Darragh Ennis (The Menace from The Chase) | Scientist to TV Quiz Star

0:00Things just stick in my head. They're just there. I can remember random weird facts from years and years and years ago because I find everything interesting. And I think that's part of it. I'm fascinated by the world. Tell me, who is Darragh Ennis? I'm a scientist. That's what I've done for most of my life. But a few years ago, I almost by accident ended up on a quiz show called The Chase. And now I'm a professional quizzer on ITV. You must get so many questions about The Chase. What are the most asked questions? What's Brad really like? They also want to know how many shows we film in a day. Three.

0:29Do we get a proportion of the money if we win? Absolutely not. Do we get in trouble when we lose? No. A lot of people think it's a fix. It's not. It will be fraud and you can go to jail. Like it's a proper crime. How I do it is I link facts together or I use mnemonics or use memory tricks. That's how I do it. So do you know who the House of Commons speaker is, the current speaker? No. His name is Lindsay Hoyle. That's his name. And that sounds really like linseed oil. The bench is in the House of Commons, highly polished with linseed oil, linseed oil, linseed oil, linseed oil, all the same. Do you ever feel bad about beating the contestants?

1:01No, if they played well, they'd win. Dara Ennis, welcome. Thanks very much for having me. Looking forward to this, Jack. Tell me, who is Dara Ennis? Well, I'm a scientist. That's what I've done for most of my life. But a few years ago, I almost by accident ended up on a quiz show called The Chase. And now I'm a professional quizzer on ITV. You loved quiz before, didn't you? So that was something that... I did love a quiz. I did love a quiz. And I love a pub quiz, but I never took it very seriously. So a lot of people I now know, because I'm in this world now, take it really seriously and they go to competitions.

1:33There are ranking competitions. There are national and international rankings. You know, my colleague Paul Sinner was number one in the UK for a while. I've met the top ranked quizzers in the world. I don't do that. No. That's not for me. So it's still a passion of yours. I like doing it for fun. I'm on a quiz team in Oxford. I play with my friends every Thursday in a league and we have a lot of fun. But I don't do the competitions. They're like exams. I do it for fun and I love trivia. This is interesting because there's a real intellect that sits behind you, the scientists, the neuroscience, the PhD, the academia.

2:03Yeah. And is that actually a benefit to be someone that's really good from a quiz program? And I'm asking that as a personal question, but also the people that you know that take it really seriously. Are they also academic? Are they also people that are in that realm? So not always. This is the thing. There's quite a few academics who are in their field are genuinely brilliant, but would struggle, you know, to find their way to the local supermarket. you know our like my my boss in the lab professor absolutely brilliant man won millions of pounds in grants terrible at quizzes they're just not his thing he's not into trivia you know it's a it's a kind of weird sidestep you have people who work in you know very normal office jobs or work you know in retail and stuff and they're some of the best quizzes in the world it's it's a very separate obsession it's not necessarily an academic one so my next question would be what makes someone I'm really good at quiz because I've gone to pub quizzes and I feel thick.

2:56Now, I wasn't bright at school. I am no PhD, right? But I've got EQ. I can dance to the pace when we're having a conversation and so on. But then I get asked, what's the tallest bridge in the world? And you probably know the answer. And I'm just like, no idea. It's a parlour game trick. It's not anything special. This is something you can learn to be good at. Anyone can learn. But you have to have a certain interest in trivia, in useless information. And if you're not interested in that, it doesn't happen. So you can practice, you can go to lots of quizzes. People who are good at quizzes work at being good at quizzes.

3:28So it's the classic immerse yourself in it. That useless information that probably becomes quite useful to know actually over time. Exactly. Now, I've always had a natural talent for remembering stuff. Stuff sticks in my head. It just does. And when I was a kid, people say, why would you possibly want to know this? For what reason? Now I do it professionally, but things just stick in my head. They're just there. I can remember random weird facts from years and years and years ago because I find everything interesting. And I think that's part of it. I'm fascinated by the world. So the one thing that we do parallel, natural curiosity.

