The old adage that ‘violence is never the answer’ was put to the test when the actor Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock at this year's Oscars ceremony. Are there instances where violence is acceptable? And if so, how much violence is proportional?

In this week’s podcast, we unpack the infamous Oscars slap and apply an analytical lens to the concept of violence more broadly. We discuss the narrow legal conditions that apply to violence, the historical use of violence in Hollywood films and the presence of violence in early human history. During our discussion we also present the continuum of force, the execution paradox and a game theory approach to the use of violence, as well as the surprising correlation between lead and the decline of violent behaviour in society.

• Will Smith slaps Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars
• Reasonable Force Law and Legal Definition
• Lead–crime hypothesis

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. 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 Chris Wragg, Nick Hare and Jordan Fermanis of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing whether it's ever okay to slap a comedian. Jordan, you're the obvious person to come to with this, well known for slapping comedians all the

time. Happy Fermanis they call him. Lead us in. Yeah so I think most listeners would probably be aware of the incident that took place at this year's Oscars ceremony where Will Smith didn't take lightly to a joke that was made about his wife by the comedian Chris Rock. Who was the presenter of the event. And he made a joke about Will Smith's wife's hair style. Lack of hair I suppose you would say due to a medical condition and he walked up onto the stage and slapped him. Yes. In full view of the audience and the camera and the world really. And yeah I think we're using that sort of incident to ask the question whether it's acceptable to use physical violence against particularly comedians I suppose.

Well do we? Is it specifically in relation to comedians or broader?

I think it's the broader thing but obviously there's also the side issue of taking offence to jokes I suppose to the extent to which. But primarily yes I think we're concerned with is it ever acceptable to use violence. Okay Jordan kick us off.

Well I think obviously the pacifist argument probably is the prevailing one.

Before you go on Jordan sorry to interrupt. I'm always interrupting you guys but we need to be careful with this one okay which is I remember when we discussed this in our prep talk is you know we've got to think about what we're adding here right because this is an age old thing right is violence ever acceptable. So let's bear that in mind when we're chatting okay. And with that in

mind Jordan yeah where were you what were you saying? What I was saying was I think the pacifist argument that violence is never acceptable is probably what most people would agree on. I think maybe there are certain circumstances where it is like self-defense for example would probably be one that most people would agree maybe it's okay to use violence. Just cause. But I think it depends the context that the violence takes place. You know I think there is certain you know political violence for example revolutions look very different to interpersonal violence one person you know hitting another person for example. So I think it's I don't think you can apply maybe like a blanket sort of violence is acceptable or not sort of lens to this.

I mean I think John's sort of picked up on a couple of things there that there's the there's both the circumstances in which the violence occurs like there's two axes to this right there's you know is violence permissible yes or no but then there's also like violence itself isn't binary right it's not like like a slap across the face is not the same as invading Ukraine right they are two things on a very different scale. So you've got to you know is the question no never in which case when does violence actually start. But if the question is yes sometimes there's also a second question which is how much violence to apply at that at that point what's what's proportionate. So I think that's yeah that's quite a sort of yeah thinking about the the way is that Jordan set it up there is going to help us structure

the question. I just want to cover off the legal side of it because I don't think it's not actually it's you might think well there must be a thing a law that says here's here's what you're allowed to here's a list of things that you can use force for and here's and everything else you can't. As far as I can tell and I'm not a lawyer right but as far as I can tell there's really only one thing you can use violence to do and there's true civilians and police. So is it what is it to

what's the technical term when you shove someone in prison I mean is it that yeah so it's to

prevent a crime and by extension to help in the arrest of offenders and suspected offenders. That's it and so self-defense isn't a special thing separate to that but if someone's going to murder you if you defend yourself you're preventing them committing a crime so you're allowed to use force to do that. So actually it's quite a narrow sort of well superficially quite a narrow range of circumstances are you preventing a crime but I think actually it covers a very broad range of circumstances some of which are really obvious and others of which might be you know you have to kind of it'd be quite hard big gray area. So for example like resisting an invasion actually could be applied the same thing could be applied you could say well we're helping prevent that this international crime of aggression. If you're resisting a government which you think is acting in a way that is criminal you know and you start an insurgency and commit a terrorist act which you think is I mean again that you know are you you could see how that would be justified in terms of an argument that you're preventing this government from being able to carry on its criminal activities and likewise. So I think I suppose the narrow the very narrow sort of concept of you you're allowed to to use violence to prevent other crimes actually could cover a wide range of

