thought here is that it's... Like, having weird hair is going to be, in some sense, easier for one kind of person, let's say a populist or some other kind of good leader, to have than, you know, than someone who doesn't have those characteristics. So let me give you an example. Do you remember we did a podcast about shoes? We did. We did a podcast about how your shoes actually turn out to be extremely good indicators of your personality. And one of the interesting things that came out of that was really, like, neat, well-polished shoes are strongly associated with having a high need for societal approval, right? So the thought here is that that is... The reason that that works as a signal is that it's actually quite... It's hard for people who really care about being approved of to have scruffy shoes, because they're worried that someone might look at them and go, oh, look at your scruffy shoes, right? So it's actually hard for them, you know, psychologically, to go round with messy shoes. Having neat shoes, well, no one's going to disapprove of you for having neat shoes. People will disapprove of you if you have scruffy shoes, but no one's going to disapprove of you. So the thought is that that's a good signal of caring, of sort of caring about what people think of you. Or rather, if you like, scruffy shoes are a good signal of not caring. And I think this is close to where we are with the hair thing. And so if you look at who famously has messy hair, artists, people like Andy Warhol and conductors, Simon Rattle and, you know, great musicians famously have crazy hair, right? If you want to depict a genius of some sort, you're going to give them crazy hair. Why? Because they don't care what you think. They don't need to. They care about that. They only care about the art. They're geniuses at that. Right. And like rejection of societal norms and saying, you know, just, and again, ideally, this isn't even conscious, right? It's not like they go, well, I'm a genius, so I ought to have scruffy hair. That's all part of it. They just don't care. They haven't got time to go to the bloody hairdressers, because they're proving, you know, the theory of relativity or whatever. So I think, you know, that is definitely going on with some of these crazy hair people, I think. The idea is, look, I don't, and why does that, why might that correlate with populism? Well, I think because you're saying this society, the elite has told me that I need to have my hair in a certain way. Well, bollocks to that. Here's my hair. I'm what I am. And I'm, you know, I stand here before you as a crazy haired man. And that is a symbol of your rejection of those societal norms.

And I think that ties in nicely to the question we posed at the beginning, as to what extent is this, you know, thought through or not contrived. And politicians famously like to, I don't know, be popular, let's say, often. Well, yes. Certainly the populists do. And, you know, I think you hit upon it there. The whole point is that it's done without thought. It's done without affectation.

Well, in order for it to be a successful signal, it has to be kind of easier to have scruffy hair or weird hair. And one can't help but feel with these politicians, they might have latched onto that. Right. But I don't think, and now I want to just pull the rug under all of that, because actually, look, Donald Trump, as we've said, has had that hair for his entire life. And Boris Johnson also, when he had no thoughts on politics, when he was a journalist, he had that hair.

Well, but famously, there have been many instances where people have talked about him being all sorts of smart and about to go on stage or about to go into public, and he tussles it himself. So, you know.

So, but I think, I actually think the trouble is there isn't a grand unified theory, which puts Trump and Johnson into the same bracket. Because I think there's two separate things going on here. With Donald Trump, I think, well, he's probably a narcissist, right? I think most people agree that. I think with him, it really is a kind of almost delusional idea that he's still young and he has, you know, beautiful, lustrous hair. And I think if you said to Donald Trump, you've got weird hair, I think he would be hurt by that. So, I don't think you should do that. That would be mean. But I don't, I suspect Donald Trump doesn't think. He does laugh about his own hair though. Right. I mean, it would be very difficult to avoid the recognition. But I don't think what's going on with Trump is an attempt to have weird hair. I think it's almost the opposite. And it's interesting with Trump, he does have a need, I think, for approval. My sense is that he perceives himself as kind of rejected by elite society because he is. And but I think he deep down, there's a kind of desire to be accepted. I think with Boris Johnson, you've got a very different phenomenon, which is a classic sort of English upper class thing of signalling your lack of need for acceptance. Well, yes, it's a classic Toff thing of being scruffy in a way that couldn't be. Like, Toffs often will be scruffy, but not looking, they wouldn't, you wouldn't confuse them with a patron of a Wetherspoons, for example. I mean, their shirt's going to be untucked, but it'll be a very nice tailored shirt. So and I think Boris Johnson, he's unmistakably a Toff. And his having scruffy hair is a way of saying, I don't need, I don't need you to approve of me.

Yeah, I'm who I am. Just briefly, I want to bring in Jordan, but also intersects with American culture and what men are like and what middle aged men, and I'm sure like wigs are probably more prevalent in there and and dying your hair. And that's more of a thing in the US, especially, you know, as men get older to preserve and you can talk about youth, maybe. But anyway, Jordan, we need to round this out.

Yeah, I just came across an interesting sort of concept that is related. It's called mirroring. Yeah, it's basically a thing where the leader tries to mirror the people that he is trying to get votes from, essentially. And so like in the context of like Donald Trump, it'd be like he's got this hair because he's trying to appeal to people that also might have strange.

The weird hair vote.