4:00Yeah. So always asking questions. The bit where I kind of parallel you is I retain some of it. I seem to remember information that piques my interest. So if you explain something to me or I watch something and I'm fascinated by it, it stays. When I learned algebra at school, gone. just didn't make any sense to me. I didn't see where I was going to be using it. So that seems like that's where everything seems to stick with you. But do you need to be interested in it or just once it goes in, is it almost like put into storage somewhere? It sticks better if I'm interested. And this is the same for everybody.

4:33Your interests stay with you, but you can make things interesting. You can force them to be interesting. So how I do it is I link facts together or I use mnemonics or use memory tricks. That's how I do it. So there's very easy ways to do this that are very obvious um so do you know who the house of commons speaker is the current speaker no his name is lindsey hoyle that's his name and that sounds really like linseed oil so now if you think the bench is in the house of commons highly polished with linseed oil lindsey oil lindsey oil lindsey oil all the same and that sticks you know so you can make things interesting you can fit things together you can you can link facts together um the one i always use is that if you want to know when Genghis Khan was alive he was still alive the same time as King John of England and I had to learn the lists of the kings and queens of England because they come up in quizzes all the time so I know Genghis Khan was alive from the mid-1100s to the early 1200s because King John was as well and I have lots of things like that there's lots of people who I link together and that's how your brain works it works by synaptic association anyway so it's kind of mimicking the network of your brain so another great one this blows everybody's mind is that Shakespeare knew the person who invented the first submarine.

5:42He knew him personally. They met. And that's a mind-blowing fact. They were both at the court of King James I in the early 1600s. Cornelius Drabble was his name. So Shakespeare and him have been in the same room, more than likely. There's no direct evidence for that, but they were both in London, in the King's court at the same time. So Shakespearean submarines existed. Isn't that cool? You're so interesting to talk. You're five minutes in and I'm already like... So everybody has a rough idea when Shakespeare was around. You know it was like 1500-1600. So now you know in your head submarines started at the same time.

6:14So they weren't a 19th century invention at all. They were a 17th and 16th century invention. So with that almost purpose element and interest, there's things that you're learning that are almost a byproduct of you being Dara and then all the things that you've gone on to do from an academic point of view and then the TV side of things. But what is the purpose? What is the thing that excites you the most? The thing that excites me most isn't actually quiz. I love my job. I genuinely, like, I'm one of the very privileged people who goes in laughing into work every day. It's brilliant. It's such a great gig.

6:46My wife went to watch this film once and she said, I'm never allowed to call it work ever again. You know, I do almost nothing and get lots and lots of praise for it. It's great. But I love science. I genuinely, like, I introduced myself as a scientist first. I am. And I think scientists in general are really, really bad at communicating with the public. We tend to be very insular, slightly nerdy people. no surprise there and i think we as a society have abandoned most of our society to misinformation non-scientific ideas conspiracy theories are everywhere and scientists are not doing enough to combat it and what i really really want to do is to change that i want to bring proper entertaining science back into the sort of like the public sphere completely that's what i want whether you bond over streaming binge-worthy videos watching sports recaps video gaming or by unplugging altogether.

7:36The 2026 Lincoln Nautilus Hybrid helps keep you connected throughout your journey. Learn more at Lincoln.com. Available connectivity features and functionality vary by model. Package pricing, trials, and term lengths vary by model. Video streaming and games are only available while parked. Burnout Paradise is hailed as the wildest night out in New York City by Time Out New York. Now off-Broadway at the Astor Place Theater, It's a live show you'll never forget as the people on stage make a desperate attempt to complete a series of escalating tasks all while running on treadmills. And if they don't complete their to-do list in one hour's time, you can get your money back.

8:16Get tickets today at burnoutparadise.com.

8:24One of the things I wanted to say to you earlier, and it's almost a brilliant timing to do that, is that a lot of scientists that I've met along the way aren't able to articulate. so they know so much it's like it's like the really clever teacher you were trying to learn your maths from at school but he couldn't teach you yeah he couldn't articulate he couldn't make it interesting and he couldn't break it down to what i'd say layman's terms so if you can if you can learn at the level of the scientist if you like then you can understand the jargon and you can you can sort of piece it all together but you have a way of breaking things down where i can understand that and anyone can understand it is that potentially what's missing in that sort of science scenario where people aren't doing enough to amplify that information across because you do that really really well yeah but it's not easy to do that's the thing like you can make it look easy and i've worked at it and i've got good at it over the years and i had a natural talent it's important to highlight that you've worked at yeah so you've actually overcome what might not have been a natural skill which now feels very natural yeah so i had some natural skill for it but i've built on the talent the talent was there and i built skill on top yes um which a lot of people don't appreciate are two separate things because you can learn skills but you can't learn talent.

