Robin Ince is a comedian, author, broadcaster and a populariser of scientific ideas. He is best known as the co-host of the BBC Radio 4 series The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox. He also co-hosts the podcast Book Shambles with Josie Long, An Uncanny Hour and Science Shambles with Dr Helen Czerski, all three of which are a part of The Cosmic Shambles Network. His most recent books are I'm a Joke and So Are You, The Importance of Being Interested – Adventures in Scientific Curiosity, and Bibliomaniac: An Obsessive’s Tour of the Bookshops of Britain.
Interviewed by Dr. Anya Borissova and Dr. Alex Curmi - Give feedback here - thinkingmindpodcast@gmail.com Follow us here: Twitter @thinkingmindpod Instagram @thinkingmindpodcast
If you would like to enquire about an online psychotherapy appointment with Dr. Alex, you can email - alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com
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Robin Ince is a comedian, author, broadcaster and a populariser of scientific ideas. He is best known as the co-host of the BBC Radio 4 series The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox. He also co-hosts the podcast Book Shambles with Josie Long, An Uncanny Hour and Science Shambles with Dr Helen Czerski, all three of which are a part of The Cosmic Shambles Network. His most recent books are I'm a Joke and So Are You, The Importance of Being Interested – Adventures in Scientific Curiosity, and Bibliomaniac: An Obsessive’s Tour of the Bookshops of Britain.
Interviewed by Dr. Anya Borissova and Dr. Alex Curmi - Give feedback here - thinkingmindpodcast@gmail.com Follow us here: Twitter @thinkingmindpod Instagram @thinkingmindpodcast
If you would like to enquire about an online psychotherapy appointment with Dr. Alex, you can email - alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com
Join Our Mailing List! - https://thinkingmindpod.aidaform.com/mailinglistsignup
SUPPORT: buymeacoffee.com/thinkingmind
Hi everyone. Welcome back. This week it's Anya and Alex and we're thrilled to meet with Robin Ince. Robin is a stand up comedian, is the host of the hit BBC four show The Infinite Monkey Cage, as well as being an author of multiple books. Today we talked about what comedy is about the problem with society in terms of struggling with seeing complexity, what it means to be creative and how to be creative, and lots of other things we really hope that you enjoy and as always, get in touch. If there's anything that you'd like to see in the future on the podcast, this is the Thinking Mind podcast. Here you can access conversations about psychiatry, psychology, philosophy that are accessible to anyone and everywhere. If you like the podcast, there's lots of ways in which you can support us. It's always really helpful if you can give us a like or a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. It really helps people to find us feel free to get in touch on either Twitter or Instagram, and if you want to support the podcast more broadly, why not buy us a coffee? The links for everything will be in the show notes, but for now, sit back and enjoy. Robin Ince. Hello. Hello. Come to the podcast. Yes. Sorry I was late. I'm always late. I had the trouble. Is that on the way to the mortuary, there's a few charity shops and they were all absolutely fine. Then. The last one did have some treats, so that slowed me down. And then not reading the second line of an email, which was to say where it actually was. Yeah, yeah. No good. And it's also meant you've not had your brownie yet, so you'll get the sound of eating. I'll do that. Yeah. Very much for for my friend Josie Long who I've done many things. Do you know what I'll also do? I've got this stupid watch that I don't know if you. You might have heard that. And I didn't want to get it. Brian Cox. Professor Brian Cox said that I was too analogue and had to get a digital watch, and now it just makes noises all the time. And then every now and again it says, well done, you've completed your ring for standing up. And I find the watch very patronising in terms of my eye relationship. So I'm just going to sit on it so it doesn't make it. It will like tell you if your heart stops though. So I guess. Yeah. Oh no, there's every now and again. But it's like having the worst kind of GP I see. Right. Like overly anxious not reassuring. Yeah. Um, thank you so much for coming to speak to us. I mean, I guess I'm going to warn everyone that I'm probably going to be a bit starstruck because I loved your book, and that's, um, you're I'm a joke, and so are you. And I guess I'm hoping we can explore some of the things that you talk about. Whatever you'd like. Yeah. It was. It was, it was the it's a book which I now I don't think it's the best written book because I think you get better with each one, but I think it's the one which I get the most continual feedback from, considering it's out of the last three. You know, it's from five years ago now. And that's the thing that's an absolute joy about it, is finding lots of people who, and I'm sure you know, this experience that you will have had, you know, that bit where someone suddenly finds out that they can say something out aloud, which they've not believed they have permission to do, and finding out those kind of things, as well as my own kind of journey with it as well. I mean, what got you interested in exploring humor and comedy and humor? I guess humanity and our absurdities and anxieties in that way. Like what? Where was the seed for that book? Well, I think I mean, I'm quite a kind of reflective person, and I'm always obsessing about what other people are thinking as well. I'm quite kind of, uh, you know, there's a bit of hypervigilance in me. So I'm always fascinated in what the possibilities are. And then, of course, in standup comedy, one of the things that happens is sometimes people laugh at something and you think, oh, good. I had no idea whether this was a shared experience by a large enough number of people. And one of the ones I mean, there's there's three things that led to it. One of them was, I would say there was a routine I started doing years ago, uh, which was about the imp, the perverse, about impulsive thoughts and about holding a baby. And as you're holding the baby, imagining throwing the baby down the stairs or out of a window or whatever, and I was really struck by how many people reacted to that and how many people would come up afterwards and say, and they still do every now and again, certain I was I was doing a mental health, uh, kind of, uh, benefit the other day. And, and I thought I'd bring it up again. And still people say, oh my goodness, I really thought that I had some desire and that, you know, realizing how because I like things to be useful as well. I mean, for me, with the performance and the writing, I don't just want them to be someone going, oh, I was entertained for an hour. I was entertained for the space. But I want them to have a possibility of something changing in the world for them. And that might be if it's a science book, it might be just thinking about the distance of the stars and about thinking what about creating light and and how light travels towards us and the experience of beauty. And sometimes when dealing with different ideas of the mind, it's about that. It really is. I use this thing which probably sounds like a terrible cliche, but I'm a huge fan of David Bowie and I, you know, Ziggy Stardust and Spiders from Mars. That album, Rock and Roll Suicide has that line, oh no, love, you're not alone. And every time that I hear that, uh, song, I can still feel the hairs on the back of my hand, the back of my neck going up. Because I think that that passionate thing of saying you're not alone. So that was one of the things that. And then when Robin Williams died, I was actually doing a benefit that night, uh, for the mental health charity mind. And I said to the people, I said, oh, it's a bit boring that we're just all doing sets there. There was another American Comic Con guy called Eddie Pepitone who's brilliant, and between us, we'd been doing standup for about 60 years. So I said, well, why don't we have a sit down afterwards? And if any of the audience want to stay, we'll have a chat about mental health and comedy. And of course, we went out on the interval and we found out that Robin Williams had died and taken his life. And and then I won. I was a huge fan of his when I was a teenager, and I remember the excitement of trying to get hold of his records and all of those things. And, and to I then also had that reaction against the way that a lot of the press were writing about his death, which I felt was a clichéd way I felt was overly simplistic way the death of a clown and all of those cliches. So I went off and I made a documentary, which I was lucky because they said, do you know what? We haven't got a slot, but we'll make one for you. But we have to agree to the title. So that is why I'd like to apologise for the radio documentary called tears of a clown. That was what I had to allow to allow me to make that documentary. And in the experience of making that documentary, it just made me think about so many other ideas and how I love comedy for the fact that you can. It's such a direct connection. That's one of the reasons that I don't like comedy. That punches down all the time, and I'm sure I've been guilty of that, you know, in the past. But it's that bit of going, you have the chance to to pull people up rather than push them down. Um, and then the final thing was there's an episode of a TV series called Inside Number Nine, which I'm going to spoiler alert fast forward for two minutes if you don't know how it ends, but you've just seen it by now. It came out about nine years ago. Um, and it is, uh, starred Sheridan Smith, and it's a woman who had her time seems to be all getting mixed up, and events seem to be getting mixed up. And at the end of the 28 minutes, you find out that, in fact, she's dying in a car crash. And I was nearly sick with tears when that happened. I I'm someone who doesn't. I mean, I am someone who uses that as my friend. Josie's that phrase crying pawn. I don't I have no problem with people crying in front of me or anything like that, but I'm not very good at crying myself. Uh, and it just, I mean, it probably right in the stomach, as if I'd been punched really hard. And it brought back the reason, I think, was because just before I was three years old, I was in a major car accident and my mum was nearly killed. And after that period of time, when she did come out of the hospital, she had some physical damage, but a lot of it was the depression that she then carried with her for the rest of her life, and also that I'd thought it was my fault because I was nearly three years old. And as you know, when you're little sometimes. So those three events. Are were all things that led to me, uh, writing that book and exploring those ideas. And then they led to me going into other places with those ideas as well. Mhm. Because I guess, I mean, where things began or where things begin tenses. Uh. Is something that you explore, like what you talk about with Robin Williams and the clichéd nature of the reporting around him, the idea that there's not. Um, the sad comedian is a simplistic idea, that is, that it is not just that, that things don't just arise because of one thing, I guess is where is where your book begins? Or, um, it's somewhere there in the start. Um, how, I guess. How do you think about that? How do you both make sense of. Of that being the beginning of your book, seeing that episode, but also, what were some of the ideas that you explored in terms of comedians origins and, and this concept that it's. It's not as simple as just people having a dark past that they deal with through comedy. I think I mean, like everything in biology, it gets messier with increased understanding and frequently with increased understanding. We find out that we know far less. So, you know, even if we're talking about genetics, of course, we've seen that's the beautiful thing about about biology generally, which is that it has actually come up now with that final single theory, which physics hasn't. But at the same time, it's made things messier. Uh, and, and I think that's what I wanted to explore in the book was, I think because of the cliches with comedians, they're very there's so many stories out there. So, for instance, the fact that there is a correlation between, for instance, there is an increased number of comedians who have been adopted. There is certainly, uh, comedians who very often and this is the ultimate cliche, because the old show me the person until they're seven and I'll show, you know, the, the adult is uh, is lost about the age of seven as well and around that time. But I think what I really wanted to get across in, in that chapter was, first of all, that you should not be ashamed of returning to your childhood because this is where the neural pruning is going on. This is where so many of your expectations of the world are set. You know, for many people who have different forms of battle with their mental health, it is, I think, from from my experience of watching for quite a few of those people, it seems to be the world was not as it was meant to be from quite an early stage. So from that point onwards, again, going back to hypervigilance, you're having to look