Five podcasters: Deep conversation, empathy, and juice bars

0:00Hello, I'm Fern Cotton and this is Happy Place. Today, something really cool for you. I'm chatting to some of my favourite fellow podcasters who I'm also really lucky to call great friends too. A few weeks ago now I got together with Jake Humphrey and Damien Hughes from High Performance, Elizabeth Day from How to Fail and Rangan Chatterjee from Feel Better Live More to chat about our own experiences of the podcast industry but really to reflect on the last few years and properly celebrate the power of deep conversation. The loveliest thing that I think all of us have felt over the years is that the world of podcasting is really kind.

0:44And that might sound a bit naff saying that, but I haven't really experienced the level of support and encouragement and friendship in any other industry. I've made firm friends from it. I've been friends with Jake for a very long time. We first met as teenagers at the BBC, but Damien, Elizabeth and Rongan are all new friends due to podcasting. I feel so lucky that I've made great friends from this wonderful podcast bubble that we're all in. It feels really gorgeous and really fortunate. So this was a great opportunity for us all to sit down, talk about friendship, but also podcasting and what we've learned and what we're still learning now, really.

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3:27Right, it's something a bit different and a bit special. Let's do it. This is the show.

3:53We've got some envelopes on the table and we're going to open them and we're going to answer the questions in them. Good evening. It's podcasting lot. It's very easy, isn't it? I know. That's why we all do it. Who would like to open? Go on, you do the first one, Jakey. I was hoping you'd say that. You kick it off. The first question for us all is, why did we all start our podcasts and what does each one do? What does our podcast do? That's a really good question. It is a good question. So we thought you should start, Elizabeth. Okay. So I always feel when I'm with fellow podcasters that I'm in such a lovely community that is really welcoming and supportive and doesn't often exist in other industries.

4:36And the reason I started my podcast, How to Fail, was because I felt like a failure in my own life. And what I mean by that is that professionally I'd had a certain degree of success as a writer. So I was a journalist for a Sunday newspaper and I'd written my first couple of novels, but it didn't translate to how I felt inside. And it was because my personal life had derailed itself from the plan that I always had growing up. So I'd got married to the wrong person. I got divorced. I tried and failed to have babies. I went through unsuccessful fertility treatment. And just before my 39th birthday, I got broken up with again by someone who I thought I'd made different choices post-divorce with my new relationship and I thought it was going to work and it didn't.

5:20And it was such a shock to me and it was the lowest I've ever felt because I felt that I was staring down the barrel of my 40s thinking, God, life is not going according to plan and I feel like I failed and I don't know how to get through this. and I wanted to talk to other people about how they had got through failure in their lives. And that was honestly the starting point. And I think alongside that, because I had been a Sunday newspaper journalist, I was so used to doing conventional print interviews where we are constantly sent to interview celebrities. I think I even interviewed Fern Cotton.

5:54You did? I remember that. I know, it was really special because we had a genuine connection. but it's really difficult in that format ever to get really deep or vulnerable very often it's about the project they're promoting the film that they had a wonderful time filming and anytime I tried to get a bit deeper and sometimes the celebrity in question was amazing and would really connect I would write it up and my editor would say we're not interested in that bit and I wanted to do an interview that flipped that on its head and that was the starting point for how to fail I hope what it does is to make listeners feel less alone and i hope that it flips that idea of perfection on its head so we all know and we all do similar things in this regard actually we live in a culture where we're all under such enormous pressure to be quote-unquote perfect whether it's the pressures of social media whether you're just comparing yourself to your friend group and i wanted to reach out and say actually failure and vulnerability is what makes us human boom what a start lovely what the hell no one's gonna live up to that imposter syndrome's kicking in yeah follow that at the moment i had that already though i was sitting here at the start thinking what are we doing i had been i guess in the public eye for a few years trying to help people improve their health and you know i've long had this belief that 80 to 90 percent or so of what we see as doctors is actually related to the way we're living our lives.

7:22Again, I say that with no blame at all, but that really is what I had seen over, I think, 15 years of practice at that time. And so for me, I saw with television what you can do in terms of improving people's health. If you can communicate in a non-judgmental way, in a compassionate way, not talking down to people, then people actually will make change. And I think I felt that podcasting seemed to be something that I was drawn to. I thought, well, I kind of like these conversations. I felt when I did television, there was quite a lot of constraints over what you can say and what you can't say, which I don't think I realized at the time how limiting that was.

8:07I think it's only having had a podcast now for over five years where I really enjoyed the freedom. But in essence, the whole point of the show when I started it was to help people understand the simple things that they could do each day that would literally make a difference immediately to how they felt, physical health and mental health. But I would say it's evolved a lot over the years. But certainly that's why I started it. I think it does a variety of different things. I think it helps people feel less alone, particularly during all those lockdowns, you know, between 2020 and 2023. I'm sure we've all probably felt had feedback from listeners how comforting it was at that time to have podcast hosts who people trusted and had a relationship with so i think i think it helps people feel less alone and i honestly believe that my podcast helps people to think differently about their lives and their place in their lives i feel like i'm listening to feel better live more just being in there i want you to start talking about blue light blocking glasses or

9:13It's a great podcast. It is a great podcast. It's a great, well, yeah, it is. We all love each other very much. We do, yeah. It's a good thing. I started Happy Place for quite selfish reasons, really, and that was because I was very, I was about to say, quite disillusioned with the career that I was in and was leaving lots of jobs that I was more traditionally known for because I was unhappy, not just for work reasons. I had all sorts of stuff going on. in my personal life that felt deeply confusing. And I had been through a period of depression. So I knew I needed to change something. I didn't know what.

