Jimmy Carr: "I Was Laughing & Crying When He Died". Jimmy Opens Up About Being Cancelled & How Anxiety Is The Flip Side Of Creativity!

23:30I'm going to be with my kid for five years. Just being in that moment. And he did it. And he was very happy that he did it. It was John Lennon.

23:46And no matter how important you think your job is, you're not John Lennon. You know, I'm sure we could have done great things in those five years. But you think, oh my God, I'm so glad he did that. I'm so glad. Because of what incredible artist he was. He'd given us so much. And that he had those years for himself. And that's for him. I mean, I imagine he's cute. I imagine Sean Lennon is very glad he did that. But he got that time. And I imagine he didn't regret it. And his life was cut short, tragically. And you think it's even more powerful when you consider that. He didn't put it off. He didn't go, well, I'll do that.

24:27I'll get to a million subscribers and then I'll do that. I'll sell a few more records. And then one more tour. And then I'll spend time with the family. He did it. Isn't that beautiful? There's a lot of emotion in your face when you tell that story. It's beautiful story, isn't it? I mean, when you think about it, you go, that's kind of that's life, isn't it? And the mortality, I think, is something we don't think about enough. I love that the Muslim phrase for death, the certainty. We're in this brief shaft of light between two oceans of darkness. Everyone always thinks about the tail end, right?

25:08And he thinks, well, what happens after you die? Mark Twain had this great quote, you know, we were you home. He said, he said, I wasn't alive for billions of years before my birth. And it didn't inconvenience me in the least. But this brief shaft of light is kind of magnificent, isn't it? I think so. I think it can be. This idea of depression is essentially thinking about yourself too much. Last time we spoke on the podcast, you talked about. I would say, yeah, sorry, that feels to me maybe a little bit too harsh. Because I think people suffer with depression. And that's a disease. And it's incredibly serious.

25:50And we think of suicide as being something that stands alone. It's not it's a symptom of a disease called depression, right? So it's the it's the permanent solution to a temporary problem. You don't want to feel this way anymore, but actually you don't want to feel nothing anymore. You'd like to feel better. So it's that thing of like, I don't think we talk about it enough, but I think that thing of, you know, think about yourself all the time. I think you just deletes to a can lead to a melancholy assadness. I think depression is maybe a slightly separate thing. Not to. It feels like it's a disease.

26:24And there's also a lot of sadness in the world. And you're lucky if you're sad. Because if you're sad, it's circumstantial. And you can do something about it. Are you depressed because you have serotonin imbalance in your head? And it's a heritable trait? Or are you sad because your life hasn't worked out the way you wanted to work out? Well, if that's the case, the latter, you're in luck because you can change that. It does feel like there's a bit of a crisis going on within young men at the moment. And I think your new show on Netflix shines a light on many of the difficulties that young men are facing.

26:57I was really excited to talk to you about this particular topic because I've been trying to arrive at a position myself on why so many young men appear to be lost and suicidalitism increased. And there's, you know, these new masculine influences or masculine influencers that are really rounding up this cohort of young men. Who are we talking about? Andrew Tate? Andrew Tate's of the world. Well, Andrew Tate's interesting, isn't he? Because I think John Mulaney made the observation, Trump is a poor person's idea of what a rich person looks like. Yeah, I've got a gold taps. And I think Andrew Tate is like a 14 -year -old boy's idea of what masculinity might look like.

27:38And of course, nature abores a vacuum. And there's a real vacuum for elders. Like we now, we don't learn how to shave from our fathers. It's a YouTube video. And so you lose something in that bonding. So there's a big bit in the new show where I give a young guy, an audience member, a pretty tough time. Like we have the talk. And I give them advice on how to be with the woman. And it's, I'm not wrong about anything. It's really funny and it's really rude. But I'm not wrong about stuff. It's like it's about consent. And I think it's really good because I've shook at the pill of the message. Because people don't want to talk about it.

28:19People go, it's obvious what consent is. Yeah, not to 17 -year -old boys or girls. It's like actually what does that look like and how should that be? So it's a really fun routine. It's really fun routine to perform and to write. What is it to be a man these days? Because it's quite confusing. Even the conversation around like chivalry and understanding, you know. What people talk about toxic masculinity and easy fix. Be a gentleman, be a manch. That's it. This is done. Be a gentleman, be a manch. You know, a gentleman is never rude by accident. It's Christopher Hitchins line. Great. I don't know.

28:55I mean, my thing about young men today, if I was going to give young men advice, it would be get the right drugs and the real thing, right? In real life, live in real life, right? So why young men are obsessed by video games, right? Obsessed. They're spending hours and hours and hours online playing video games. Why? Well, that's a proxy for career, right? Video games. You think about the levels of video games and what people do on video games. That's a proxy. That's like a, it's a substitute for the career that they're not having. And then they spend a lot of time, you know, fapping to pawn hub or you pawn or whatever.

29:33And that's a proxy for sex. And my thing would be, George Orwell wasn't right. Our power won't be taken away from us by some authoritarian master. We're going to give it away for cheap dopamine. And the cheap dopamine of video games and online pawn and living online is getting in the way of real life. So it's risk, right? That's what we're not allowing young people to do. Because we're saying to young people, you can't take risks in real life. We're helicopter parenting. We're not giving them the freedom. How much freedom should you give a kid as much as they can cope with? Right? Fourteen -year -olds used to be babysitters.

30:16They now need babysitters. That's not good, right? So you should allow them more freedom in the real world. Because otherwise, the only place they get freedom is online. No freedom in the real world. You're not allowed to go to the park and hang out, but you're allowed to do whatever you want online. Well, that's a, that feels like a very bad social experiment. That feels like a bad idea. It feels like we've inverted, you know, Maslow, this pyramid, the hierarchy of needs. And you go off food and shelter and warmth and do all that. We've got all the bottom stuff worked out in our society, right?

30:54We kind of can't see it. We're not grateful for that because we can't see the hot shower. The hot shower. We can't see the third world and we can't see the people in the past having a tougher time than us. So we take it for granted. But we worked out that stuff. They hadn't worked that stuff out 200 years ago. But they had the top of the pyramid sorted. Everyone knew who they were. They had their identity. And they knew what their purpose was. Everyone knew who they were, what they were about. And they were connected to the others in the, in the group. And now we're kind of free -floating individuals.

31:25We kind of worship the individual as if, as if we can survive as individuals. I always think of that thing of like there's no such thing as a baby. There's a baby and a mother. There's a baby and a father. Baby and an auntie. But there's no such thing as a baby because a baby on its own isn't anything. It's dead. It's, it needs taking care of. We're all still babies. We all need the connections. You yourself, you're sure there's, there's a lot of yourself that's within you. But a lot of it is out in the world. It's connected to other people. And it kind of mediates who you think you are. And that's, you know, that's, that's slightly missing from society where you kind of live online and you're kind of a self -authored thing you're just on, on the computer on the screen.

32:10And you're not connected and you're not taking risks. Taking risks is really important. Is this in part due to the rise in atheism and agnosticism? I think we, we both mean you lost our sort of religious faith around the same age. I think sort of early, mid, mid, mid, mid, mid, mid, mid. I think it's a weird thing where you go, you can lose your, I certainly don't believe in the story. It's there's two types of fools, right? There's people that book, take religion literally. And there's people that think it has no value. Okay? Both, both idiots for different reasons. Like it works as a thing, religion.

32:44I quite, I miss it because the reason the ceremony works isn't because God's pleased. It's because the people came together. And so I think we look for things that are proxies for religion. And sometimes that's, it could, football, it could be environmentalism. You know, because you go, well, I, I need something, I need purpose in my life. I need to feel like I'm, I'm adding value. And what a great cause. I'm going to save the planner. It's a big thing to think about it. It's got a religiosity to it. But I don't think that's the, you know, I don't think that's necessarily the answer. You know, some people do it with politics.

33:16They think politics is going to, is going to be heaven. They're going to, they're going to come up with some perfect system. I think you're putting too much pressure on politics. First time I've ever said this actually, but when you just said, I think I miss religion. I think I miss religion. It's nice, wasn't it? It was, it was, it was. It was, it was. It's lovely thought as well when you lose someone that you love very much. It's a lovely thought. I mean, heaven is just a lovely thought. And I think in a way, in our culture, fame and fortune has replaced heaven. It's the land of milk and honey and where you can feel like your...

33:50Everything's okay. Everything's taken care of. And it is good. But it's not heaven. I don't believe in an afterlife. I believe in a next life. So I don't think anything happens after you die, but I think you can have a next life. A very different life. So it's interesting you're at this point of your life when you're thinking about, well, I might start a family. It's a whole other life. It's a whole other... Your heart do recognize yourself. You and your partner will be saying, what do we do? What do we do all day? Now, we're not a pepper pig world or wherever you find yourselves. It's really just struck me that I do kind of misreligion.

34:28But it feels like when I lost my religion, I put a backpack on, a backpack full of weights on. And I think that's what the responsibility and individualism is. I mean, for me, the loss of religion was a rush of blood to the head. It was like, oh, this is my life. And I need to make good on this. And I need to live it. The tragedy is most people don't have that kind of... They don't get to kind of follow their dream. When you were 28 years old, your mother died, who had a profound influence on you for many reasons, but also has very much the inspiration or at least the singular biggest causal factor of your career.

