#953 - Jimmy Carr - Decoding The Secrets Of A Meaningful Life

26:30Be very careful what sort of algorithm holds you fall down in particular. Yeah, good, right? Good. Good, be careful. How do people know what they should be doing with their lives? people coming up to you and asking you for earnest, you know, sincere life advice. How do you work out what someone should be doing with their life? I don't know. I mean, it's a... it's very odd to be like, I'm quite taken with simulation theory because I don't think it's true. I don't think we are in a matrix and this is a video game. But if we are, I've definitely got a cheat code, right? Well, I get to be a touring international comedian with lovely kids and a great life and great friends, like that's an incredibly sort of privileged position.

27:19I think thinking about the world as if simulation theory is real and this is all a simulation is very interesting, because if your imagine life is a game, what are you solving for? What are your metrics? And I think when you really kind of analyze it, I went, well, if this was going to be a scoreboard at the end and you're only really competing with yourself, there's nothing in being better than anyone else. There's only on it in being better than yourself last year. So the idea of going, well, what would be the important things? What would be the, you know, it's, and it's that thing of you go, it's not the achievement so much as the process.

27:58enjoying the process seems to be it. So that thing of like, you know, what should people be doing? It's not for me to say it's all life is self -assignment. It's that thing of like, what are you happy doing? Where's the flow state for you? What's the thing that brings you joy? It's not even like the 10 ,000 hours, I slightly think misses a trick because although I buy, yeah, you've got to work really hard and really long to get good at anything, to get competent at anything is hard. But what could you stand to do for that long? Because if it's, I mean, it's Navale, if it's play to you and work to them, you're going to win 100 % of the time.

28:36Much better question. To build on that, what looks like play to you, but looks like worked with everybody else is what pain do you want in your life? This is Mark Manson's twist on it. He says, any pursuit, no matter how existentially aligned, will regularly come with a huge side order of pain. It doesn't matter how much you love doing comedy. If you want to be a comedian, that means you need to spend an awfully long time writing jokes that never see the light of day apart from one set where no one laughs. You go, yeah, fuck, I spent ages on that. No, don't forget that. You got to enjoy taxi rides at the airport.

29:12Correct. You have to enjoy the whole thing. Correct. Correct. And as soon as you go, I just like the bit where I'm on stage, Did it win? No, it's not. That's not how life is. You have to take the whole package. Yeah. James, James Clear has a fucking unbelievable take. Where he talks about if you want the life, but not the lifestyle, you guarantee disappointment. Like if you're going to pursue this outcome, but you're not prepared to do what it takes to get it. Okay, you want to be a touring musician. Sounds fantastic. You need to spend probably between five and ten years just learning the instrument.

29:47This is before you get to perform. You don't really get to perform on stage for that long. And then when you start doing that, the first 10 tours that you do, and maybe going to be in someone's borrowed van in the back of a van, you're not going to have enough money for hotels, you're going to be playing to 100 people, no one's going to care about you, you're not going to have any money, you're not going to know if it's going to work. You have no promise of glory on the other side, you're going to be racked with self -doubt, constantly uncertain. The whole experience is going to be tarnished in this like like weird, liminal, like discontent about whether this is actually the right path to be on.

30:19And then maybe you reach a tiny bit of escape velocity and perhaps get toward micro notoriety. Okay, and then we maybe get to our manager and then we start to get looked at it. That is the process of becoming remotely great at anything. Yeah. I always think that thing of like with young comics, it's quite easy because you go if you're going out 300 nights a year to do open mics. It's kind of the same life as playing arenas. It's not vastly different. You're going out and telling jokes, you go out and do a show, like where you go to and how, whether it's an audience of 50 people or 15 ,000, it really is a very similar process.

31:01So it's, if you enjoy that, if you love it, then great. A good question on And what should I be doing with my life, you said before? If people were making a movie about your life, what would the key scenes be? Well, so we had actually actually wear like the cancellation episode. I always think like, whenever you get canceled or not canceled, dragged, whenever you get like a tough time, it's like, well, if my life was a movie, it should be the best episode. If my life was like a 10 part on HBO, they, I mean, you're obviously dead getting entire episode to that. You saw the episode where he said the terrible thing and people got very upset.

31:40I mean, I always think you've got to write size it with, you know, there's different types of cancellation likes. Oftentimes it's, I told a joke and some people didn't like it. Okay. Yeah, it's like, there's a, the patron saint of comedy is St. Lawrence and St. Lawrence Your industry has a patron saint. Yeah, and he's a third century martyr and he was an early Christian obviously and St. Lawrence was condemned to death and they burnt him alive So they put him on like a metal kind of I don't know like and what you would call it could fucking skill it. Yeah I could be skill it and they and they They cooked him.

32:24Okay. And he said after 10 minutes of being burnt alive, turn me over, this side's done. And that level of bravery and fuck you is very inspirational. It's like that thing of like going, it's almost like stoicism to the extreme. Like the what we We can't control the world. We can have strong influence, but we can't control anything. And shit is going to happen to you. And how you react to that is life. Was Plato the guy that was forced to be killed by the government? Was that him? What drank poison? Yes. I think that was Socrates, wasn't it? Socrates, thank you. There's a great story about him.

33:10Apparently very, like big fuck you energy. I think I need to channel my inner Socrates a little bit more. And the way that it worked when they condemned him during the trial, he was saying, you think that you're punishing me. Like it was a jury of like 150 people. This is how much. And typically what you're supposed to do is be groveling. It's actually supposed to come up and you know, bring the crying wife, bring the crying children. He didn't do any of that. And he started chastising the jury. And he said, you all think that you're punishing me, but you know that I'm an instant man. So really, you're punishing yourselves.

33:52There's nothing that you can do to me because I know that I haven't done the things. You're clothing, whatever it was, disturbing the youth, you know, the sort of frivolous claim that was accusation. And he gets sense to death and he's supposed to drink hemlock, hemlock. And he's back at the cell and all of his families around him and his friends were around him. And the way that it worked, there was not really a time limit on when you had to drink the hemlock. His friends said to him, you know, you don't need to, you don't need to drink this. You can spend some more time around your friends and your family.

34:28You can, you can, you can stay, you can like play the system and drag this out and you just rank it in front of them. Immediately. I just love how much of a fuck you it was. Like, you all think that you're condemning me, but really you're condemning yourselves. You think you're punishing me, but you're actually punishing yourselves. There's nothing that you can do to me. A quick aside, you've probably heard me talk about element before and that's because I'm frankly dependent on it. For the last three years, I've started my morning every single day with element. Element is a tasty, electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't.

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36:11Kids are seeing stuff for the first time and they're excited. And what I think a lot of people are doing past a certain age and not what the age is, I say 40, you're remembering stuff. You've made that drive before, you've seen sunsets before, you kind of remembering stuff so that your mind is kind of filling it in and you're not in wonder and I think a lot of what Comedy is certainly that kind of the observational element of it is whether it's linguistic or Observation more generally is you're really recognizing stuff You really see things the sort of thing. The really seeing things in a in a way that An artist what you're trying to see it for what it is if I'd never observed this before What would I notice?

36:50Yeah, yeah, and also that unique experience of like touring around seeing different places. It's actually, you know, when you, I've done 20 shows in my life, 20, 30 shows in my life. I remember a bunch of different scenarios. There was a nine year old girl sat in the fourth row of the show that we did in Sydney. And she asked this amazing question. And James had been dropping the sea bomb throughout all of his warmer packed. And my, my mind was a little bit, you know, this fingering jokes and stuff like that. And I was like, parents, I'm so sorry for like what's happened to your nine -year -old don't.

37:23She was like, it's all right, she's Australian and everyone broke out laughing. I'm like, I can't until Parkinson's comes and rips my fucking consciousness out of my head. I'm not going to forget that. So you have, you're right. The two ways that human memory works is novelty and intensity. It's something that's newer, if it's something that's really emotionally salient, which you could just look at as another form of novelty, right? The intensity thing. So, someone will make a drive to work. They've been at this job for four years. You're like, you've made that drive there a thousand times and back a thousand times.

37:57No memory. But it's been condensed down into one journey. So apart from that time when it was icy and the guy next to you skidded and oh nearly that's novelty and intensity. And you go, I remember that one. And I remember the first day I went to work. Yes. And I remember when the road was closed and I got in late and I did whatever. But unless you purposefully inject novelty, and this is one of the sort of ruthless double edged swords to routine, which is a lot of the gains in life are to be made through being structured and routineized. What's actually finding that balance of going like, because that is that thing of like you could go somewhere different on vacation every year or you go back to the same place, because what are you solving for?