circumstances. This all feels quite airy at the moment it all feels quite intangible. Let's ask a couple of questions. First of all I think it is a good idea actually if we talk about that incident okay and maybe comedians let's focus on that that will help frame these wider discussions but also have you ever been a perpetrator of violence yourself? When I say perpetrator it sounds like

a bad thing. Well it might be a bad thing. Chris's case it probably was. Yeah yeah. I don't think

the victim's yet recovered psychologically or physically. So I mean what I think is quite interesting and I'll come on to answer your your questions in in a minute but what I think's quite interesting is that this occurs against a backdrop where violence is unlike really shocking to us because it's so rare right so when Chris when Will Smith walks up on stage and hits somebody in in anger will like the whole world is utterly shocked by this event right whereas of course in other eras you know hitting people would have been much less shocking so I think we're in an unbelievably non-violent world generally at the moment so I think that's the context and I think then if you look at the idea of what actually happened there I would say the balance of opinion is that he was wrong to hit him he was right to be offended but he was wrong to use violence right which is again the prevailing um sort of belief in in our society that you know all you're indoctrinating to school you know violence is never the the right the right thing to do you know always take up your complaint through some other you know means and so I think Chris Rock was judged to have been wrong to make the joke that he did about somebody because of a etc etc um but the right answer yeah Will Smith was wronger exactly um and the right answer was not to to hit him but would have been to verbally address it it's an incredibly mild joke though

I mean I'm not uh I don't know if we should we don't really want to get drawn into talking he's claimed that he didn't know that Will Smith's wife but there's all yeah well that might be true but I mean it also it's not even like it was offensive it wasn't it wasn't like he was taking the mickey out it was also a crap joke yeah it was it was a he committed a crime against comedy but he it was really like you know but she's she's she's kind of got no hair uh reference to um g.i. jane like it's not like it's not one of my jokes but it's not like joking when I say it's not like the character of g.i. jane is is a is a a bad character to compare someone to even it's like uh it's it's I don't so I mean just for the record I'm not but let's let's say so let's

take this as a bit of a thought experiment is there anything Chris Rock could have said on that stage that would have warranted him let's just let's say that he was just having a go at

her he just said oh you uh you yeah you're really ugly and you smell or something but even and that

was it he wasn't trying to create a joke yeah but I'm just saying you know get get aside from what is he said you know is there anything that somebody can say that warrants physical violence against them and that's I think at the heart of the debate whether he's right to be offended whether it's his job or his wife's job to defend themselves whatever that's all an aside and and maybe

actually because thinking some examples of things he might have said either about uh Will Smith's wife or anyone else or anything in general actually the the the worst the more the most more horrible thing he would have said I think would arguably make it less like uh necessary for anyone to respond with violence because it would have been so overtly awfully terrible yeah that we can just condemn it naturally without sort of thinking um yeah with I don't know I'm

rambling well but let's say that he was just being really offended I mean someone that someone gets up on stage and starts being really needlessly offensive for example or shouting you know uh shouting hate slogans or something um you know obviously what you would want to do is remove that person from step from the stage but you if they didn't want to go you would have to use physical force to make them go you'd have to drag them off so they would they would have that you there's no way of compelling someone to do something other than ultimately with the threat of physical force which is at one end of the continuum but the point is that you know it's like you pay your taxes ultimately with the threat of physical force like the threat of physical force underlies every norm that we have because as soon as someone starts violating a norm you want them to stop but what if they don't what if you ask them nicely and they don't so I was thinking about this with I just think all norms all norms ultimately boil down to the

threat of violence yeah yeah nice um we still I still actually I think we should still talk about comedians before yeah you might not want to self-incriminate but violence have ever committed an act of violence yes yes okay all right well he doesn't he doesn't he's killed a man okay uh I have um actually I'm ashamed to say I've smacked my children only my sons weirdly not my daughter which is now illegal which is now well is it isn't there's a debate around this at the moment but but actually it is a truism and then I found this to be the case it was pointless because I just ended up smacking them more because they it didn't work and and I just realized the absurdity and and how shameful it was and actually more than anything else um I I made sure to do it before I felt that they could form memories um and I was worried that they would form memories of me smacking them trauma is often an early memory yeah and so I'm I hope you know it's not I mean don't get me wrong I wasn't bad but um but yeah no I'm ashamed to say it but I did but I think that's probably it um anyone else well I've I I'm a very non-violent