9:47So I was just getting rid of stuff left, right and centre. And podcasting felt like a good natural place to arrive at because I love interviewing people. I'm sort of deeply fascinated by people's stories. And I was really ready to do an interview that wasn't eight minutes long with four songs in the middle where I could only ask about their album. I wanted to know about the people. So it felt almost sort of reckless to go, well, I can just talk for an hour without any restraint. I found it absurd. So selfishly, I felt really challenged and I felt really excited and I needed both of those things, certainly.

10:26And I was wanting to explore the subject of mental health and life, really quite a sort of nebulous, broad area of just looking at life because I was sort of deeply confused about my own life at that time. So I think it served me personally greatly. And then I realised, oh, this is quite helpful for other people. I didn't start going, I want to talk about mental health so everyone feels better. No, I was doing it for me 100%. And it's turned out to be a helpful tool, luckily, to other people totally by accident. And I'm so grateful for that. And that is now my motivation is because I can see that it's doing something good.

11:09So that's why I started it. And what does it do? Hopefully it destigmatises mental health. Hopefully it makes people feel less alone, like you've both just shared. Hopefully it really celebrates storytelling, which I think we lost for a moment. The art of beautiful storytelling without the need of any other distraction. And it gives us a chance to get really introspective and curious about ourselves. Those are my hopes anyway. Love that. Who goes first? You're better. Do an arm wrestle. He'd win. You know what? And I don't want this to be the wrong thing to say in a room of podcasters, but I was actually like pretty anti doing a podcast because I honestly thought that like TV was the sort of big brother or the grandfather to this little podcasting thing.

12:05And I just thought, and again, I probably sound like a dick. Like I thought, oh, no, I've moved beyond doing a podcast. Like when I was working in TV. And I always wanted to have these conversations about mindset, resilience, failure, struggle, but also hard work and non-negotiable behaviours and taking control of your destiny and all this sort of stuff. But I had this grand idea that I would come up with an amazing TV format and it would be on like BBC One on Friday night at 7 o 'clock. And I chatted to someone and they said, well, why don't you just do a podcast? And my initial reaction was, don't be so silly.

12:38This is a much bigger thing than a podcast. What are you talking about? We were so TV brainwashed, weren't we? So TV brainwashed. We were so TV brainwashed. But the reason why I sort of think it's important to start by saying that is because I now sit here three years after we started And I've done 10 years as a football host, four years doing Formula One before that, eight years on kids telly before that. Not a single person stops me in the street and talks about any of that. Every single person I meet goes, I love your podcast. Your podcast changed my life. Your podcast done this and that. So that is really like testament, I think, to the power of podcasting, which I think is interesting.

13:13I actually had two podcasts, you know, that I was that I was toying with. And one of them was called One Last Thing Before I Go. and it was conversations with terminally ill people right at the end of their lives. And I recorded three episodes and couldn't do any more. It was just too painful, like too much of a sort of, it wasn't even an emotional rollercoaster. It was just very much one way, like really hard. And then thought about high performance. And then the old imposter syndrome kicked in and I was like, no one wants to hear a guy from Children's BBC talking about high performance. And luckily I met Damien.

13:45It's been fun, man. That's all I get. I just feel like I found my purpose. and I think all of us probably feel there's an element of finding our purpose here and I think that makes a real difference. It's always nerve-wracking as well. I don't think I've ever been complacent, like, oh, I've got to do another episode. I'm, like, shitting myself in the best possible way every time. Yeah, because I don't want to cock it up. Like, it means too much and I don't want the guest to, like, think I'm a knob by the end of it. I want it to go really, really well. Whereas I don't think I ever cared. I cared, but not this much.

14:16No way. No way. It's bad though when it goes badly, isn't it? And you're doing an interview thinking, oh no. How many of you have done where you haven't seen the light of day? One.

14:27Not the same person. Imagine. Don't you feel like there is a sense of responsibility? Definitely. And I feel like the same as you. In TV, I never felt that. I was like, if the show's crap, it's not my responsibility. Yeah, and I think you've got a connection with your audience as well. Like I think with podcasts, you have such a deep connection with your audience. you kind of don't want to take the mickey out of that I think a lot about podcasting and why has it exploded so much and I think one of the things about it is that you just develop this trust with with the host that you're listening to and I kind of think so hard about you know is it good enough to go out for this audience you know do we need to make a better edit or whatever it might be and I also feel I know that we're sitting here being filmed in this beautiful studio but when podcasting started it was audio only yeah and there's an intimacy to that and there's also for me I felt really liberated to show up as myself almost for the first time professionally speaking and sometimes and I'm sure you will get this people will come up to me and say I feel like I know you and I say to them if you've listened to my podcast or you've done me the honor of reading one of my books that's come out of the podcast you do actually know me because I feel that I am myself and you're absolutely right what you were saying about connection hopefully I can also show the guest as they really are and we can have that moment of connection and that's such a special unique thing being able to show up as yourself did you find that Damien when you we find it and I I often feel quite humbled when people tell us the invite is on a dog walk or a commute or in the gym because I think given how busy our lives are the fact that somebody would choose to invite you into their world at their own time just really humbles us so when people come and tell us that they feel that they know you or connect with you that's where it often just feels a privilege that that they've invited us in don't be too modest to tell us why you started it why did you say yes to doing it so i grew up in a boxing gym and what i often say about that is that a lot of the work that some people get blinded by the bright lights of that like a big night or a fight night whereas actually it's the stuff that precedes it the months and years beforehand where high performance really happens so a lot of my work has been spent in the shadows working in sport but the stuff that nobody sees so when me and jake were talking about it i just thought this was a great way of sort of demystifying what high performance is it's not about being number one or winning championships it's often about showing up when you don't want to.