38:36Are you making new memories or do you want relaxation? You know, what's the, what's the, what are you trying to get out of this? What do you want? You're back to that fundamental question. I think this is one of the reasons why as people get older, their openness to experience goes down, because the assumption is, I've been on loads of holidays. I know where's good and I know where's bad, and the likelihood as somebody that's been on lots of holidays, of beating the best one, or even getting into the top 10%, is way tougher in my sixth decade than it is in my second. What am I reversing? That thing of trying to go against the grain of what normally happens.

39:14So, serotonin and dopamine, both are important, and we normally get serotonin from old music, people listen to old music, they listen to the stuff they like when they're in their teens and 20s, and they watch new movies, dopamine, new stories, whereas this guy wants to happen. I kind of change it round. I listened to that Quentin Tarantino book, the Cinemasterweight Speculation, and when I haven't seen any of these 70s movies, or maybe I saw them when I was a kid, I haven't seen them for years, or whatever, I've been watching 70s movies and listened to new music. And it's a really fun, it's a really fun way to kind of change things.

39:49I'll say to you. Well, I think that thing of like going being slightly out of your, like new music's really interesting because it's such a pleasurable thing to listen to new stuff. And old movies, I think the 70s was the high point for movies. I don't think movies go because it was like there was an industry there, but it wasn't fully, I don't know, it wasn't blockbusters yet. It's experimental. Yeah, there was altars and the suits were giving the best directors the money to go and do the thing, go and do. Because we don't have a established process of how this should be done so we can allow you to have a few more degrees of freedom.

40:26Yeah, it was, I don't know, it's just a wonderful time. I kind of feel like it's very analogous to how comedy is now. Comedy's really having a moment culturally that's very, very special. And I don't know what that is. Maybe it's authenticity or there's something about people wanting to be part of a tribe. I sort of think, so in our culture, there was a fire and we gathered around the fire and we did this. spoke, right? And then there was the radio, and we gathered around the radio, and we didn't do it in the chat. And then there was a TV, we gathered around, we watched the shows and talked about it the next day.

41:06And then suddenly it was the phone, and I'm over there and you're in your room and it's where it kind of isolated. And I think that thing about coming out to comedy or going out to festivals or going and seeing stuff is It's my, I suppose, play. We are playing creatures. Someone wrote a book about this in the, I think it was the late 30s about human beings of the playing animal. I play being upstream of cooperation and cooperation being the secret source of humanity. And the idea of like, I think about what people are interested in. Anyone you know, anyone you speak to, like what you excited about, oh well, I'm watching the game on Saturday.

41:48watching people play. I'm going to go and see the the concert, the killers of playing live. Oh, I'm going to go and see them play. I'm going to go and see that comedian. Okay, it's just a guy playing on stage. I'm going to go and see a musical. Whatever you're into, you want to see people playing and what is this conversation? It's kind of playing, right? It's curious to you and it's you can you would sort of sorting out ideas and picking little things and strands and it's playful And it's incredibly important that I love that George Bernard Shawline that we don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.

42:24And there's a wonderful thing in my privileged life as a comedian where I'm a grown man but I also get to be in that mind space where I'm playing all the time. And the audience come out and they bought a ticket. And just, I mean, it's very self -selecting the audience that you'd have a tough time having a tough gig because a thousand people bought a ticket to see you. They were the main one. Came to play. No, but there's an illusion, isn't there? The illusion is, and your ego could get taken away. Like, oh, I'm on stage. It's me. I'm performing. You don't see the audience. The audience are performing.

43:02I saw it last year. I went to see Taylor Swift live in Wembley last year. And it was transcendent. And she was amazing, right? great songwriter, an incredible musician, wonderful performer. She was great. The audience were next level. Like it was girls and their mums and their best friends like quite a lot of this action. They knew every word to every song. They were, because I was watching it and I was also kind of watching the crowd. I'm watching that. It was performative. And then you saw, I was kind of watching it and going, oh yeah, well in my audience, people don't, they wouldn't laugh if they saw the clip on their phone on the bus, you know, or with, you know, sometimes people will post under an Instagram, you know, you put out some heck or video, I think I'm not funny.

43:48Yeah, but you watched it with a sound off in the subtitles. It's like, so I saw a clip of Taylor Swift Live and I didn't sing along. Yeah. Well, you're not singing along when you see the clip, but when you're there, it's permission. It's the, I suppose that thing was like, you see Bruce Springsteen live. How are you doing? Yeah. If you're someone in Starbucks, is it? It sounds psychotic. It's great. You allow yourself permission to be in that space where you can perform. It's wonderful. Collective effervescence is a wonderful way to get out of your own head. And yeah, I think to fly the flag for my old industry, the demise of nightclubs that don't require quite as much effort that aren't as rare, that allow you to sort of be in that space and see a DJ.

44:31There's just even some local DJ that plays great songs and every song is everybody knows it. get to dance together. How increasingly rare is it that you're in a room with a bunch of people who you both do and don't know, all feeling a vibe that's together. Maybe the resurgence that you're seeing with comedy, with live stuff, even the sort of things that I do are more like a Petersonian -y style, lecture -come, whatever, with a few fingering jokes. There's something going on there. Well, I wonder what people are looking for when they are mutual friend Alan de Botton. You know, he's got the School of Life, which is ultimately they were running services on, I think they still do, run services on a Sunday, which is sort of church for people that can't, they can't sort of believe in a deity, but they still want to go because that, you know, church works.

45:24But church works not because God is happy, but because people are coming together. And, you know, they kind of, they're, you've, you've heard me talk about this Latin mass thing, which is kicking off at the moment. Yeah. What people going to Latin mass? Well, I've often said Vatican II was the biggest mistake in, in the church's history, because what they did was they, they translated it goes back to Ian McGillcrest. You know, you read that, they're mastering your industry, the left brain, right brain thing. So the incredible thing about the left brain is it, it orders things and makes lists and it's very, are we living a left brain world?

45:59Procedure also. And the only thing more impressive than that is the right brain, the idea that it can see the Gestok, that can see the whole thing. And you go the problem with Vatican II is they took religion and they made it, they translated it into your local language and you could just go, oh yeah, it makes sense. That can't happen. Can't come back from the dead. It's crazy. But before that, when it was all in Latin and there was a lot of incense, it was you were just in awe. So I had the same effect of like standing in nature. It just, do you know what it is? I fucking wish it wasn't this.

46:30But the more that I think about what it is people want to take away from life, it's all just vibes. It all just comes back to vibes. So what's the vibe? What was the vibe of his shock? Can you remember only the one line? I think he did a joke about roadkill. Can't, yeah, no, can't remember anything. And I do, he definitely did. He gave this really nice answer. You get this early sunset to this guy about this something something something something something and But I remember the vibe Vibers could it's just relax. It was like intense actually. It's kind of quick And is it my angel loop people don't remember what you say, but they remember how you feel Yeah, you made them feel I got a I got around that that movie thing you mentioned movies before and two questions about People ask what should I be doing with my life?

47:14If your life is a movie what the key scenes be? I think that's important when you're looking backward, but a much better one. If your life was a movie and people were watching up to this point, what would the audience be screaming at the screen telling you to do with your life? What would they be? Just it's fucking obvious. Leave the job. Leave the road. You mean to get like, it's your brother. It's that, you know, the fucking killer's hiding in the cupboard. Whatever it might be, what would the audience watching the movie of your life be screaming at the screen telling you to do? And I think it's a very orthogonal way to look at Huh!

47:58I already know the answer of what I should be doing. I'm just scared of making the commitment and having the conversation. Yeah, I waited a long time. I didn't add kids very late in life and it was because I was waiting to feel like a man. And obviously I had it just backwards. It's because it's a, it's not a noun, it's a verb. So you have kids and then suddenly you feel, hold the kid and you feel fucking lonely. And then you just fucking great. And then you don't know who you're gonna be as a dad. How's father had changed you? I don't know. I think it's, I'm not about change. I think it's like you sort of, Um, you know, that thing of like, uh, uh, power corrupts.