around the whole time because the world doesn't have this linear route. The world, you know, if you lose a parent, if you're, you know, have a terrible injury, whatever it might be, it means hang on a minute. The world's not meant to be like this. Um, so I wanted to kind of get that across, and, but the main thing is, and I still talk about it, talking about my most recent book, because I'm always telling people to write as much as possible. I think writing is a really, you know, one of the things that I got out of that book was I didn't even want to put in the story about the car crash. Um, I thought it was boring because I think, you know, the thing is that with the stories that we carry with us, they become mundane because we've carried them with us for so long. Um, and then realizing that by taking these errant thoughts that had been the chaos in my mind and placing them as a series of sentences on a page allowed me to scrutinize it and analyze it in a way that I wasn't aware. I wasn't aware that it would change things that much and indeed changed things. I think for my two older sisters as well. And my mum was no longer alive, uh, at the point of me writing the book, but my dad was, and I think that opened up certain things to talk about. So I think it's a really but I think people are people feel and I know people who've who suffered terribly and who've not been able to they felt embarrassed to go back to their past. Maybe they've had, you know, something like abuse in their past and they've gone, oh no, no, no, no, no. But that was years ago. And I see the way that they still suffer. And I see the way that they cannot believe or accept that something from when you're a child is not left behind. Most, you know, most of the things for a lot of people. You know, what happens in our lives, they aren't left behind in the most positive way sometimes as well. One of the things that makes us grow and form, and then also the negative things, is those, you know, those awarenesses and those anxieties and terrors that come from certain, and also the fact that it's not the same for every child. It's not the same, you know, every there are far more people who are adopted who have not become comedians, uh, painters, poets or whatever. And there are people I know, like the comedian Mark Steele, who, uh, he's very pretty. I wouldn't say nonchalant necessarily, but when he found out, he'd always known, he'd I think for a long time it was adopted. Mark is a working class socialist and then found out that his biological father was a millionaire who played cards with the criminal Lord Lucan and built some of the biggest buildings in New York. So there's this fascinating story. But for him, it was a story. It wasn't something I don't think he had a battle from what I know of him. Anyway, with his Dutch. But there are other people I know who that is. You know that that battle of why was I not wanted? You know, you can see why you want to. Because that to me is not just comedy. All creativity, both professional and amateur, is, it comes to some extent from a desire to change the world. Uh, and that might not be the world outside you, but it's to go. I have control because I have the story. I think it's why very often very timid children are drawn to horror films because they're now they're in a framework. The terror is in a framework. So you'd think they want to leave the horror? No, but they don't. They want to see horror. That is actually it's the same way. Sara Pascoe, when I talked to her for the book, you know, she said, some people are always surprised that some comedians are very socially inept. And she said, but that's the thing is, one of the reasons to be a comedian is you stand up in front of people and you are now in control of the situation. The situation might still go horribly wrong and they might absolutely hate you, but it's not the same as walking through the world where you have no idea where the jeopardy is coming from. When you're stood in front of an audience, you know exactly where jeopardy is seated and how jeopardy is looking at you. 1s Now. What changed for you when you started writing about your experiences? I think when I started writing about the experiences, I mean, there were so many changes. The first one was to to realize the enormity of something which I just had. Never because I have friends who've gone through what I would say are really, really terrible things to be a three year old in a car accident and think it was your fault. Well, there's worse things, and I think that's a very typical problem for a lot of people, which is the shame. You're embarrassed because not embarrassed to your experience. You're embarrassed that it should mean anything because you know, someone who lost both their parents in a plane crash and you know, someone who lost their brother and sister in a fire. And you know, you know, all of those things, or someone who had terrible, terrible abuse. So I think that bit of just I mean, one of the phrases that I despise most in our world is keep calm and carry on, because I think, I think one of the things that especially when you look around the UK, I think one of the reasons that we drink so much is it is this constant covering up, and of all the countries that I go to, I'd always when I get back here, I go, wow, this is the one where the drinking is most clearly on the street and everywhere. And, and it seems to me that that's the one chance where people might open up and say something, and then they go back inside themselves. And so, um, yeah, so, so I think it was, I think it was the thing by writing about that, by realising and also beginning to think that because of course, all our childhoods are normal to us. And realising that my mum's depression and some of the things that went on in that house, and she was a good mother and she was a very kind person, but she battled. She really had to fight. In the new edition of the book, I talk about the fact that she was about to be sectioned when she finally got out of hospital. After you've been through the coma and everything. She was basically insane. 1s And and when I said she pulled herself together and I said, I literally mean that as well. I don't mean pull yourself together as in when someone's being told off. I mean that somehow she found the strength to put herself back into a closer to a single piece when everything looked like it was destroyed. Um, and then realizing another thing as well was when she was dying. That was something which I think helped me understand things, because it was the first time that I realized something that's so brutally obvious, which is that the person who left the hospital was not the person who got into the car before that. So for my dad, I realized that sometimes when he could get really frustrated by my mum and I thought, well, one of the reasons is she's not the same person. She's quite a lot of us, the same person, but she's not exactly. And that's a terrible thing, I think, for anyone as we know. You know, sometimes when people get brain injuries where, you know, it damages the emotional core and they suddenly they can't express, you know, the love is, you know, I can see why that does such damage to people. Because when we see the outside of someone, we cannot help but believe that the inside must still be there. And that's true after accidents. That's true with dementia. It's true with so many things. So all of these things. Suddenly I was just and I wasn't confronting them because it wasn't like a dramatic impact. And yet it was a very dramatic impact. But it didn't feel it just suddenly felt like this is blindingly obvious, that my perpetual fear of letting people down. I'm always worried how people are. I'm always worried that people are happy. I'm always worried about audiences. I'm always worried about even the person that I've said. I think in the book I talk about. It might be I might not have made the edit I can't read. But like a typical example would be the fact that I will be able to worry about a brief interaction in a coffee shop. I will be able to worry about the fact that I went to a local bakers, and I said to my friend, oh, would you like to have a bun as well? I'm going to get a bun. And he said, well, what they've got. And I went through all the buns, the Chelsea buns and the Danish buns and, and the Belgian buns and all of the ice buns. And he said, uh, he said, God, you really know them. And I said, yes, I really know my buns. But then I immediately worried that the woman behind the counter might think that I was the kind of man who enjoyed double entendres, which I don't when I say I know my buns, I literally do mean I know my baked buns. I'm not a carry on fan. I'm not. But I was mortified and I spent the rest. Oh my God, what's she going to think? She's going to kind of think I'm some awful sexist man? Oh, I know my butt. Oh. You know, and and so there was. And that was one of the things that I started to really come to terms with as well, which is the anxiety imagination is. Incredibly inventive. So when you manage to conquer one of your anxieties, it'll go, don't worry, I've got another. And I used to have that in stand up. The the obvious one is when you first start doing standup, you think, oh my God, what if they hate me? And oh my God, what if I don't remember what I was going to say? And then I had so much to say that that stopped being a worry. So I immediately start to think, oh, no, what if the moment I walk on stage, I suddenly need to go to the loo? What if I hey everyone, I'm so sorry and I have to walk off. So you start the moment before you go on. Do you think I still need the loo? Then. Then it can become things like, oh my God, what if I. What if I suddenly got an erection on stage, you know, all of these things? And in fact, a therapist friend of mine said I wouldn't worry because the way the actual tuning in between anxiety and all of those different things. But, but so that was just watching the way the anxiety imagination is that it's not to to cure a single anxiety does not cure anxiety. And and that was eventually what I mean, the big change for me, which I wrote a little bit about in, in the, in the updated version of this book, and I'm going to write a lot more about in the next one was having a stranger, a man called Jamie, uh, who does a great podcast about autism and, and knows a lot about neurodiversity, get in contact with me. And so I've been following your work for ages. Uh, can we have a talk about the neurodiverse model? And we went through a long kind of series of questions and he said, well, I think you very much got a kind of ADHD mindset, and we can deal with those labels another time. But I think the most, you know, for me, the practical thing was everything made sense. And then it didn't necessarily get rid of everything. And that was also the point where I no longer I thought, why don't I try medicine? Why don't I try prescription stuff? Because I've had 30 plus years or more than that, uh, of being perpetually anxious. You know, I had very long periods of terrible insomnia where I just like. And and it was like, do you know what life is far too. There are so many things that are inescapable in terms of terrible things that we will have to deal with and many of the things within the mental health world. 1s Are. There's a possibility of at least some escape from those by understanding and possibly by prescription and possibly by therapy and all of those different things. And if we can start finding those roots out, the idea that people are too ashamed to talk about them, I think what, you know, the tragedy to have such a brief life and to have so much of that life in an unnecessary pain when there will be pains which are unavoidable. I'm still I still sometimes feel shocked, I guess, because my everyday life is is mental health is talking about therapy, feelings, prescriptions, but still even like just people that I know who are still like, oh, but I just really don't want to, you know, I don't want to be reliant on medication, which is a completely valid concern to have. 1s But it seems to completely overtake the calculation of yes, but what could it also give me like? Of course there'll be downs, but there's nothing's ever perfect. There may well be downsides to medication, there may well be downsides to therapy. But what if it gives you something that, um. That is better than than what you're currently dealing with. Or it takes the edge off something. But for so. But even though we talk about mental health so much, that still seems to be like a real, like a deep rooted worry that probably is beyond the worry itself. Is that because do you think that might be because we we want an illusion of control, and in fact, we have so little control. I mean, what an odd thing that we, you know, the idea of for those who can find something, you know, for, you know, pharmaceuticals does help. What an odd thing that that would be on a no. But I don't want to turn to that because we're turning to so many other things all the time, and we actually have so little control that I wonder if that's why every time we can find an illusion of being in charge, then some people will fight against it. And I think it is also, I don't know how you found it with, but I think for so many people it's this idea of a weakness. Yeah, yeah. And with the media, I mean, I don't know how you guys, the mass media, you know, the way that I