17:01It's about doing your best, whatever that is. It's about failing and learning from the process of it. And we just felt if we could shine a light on the truth of what high performance is rather than the mythology or the unhealthy perceptions of it. Right, envelope number two. Tell us a story about a conversation that has made you think differently. Do you guys want to go fast? Go on, Demo. well we'll do one with Tyson Fury to have the ultimate boxer the heavyweight champion of the world sit down with us is a privilege but then secondly to have a conversation not about boxing but about mental health and some of the stories that he shared with us just felt quite earth shattering within that world to hear him talk about um what was essentially a psychotic episode and his desire to reach out for help just felt a real privilege.

17:56And when we were driving up there, we went to meet him in Morecambe and I was saying to Jake on the way up, I said, we'll get one or two results from this interview today. If he turns up with a mob of his friends, I think it'll be rubbish. I think it'll be all boastful and it'll be all the hype that you normally associate with the sport. If he turns up on his own, I think we've got the chance of getting something incredible. but we didn't know what Tyson was going to turn up and then he showed up in a dirty, sweaty T-shirt fresh from a run on his own. Bingo. And that's when we knew, didn't we?

18:29We thought we'll get something really valuable from this and we spent nearly three hours with him where he was riffing, he was going off down places that I don't think I've heard him speak about before. Is yours the same one, Jake? Do you have one? No, I think that the podcast that changed the game for us was probably Johnny Wilkinson. the former rugby player, when he said, he basically came on and said, doing the washing up is the same as winning the Rugby World Cup. And that was my reaction. I was like, what? What are you talking about? And basically what he's saying in that is society decides that winning the Rugby World Cup is a great achievement, but society tells us doing the washing up is pretty straightforward and simple.

19:05What are they? Using your body to achieve a goal. So that idea of reframing what success is or what high performance is, is brilliant. Because I'll be totally honest with you all, right? When we started high performance, I wanted people to come on it and go, oh, I've had to work so hard. 24-7, get kicked down, get up again, keep going. And then when you start having conversations with people who have done amazing things, you realise that just was the really horrible, nasty, toxic side effects of doing things that they've done. You know, we've had people come on the podcast who spent 20 years trying to achieve something great to be joyful for 15 seconds.

19:39So the podcast then became about that. And Johnny was the person that sort of shared it brilliantly with us. And the only other one would be Matthew McConaughey, who was the same. He said, there is no yet. And that's... What a phrase. What a phrase. I want that tattooed somewhere. What did he say? Life's a verb. Yeah. Life's a doing word. Life's a verb. Oh, I love it. It's a doing word. And that was like, yes, life's a verb. So both of those were game changes for me. We need to know, didn't we? He was the first A-list guest that we've never sat down with and we were expecting... First and only, actually.

20:10Yeah. We picked up the lights. One Hollywood actor and it was about five episodes in. But we anticipated, didn't we, that it would be like PRs and all different types of people vetting the questions. And he came in on Zoom on his own, didn't he? And I think that told us something, that he was just a really genuine bloke that wanted to share what he'd learned on his journey. That's so cool. It's quite hard to choose, isn't it? Sometimes when you ask these questions, it's like picking a favourite child sort of thing. How many episodes have you done? I think we're on about 390 now, something like that.

20:45Amazing, man. you forget so many of them as well, don't you? You forget, but, you know, I think one does still rise to the top for me in the sense of it changed me. I can still remember going into the conversation, having it, and then literally afterwards feeling I'm not the same person anymore. And that doesn't happen that often, but it happened with a lady called Edith Eager, who I had the greatest privilege, One of the great privileges of my life was to spend two hours chatting to her. And when I spoke to her, she was 93 years old. And when she was 16 years old, she got taken to Auschwitz concentration camp with her older sister and her parents.

21:30And just to put a bit of context, I remember her saying that she was at the time just thinking about the date she had with her boyfriend that night and what dress she was going to wear. And then suddenly there's a knock on the door. They end up at Auschwitz concentration camp. She didn't know what Auschwitz was until she got there. Within a couple of hours, both her parents were murdered. And what was just so incredible was the spirit of forgiveness and compassion she had throughout the entire conversation. And a couple of things I think about most days still, even though it was probably over two years ago when I had that conversation, one was how she could reframe anything.

22:10So she said to me, wrong and listen, I never forgot the last thing that my mother said to me before she was killed, which was, Edie, nobody can take from you the contents that you put inside your own mind. So she would illustrate that to me in a variety of ways. One was when literally the same day her parents were murdered, later that day, she was asked to dance for the senior officers. And she told me, you know, when I was dancing, I wasn't dancing in Auschwitz, in my mind, I was in Budapest Opera House. I had a beautiful dress on. There was a orchestra playing. It was just absolutely gorgeous.

22:48I thought, wow, that's pretty incredible reframing. At that age, given what was going on around her. Then she told me that during her stay in Auschwitz, she reframed things whereby she saw the prison guards as the prisoners. She said to me that they're not free. They're not living their life. In my mind, I'm free. And the last thing she said to me was, I've lived in Auschwitz and I can tell you, Rangan, that the greatest prison we will ever live inside is the prison we create inside our own minds. And that's the phrase I want tattooed on me. It is the inner turmoil that we create by disempowering narratives every single day.

23:34And once you understand, and she helped me to realize this, that you can choose the narrative and the spin you put on any situation. Once you truly understand that every situation in life is basically neutral and it's the perspective you put on it that determines its impact on you, I think you never look back. And for me, that conversation helped me realize that actually wrong and you can reframe anything right and if I'm ever struggling I think of that conversation I go wrong and listen if Edith can reframe things in Auschwitz you can probably reframe this in your life so I take it as inspiration and you know it I don't think it's even close so many conversations have changed my life but that one for me has almost had an imprint left on my soul and how I interact with the world.