9:30So I had some advantage for that but most scientists if you think about what selects for a scientist you know what the selection criteria are they are nerdy people who are slightly obsessive who really want to drill down into one particular thing and they focus on a tiny field. It's not even just like biology, chemistry, physics it's you know really really narrow and the more advanced you become the more narrow your research becomes and some people will work on one gene for their entire career and trying to explain broad concepts when that's all that you do is really really difficult also a lot of people are on the spectrum who are scientists because it suits them you know it's it's repetitive work it's very meticulous it's very organized and this suits a lot of people who are on the spectrum and it means sometimes their their social skills are a little bit lacking you know they find it difficult to communicate with people and all of those things added together with the one big one is that there is very little reward for scientists to communicate their research.

10:28All of the funding agencies talk about outreach, they all do. They all want you to show some evidence of it but there's no real reward. There's this feeling from a lot of lab leaders that going to talk in schools and going to do social media is an extra, it's a waste of time, it's icing on the cake and it really shouldn't be. It should be a fundamental part of research and it's not. There's so much in that, so much on the spectrum. I was diagnosed of adhd last year like six months ago so the the the hyper focus the the niche like you said working on that one cell i totally get that these people dedicate time and commitment and they're getting their own fulfillment out of that but then dare i say unless they achieve some massive breakthrough they don't get the reward financially and it brings me quite amusingly to your your sort of entrance if you like to the chase you went on to make a grand yes and to pay for a back door and you were so genuine and sincere and authentic.