see them still dealing with mental health and I, you know, I look at things like Sinead O'Connor is death and Sinead O'Connor was another kind of great hero to me. And, uh, I love that line. They buried me, but they didn't know I was a seed. Isn't that a great. It's actually a great poet, I think. But she used to say that. And, um, now, now that she's dead, everyone's very safe with their opinions. Now, it's all fine for them to say things. But when she was alive, she was perpetually, you know, demeaned and, uh, and, and I think we, you know, we see that with so many different cases of, you know, once someone's dead, then we mourn them. And while they're alive, we demean them and besmirch them. And, and, uh, and, and I think, again, one of the with most of our media is very much about the status quo. So it doesn't want things to change, and it wants things to be easy. And so whether it's sometimes about ideas of, you know, sexuality and gender or whether it's, uh, ideas of, of, of proper social change or whether it's ideas of, of the diversity of minds, they want everything to be their version of normal. You know, I always find it a, you know, the ugly irony of the fact that a lot of those columnists who have a go at young people for wanting safe spaces are people who have are driven around in private cars, go behind metal gates, uh, often have security. And you think, yeah. Do you know what I think you like your safe spaces, you know? So, you know, it's it's all of those things. So. And again, that's another reason why I'm not particularly shy about talking about these things is that I realized that a lot of people are worried, uh, about bringing these things up. And and I really do. I worry so much about the people just not being as happy as as as they could be or even less miserable. And it's, you know, when you see someone who's been suffering and you. There's a friend of mine who I mentioned in the book, Rebecca. Rebecca was she was. First of all, she was my agent. She's an actor now. When she was six, her, um, had her dad died. Her dad died. It was, as far as I remember, it was. It was a bicycle accident that happened. 1s Um, and when she was, I think 35 or 36, her sister was murdered in Mogadishu. Uh, her sister was murdered doing a job that she'd already said to the people who were employing her. Uh, I don't think I should be going here, and I don't think I should be doing this. I think it's too dangerous. Um, and Rebecca then wrote, uh, a monologue called sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister about the experience of losing a sister. And after the first night that she performed it, her co-writer, she came off and she just said to her co-writer, I've just realized he was speaking. And the co-writer looked kind of perplexed, like, well, it was you, Rebecca. No, it was the six year old that no one listened to when she lost her father. And you know that when she and I had never known with Rebecca, because we'd hung around a lot, and I'm still friends with her, and she can seem so filled with joy. And I'd never known that really, throughout her whole life, even before she lost her sister. She'd been a terrible, terrible battle. In fact, I would recommend anyone listen to this. She did a thing for TEDx Brixton. Uh, look up and and and it's. Yeah, she she was she. But about that that bit of. So she spent her whole life like that and I didn't know. And that bit of not being scared to just say things out loud. And I love that moment. You know, sometimes there is is nothing more exciting than finishing a show and someone wanting to tell you a story, someone who believes they've now got permission to share. And, you know, I was doing a gig in when I was doing the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year. I was signing books and and this woman came up to me and she said, oh, can I just tell you a story while you're signing books? I won't take a moment. I said, I'll tell you what, if you've got time, I'll finish signing the books. And then we just have a chat. And she was with her husband, and eight months into a pregnancy, they'd lost their child and she'd had to go through the birth. Their daughter was called Hope, and, uh, she, she. When she was about to give birth, they realised that that the baby had one of its arms was behind its back. So making it very, very difficult to deliver and very dangerous. And one of the doctors went, you know what? Where was it? We were in Africa. Do you remember? There was there's a method out there that isn't taught here, which is kind of creating like it's almost like creating a little lasso out of rubber piping. And someone else went, yeah, I think I know. And they looked it up. And then they managed to to do this procedure. And in one move, they managed to pull the baby's arm round and hope was delivered and, you know, hurts sharing that story. Because that's another thing about the importance of stories, which is, you know, hope didn't live. 1s But hope story is now for everyone. Every doctor who is now going to find out about what to do if a baby has its arm positioned behind its back before. So hope story. You know, all of those things are just and having that and and I hope we live. I still think it's a real battle. But I think there's more people now who know it's okay to open up. That's what I always say. If you if you're sometimes worried about what you're going to tell your friends, the thing to do is don't change yourself. Change your friends. Because we should be hanging around with people who we can trust, and we should be hanging around with people who are ready to listen. You know, you can be having lots of fun. And then it's one of the things that, sorry, I'm really rambling on and you won't have any time for any questions. Oh, please. Right. Well, I wanted to I'll tell you this one then, which was about which I talk about in the book and again was a very important thing, I think, for me, thinking about stuff, which was I met an ex head teacher in Adelaide and uh, we got on very well. It was, it was very funny. She was a diehard atheist and her partner was a full on Catholic who'd lived most of his life almost in a seminary. And I think they would spend about four days together every week and then go, right, that's enough. And then they'd go off for three days. But we just got on and she was really entertaining and interesting. And then one night when we were in a bar in a hotel, she said, uh, you, uh, you should do material about suicide. And I knew the best story behind this. And it turned out her daughter took her life. And, um, and so I then spent ages working on I don't normally I'm very scattergun in the way that I create things, but I, I thought, right, she's asked me to do this. I'm going to have to write a piece about this. And I really worked hard. And, you know, her sharing that. And then that led to me writing a ten minute piece about, you know, about suicide and, and and it meant that for various people who knew I was writing it, then got in contact with me and said, you probably won't know this about me, but I was going to take my own life at one point. And it was. And it was interesting because it made me realise how much of my life had been, uh, kind of how dominant suicide ideation had been. I'd never I've never attempted to take my own life, but in terms of sometimes perpetually for months on end, just to that's that's the moment you have downtime. It goes into, why don't you kill yourself? And again, just opening up about that and then finding that other people felt that they could open up about that and find out that they're not the only one, you know, those things. And that, again, is the potency. I think, of what you can do when you're in a room with a group of people and you're talking honestly and hopefully they're enjoying laughing. You know, there were jokes in it that was the hardest thing is finding the good, you know, the good jokes, which are not the victim. You know, I had to make sure the victim of the joke was not the person who was either thinking about or was taking their own life. I had to, you know. But I think, you know, it's it's something that people have definitely said to me when they've been in the depths of that of, of thinking about suicide, of, of not wanting to be alive, that, um, you know, there's there's some good suicide jokes out on the internet, there's some good suicide memes out there. And like, they're the one thing that can crack through a little bit, like they're the ones, because I think it feels so alone. It feels you feel so alone in that, uh, that, you know, there's no reassurance. There's nothing that you can believe in that moment that anyone says to you when you know, when people say, no, it's not like your brain is telling you it is because you feel it so completely. Um, but but yeah, but there's something about being able to make some kind of laugh or some kind of joke or something about it is the thing that my friend Nick Doody used to have. I think one of the darkest jokes about this, uh, it was one of his earliest jokes and, uh, it was about the fact that his uncle, um, hanged himself on Christmas Eve, which unfortunately meant that they couldn't take him down till the 6th of January, which is such a, you know, that that is, that's the, um, and, uh, but it is, um, yeah. I think that bit of, of, um, and when you realize again, when Robin Williams died and when, when other, you know, well-known celebrities have taken their life and you get all these columns and when people always, you know, if you ever get that bit people saying, oh, how selfish and to not understand that someone in that mindset, they don't think they're worth anything. You know, one of the people that I chatted to and, and I said, what about your kids? And they went, well, I thought they probably missed me for a few days. But they'd be better off. I mean, the people are convinced. People are convinced that everyone would be. Your experience is just pain. Wall to wall pain. And that seems to be like the only way you can get out of it, you know? One of the. I guess misconceptions that I'm very keen to dispel is the idea that I think a lot of us walk around unconsciously thinking, if only I can achieve what's conventionally we think of as success. If only I could have money. If only I could be famous or influential, then I'd never be depressed and life would. There's this, always this idea. I want to get to the other side, where life is kind of easy and a bit effortless. And if it's one thing these celebrity suicides, you know, we've just had Matthew Perry, obviously we don't know the cause of death at this point yet, but we see a lot of famous people who have problems with drugs, who commit suicide. And can you speak a little to what was going on with you when you were experiencing those thoughts? Do you have a clear idea of what those thoughts represented for you or or perhaps how they were serving you in some way? I was just going to quickly say, when you were talking about the celebrity thing, I think it's an interesting thing there, which is that one of the mistakes that we often make as human beings is to say, say you think, oh, wow, if I lived on the coast in that beautiful house, and then you get to live on the coast, that beautiful house. But the one thing that you didn't realise was you brought you with you. And that's the thing is, you know, your problems are not obviously, there are also financial things, but I'm talking generally, you know, that that um, with me, it was and has generally been I mean, an example that I about two years ago, uh, I did a 25 hour, um, live Christmas show because it was kind of just after lockdown, but the theatres weren't open. I always do these big Christmas shows. We had scientists from every single one of the of the seven continents on live. We had Robert Smith from The Cure, we had Tim Minchin, we had Helen Sharman and lots of other astronauts and all these things. And it was one of the rare occasions where myself and my friend Trent, who I work with a lot, both felt at the end of it that we'd done all right, you know, and we sat at one in the afternoon, uh, just having finished it, you know, we've not slept for, whatever, 32, 36 hours. We're drinking fruit and rather drinking Malbec and, and and, uh, and eating fruit and fibre, which is not normally a combination that I have, but I thought this breakfast is allowed to have wine with it. And, um, and then I got home and everyone was like, right. And then I did one thing wrong. There was one of those, why do you put that there and that bang. That was, uh, and it meant that every moment of downtime that I set my alarm for 5:00 the next morning so I could just be out of the house before I woke up because I, you know, I want to stop all the connections. 