35:03When I read through your story even more recently, you've undergone quite a lot of grief, even the loss of your dog, I believe, which had a pretty large impact on you. I think grief is cumulative. So every time you lose someone or something, and actually losing a pet can be... It's a weird thing, because people lose pets, and it's like, I don't know, the other people in the office can be a bit, oh, okay. Oh, well, what we do for lunch, it's like, can be a really affecting thing because it's not just everyone you've lost and you think about mortality, but you think about your own mortality. And you think about, you know, you kind of think about...

35:36It takes you to a very melancholy place of life. I get at some point you've got to say goodbye. And I guess you think about those things of going, what are the, you know, in life, as we were talking about, the great... You can have a great resume, great CV, loads of stuff on it. But what are people going to say at your eulogy? That's the important thing. That's the stuff that really matters. And it's a very different... It's again, it's the... It's a hidden metric of what people are going to say at your funeral, what are people going to say when you pass? I don't know, I think griefs... It's very interesting.

36:13It's very... It is that thing of, you know, kind of comes in waves and, you know, think about it for a long time and then it hits you. How have you dealt with grief in your life? I mean, I think when my... I don't know, I think... I think I'm slightly guilty of... You know, suppressing it a little bit. I think when... I think when Sean Locke died, I was very... I'm very upset by it. And... You just got to work. You just kind of go, well, I'll put myself in this joyful place of laughter and maybe not have to think about it as much. But it's... Yeah, it's... You know, they've gone forever and there was something really amazing about when Sean died because people shared so much online.

36:59So you had these clips of like... I remember the day... I remember being at home and getting the news and laughing and crying, kind of... A real kind of cognitive dissonance of like feeling really upset. And then they played just all the funniest clips of Sean, like people just sending me clips, clips, clips. And he was just so funny. And that joy is kind of there. It's really lovely. It's really like for all of social media's ills on that day, my god, it made a difference. What did it make you realize about both Sean and life when he passed? I don't know whether there's any great revelation. I think it's that thing of just, you know, enjoy...

37:44You know, enjoy your time. Enjoy this because it's fleeting. I mean, all too fleeting for Sean who's very young. But it's, you know, I think that that thing of...

38:02You know, family and spending time with the people that you love and doing what you love. I think prioritizing that. If you want to meet someone high agency, meet someone that's got six months to live. I'd say their tolerance for bullshit is about as low as it gets. I think living your life like that, it's not a bad idea. It really shows you what your priorities would be. Someone said, you had six months to live, or what would you do? That's what you should be doing anyway. Yeah, that's really what I'm getting at. Is there's something that are facing our own mortality teaches us? But unfortunately, we have to...

38:38We often learn that when we haven't got a lot of time to implement it. And sometimes when someone close to us passes away, we can for carelessly learn that message about our immortality and what really what our priorities should be, and really how we should be living our life, and really what mattered the most. And I imagine losing someone that was as close to you as Sean was sends you some kind of message about priorities and life and gratitude and all these things we talked about. Yeah. I think gratitude is a big part of it as well, about the idea of going, well, that was pretty special. You were sort of...

39:17I might grab another coffee. Yeah, I'm the rest of my coffee. Is that all right? My loud. He said, breaking with the former. I might shuffle my notes as well. I might shuffle my notes. This is a business poll, Gaster. At least that's how it started. And... Is it? Have you listened back? Because I don't think it is. No, that's not good. I'll be honest with you. It's not. But business is life. You know what I mean? And they're the same thing. It's communication, mental health, striving, progress, people, relationships. It's all business at the end of the day. It... I mean, you are re... I mean, this...

39:53I mean, I know it's still called, darling, the CEO, but I don't think you've talked about business on this for like three years. And even then, it was like a passing. So when you started your business, how did that make you feel? This isn't... You're an old hippie is what you are. You love this is a great podcast, but this is a storytelling podcast. So many entrepreneurs are old hippies. I think Steve Jobs, he was an old hippie. Yeah. You know, and... It's interesting. I think that thing of like... What does business teach people? We're talking about like young men and kind of... There's a bit of a crisis going on out there with young men.

40:27And listen, young women do not have an easy time either. But it's that thing of like the suicide rate, whatever, is horrific with young men. And you go, well, what's going on? And it's agency. I don't think we're giving young people enough agency. So they don't feel like they have control. And really, I think nothing of like serial entrepreneurs. Like no one ever seems to hit on their first company. But it's the second and third and fourth, and they just keep going and they go, well, I'm never going to work for anyone. I'm going to do it myself. That's kind of... I don't think we're teaching enough of that.

40:58It's a way of thinking is like teaching someone to be a self -starter. It's kind of a contradiction in terms. But it kind of works, right? There's... I think we're teaching the wrong things. I've got a theory. I think I'm going to start teaching comedy. I... Okay. So comedy is very new. It really... You could trace its roots back to George Carlin and Richard Priya in the early 70s, as like one guy on stage in a big theater and he's selling tickets and people are just seeing him, right? You can trace it back to the dawn of time. But really, the modern stand -up early 70s is a good starting point.

41:33So it's very new medium compared to music and film, right? It's very new. So I sort of view George Carlin and Richard Priya... They're John the Baptist, right? And Jesus isn't here yet. And it's this new evolving medium. And unlike music, we don't have a language yet. So we need a language of like, okay, what are the joke types? And how do you write that down? How do you configure it? There's too much magical thinking around stand -up comedy. You know, that idea that I just came up with it. It's just... Yeah, just... But actually learning how jokes work and systematizing and analyzing them, I think really helps.

42:10So I've been working on a book with Amanda Baker, who helped me on my first book. We've been working on a thing together for the last couple of years, trying to teach comedy. And I think there's a real benefit to it. Because if you think about music in schools, right? We'd all argue learning music is great, right? It's a great idea. Teach kid the piano, grade three. They learn something about music and they'll appreciate music much more in life. I think comedy is much more relevant, right? What's comedy teach you, right? It teaches you you learn to kind of... You find yourself and you find your voice and you learn to communicate your ideas and to order them and write them down and to communicate.

42:44It's very valuable. Like the great tragedy of life is most people live and die and never hear their own voice. Everybody wants to be a better speaker, a better communicator. You know, it's funny because I sat with a guy called Julian Trezza who has, I think, a TED talk on communication and speaking that. Did I know? 30, 40 million views. And he said, I also did a TED talk on listening. I can now listen to it. Everyone listen to the talk about being a better speaker. LAUGHTER That's pretty funny. The... Yeah, no, I can imagine that. As a guy that's touring the world, 300 days a year, you must have really been able to break down the science of communication and being a good speaker that's transferable to business, public speaking, life sales, et cetera.

43:31What advice would you give me on how to be a better speaker? Communicator. All right. Okay. 92 beats a minute. That means... Speak at 92 beats a minute. That's... There you go. I mean, there's kind of a science behind it, and I've looked into it, but most great public speakers sort of speak in a rhythm. Well, it doesn't matter how fast they're speaking, but they're kind of hitting 92 beats a minute. So I tend to listen to a playlist of songs that are all 92 beats a minute before going on stage. I know that sounds like madness. You know, and it's... It may be it is, but I think there's something about that rhythm that just the audience, that kind of...

44:12The proximal speed of cognition, that idea, everyone kind of gets into that rhythm. And when you look at the great public speakers, they all seem to be hitting that rhythm of 92 beats a minute. Do you think Trump's the good public speaker? Yes, an excellent public speaker. Of course. I don't know why people would have a problem admitting that. I mean, he's kind of... And he's freestyling. He's like, there's nothing planned. This is insane. Yeah, it's... Because he really leads into sort of exaggerated storytelling and emotion much more than facts and figures than most politicians. I mean, it's a...

44:50You know, there's a theory that this is all Gwen Stefani's fault. What do you mean? Okay, so Donald Trump was posting the apprentice. And Gwen Stefani was on... America's Got Talent, or one of the singing shows. Maybe it was X -Fact anyone, one of those big singing shows. He found out she was getting paid more than him. And so he wanted to build his relevance, right? So he decided, well, I know, our run for president are becoming incredibly relevant for like three months. He's a contender, he's whatever. And then you drop out of the race, no problem at all. So he hires all those people in Trump Plaza.

45:28And he comes down the gold escalator and he does the speech and do... Great, okay? Nothing. He then goes and there's footage of this. He then goes and does... The first make America great again rally. And they've got footage of him walking up the steps. And he sees like 10 ,000 people all chanting. And there's the realization, oh, oh, this could be real. It's kind of a... Yeah. I think that's... Where's the phony, Jit? Get a... I was... The reason I was talking about business is because... Because this is down over CEO. So podcast about business. No, it's short. It's short. It's because you taught me last time, sort of indirectly, about something that I've now developed and I called myself No Man's Land, which is that moment when you make a decision to leave the comfort and security of your identity, your professional endeavor, whatever it is, you're working in marketing.

46:26And then like I always reference how objectively insane it was for you to leave that and go and become a comedian. And I've dubbed that No Man's Land. That sort of six to 12 months of looking a bit stupid, of losing your friends, of losing, you know, refer to these five buckets in life. You have your knowledge skills, your network, your resources and your reputation. And when you go into No Man's Land, you fill the first two buckets of your knowledge and skills, but you empty the last three. You lose your network. You lose your resources often. You lose your reputation, whatever that was at the time.