11:22I watched it last night to remind myself of it. And you're sort of being asked, really, is that all you want? Yeah, that's why I'm here. And that version of you there, which was like, that's all I want to now actually have made a career out of it. Talk to me about that transition. Yeah, it's bonkers. So people don't know this. They assume scientists who work at the bench are really well paid. They're really, really badly paid. I was a senior postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University, which was the number one ranked university in the world and I would have earned more if I was a manager of a shop it's just that simple we get paid very little and my wife was also a researcher so we didn't have very much money we bought our first house no back door it was freezing cold we had a curtain over our kitchen door so yeah I just I genuinely just needed you know a thousand eleven hundred pounds to buy a door and I went on a quiz show to win some money because why not I applied for it and i won the money and i bought the door but then about two weeks yeah that was it done job done it was a great experience i had a brilliant time like i know it's a cliche on like a game show or something they go did you have a good day i had a great day i genuinely loved being on it and then two weeks later i got a phone call from the producers asking me to interview to be the next chaser and i was like is this a wind up yeah it's like you don't expect it you know it's not a thing and on the uk version it had never happened you know they'd had five chasers at that point none of them have been recruited from the contestant pool but i would be mad to say no have you had a chance to ask them what they saw in you why did they did they get customer feedback was there was a you know i mean was a mixture of the producers thinking he's got something about him there's an intellect there's a character because you are yeah you're interesting to talk with and of course that's worked for you uh which you need to have to be successful on tv yeah so there was a couple of things i talked to them they always have you know this idea that if someone comes along we'll consider them you know they're never they're never actively recruiting as far as i'm aware you know that's not what they're doing but they saw me and they said they i was something different to what they already had so a lot of people who are very very good on the show are camera shy or are quite introverted because that is a lot of quizzers are very introverted people you know they like doing solitary things whereas i didn't care i was having a great time and i was very comfortable on camera and yeah they just seemed to like what i had it was a little bit different to what they had already so lucky me because for that sort of two weeks later so then at what point did you kind of always see that as a career because that was if i'm right that was 2019 i got that right no 2017 i was on the show longevity that's seven eight years yeah so it took two years the interview process so i didn't get offered the job until 2019 i was i was what i was thinking i was in the process so and i as far as i know and i don't know because they don't really tell us there was several people who were in that process or at least more than one there was I wasn't the only person um but yeah it took two years and I had to I had to bulk up on my knowledge um I had to learn a lot especially British stuff because I grew up in Ireland I don't know where the motorways go or any of that kind of stuff that are just standard questions for British people it's kind of weird that actually the cultural difference even though so geographically close same language the things like nursery rhymes are different and what is a dead easy you know level one question for someone who grew up in Britain no one in Ireland has any idea what you're talking about you know I don't know who Dr Foster was or what where he went you know that kind of thing it's bonkers so yeah it was this two-year process and then I went on the show as a chaser and it was yeah it's really surreal you must get so many questions about the chase what are the most asked questions yeah so I always expect people to ask me trivia questions to try and catch me out but they always want to know what's Brad really like so we are not the stars of the show people who haven't seen it bradley walsh the presenter is the star of the show and he is way nicer and funnier in person because he is like you know the naughty child in your class that everybody loved he's like that in a 65 year old man's body he's really good fun but he's he's genuine and he's concerned for people's like welfare when we start if there's somebody new he talks to them for a few minutes just to find out what their ambitions are and to assure them that if they have any problems they can come to him lovely lovely guy um they also want to know how many shows we film in a day three uh do we get a proportion of the money if we win absolutely not that would be bonkers i wish we did um do we get in trouble when we lose no i think a lot of people lose sight of the fact that this is a show that's made to entertain people it's not a competition like i try to win all the time because i'm very competitive this is the only thing i'm genuinely like naturally skillful and good at is is knowing things and remembering stuff so i really push it to the maximum i was terrible at football can't sing can't dance this is it so i always try to win um a lot of people think it's a fix there's a almost hunger in the general public that things are a conspiracy and things are fixed and it's not it will be fraud and you can go to jail like it's a proper crime and because the prizes are tax-free you know so anyone's going to come after you hmrc will and yeah what else did they ask me oh how did they pick the chaser they had this weird idea that all six of us are waiting outside we're on a rota of course we are because i'm not going to come in and stand at the back um on a show we're not going to record is there a chaser you wouldn't want to go up against oh no i i would fancy my chances against any of them love that yeah love the confidence well the the show itself is slightly tilted towards the contestants to make it more balanced the show wouldn't work if we obliterated them every time and it wouldn't work if the contestants won every time so they've they've put in certain safeguards like you get a head start in the final you've got a team of people you've got pushbacks and i would fancy my chances against any of the others i don't think by any stretch i'm the best out of the chasers even though i'm wildly self-confident but i know for a fact that in the contestant space which i've been in before i would i would be any gives you the unique perspective right yeah and a lot of people oh yeah do you feel bad for the contestants not initially because i'm so competitive i have like a flush of victory and then i feel bad about it afterwards i love that yeah and you know and it's the the charity shows because we do celeb specials for charity and they're like would you not just let them win i'm like no that's not the point it would ruin the show no one would watch it'd be very obvious and again a crime you know it would be fraud but they still like the charities still get a bonus they get a thousand pounds each and they get millions of people hearing the name of the charity awareness yeah yeah and that's worth huge amounts especially to a small charity so going into the chase do you have like a kind of routine or pre-match thoughts no not really so what we do well the routine is there because tv is regimented so you know i turn up before my show do hair and makeup and then one of the producers asks us warm-up questions usually from one of the quiz leagues or in england um and they do that just as a things just to get the brain ticking over but i don't particularly know i'm i'm fairly low maintenance i sit down i chill we watch we sit in the studio watch the contestants do the thing and then out i go you can turn it on when you need to Yeah.

18:19Well, it's always there. It's always turned on. That's the thing. When we're doing Beat the Chasers, though, and all six of us are there together, before the first episode, we all put our hands in and go batter them. It's an old tradition led by, I think Mark first started it, but we all go batter them and away we go. That's cool. So do you ever feel bad about beating the contestants? No, if they played well, they'd win. It's a game. You know, this is like asking a footballer, do you feel bad about beating the opposition? The objective, in my view, is to beat them. and if I beat them, that's fine.

18:49If they played better, then they'd win. Now, sometimes you wouldn't be human to go, you know, the 84-year-old grandmother who wants to bring her grandkids to Disney with the money. You do feel a bit bad, but I always like to win. I'm very competitive. You can see the competitiveness. Refreshing Wild Cherry Cola meets smooth cream.

