Russell Brand FINALLY Opens Up: Escaping A Lifetime Of Anxiety, Addiction & Finding Love!

28:04You have to, in the end, answer to this God. And as I say, the ingredients are all present. In this sense, hmm, there's something I'm supposed to be doing, there's something I'm supposed to be doing. It's only some tweaks, I find. You know, I used my program for recovery over a 20 -year period from the smack -ed, crack -ed that I was. And I also use it in five seconds, when I'm like, when I'm caught again, as I will be, as I am capable of being, when I feel temptation, when I feel inferior, when I feel that someone is trying to impose status on me, I feel all the machines fire up. Still. Yeah, it's a mechanical.

28:37It's biomechanical. It's biomechanical. The swamis, the masters, the rishis, the yogis, and the sashes, and interestingly, may, swami means he who is with himself. They are able, I believe, to observe it. There it goes, but it's not me. Your thoughts are merely the first layer of the external world. They would have a weight. They would have a charge if we had the instruments to observe them. Instead of identifying with my thoughts and locking into them, oh, look, there it goes, little Russell, thinking it matters if everyone loves him. He's thinking that again. Well, why wouldn't you think that with that little childhood?

29:10Why wouldn't you think that with that little society that he lived in? Some compassion for him, but some duties also. One of the things I've thought a lot about recently, you mentioned a god in your belly, or that person, or that signal in your belly, that's trying to tell you how you feel. And we've all become so phenomenally good at tuning out of that and tuning into the kind of external, how you feel, like how you should feel based on the job or title, status that you have. And this is a strong noise and signal now than this one. Your life has been this, you talked about mentalism as well. Your life has been this amazing, amazing journey from chapter to chapter to chapter, as this person described as transcendence.

29:52The question I'm getting at is like, I'm thinking about someone right now that sat in the city, and they know they feel like shit at a deeper level. But they've gotten so good to listening to their mother's opinion of them becoming a stockbroker. Then it's almost hard to hear that feeling of I feel like shit. How do we go on the journey of changing? How do we get there? Well, typically, Stephen, the journey begins with a departure from home, interestingly. Whatever home is, you have to leave. You have to leave the familiar, the place that you are familiar with. Scary. Often this is induced by crisis.

30:32A crisis that you cannot avoid or delay or defer. A crisis of some kind may come. Of course, this can be an inner crisis, a moment of despair. Often a psychic breakdown can be, can precipitate, change, transition, awaken him. I suppose what you have to, what one way that you can do it, this is the way that I would do it, the way that I have done it, is firstly to acknowledge the problem of my condition. To admit there is a problem and that my life has become unmanageable. These are not my ideas. What are the signals of that? Unhappiness, sadness. In a sense, one thing that's good about that is you're trusting your personal integrity.

31:20It's not like, oh, you're delirious. Why are you not happy? Why is this not working for you? Problem and manageability. You're sad. I'm using, in fact, the example you use. Someone in a city hold up, left with a familial and cultural conditioning that has left them at odds malajested to a malajested world. One, there is a problem, life is unmanageable too. You've got to believe it's possible to change. If you don't believe it's possible to change, you will never be able to marshal your inner resources towards making that change. One way that this change can be made is through mentorship. Even if that mentorship is in the abstract, even if you've just chosen, hey, this person seems to have been able to have done that.

32:01He says that he used to feel weak in fear, in competent, impotent, and he says now that he doesn't feel those feelings. So maybe if I do what they did, maybe I can change also. So this, so this. And the third component, first one, acknowledgement of powerlessness. Second one, belief change is possible. Third principle, it will not come from the same map and rubric that you've been running on up till now. You are going to have to import new ideas. You will need help. That help I would offer you might be of a divine nature, prayer, meditation, humility, to ask for something greater than your my individual want, my individual preferences.