24:29Oh, mate. Oh, that moved me to tears just hearing you speak about it. So I can't even imagine. Good luck following that, Elizabeth. Oh, no, come on. Over to you. Okay. Well, now it just sounds like I'm so derivative because the one that I'm going to choose genuinely changed my life as well. And again, we've all been so fortunate to interview so many incredible guests. But the one that always sticks with me came about in season four of How to Fail in 2019. and I believe it was his first ever UK podcast interview and he had a book out called Soul for Happy and the man in question is Mo Gowdat and I was pitched him by the publisher and the publisher was like, he used to be chief business officer of Google X and I thought, oh, that's good because I haven't really had any business people and I'd really underestimated what a profound thinker and what a deep impact he was going to have on my life.

25:23So he wrote this book, Solve for Happy, which is all about how we all have the capacity to be happy according to how we reframe our mindsets. It's very similar to what Edith was saying. And he is just such a wonderful, wise person. And he taught me so much. And one of the key things that he taught me was that we are not our worst thoughts. And he describes the brain in a very accessible way. And he says the brain often gets caught on this anxious narrative loop where it's constantly pointing out the things that might go wrong because it's trying to protect you. But ultimately, we're in charge of our brains.

25:58It's not the other way around. And unless you suffer from a neurological condition, you can generally train your brain to do the things that you want it to do. So if you say, brain, raise my right arm, your brain will do that. So he introduced the concept of the Becky brain. Now, he calls his anxious brain Becky because there's this girl at his school that used to point out constantly the things that would go wrong. And she was very negative. And her name was Becky. And I always have to apologize when I tell this story in case anyone is listening and is called Becky. But when his Becky brain starts telling him things about himself, like you're a failure, you're a terrible parent, you're an imposter, you shouldn't be doing this.

26:34He stops himself and has a conversation with that part of his brain. and he says Becky thank you for your feedback noted I would really like it if you could take that opinion if you've got no evidence for it I'd like you to take away that negative opinion and replace it with something more positive and in that way he says you can train your brain to be happier now I do that almost every day and he is absolutely right and when I tell you about Mogadat the other very important thing that you should know is that this this mindset that he developed was not developed in a vacuum. So shortly after he started researching happiness, his son Ali died aged 21 during a routine operation.

27:17And in the immediate weeks and months after that desperate tragedy, Mo would wake up every morning and tears would be streaming down his cheeks. And his first thought on waking was Ali died, Ali died. And he realised after a few months of this that he himself mo couldn't carry on living if that continued and so he sort of challenged himself to apply his own learnings and in the mornings when he woke up tears would still be streaming down his cheeks and his first thought would still be ali died but he added very crucial set of words yes but he also lived and within the but he also lived was 21 years of shared memories of love, of happiness, of a son who was more like a best friend.

28:02And that's what enabled Mo to continue living. And that interview changed my life in a practical sense, but also changed my life in an emotional sense because Mo and I are now really good friends. And he's one of my few repeat guests on the podcast. And he's such a wonderful, warm person who's become something of a guru for me. So that one. And if I can have just one very quick one. I had Gloria Steinem on a few series after that. And she's like a feminist icon of mine. And she said that sometimes when we feel fear, actually what we're experiencing is excitement. And that, again, is just like such an amazing mindset shift for me.

28:38So those two. Do you have a name for your brain? Is it the Becky brain as well? It's not Becky. What is it? But I don't want to say in case she's listening. In case she's listening, guys. It's someone from my primary school. I basically took, I'll tell you after. I mean I've not spoken to her since I was like eight it's probably fine isn't it yeah Jennifer Jennifer we've said it we've said it now we've said it now perfectly nice watch your DMs Elizabeth Jennifer you were you were really lovely Jennifer it was a random name picked at random and please don't read anything into it great all this is about reframing isn't it and what I think is really powerful about that is that it well it empowers people it reminds them that we're not you know we're not having conversations where we're saying now you need to go and do this we're saying it's already all there yes like this idea of flipping a thought flipping imposter syndrome flipping doubt flipping how you respond to something it's all like it already is there it's just like the moment you're opened up to that you realize the power that your brain has and you realize how much of your brain is being used to make you feel like crap but like we have to be reminded of this stuff every day we know don't you forget all the lessons you learn on yeah have these amazing conversations people say to me i love this or that and i'm thinking how have i allowed myself to forget that i know i know it's through your fingers and you know you know this also something i think isn't commonly thought about enough is this idea that when you don't reframe these things you kind of make yourself a victim to the world and you make yourself a victim to external events and what that does and you know why is that relevant to me as a medical doctor because that's what people compensate for a lot of the time when they're eating too much sugar or they're binge scrolling or doom scrolling online or staying up late watching netflix and you know staying up too late whatever it might be where they try and change the behavior by going i want to stop that but what i've found for years is that patients and general people in i think most of us don't realize actually that a lot of the time we're using these behaviors to compensate for the way we're approaching the world so this reframing stuff works for mental health it works for happiness it works for high performance it also works i think if you want to reduce your sugar intake because your sugar intake is probably in some way trying to manage emotional stress you could do a lot with that that's a great tip takeaway yeah love that, Rangan.

31:12It's not an actual takeaway, though, because it'd be compensating. No, that's too much salt. Too much salt. So I'm going to go for, I mean, I could probably answer, like, all of you on any given day, I'd say a different answer. It's the hardest question, isn't it? It's so hard, but I think the one that's jumping out for me today is one that was relatively recent with Bronnie Ware, who I think you've been to as well, Rangan. And Bronnie is so wonderful. She ended up accidentally working palliative care and just is a naturally very warm and gracious human that you want to spend time with. So when she was caring for these individuals, some were elderly, some weren't, she naturally just bonded with them because she has natural empathy and she's a brilliant storyteller and she's really curious about life.