19:11The treat you deserve. Pepsi Wild Cherry and Cream. Treat yourself.

19:46Bolligard.com slash screen. It's big time. I love it. Is there an embarrassing moment or a question that stands out for you? Yeah. So when we have a question, if we want to like add a bit, which is good for the edit as well. And it sort of, you know, shows our knowledge. At one point, there was a multiple choice question. And I said that I mixed up cheetah and chimpanzee in my head. And I said, oh, of course, you know, a cheetah doesn't have a tail because it's an ape. Because I was thinking of cheetah, Tarzan's cheetah in my head. somehow I'd flipped them. So I said, and that was on Beat the Chasers with a live audience.

20:20I went out to millions of people. I was, as a biologist, saying that a cheetah is an ape. Did you catch yourself or did you have to hear that back or see it? Are you with me? Because did you have a moment where you're like, or did someone point it out? All of the others turned to look at me. The audience went quiet. Brad went, is there a punchline? Because he thought I was lining up for a joke. And then I went, oh my God, what have I just said? And afterwards, I went to the producers and I'm like, that's gone into the bloopers. She goes, no, no, that's going straight into the main edit that's gold I go thanks very much I think very few people ask me did I consider saying no to the job everyone assumes that I immediately jumped on it when I got the interview I immediately phone called when they called me up I immediately jumped at that but when it came to the critical point I had to sit down and seriously think did I want to do this because we've said earlier about people want to be famous did I want to have people stopping me for photographs and I had to have a long talk with my wife and we talked about the structures we put in place about you know keeping my children out of the limelight all that kind of stuff so there really genuinely was a point where I had some reservations about actually taking the job because I don't want to be famous and I've never wanted to be famous I am famous despite my best sort of efforts there's nothing I can do about that but that was not the aspect the job that I wanted.

21:40I enjoy doing it, I really like doing it. It's pretty well paid, not as well paid as some people think. They think I'm a billionaire or something but I did not want the celebrity, I didn't want to be stopped on the street. No, I can feel that, that authenticity. So I go away, my friends who, in Ireland nobody gets divorced, I know very few people who are divorced so my friends, we're all in our 40s, almost all of us are married, there are no more stag parties they don't exist so we've invented the first weekend in May me and all my buddies from school like 20 of us go away somewhere we go away as if it's a stag party we go we have a few beers we go somewhere sunny it's a really nice thing but since I've gone on TV it's become a chore because whatever about walking down the street in London or in Oxford or something if you're in Benidorm or Alba Fera or something in a resort people are have a few drinks the reservations go I get absolutely mobbed by people and that that side of it is not enjoyable and if because you never wanted that so many people that will come into what is effectively a tv show will have at any one time be expecting or wanting to be famous yeah and the the weirdest thing about it is is that most of those people will get to a point where they totally dislike it even though that is what they were chasing because they don't realize what it's like um and I'm only like I'm no way a major celebrity you know I am I'm a fairly a lot of people know who I am but I'm not like you know Hollywood level where people are like running after me and calling their friends to say and I can imagine that's truly horrific and it's not that bad I don't mind it it's fine and if anybody's seen this shows if they want to get a photograph with me or chat with me I'm more than happy to do so but that is a cost to this whole lifestyle that I assessed at the time and nobody ever asked me about that thank you for sharing that i have one more question having the perspective of having been a contestant and a chaser if you're coming on the show as a contestant what advice would you give there's no magic formula to winning the show you need to answer lots of questions right but i would say for most people it's fairly basic give an answer don't say pass the pass has only been a correct answer on the chase once once in like 15 years or however long they're doing it because they did it nearly as a joke.