1s Uh, and then I would just say, I've got this little tiny, like, office that I share with some artists. And, uh, just sitting there in the cold and every moment of quiet, 1s I would just be thinking, well, I suppose you could go, but, like, all of this is ideation. So there was no move to action. And I think that that's one of the things, which is if people realized how common it was that you can and that was about three months. So really from the beginning of December through to probably the beginning of March, all downtime was thinking about, um, well, I could do that, or I could do that. Yeah. Um, I never would. I think I've been very lucky because I've never even reached stage one. I've, you know, I've, I, uh, um, because there's always been enough of it's almost like, you know, Viktor Frankl, you know, the, you know, his thing that apparently he would sometimes when someone was in and he was, he was doing therapy with him and he'd say, why don't you kill yourself? And I think there's a there's a lovely thing that I quote in the book, the Australian comedian Laura Davis, she used to have, uh, every 25 minutes to half an hour, her brain would just go, you should kill yourself. And she said it was really positive because it meant that every half an hour I had to work out why I didn't. And she had a little listen, she did this in her show, cake in the rain. And that was an interesting thing as well as I saw her when I saw in Australia last year when I was on tour and she's been diagnosed. I hope I get this right now with ADHD and also on the autistic spectrum as well. And I said, what happened with the suicide ideation? She said almost at the point of diagnosis, before any change in medicine or anything else, it went after having had it since being a teenager for the whole of it. And that, to me is a is a fascinating thing of also how sometimes some outside experience, some outside voice that says, I think your mind is doing this, this, this and this. And it just goes on forever and everything just slips into place and you go, wow, how could it be that easy and yet that hard? I'm still not sure. You know, both of you working. You know, in the world of psychology, it's a thing that I don't understand. I don't I don't understand why. Because it didn't work for me when I tried. The one thing that I learned from when I briefly tried therapy, uh, was that an enormous number of things that I thought were disparate were all anxiety based. So lots of different things that I defined, things like irritable bowel syndrome, things like the fact that, like my journey here today, I would have been worrying about it, that I wouldn't take the bus, for instance. So I took the bus from Elephant Castle. I probably wouldn't have taken the bus. I'd have taken the train. I'd have done all of those different things. I mean, that's one of those things. All of the plans that you're making all of the time, all of the things that you say no to because you go, oh, no, but that will mean. And then the bus and then I have to get up really early and then, uh, and then I've got to take a car there. And I don't like all of that stuff. So you you're turning things down all the time, but you're thinking it's just normal and you're blaming it on some physical idea, which it turns out is, is it's physical, it is real. But it's I mean, I think that's one of the fascinating things that I've really begun to understand again, from, uh, having dealt with some of the anxiety things, which is the fact that, uh, it, you know, those physical manifestations are as real as any, you know, again, in the book, I talk about the guy who who was in agony because he was working on a building site, and he got a great big nail right through his foot. And he's screaming and he's screaming and he's screaming, and they're giving him as much, uh, morphine as they can. And then when they finally get to the x ray, it turns out it didn't even go through his foot. It just went to the gap between his toes. But his level of belief was such and that. Again, that's something people don't like the idea of, because we like to believe that the, you know, even if the, you know, the mind doesn't rule the body, that the mind is autonomous. And once you find out that the mind is everything is connecting in so many ways, both positive and negative anxieties. Uh, anxiety is a great one, isn't it? Because. It. 2s Yeah. I mean, it just makes you believe with such conviction, things that are that anyone else could tell you are ludicrous and that you could probably tell anyone else. All ludicrous. But when you're in the throes of it, um, you're just completely at its mercy. Well, I always say it's because it's connected. Anxiety comes from the formed before speech did. So you're trying to argue with a bit of your brain that doesn't understand a word you're saying. So. So your frontal lobes are saying, don't be ridiculous. Why would you suddenly need the loo half way through act one of Coriolanus, you know, whatever it be. But the bit you're talking to is just this, you know, it hasn't got any. It's, you know, that's. And there are other reasons as well. Have you guys ever heard of the smoke detector principle from evolutionary psychology. Mhm. So the smoke detector principle is the idea that something I listen to your shows Alex. Don't worry 1s somebody does. Um the smoke detector principle is the idea that something doesn't have to be always right to be adaptive. Anxiety only has to be right once in order to save your life. So if every time you see some rustling in the bushes you think it's a lion. It only has to be correct one inch 100 times, say, to be adaptive. And so we even though anxiety is extremely unpleasant and that and all other things cause us a huge amount of suffering, it can help us. So there's this whole set of ideas that ultimately our psychology is mostly just trying to keep us alive. It's not designed to make us happy. It's not designed for us to have peaceful lives. And now in a modern environment where actually it is a lot safer. Ironically, all of these forces are being jacked up by all of the huge sensory inputs that were subject to in the form of advertising social media. Just the fact that we can communicate with people on a much faster scale, it makes the world a lot more anxiety inducing. So a lot of what we focus on on the podcast is this mismatch between the environment where our brain was designed, the environment which forged us, and our very different modern landscape. Well, I think it's like Dunbar's number thing, isn't it? You know, the fact that if we're only evolved to basically have relationships of the slight 150 maximum of the slightest way, not even, and you go, well, every single day that you walk to work. You know, when I walked here. I would have gone past a lot more than 150 people. Uh, and the couple of places that I went into and the cafe and things like that, that that will have added, uh, 15, you know, all of that. And so I think it is and I think that's why, again, that bit of working out, trying to be pragmatic. And like when my dad was in his 90s, I say, dad, why do you watch the news twice a day? So first of all news is entertainment. It's not actually information. And secondly, it won't make you happy because it's an it's this negative entertainment. It's an entertainment. It's actually created to make you feel powerless and sad. And, uh, in the end, I don't read any newspapers. Now, if there is a story that, you know, comes out, there's normally there's access to all different bits of information, but I mean, especially a thing of psychiatry, if I, if I saw something in the newspaper that was a report on some psychiatric treatment or something, I would immediately turn away from that and start looking at the actual, you know, some of the proper information, because that's why we started the podcast. Yeah. And I think that's great because it is that if you realize, you know, at the moment that we're, you know, recording this, what is going on in Gaza, what is going on in Israel, what's going, you know, that the anger that people are experiencing without actually any action. So what is the action that. Well, quite often there is no action you can take. The action you need to take is the action for people around you. Is the action to reach out for those that you can help? Um, but you're being fed stuff that it's not. When you suddenly realize that you hate someone you don't even know and it doesn't matter. You know, there's all of those personalities and all of these. And again, the sad thing is also because you've got one, as you said, that the problem is our mind is not made for this many connections. Yeah. And secondly, also because hate and anger has been monetized, it's also so omnipresent because there's a lot of people who make money from annoying you and me and making other people for. And so filtering through that, there's a great book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. I don't know if you know it, by Neil Postman. I've heard of it. It's great from the early 80s and it's um, and he said, you need to cut down your number of opinions by a third. I think now in the world you could probably say about about 70%. So I try as much as possible not to have opinions on the I suddenly go, I don't need an opinion on him. No no no no no no. You know, and of course there was Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Who have you read it? I've read, you know, I, I gave it my best shot. I it's on my shelf. It's the brief history of time of late 20th century fiction. So many of us have it on the shelf and so many have begun. So for those who don't know, Infinite Jest is about a thousand page novel by David Foster Wallace. It's an excellent book. It's about I got through about 6 or 700 pages. It's an incredible book because it has that amuse ourselves to death. Idea in it. It's about there's a tape in it. It's actually there's several plotlines in the book, but one of the major plotlines is there's this tape that anyone who watches it is so compelled to watch it that they sit in front of the television until they die. And and the author spoke about this idea quite a lot in his interviews. And he, you know, this was in the early 2000, I think, because eventually he committed suicide, I think, in the noughties. But he spoke about this idea that we're very much ruled by destruction in the West, and that was even predicted even before that by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, where you had George Orwell at the time writing a book about the tyranny of the extreme left, probably making an allegory for the Soviet Union in 1984. And at the same time you have all this Huxley saying that's well and good in the West. It's going to go differently. It's not going to be an overt tyranny of control. It's going to be more the subtle tyranny of distraction. Don't think about anything important, like just have fun. Just have fun. That might be a class thing though, as well. I think even in the West, you could say that some people are living in 1984 and some people are living brave new World. I think even within geographical kind of uh, that again, is fact is is what Neil Postman's book is initially. Its starting point is which way is it going to go? And I think it's kind of both, really. It depends on where you manage to get to. But yeah, that distraction thing where I just well, I try and cut my because I'm easily distracted. So I try and use it in a good way. Uh, which is I'll always have seven books on the go and I'll always start writing something and then go out, you know, and and I need to feed my brain all the time. But also, I think I've now found a way of feeding it with, uh, most of it's positive things. Like, quite often I can have a brief, transcendent experience, uh, in nowhere special. Like, for instance, I was telling somebody the other day about I've got a favourite wall every now and again when I'm on trains the whole time because I'm travelling, you know, you look out. And now when I look at a wall as I'm approaching a station built in, I don't know, you know, it might be 1893 or 1934. I think about all the hands that went into building that wall and the minds that went into it, and so suddenly something that is mundane is no longer mundane. And I think again that with the reduction in the anxiety and I'm generally now a very, uh, I think a lot more than I was very kind of like, I'm quite good at being happy with people and not being fearful of, uh, you know, sometimes those little moments where there's a story that I was telling somebody that they've going this this would be a typical example. Uh, I was just approaching Sheffield station, and there was a young woman who was struggling with her bag that was on the baggage thing. And I was my first thought is right, I must get up there and help her. But then my second thought is, oh, no, much like the buns thing, what if she thinks, here comes an old guy going, hey lady, I can probably. I'm really strong. Yeah, what if she thinks that I'm being patriarchal? You know, all of these things are going through. And then now I think that would very often have won. But that doesn't win anymore. And then the other one goes, shut up, just get up there and do it right. And, uh, I said, do you need some some help? And she said, oh yes, please. And I went, okay, there we go. Got it down. And then in fact, I was wearing the same badge that I've got on, uh, my, uh, cardigan today by chance. Haven't worn this for ages, which is, uh, by, uh, an artist. An Australian artist. I was wearing this badge and she said, oh, where's that badge from? And we had a little chat about art. And then I said, where are you off to? I've just left university. I'm going to Grimsby for the first time. That's where I'm going to work. And I said, oh, do you know there's a cafe there? And then we left and went to a separate trains. There will never be communication with us again. There was no other reason to, apart from a brief moment of connection, where two human beings talked about things that were nice and talked