46:57But you fill these first two buckets. You made that for whatever reason, decision to leave a normal life and go and tell jokes for no money. Some people, for some reason, and I've seen consistent on this podcast, like Darren Brown, who has had a great professional life ahead of him, and decided to go do car tricks on tables and bristles for 10 years. I got it. What is it about these people that's making them... I think they've had the realization, right? They've had the Confucius moment. Every man has two lives, and he second begins when he realizes he only has one. And the good is the enemy of the best.

47:35Because you know when people are on podcasts like this, that moment looks like bravery. But I wonder if to you, when you quit your sort of marketing job. No, there's plenty of four o 'clock in the morning. What have I done? This seems crazy. Especially when you really, when you leave as well. You don't have an hour of great stuff, of like that you've written, you've got like 20 minutes of stuff that you kind of look back on and go, oh, that's kind of joke -shaped. There's something there. But really, it's insane. Yeah, but I think that's great. I think failure is one of the great gifts of stand -up comedy.

48:13You sort of make friends with failure as a stand -up. Because you write so many things that don't work. You write so many jokes that you think, I just can be great and then you tell that in the audience, it's going, no, that isn't anything. Guess again. And that idea of going, failure is kind of frowned upon in our society. We don't let kids fail. We don't let kids lose at sports. We don't let, you know, that it's really silly. Because you're sort of teaching them, if everyone's a winner, then you don't learn how to lose. And to learn how to lose gracefully is that's a great skill to have, isn't it?

48:48And you kind of, you know, it checks your ego and you, you, you, something, not everything in life is going to work out for you. And it's in case you test it. And it's a good test of how much you want something. You go and have you have a terrible gig in your while I'm never doing that again. Or you have a terrible gig and go, well, you know, you lose or you learn. You develop your relationship with no. I've, someone said this to me the other day and it really stuck with me that you need, you know, I worked in Telly Cells for a couple of years. And it really helped me develop my relationship with the answer no.

49:19And so now in life, I think I have a much healthier relationship with the word no. Because for me, in Courset, you know, it's that the law of averages where in the Courset and to all it meant was that I was one step closer to getting the yes. So I'd get, you know, you get loads of notes in a row and you sit there and go, okay, now this next guy's going to buy these fucking double glazing. And I think at a 16 years old, I developed that relationship with no, which meant in my head that it was getting me closer to a positive outcome. Lots of kids don't have that these days because we shield them from now.

49:47No is seen as a self -esteem hit. For me, it was building some kind of muscle in me. I don't know. A bit self -esteem on its own, like confidence without confidence is madness. It's madness. You have to give the world irrefutable proof you are who you say you are, right? So you release a comedy special whatever you go, yeah, that's me. That's what I do, the new tool, that's me. That's what I do. It's irrefutable evidence, right? I am who I say I am. And I think that idea of going taking away the negatives. You can't just, I mean, you can, but then I think we're, I think it's very cruel. I think we're being kind on the wrong time scale to people.

50:28If you're kind, you want to be kind to your kids, right? I want to be kind to my kids. What do my kids want? Well, they want McDonald's and they want ice cream and they want to watch TV and play video games. Well, okay, downstream are some fat, stupid kids. Who wants fat, stupid kids? No one. So you have to be kind to their potential, to who they're going to be, right? And that involves, you know, broccoli and homework. There, boring, going on a walk. Do some exercise. There. Okay, but you're being kind later. And I think that it's very easy to see that when you're a parent. And it's hard to see that with an 18 -year -old that's maybe struggling.

51:09It's the highest you're point about being kind to you in 24 hours, I guess. It's a similar thing, right? Like seeing the potential in someone. Seeing the potential in yourself, in a child, in anyone. But in yourself, that's kind of the thing of going, well, you could be incredible in 20 years time. Because really that thing of like, it's the, I suppose, what's the, the opposite of gratitude. It's resentment. And who had the great line, Nietzsche, had the great line on resentment? He said, if you think someone's ruined your life, your right, it's you. Like that's a mic drop, isn't it? That's such a great line.

51:51And, you know, gratitude is the cure for that. There's a, there's a great definition of entitlement, which is where you are now and where you want to be. If you want to do something about it, that's ambition. Where you are now, where you want to be, if you think that someone else is problem, that's entitlement. And I think if we're honest, there's always a little bit of that going on. Like there's a lot of people in my industry that would, you know, their career isn't where they think it should be. And I need to get a new agent. Really? You think that might be the problem? I remember there's a great story of, I wasn't there, but David Tell is sort of the comedians comedian is works out in New York late night.

52:39He's, I mean, really one of the greats, one of the one of the most influential voices in comedy. And these guys backstage were like moaning about their management. And he's kind of overhearing this conversation that's going on for far too long. And he just, he just wouldn't be funny.

52:58It's often very simple. That's stoic thing of going, what's the thing you're meant to be doing? Just do that. I'm not sure I approve of portfolio sort of working. The idea of having lots of different things that you do, because really, you're going to do comedy part -time. What you're going to do, half comedy and half novel writing. So you're going to compete, I'm doing it 100 % at the time, and you think you can compete 50 % at the time. All the best. I see how you do. You're never going to get to the top of the pyramid during a 50 % of the time, right? Yeah. And there'll probably be a lot of resentment, as you say in entitlement.

53:36Be, you know, be a, be a specialist. That's one of the favorite parts of my previous conversation that I had with you where you talk about the world doesn't need more people for a shit in physics. And it really helped me understand a lot of things. So also then shortly after Matt Richard Branson in New York, and he's the most, you know, incredible delegator. He's not trying to get good at things that he's not good at. He's built his whole business and life on realizing what he's chit -chat, and just handing that over to other people. Whereas so many people are fighting to polish something that they're not so good at.

54:05Yeah. I think knowing who you are is quite important for that, isn't it? It's like being honest about it, like, well, I'm not good at that, but I can do this. It's hard to know who you are though. Cloudy thing. Yeah, I mean, it's not a big. Yeah, it's, well, yeah, it's also that thing of, it takes a bit of time. I'm not sure whether we're not kind of rushing people on that a little bit. I was sort of often think of like the listeners to this show, right? So like, it's certainly the younger ones of kind of going, well, do I need to know now who I am and what I want to do? Exactly. It's like, no, you can, you know, try a few different things if you like.

54:38Because I think that thing, when you get into the stream that you're meant to be in, it just feels very easy. It's like, you're not, you know, swimming against the tide. Just feels like it's carrying you along. I love what I do now, but I also often question whether I should go be like a DJ or do musical theatre or something. It's what's me? Do what? I can answer that question for you. That's a bit of luck. No. No, you fucking shouldn't. What? What? You think you maybe should do musical theatre? What? Are you having a panic attack? What? What are you talking about? What would make you think that?

55:17I bought some DJ equipment and I spent about a year learning and I thought, I fucking love doing this. Great. You've got a hobby. You've got a hobby. Not everything's a business. I know it's Dario the CEO and everything you do, you think, oh, maybe we can make a few quit -hullis. No, stop it. What are you talking about? You know who's, you know who's being a DJ right now? There's someone right now in their bedroom. They've been there for 12 hours already today and they're just loving it and they're putting everything into it. They're putting the work you put into the podcast into DJing. Let them have that.

55:51It's nice to have stuff where you're in a flow state in life and for some people that's work and for some people that's a hobby. Some are very lucky and we get to do it in a few different things. So I play a little bit tennis. I don't think I'm going to get the wild card at Wimbledon this year. There. I've given up on that. It's just a hobby. And listen, I mean, you might be the next Calvin Harris. I might be steering you in the wrong direction. You might be incredible, but stop it. Stop it. Just do this. This is great. This is enough. This is loving. You're talking to the most interesting people.

56:24I mean, the present company accepted, but you, you know, you speak to all these different people from different worlds and it's, it's, this is enough, right?

56:34How do you want to talk to you about quitting? Because there's going to be a cohort of people that listen to them. I meet them. I met a lot of them last night at a show I was doing and they are working in finance and they'll tell me their job. Then they'll show me their hobby on their phone and their face lights up when they show me their, I know, their papier -mache business or whatever it is on that phone. What's the great line? It's the, you know, if you want to find out what you should do in life. What do you think about all the time? That's your God. What? Working in the city with a certain tile on it.

57:04Yeah. J .K. Morgan or something. No, but no one's thinking about that all the time. You know, so what, what do you, what do you think about all the time? What do you, what do you engage in all the time? Life, it's, if it's football, if you're absolutely obsessed by football, or something in their industry is going to be the job for you because you're obsessed by that and that's what you think about all the time. So the, the idea of quitting, quitting is quite interesting because oh, the things that you won't do. Like if you're going to have an interesting life, you can't have all the other interesting lives you would have had, right?

57:35So there's all the counterfactuals of the different sliding doors that you could have done. Like, well, you know, if you're going to be an Olympian, you're going to have to give up an awful lot of stuff. Like you're not really going to have a childhood in the traditional sense, but you're going to be an Olympian. Great. And if you're, if you're going to be an academic, then you're probably not going to be having to go to as many parties. Well, okay, well, that's, you know, there's, there's no solutions, only trade -offs. You know, Thomas Sal, isn't it? You have to make a lot of trade -offs because not only, you know, are you on the road for a hundred days a year, but you have so much opportunity.