48:43I think it does. I think power reveals. And I would say sort of the same about sort of a parenthood like, you don't, you don't change. It just reveals who you, who you are at a kind of a deeper level. It just like the, the, there's a side of you that was always kind of waiting. And you come out and you don't get, it's almost like the kids come out with their factory settings, right? Like how much of what they have is heritable. And they just come out and they are who they are and you watch these little creatures and they kind of come with that. You sort of got a personality. I don't know where that happened.

49:20And then the other one's got totally different personality. Oh, because I think everyone with one kid is nurture. Oh, we gave them this, so they've done that. And we were always, we read books like that, so they did this. Because you haven't got to run the experiment a second time. Yeah. And then as soon as you get the second one, you go, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, they just, yeah, she likes that. So what are you going to do? Yeah. It's lovely. And I think it's the same with parenting. I think you don't know who you're going to be as a parent. And it's a revealing thing. It's you kind of go, oh I'm, oh I'm not kind of, okay.

49:59That's fun. Great. Did it teach you much about yourself?

50:05I don't know. I don't know what the, I suppose it's that thing of like it's a feeling that's very difficult to put into words without, you know, it's a cliché thing, but it does feel or like it's, I suppose it's closed off an existential angst that I always had of like since losing my, I lost my religion my mid -20s, it's quite sort of late. I was a Catholic and I lost my faith and was an atheist and not having an afterlife is it's a rush a blood to the head, right? So I've got to do something with this life. I've got to take opportunities and risks and have fun now because a random collection of atoms coalesced into a form that can contemplate its own consciousness for 4 ,000 weeks and then disappears again.

51:06That's it. We're in this brief shaft of light between two oceans of darkness. And then suddenly you have kids And you go, oh, there is, there is an ex life. It's them. It's the DNA. It's, oh, Dawkins was right. It's the gene. I'm just the vessel. And that's, I found that very, I found that incredibly comforting. So you're saying that the denial of death and the death anxiety can be a swage at least in part by making more of you? Yeah, I think the death anxiety, The death is the certainty.

51:49It's coming for all of us. I think the more that we talk about it and acknowledge it and the better. That idea around I will become a dad when I become a man. I will... That's clearly the movie of your life. The guy's listening to the podcast. The girl's listening to the podcast. I mean, we're all screaming at the podcast. Go and... Like, use the jeans. Use the... We sort of want you to be happy. Yeah. But I can't wait. Keep on saying it. I really, really do look forward to becoming a dad. Like, I think it's going to be... I hope that becoming a father makes all of the things that I've done up to now feel like shallow, vapid attempts to get recognition from the world.

52:45Your club promoter, love island? Shower and vapid. Yeah, I know. Shower, vapid, how dare you? What can I say? It's a wonderful industry. It's very insightful. Very insightful, you know. My prediction is you should, not my prediction, my dream for you is that you have a big family because I think there's an only child that sounds terrifying. But there's a theme in the only child thing comes up a lot for you. Like it's a recurring theme and I think what you need is a really loud messy house. Let's go back to Plato, right? So my issue with Plato, obviously, you know, the birth of the, you know, it's Plato to NATO.

53:26That's Western civilization, right? Incredibly important figure. But I got issues with Plato, if you was here, and I tell him, it's Plato and the Zarathustrians, and they both independently came up with the idea of perfection. So the Zarathustrians, with the first religion, believed to come up with the idea of heaven, perfection and the platonic ideals of Plato. And I think in our heads, we think of perfection as an ideal, obviously a lot. And I think it gets in our heads. I like, well, if it can't be perfect, I don't want it. I want to get to the bottom of my list. I want to cross everything off.

54:05I want to deal with all these problems and then move on. You can, well, problems are... All the problem is, is something that needs your attention. That's great. And there's no such thing as no problems. It's just different problems. Higher order problems. If it helps call it a puzzle, not a problem. Like just, there's going to be problems. It's going to be messy. And like Nietzsche had this great line which embrace the chaos. Like it's quite chaotic life. And it's not terribly orderly, and it's never going to be orderly. And I think there's something about having kids kind to let you just kind of lean into that a little bit.

54:42It's the illusion of control really disappears. You've got influence, but very little control. Before we continue, if you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like, getting your blood work done is the best place to start, which is why I partnered with function because they run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that take the data, put it in a simple dashboard and give you actionable insights and recommendations to improve your health and lifespan. They track everything from your heart health to your hormone levels, your thyroid function and nutrient deficiencies.

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55:50The common feeling that your life has not begun, that your present reality is a mere prelude to some idyllic future. This idyll is a mirage that'll fade as you approach, revealing that the prelude you rushed through is in fact the one to your death. It's this strange. Is that not John Lennon? Life is what happens while we're making other plans. Yeah, it's brilliant piece of, it's a brilliant observation. Oh, once I've got this done, once I get my degree, then life will begin. Once I've just got to pass these exams and get to that thing and buy that house, and then I've just got to pay this off, and then we can start.

56:27It's a very instrumental view of life that everything is done in order to achieve the next thing. So at no point you actually arrive, it's a great question. Okay, when are you going to arrive? Tell me, tell me when you're going to arrive at life, when are you going to feel like you've actually got that? Well, we're going to end up being Buddhist summit because it's like, I do slightly disagree with the over pathologizing life, but depression and anxiety, which I would rather call sadness and worry, but it's very serious for some people, depression is always about the past, and anxiety is about the future.

57:03And then the more you can just be in the moment, you're sort of all right. You're sort of okay, you know, today enjoying that thing of like enjoying this bit of the process. But it is that thing of like, it's very, it's kind of easy. It's easy to say. I mean, I love that thing as well. I'm such a fanboy this show, but the 2D and 3D lessons. But it's so true in terms of like, you can't say to a young person like the material possessions, they're not going to bring you happiness. Because actually, they kind of will. But not having the watch won't make you happy. Getting it is fun. Having stuff is fun.

57:49The journey is so fun. That thing of like, and it's partly the dopamine of like, it's the thrill of the acquisition. but the stuff that gives you pleasure, long term, it's feelings. Having things isn't fun, getting things is fun. That's Andrew Tate, by the way. But you have this... Is it? Yeah, that's Andrew Tate. Yeah, no. Like, you weren't expecting that. Well, a stopped clock is twice a day. That's true. But you had the inverse of this when it comes to work rate, which I think probably classes is one of the best insights over the last few years. Everyone is jealous of what you've got, no one is jealous of how you got it.

58:28Yeah, I think that thing of like, but is that thing where you go when people say, I want to be famous. But they don't have a thing. I don't know what for, but it's the fame and fortune is the secular heaven. For fame, read heaven. It's the land of milk and honey. Everything's going to be okay. And then when you, it's kind of annoying when famous people complain about stuff, because you're going to have to do your... You've got everything. No, you've got different problems. It's again, it's problems as a feature not a bug. The issue that I think a lot of famous people have is I am certain that my inner void will be filled when I, and the benefit that people who are not yet as rich or as famous as they want to be is that they still have the potential panacea for them to get to.

59:21What's that great Will Smith line? I'm not the biggest world Smith fan in the world. But the idea that he went, I was poor and miserable and it was okay because I thought, well, I just, I'll get some money and then I'll be all right. And then I was rich and this reward was like, disolven. Oh, fuck. Oh, no. Yeah, that's Mark Vansen's, uh, nothing else to do. Yeah. Yeah. Originally, that was going to be a two -part series. Mark was going to write, because the first box is called Will. You wrote that with Will Smith. And the second box was going to be called Power. Should have been called I Am. That would have been a good one.

59:51Very good. a copyright issue. Which way around does it work? Interesting when it comes to trademark. I'm going to get this the wrong way around. But Europe and the US have different laws when it comes to how words can be trademarked. My mind is stuck on a joke. Okay, so when the world's myth and Chris Rock thing happened, okay, obviously, Chris Rock is like, for me, a godlike figure, I've met him a couple of times and I just, I'm so in awe of his skill and and do work. Touch our profit, okay. Work ethic. And like I was so annoyed so I was chatting about chatting about it a couple of weeks ago with a friend and and said oh, somehow it came up and I said oh, Chris Rock came was he was at the Oscars, yeah, he was really star struck.