23:56You know, what's the space between two mountains? And the guy said, oh, pass. And it was right. So they did that as a bit of a joke. But if you don't try, like anything in life, if you don't make an attempt, you're never going to get there. So you have to try. Do something. Make the effort. What are your family? What are your kids thinking about that? Because the whole transition. Well, it didn't transition. I kept up both jobs for quite a long time. So I did the chase in my holidays. I didn't take a day off other than maybe Christmas Day for about two years because I love science and I wanted to keep doing it and I was also very aware that TV work is sketchy you know guaranteed not guaranteed by any amount you know like there's no there's no real guarantee of longevity at all so I was very very aware that you know I just bought my first house I had a young family so I was hedging my bets for quite a long time but once it did become a career it's become it's really normal for my kids you know they don't really remember me not doing the job because they were very young or not bought and actually youngest wasn't born yeah and they just think it's really normal they don't they don't watch the show they won't i was thinking more your wife actually oh my the way that it went from going on the quiz show for a door to be like oh my god you're getting noticed in the street now sort of thing that's a quite a big that that no the jump was worse than that because my first shows went out during lockdown so i became i came out of lockdown famous which was hugely jarring so I went into lockdown I was already filming but wasn't allowed to tell anyone and we went into lockdown and my episodes came out in 2020 that I filmed in 2019 and then when we were all allowed out into the world and it was that weird sort of you know you don't want to stand too close to people but I had like people coming asking me for photographs it was it was very jarring the first week or two of that was really sort of surreal and weird you're not prepared for that right you know you you're sort of the white lab guy kind of yeah he's like what's what's going on but that's that's something that you how did you deal with that so that's because that's a lot of eq there's there's it feels like you've got a good balance of iq and eq but that's something that you're not trained for or necessarily given the support for well we're given advice you know when before i took the job i was told you know this is what's going to happen if you end up on the show people will stop you in the street you'll have to you know um be very careful about things you say on social media because people will be tracking it you know all this kind of thing he says you'll have people coming trying to get you to promote their products so we were advised well I was advised anyway but it still doesn't quite prepare you for when it happens because a part of me went no it'll take years no one's going to notice but it's a juggernaut of a show like six million people watched my first episode live and that's a that's 10 % of the population in UK um so it was it was really really intense at the start but now it's absolutely every day so on the way here I was in four photographs just from the train station to here which is like a three or four minute walk it's just if that yeah but I guess you've got used to that now yeah it is it's part of it's part of the thing um and there's there's a there's a as you say nothing guaranteed in tv work but there is a there is a lovely kind of established element of that for you now but I I love the fact that the science never stops.

27:07What are you working on? What is it you're specifically working on within science? So right now I'm writing books, but science books for normal people. So in a very accessible way. I find quite a lot of popular science books are slightly impenetrable. You know, they're 400 or 500 pages long. Text is very small. Lots of technical jargon. So I was approached by a publisher to do a science book last year, which I did. It was about the human body. And it was really not simplistic, but straightforward. straightforward and at the moment I'm writing one about memory which suits all it wraps up my entire life because I worked on memory in the lab I now memorize things for a living you know so yeah so it's all that together.

27:44Our mutual friend Martin O'Shea mentioned exactly this and about memory and about dementia so almost back to the beginning part of the conversation about storing things it's the most cruel situation to then have someone that can be so knowledgeable going into later to years and then have the whole thing disbanded and be around that person in terms of family, friends and watch that happen. Is there work that you're doing within the dementia space that you can see from a scientific point of view could actually help what is such a cruel disease? Whenever I talk about this with people, a lot of people are looking for hope in what is almost a hopeless situation.

28:23There is no way of redeeming or fixing dementia. It doesn't come back once those memories are gone they are gone. What about preventing it? So what you're saying is once it's once it's set in... Those memories are physically lost so people don't realize the script memories is that they're a physical object in your brain they exist you can touch them they are certain networks of synapses and neurons connected together in a circuit that fire and that's why you get it they are a physical thing so if you remember me meeting you downstairs that is now a physical object in your brain because your short-term memory is in terms of seconds not minutes every single thing gets filed away and some of them get consolidated and they stay forever and some of them don't and they sort of disappear and dissipate I didn't know that so it's a physical object if you remember what you have for breakfast this morning that's a physical thing in your brain but if that gets damaged which is what happens in dementia it physiologically gets damaged lots of lots of different types lots of different variants but usually those cells are gone or they're broken and they can never be fixed.