58:09There's so many things being offered to you to do movies. Why don't you try and be an actor or why don't you write five more books or why don't you do, I'd know a comic, comic or musical or whatever it might be. Why don't you come at DJ? DJ and musical theater. Those are my two prime loves. Yeah, I mean, there's, there's a few, there's not as many as you would think. I don't, I almost bang in down my door saying you want to be in a movie. And I don't know if I'd be, I don't know if I'd be great at that. I don't know. I mean, listen, I like getting out my comfort zone and, you know, opportunities come along and sometimes you get off to TV show that you go, well, I'll give it a go, why not?

58:42I think sticking to what you do, that stoic thing has really paid dividends. That really has paid off. And I think you have to listen to that. You know, and I see other comics, you know, mentioning no names, there's some great stand -up comics that were like absolutely amazing and they're doing five other things now. And they've lost a yard of pace. And for me, that feels crazy. Like you've, because I'm looking at it going, you've got the best job in the world. Why are you allowing yourself to be distracted? Because ultimately, it's going to be hard work. You know, ultimately, I mean, people can see it, I suppose, that the, you know, something costs more.

59:20Like a Ferrari cost a lot of money because a lot of work goes into it, right? There's a lot of work goes into that thing. That's a beautiful handmade, luvitarned thing is it gave, it's going to be expensive because a lot of work went into it. People understand that. I sort of feel the same about shows. You're going to see a show and you're, wow, that really took some time. Every single line in that is brilliant. He's not wasting any time. There's no fat. It's just, it's a lot of work. When people look at you and they look at successful individuals, they think, they just must be innately motivated in some way that I'm not.

59:51What I do think that's, it's slightly unfair that we think about luck in a very fixed way. Right? So a Barbie and Oppenheimer are great to talk about with this, right? So people see Margot and they go, well, she's just lucky, right? She was born. She's that beautiful, right? She's so beautiful. People can't see how good an actress she is, right? People just can't, because she's just like sort of this stunning thing. And then you look up on him, right? No one thinks, I so lucky, born with an IQ of 170 and born with a work ethic because a work ethic is heritable, right? So he was born incredibly clever and an incredible work ethic, right?

1:00:33No one thinks that him is being lucky, but they think her is being lucky. Weird thing, right? That's odd. In our perception of luck and how much is, how much is your factory settings? You know, this, it's always, I took the do you about this before, but it's always like some bullshit. If someone's very successful, you'll either go, wow, incredible talent, or oh, work so hard. No, always both together. Always both together. And all like you said earlier, maybe a bit pathological in some way, which I don't know whether you've been talented or not. Again, you put the pathological, the work ethic, the striving, a lot of that is heritable.

1:01:15You know, so what are you going to do? I think when you, when you see luck in that way, I think you've become much more forgiving of, okay? Quite crazy. This idea of luck. I've been thinking a lot about it lately. I was reading some stories about even the asteroid hitting Arthur. It'd been a minute later than the dinosaurs would still be here and the story of Nagasaki and Hiroshima being bombed because one guy went to Kyoto 20 years early and he really liked it. So he told President Truman not to bomb it. And if he hadn't been on holiday there with his wife, then Kyoto would have been hit by the nuclear bomb.

1:01:48And then they went over Kukuru, I think, city in Japan and that had a cloud. So they sort of fuck it. We'll go bomb Hiroshima and 100 ,000 people over there, lost their lives in every generation that would have come, lost it. Do you think these tiny little things that are going on in the world at all times, kind of like this, this idea of the butterfly effect, shaping our world? And it can make you feel a little bit powerless in some way because if someone's holiday can be the difference between me being alive or dead, it's very difficult to, you know, we always think about the first order effects of what we do, not the second and third order effects.

1:02:20Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that's a lot to take in. With this idea of luck in mind, personal responsibility seems to sit on the other side of the conversation of luck, which is how much can I control where I'm going in my life? How much control do I have? How much should I show up and fucking fight for positive outcomes? Yeah, well, that's agency. You should strive to have the locus of control within yourself. Like, so there's this character and there's reputation and reputations, what the world thinks of you and characters what you know about yourself. And yourself a steam should be largely based on your character and a little bit based on reputation.

1:03:02Because reputations, you could, you could take a hit every now and then. You get counsel once in a while. Well, once every 18 months, why hang on the Netflix special drops today. So, I imagine I'm being counseled right now somewhere. How have you come to deal with that? Because as a comedian, you guys get it worse than anybody. I don't know if we get it worse than anyone. I think we're sort of the canary in the mind. It's, it's, I don't know, I sort of view it as respectability is a prison and the gates are open and people are desperate to be inside. Right? I'm not a respectable guy. I tell very edgy out there jokes and jokes are like magnets.

1:03:37They attract some people. I've got a big following. I've got a lot of people who watch my shows and they really enjoy it. And like magnets, they had the jokes attract people and they repel people. Some people are repelled by my jokes and they think they're terrible. I'm not for everyone. I think you have to accept that. And you know, it's, it's when it comes out on Netflix, when it drops, that's when it kind of the pathogen escapes the lab. Because people that didn't pay to see this are suddenly exposed to someone puts a clip somewhere and goes, this is ban this filth. Okay. Banging stuff is like, I sort of view cancel culture as the new and this isn't saying criticism is invalid.

1:04:13You can criticize ideas, but you cancel people. And I think the cancel culture thing, I think it's the new book burning. It's no different. The people that burnt the Beatles records in the 60s. How do they feel now? You feel like a dummy? I bet they feel like dummies. It's like, and obviously the basket of things that are acceptable and unacceptable change and ebb and flow through time. But really, it's, it's, you know, I'm a creature of my time. I'm going to tell these jokes and if they get big laughs, then, then great. Have you always had this perspective, or is there something that's developed like a muscle over time?

1:04:48No, I think, I think there's, I think that adversity, I mean, cancel quite a few times. And there's, I try and see the positives in life, right? So adversity is a filter and you find out who your friends are and who stands by you and who's, you know, who's right or die. Great. Turns out, got loads of great friends. And a couple of people fell by the wayside and great. I have to waste any time on them because everyone loves you when you're throwing a party. But in the tough times, you're a bit more difficult to love. And if people stand by you then, then their friends. That's, that's, that's what it is.

1:05:24And your friendship is such an important thing. It's something that we don't really think about. We think about a lot about our partners in life and our children and that side of family. Friendship for me is such an important thing. It's such a huge part of my life. And really, when you think about it, why, why is comedy having this moment? Well, because comedians, it's a little bit like a friendship, right? There's there's a, there's no filter. And really, your best friend is the person you have the least filter with. Your deepest darkest you share, you open. And a colleague, you have quite a lot of filter.

1:05:55And someone you meet the bus stop, tons of filter, right? Comics, currently, there's no, there's no filter. You see Shepel on stage. He's, it's him. Great. You see Chris Rock on stage. That's him. It's like, you feel connected. Lovely. It's really something in that idea of, as you're saying there, that there's so little authenticity and vulnerability and openness in the world that when we encounter it, we feel so connected to it because it caters to the demand that we have that's not being met with supply. There's so much supply of like filter, girl on holiday in Hawaii, drinking cocktail. But it, but in our sort of private and our secret lives, there's very little reflection of what we think about in our private and secret lives in the world.

1:06:43So when we hear someone talking about their depression or their mental health, we go, oh my god, that, you know, I can resonate or, is this not why the podcast is so big? Why comedy so big at the moment? Because the gap between public and private discourse has never been wider. And we both, we're both living in that space. We go, yeah, have a, have a real conversation with someone. Great. And the, you know, the, the canceling thing is, is great, but really, what happens? I mean, you could, you can recalibrate it and just call it free publicity. Like people are talking about you. Well, great. Okay.

1:07:13There's this thing called the eraser test, which one of my guests talked to me about before, Murgordat, where he said, if you could go back and he asked, I think he asked, or there was a study done where they asked people if they could go back in time and erase their most difficult moment, would you press the button and erase it? And like nine, these are like really traumatic events. About 95 % of people said they wouldn't. When you think about your almost traumatic moments, they've sort of been canceled or something like that. The best, best advice I got. Actually, last time I got canceled, I found a friend of mine who's been canceled.

1:07:40And he said, you've only got to, you've only got to answer one question. Who's Jimmy Carr?

1:07:49Anyone, no, who's Jimmy Carr? Well, I'm, AG standup comedian. Okay. Fine then. You haven't got a problem. It's great. And then another friend of mine just went, well, you need to just right size this. And I'm like, what? You've got to right size it. She said, what's happened here? You told a joke and some people didn't like it.

1:08:21Yeah, that's what happened.

1:08:25Doesn't seem like that big a deal when you put a like that. And yet in the moment, sometimes it feels catastrophic. But those hard times, you know, you wouldn't erase the hard times because again, I would say, and it's a, it's a, it can't have an easy life in a great character. And what they're saying now by not erasing that moment is, I'll keep my character, thanks. Anxiety. We talked about this last time. Anxiety is, it's a very interesting thing. I mean, my kind of original thought on an anxiety was the, it's the flip side of creativity. So you have a mind that is worrying. And that's given me every gift I've ever received, right?