about art and thought, you know, in the space of four minutes and before, my brain would have been so worried that I would have, you know, that it would have looked and even, in fact, if I'd done it, I noticed, because it's that bit as well as it is being aware of what is not there of the negative, because we're always aware of the negative. And so I think we have to be as much as possible aware when because I find it now, every now and again, when I do have some anxiety or fear or just general kind of, you know, an air of melancholy, I suddenly go, oh my God, how did I live with this all the time? God. This was that. This was my whole this was, you know, the extra, the spare time that I have, the amount of energy that I have now. I mean, I always did a lot of things, but like the two shows that in Edinburgh, people came up afterwards. I'm going, I thought you were going to die. I do not understand how you said so many words so quickly and so many things, and it's because I have now. I always talk pretty quickly, but now it's it's utter freedom because what I used to have was even if people were cheering and laughing and applauding, my voice was going, oh, I don't think that was good enough. That was a bit of a letdown. I think that person over there, it's not enjoying the show that doesn't really exist. Yeah, I can still come off and go, I wasn't good enough today. I haven't lost my critical voice, but I just go every time because I make a lot of random connections very, very quickly. And it just goes, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. And then and then every now and again I think I'm gonna do a poem now because I think I'd just allow everyone I can see because there was one night where I thought, God, they weren't laughing as much tonight. And I was chatting with someone afterwards. When was that? All right. They went. Yeah. Oh, God. Everyone in the audience was just going, oh, we wanted to get every single reference. And then I had, I was doing a show about books, and there was a guy in the front row. I'd been in the front row the day before, and I thought I'd better do a different show then. I can't do the same show because he was here last time, so I did a 50 minutes of it was nothing that I'd done the day before. And he went, that was really nice of you to do that for me. But just so you know, I came back, so I wanted to make notes on all the books that you mentioned. Yeah. But having that, you know, when I did the radio show The Infinite Monkey Cage, people would not. I mean, for anyone who's listening to this, who listens to to that show, I think you would be surprised to know that until two years ago. Every single episode. If you could have heard my head was admonishing me for not being good enough, for getting in the way of what Brian Cox was going to say for that joke wasn't funny enough. That link wasn't good enough. That question was too confused. All of those things. So that was just perpetual. And now I don't have that. So sometimes people go make sure Brian gets a word. In I go, you'll have to work harder then, you know. But having, you know, all of those positive things that are there, you know, to have that amount of manic, that manic intensity, which was so often I mean, I thought it was interesting when I said to my wife, I've been chatting with this guy Jamie, and he thinks I might be ADHD, and I didn't know if she'd be annoyed or whatever. And and she went, oh, that would be great, because I've always thought you were bipolar. And I can see how there are in terms of that energy that goes from the energy of intense, happy excitement to an incredible energy of despair. I can see why. Well, you know, as we know, these labels are people. Should I personally be the label should be to help you? Uh, and you shouldn't get too hung up on going. Oh, I'm not sure I'll fit in with that definition. And that's wrong and that's wrong. Or other people say, just for the time being, we're going to find out so much more about, you know, ADHD. When you look at the way children used to be defined with it, when you look at the number of middle aged women now being diagnosed, you know, on the autistic spectrum, and that's another, you know, when I now now I get I've always had quite a few people. I mean, I think I've naturally had quite often in the audience, some people who would see themselves a little bit on the outside because of just the kind of stuff that I do. And um, but I now when I meet, like, there was a woman who came up to me, she's 60 years old, and she'd just three months before found out that she was on the autistic spectrum. And, you know, when you can see someone who's lighter than they were and you never even knew them before, you can just see in their movement that there's something that has been so heavy on their shoulders and they didn't even know because it was normal. And so they don't know. I mean, I always use that example of it's like having a really a rain sodden, great big horse hair coat and all the bits of horsehair are jabbing into you, but it's what you think is normal. And when that comes off going, whoa! Oh, God, I didn't even know I was wearing that. Yeah, I called it. Well, a lot of people call this the refrigerator. Hum. They have a refrigerator hum of anxiety, and when it disappears. Oh, that's that's really. Yeah. 1s And I thought you actually meant I was carrying a refrigerator as well. No. That's fine. Yeah, because that has been done by other comedians. So. Yeah. 1s Um, so do you find what's what were the thing? What was the thing? Or maybe the collection of things that helped you deal with anxiety? We talked about writing things down, but were there other things? No. Do you know what? It just happened. I just had it the whole time. And I would sometimes imagine that writing certain routines that were about the anxiety would help, but they didn't really. Okay. Um, and I think that might have been because I also didn't quite have the language. I didn't have a level of understanding of what was going on. So so the moment that I started to have an understanding of that, I think that meant that, like this year at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, both the shows I was doing every day, I, you know, again, I just I've never enjoyed myself so much with all of that freedom. And I realized that to an outsider. They wouldn't necessarily know there was a huge change. 1s But I mean, that's the that to me is one of the most intriguing things, which is I was chatting to my friend, uh, Joe, who, uh, used to be a tap dancer. In fact, this is a good example of what I'm like to hear, because this, again, is one of the things that I find interesting, because it's just on the last tour that I did with Brian Cox, every time that you said, why do you say those weird things? That's weird. That's weird. Now I understand myself. So I don't, you know, I knew I always say weird things and I know my wife would say, why do you bring up these weird things at parties or whatever? But now I know, so I'm fine with it. Now I'm, you know, I think those weird things are why I have a career and why I have a it's an issue of self acceptance. Yeah. And it's just like and it's realizing that you're not on the outside. You're, you know, it's I don't like the word normal. I would say usual. Usual might be, you know, for the time being as a, you know, because I think the moment you tell someone that they're not normal, for some people that will be a terrible reaction. Normal. Whereas being unusual, I think is, you know, and and so I know now that I'm through it. 2s But there was no almost feels like there was no. 1s Though I can map a journey now because the dots are there. So now I can go back in hindsight and say like right at the beginning of this, you know, when we talked about three things that led to the book, I can now show you a narrative arc, right? But I didn't know that any of those narrative arcs existed until I had got past the problems. And now, because I've done that, I mean, I do think it's given me, you know, I hope it's, for instance, easier for my son. Uh, he's a teenager now because someone asked me when I wrote the book, they said, uh, you know, do you get worried about what your son will think about reading about the suicide ideation? And I said, I don't think I will be worried. I said, one because we open anyway. It's not just something that exists. And to because I hope it means that he knows that it's I would rather he knew that that was a way that human beings can be and and I mean, it's interesting that I had, um. I got in trouble with, uh, someone that employed me, and they said this thing about, uh, mental believing that I was having. I remember what it was, a mental health episode or whatever it was. 1s And I was quite annoyed about it because I was actually not at all. I was in, in a very, very good place. But one of the things that I found out was it's because I'd written because they went through all my social media and I'd written a piece about suicide ideation. Right. And it and I thought, it annoys me that these institutions all pretend they're all right on, but they're not, because I wrote it very carefully. I was writing it for other people, not for myself. And someone said, you know, were we worried at the institution that you may be suicidal? And I'm thinking, well, this is what leads to people being suicidal is that it's always hidden away, that it's always if we only see it, the only time it becomes revealed is at the point that it may well either be a demand for oblivion or the cry for help or whatever, then that's, you know, so, uh, sorry, I'm never answering any of your questions. I always start by answering your questions. This is another thing that I learned as well. This is the useful thing. What's useful? Things that I've learned. Right. Um. One is. Now I know why. Sometimes I'll be told. Why did you ask that question? It didn't make any sense. Because very often, not your questions. They've all been excellent. Of course. Yes, but, uh, that's true. Will get you nowhere. Uh, with one question. Then my brain would go, oh, I've thought more interesting thing. And then by the end and so again, having it's a bit like the guy who was helping me do some of the kind of press stuff in Edinburgh. He said, I can't believe how quickly you fill in interviews. You know, when a newspaper sends you an they said The Scotsman have never had one back within an hour. And I said, I'll tell you why. The reason is that I now know that I either do it now, the moment it arrives, or in two weeks time you go, have you done that? Interview you. And to suddenly be armed with, you know, because I always believed. Oh, I'll come back to that. And now I'm fully aware I will not come back to that. And another thing that I just said, things that sorry, something probably not something useful yet, but something that I've found useful thing to do is when I get someone coming up to me and they're a stranger and they tell me a story, and it might be quite a personal story. It might be about what they're going through and how they're perhaps being, you know, all these different things. Um, is as they go to leave, I go, uh, just so you know, I know what you're going to think when you walk out the room. You're going to leave. I said this is an 80% chance. I reckon that at the moment you're around the corner, you can go. Why don't you tell him that story? Oh, my God, I don't even know him. He's just something I listen to on the radio. And so I'm glad you told me the story. I was not bored by the story. And you don't need. So actually being able to say out aloud, because I know that's exactly what I would have done. Yeah. And and I think that's another thing that if we could learn to do that more often, which is to go, let's say the thing that we think is going on in silence here, just out and say it jovially and without any just, you know, yeah, I mean, both of those things. So the first thing talking in a very spontaneous, free associative manner and the second thing, the willingness, having the courage to name things which are a bit awkward. Both of those are like the workhorses of therapy. One of the most common things that happens when a client is in therapy is they say, you know, I just don't know what to say in today's session. And my response is more or less always the same, which is, don't worry, we'll get there. 