1:00:41Like three years too late. I thought of that on the day, which really genuinely annoyed with myself like, come on, come on, brain, think about it on the day. No use now. But there is that there is this sense of what happens if you achieve the things that you say that you want. What happens if you get there? Just imagine for a second the perennial insecure over a chever optimizer people. What happens if you get there and you still have the same problems? times. Then what do you do? That's a difficult question. Yeah, but I think it's answered by, you know, there's other people on the same road and it can feel sometimes quite sort of, I don't know, you're sort of out there battling, trying to achieve whatever you're trying to achieve and you kind of do it and look around and you go, well, there's other people, I think having friends in other fields is really helpful and you, because that thing of like, if it's too close to your industry, it can sometimes be a little bit kind of frenemies.

1:01:42But I think that thing of like, well, comedy's really good for that because it's kind of, we're out for ourselves, but in it together. There's a lovely thing about... Sense of camaraderie. Yeah, and it's not like we're actors. It's not like we're, you know, it was... There's only one role for the next Marvel movie. There's only one James Bond, and I'm afraid you didn't get the part, but he did, ah, he's lives amazing, yours is shit. whatever that thing is, with comedy, it seems to be that there's a camaraderie and a... It also comes back to that thing of like, don't be the best, be the only. Like, if you're a non -fungible human, and someone goes, well, no one else is doing what he does.

1:02:20But other people are in the same industry. It's like, Iron Maiden had a great line about this. The Iron Maiden was like, I think they didn't interview with their manager. And he went, well, we're not in the music industry. We're in the Iron Maiden industry. That's a fucking slumber. And they went, you went, don't care what's happening in that field. We can only plow this field. And like, it's just, you go, yeah, I mean, they had so many great lines actually, but I think Bruce, things are sort of saying famous. It's a, a byproduct of what we do. It's the, it's the, it's the excrement. Fame is the excrement of creativity.

1:03:08Ah. Ha ha ha ha ha. Like something that you need to deal with, but sometimes can be enjoyable. Well, it's like, eh, yeah, okay. I think, yeah. Well, it's interesting when people pursue fame for fame's sake. I want to be famous. Is that no? Sorry, you were on a level, I don't want. Yeah, sorry. What? Yeah, look, I'm allowed to talk, I'm allowed to talk about this because I went up the mountain and came back down. Well, I think it is that thing of like the... I don't think that story's been told properly. We chat about this last night at Dinobah. I think to tell that story fully, I think he's very inspirational because you go, it's the...

1:03:45you've worked on something that is a...

1:03:50like any other muscle. You know, we're going to love Ireland and okay, you've got great forearms. wonderful. Good luck. God bless. And then you've worked on that for how many years now? Six, seven. This is your eight, seven and a half now. Okay. Wow. The results. Like the crazy, like you're an advert for, it's not even work ethic. It's just, it's not like ambition. It's systems. It's like three shows a week, every week. I know what a tough year you've had. And the idea that you just keep on showing on. Come on, come on, to mutually fillate each other. You are by a margin the hardest work and comedian on the planet.

1:04:34I don't think that's funny. I had a bit more talent. I'll take a weekend off. I'm blown away by the schedule that you have. I did actually want to read you an essay of mine based on people that work very hard. The gastric band surgery of being busy. After undergoing gastric band surgery, people's risk of suicide goes up. That's perhaps unsurprising. Gastric band surgery is a big deal and can sometimes have complications, infections, and painful outcomes. But one of the unseen reasons for the increased suicide risk is actually due to the surgery going right, not going wrong. Many patients used food as a way to deal with issues in their lives, emotional challenges, loneliness, anxiety.

1:05:17After having their stomach shrunk, the ability to use food as a comforting crutch has been removed, but the emotional challenge is still remain. So, the coping mechanism has been taken away, forcing patients to face their issues without release valve. I think there is an equivalent dynamic happening when you try to elevate your life to take your sense of self -worth from things other than your work and your level of busyness. Let's say that in the past you used busyness as a chaos and as a way to distract yourself from feeling unwanted emotions. It meant that you didn't need to reflect on your decisions or sit in discomfort that you're moving so quickly that you never fully connect with the things that are happening in your life.

1:05:51Lost relationships, disconnected friends, poor decisions and accumulated negative character traits are all swept away so quickly that you didn't even have time to consider them by manic work right. Eventually, you realize that chaotic busyness is not your highest calling in life. Maybe you value different things now, maybe you've outgrown that phase of your life, maybe you realize that busyness for busyness is safe is detaching you from connecting to your existence. So, what happens when this coping mechanism gets taken away? You're forced to face your issues without the highly distracting release file that you're used to.

1:06:22The busyness and aesthetic that you've used to previously rely on has now been removed leaving you with two choices. Number one, ignore the lesson that chaos is not fulfilment and go back down this road that you just escaped from by force feeding your way through this figurative gastric band. Number two, actually learn to handle emotional discomfort without distracting yourself with work. Yeah, that's beautiful. It really reminds me of that Milan Kundra wrote this short book called Sloanus, and kind of the the number the book, the message is that memory and speed are inversely proportionate. So the idea, like the best example I can think of is when COVID hit and the world slowed.

1:07:05You kind of took stock and remembered stuff and sort of had time to contemplate. Like in that border, I guess, of not being busy, not being chaotic. There was a real, oh, kind of look around. I don't know. I, um, didn't you have a Chairman Mao quote that was similar to this? What was the Chairman Mao quote? I don't know. You can't smell the roses from a galloping horse. Yeah, yeah, that's a good, that's Mao. What? Who knew? The Chairman Mao. No, we can take good shit. we can take good trip from Andrew Tate and Chairman Mell. As long as it's good. That's bad. Because that's really who you need to be associated with right now to help rehabilitate your youth.

1:07:51Sure, sure, sure. Man, that's true. Yeah, but it's true. Slowing down once in a while is very good for you. And finding that balance in life. But I think, I don't know, I think working hard is not. It's also like I know people that really work hard. Like I work at Hardin's showbiz. Like are the hardest working man in comedy. Yeah, that's like being the best looking guy in the Burns unit. Right? It's not really a flex because even if I do two shows a night, oh my God, sometimes I have to work for four hours. I'm not sure I'm gonna be okay. Like what are you, it's nothing. But there's people with real jobs that work really hard.

1:08:34And there's people actually that don't love their job, that they work in order to facilitate a life that they love. Well, great, good on them. There's an honor and there's a worth in that. I think we've slightly lost that in our society, if I'm honest with you, like the hero of the working man that provides for his family puts food on the table and a roof over the head. Well, it's great. That's a good point that we've sort of pedestalized passion so much that we assume the only reason that anybody does a job is because they want to do it. And there is an additional type of nobility that comes along with drudgery.

1:09:09You think, well, not only do you do this thing, which is maybe hard, but you don't want to do it, but you do it anyway. Yeah. I know being a provider, taking care of, I mean, yourself and the people that you love, just doing that and working hard. It's not like something shifted in our culture where that isn't Those those people are seen as being chumps or you know a mark Oh, they haven't got a Scythe by the man. Yeah, they haven't got a side hustle and a griff. You go no, so that's some people Work like that and they work really hard and they provide for their families and they they are doing great and They're taking pleasure from their hobbies and their interests and their actually a friend of mine was talking about this because his father had quite a boring job, but he was so passionate about his hobbies.

1:10:03And it was really interesting that he was like, he didn't like the term hobbies even because he was going, that's what brought him joy in life. That was the thing for him. Great. In other news this episode is brought to you by Momentus. If your workouts feel flat, your recovery slow or you've just been feeling off, it might not be your training plan or diet, it might be something a bit more boring like your testosterone. So, if you're not performing in the gym or the bedroom, the way that you want or you just want to naturally improve your testosterone. Tonkata Lee is a fantastic research back place to start and when this is stacked with zinc, can make a huge improvement in testosterone production, strength, recovery and energy, which is why I'm such a huge fan of Momentos' zinc.

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1:11:21Check out. There's a line from Vesakhan Varasmi. He says, I have not yet grown wise enough to deeply enjoy simple things. This is an idea I've been thinking about recently. There is a kind of embarrassment in the modern world at taking pleasure from ordinary pursuits. This sort of sense that my, the things that I feel particularly proud about and that I take a sense of self -worth from and fulfillment, they should be grand. Because how feeble, how shallow, how unimpressive a life it is that lying in a hammock for a couple of hours can be one of the greatest sources of joy. No, no, no, no, you're supposed supposed to be base jumping from the edge of a skyscraper, well, you know, just off the back end of some VIP trip to Ibiza to go and watch, you know, it's supposed to be this grand thing.