That massive weird hair vote. But he's not just like a traditional, you know, looking person. He's kind of representing minorities or diverse populations, people on the fringes, peripheral kind of people. Underrepresented.

But curiously, he himself doesn't have a fringe.

No, no. And I think maybe there is something of that going on. I mean, like it's obviously like more recognisable to have a distinctive look than just to look the same as everyone else. And populists generally try to appeal to interesting cross sections of society. Like they're not looking, you know, like they kind of go outside. They don't want to be the grey man. Yeah, yeah.

One thing we haven't touched on, I don't think it's worth exploring because I think my conclusion here is that this isn't really a thing. What we're talking about is there's been some politicians with weird hair recently. But what we haven't done is talk about, you know, why might, let's say, sort of left wingers or establishment people, why might they have sensible hair? I can't see any reason why lefties should have sensible hair. Like if anything, they should also have weird hair. Unless they want to look sensible. Will be electable. Yeah, yeah. So look, I think my conclusion after all of this is we might just be linking together a bunch of unrelated phenomena. But I mean, it's interesting all the same, I think to analyse those individual cases is interesting. But I think in all honesty, there isn't. This is not a thing.

Yeah. It's a shame, isn't it? Yeah. Which is relieving in a way, because imagine one of the people I know has got very extravagant hair is Peter Coghill.

Oh, he's a marvellous hair.

And we'd have to keep an eye on him to see if he's going to try and take over. Well, who knows what he might want to take over and, you know, who he's, you know, would appeal to. Got a question? Yeah. Take it away from populists for a moment. Extravagant hair, right? If we think back through history or even current times, I'd be, who would you like to be? If you could be anyone in history or in literature or, you know. His hair. Yeah, wait, wait, wait. Who's got an extravagant appearance? Ideally, because I don't want to be silly with this, you know. So ideally with hair, because I know who I'd like to be and I can jump straight in there with it, right? Elvis Presley.

Oh, yeah. Very distinctive hair.

Amazing hair.

That would be a pompadour, I think. Is that what it's called? I think so. Well, quite a classic kind of quiff, straight, yeah.

Yeah. What I like about him, and there are many things, OK, is, well, first of all, he's dyed, but he got away with it. You know, I think it fits him. Imagine Elvis with brown hair, which he, when you see earlier photos of him, that's what he's got. It doesn't, no, that doesn't work. It's got to have that shiny raven look to it. And when it all gets messed up, when he's on stage and he's dancing around, it still looks amazing. And those incredible sideburns. And also an incredibly handsome man, I think. Oh, yeah.

I don't think many people would disagree.

Yeah, possessed of great charisma. I want to be Elvis.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a tough one to beat, really. If you could be anyone, Elvis wouldn't be a bad, Elvis for a day.

Beautiful eyes. I need to stop on that. But I mean, I'm pretty obsessed with him.

Yeah, no, he's pretty awesome.

But maybe I asked that, and God forbid that I would ever do this. Maybe I only asked that question because I wanted to give the answer. But do you want to answer that question in a non-Elvis way?

Well, I think my natural inclination is to go down the music route because I think musicians often famously have weird hair. Beethoven is a good example of, I mean, he's got, you know, this kind of wild gray locks. And I think that, you know, if we had longer, we could talk about the connection of romanticism to having weird hair. But I think Beethoven, the unruliness of Beethoven's hair tracked his progression from classicism to romanticism. And I think that idea that your appearance should express something deep about your personality is a very romantic idea. You know, the idea that emotions are more important and we shouldn't care about how society says your hair should look. But so I think, you know, Beethoven around, you know, at the end, late Beethoven, you know, the time of his sort of late string quartets, you know, inventing music that really is 100 years ahead of its time. And with that beautiful sort of gray shock of hair, I'd go Beethoven, I think. So, yeah.

I'm having a lovely time right here, right now. Hallucinating, as it were. And I'm imagining here, me here with my Elvis bouffant with Barnet and with you with your Beethoven. Oh, imagine if Beethoven and Elvis collaborated. That would just be so amazing. But I'm imagining our bodies with that on there. And I'm looking forward to see who comes to the party next. Yes, who is it? It's a knock at the door. Who is it? Yeah.

I think of footballers because they always have quite good choice. No good choice. Is it Gascoigne who had that hair? David Beckham had a lot of different hairstyles than that one, that Ronaldo one where he had.

Yeah, that weird at the front sort of thing in the in the 94 World Cup. At 98. But I'm going to have to limit you to one.

Yeah, that Ronaldo one, I think is pretty interesting. So this is the one where he's got just a tuft of hair at the front. It's like a little wedge shaped bunny. It's just such an eccentric hairstyle. I don't think anyone would ever be able to pull that off.

I think me and Nick would be looking at you going, who invited him? That guy's got weird hair. What's that all about? Totally. Yeah. All right. Okay. Yeah.

So I mean, we're talking about, you know, this incredible chord progression in the B section, and he's just doing keepy upy in the corner. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No problem with that. Yeah. All right. Let's stop there. Thanks, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. I've been here with Nick Hare and Jordan Fermanis of Aleph. Until next time. Goodbye.