29:24So you need to work at a way of trying to slow it down or preventing it. Slowing it down is possible and right now, at the moment, if you were early diagnosed with dementia, you can control most of the time the slide into losing memory quite a lot. You can slow it right down. 30 years ago, if you got diagnosed with dementia, you were finished and that's not the case anymore. So there's been a lot of research. There's a lot of really good sort of chemical things and you can do things to help keep your memory active. You know, you can do, you can exercise your brain, you can do physical exercise, you can eat well.

30:02All of these things that we know are good for us, that we avoid, also help keep your brain out.

30:22Sponsored jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Predator Badlands, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. Here, you're not the predator. You're the prey. Prey. Prey. Prey. Prey. Prey. Prey. critics are saying it's epic stunning and breathtaking many have come here none have survived predator badlands now streaming on hulu and hulu on disney plus rated pg-13 so many people do them to keep physically fit yes so it's so important to amplify that isn't it so it's like going for a run and filling your lungs up with air and getting your heart pumping the blood and so on is as much as anything to really keep the brain fit.

31:19Well, one of the key things for aging of all of your body is stress. The stress response, and I mean the cellular stress response that you trigger by being stressed, is incredibly bad for you. Inflammation like that damages cells. It makes them age quicker. It can make them shut down and die much more quickly. And that can be contagious. If you've got what's called a senescent cell, which is a cell that's gone into sort of deterioration, it's like having rotten fruit in the bowl. it can infect the rest. Stress is absolutely a killer in every single way. It shortens your life, but it can also damage your brain.

31:53It can damage your muscles, damages your immune system. If you're stressed, you're more likely to get sick. All of these things, they're cumulative. And one of the best ways to deal with stress for most people is to eat healthy, sleep properly, and most of all, get some exercise. The doctors have been telling us for decades, and they are right. And I have people sitting where you are that in various capacities of, not necessarily scientific but success they're practicing that i want to humanize you for a sec what do you do because we know this right we know we should be going to bed on top do you do that do you have a morning routine do you get up and kind of i am the normal type of person i hate exercise i hate it so there is a subset of people who don't get a rush from exercise who don't feel better i know it's good for me i'm not saying it wouldn't be good for me physiologically but I don't go on I'm gonna go for a run to clear my head or I'm going to you know go for a swim it'll make me feel better I just feel tired and sore afterwards exclusively you tried it you've put yourself in that position and then gone that didn't work I used to be fit I used to be physically fit when I lived in Canada for a while and I lived in Montreal and I was in the Gaelic football team we used to run up the mountain in the middle of the city in the summer in like 40 degree heat and was able to do that um and but i did it because i wanted to be fit for football i didn't do it because it made me feel different purpose and maybe camaraderie teams yeah exactly and i like playing sports and stuff but i'm getting to an age my knees don't work my back doesn't work anymore and i know i need to exercise more and i should but i don't and i'm like almost everybody you know i know i should but i don't do enough i it's the start of the year when we're recording this my new year's resolution is i am going to do some more exercise i have a running machine in my garage i'm going to go on the thing it's not just going to gather dust because i've seen people fade away and i'm reaching i'm in my mid 40s now i'm reaching the point where your muscles start to atrophy if you don't use them and i really need to get on that but yeah i don't i wish i i should be a better example when i'm spending all this no you're honestly that's what this is about i'm into late 40s now and i've always prioritized fitness and similar to you there's been a team element of camaraderie there's been a appreciation of nature so you used to get on the bike the the the mountain bike and go for what was actually a beautiful trail.

34:07So it wasn't just the exercise. I was taking, I've seen deer and all that kind of stuff. Time doesn't allow that for me now. So it becomes perhaps less stimulating going into the gym, going onto the treadmill because I know it's good for me. But I still make myself do it because I keep having conversations and I know it's, what about diet? And can we link that in any way scientifically to the brain as well? And I'm not going to make you guilty on that one, but just what should we be eating? Again, this is going to be obvious answers and people aren't going to like it because what people really want from diet advice is the thing.

34:40If they eat the superfood, they'll be healthier. You need to eat fresh fruit and vegetables and not five a day, 10 a day. We've been told that forever, right? Yes. I was told that to school and I'm nearly 50. So it was originally 10 a day, but they realized if they tried to push 10 a day, no one would do it. So the advertiser said, let's do five, let's compromise. So you should be eating lots and lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, as little processed food as possible, under no circumstances smoke, drink moderately and get some exercise. It's really, it's what the doctors have been saying literally for decades.