1s If you start talking and you give yourself the freedom to talk. And incidentally, it works for podcasting, it's like this isn't scripted. If you start talking and give yourself permission to say what comes to your mind, not only can you say things are useful, things which are useful, or in your case, things which are entertaining, but you and useful sometimes use. Don't worry. But you're bringing into consciousness things that you're not necessarily aware of. So by speaking spontaneously, you're putting a spotlight on your unconscious. You're discovering yourself in a very real way. You're having a conversation with yourself. See, I love that stuff. It's like, um, E.M. Forster, I think. I think it was the enforcer who said, uh, how do I know what I think until I've written it? Uh, and that's a similar thing, which is one of my favorite things after doing events is when there's a Q and A and someone will ask me a question, and then at the end of it, I'll go, oh, I didn't know I thought that about that. But it turns out that is what. And again, that because we can so often spend our time going through the same conversations every single day, because again, that fear of social shame means that you stay within. You know, I always call it, you know, the kind of, you know, the oppressive thinness of the corridor of normalcy. You know, it's just that this is the you can't allow. And the moment, it's like that moment that when you're sometimes feeling, you know, troubled, and one of your friends gets in contact and there's someone who perhaps has been diagnosed with some neurodiversity, whatever. And you go, oh, yeah, they're the person to hang around with today because. I know that they the way their mind works and the way there was a friend of mine in Bristol, Heidi, who, when I was going through difficult things during a festival from an outside thing. Uh, and she wouldn't want to come to my house. The old woman who used to have loads of books. Now about the stuff you'll like. And I thought, yeah, that's how I need to be hanging around with because of I know that she knows her mind and I know. And we'll spend the whole oh, God, I'm so sorry, I interrupted. Oh, I'm sorry, I interrupted. I'm sorry I interrupt, you know, and all of that stuff and and and I think you're right as well. That bit of that's one of the tragedies of people holding things in so much is that they sometimes they don't even know what they believe and what their real story is. And, and and I think that is, you know, when, when therapy works for people, it didn't work for me. I mean, my problem with therapy was, again, this because I so I just lie on the sofa and go, oh, I think I said that last week. Uh, and you know, oh, no, that's a boring story. Oh, that might upset her. Actually, I don't want to tell that, you know. So I was like, so I think now it would be totally different. But I also my personal feeling at the moment anyway, is that I don't feel that I require it now. It was, you know, it was useful to get to that point, even though I don't think, you know. But yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it. What uh, and some, some people and there's so many people, I think, who benefit from it. But again, it's so hard to find. It's like people with neuro, you know, the amount of time they're having to wait to be diagnosed and you think, oh my God, how much better society will be, because you'll also have people who they'll be more excited to be creative, to be working to do, to do everything. You know when you wake up every morning and your first thought is, what are the threats of today? And I think that is. Yeah. The sadness of that. I think that's why people, some people quite enjoyed lockdown was not just the inaccessibility but that bit of going again the parameters, the walls around you, what's the threat. Oh the threat is Covid as opposed to what's the threat? I don't know, but I know it's somewhere. Yeah. 1s I mean, something that I've heard you talk about is sort of encouraging people to fail or encouraging people to, you know, run with an idea for the sake of running with it and seeing where it goes, not because it will necessarily lead to success. Um, and I guess. 2s I wonder how that links with another idea, which is the pursuit of creativity, or the development of creativity and how people can explore being creative. Or I guess, how you how you think about that. I mean, I was what I always say, like when people are talking about writing, I said, just write. Just write and don't think who your audience is. Don't think, who's it for? Don't think, are you going to be able to sell it? Don't think. You know. And because I think there is a big difference between there are people who become quite deliberately commercial. You know, that's true of most forms of art. But I would say the first thing is, I mean, everyone that I work closely with and my closest friends are all people who create things because they must. If if there wasn't, uh, any money in it, they in fact, you know, a lot of the projects that one of the things that I like is that I've got enough between a couple of things that I've got, I can, uh, cover the bills and say yes to doing free stuff for 3 or 4 months a year, and, um, and that's kind of like a very deliberate thing of going, do I need to earn more money? No, because there's a point where you might earn so much money that you become defined by money, and you start going to swanky restaurants, and then you get a black American Express card or whatever. I have a very broken debit card. That is all that I carry with me. I remember once having to use it. I was doing, uh, some gigs and we put up in a very posh hotel, and the only thing that wasn't paid for was the, uh, booze. And when I went to the ornate counter and went to pay for it and pulled out my, uh, uh, it was a travel card wallet, a plastic travel card, wallet with my library card inside it, and one broken debit card. You know, that was, uh, um, but, yeah, I think it is. You just. 1s You have to try and crush the voices or that are tapping all those ones that I was always hearing during Monkey Cage and everything else, and stand up and everything else. You have to stop thinking about anyone else looking at it apart from you. You just have to. And you have to really try and let it. And when you can't, right. Just write anyway. And even if it's gobbledygook, uh, and, and I think, I mean, what I can say is that lots of the things that led to, in fact, the show that I did this year in Edinburgh, the evening show which involved me punching a melon at the beginning of it. I'm not going to tell you any more now, but until it exploded, every time that I thought I'd really worked out how to aim the melon, it would suddenly explode you different direction. Oh well, did you see that show? No, no, no, I think, um. Oh, man. It was, uh, one day my my knuckle actually started bleeding and I was like. I went at last and in our toast Theatre of Cruelty. Um, but it was. But that was part of that show was about the fact that 19 years before I'd done a show that ended with me punching a melon, and it was a disaster, but it was also the show that led to all the most interesting things I got offered, and led to me realising that I had been trying to make myself into the shape of what I thought you were meant to be in the entertainment industry, as opposed to wired. Originally gone into it, which was from the age of 15. Seeing these things that I loved. And there is no it's like when you sometimes if you go through TikTok and you go, that's someone who's trying to create a meme, that somebody is trying to create a meme, that's someone who actually has created a meme because they just came up with this really quirky thing. And it it was in their heart. I mean, obviously there is there are lots of people who also just know how to work it. But, you know, someone like DanTDM who is absolutely huge, you know, he was I don't know if you if you might not know him, but he he started off, I think doing just playing Minecraft online. But he didn't do it to be the millionaire that he is now. I think he genuinely was at the forefront of that thing just because he thought, I'll be fun. I'm 17 or 8. AG was going to play Minecraft Online's little connection and, you know, it's uh, and monkey Cage exists because I started doing Stupid Knights, um, of science in little rooms in pubs. And, uh, everyone would go, why are you doing that? There's no money in it. So it is. So I think the it's very important not to start off by thinking, how does this become my job and how do I make a living? 1s And it's very important as well to not be ashamed of, uh, because most of the comics that I love, most many of whom are now pretty successful, I've seen have really terrible gigs. Um, and most of the artists and painters that I like most, I've seen terrible reviews of their work, and I think of something like the Stooges, Iggy Pop's band, the Stooges, one of the most important bands. It just because I was listening to them this morning. Late 607 hated. The Velvet Underground. You know, the band that not many people saw them, as they always say, but everyone who did formed a band. And, you know, there's lots of different examples of people who have been incredibly important and many of whom have become successful. But the initial because the trouble is that the more that you move away from what is accepted in the mainstream, the smaller your audience becomes. But that audience might be a very devoted audience, and things may them build there. So but I really think with Craig it's very hard because I think a lot of creativity often does come from from sometimes initially negative feelings. And I mean, I think one of the things that Robin Williams, which I there was some very interesting stories after he died, and one of them was that, you know, the story where he went into a doughnut shop and did I, I don't know if I talked about this in the book. He went into a doughnut shop and there was just this family sitting there looking all sad because they'd just been to their grandmother's funeral, and Robbie Williams bought his doughnuts. They just came over to the table and just said, oh, how are you? And just chatting. And then slowly he went into doing Robin Williams shtick until everyone was laughing. And the grandson said, it was the first time I saw my dad laugh since his mum had died. Right. And and I think there's that interest, which is, um, I think it is true certainly of some people that I know that one of the drives to create things that, uh, hopefully delight people is that, you know, how horrible the world can be and how sad the world can be and how sad people can be. But that then becomes a very positive drive to go if you can, you know? And again, that's why I don't like and I find it harder and harder that that comedy that is always victimizing. Very often people who are more likely to be victimized in the first place is because I think, I think there's a line that I heard once, which I think is is a great philosophy. Someone once said the difference between falling off a bar stool in London and falling off a bar stool in Dublin, and they said if you fall off a bar stool in London, someone goes, ah, you fell off the bar stool and if you fall off a bar stool in Dublin, someone go, oh, I did that on Monday and they help you up. Now that to me is such a simple story that has. 1s I think, an incredibly important philosophy. Do you want to briefly be superior to someone who's fallen on the floor, or do you want to get down and lift the person who's fallen on the floor up? And I think, you know, so much of the dynamic of of the communication that is driven by news media and social media is your brief superiority as opposed to let's all get down there? Yeah. So so do you think that in terms of pursuing something creative, then you should as much as possible be motivated by the intrinsic rewards as opposed to the extrinsic rewards by which by which I mean, what do you think is good? What do you think is valuable? What do you think you would be proud of if you created, rather than getting the rewards of validation or congratulations or money or status? I mean, of course, I imagine especially in stand up, external feedback is integral to the art form. So there is that to be taken account. But in the main, do you think you should approach creation from that more intrinsic mindset? I think it's better to start and, you know, to to really what do you want to create and why do you want to create it? Because there are easier ways of making a living, and there's a high percentage chance that you're not going to break through and you're not going to end up playing the O2, whatever you do. Uh, so, you know, there's a great sadness when you suddenly can sometimes see what you're doing and you go, I don't even like what I'm doing. And it also hasn't made me famous or rich or whatever it might be. So I do feel that that again, this is from my perspective. I'm sure there's others who would just, you know, on a comedy course, say, this is what you need to do. This is how you need to make people laugh. This is, you know, but I, you know, it's Eddie Izzard is always often used as that, that great example, you know, because when she began, uh, people always say that Eddie was rubbish for ages. I think Eddie was probably rubbish for a couple of years. But then. When Eddie got good and that was his her manager at the time, Pete would have been one of the people who, uh, set up a load of clubs for, for Eddie and said, just do do different stuff every week. 1s But I've not got very good stuff this week. Doesn't matter. So Pete created the space for Eddie to fail. As often as she needed. And then that became, you know. Eddie's a true phenomenon. And Stewart Lee, now, Stewart Lee is, you know, the most critically revered comic in the world, pretty much. And I think sometimes embarrassed, but sorry. Yeah. No, but that's the trouble is, because all the bands that he likes only ever go up 13 people go and see them. Uh, he always feels embarrassed by his success because he wants to be as unsuccessful as some of the bands that he loves. Um, but, you know. No, no, no, but, you know, and, uh, and then there's other people who deserve, you know, there's so many brilliant people. I mentioned my friend Joanne Ranieri, he's one of the funniest people in the world. And, you know, someone like Josie Long. But I think the reward ultimately is the reward