32:50It's not just some wish list passed up to the cosmic center. It is a knowledge that there is a requirement for growth. And indeed, that I'm no longer prescribing what outcomes I want. It's curious. There are often paradoxes in this. So for me, mate, first that you admit the powerlessness and the nature of the problem. Second, I believe it's possible to change. And I base that on, hang on a minute. These people used to have that problem. And they've changed. So what if I do what they did, then maybe my life will change. These are all things derived from 12 step ideology. The third thing is accept someone else's plan, accept someone else's help, surrender.

33:30Because in the end, this is the think perhaps the hardest contradiction. At least I find it a very hard contradiction to live with. This idea of activated surrender and a return to the original condition. Activated surrender. Russell is no longer in charge. Russell is no longer in charge. Russell is a servant. There is a master. I am in the service of this. Now, I recognize those words are pretty loaded. But I'm saying that this is, if you can envisage a benign and loving mother or father, rather than authority. And if you do consider a authority to be mostly maligned, I could not identify more strongly.

34:09My distrust and my dislike of authority is a deep, deep fuel in me. I do not like being told what to do. I do not like it. It is a big, big part of my religion. I have to stop myself reflexively doing the opposite of what I'm told if someone speaks to me or foratively. Someone asked me to help them. I will do my level best to help them. If someone tells me what to do, I find it very, very difficult indeed, not to do the opposite. Anarchist, calisthenics, break rules every day just to remind yourself that you belong to something higher than a set of systems potentially imposed by a malevolent force.

34:49Step three, you referenced the first time, was about running basically a new instruction manual for your life. Like accepting, because the current instruction manual is clearly not producing the results you seek. So a new instruction manual for your life. And my brain went, but how do I know which one to pick? Because there's many temptations for it for a new path forward. I could join a cult in Arizona or I could. I might seek meaning in surrender in another wrong place. From my preferences to something even more destructive. How do we know what new instruction manual to run our lives on when we find ourselves in such a situation?

35:30I'm thinking again about that person who finds himself in a job because their parents have told them to go and get that job. And now, or they're working any job where they feel like something is wrong. They admit it. Step one. Step two is they seek out mentors to provide evidence that it's possible to leave the situation. And then step three is this idea of surrendering and running your life on a new instruction manual. Where do I find that instruction manual? Is it from my mentors? It's interesting. Yes, possibly. Yes, quite, quite likely. Yes, because I feel we're in a crisis of authority. Most people don't trust the government.

36:06Most people don't trust the media. Many people don't trust the judiciary or state authority. And I would have to confess that I am inclined to agree that we are in a true crisis of authority. Who indeed would you trust to say, I will do what is right. I will do what is right for you. I will do what is right for the community. And trust that they are speaking on behalf of a set of principles that could be somehow universal and truly valid. How I have handled this is I've been fortunate enough through crisis and despair to find myself primarily connected to a group of other people the same as me who cannot cope with reality unless they drink or use drugs.

36:49And those people provide me with a paradigm for moving forward and a program. And I like that word program because it's both a sort of very old, facial word, but also an ultra -modern word in terms of software. Software, for example, if you thanks me. And I guess at some point we're going to have to trust ourselves. But when embarking on this journey, it's not easy to lean into intuition. And it isn't easy to trust others. I find trust very, very difficult. I don't know about you, mate. I don't know what kind of experiences you had there as a young man in Plymouth. But for me, trust ain't my go -to.

37:26That's not my go -to. It takes me a little while. My strategy is do not put yourself in a situation where you require trust. Why? Because maybe people are going to let you down bad. Maybe. Maybe the systems of authority be they educational, legal, judicial. Maybe they're going to let you down. Maybe they can be relied on. I mean, I was kicked out of school, but you know, I was expelled from school. I went to university for one day, left that. I remember it. I recognize it in your story, but that I don't have the same level of... I'm skeptical. I require evidence to accept things. Some kind of subjective or evidence that I...

38:01But I wouldn't say I'm distrusting. Broadly. Or maybe I am to some degree. What is skepticism? Is that? Yeah. So critique is an analytic. It's a perspective of until you know. But your problem with your challenges with authority that are clearing your story through school and institutions and all these things. Where does that come from in you? That. That. What is... And how would you describe it? Well, now I would describe it as a very deep love of God and a great deal of respect for other people's individual liberty and freedom. And the idea that any central authority would impose that without clear consent achieved through democracy and community...