1:09:01The ability to write jokes and to be funny, whatever is from that. I can't turn it off mind. And sometimes that foreign the morning when you've got nothing to do, that mind is still worrying. So you get involved in counterfactuals. You start to think of all the other things that could have happened, that haven't happened in life. And, you know, people are not worried about falling off a cliff. They're worried about jumping. It's, they're mad just within all of us. Well, what could happen? And the worst case scenario in these terrible things. And you allow that to get ahead of you. I think the cure for it for me at the moment, how managing my anxiety is giving myself more to do.

1:09:38Because I think anxiety, you're trying to solve a problem in the future now. And you can't. Because there's no problem in the now. The problem is in the future. So you're, you're kind of ahead there trying to try to figure out something because you, there's a demand for problem solving in the moment and you don't have a problem. And the thing about people don't get depressed when they go to the gym, right? If you're in the gym, you can't be anxious while you're working out because you have an immediate problem. I've got to lift this damn thing off my chest. You've got an immediate thing to deal with.

1:10:12You're in that moment. So it's hard to be anxious because you've got something to do right now. So give yourself something to do right now if you're suffering with anxiety. I don't let your mind kind of drift into the future. It's kind of, I suppose it's quite sort of buddhist in a way. Is your anxiety triggered by anything? Or is it just kind of a noise in the background? I don't think it is. I think you often, I think I, I think there's an illusion that when you feel anxiety, it's about this thing. I think actually you've just got a level of anxiety and you will, you know, so if I've got nothing to worry about, career wise or show wise or I'm not currently being cancelled, you might worry about the environment or you worry about your kids or you worry about, you know, you'll worry about something else.

1:11:00So I think you just, it just, it attaches on to whatever's front of mind and you logically go, what's anxiety about this? It isn't. It's just anxiety. Do you think people know who you are? Truly. You know, I met with a CIA agent a couple of weeks ago and he said, we have three lives. We have our secret life. We have our private life and then we have our public life. Public life is, you know, the guy in the suit on camera. Your private life might be what your wife knows. But then maybe your secret life is who you are when there's like absolutely nobody there in your mind and in your own space. Do you think people know who you are?

1:11:32I think so. I think actually weirdly, this podcast is quite important in that. You know, going on this, going on Joe Rogan, going on modern wisdom and talking of myself is very exposing and writing the book before and after which is kind of a autobiography, but also a bit self -helpy. He's very much authentically who I am. So I think reading the book, listening to this, this is kind of what it would be like if we knew each other if we were having lunch, you know, for the listeners, it's like this is kind of what I'm like. And then I've got an ability to be funny on stage, which is another side of me.

1:12:05So I think that's like, it's not, it's not inauthentic what I do on stage. It's just like that's who I am in front of 3 ,000 people that have all paid 30 pounds to be entertained. Here we go. What's the side of you that your wife might know, but we don't? This. This. This is, yeah, you know, you're slightly more, I think on this, it's very much you take down the, it's not like doing a TV show to publicize something. So if you go on, you know, Graham, you're very much like, okay, well, I've got three anecdotes and I'll get them out and I'll try and get four laughs. And then I'll try and snipe her in on the other guests and be funny.

1:12:41And it's a it's very performative. Whereas this is performative bit in a slightly different way, where you'll kind of go, well, this is kind of what I think about the world. And this is, this is what it's like inside my head. And it's quite, I don't know, I suppose when you step back from it, it's kind of, okay, well, the lot of self -help, a lot of a lot of, I guess, therapy, a lot of, you know, that's that's what I'm like. Since we spoke last time, is there anything you thought then that you no longer believe? I'm interested, I'm asking that question because my favourite question, what was the last thing you changed your mind about?

1:13:16I think I've changed my mind about environmentalism a little bit. I think I'm, I absolutely acknowledge the problem. And I think the solution is just there. I think it's, I think it's splitting me out. I think we should all be, I think nuclear is kind of the, is the future. That's what we should be investing in. That's, we've got on the issue that we have a system that is full of politicians and we, we haven't got statesmen. We need longer terms. Longer terms. We need longer terms because we need people to make decisions like everything's about, about rewards, right? So what do we reward? It's on a five year cycle.

1:13:57So no one's ever going to invest in nuclear because it's going to take 20 years to pay off. But they should be rewarded for that. Somehow we need to find a way to reward politicians for what they did 20 years ago. Because if we do that, it's, there's a better future, right? And I don't know if Britain doing it makes any difference. Like people often say, well, if Britain does it, it doesn't make any difference because China's not going to do it or India's not going to do it. But you go, well, actually, if we did it, if we did something radical and went all nuclear, it'd been incredible examples to set to the rest of the world.

1:14:34Here's what I do. Here's my, do you want to hear my pitch? Here's my political pitch, right? Nuclear submarines have been testing this for 50 years. They're perfectly safe, right? People are going to live in the nuclear sub next to the reactor. They're fine, right? So we put one of those. There's no, not in my back yard. We put it in everyone's back yard. There's a nuclear reactor like a submarine in every city. Berrier have a small power unit in every city and town in Britain, okay? And then it's quite expensive. So you pay your fuel bill. And in 20 years time, we don't worry about COP 23. We burn all the fossil fuels we want for 20 years.

1:15:06And then in one day, we go totally green, right? No more fossil fuels. What? A little bit for fertilizers and stuff, but no more, essentially. And then fuel over the next 10 years, power becomes free. So we say to businesses around the world, do you want to set up a business in Britain? It's quite expensive to employ people, but energy's free. Do you think we live in a world where energy will be a value in 20 years time? Is it going to be the thing? Yes. So you say to your Amazon's and your Google's, do you want to set up the place here? Yeah, great. If I rule the world, that's what I would do.

1:15:40Trump's probably going to come back into power, isn't he? By the looks of things. Biden's not, doesn't seem to be very compelling to people, calling to some of the polls. I mean, a week is a long time in politics. Who knows? Who knows what will happen? I think America will be fine, regardless. America is geographically, economically. It's a net exporter of fuel and of food. It's got incredible neighbors in Canada and Mexico. It is, it's going to have the most incredible 20 years, regardless of who gets in. They're going to double their industrial base in the next 20 years because everything that was globalized is becoming more insealer, which isn't necessarily good for the world, but very good for America.

1:16:21America can afford to have a terrible political system because it is so blessed. They're going to earn much of the AI race as well, all the big AI companies seem to be based in America, and that feels like that's going to really... I'm not worried about AI. AI is a covers band. It's artificial intelligence. It's not artificial consciousness. So if you tell it to write a joke, it can spit back stuff that you've already written and reorder it slightly. But... Don't worry about it. But if you imagine... The Beatles aren't worried about the bootleg beacons. But if you imagine a sort of even a 20 % rate of improvement every year, it's only going to take...

1:16:56And you know, that compound. It's only going to take us five or 10 years before there's a fucking AI that can crack a joke really, really fucking well. Right. And an original joke. I don't know whether it's going to be original. I think there was something about... I mean, I don't know. Genius isn't overused to it. So there's two types of genius. There's innate actual genius. There's bark, bay hoven, or whatever. Genius. And then there's hyper -accelerated rationality. And people talk about comedy genius. They think, that's what they're talking about. Hyper -accelerated rationality. And I think AI is a long way from either of them, like, of coming up, generating something that's genuinely original.

1:17:45No, it's a covers band. It can... It can go well, that's the genre. And I can do something that's a bit similar. But there's something about human creativity that I don't think it's getting close to. And maybe I'm being naive. But I think it'll be an incredible thing for the world. Because I think new jobs will come along. This wasn't a job 10 years ago, right? Being a podcaster. Because I'm going to do sort of a long radio show. But it's an individual thing. You'd have to explain it. You know, it's things change. And it's only when you sort of look back, you go, oh, wow, that's interesting. The biggest TV channel in the world is YouTube.

1:18:26And no one noticed. The BBC were battling with ITV about who's going to get the higher ratings on a Saturday night. And YouTube stole their lunch because they weren't paying attention. Is that not AI? Well, it's the world. It's the world progresses and things move on. And it's always been fine. I think people worrying about AI, it really strikes me. It's the people going, well, these... We've got to smash up these cotton making machines because this is... This is... This can't happen. There'll be no new jobs. There'll just be different jobs. I read a book called The Innovators, Dilemma. And it really changed my mind on a few things.

1:19:01They go back through history and they look at all of the big steps forward in innovation. And they basically categorize two types of innovation. I'll call it the upward opportunity in the downward opportunity. So if you're selling horses back in the 1880s, the upward opportunity is the thing that all your customers are asking for. It is the thing that you know how to do. It is the thing that you have your supply chain set up to deliver on, which is faster and better horses. You know, you can imagine the meeting that you're the CEO of a horse company, I come and I go listen, boss, got an idea, they go, what is that?

1:19:28I go faster horses. You go, people asking for it, yeah, do we know how to do it? Yeah. Do we have a customer bit? Yeah. Let's do that then. Then another guy comes in and says, Jimmy, I've got an idea. Cars, are they better? No. You have to walk in front of it with a red flag and it goes 10 miles an hour. Do we know how to do it? No. Is anyone asking for it? No one. None of our customers have asked for a horse. Yeah. That is the downward opportunity. And throughout history, the incumbents always ignore the downward opportunity because they're incentives, as you said. They're incentives are set up to pursue what we call the sustaining innovation.