of those who do love what they do. It's such a pure thing. And that again, is I think one of the problems is I still sometimes battle with this when I'm doing a load of stuff for free. There's a little bit of my mind going, why are you going to Hull not even knowing it? Because we're we're in a capitalist system that says everything has. And then so I still have that little battle, and then I go, I'm going to Hull because I can and I'm going to meet some people and I'm going to find out something new about the world. And but I think we've been so that idea that everything needs to money has become a yeah, money has become a total proxy for value. Something is valuable if it gets you money, if something doesn't send you money, then what's the then you really have to go through the mental gymnastics to yourself to prove. Yes, this actually is a good use of my time. Yeah, I wasn't just being just having an experience or a curious experience or like, like you say, just discovering something new. Yeah, it has doesn't feature as as the thing as much. And of course the media again, it's nothing that gets particularly because that is all set up in that world. It's set up in the, you know, the world of this is money, money, money. This is what makes and I think, you know, if you are lucky enough, if you're lucky enough to get to the point where you. 1s Are not concerned or most of the time. Then I think because I think there must be a Goldilocks region, and I think I'm in that Goldilocks region, which is I don't have a big house, I don't drive a car, uh, but I can, uh, go into a bookshop and buy some books and I can go and have a nice cake. And if the bills suddenly go up for energy, I'm not immediately in any jeopardy. So that means that I've got this, which I've got, I think, an incredible amount of freedom. And if you don't notice when you have that, I think of the number of people who have a job where they really do. They have no freedom and they will get told off if they're five minutes late, as if that mattered, you know, and they will be watched over the whole time, and they will have that, that level of incarceration. And to think of the number of people who are going through that. And then equally, we're not equally but that ridiculous thing that then happens with wealth, if you have too much money, which is if you then don't pay, you know, if you don't have the most expensive wine, if you're not able to offer your card, you know all of that stuff. If you haven't, if you're not all going to your holiday homes in the same, but you know, all of that stuff that that to me is again creates another form of incarceration. Wealth becomes your god essentially. At that point, it becomes, I guess, what they would have called in religious times. Your false idea. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think that that bit of when you do have trying to observe the freedoms that you have, if you're lucky enough to get to the point that I've got to. Yeah. I mean, especially by thinking about things globally is important and think thinking about things in historical context, like we talk about the 1% a lot. And when we say the 1%, we normally mean the 1% in a Western country. But do you know how much money you have to end to be in the 1% of income globally? It's like 30,000 USD per year. It's not a lot of money. And then that's not even extrapolating. Historically, the amount of freedom, you know, for most people, for most of human history, it was just a nightmare. So I think, like you're saying. By capitalist standards, you can be doing quite modestly and yet have an incredible amount of freedom, which is the problem is you have to consciously shine a light on it. Because again, our brains are geared towards negative information, not positive information, because being focused on negative information is much more likely to save your life. Whereas if you spend all day writing a gratitude journal, that's not going to help you. When the neighboring tribe comes to pillage your village, you know what I mean? So, I mean, it's 2s important to have one of, you know, the ecology of practices you have is to be like, this is kind of amazing, the ride that you're on. Yeah. And I suppose also that bit, as you said, people don't like if for some people are questioning things, it's very, very difficult, you know, and again, I think because there's so much stuff that goes on, uh, in terms of uh, with the trans community and non-binary people at the moment. And, and I think, you know, the, the aggression, which I think is I don't think it's, I think. From my experience, most people don't have that aggression. Most people. You know, it's. But it means you have to change the way you think about things. And, you know, when you do actually look at cultures that don't I mean, I think the idea of living in a binary world is preposterous. I think, again, when we get back to the messiness of biology, the fact, the idea that we are both exactly as male as each other because we have a Y chromosome and, you know, all of those things, which is where the whole thing is, is a spectrum biologically and culturally in so many different things. And I think we rob ourselves when we go, are we the goodies? Are we the baddies? Are we in, are we out? Are we this or you know and and so sorry the reason I was just again that bit which when you as you said if you go we'll manage the thing that's your meaning then you don't have to then think about the other meanings. Or if it's a dogmatic religious belief or dogmatic political belief, you don't. You set the parameters. But if you are, I personally always like the rules changing. The older I get, the more I like trying to go, oh, the world's not the same today. And oh god, that means I've got a totally different viewpoint in that world situation and this situation and I don't know, in the same way with the fact that I don't believe in God and I don't have a God shaped hole in any way, I don't I don't go, I wish that, you know, what I wish was that life was longer so I could read more books and see more things, but it's not like, you know, I don't have the God shaped hole that some people have. And that bit of saying, the moment that you have to go, right, what is my meaning? What do I do? Because I don't want money to be my meaning. I want to have enough to make sure that my family are comfortable, uh, and happy. And then after that, I don't want to worry. And then I go, oh, well, the meaning is creating stuff for me. That's a lot of what the meaning is, is, is creating things and seeing things. And it is, you know, on every journey is suddenly going, oh, wow, I've not noticed that weird little garden before. Oh, I've not seen where that blue plate before. Oh, look, there's that street preacher there. And what's she talking about? You know, that thing to be. And I think it then also just means that the more connections that are going on, positive connections, not the bit of the the Dunbar's number where you're confused that everything is kind of in transition. So that's another thing I think, which is when you go, it's like the answers are not as interesting as the questions, you know, all those old cliches. But I think it's true. I think that, you know, I was doing an event about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the other day, and one of the things we were being asked about, I said, I think 42 was the answer to the life, the universe, and everything is a good answer because I think if we ever do get an answer to something like that, it will be as boring as 42. If we get an answer to what consciousness is, it'll be an equation which doesn't actually alter. You know, the interesting bit is us going on the journey and working out all the questions of what is consciousness? Uh, the ultimate answer is not the interesting bit. It's the new question that comes from that answer. Yeah. And you're also with what you just said. You're. 1s You stumbled onto a very important problem about. Does scientific inquiry, trying to figure out how the world works objectively. Is it the be all and end all of trying to figure out how we should live and what we should value? And many people think, and I would tend to agree with them, that you can't even carry out science without having a value system first. So that such that science needs to be nested within your personal philosophy, or perhaps a cultural philosophy about what is good and what is bad and what is worth pursuing. What are we trying to avoid? Because unless you have that, you can't even begin your first experiment. You can't even form your first hypothesis. What do you look into? Where do you devote resources? How do you construct your questions? All of these imply a value system caring about something first and then okay, we're going to we're going to look into cancer. Why? Because we can try to figure out how we can treat it. Because people dying of cancer is bad and we want people to live longer, healthier lives, that kind of thing. So, I mean, I think scientific objectivism isn't going to give us all the, you know, like you said, if you figure out how consciousness works, that's that's great insofar as it helps us figure out how to live in the first place. But the most, yeah, the most important is when we're looking at the little bits, isn't it? When we look at the damage, how can we repair the damage? When someone's brain gets, when we see their consciousness, their actual active consciousness affected? But it's I think you're I mean, I think what is important and what isn't important in terms of the nearest we get to objective truths is, again, one of the problems is that people want to believe that they're right. And I, you know, like, I don't care whether someone believes in a god or gods or whatever it is. Uh, I only it only becomes an issue if their belief in the God of the gods also is the reason that they say. And that's why all gay people must be murdered. That's why all women must be slaves or whatever it might be. So it's not the issue. Right? And I always think that some of the atheist movement got that wrong when they I think they used to, and I'm sure I used to have a little bit more of a belief that the idea that if you could get rid of of organized religion, overly organized religion, perhaps, uh, then things, but you go, oh no, that would immediately get replaced by all the other forms of so, so what? We need to battle with is dogmas. So, so something like proving there's not a god. Is of no interest to me. Uh, and indeed, having I mean, I think it's to me, the most interesting thing is it's a thing that I've talked about quite a lot, which is Brian Cox. Uh, you know, when I say things he disagrees with one of them is that, uh, ghosts really exist. And, of course, he'll always say, no, they don't. They break the second law of thermodynamics. But that's ghosts as a scientific idea. Ghosts as an idea that populate our imagination, ghosts as our experiences, all of those things, they do exist. And I always go back to there's a great book about William Blake by my friend John Higgs, uh, called William Blake Versus the World. And, um, and it talks about how William Blake was able to have different levels of reality. In fact, I mean, not far from here, Peckham, you know, rise where he saw some of the angels in the tree. But it was, uh, but he could accept this as a basic the base reality. So all of us have we got up now and immediately walked straight forward. We would all bang our shins on that table. There's no one here who, whatever are set of beliefs is will not. You know, we might pretend that we didn't really hurt it. You know I shouldn't, but we did. Uh, but then on the other levels of things, like, for instance, William Blake was once arguing with a thistle because the thistle was an old man to him, the thistle. And he was having this very. But he would not wish to persuade anyone else that the thistle was an old man, because he knew it was the, uh, reality he was experiencing. Now, that, to me, is an incredible level of possible maturity. 