38:44A community dialogue seems ridiculous to me. But obviously it's biographical and interpersonal that the circumstances of my life have shown me that the people one way or another that are in positions of authority on the various scales of authority that most people encounter, familiar social educational have not been able to fulfill their duties required of them. Of course as a person that is a certain way down the path now because in the words of Philip Larkin, they in their turn were fucked up too. But we are just part of a long lineage of people coping with broken broken systems. And I would say from agriculture onwards, systems of aggregation, centralization, accumulation that can't enshrine the rights of the individual, except for a certain set of individuals, that we are living in a system that's about centralizing with centralizing power and increasing authority, diminishing individual freedom, using whatever rhetorical tricks required, safety, convenience, whatever is required to achieve this centralized authority.

39:52Now so I now feel like you said before, how is there other ways that you could have ended up being this man in this chair? Now I am glad that I have been deeply schooled in mistrust of authority that it's almost like it burns in me. I can tell. Watch them. Watch what they're telling you. Watch what they're telling you. I give it to my own children and I hope I'm not doing them at this service. Question authority, question it, question it. And of course this makes bedtime difficult because who's the person telling them bedtime? But it makes schooling. For institutions having inertia, institutions have a tendency.

40:26They might start off with we're going to educate these kids to be creative and individuals, but in the end it's going to be about health and safety. In the end it's going to be about fire drills. In the end it's going to be a set of a bureaucratic emeshment and maze that prevents individual freedom. The great David Grave, God rest his soul though, he was a communist so he maybe wouldn't thank me for saying that. David Grave says that out one of our great dialectics against Soviet communism for example was that they were bureaucracies that prohibited individual freedom. But look at the bureaucracies we live within now.

40:58How do they solve the problem of spying and stealing your data? Just make someone tap, I agree. No, just stop spying. Continue to spy. Continue to accumulate the data. Just tap, agree. You agreed to be spied on. This is bureaucracy. These are the observable tendrils and symptoms of a centralized authority that is not necessarily sentient, occultist or overtly corrupt, but a tendency to accumulate power to dominate resources that is plainly observable. In the geopolitical dramas that play out on our time, the ecological crises and the evident main stage players that occupy our current time, that many of whom have not been elected to get there.

41:44I'm talking about unelected acronym organizations that have a great deal of influence in the world today. So the reason I don't trust is not, you know, I love my mum and dad, Ron Brand, Babs Brand. Today sat here in Shoreditch as an adult man. I wouldn't just walk around Essex and go to find some couple of working class kids and say, why don't you and you take responsibility for my spiritual development? They did their very best they couldn't love a more. I couldn't love a more. But my mum, she had cancer like eight times in a few years. My dad, he's got his own deal. He's got his own deal. And I recognize what it is to deal strong individualistic further.

42:22I love them. I love them. When I'm trying to formulate, and I know I'll make errors as a parent, of course I will, we all do. And as you will discover, it is our duty to wound our children. It's not our duty. It is a necessity beyond the duty. It is a tendency. It's just gonna, they're gonna end up wounded. They have to. They're gonna have to find a second mother, a second father. They're gonna have to. They're gonna have to.

42:50So it's not anybody's fault. It's not even the systems fault. I'm kind of grateful to all of it now. I'm grateful to these institutions. I'm grateful to the mainstream media. I'm grateful to these governments. I'm grateful that they have set out the instruments required for the change that we will encounter in the coming few decades. You mentioned your mum and your father again there. Your father, what role, what impact did his departure have? Do you think on hindsight on your relationship with authority, if any at all? I would say, fatherless men. I don't want to be so solipsistic as to make this entirely about me.