1:20:01Right. We obviously in front of them, become a better comedian or become a better podcaster, get another camera. The downward opportunity, I ask myself, what is the downward opportunity in podcasting? You should ask comedians. comedians got an interesting way of thinking. I think we're very similar to detectives because we think backwards. Most people think about what's next. Right? Which is what you're talking about there? Is the what's next? What's the next thing? What's the next thing? And we go, well, this is the state of affairs. How did this happen? It's the same as it's like being shell at home.

1:20:29So you go, well, how the hell did that? You're a reverse engineering a lot of the time. It's very interesting that this may yet be a business podcast. I think I honestly think with the right amount of work, if you really put yourself into this, I genuinely think you can occasionally talk about business. I try to. I try to. I try and weave it where I can. But that's interesting that the podcast thing of going no one saw podcast coming. No, but like this. And yet what's missing from our lives? Right? What's missing? What's the nature of balls of vacuum? Well, people aren't having conversations. People are, when you look around the world, all those people that live to 100, all of those zones and people go, oh, yeah, they eat loads of olive oil and fish.

1:21:11Maybe that's the answer. No, it isn't. They eat with other people. They have a conversation. They're part of a community. That's the difference. They've got something to live for. The olive oil isn't making any fucking difference. The connection to other human beings is, what are you doing here? You're connecting to people. You're having a conversation. So people are eavesdropping on a conversation. But in their heads, they're having a conversation. And they're with the stuff we're talking about. They're relating to their lives. Great. Nobody was asking for this, though. Nobody was saying, you know what, I want three hours of Jimmy Carr talking about life.

1:21:44No one was demanding that in the like, you know, someone rolling their eyes as they listen to this. Yeah, I'm churning off. But in the industry, they probably thought people want bigger TVs and thinner TVs. That's what they want. They want to watch the BBC on a thinner, bigger television. So we're going to deliver up to them. Whereas the dam old opportunity was, in fact, they wanted connection. They wanted it to be longer form. They didn't want loads of ads every six seconds inside of it. Not the great sort of, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, right, what am I going to do? It's like, it's not like someone has spotted the gap in the marker.

1:22:17You could be the person. You know, and it's that thing of like, do what you do authentically. I always think like Joe Rogan's a really interesting example of that of someone that's entirely authentic. What did you talk about? Comedy and MMA and life and it's slightly kind of, you know, philosophy, stuff that is interesting. He's exactly the same guy he was 20 years in the comedy store. 20 years ago in the comedy store backstage chatting. He's exactly that guy, totally authentic. A bit of people just said, yeah, great. I listen to that all day. You're exactly who you are. I mean, I love the idea that you think there's still a bit of you that thinks there's a business podcast.

1:22:58It's not, it's not you have a thing where you love stories and you love chatting to people and you love learning. And that's what it is. This is just it's the this should be called the education of Stephen Butler. Well, I the reason I think this is a business podcast is because of what I said. I think business is mental. Like this is called the diary of a CEO, right? What would you find in the diary of a CEO? You wouldn't find fucking forecasts and PNLs, would you? You'd find problems with his wife and you'd find that he's having anxiety attacks and you'd find that he's doesn't know what the fuck you're doing.

1:23:28So the whole point of this was to go into the diary of a CEO, the things you that's not business. That's the rest of his life. This is about life. I mean, I love it. I actually love it. I'm breaking your balls, but it's like it's great the way that it's kind of developed, I think. Yeah, it's been led by, as you say, curiosity. I get people all the time, we'll say Steve, we want the fucking CEOs back. We want them to listen to the business people or whatever. And I just go to I can't do that for a decade. What I can do for a decade is full of my curiosity. I could do that for the next 30, 40 years.

1:24:02And at some point, I'm going to care about a Zempec and I cared about psychedelics. And so that's what I'm going to talk about. And if you don't like it, then there are three other million other options. Yeah. I think that thing about that's going with your gut is going to be the way to go. Because if you like to show, and if you're having interesting conversations, I think the listener will go with that. And if you try and give them what they wanted, I think again, it's the exactly that thing of going. We need better faster horses, not a car. And you're going where you need a car. Because whatever this is in 10 years time, it's going to be different, right?

1:24:34It'll be something else. I'll be thinking about a different set of problems. And I'll be speaking to parental psychologists about what's the fact you and my kids and stuff. Yeah. But Rogan was the bloop. I have to say it. And I think of the end of it. I don't think he replied, but I just said to him one day that the blueprint he said about authenticity and following whatever it is you're interested in has helped me so much. Because there's more pressure to change when there's more people watching. And they can, I've seen petitions and I've seen little movements on LinkedIn trying to get me to have more of these kind of people on the single biggest request I have on this podcast is to quote interview normal people.

1:25:12Better at the start of their journey. That's the quote. That's what they say to me. And I go, well, if you didn't see it in 18, not a lot to talk about. So it'd really be them interviewing me maybe. That's tends to what happens. Who would be the student in that situation. But that's the most popular request I get is to go and interview quote and quote normal people. So, yeah, ignoring that. I mean, as you must have been able to have to ignore the external pressure of changing or telling a certain type of joke or being a certain type of person. No, I think I think the audience, so for me, because of that immediate feedback loop, they do tell me what they find funny.

1:25:52And that kind of leads you down a road of going, well, that's interesting. People want to hear this. I think the reason people are drawn to my comedy is partly because there's not a lot of censorship in our society. There's quite a lot of self -censorship. So people aren't speaking freely in the office or even at home. They're not saying what they really think. If you notice this thing, opinion polls don't seem as accurate as they once were. And that's because people don't feel like they don't vote in the same way as they express themselves in the world. So they come and see me live. And there's no filter in this guy saying whatever he wants.

1:26:30This guy doesn't seem to give a fuck. Very cathartic. If you're spending your days going, well, I know what the right thing to say is. So I'll say the right thing. If you want to see who has power in a society, who can't you criticize? And making jokes and making light of all of that stuff is powerful because it's about free speech and it's about the overt and window. You know, that overt and window of what isn't what isn't acceptable to speak about. So there's an overt and window in politics of what isn't what isn't acceptable policy. And then there's an overt and window of what isn't acceptable to talk about in polite society.

1:27:07And I think comedy has a really valuable role in moving that over to the window. In what what people can discuss, what people can talk about. But always very interested in like occasionally it happens where you'll overhear the audience leaving a comedy show and have such great conversations. It's really interesting how it light just taps into they just feel a bit freer and looser because they've listened to someone on stage being very loose. And they're not buttoned down. They're not trying to self -sensor or say the right thing. Self -expression and expression generally has just been on such a journey.

1:27:41Like, you know, this whole idea of work is a man what you can and can't say. It's really accelerated in the last 10 years. To the point that it's quite, you know, it's quite if I look back at comedy videos from 20 years ago, they really seem to just be able to say whatever the fuck they wanted to say. And then when through this era of like censorship and cancellation and there's no time in human history where the good guys have censored stuff. It's never happened. So wherever that's coming from, whether it's the right, you know, the Mary White House ban this filth which used to be the case or the left, the idea that there's, you know, a hate speech or the idea that something can be words can be violence, which is, you know, what people say when they've never experienced real violence, I guess.

1:28:29There's such demand for violence. We had to co -opt words into it. But the idea of going, you're trying to censor stuff is a bad idea. Free speech is a very good idea because those thoughts don't go away. If people don't express themselves, they just get suppressed. And actually just speaking freely about stuff and talking about it is very, very valuable. Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead. And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is NetSuite.

1:29:06They're also a sponsor of this podcast. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform. You'll find all of your accounting financial management inventory and HR in one place. Their technology has been a real game changer, especially for my team at Flight Studio. As over the last year, we've moved out of startup mode and into scale at mode. We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and errors. Over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business, head to netsuite .com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning.

1:29:45That's netsuite .com slash Bartlett. If you were a podcaster, would you have anyone on the podcast? Would there be any limits you would say? That's something I think about a lot. Where are my limits? Because I get a lot of messages saying, would you have this person on? Would you speak to Trump? Would you speak to Vladimir Putin? Would you speak to a, you know, yeah, I mean, I think I think you're, I think you have to speak to everyone. I think the idea of going that there's there's people that are beyond the pale people have got like there's people with bad ideas, right? I don't know if there's that many bad people, but there's bad incentives and people that follow them and talking to everyone seems incredibly valuable to me.

1:30:20And the idea that you go, yeah, that's how life moves forward. You know, there's, you know, you want to be a Marxist. It's a dialectic of go, well, this person I don't agree with and you have the conversation. And with an open mind and an open heart and maybe you change their mind. And how do you move the conversation forward? I mean, the great mystery for me in politics is the idea that people talk about hypocrites in politics changing their mind about things. Of course, he changed his mind. The facts have changed. The world's changed. You move on. Obama ran on an anti -game marriage ticket, but the world moves on and things progress.

1:30:58And, you know, I'm, you know, a progressive, but I think the idea of not listening to people is pleasing. You know, you think about why Hillary lost the election, right? It was that deplorable thing. Remember when she talked about the deplorables and people you can't talk to those people? And it was like, no, there's just working class people and they've got worries. And you need to talk to them about those worries. You can't just write them all off and go, they're despicable people. You know, that urban elite kind of thing. You've got to bring them in, have the conversation. You'll get someone with it.