1:12:15And that line, I have not yet grown wise enough to deeply enjoy simple things. I think is a pathology of the monomole. Should we quote Naval? I mean, he's the best of us. If you're not happy having a coffee with a friend, you won't be happy on a yacht. Yeah. I did have coffee with a friend on a yacht recently and went, this is good. I mean, you're in all of it. Yeah, it is better. It's a big boat. Yeah, but no, there's an interesting, there's an interesting challenge there, I think, for people that are perennial overthinkers, because a lot of them will feel things more deeply than they should do, including the shame of feeling things more deeply than they should do.

1:12:55It's this odd sort of recursive loop. Yeah. Are you are you allowing yourself to enjoy anything at the moment? I'm trying to as much as I can. Yeah, and I mean, look, some of the things that I've learned, the celebration thing is gratitude and action. I think is a beautiful way to summarize something that I've kind of been floating around. I'm trying to get, I'm trying to build a studio in an office here in Austin because I basically took the working from home pill during COVID and then never realized that COVID had finished. Just I'm just going to, you know, solo pranod degenerate, lone range of my way through this thing, but we hit a million subs and I got to ring Dean.

1:13:33We hit two million subs and I think I broke off from work for a little while. I hit three million subs on a plane and I just didn't, you know, it's just another thing that happens despite it being something that we work toward for a long time and you might go, well, you're not doing it for the subscriber count. You go, okay. So at what point are you going to allow yourself to arrive when are you actually going to celebrate the sort of a thing? Well, it's interesting. You know, that thing of like, when it gets to a certain number of subscribers, you do a Q &A. I think the Q &A should just be a regular thing.

1:14:01Because I think it's like, it's a bit like the newsletter. It's like just, it's sort of almost allowing people to check in with you on a regular basis. And I think you don't allow yourself to do that because, like, if your whole interviewing style is about the guest, yeah, you're very much in service of the guest. And my goal is to make you, or They'll not make it about me. Okay, when's that going to shift? When's it going to shift? Because how many books do you need to read? How many people do you need to sit with and talk to and add value to? How many quotes do you need before you go, I'm enough.

1:14:41I've arrived. I can just talk. I can just talk about life and what I think. And I'm enough. It's a good question. There is definitely still a kind of imposter syndrome, not around what I do, but around stepping into the more sort of guru side of this stuff. And I think that in some ways that's healthy because there's certainly a lot of people who completely bypass the learning thing and go straight into the proselytizing thing without having done any of the work to get up there. I mean, I'm a big fan of imposter syndrome. I sort of think if you're not feeling it every 18 months, you're not pushing yourself.

1:15:18So that thing of like doing things that you're not quite comfortable with. On a regular basis, it's a pretty good sign you're moving, you're making some progress. Is that difficult for you given that kind of all of the things that you sort of can do now like what? Yeah, no, I put arenas in in the UK, so I'm playing arenas at the end of the year. No way. And it's like, that's a, that's a, like I'm used to playing theatres. And I do arenas in different markets in the world like in Australia and New Zealand. and I'm playing arenas next year. But in the UK, I kind of have a... We're running. We're running.

1:15:5110 cities around the UK. And then I, you know, in Australia and New Zealand. What do you know? Everywhere. Yeah. Do you know what dates you're doing in the UK? When I was in... I'm doing, it's November and December. And it's... But I'm playing in the round. Because it's that thing where I did just... I did a gig, I was in Melbourne, and one night off in the tour, and she a pal was in town. And he called and said, you know what's popping? I said, I'm doing a show. I'll come down and play it. And he played it in the round and it was like being a boxer. And you sort of realized there was like 14 ,000 people in there, but no one had a bad seat.

1:16:26Because there's screens above and you're just kind of gently rotating and delivering to the lazy Susan of the Commonwealth. Yeah, but it was literally so exciting. They're walking on. And it was that thing. And it was outside. And I loved how nervous I was. was walking on. So you did a little warm, would be a boyfriend? Oh yeah, like a half hour or whatever. Only a half hour for the girl. Yeah, but it was, it was, it was, it was, it was so fun. And then I kind of thought, oh, did your crushes look like you did sick? I love, I love being friends with you. I think it's so cool to watch you do this stuff.

1:16:58But pushing yourself and getting to that space is, is, it's really exciting. And then playing America, like playing, sort of driving across America and really trying to, I suppose it's that thing of the, it's the same as the Beatles, you know, you're taking something that is, the standard is an American medium, really. If you think about what America's given the world culturally, it's the Western jazz music and stand -up comedy. But great, Gare. I mean, this is a George take where he says Britain has some of the funniest people, some of the funniest comedians, but so few of the world's biggest comedians.

1:17:31What do you think is going on there? Why is it that the UK is able to reliably produce a Jimmy Car or a Ricky Gervais, but most of the big names come out of the States. I think that might change over time. I think the club culture here is very, very healthy. If you think about the comedy seller and the comedy store in LA and the communities that they've engendered and then laterally, the mothership in Austin, the Joe set up. And you know, yellow springs is Dave Chappelle's new thing as well, which is an amazing space. I think that thing of like you can't be your environment and the being around other people and coming up.

1:18:12It's it's it's it's scenes. It's groups of comedians that come up sort of together. So if you think about Jerry Seinfeld and then you know, begat Chris Rock, begat Louis CK all out of the same kind of comedy seller crew and they're all around each other all the time. I think that really helps to be part of that group. I wonder whether the classic British aversion to aiming too high or doing something too different is causing that scene to just stutter a little bit as it grows. Because when I look at the best, for me, when I look at the best scene in the UK for comedy right now, I'm thinking about guys like Adam Row, Finn Taylor, Vittorio,

1:19:04the screenrock guys, Jacob and Jake, like this is kind of the equivalent of the DGEN podcast bro circuit from the US. Well, I wonder what we're in the UK. I wonder what the UK is. Well, it's, it is a great company market. Like the UK, there's a lot. You could busy yourself very happily for two years touring the UK. I'm not have to drive for. And be home in your own bed every night and then write a new show and go again. So the the the wonder lost that I have to go out to 47 countries on tour is maybe slightly unusual, but I think I think as the Comedy's gone global relatively recently, right? It was Netflix decided to an obviously Netflix is based in America, so it's gonna lead with the American comics and then I think it will gradually go out around the world and What I'm hoping they just becomes a bigger and bigger thing because can be such a a a broad church.

1:19:58It's kind of wonderful. I mean, I kind of get annoyed when if ever I see a comic slag off another comic, I'm always like, that narcissism of small differences. We should go, really, we're doing exactly the same jobs, doing the same thing. This is different stylistically. Oh, what are you? Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that Iron Maiden line. Don't try to be the best, try to be the only. I suppose that really only works if you're actually good at what you do, because if you're not good at what you do, you're like, yeah, I mean, it's awesome that you've created your own unique band of World of Warcraft stand -up comedy.

1:20:34It's a shame that nobody except for you is into it. So, I do think that thing of like there's a, with comedy you find your audience, you can joke about anything but not with anyone. And that kind of goes both ways. It's like you go, your audience is kind of, it's cool with this stuff and maybe other people wouldn't be, but it's that you attract your crowd and you get the audience you deserve. of ultimately. If you look out and you don't like your audience, you fucked up. Yeah. I mean, that is one of the most fortunate things I think about doing work that is interesting to you is that you will accumulate an audience of people that you would happily hang out with.

1:21:12And look out the audience at any of the live shows, the one we did in London last year, sold out the event in Mapalo, which was fucking mind blowing. I'm like, there's 7 ,000 dies looking at me. And I would happily go for a coffee with like any person in there. But it's such a weird way to think of three and a half thousand people. 7 ,000 dies? Yes. Well, you see them in there. No one thinks like that. That's a bizarre way to think about what you're talking about. It's a good way to artificially inflate numbers though. You're talking to a club promoter who used to inflate numbers for a very, very long time.

1:21:44Right. Turning 3 ,500 people in 7 ,000 dies. It's packed in there, mate. Yeah. It's packed in 400 eyes. But yeah, and I would happily go for a coffee with any one of them. And I know for a fact that there are fucking tons of people in my industry that couldn't say the same. Yes, I think that definition of a grifter is really powerful. Somebody who is selling a product that wouldn't use themselves. That's it. So we've got to conversation about this. I have an issue because I think it's kind of like the racism concept creep of the online course bro and influencer world that if grifter and shill means everything, it means nothing.