35:15We all know it, but it's difficult though. So especially if you're low income, fresh fruit and vegetables are really expensive. Processed food is cheaper and that needs to change. We need to make it so that junk food and terrible food, and not just high sugar and high fat, but really processed food, should become more expensive. It shouldn't be cheaper than buying fruit and vegetables. That shouldn't be the way. It should be flipped. There's a whole health conversation there, isn't there? Yeah, and that alone will, you know, it'll lower your stress levels, which is good for your brain. It'll make you feel healthier, make you more likely to be able to exercise.

35:47You'll probably sleep better. And all of these things, they damage your hormone systems. they damage how your insulin works, your blood sugar, which is very bad for your brain, having spikes in blood sugar. All these kind of things are all linked to what we eat and how we exercise and how stressed we are. This is fascinating. And do you know what's lovely? It's like there is a there's a massive information out there now, isn't there? There's supplements and so on, but actually all of that is distracting from try and eat 10 a day, make it five, cut out the things we know. Supplements are a great thing, okay?

36:17You can take supplements and there is absolutely nothing wrong with them though you can overdose on some vitamins not everybody knows this but vitamin a and vitamin d can literally kill you if you have too many um so but if you take them in supplements even if you take twice your recommended daily amount that doesn't mean you absorb that much so vitamin a especially and d will go into your fat but c and b are waterborne and you will just weed them out if you take in too much at once it goes all the way back out so the body knows It's just it's too much at once and it's not able to absorb it. And the other thing is there's other things in fruit and vegetables than vitamins and minerals.

36:53So fiber, roughage, you know, if if you have juice instead of smoothies, smoothies are better for you because they've got pulp and other bits of that your body needs to keep healthy. You know, you just need to eat fruit and veg. I mean, it's like going back to the academic conversation where some of the smartest, brightest people are not actually being rewarded financially for what they do. there seems to be a disconnect between the people doing incredible work to try and then innovate and help us live better longer healthier and then the element of the fact that there's um people in the sort of show business world and i'm bringing that in because of the chase and probably that world that you've seen where maybe it's cruel to bring it up but someone can go on love island and then can come out with kind of a million pounds worth of different deals and so on the back of it when they haven't had anything other than the opportunity that maybe there's a bit of luck in their proper personality for that to happen.

37:46And I'm just trying to almost sort of bring that back to this disconnect where the reward doesn't seem to necessarily go where it should. Eyeballs are important. How many people look at things are important. And the average scientist that publishes a paper that takes them five years of work to do, that's probably going to be read by 20 or 30 people. That's it. And the scientist has to pay the publishing company to actually make the article. It's not the other way around. You get zero back. that's just not how it works so all these little building blocks that change the world piece by piece and how we understand things and build up and they all fit together there's no it's not a financial reward and anybody who goes into scientific research for finances doesn't understand how it works but in the you know the very rare person who makes you know a million out of going on a reality show or something they just got lucky and fair play to them no i know absolutely i get it like just it's just that disconnect yeah i mean literally millions of people will watch them and in a world where in the 80s and 90s you'd have episodes of tv shows that get 10 12 15 million people watching them literally never happens anymore our show is one of the most successful shows on tv the highest rated episode of it ever was my first episode as a chaser and that was six million people and that's the highest ever and it normally gets about half of that do you know why that is is that is that a recognition of the fact that perhaps someone that came on as a contestant had that broken in they didn't know that in advance so they they'd been teasing that there was a new person coming and there was a new person coming and it was like a silhouette of me with a question mark over it for like a week or two beforehand and then people started tuning in because they were curious it was a very good advertising model and people once it came on because of the nature of the world people were like oh new chaser and it all it bloomed up on you know social media and people tuned in to watch and that's that's the nature in the world advertising runs all of these industries and if you're a successful reality tv star you can get a key demographic of people in their early 20s who've got loads of disposable income watching something that's worth money fair play and yeah fair play i'm i'm not people think i would be bitter about it i'm not i'm curious about it yes and i'm curious that that's the thing that that's the thing that people i i don't know why that's the thing that people tune into I don't understand it because I never did, but they do.