43:25He says 20 years into a career. But I think, and I experience with fatherless men who I deal with a lot in my, what I would say, my spiritual life is to be around men a lot that I room recovery, both being men or by and mentoring and recovering mutually in support communities. Broadly, fatherless men feel a big burden and they do not feel safe in this world. A big burden, not safe in this world. If they're with the mother, I think they feel it is their duee to look after the mother. If they are without other parents, I mean, if without I have a parent, my god, who knows what kind of chaos. And I'm not saying there is only one way and that there is only template, but one template.

44:08Because I'm already talking about a subset. I'm talking about a subset of people who have become drug addicts and alcoholics in order to deal with these kind of challenges. But also I know people that don't identify as addicts in exactly that way. And still the absence of the father. And that also, by the way, could be through there for it, could be, could break up with a relationship or it could be because the father doesn't have the emotional lexicon to connect. Yeah. One way or another. Because I can think of examples top of my head of all of those. I think it feels that you are prematurely invited to be a man.

44:39In fact, we're not thinking about our interviews, Stephen, because you'll be glad to know I thought about you before I met you. I felt the significance of anthropology, the significance of what the original condition might be. I do not use these terms to suggest there is some one template that could be imposed and stamped upon everyone. I would never take away people's individual rights or struggles, particularly those connected to obvious and evident civil rights, cultural and identity issues. Those are their stories for them. And I support them in those stories. But when it comes to how human beings might have lived for hundreds of thousands of years, it appears we do well when we are a connected unit that communicate together in order to achieve a common goal.

45:23Time and time again, we're anthropologists and even contemporary psychologists study these forms of society. They discover that there are rights of initiation for both males and females, although they're often appears based on what I have heard. I'm not an expert, but to be particular emphasis on male initiation as the body is not so uniform in the way that it informs a boy that it is a grown -up now, not a child anymore, and that there are new duties to be undertaken. One of the best examples I ever heard, and I feel I see somewhere in Freud or maybe in Joseph Campbell, is that I feel this is some Australian Aboriginal tribe that they, what they do, and I think they're doing this now.

46:09I figure, I don't know, you know, I'm putting this stuff together, you know how it goes. That the boys at a certain age are dragged away from the mother and they make much of it. They wear masks, the men of the village, all the men apart father, all the women apart mother, and of course there are categories for other forms of identity too, which they honor and revere, often in the form of the shaman who is beyond gender identity incorporating both. You see reflections of this to this day, even in monotheistic faves where the priest wears what appears to be neutral or and drudgenous attire, distinguishing them from the rest of the community, yet honoring them and revere them.

46:49And you went through that initiation way too early in your own words. You say that you were prematurely forced to be a man because you've got the duty to care over your, over your mother at a young, young age or father leaves, I think six, six months old. And then the other thing that happens, which feels like a horrible turn in turn, you know, horrible sense of chance is your mother has cancer and she struggles with it for many, many years. So you've got this young boy and I was thinking about this when I was doing a research with this conversation, you've got this very young, young boy who's struggling with a lot of things on his own, disconnection coming from all angles.

47:28And then the stability in his life becomes gets the uncertain horror of cancer coming to her life. And what that does to that young boy who's already destabilized in sense of like connection, these are all interpretations I have from reading a piece of paper, you know, if I'm just being honest, they are just, I was putting myself in those shoes and saying, I've got this stable figure here in my life, my mother, and I'm dealing with all this instability over here. And then this becomes unstable. Yeah. It's good analysis. But you know, really my mother struggles, them as her struggles, she had to go through that and bravely she's done it, what life force that woman has in her.

48:06And to pick up on a point within your question, you cannot fake being a man or a woman or an adult that say a word that doesn't have any cultural load to bear. You can't fake that or you can fake it and I did fake it and that is what people do. They fake it. They fake it. But in a sense, maybe you need another adult to make you that you need to be initiated, you need a code, you need to know that it's about duty and responsibility, that it's not all just about swagger and personal achievement. And like many young men, I joined the group of lost boys, I found men, young, young, men kids kids, because if I met them now, that's what they were kids, a couple of years older than me, that that becomes your tribe.