32:02So she's written this brilliant book called The Five Regrets of the Dying, which had a huge impact on me reading this book. I was just, I couldn't put it down. And I think the one regret, I'm not sure which order it is in the book, but the one that we spoke about that I still think about all the time, and I'll probably truncate it, I don't remember the exact regret, but it's something around live your life how you want to, not through the lens of what other people are going to judge you on or assume about you. So essentially living an authentic life. And I think the word authentic gets thrown around so much these days.

32:38really flippantly and without us really knowing what it means anymore. We've said it so much. We're like, what is authentic? How do I live authentically? And the way that Bronnie talked about it was just cutting through the bullshit, really simple, going with your gut, doing what makes you feel good, not worrying what every single opinion means. And she's already doing that and she's always lived like that. So there's this lovely tandem of her showcasing how you can live authentically but also you know these are incredibly powerful stories of people's final words and final regrets in life I think that whole episode just really got me thinking and is something that I I go back to regularly amazing okay let me just ask a question right do any of these conversations cause you problems in your personal life that's such a good question because they do yeah I think I think they do I I think they do because say after Bronnie I could easily go fuck all this i'm gonna go and live in ibiza and run a juice bar like i'm not living authentically like easily i get it i totally get it i'm annoying my wife by going well you're responsible for how you react to that person didn't you i love you so much i learned from one disaster to another don't worry about it i just love it hi this is nox from the podcast with nox and jamie and maybe like us at the podcast you also know people who have been smokers or vapors.

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36:06Okay, who wants to take this one? Fern, do you want to go first? Go for it, yeah. Why does having deep conversations matter? I think it matters greatly. I think our generation are in a tricky position in terms of, I'm speaking extremely generally, but I think most of our parents' generation weren't brought up with the space to be able to have big chats. It's by no means their fault, but their parents, and again, there's that generational ripple effect, they weren't given the space to have a deep chat. If our parents were struggling as kids, they would be ignored or told to leave the room or whatever.

36:43So I think we are all, not just us podcasters, but everybody in this sort of new generation trying to unpick the past. We're still trying to recalibrate and figure it out and get, what's the happy medium here? What do I keep for myself? Because I think that's also deeply important, keeping some stuff for you and not simply just offloading everything. But I think deep chats matter greatly. They stop resentments, which I think is something that the generations before us had to deal with greatly. and they probably stop a lot of physical tension because when we're suppressing stuff, you know more than anyone wrong and how that can turn into chronic stress and then manifest physically.

37:25I think there are many, many reasons why we're all individually trying to promote big, deep, honest chats that might help other people feel they can also speak out. I mean, personally, I talk a lot about mental health because there is still a lot of stigma around mental health and people still do feel silenced in their workplaces or within their family unit and feel like they can't say, I'm really struggling and I don't know what to do. And obviously for men, there's a whole other problem with that side of things. So I think big conversations matter deeply for many, many reasons, probably because we're all feeling it from the past, but also because there's still a whole bunch of stigma around.

38:03Yeah. Damien? I think it matters just because I think everybody's got an amazing story to tell. That's often one of our philosophies on the podcast is that everybody's got a story to tell or everyone knows something that you don't know and I think when you create a safe space for people to come and share that collectively the wisdom that we all gain from it is uh is is just a privilege to listen to so I've often been brought up with the idea of just just just ask a question of everybody that you meet because they'll know something you don't know and I think that's really what we're trying to do on the podcast of everybody's lived a unique set of circumstances but tell us the generic lessons you want to pass on and i i often find it amazing how much wisdom and how much vulnerability people are prepared to give you if you just ask them and then create the space to do that without without applying a judgment or an opinion or a statement of facts on the back of it yeah beautiful i think there's a couple of things i think about the first thing is i think we've lost the art of nuance right I was going to say that.

39:09Goddammit. I'm so sorry. No, but that's such a good point. You can go through it on this. We're on the same wavelength. It's a big one. I'll make the point. You explain it because you are far from it. Shut up. Shut up. You make the point. I've got another one. I've got another one on my sleeve. You can do it from a journalistic side, which is relevant. We've lost a lot of nuance. I've got four. I struggle more and more as a football host, operating in a world with zero nuance and massive anger and strong opinions. And our podcast is all about find the nuance, find the empathy, find the understanding and those two things were really starting to clash in my professional life really and i found it really hard to stand and talk about should a manager be sacked should a referee be criticized should a player be dropped on live on the television when all week i'm talking about let's understand someone what what are they carrying what's the challenge so that's the first thing losing the art of nuance the second thing plays into that which is this idea of like leaning into people i think it's really hard to dislike someone when you lean in and understand them and you know damien and i now do a lot of work going into businesses and talking to them about high performance and a lot of people talk in business world about um resilience and like what we say is well how resilient you need to be in the face of kindness and not very resilient at all and too many of us are walking around having to be resilient when we shouldn't need to be because we're not getting to know each other you know if you're listening to this at work you might know how your colleague takes their tea but have they got an ill parent have they got a health challenge that they're dealing with have they got a child with personality or behavioral difficulties you know what's going on around that that maybe leans into things and that wonderful phrase if you'd have lived the life they lived you'd act in exactly the same way yeah um which was shared with us by a previous excellent guest on high performance um so i think there's yeah Yes, that's the point I'm trying to make.