1:31:36You have to listen to that. You have to listen to all the different sides of the argument. Otherwise, we're entrenched. We're just in these little, you know, and it's that thing of like, it becomes identity, you know, which party that you follow. Crazy. People don't like to follow people that they disagree with online, in particular, because that's creating cognitive dissonance, isn't it? It's the constant confrontation of a set of ideas that threaten or challenge you in some way. So, in rather just create this little echo chamber of individuals that will confirm my set of existing beliefs. And that's what, you know, one of the things I made the decision to do about two, three years ago was just to follow everyone that I viscerally sort of repulsed by, shall I say.

1:32:17Yeah. And if you had them on the show, if you had people on the show that you go, why don't you really agree with what they say? But, yeah, it's this, I feel like it was great to be back. Yeah.

1:32:28That's interesting. I think that's really, I think that's really valuable. I think that's a more interesting conversation as well. Because if you're just going to nod along with someone and go, wow, it's talking sense, that's great. It's like, you know, and I think to have those kind of difficult conversations, it's really a valuable thing. One thing you said, which surprised me because it didn't come at all up at all in our previous conversation at all. And even in my prior research was, you said that you feel like you have a low level eating disorder. Yeah. I think I'm very, very conscious of my weight and my appearance.

1:33:03And I think that's maybe, and that eating disorder is very, they're very, very serious things. And I'm not, I'm not really in that category, but I'm very aware of it. Like as a man, as well, I was chatting to Chris Williamson about this on modern wisdom. I think he was like quite in the stat of saying men's body just more for you, overtakes women's, I think, in the next year, in terms of kind of young men looking at Instagram wanting to look a certain way and presenting themselves a certain way. I think there is kind of an issue around it. I think that weird thing about, I thought a bit of work done, you know, and had my teeth done on my hair done.

1:33:41And I think there is kind of a, there's something about being on screen all the time that you get very conscious of kind of, and maybe it's slightly a control thing. Have you always had that? Or is it developed? I think it's kind of, I think it's slightly developed through sort of, you know, I think if I wasn't on TV or Netflix or whatever, I think you probably wouldn't be as aware of how you, how you present yourself. So it's slightly odd, I think, slightly odd relationship with, I mean, I, I've kind of a theory around around drugs, right? Drugs in alcohol. So I think marijuana, when you think about it, like weed is, people are very carefully about, oh, that's just a bit of weed fine.

1:34:30But think about what it is, right? It's not a performance enhancing drug. It's a performance inhibiting drug, right? It takes away your ambition and agency and it just makes you very chilled and relaxed. I don't think that's appropriate for men in their 20s or teenagers, right? Actually, what you want is the performance and asking, and I think what we should be promoting is almost like prohibition. I mean, I did it kind of, organically, I found comedy and I gave up drinking for 12 years. I didn't touch a drop. And that was mainly because of lifestyle, because I was driving to gigs and driving back.

1:35:08And then I didn't want to hang over the next day because I wanted to, and everyone was trying to buy you drinks all the time and it just felt like it was like enough already. I'm going to be, I'm going to be straight edge, which always like the term straight edge. It's a punk rock term for being T total. Straight edge. Cool look, right? I like the idea of going, right, I'm going to control that. I mean, I drink a little bit now, kind of socially, but not in a problem way, but giving up was quite an important thing, because it was also the focus that it gives you. So, I kind of, I'm slightly slightly anti drugs for young people.

1:35:44I slightly think many in the 50s and 60s that work at Hollacks, maybe some marijuana wouldn't be a bad idea. But it's the, it's the idea of kind of young people taking it and not having, what does it take from you? Takes away that kind of that, that raw ambition. And that's such a sort of valuable thing in those years. It's almost like that advantage that young people can't see the advantage that they have. They see the wealth and the, you know, the financial security of being 50. And when you're 20, what you don't recognize is the energy that you have when you're 20. That incredible advantage you have over everyone else in the office in that you're just, you're just full of energy.

1:36:31You're 20 years older than me exactly. What advice would you give to me? That's unobvious as a 31 -year -old, you're 51, I believe. Yeah, what advice would you give to me that would be probably quite unobvious to me at my age about the next sort of 20 years of my life? Stay out the sun. Stay out the sun. Sun damage is 90 % of aging. Stay out the sun. Honestly, you're so unfortunate on plastic surgeon. I don't know. I mean, I think that, you know, I don't know if you could be in a better place right now than you are. But you can certainly give yourself gifts when you're 50. What gifts do you want to give yourself?

1:37:09Let's talk about what gifts you would like to receive on your 51st birthday from you.

1:37:17Interesting. What would you like to have? I'd like to be physically fit. It's done. No problem at all. You will need to go to the gym three times a week. And 80 % of it is going to be diet, no exercise. Okay? So you're going to need to do that, but no problem at all. I'm the genie. You got it. What else would you like? I would like a happy, healthy family and relationship with my partner. I'd like to be married and I'd like her to be happy. And I'd like my kids to be happy. Okay. That's great. I don't think you get to call that. I think you get to be happy and you're in charge of that. And their happiness is maybe a byproduct of that.

1:38:01But you need to, my perception would be you need the a locus of control to be within you. You could be happy. Make yourself happy. And that's good for the people around you. But I don't think someone else's happiness can be your responsibility. I think you can set up all the conditions and you can make it as easy as you can. But you know, that's a lot. But I get the idea of it. The how many kids? Four. Four. Jesus Christ. All right. So four kids. So you're in minivan territory already. You can't even drive a regular car. This is crazy. This is madness. Four kids are one of each. One of each. Yeah.

1:38:39It's a modern world. I love that. What else would you want in 20 years time? I'd like to still be doing a business podcast. You're not doing a business podcast now. Very little business in this. No one ever talks about supply and demand. No. I think yeah, the that stoic thing of like, you're still doing this in 20 years time. What a journey that will be. Like think about the people that I've got a new show. And it was so easy to put together because it was just like every night you're trying new, new, new, new. And it forces you into that space of writing more, more, more, more. And I feel like I'm getting better.

1:39:21You know, a year on you go, I was, yeah, that was that was easy. And it was just a little and often. How important is that the routines, you know, the small things? Because I think there's kind of two camps of people typically. There's those that think sweating the small stuff matters. And there's those that think sweating the small stuff is inconsequential. And it's, you know, man, but it seems that, you know, the people that I seem to see here with that are really successful what they do have a real obsession with the detail. I remember why I don't know if it's the small stuff. I think it's the important stuff.

1:39:56So I wouldn't sweat anything other than the joke writing and the performing on stage. Everything else. It's all small stuff. That's the important stuff. And focusing on that, like knowing what's important, I guess would be the first stage there. But then, yeah, that's, that seemed absolutely critical. Remember I sat here with Walte Ryzex and who followed Elon Musk for two years and followed Steve Jobs for two years before Steve Jobs died, both two business people. He's not connected. No one picks it's his fault. No, you're not, you're not casting any of that. No, no, no, no, I'm not saying he did it.

1:40:26Yeah, I'm not saying he did it. But he said something to me about how Steve Jobs would even make the circuit board inside the iPhone look beautiful. And this came from Steve Jobs' father who told him that he had to paint the back of the fence as well, even though no one would ever see the back of the fence because it was covered. But he said that truly great individuals care equally about the parts that are unseen. You know, the things you'll never see. And I always thought, that's incredible that Steve Jobs would care so much about making the circuit board inside this iPhone look beautiful. And why is he doing that?

1:40:57Well, is he doing that because he will know? You know, and that made me think about this concept of your self -story. We have, you said reputationally, which is the external story of what people think of you. But everything we do writes this self -story about who I'm up. Like, when you leave this, I love this concept. The idea that we are a story we tell ourselves. Yeah, and everything I'm doing is telling me who I am. So Chris, you banked Junior, the son of the famous boxer, great boxer himself, says that if he's on a treadmill and he gets cramp in his leg, like really painful cramp in his leg, no one's in the gym, but he told himself he was going to do 20 kilometers.

1:41:30He says, I will physically limp the last 8K. Yeah, even though no one's there. Of course. Well, I, of course. Because you, you, you are who you, who you, who you are. It like that's that, how you do anything is how you do everything. So he's all in. He's, he's that guy. Great. That's, it's great. That's a good, it's a great story because you go, yes, well, of course, if you say you're going to do it and then you're the kind of person that does the thing you say, powerful, right? If you keep a little promise to yourself, that's powerful. That changes your sort of perception of self. You can trust yourself a little bit more.

1:42:10A lot of us pathologically let ourselves down in small ways and don't really think those promises matter. We break commitments to ourselves pathologically. Okay, but, but you can, but you can change that, right? But you can build that up a little bit and we'll see the results in 20 years time. Fit and healthy and you've got a family and kids and you're doing great. You're still doing this. It's great. We'll see it. I think you probably, you can't beat yourself up over everything, right? You, you have to choose where to suffer. You have to choose what's the thing that matters to you and don't let yourself down on that.

1:42:44So maybe you're not going to do everything. Okay? Fine. Do you think that's what confidence is? Confidence and, yeah, confidence in yourself is just a combination and a culmination of the commitments you can to yourself and what you proved to yourself about yourself. I think that's a, I haven't thought about it like that, but that seems like a very logical conclusion. You know, it's that thing that you want to give the world a refutable proof you are, who you say you are. Well, the world and yourself. There's a mirror up as well. Are you who you say you are? Yeah. Well, great. That's a lovely thing to be.