person I've hardly ever in my life laid a finger on anyone yeah I never that never never uh hit my kids or any of my family as far as I can recall um might have done when I was uh three or something but um the one time I do remember uh and I still think I was justified here is when I punched Andrew Hayward on the arm who's Andrew Hayward he was a kid at school oh okay he said I didn't know how to spell Haringey uh well that's the whole old Haringey debate right it's yeah yeah I mean you can talk about justifications for violence but this has got to be up there yeah he I live in I lived in Haringey I did then and I do now and if anyone can spell Haringey he's already getting a little bit yeah yeah are you sure you got it right though how'd you spell it Nick well that's the beauty of it there's a difference between Haringey the village and Haringey the county or the borough um Haringey the borough is h-a-r-i-n-g-e-y Haringey the the area is h-a-r-r-i-n-g-a or e-y it's up to you no it's not it's the other way around the so good they named it twice so uh he I was saying that I lived in not the area Haringey actually at the time but the borough of Haringey and and he said no Haringey's got two r's and to make matters worse Mr. Easingwood the physics teacher joined in but saying yes that's how you spell Haringey with two r's taking Andrew Hayward's side well I couldn't very well punch him but when his back was turned I punched Andrew Hayward on the arm and made him cry that's about the only time I've ever used violence but as you can probably tell I was very heavily provoked yeah something slightly depressing about that story the good thing about it was that well I don't think you learned how to spell I'm not coming out of this smelling like roses but the class bully came up to me afterwards shook me by the hand and said you made Andrew cry good one regardless he didn't he couldn't spell anything no exactly I but violence pays well I'll tell you this I'm going to apologize to Andrew if he's out there um but you know I was right about how to spell that's not really an apology I'm just saying I was right about the Haringey thing yeah I'm not justifying I am

justifying my actions yeah yeah but what's nice is that you didn't like knife him or anything so I mean maybe it's it's okay to defend just certain levels of violence so can I just talk about the use of force continuum well before you do I just want to hear if Jordan's been violent towards

anyone oh yeah he looks like the type on the sporting field for sure I've been involved

unfairly kind of oh yeah so yeah yeah what sport are we talking about like croquet

tiddlywinks football as well some you know but I yeah again I mean and that happens in sport I mean you could sort of make an argument that that's one and it's almost kind of acceptable yeah where violence is not really it's viewed differently than than it is in other domains

yeah yeah I mean I think the other thing to sort of the sporting environment or um certain types of environment bring out is what is the natural aggression so there's there's there's violence that's not been physically provoked and then there's physically provoked violence which feels like a very different thing if somebody hits you then there's something very visceral about that and and emotive that um that and sorry I know I do go on about this and I make

out like I'm some big boxer guy which I'm clearly not um but when you get hit it's actually quite an emotional experience yeah and and one of two things happens right you either want to run the other way or you want to hit them back but you and depending on how tired or not you are I mean or how hard you were hit but um it definitely it's very personal and you just want to hit them

right back you get angry um yeah I've been on the wrong end of of I mean in the grand scheme of things I've I've absorbed far more blows than I've ever given out you don't say you don't so in the grand scheme of things I'm I'm a net taker when it comes to violence rather than a net giver yeah um yeah so the continuum of force which is apparently a thing that a lot of police forces use use uh to kind of think about what appropriate type of escalation is and I suppose I'm also partly thinking of the escalation in the whole Haringey situation but that you start out with presence so you'd be you'd be there and that is sometimes enough well if you're a policeman and you're there that's sometimes enough to calm things down then you issue verbal commands and at that point you use soft control which apparently is type a type of force that won't cause any soft tissue damage that would be restraining someone or holding their arm or something and then you get moved to the hard control which is kicks and punches and and stuns and that sort of thing and at that and then above that you've got the use of weapons so that's uh you know sticks and mace and dogs and stuff and eventually you progress to lethal force um so I think I did go through that uh before I got to hard control but stop before lethal force I didn't go as far as lethal force although I was in a physics lab so I could have I could have you know probably and he would have deserved it for yeah yeah but I but I certainly the verbal commands were there first but that's that's that's the use of force continuum but there's also quite an interesting model of conflict escalation which I'm not necessarily signing up to but it's by this guy called Friedrich Glasl and um I quite like the overarching model I think it's quite interesting which says you go in any kind of conflict from win-win where where there is a way of resolution where you're both okay and you both gain to a situation of win-lose where one of you is going to win and the other one's going to lose and if it then extends further you can end up in lose-lose when when neither side is going to win and um so the win-win bit is about sort of tension and debate and and uh talking things out essentially um and taking actions but not harmful actions uh win-lose is when you start to form up into coalitions threaten people uh it's turned into a kind of right we're after this thing and you're after the opposite of that thing and then lose-lose is the actual physical destruction so that would be when you're in the war situation and culminating with you know where you both go down destroy everything because you deny that both of you would rather destroy what you're fighting for than let the other side have it and I yeah well I mean I guess you know by the time you're in a real world war you're already in that kind of area but uh yes so there we are two kind of interesting sliding scales which we can