1s Uh, to go there is a general physical reality, and there are certain laws of physics that really is worth obeying at all times if you want to have a longer life. Uh, and then there's another form of reality, which, as long as you don't wish to, you demand that it, uh, everyone else believes it. And you can go. So this reality becomes a far. It becomes an authentic but but but a reality that it has a, you know, it's a mist of reality. Yeah. And you can see how that could apply to everyday dysfunction is like, say you're talking to your friend about politics over lunch and you stumble upon a disagreement and all of a sudden you're in this heated debate about politics. What do people typically think? They think, oh my God, my friend has somehow failed to learn the truth about this topic, which I am lucky enough to know about. Let me try and educate him. And should he failed to agree with me by the end of this conversation, then I guess I've failed at my job of trying to get him to learn the quote, truth. Whereas what actually you should be thinking is very similar to what Blake thought about the thesis, which is clearly there is a reality about politics or whatever it is you're talking about. My version of what I think seems to be clashing with his for fill in the blank any number of reasons. You know, I've consumed different information. I have a different personality. I have a different perspective. I've had different, had a different life experience. He's had his set of experiences. And now it seems there's some important differences. And you could think, I wonder what there is to learn about my life, about his life, about how we happen to arrive at these different conclusions and what we could learn from each other sort of going forward, rather than just doing what everyone else does. Well, the demonizing we are talking about this, that that bit of when you go, why, why, why do I need to hold this opinion? And why do we need to argue about this? Yeah. And you know, that bit of getting to the kernel of why something worries you, why something is, is unjust, whatever it might be. Yeah, like my friends voting. I'm a Democrat, my friends voting Republican. It must be because he hates this kind of person or whatever it might actually be, because he cares about certain economic things that maybe aren't as high on my priority list. So that sort of active imagination when you're disagreeing with someone is very important, I think. Oh, the culture war thing, which is why is the thing you're being told is, is a threat. Why is it a threat to you? Why is it going to, you know, and that bit I always feel that on all those political shows, they never ask that. Why do you believe this question enough, you know, and now we have reached that that period of I think there was a minister, I can't remember what it was the other day where, uh, something that's going on now with an enormous number of our kind of, uh, industries, it's basically been called out as being hugely problematic by the head of those groups. And, uh, the MP just went, well, I don't believe that. And the journalist went, no, no, no. But this is actually what this is now, this is evidence. This is this has been you can't just ignore it. And that bit of understanding why you believe what you believe. Yeah, I think he's kind of I mean, that's what I find thinking about faith. I say faith rather than religion. So I think religion is an organization. I think faith is, you know, that, um, when I sometimes see something really beautiful and you have that emotional experience and I think what I'm experiencing is probably the same thing as people who have that some, some of their moments with a god. But for somehow for them it's being translated as some greater power. And for me it's not being translated, but but I think it might be the same physical experience. It's just that the translation is different. I guess the, the difficult, the difficulty that we seem to be having is just with with nuance and with balance and with like with things not being a definite answer like you talk about. I know you were talking about LGBT, the trans community, kind of the amount of hatred that gets directed their religion. Likewise the amount of hatred that gets um, and people seem to be so desperate to make it certain to make it for that to be a ground truth in something that is messy and complicated and unclear and that we don't completely understand, and that we're all if we could all somehow muddle through it together, it feels like we could probably get to something that more of us would be happy with. Um. 1s People seem to find it. Yeah. People seem to find it hard to consider uncertainty. Yeah, I think there is a security uncertainty. But then I because I used to sometimes think, ah, it must be quite nice to be one of these, you know, fundamentalists. But then I realised none of them seem happy because I mean, it's again, it's one of the problems, isn't it? Some of the issues that we might argue about, if you believe in that issue with such intensity that it is part of your personality, then you cannot argue with that person because you are for them. You are beating them up. And that's the and that's the, the problem that arises that, you know, so many people waste so much time, um, especially on social media. And a number of times I send someone a DM going, stop arguing with this man. He's there's no point. It's, you know, the desire and the importance of his belief means that it is not going to it doesn't matter what evidence you show. And I think, you know, again, sometimes some of the arguments, if they're when they might be required on on a scientific thing is people are still learning that it doesn't matter about what statistics you show. It has to be the emotional thing. It's like the there was a National Geographic years ago did a piece about kind of the rise of pseudoscience, and there was a climate change scientist, and she said she couldn't believe it. She found out that her dad didn't believe that, uh, you know, the speed of climate change was due to human action. And, uh, and she said, well, this is what I do. And she'd go back to her and say, Dan, have you seen this? And this is, this was in the Arctic, and this is happening here. Um, and he just wouldn't believe me. And then one day I said to him, dad, isn't it weird that you trust all these strangers that you've never even met more than you trust your own daughter? And that was what chipped it for him, was suddenly it was like, this is my daughter, and I'm, you know, and that so, so I, you know, most of our beliefs, I think are emotional beliefs. Yeah. I would tend to agree with that. And I mean, again, it's important to understand our brain wasn't designed to try and figure out the nature of objective reality. And the function of our beliefs isn't to have a really good map of objective reality. I think the function of our beliefs is how do we get from point A to point B? Like our beliefs are vehicle for action through life. And that's why so many beliefs cannot be true in terms of objective reality. But they can be metaphorically true. So let's take karma, for instance. It may not be the case that doing good things results in, quote, good karma and energy and disembodied energy that somehow helps you. And bad karma may be equally untrue. And yet it is true that if you go live generally doing good things, as a rule of thumb, it works quite well. The reason doesn't have to be karma. It can still be really, really good advice. So I think atonement here as well. I'm sure there is. Or I think that I'm sure it would make you feel of doing something out. Oh, completely. Laurie Santos is like big into happiness. I don't know if you've come across her, but she's fantastic. Um, and I mean, yeah, basically all the research shows that it is more, much more satisfying that the happier people are the ones that do more for others. You know, volunteering is one of the best things that you can do for your mental health. Um, so all your altruistic free months of work are, um, you know, like probably the thing that can contribute to your happiness most greatly. Um, and. 1s You know, kind of in random conversations, random bits of connection with people are the things that are good and that none of these things are new. Like, she has this great bit of her podcast where she goes through lessons of the ancients and she goes through like Judaism, Buddhism, um, and the sort of Greek philosophy and kind of goes through the ideas that they've explored and that basically all of the things that we're now using science to show will contribute to our happiness were being thought about by humans, you know, thousands of years ago. Um, but yes, returning to the point, doing things for other people is is top notch. Yeah, the problem is probably all those things that were being thought about were being thought out by a minority, but they're the minority that actually are now remembered because they were the most interesting people. And there was a bit of papyrus. And still we were having the same exact thing, isn't it? Which is, you know, whenever Natalie Haynes does her stand up for the classics, you know, and you'll always find that all of the, you know, many of these thinkers who, you know, mistakenly, we call these things like ancient Greece. And you go, it's only a few thousand years ago. It's not ancient at all. Um, the same issues. And that's what people it's like with middle age, where people can't seem to realise when they're looking at the kids nowadays and trying to go, but it's not the same as when we were young and our parents and you go along is it is the same thing because this has been going on for as long as writing has existed. There have been middle aged philosophers going, I mean, but the kids nowadays, well, that's one of the really complicated things about life. Whether you're going through it as an individual, as a society, you have to figure out this problem I'm facing. Is this a new problem for which I need a new solution, or is this an old problem for which I need to rely on traditional wisdom? And that's the whole liberal conservative dynamic. Liberals are like, these are new issues. We have to have new ways of thinking about it. We can't keep going back to these traditional methods and conservatives are like, no, we've had this problem forever. It's like, get married, have kids, pay your taxes, you know, whereas liberals like, what about art? What about creativity? What? Let's figure out the new thing. And I find that's true of individuals lives. I was trying to figure out what's the context here. You know, how do I solve this specific problem. It's a huge, you know, so there's something there. There really is something in just, uh, having the wisdom to tell yourself, like, life is really complicated and there's no answers in the back of the book. No, I know the answer. Your thing is, you know, connection to again, Ian Force was right. Wasn't the only connect. Yeah. That's where that bit of not being the only one of being of saying what's actually in your mind of trying to I mean, I think one of the most important things. Is decreasing as much as possible. The disparity between who you appear to be and what is going on on the inside, because I think that is, again, when we were talking about the drinking in the UK and things like that, the greater the distance between what is going on in your mind and who you're presenting yourself as, that can only lead to unhappiness and because you're always misrepresenting yourself. We call that congruence. 2s That's you. Like you said, your your words, thoughts, actions and emotions are as aligned as possible because it takes so much mental energy to misrepresent yourself, and it's so corrupting of your soul to constantly try to have to hide yourself away from other people. 2s We fixed it then? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good. You seem. You seem like a very congruent. You seem very. You seem like a very at peace person, if you don't mind my saying. I mean, two years ago, when I when I would have left this room, I would have immediately think, why did I say that? When I say this? And there's a couple of things I've said that I thought, should I said that I never would have said it, but yeah, not having that with me now is, you know, I'm always waiting for it to come. Like in Edinburgh. I kept thinking, really happy. This is a bit worried because I was like, I was having a lot of interesting conversations. I was meeting lots of people. I felt that I had purpose as well with the shows that were going on and and I only had one little. There was one little moment where I was a bit cross and I was like, wow, this is, you know, again, I'm very aware of the fact that, you know, for the up to the age of 52, there was a bit that that friend of mine, I never explained, my friend Joe, she's a typical she, she's the one who was the former tap dancer who the first time I went up to her was I saw her tap dancing at a late night club and I said, hello, my name is Robin. I do a show where I read out from books about giant killer crabs and Mills and Boon romances, and I think that you're tap dancing would really enhance some of those readings. And she always tells her friends, she went, that's how we met. But I asked her, I said, because we know each other for a long time. I said, how different do you think the exterior of of me is? So. And I said, that's a funny thing. I don't see any difference. I said, that's, that's the to me, the most interesting thing, which is my interior is entirely changed, but my exterior is still so the performance mode, I'd sometimes find that as well. I remember doing this celebrity mastermind and all these people got in contact with me afterwards and oh my God, you look so comfortable and so relaxed and well. And I thought I was one step away from running away from the studio. And I hadn't slept for three nights because I was so worried about it. But my and that was another all of those little reminders that go, this is what I appear to be. Because I would say that, yeah, no one would have. I'm, you know, my wife never knew about there was just when it started to come up, I think when I reached a certain point of therapy and she just turned to me one day and she went, so you anxious now? I went, oh, yeah. The whole time, yeah. I wake up and I worry what I did wrong. Then I worry about what I'm about to do wrong. And then I go to the bakery and say something about buttons. It's a disaster. That may be the beautiful place for us to come to a close. I'm talking about people's buns, narrative art. 2s Um, come back anytime. All the narrative arcs are welcome here. Um, Robin, thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Talking to you. Wisdom and congruent. Yeah. 1s He's a psychiatrist. Yeah.