1:43:21And to build it up in small ways, I mean, that's really talking about building character. I'm going, well, I'm going to make that promise to myself and then I'm going to, I'm going to do it. So you don't make bullshit promises to yourself. New as resolutions are not a good idea because if you're going to let yourself down, that's more damaging. Pick something that you can do. Pick something small. Last time we spoke, you expressed an aspiration and ambition you had. You said, I think we were talking about Dave Chappelle and you said you wanted to do longer -form jokes. Yeah. So there's some stuff in the new show.

1:43:55So there's like 20 minutes on being a dad that I think's really funny. And I wanted it to fit within my persona as well because a lot of people sort of become fathers and they get a bit sentimental and they lose some of their age. So the stuff that I've got about being a father is brutal. But it's funny. It's funny. It's a funny thing to kind of experience as well. Something kind of new to talk about. Use your favourite comic of all time. Chris Rock. Really? Chris Rock by, yeah, Chris Rock, I think, the I mean, I had the great pleasure of working with Chris as well and he's an extraordinary talent.

1:44:29The rhythm and cadence and the points that he makes and the way that he sets up material, the way that he delivers a bunch like that, just everything about it from sort of a technical point of view, I admire. And I love what he says. I just think he's just fucking hilarious. And I see the work. I see what he does. I see the work that he does now. He's been a legendary next level performer for 30 years and he's still working just as hard. And you've got to love that. What did you make of this lamp? I mean, obviously, there's no argument. It's a, I was shocked. You know, it strikes me that Will Smith may be the greatest actor of his generation because he was pretending to be an entirely different human being for the last 40 years.

1:45:33And the mask slipped. And we saw a different side. And I think Chris really, the extraordinary thing about that moment was Chris Rock got slapped in the face. His level of composure was he was like a Hindu cow. Get slapped in the face by a big dude right hard. I just got slapped in the face. That's going to be a huge TV moment. He is the award.

1:46:06He's to be admired. Incredible man. You were on stage as well. A couple of months after when Dave Chappelle was attacked. I actually saw you in the back. I remember seeing you sort of come out and just you kind of looked a little bit like security, but maybe not the most. Yeah, me and me. Well security. So when Dave got rushed, I mean, it's very scary because it could have gone another way. You know, the guy had a knife or be a knife in a gun. It was it was it was kind of a fake gun that pressed a button and a knife came out. It was a it was a it was a it was a it was a knife that identified as a gun.

1:46:49Maybe I don't know. Anyway, so yeah, I remember I was standing with Jeff Ross on the side of the stage and then and then this thing happened. It was yeah, it was crazy. Crazy. Scary. Had he got his ass beat the person that ran out and was stomped out by like, what he got the reason he got stomped out wasn't it wasn't malice. It was he wouldn't let go of the gun knife. So the guy had a gun. What looked like a gun? I mean, it was a gun and he wouldn't let go of it. And they I think there's a security guys broke his arm trying to get getting the getting the gun off him. Yeah, but what are you going to do?

1:47:30Let the guy have the gun. Like it's a yeah, it's very very scary. Scary thing. I tried times changing in terms of violence towards comedians. Is it no. I think they're isolated in terms. Eddie Murphy had the best line on it. Eddie Murphy said he said Will Smith when he slapped Chris Rock rang the Dylan Bell for crazy. All the crazies came out for a couple of couple of weeks. The guy in Russia's Chappelle. It's not. It's not a great situation. I mean, it's like it's it's a scary thing when you think, you know, friends getting rushed by someone with a knife and you sort of think of what could have happened.

1:48:09But he was fine and obviously, you know, he was shaking in the moment, but he was pretty pretty philosophical about it. Anyone ever attacked you on stage? No, I mean, friend you. I mean, I've been I've been threatened a little bit, but okay. If I'm part of the game, I guess. I mean, it's like it's that weird thing of like when you there's a routine in it, I talk a little bit about being cancelled on the on the special. And you talk about like what I'm going to do next time because it's going to happen again, right? So the next time I get cancelled, I've got a plan. Here's what I'm going to do.

1:48:44I'm going to say I've rehearsed this. I'm going to make a public statement on the day the new story breaks. I'm going to say, I'm sorry. And the people that offended will say, you don't really mean that apology. And I'll say so you're saying I could say something and not mean it. Now you're getting it.

1:49:03But it's that it's their jokes. You can't go around apologising for jokes. I'm exceptionally excited to sit down and watch your Netflix special natural bunker, which came out in April 16th. There's been a lot of conversation around it because I think a lot of people are acknowledging that you've adopted a slightly different style to the past and everyone's excited to see this this newer Jimmy, this this heavily iterated, optimized version of Jimmy that's taken 51 years to produce. And I always talk to people about our last conversation and you telling me that even you at the peak of the mountain in many people's eyes are still trying to find small marginal gains and challenge yourself and come out of your comfort zone.

1:49:45And I think that's exactly what you do in this special. I've been fortunate enough to see some of the the jokes and the angles in this special. And I think for some reason it feels to me like society needs to have some of these conversations as well. So even though there is humour there underneath the the jokes you tell there's I think there's an underlying important message that's greeting society at the right moment. I very much appreciate that. Is that accurate? Is that an accurate assessment? I think it is. I think it's I it has it is different to the last special and it's got more of me in it and it's like I'm in a very privileged position where people you know some people listen to me and I have my audience I know what my audience are.

1:50:23So I can I can get a message in under the wire that other people can't really talk about. And so that thing of going if I'm doing sex ed I do sex ed in my way and it's very funny but it's getting a message across the young men that I think is very valuable. I'm excited to listen specifically about the stuff about consent very very excited. Jimmy we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. Oh well I've given this literally no thought so right okay I think to see it either which is funny people don't believe me when I say that but okay what's the other got a question you have got a question that's been left for you.

1:51:03The question that's been left for you is what would you tell your 20 year old self that you wish you knew and that would have positively impacted your life and helped you to avoid unnecessary pain.

1:51:20I think I would have said enjoy yourself more. Try and be more present. I think I was I think I was worried about the results and not the process at that age. I think I was worried about what kind of degree I would get and working hard and I should have been worried about having more fun. What's telling you in hindsight that's the important thing you needed to hear at that point. What was the symptom of not hearing that? I think it was I think there's a there's a weird thing in if you're in academia and you have that long hair I'm not right enough I need to work harder that's valuable in one sense and make sure kind of work harder but actually you know I should have what's what's what's college for it's for growing up be in the moment.

1:52:13I do you think at university I think university is a luxury item now. I think the intrinsic value of university is less important than the what it signals about you so I think a degree from Cambridge is a Louis Vuitton bag. It's a luxury item that says oh I have this you can just get the reading list and read the books. I'm not sure whether whether academia is you know I don't know I've got strong views on academia because I was when I went to university it was free right it was very difficult to get in but it was free and I think we should bring that back. I think if you're doing let's say STEM right say you're studying any STEM subject university should be free in the UK and if you get a STEM degree from anywhere else in the world it should come with a British passport attached come spend some time here great it's not a bad policy.

1:53:12Your kid turns to you one day and says daddy I'm I want to be a magician what do you say to your kid they want to be a magician or they say that I want to be an MBA player let's do that one what do you say to your kid wait go back become a magician. I don't know I mean listen it's I suppose it's that thing of like follow your dreams if they're hiring Chris Rocksline isn't it? Yeah follow your passion if they're hiring if you're if you're good at that if you're I don't know if my kid and winds up being seven four I'd be surprised but if he is then maybe then me and I maybe there's maybe there's a future in it but the yeah pick something that seems realistic to you.

1:54:02Have you got a bias about what you want your son to do? Uh honestly because we all have I would have a but I would have a bit of a bias. I mean I don't know I don't know what jobs are going to be in 30 years time right you want your kid to be happy and maybe maybe to have some sort of grounding in critical thinking and beyond that. Good luck. Jimmy thank you our first conversation really blew me away and it taught me something about actually about this podcast you're one of the real defining conversations I had that taught me that everyone is much more than the surface that you see and it's funny because when last time when we recorded it was upstairs in my kitchen my previous kitchen and the team texted me when you arrived and they said Jimmy Carls just arrived I think you arrived on your bicycle or something and I like hardguard he's just cracked a joke about someone's mum downstairs and I thought oh this is this is Jimmy Carl the Jimmy Car I've seen on 9 out of 10 cats and then we went upstairs and had that conversation and it just blew my mind it just absolutely my mind.

1:55:06Well this is the difficult second album how did I do? Oh fantastic. Oh great. Fantastic absolutely. But no really it taught me that and people are much more than than just the the mask that we wear and we all wear a mask you know the person it's a get through life and we find it easier sometimes to wear the mask than to confront who we actually are but in that conversation I feel like I got to meet the man behind the mask per se and I really like sharing that side of myself I really enjoy this I really enjoy the show I wish you every success. Thank you so much Jimmy thank you for everything and I highly recommend everybody go and see natural born killer which is on Netflix right now I'm going to put the link to the Netflix special in the description below.

1:55:46so Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead and over the course of my career I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places one which has helped me across many of my investments is Net Suite they're also a sponsor of this podcast Net Suite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform you'll find all of your accounting financial management inventory and HR in one place their technology has been a real game changer especially for my team at Flight Studio as over the last year we've moved out of startup mode and into scale at mode we no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and errors over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future proof their business with Net Suite so if you'd like to learn how it can help your business head to netsuite .com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning that's netsuite .com slash Bartlett