1:22:24And it's just a insult that gets thrown around to anybody that seems to be kind of commercializing. So if you're selling anything at all that isn't just yourself or Patreon access, this is some sort of a grift. And what they basically mean is you are monetizing in a manner that I'm uncomfortable with. I think it's very different for different people. Like I did Kill Tony the other night, Tony Hitchler. I think I got a ton of merch. It's like a merch table out the front. And I saw lots of people buying it and the big fans of the show and their lover. And I sell books at the tour shows and that's it.

1:23:01And I know it's all t -shirts, I don't sell pens, I know it's all mugs because I wouldn't buy it. That's not to say that other comics can't do that because for them they go, yeah, no, 100%. I would wear that mug. I would wear that hoodie, I would wear that t -shirt. What am I gonna do? That's why you've got shares in menswear company in Savile Row. Sure, so yeah, I'm gonna sell Tom Swini suits. I'm gonna have tailors on standby in a lobby. Yeah, but I asked on Twitter, like for the people who use the word grifter or shill, give me your best working definition of what that actually means. Like what is a grifter or a shill?

1:23:37And I was kind of, it was a little bit of a red herring question, because I just assumed that nobody would be able to come up with a good definition. That's a great definition, isn't it? You would sell something you wouldn't buy yourself. It's so fucking awesome. I was like, are you from the 80s? It slices, it dices. You're gonna have one of these in your life. Well, I just think, okay, that's cool. But in that case, if you have this functional definition, it's pretty easy to work out whether somebody... Thank you. I have a new tonic. New tonic, Jimmy. There's no R in it. All right. Thank you.

1:24:09I came here with a fucking, what's the make of the bag? You got put me onto the nomadic. The nomadic like the fully wisdom piled. Oh man, but I did think sometimes you have a element in the morning in the cold plunge. I got the new brass monkey cold plunge. Jesus wet. So it's the one, it's the lie down one. and it has ice that you break through at the top. So you feel like it will throw up ice in the morning. So it just feels better. I mean, I can't do as long in there, obviously, because it's really cold. But it's so good. I love how we'd slowly sort of re -broad you. There's somebody that sort of turns up in the three -piece suit and all the rest of it.

1:24:56But behind the scenes, it's crocks and socks and cold -players and element and nomadic and fucking new tonic. I tell you my, let me tell you the story. So I was in, I now stay in hotels based on sauna co plunge, right? If they've got a sauna and co plunge, I'll stay in that one. Okay. Because I like to do it every day. I find it very energizing. I'm not great with meditation. But I think there's a lot of people like me that aren't great with meditation. But I mean, I love Sam Harris's out waking up. It's fantastic. I do my best. I'm better at listening to talks about it than I am at doing it. Okay, that's fine.

1:25:26But then I find, like I can sauna and co plunge. And that's sort of the same thing, right? It's the same vibe of like just take some time. So, staying in these places, and I'm staying in this place in Austria, they've got an amazing sauna cobblatch. Right, so go into the sauna. It's like a beautiful facility, huge, like 95 degrees in their properly hot. So I'm in there, and the guy goes, man, let's speak German, but shorts. Shorts. And it's like, we weren't supposed to be dressed. Oh, you can't. Okay, my tent was shorts off. And it's fine, there's like three guys in the sauna, everyone's naked, fine, we've got towels, great.

1:26:05Then I do the cold plunge. And I come out of the cold plunge and I don't know if you don't, it's like five minutes in six degree water and there's some baby dick going on, right? There's some baby dick. And then another guy comes into the sauna as I get out of the cold plunge. He has no evidence I've been in the cold plunge. I'm just walking around, I'm like, I need a disclaimer. Could you come into the sauna with me for a couple of minutes until this and then,

1:26:38so Sky that you've just met, we went to his bachelor party in Houston and he likes Asian things, which is why the office looks like that next door. This is not great for him at the moment, if he's listening out there. And I've just said, baby, can you go, oh, I've got a story. Let me think about Sky. I've got a story about Sky. Yeah, he may just go to I think it's called the golden temple or something. It's the biggest Asian spa in Texas And this thing has five and a nine different sauna rooms and a fucking snow room and this weird hot thing You've got a clamber into and the floors heated and it's insanely hot and through the back of the gents kind of classic Asian spa approach is load of unisex, cold plunges and soreners, but you've got to, everyone's dick out.

1:27:26So first off, I was the only person in there with a foreskin, that was interesting. But I walked in to see Skye laid down on a bed with this small Asian man, an aloofah, and he just had a towel covering his junk, and this guy, you know how people plane the top of varnished tables? But then like we're gonna get the varnish off the top of this table, we're gonna retreat it And then we're gonna re -varnish it again And this guy had a luffa and I was watching him scrub Very aggressively I get that this might be a cultural thing Everyone in here's naked The guy's getting out of the sauna per you Sort of hands are open, I've got no problem with my manhood Everybody getting out of the cold plunge was a little bit more sheepish about the way that they're watching Oh yeah This is, I tell you, you've come a long way through.

1:28:16Is it Middlesbrough, you're from? Stockton, yeah, there's shit -sale of Middlesbrough, yeah. Stockton. Stockton, aunties. And that's your idea of a stag do now. That was Sky's idea. Shame on you. I know. Shame on you. You should have been in Benadorm. You should now have some kind of antibiotic resistant STI. Mm -hmm. You went to a sauna. Not even that kind of sauna. You had a Jeffersonian dinner. that weekend as well, and followed Shabbat at the same time. Yeah, no, my friends are unbelievably weird. I have some of the strangest friends in the world. I mean, you were dinner with us last night.

1:28:53You rocked up to dinner and we've got Craig Jones, second best grappler in the world, maybe the best troll on the planet. Seth Belile, who is his handler, I suppose. George Mack, your handler. Soon to be one of the best writers on the planet. Zach Talandert, signed to Conor McGregor's record label, but next wait, lifter, your videographer, me, ex fucking reality TV turned podcast to person, Brian Callan and you. And I'm like, this is the shittest version of the Avengers that I've ever seen. But what an eclectic next. Yeah, I don't know what crime we were planning, but it wasn't going to go well.

1:29:28Yeah, fuck. Um, I don't know, man, I really like. I've liked breaking out of whatever format the UK, or whatever life it was that I was supposed to lead, I think. So I don't think I was supposed to lead this one. I feel like this was kind of, you talk about self -authoring an agency, I think this was something that kind of wasn't written in the stars. All that much, I don't know whether you feel that way. You started your single life. No, I think you made a very big move, like a physical move. But I think you could have done this in the UK. I think it's not so much the physical location. It's where you chose to go.

1:30:07I think you know you made the move seven years ago. You made the move seven years ago to sit in your bedroom and to go Well, I'm going to talk to interesting people about interesting stuff That's what happened like everything the fact now that it's on a Grounded scale neither here nor there process wise. It's the same thing. You're as inquisitive as you were early on Unfortunately even more actually, I think yeah, I didn't look I it's one of the things I have two tensions right I have I have attention between two different polls. One is, I don't like to get too big for my boots. I know that it is a bit of a turn off to people to see someone who seems to be too full of himself, especially someone that presents in the way that I do, especially someone that's doing it through an art form that on the surface anybody can do and lots of people do do.

1:30:57It's slightly different if you see somebody that plays an instrument because you think, well, as much as I might not like the fact that they're successful at the saxophone, I can't fucking play the saxophone, right? So there is a kind of hurdle that you need to get over. So the narcissism of small differences. I think that the differences are much smaller when it comes to the art form of podcasting because it's having a chat. It's just having a chat well, hopefully, when you do it effectively. I don't think anyone thinks that. I mean, I think you'd have to be insane to think that. It's, if I look at the work that goes into it, if I give it just a briefest thought.

1:31:34I curse the reglands. A curse reglands are like the questions you asked, the reading that you've done, the research, the amount of books you have to get through, the way that you need to kind of go, okay, so they've written a book, whether it's really good or really bad, you kind of have to get them to present their whole thing. It's like the presentation. It's a phenomenal skill set. I appreciate that. So that's on. But so your perception is that you shouldn't appear too successful because. Not only appear too successful, just appear too full of yourself. It's like, ah, you're not that special.