40:56So there's that. And I think the final one is, I suppose when you've done the, you know, particularly the job that Fern and I have done on the telly for many, many years, like this idea of being judged is painful, right? And the criticism, you have to live with them. For a long time, that sort of social media criticism I was getting just for literally going to work to do the best I could to pay my mortgage and feed my kids and my wife was like ridiculous and there's definitely a conduit to challenging mental health period. So I think the final thing that I love about doing podcasts is just stopping people from being so bloody judgmental of others.

41:33We're the only species on the planet that seem to be like this. You don't have koalas looking at each other going, oh, overdone the eucalyptus a bit, or a tortoise going, oh, your shell isn't that shining, bro. We're the only species that seem to think the worst of everybody else and I don't understand why we've got to this place. Well, it's because we're all deeply in self-loathing ourselves. Seems to be. That's the only problem. I think you're a fucking idiot. Now prove me wrong. That seems to be the starting point for everyone. Yeah, it's really pointing at me out of everyone. Finally, I can reveal.

42:03I've been harbouring for 20 years. But this idea that, like, I'm going to think the worst of you until you prove me wrong is so dangerous and so prevalent. I'd much rather we lived in a world where it's like, I'm going to think the best of you until you prove me wrong. And I think hopefully we shine a light on people, all of us, by the way, I'm talking about, to a really deep level so that people listening can go, shit, I didn't know that about you. And now I understand an awful lot more. So just understanding each other. We're all just doing our best, right? Yeah, I've loved every single one of those answers.

42:36And I suppose I just want to underline the fact that we're talking about connection. Yes. And about forging a point of common ground. And I don't think there's much greater respect that you can pay to someone other than really listening to what they have to say and creating space for what they have to say, because each individual is unique and important. And actually, all the bad things, all the fear we feel, the ignorance, the prejudice, the discrimination that flourishes comes about when we don't understand each other, when we don't know each other. And so really a deep conversation is about attacking that notion.

43:16And you're right that we live in a culture where nuance is increasingly sidelined, as is the ability to say, I don't know, teach me about that. Please tell me about it. That's how we learn. That's how we grow. And so much of social media or 24 hour news cycle is about soundbites and having an immediate reaction to something. and a lot of the time I haven't had time to formulate an opinion. The way that I learn about the world is by asking other people who know better, more, different things than I do and that's why I think deep conversations are so crucially important and by the way, my final point, a conversation might be deep but it doesn't have to be serious.

43:56It doesn't always have to be about trauma or what we've overcome or what we've learned about resilience, although those are some of the most amazing conversations I've ever had. You can have a deep conversation about lighthearted things too. That's all about what makes us human. But podcasts are absolutely fucking amazing at creating a space for that and the length that we need for that kind of intimate human connection. Elizabeth Day, everybody. Elizabeth Day. Brilliant. That was seriously good. I really feel that long-form conversation, these deep conversations are the modern-day campfire. I really strongly believe that as we become lonelier more isolated more addicted to short form content now now now you know I don't have time to do anything I just want to get through I think podcasting is the antidote to that for so many people it is for me where you can take some time get away you know create space go on your walk and listen to you know one of your favorite podcasts and hear a deep conversation and it's only through conversations with others that we get to know who we are so I think all of us on our shows what we do we're having an intimate conversation with our guest but that in some way is reflecting onto the listener they're they're hearing what they want to hear from it they're taking a bit oh that's relevant for me in my life.

45:25So I think deep conversations are needed today more than ever before. If we think about the division that's going on, the toxicity, you know, certainly in the online world, I think podcasting can save the world. I genuinely do believe that because, yeah, I really do. I absolutely believe that long form conversation can save the world because it's like that phrase I shared with you guys on when I came on High Performance that if you were that person you would be doing exactly the same thing as them that for me has been a massive shift in how i approach life over the last few years and it's changed everything and deep conversation fits in there because once you hear someone you hear them speak you are you hear them articulate the reasons why they believe the things that they do we just understand people better we become kinder we become less judgmental we become more forgiving.

46:23It's a time of year for gratitude. What is one thing your podcast has made you grateful for? Jake? Basically it's given me freedom. Like I feel like, I don't know whether everyone feels like this that is involved in the TV industry, but it feels like the most, and you might have an answer for this, it feels like the most exciting job in the world when you're 17. It feels like a pretty incredible job when you're 21. Still feels like a rather amazing job when you're 27 and 28 but then there comes a time almost where you feel like why am I addicted to being on the television why do I need to do this is this really what I was put here for another conversation about another sporting event or something like that or like the hardest ones like for me anyway was like hosting like daytime quizzes where you're like I used to I did I did this show after I finished doing Formula One where it was a daytime quiz show and I was used to saying if Sebastian Bettle wins this race, he is the champion of the world.

47:20And that felt kind of like it mattered. And then I'm standing there going, okay, answer this question for£15. Do you want to hear my worst quiz show that I did? Yes, please. I'm aged 17. Yeah. And I'm hosting a TV show called Pet Swap where the children who come on the game show dress up as their pet. Could be a gerbil, could be a rabbit. and they then do an assault course that is relevant to that animal. Beat that. Dressing up as a lobster running around the Blue Peter Garden popping balloons of foam. Large starfish temperance. So anyway, I suppose the point is, and you might feel the same, is that you feel in some ways chained to doing that because that's your job.

48:03Totally. And actually, when you start creating something and talking about something that you really love, you feel like this, like it feels really intentional, it feels really purpose-driven, and it feels like we're still certainly on high performance. I don't know what the rest of you think. I feel like we're at about 5 % of what we actually could be. I feel this could be really, really incredible. So I feel it's given me freedom and hopefully it's given the audience something special along the way. Can you relate to that TV analogy? Yeah, I mean totally. I feel I've probably got a more sort of selfishly skewed answer as well because I definitely get that sense of freedom.