use to think about these things um okay great I feel that we are adding something here um we're

yeah some of the way through let's let's yeah well I was just going to say that the the um clearly right like we can talk about whether violence is right or not but the fact is it exists right and but it's love it or hate it it's here to stay and it is it is fundamentally human right evolved human behavior violence right and if you look at animals but not unique to us not unique to us but it is but but actually if you look at there are two there um you know there've been studies of us compared to other primates right and they they can separate violence into uh proactive violence and reactive violence right and proactive violence that sounds like the good one doesn't it but it's not proactive violence is where you you basically go out of you you you aren't under threat but you commit violence right like someone you just you just speak with someone about spelling and then exactly you just go in there um reactive violence is when you are attacked and you defend yourself with violence you know um and apparently humans um uh compared to other primates exert more proactive uh violence whereas other primates are exert more reactive um violence and so why well potentially because we're better able to look forward so because we're we're sort of more strategic um and and our thinking is more abstract we can see the advantages of um perpetrating violence to gain something that isn't immediately in our face you know um but if you if you look back this there's um there was a find uh in spain um somewhere in archaea an archaeological find or paleontology paleontological um of a skull cranium 17 right and this is this is famous and this is um from the mid um uh the mid pleistocene uh face so so in the in the sort of low hundreds of thousands of of years old this um so that could be an early so it is an early one well it's it's it's a hominid i don't know exactly but it's very close very you know um very close relation to us and it's um it's considered to be the the first um evidence of of sort of um uh hominid um uh face-to-face interpersonal violence as they call it lethal interpersonal violence and um what they they they've done this incredible um forensic study of uh this skull and looked at all the different um potential things but effectively the key the key um indicator that this was uh force was that um it's been struck by the same object on the skull multiply if it was a fall it it would be different kinds of things in different places and so on and um anyway they're pretty sure this was um uh face-to-face violence and and you know um repeated deliberately to kill the the other person so so it's right it's right back there in our history and if you look at the you know conflict data we we you know there is less war going on and generally you know sort of um you know we've moved out of that Hobbesian state of nature where people are hitting each other with you know bone fragments on the on the head now we're hitting each other with nasty comments on twitter exactly um or slapping comedians around the face but but um but so there is something fundamentally human about it but we are moving away from it and

as you say it was shocking event right shocking event i would just like to pick up on chris's point um because i i was i saw that you could even apply a game theory game theory to physical violence because as chris was sort of saying it is a winning strategy in a way like it's um the reason i think we resort to it is because it can increase our chance of winning in a certain scenario um and that's why it's something that kind of is part of human nature in a way it's it's it's it's increasing our odds of getting what we want so we use it um in certain situations yeah

and we signal around it right and we threaten and and that kind of thing well that's that's so in

the the this whole long-term decline of violence one of the so the which i guess the stephen pinker book better angels of our nature is a certain attempt to document that um his argument is a game theory one and he he says the the the point is that when society is improved it's ultimately because we improve our ability to coordinate around enforcing non-violence so it's the fact that we can threaten you with a worse punishment if you commit violence than if you don't you know whatever you might hope to gain by you know invading someone's house and killing them all and stealing their um food or whatever whatever you might hope to gain is not going to be as good as the it's worth the punishment that will meet out to you as a society and that has kept everyone being less and less violent over time but just in case people aren't aware there's been a really significant decline in violence i mean obviously over the long term i mean it's orders of magnitude less violence you know people i think in uh you know pre-civilized um or yeah pre kind of pre-urban societies something like one in ten people were killed violently now it's about one in a hundred thousand in the uk you know so but but just since the 19th yeah yeah i was just going

to say um yeah and there's this thing called the um the execution paradox which is um that uh basically in the in the late pleistocene period so that you know when we were moving towards more civilized societies and and groups and so on um one of the things that brought violence down in society was capital punishment which in itself is is violence so it's like nick was saying the threat of something is like a nuclear terror yeah so so so you reduce violence by using violence but ultimately the threat of violence is what reduces the violence so but but just in so in the last