1:32:08Again, it's that British working class mindset that I'm trying to rid myself of. It's wiping around people like George, like Zach, like Brian, like yourself, people who've got big dreams and sort of blue sky vision. I've referred to myself as a criticism hyper responder. Overindex on the criticism of others. But so that's one end, right? That is one end. But the other end is... If somebody that comes from the most backwater, working class, bullshit town, three people living on one person's wage in the northeast of the UK, goes to a school where your entire 200 person, your group has maybe one other person that goes to university, out of it, everybody is born, lives and dies within a 20 mile radius for the most part, is able to kind of rip some fucking project off the launch pad and get themselves out to escape velocity in orbit.

1:33:06That should be a really relatable story for most people because it's this pretty accessible combination of effort, curiosity and stubbornness to not stop. I think it's... I think you're very working class in the best possible way. And you don't waste anyone's time. I'd be like seeing the inside the actor studio thing, the master class, there's a master class thing. And Michael Cain did it. Lots of actors have done it. And most actors do it and they tell their life story. And I did this and then I did this and then I did this. And Michael Cain did it. And Michael Cain's working class. And Michael Cain goes, when you look in the camera, I can't do it.

1:33:55like, okay, but when you look in the camera, have one eye, look at the, someone in the eye, but look at their, look at their left eye and cheat it and then look at the other side. So you just look at one of their eyes and the, in the camera, it'll look as if you're looking directly down the lens, but also looking at them. And it's like a practical tip. You're not wasting anyone's time. It's very spitting soddest. He's a working class guy, he's telling you how to do the functional thing. Weirdly, I'm, I'm more working class than you think, because I'm from Slow. and from the farm road in Slaal.

1:34:28Next to the Mars factory, I grew up on the big of the education and the current tax seal. But that thing of like, you go, I'm very aware of like, there's reputation in this character. There's how you are perceived. Very important to know how you're perceived. You're very aware of how you perceived. There's also characters, there's who you know you are. That thing within you and like where you've come from. And the idea of like, I think people assume I went to private school. People just get, well, yeah, probably. No, of course not. But I kind of know that, but you go, you can't change how people just have that.

1:35:05It's perception. Yeah, but it's okay to lean into that. I think as long as you know. Yeah, reputation management's an interesting one that people have. I think so many people are concerned about what other people think of them not who they are. They had dry creek dwein. Did you watch that one? The guy with the Wrangler horse, dude with the big beard. Oh yeah. Yeah, and he just had this fucking lovely line where he said, I like me. I'd buy me a beer. I thought, what a fucking beautiful self -assessment. I like me. I'd buy me a beer. But he hadn't arrived there overnight. It took him a long time to become the sort of person that he liked.

1:35:44And I guess some people start further off. Maybe some people are more scrutinizing around who it is that they feel they need to become before they would buy them a beer. But I thought that was a lovely internal metric of a place that we should all want to get to. I want to like me. I want to be the sort of person that I'd buy a beer. Yeah. I'd buy you a beer. It's been great. I want to know what relationship people should have with their inner critic. I think it's very healthy, isn't it? It's very healthy to have an inner critic, but it's also, there's the golden rule, and then there's the platinum rule.

1:36:31There's the tree others as you want to be treated. And then there's the treat yourself as you treat others. Most people are very kind. like you're nicer to me than you are to yourself. Like if you said the shit you say to yourself, to me, we wouldn't be friends. And I think that thing of like the inner critic has to be, it's as long as it's processed driven, I think it's very, very healthy. It's like imposter syndrome. It's okay, feel like an imposter for a while. As long as it gives you, as long as you can get that to a granular level where it gives you something to work on. Like the inner critic can't just be, it can't just be like, that's bad.

1:37:16It's got to be, or that didn't work so we need to change it. Or that one's not going to work so we're going to write something new. It's got to be something that's like, you're working towards something. You're aiming up. And I think criticism's very important. I mean Walt Disney's to do this thing we had like the, we had three rooms. You know, this thing of like one for creativity, one for sort of management. Like how would you do the idea? And then it was only in the third room that you were allowed to be critical. It's kind of fun idea of like going to sort of compartmentalize. Well, I do think that thing of like never refuse the muse if you're working in anything creative.

1:37:59Just write it down. That's something comes to you. Yeah, that's the right one, right? Inspiration is perishable act on it immediately. Yeah. Yeah, there's a Tim Ferriss says, the world rewards the specific ask and punishes the vague wish. And I think that sort of inner critic voice can expand out into, I don't feel good about the thing I did. Okay. Well, that's probably the first place that everybody gets. So I'm not really too sure about why, but there's some sense of discontent about something that just happened or something I'm about to do. You're probably very normal. You don't know where it's coming from, and you don't know what it's about, and you don't know what to do to fix it.

1:38:40Okay, so how about we get away from the vague critic and we move toward the specific coach with regards to this? Okay, so what precisely is it that you're concerned about? Well, I don't feel fully prepared for the presentation I've got to give tomorrow. Okay, is that fair? Do you know that it's true? Do you think that you haven't prepared enough? Oh, actually, I have prepared quite a lot to be honest. I think this is probably just my fear trying to be sneaky, sort of turn itself into a way that I'm going to believe it. All right, well, what are you going to do about it? Well, I'll just check my notes a few more times and actually, huh, it seems like I do know this pretty well.

1:39:16The, the, yeah. The inacritic. It's not often wrong. Just, you can say it in a nice way. You know, it's, it's, sometimes it's right. Sometimes you fuck up. Sometimes it's not, it's not, it wasn't good enough. And that's okay. It's like, it's the, it's that idea of like going, it's not repetition, it's iteration. It's like lots of different, you know, doing the same thing again and again, doesn't let you bed up, like tweaking it. And knowing what to tweak is that you have to listen to an in a critic. I think the, is it Homozi? It's Homozi so good for quotes. But I think it was self -confidence without evidence is delusion.

1:40:02Some version of that. Confidence without competence is delusion. Yeah, it's so true. And you do meet people along the way that have that incredible confidence or they sort of exude that. And then they don't have the confidence to back it up. And you go, well, no, you need to be able to... So finding out, I think it's very, I think without that inner critic, I think we would all be kind of delusional wandering around going, yeah, you know? Yeah, George says, there's someone with half your talent, but five times yourself believe making ten times the money. Yes, and that's true for every British person.

1:40:37There's an American. Exactly. Well, I think for the perennial overthinkers, reframing this very well -trotten landscape, of inner criticism. A lot of the way that you can look at that is I'm fragile. You know, my self -belief exists on a knife edge. It feels like I'm tight -robbed, walking confidence, perhaps. I think a better way to look at it is you're not fragile. You're just finely tuned. And in the same way as a Ferrari can go really, really fast, especially around a track. But if you don't treat it very well, it's probably going to break down quite a lot, actually. me if you treat it really well, it's still gonna have a couple of hiccups and days where it doesn't fully operate rightly.

1:41:26But yeah, you're not fragile, you're finely tuned, is a nice refraining. It's so easy to be kind to other people and sometimes so difficult to be kind to yourself. I thought you wouldn't let someone else speak to a friend like that. He just wouldn't stand for it. And yet you're in a cruiser, you're just like, yeah, yeah, say terrible things to me. just accept it as it comes. Yeah, I am. That idea on, you had a position and disposition. This has happened a couple of times. I miss remember things that guests tell me. And then I write about the thing that I miss remembered. And what you realize is that you've actually built on something that they didn't mean.

1:42:02And I think I told you about this before, but I'm gonna tell you about it again. So this is after our first episode, 18 months ago, something like that. But my chat with Jimmy Carr a few weeks ago in Spiderman's Spiderman idea, I've been reflecting on how your trajectory is way more important than your position. If you're number two in the world, but last year you were number one, that is way worse than sitting at number 150, but being on a huge upward slope from 300 12 months ago. There's a few reasons for this. Recenty bias. If your value is increasing right now, that means you have to be popular at the moment.

1:42:33By looking at recent trajectory, you are selecting for only the few people who are trendy right now, which is really all that we can remember. We can also romanticize where someone will be in future if they're currently hot stuff, how high might they climb? Who knows? Maybe to the top, maybe even beyond the top. Human struggle to realize that everything is temporary, including growth and decline. Instead, it's easier to label people as heroes and losers based on what we know of them right now so we don't have to predict a messy future. There's an old saying saying that there's three types of people on the ladder.

