Meghan Markle criticises Jordan Peterson in latest Archetypes podcast - and discusses how the label 'crazy' is used to 'diminish women'

Meghan Markle's latest podcast episode of Archetypes, released on Tuesday morning, takes aim at Jordan Peterson and TV comedies Scrubs and How I Met Your Mother, as the US actress is joined by Deepika Padukone, Jenny Slate and Constance Wu for what is described as a 'vulnerable conversation'.

The Spotify series begins with the Duchess of Sussex issuing a 'trigger warning' advising listeners to 'tune out' if they find the content 'too heavy' before discussing the times she has been labelled 'crazy' and 'hysterical'.

The host continues: 'Raise your hand if you've ever been called crazy or hysterical or what about nuts? Insane out of your mind, completely irrational, okay? You get the point.

'Now, if we were all in the same room and could see each other, I think it would be pretty easy to see. Just how many of us have our hands up? By the way, me too.

'And it's no wonder when you consider just how prevalent these labels are in our culture.'

Then, a series of quotes are played , including one from American sitcom How I Met Your Mother in which the character Barney says: 'If she's this crazy, she has to be this hot.'

This is followed by the conservative philosopher Jordan Peterson, who says, 'I don't think that men can control crazy women'.

The third segment comes from another American sitcom, Scrubs, in which the fictional female doctor Elliot comments: 'I can't take it, Carla! I cannot hide the crazy a minute longer! I'm just this big mountain of coocoo is about to erupt and spew molten crazy, all over him and he's gonna die like this.'

At one point, Meghan mentions how she 'didn't know' the Greek origin of the word 'hysteria'.

'I just learned this when we were doing this episode that the word hysterical comes from hysteria, which is - wait for it - the Greek word for womb,' she says.

'Plato himself was actually amongst the Greek philosophers, who believed that the womb would travel around the body adding pressure to other organs, which would then lead to erratic and unreliable behaviour.'

She adds: 'Calling someone crazy or hysterical completely dismisses their experience and minimises what they're feeling.

'It keeps going to the point where anyone who's been labeled it enough times can be gas-lit into thinking that they're actually unwell or sometimes worse, to the point where real issues of all kinds get ignored. Well, that's not happening today.

'I feel pretty strongly about this word, this label crazy the way that it's thrown around so casually and the damage it's rotten society and women, frankly everywhere.

'From relationships to families, being shattered, the reputations destroyed and careers ruined the stigma surrounding the word. If it also has this silencing effect, this effect will women experiencing real mental health issues, they get scared, they stay quiet, they internalise, and they repress for far too long.'