25 years there's been a really significant decline in violent crime in in the us and the uk um which some explanations are you know legal ones like there's more police more imprisonment more interesting ones are things to do with the decline of the crackhead epidemic um abortion famously the legalized abortion means that people are more likely to but also lead the one of the reasons why i think this has been observed less lead around yeah because of the decline the the abolition of lead um of lead yes yes so and i thought that's uh obviously your first instinct is that's a crazy uh theory but actually it's really well borne out by the evidence and and and in fact there's a really good uh you know the the the um connection between lead exposure and violent behavior has been noted for hundreds of years so actually you know interesting is it a

smack that's cludo oh cludo yeah this is why you this is why people don't want to play you a

um i'm trying to think when i last saw a pub fight um yeah i know so i've been seeing a horrible when i was at university

anyway um i've got i've got i just wanted to i wanted to move the discussion on a little bit

perhaps towards as towards the conclusion yes indeed and in fact you've anticipated that nicely

because um we're towards the end we need to so one of the things that um you know will smith apparently he's an actor it says here um one of the things there's a lot more violence in films than there is in real life way more like you can you can watch an average film and you'll see more violence you'll probably see in the rest of your life um i i was intrigued i thought well how often do like heroes solve problems loads more sex by the way because i you know anyway keep going yeah more more sex in the average film than you probably uh but the the uh yeah so how often do is it true that heroes use violence a lot because we always imagine well heroes always getting up and punching people in the face because they were insulted their woman or whatever yeah in a kind of who is a hero right well i but actually yeah it's not true i had a look at um who gets who gets killed and how you mean in films or yeah i just looked at a few because there's no data set on this there's data sets on like numbers of deaths on screen but they're not very easy to use if the hero's killing lots of people yeah so i just took a few case studies yeah indiana jones baddies at the end of arc of uh raiders of the lost ark all get killed by by the arc of the covenant he shoots he shoots the guys with the guy with the scimitar though doesn't that's true he kills and he wouldn't even call him a baddie really but but but then molar ram falls off the rope bridge and gets eaten by crocodiles donovan gets killed by drinking from the false grail and elsa gets killed by greed because she can't leave the grail alone she falls down a hole um in star wars luke does kill everyone on the death star including moff tarkin but actually who's moff tarkin he's the he's he's the guy who's peter cushing yeah he's peter cushing but he's the guy who's sort of he's actually look the darth vader's boss in the in the first one but anyway darth vader and the emperor kill each other i hadn't even thought about that but luke doesn't kill either of them they actually kill each other yeah yeah the the uh vader picks up the emperor and throws him down that crevice by the way there'll be a lot of people falling down things i'll just warn you um and and of course the lightning crackly lightning that comes out of his hands is what kills darth vader in the end so then uh you know who does kill a lot of people james bond but but he usually doesn't just he doesn't just shoot them or punch them to death normally something hilarious happens so dr no boils to death in in a cooling vat goldfinger gets sucked out of a plane uh mr big explodes after james bond forces him to eat a gas pellet um a lot of this happened in the 70s yeah exactly uh zorin falls from the golden gate bridge um and uh whittaker in the living daylights he gets killed by a falling bust of wellington triggered by a bomb ignited by james bond and then finally the probably they don't kill people like they used to the least least violent uh guy is superman which i fine because that's what you expect from superman um lex luther is simply arrested at the end of superman in superman 2 um he uh everyone falls down crevices so after depriving uh zod of his powers superman um tells him to kneel down if you remember and then throws him into a crevice non then tries i think he tries to fly or something and falls into another crevice and then lewis lane knocks ursa into yet another crevice so so um yeah yeah yeah quite crevicey but the point is that basically if you're a villain watch out for crevices because that's what gets you in the films it's not usually superman yeah yeah it's not usually because a baddie comes and and uh sorry the goodie comes and just shoots you or something it's normally because you're going to fall down a crevice that's because we can't ascribe we've