48:37Also, I'm extremely grateful that I just get to meet the most interesting people every week. Like you were saying earlier, Damien, everyone's got a story to tell and it feels like an absolute privilege to just sit and listen to someone else's story. It gets me out of my own bullshit. We've all got the propensity to go, oh, and this is going wrong and I should be doing this and all these intricate bits of the day and we're so stuck in our own little bubble of stuff and then you listen to someone else speak and you're like, oh my God, there's so many other perspectives and lived lives and experience and angles to look at everything.

49:12So every time I do a podcast, I get sort of woken up again. I get sort of shaken, like, come on, wake up, Fern. Get out of your own bullshit. Every time I have that experience. So I think selfishly it is about the meeting of new people, the hearing of new stories. And how long did you slide back into your own bullshit afterwards? I mean, it really depends on what we've chatted about. Some have stayed with me a very long time. Like I remember when we interviewed Ashley Kane and he talked about losing his daughter. I did not stop thinking about that for months and months. And I still think about him and I'm still in touch with him a lot.

49:49But we're so lucky that we get... Hopefully the listeners have a similar experience of, oh, yeah, let me get out of my own head for a minute and think about other lived lives. I get to turn up to work now as myself, not this sort of sugar-coated version of myself that has to be super happy and positive all the time and pretend to like songs that I don't, I'm, you know, I can just be like, I've had a shit day or I've had a good day or whatever. And I feel like I'm, you know, I can luckily say that. We're the lucky ones. We're lucky. I feel so lucky I've found your podcast. I'm like, you feel lucky.

50:23We are lucky. We just get to do this. We are so lucky. How fortunate is that? It's so fortunate. I'm incredibly grateful for the community and for the fact that it has changed my life. I am aware of the irony that a podcast called How to Fail which came out of my own feeling of failure has gone on to become the most successful thing I've ever done I will never stop being grateful for that and I'll never stop laughing at the absurdity of it but it has brought me into contact it's exactly what you said really not only with incredible people that I've met through them being a guest and doing me the honour of being a guest but the people who listen and who make me feel seen as I am and I'm sure you all relate to this.

51:08There's something so special about doing a live show or doing a festival, as Fern does, that you feel that wave of acceptance. That's the most beautiful thing. I feel my interview style is appreciated just for what it is. Yeah. Which is such a relief. And it took me a while to believe that. It took me a few seasons and I think if you listen to my early interviews, I'm still finding my feet and I'm still a bit nervous. Oh, we all were. I don't want to listen back to my early days. I couldn't do it. I don't think I'd go back to the early days. No. Sadly. Did you not used to go and knock on the door in the early ones?

51:43Yeah, we used to go home like, I'm on the train going, what the fuck was that about? Yeah, I mean, eating a Cornish pasty on the train. I love that. I remember you going to knock on Mary Berry's front door. That was lovely. I felt like I was in the front garden when you were talking about the fox gloves. Of course, you've got a great room. I don't remember that. But that, I would still rather look back on my early happy places than like me on the telly in the 90s, which really makes the old toes curl. I don't even want to go there. But yeah, we've learned and we've grown and we've changed because of it.

52:11It's great. Damo? I sort of really welcome the chance just to treat people with kindness, to try and come with that empathy and understanding and hopefully it gets reciprocated. So what I find is when I meet people now that listen to the podcast, they tend to be kind back and I think what you give out comes back at you in ripples. So I often find that, that rather than coming in with judgments or opinions, just trying to be empathetic to people. So a really good example for us was, I know you had her at the Happy Place Festival, was Vicky Patterson. And I'd never heard of her. I wasn't aware of her story.

52:48And she sent us a copy of her book. And I was horrified as a father of her daughter, some of the stories she'd been through. And yet when we met her on the podcast, she sort of admitted she was a little bit fearful of coming on what she thought was a male-dominated podcast. and just a chance to be able to role model kindness and empathy and understanding for what she'd been through rather than a judgment or some sort of snide, snaring remark about it, I think ended up being a really good interview because it was a level of connection. So I think just the opportunity to role model kindness that you get to do it, what I've found is that it tends to come back at you in waves.

53:24You need to reclaim the word kindness, Damian. That's yours. You can have that. Can I have another thing I'm grateful for, actually, really quickly? Yeah. I'm really grateful for you. oh thank you because you know this is the only sort of double header podcast in the room if you like with two hosts and honestly i do think that if i'd just tried to do this on my own it would have lasted about five episodes and i would now be meeting commissioners begging for a job on the telly please let me on the daytime quiz show and honestly what you bring to high performance the empathy the understanding the amazing knowledge you have of psychological studies and research from over the years, but just being like a really genuine and generous, kind, nice guy doesn't get mentioned enough.

54:05I don't think I say it often enough, so I'm really grateful for what you've brought to High Performance. You are the true High Performer. Thank you, Ben. That's lovely. Thanks, mate. And I'm also grateful to Fern because she told us to do High Performance. We weren't going to do a podcast. Yeah, we had a phone chat and I was like, do it. I rang her and said, I'm not going to bother. I don't have podcasts. I'm not sure it's for me. She said, it's the greatest thing I've ever done. so genuinely Fern is like probably the reason why it happened I mean where to start in terms of what it makes you grateful for at the end of every conversation I feel energized like I feel even if I've caused myself a bit of stress by thinking I'm not prepared enough or I didn't get through the entire book I got through 80 % of the book or whatever it might be when I let go and have the conversation it always flows because it's just a conversation right and i always feel full of life and energy afterwards and so i know this sounds potentially as though i'm exaggerating but i honestly believe that podcasting is has the market's uncertain revenues tied and hiring on hold that's why results driven companies are using upwork to keep work moving go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast.