1:43:03One at the bottom, one at the middle, one at the top, which one is the best to be. the one that's still climbing. Yeah, no, I think it's fantastic. It's very well put. Yeah, I think that, especially in show business, trajectory really seems to be such an important metric and it's like you could be half the size of some other comic but they've been around 20 years and they always sell out the arena. So who cares? It's like, it's novelty, dopamine, this is new, recency bias. Yeah, I think there's a thing this year where and I was just applying. And it's a big deal. People are very excited about it.

1:43:43And I think Coldplay are doing, I think it's 10 or 11 nights at Wembley State. I never was like Chris Martin, board of you, been around for ages. Yeah, well of course you are, yeah, you're a big band. But it's not like an event culturally in the same way that I was just going together with. There's a narrative to that and a trajectory of kind of where they are. that's and Coldplay have just been steadily. Listen, and if Taylor Swift does 15 nights next year, it'll be a, yeah, in course. Of course. Accepted. Yeah, so that thing of like other people getting excited about it. And I think I don't know what it feels like to be, in Coldplay the moment, and maybe people aren't making as much fuss.

1:44:25I hope they're celebrating. I hope they're taking time to go, this is fantastic. It's a question again of what happens when you arrive. Let's say that the things that you want to have happen happen. What then? Okay, I will be happy when I get to do Wembley. Ah, but no, I need to run it back, because I need to prove that it wasn't a fluke. It's got to be too night at Wembley, because, you know, the goal... That's the reason the gold medal didn't feel right because it could have been a fluke. So I need to do it twice to prove that the first one wasn't a fluke. And, you know, I... Well, no, because the three...

1:45:01Or is it a process thing? Well, they just go, yeah, keep doing what you're doing. Keep doing what you're doing. Keep, you know, if it's, you know, however you want to frame it, you know, if you're hard -charging, you're like, if you're working hard because you go, well, this is an opportunity. That's what I like to do. Yeah. You know, as I've reached whatever level of microanniche to generate the same success thing that I have done, I think it's okay not to do the throat clearing on that. The British, the British person in me is, as I've reached this level of success. It's okay to say that. Thank you.

1:45:36As I've reached this level of success, the thing that I've realized is, if you create all of the external accolades that are associated with success, but the thing that you have done to get there is not fully aligned. and the success feels unbelievably hollow. And this is not something that I've done with the show, but you see it in micro -wobbles when episodes that are I'm really passionate about. It's someone that I wake up on the morning and I like, I cannot wait to speak to this person. This is gonna be so fucking cool. Today was one of those days. And then there's other ones where I go, yeah, I'm gonna be interested in talking to this person, but I'm not like super fired up.

1:46:23Even if the other episode that I wasn't super fired up about It does 10 times a place or a hundred times a place. It's the bait number one on Spotify and it does all of this stuff. Like, hmm, it was okay, I guess, like it was fine, ish. But it doesn't feel the same as something that's 1 % successful but much more existentially aligned. And again, this is another unteachable lesson that success derived from something that isn't authentic, doesn't feel like success. Well, it's slightly that thing of light. What's the money won't give you happiness. Unless you weren't it. Like a lottery win doesn't mean anything.

1:47:04It tends not to bring people happiness because they didn't earn it. But if you earn it, then it's got a meaning. It's like there's no benefit. I'm sure I could get some kind of early up to fly me to the top of Everest and have a look around. No one does that because there's nothing in it. The view isn't, I'm sure the view is great, but the climb is the thing and the idea of going, the episodes that really resonate with you and are important to you and you go, well that's just, that's giving you direction. That's the gift of going, oh more guests like that, let's guess like that and then you're not looking and the metric that you're using is the feeling.

1:47:48The fulfillment vibe. So it's the vibe in it, so you're not looking at the figures and going, well that went through the roof, but it's not, I didn't want to talk to that person, I want to resonate in the same sort of way. Yeah, and I think actually, for your listeners as well, I think it's actually very important to have the balance. I think it's what you don't want to do is, it's not audience capture, but it's, it's, You're feeling a certain way at the moment and you go, right, well, I want to talk to these people and you could be siloed into just, okay, well, I just talk to these guys and it could just be health and fitness and then someone comes on to talk to about economics so you go, well, this is boring.

1:48:28I'm not really interested in money in that way. But the audience might be and then it might awaken something in you and you'll ask more interesting questions of that person than they would have got somewhere else. So is that thing of like going actually the, for me, certainly the idea of this show is that it's quite a broad church. And if you don't keep on split testing, guests that are, oh, well, yeah, no, maybe I'll chat to them. That might be something. You're not necessarily the best judge of what you're going to enjoy, right? It's, I kind of think, and maybe this is the same when it comes to the comedy stuff, too, to avoid being too stagnant.

1:49:07I think there's been a bunch of specials that I've seen recently, some of which have been, wow, that's like, that's really, really good. Others where you go, kind of feel like this guy did this thing before and maybe this is a bit repetitive. Well, there's a balance, isn't it? I've like, it's growth, but also in service. So you go, I always think, you know, comedy specials, You go, yeah, but it's, all my company specials are exactly the same and totally different. It's me and it's 200 jokes in a row and that's the thing, I like, you know, how much crowd work you put in there and, you know, what kind of jokes.

1:49:46It's as funny as I can be. And I think if I released one and it was a heartfelt story about love, who go, well, that's not, no, I didn't. Too much of a departure. Yeah, and you can do a little bit of that. you can do a little bit of talking about stuff that is meaningful to you within that, but you've got to serve as well. So it's not all for you. It's for the audience. Yeah, it's an interesting one. I certainly think that if you feel like substantially aligned with stuff, the more that you do that, the less you're going to feel like, the more you're going to feel connected to the successes that come along with it.

1:50:22I just think that there is that thing of like the success in whatever term that is, whether it's financial lifestyle feeling, whatever, it's a lagging indicator of good decisions you made. A long time ago. Seven years ago. Oh, I'll do three shows a week. I don't know when you made that decision. COVID. Yeah, that's insane. It's an insane work ethic. And that's me saying this. It's like, it's a lot of prep to have to do. It's a lot of work to put in. It's a lot of reps. But my God, it's paying off. Yeah, stubbornness is a consistency. Stubbornness or consistency is a hell of a performance and answer.

1:51:05Just it's the one way and you've spoken about this too, how are you presuming that you're going to be able to beat somebody who does one thing if you're doing two things? At the very least, you need to be twice as good. Yeah. In order to be able to keep up just with where they're at. In order to be able to beat them, you need to be like two and a half times as good. But yeah, and you see people that are spreading themselves incredibly thinly and they're taking, I suppose it's that thing of the things you won't do coming back to that. The opportunities that are presented to you in show business, the things that you could be distracted by, the invites you get, the stuff you could go to and you go, yeah, but I've got to work.

1:51:43This is another one of those insights that I think people early in the journey need to be aware of. I essentially, by Greg McEwen, was a huge influence on me, doing less but better. The highest point of contribution. What is that? Very, very offensively get rid of all of the rest of the things. But if person watching this who is trying to get more clients than they have now as a personal trainer or a person that's writing on the internet and wants to get more opportunities to go into live speaking or whatever it is that your goal is, as you continue to get better and better and better at the thing that you do, more opportunities are going to come along, which means that your nose need to be more discerning, not less.

1:52:28So you have this weird inversion where as more opportunities come along that are better, that only 18 months ago you would have begged to have had the opportunity to be in the room to have pitched to have been able to say yes to. You now need to be able to say no. Dave Chappelle had a great line on this. I think someone told him very early on your only power in show business is no. He did the thing on series two of the Chappelle show. I'm not sure if this is a known thing. I'm sure I can talk about this. On the second series of the Chappelle show, they were in negotiations and he said, make me an offer.

1:53:07And if I don't like your opening offer, I'm walking.

1:53:14It's great. Someone gave me that advice years ago, like when I had a proper job. They said, if you get offered an amount of money for a job, whatever it is, don't even look at it. Just write back and gum. A little bit disappointed. Don't even look at what the offer is. Just go on, a little bit disappointed. It doesn't matter what the number. It helps if you don't look. Because you think I can't sound a little bit disappointed but it kind of works. Jimmy Car, ladies and gentlemen, Jimmy you're awesome man. I love you. And thank you for coming to see me. Thank you for staying for an extra day. So I know that you've got somebody to go to.

1:53:51It's great. I think, I think you know I like the show. I'm proud to be a small part of it. I appreciate you man. Until next time. Lovely. Take care.