obviously eschewed violence to such an extent that it's like the morally upstanding superman can't can't kill someone but we need them to die so right so you know let's blame the crevice yeah

it's true but that's true that is definitely why that happens like they because they don't just get arrested yeah well look you know obviously lex luther did and beware the man who um builds

a crevice in his garden you know quite right too yeah um okay that was nice yeah but those were i mean i i guess from your sample there i mean very scientifically chosen um i mean they were kind of good heroes right because um if you and they and they are sort of the popular well-known ones so fair enough um but then you think of here is like is it john wicks um is that what i think wick i'm thinking of the building supply of simon wicks from east enders wixie and every loser wins yeah yeah yeah um but um he kills an awful lot of people you know john wick or whatever and he kills them all in the same bloody way which he trips them over with his legs and then shoots him in the head but when that happens about the 200th time in the film you've kind of

you know you've seen that who's that chap who's in stephen seagal yeah he seems to kill everyone by picking them up and then breaking their spine over his knee i think he throws knives at people

as well maybe he does he's definitely quite violent um we we we somehow need to to bring

this to some sort of conclusion so so i think we've established that that um violence doesn't happen uh and but i don't think we've really answered the question whether or not that violence doesn't happen it doesn't happen as much it doesn't happen as much as it used to yeah yeah so it's on a on a general scale thinking about so we've obviously made a decision that it's not good for you well the question is why why isn't it you know why why isn't violence the right thing for society to endorse right and and you know there are lots of reasons for this but obviously one of them is the cost of violence right so like um you know on a much higher level uh i believe the uk trident um program costs us something like nine thousand pounds a minute um so not each not each no no no otherwise it wouldn't be a very constant outseed deterrent um but yeah um so the point is like violence begets violence right that's the the the whole thing and if if we've got an army then they've they've got an army and that costs that costs you know the violence the cost of protecting yourself from other people's violence is usually um not you know not something you want to um continue to to bear so it's in all our interests to i guess not be um not be not be violent and then i suspect we probably turn that into morality um you know in in some way to sort of uh enforce that yeah um yeah it's like you

know the the uh it's actually don't know when i don't think this has a definite author but you often see it ascribed to gandhi or to martin luther king but an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind yeah but they didn't take into account the fact that two eyes for one eye leaves the other guy twice as blind as you and unable to find yeah then he can't come and get it so exactly as in

kill bill uh second part where poor daryl no dan what's her name the the fishy woman mermaid i haven't seen kill bill too it's good it's good but they're very violent films they are violent yeah um yeah she's only got one eye but she gets her eye plucked out um and can't fight okay uh i enjoyed well yeah it's not like i like violence but you know i did enjoy that that was good um

we haven't committed any violence we're doing this unusually actually should we go for it

nor encouraged any no we have not well i put them up you put them up put them up um i know i i i think it's a shame i think we could have gotten into the whole comedian thing a bit more i think just as it was interesting in the immediate aftermath of the event with will smith the um so commentators were not quite sure which way this was going to fly because some people were still saying oh will smith he wasn't he was not immediately condemned no i think most people

thought it was pre-rehearsed comedy antics well maybe in the immediate no one knew what was going on but it was like gradually dawned on people it's like that awkward moment in when when you discover that someone is has massively overstepped the mark socially and everyone's looking around thinking uh do they know what's going on here you know so that was in the immediate immediate moment i'm talking about the other yeah they gave him an oscar yeah i gave him an oscar didn't he won an oscar later yeah he did whereas you might have thought they said no we don't give off oscars to slappers well just leave that one in the air there um no but also i remember

there's a great comment from rebel wilson the next morning um and she said yeah it's a difficult time for comedians at the moment um because i think she was making the point that and actually there has been a rise in violence against comedians apparently um since the pandemic has more or less ceased and people are back um at live things um they don't know how to behave they've forgotten

that you're not meant to get up on stage and hit people yeah yeah yeah um but i think we our conclusion is don't yeah don't yeah yeah unless you know unless they make claims about how to

spell harringgate in which case they're totally justified right let's stop there um thank you as always for listening to the cognitive engineering podcast i'm fraser mcgrew we've been here with chris wragg and nick here and jordan fermanis of aleph insights until next time goodbye