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56:49it's really made me appreciative of being alive and being able to have these conversations i just love them so much i put so much of myself into them i think i spoke about this when i was on on how to fail elizabeth about uh perfectionism and recovering perfectionist i think it really helps to teach me to let go and go it's all right and anything's okay just connect with this person talk to them. And so it really makes me grateful about life. It makes me grateful that I get to do podcasting and have these conversations with people. But I also want people to not think that they need to have a podcast to do the sorts of things we're talking about.

57:33What we're talking about is just an intimate conversation where you pay attention and you listen. Every single person can do that in their own lives and it's a real moment of connection and presence which I think is very hard to get sometimes I think I don't honestly think I sometimes will sit with my wife for two hours and none of us get distracted or have to do something else so I just feel an incredible gratitude that I get to do it but also hopefully showcase to people that you can also do it in your own lives how was making the show affected you personally all of the things i've said but i think the key the key aspect is teaching me how to deal with failure in my own life so i went through something difficult i'm i've had recurrent miscarriages the last one that i had was a couple of years ago and having done how to fail helped me to know that i was going to be okay and it helped me to know that even if the failure itself had no meaning in the fullness of time it would teach me something meaningful if I allowed it to so I think that it's helped me really understand how the way we're brought up impacts who we are as adults but also how a lot of our personality is not who we are, it's who we became.

59:04And just as we became it, we can un-become it if we choose to. So it's been really empowering for me because by talking to such a breadth of different people about so many different topics, one of the things I think about a lot, and I think the podcast has usually inform this is that everything's stories life is story and we get to choose so much of that story which I think is incredibly empowering so as I shared before with Edith but even beyond that just the knowledge that I don't have to be a victim of my past and I can create the future that I want I think that's been the most powerful message I've taken from my own show

59:56So my podcast is called Happy Place, which can be quite a loaded title. And I think I'm pretty comfortable with the fact that it's quite loaded and that people might question the title Happy Place. The word happy is in there because obviously I established the idea during a period where I really wasn't very happy. And I was probably quite obsessional about happiness. And I think my podcast has taught me that happiness isn't the be all and end all. And it's certainly not a final destination that we reach at some point. It's going to come and it's going to go. And there's actually so much wealth in sadness and anger and anxiety.

1:00:34Like even the things that we fear, there's something to be learned from all of them. And I really didn't see that at that point in my life. I was trying to reject anything that felt uncomfortable or that felt like it just wasn't working for me. Whereas having all of these conversations has allowed me to see that there's just a richness in everything we experience if we're willing to stick around in it and learn the lessons. Nice. It's taught me that I need to have the same conversations with the people in my personal life as I have on my podcast. Yeah, God, that's a big one. Because I thought a while back, I thought, bloody hell, I love it when I do like three or four records in a week.

1:01:09I feel engaged and empowered. And then I'm thinking, why am I not feeling like that about the people I meet on the school run or who come around for a drink or even I'm married to or live with? You know, like I should be having these kinds of conversations with everyone. That's one big thing that it's taught me to try and connect to everybody, really like connect. And I think the second thing is that it's reframed my thinking of what high performance is. I genuinely started high performance thinking it was about the success. It was about the glory. It was about the medal, the trophy, the big car, the nice house.

1:01:38high performance we've whittled down to three lines which is do the best you can where you are with what you've got and for some people high performance is just getting out of bed for other people it might be winning an olympic medal but for all of us it's the same thing do the best you can where you are with what you've got no one can ask you to do any more than that that's what it's taught me yeah mine is just admitting the power of what you don't know and getting comfortable with it there's so many of our guests i remember quite early on we interviewed dylan hartley the england rugby captain who'd come over to england from australia new zealand at the age of 14 and speaking about rugby and he was eloquent he was smart he was going into a level of granular detail but he'd just become a dad and when we asked him about how many of these lessons he was going to take to being a dad he went i don't know i might have never done it before and it was a really good reminder of where your expertise ends and where the novice mindset begins.

1:02:35And I think if there's one thread that we've seen through so many, it's just the humility to not claim knowledge where you don't have it, but to be curious and open-minded. And I think so much of life depends on us just admitting, I'm not sure, I don't know the answer to it. Yeah. It's probably the healthiest thing you can do. Yeah. It's liberating. Yeah. I love that, guys. So did I. I want to do it every week. Me too. Thank you. Every week might be a bit of a challenge for all our diaries, because this was hard enough, by the way, to try and get us all in one room at the same time. But how about we actually commit now, in a year's time, coming back.

1:03:09Let's do it again. Let's do it again. And just seeing how things have changed for us in the last year, whether we feel the same, feel differently, I don't know. I'm bringing snacks next time. We're going to make a thing of it. It's going to be a proper social to-do. Catch up. Yeah. I hope you all have an amazing 2024. And you guys. And you guys. Happy to have you all in my life. oh that was so wonderful to spend time together and just sit and have a really good chat and I really hope those little reminders that everyone has a story and that we do have ultimate control over how we choose to see the world really sticks with you I know that those stories and those sound bites and those bits of knowledge and wisdom will really really stay with me So, look, we're back as normal next week with someone whose incredible mind I cannot wait for you to delve into with me.

1:03:59He is a brilliant philosophical thinker. In the meantime, a huge thank you to Jake, Damien, Elizabeth and Rangan for all the thoughtfulness and the laughter. To the producers of this episode, Anushka Tate at Rethinkordio and Finn Ryan, Will O 'Connor and Jemima Smith at High Performance. And to you, because literally, None of this would exist without you.

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