48:54Unless you have hierarchies and systems of acculturation and inculcation that are based on higher values, remember our earlier point about moral, authority and trust, who you're going to give it over to, you'll create your own one, you'll create your own little community without elders, without elders that are around you. You're reliable and trustworthy and beautiful and understand the nature of sacrifice, sacrifice of themselves in order to perform them duties. So of course, yes, I feel like when you feel the incumbency of adulthood upon you early due to the conditions of your domestic trial there, you will have to, as they say, man up or woman up, you will have to, but it won't be real, because it can't be real.

49:37Because it's not only a set of endocryonal imperatives, it's also a system of instruction as laid out in that, as laid out in the previous anecdotes, the Cambellian analysis of the anthropological conditions of that Aboriginal group there. So really, until you find other adults, elders that are like, I know what I'm doing, you don't need to worry, I'm stronger than you, it's going to be okay, I'll look after you, it's all right, do this. You know, a father, a father, like a father is, you're going to forego this now because in the future this, you know, without that, you will not forego, you will consume now, you will consume now, you will not understand, you will not understand your role.

50:22So it's, it's, it's all about it takes a long while, I've said it before Stephen, but I've said it again, so it bears repeating, you know, without shall worship no other gods than me, because otherwise you will worship them gods, you will worship, worship pleasure, money, fame, them gods are greedy little gods too, they're easy little diities to start worshipping. And the problem with the worship of those gods is you lose the principle of the divine, the interconnectivity, the pleasure is not the result, pleasure is a byproduct, pleasure is an inadvertent byproduct, please God, of doing the right thing.

50:53I was just thinking then as you're talking about all of that and the gods we choose to worship and young men and fatherlessness, I was thinking about the and you take phenomenon. As a form of he really seems to have captured a huge amount of young men for some reason and trying to diagnose why, why that is is a very multifaceted process, isn't it? Because there's elements of purpose and meaning and having a figure in your life that you can, can guide you can initiate you into what being a man is that seems that young men are in search of. Yes, I agree, I agree, I agree. No doubt, one of the challenges it feels like we have culturally Stephen is we are unable to observe the difference between symptom and cause, symptom and cause.

51:47And obviously as with matters medical cause is what we must analyze, cause is what we must understand is no point saying you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that. If you have a set of values that are pretty simple, I call them Sesame Street values, kindness, love, service, that's going to take care of a hell of a lot. If you have kindness, love, service, take care of a hell of a lot. Are you being kind right now? No, you've gone off track mate, you've gone off track, you're not being kind. Are you being off service? No. Then we can maybe sift through different also we live in a such a curated space that it's difficult to discern what people are actually angry about sometimes.

52:32What is it as one of my great teacher says to me, what is it? Don't get caught up in the phenomena, the epi phenomena, the distractions, the stack. What is it that you are trying to understand? What is it you're trying to do? All of these groups then, people that are big fans of an and you take people that are radically left people that are radically right. What is it that they are seeking or that they are getting from from such a physical radical pursuit? A argument might be that we are recognizing that there is nothing in our evolution to suggest that we live in cultures of 300 million people who live by one ideology.

53:18But we have to truly respect diversity. But we have to acknowledge that many of our most influential and powerful systems do not have our best intentions in mind that they in fact benefit from ongoing cultural conflagration. If we can do one great service in this cultural space, I recognize that part of your goal and your mission is to awaken latent potency in individuals in honor of your own journey and it is a great mission if I may say. But part of this mission must be, for us to learn this simple lesson, we have more in common with one another than that divides us and it is our duty to reach out in particular to the people we disagree with in a spirit of love and good faith.

54:06Firstly then, identify, oh am I reaching out in good faith to people I already agree with? No, no, no, no, that's not it. Disagree with, I disagree with that on this important hot button topic of guns or pro -life pro -choice or identity or tradition or progression. I disagree with them and I respect your right, I respect and I love you and I know that I do not know what you know that I am not God, I am not God, I do not know, I do not have any authority over you, but I believe that together we can achieve a consensus and this consensus must be founded on good faith. We must allow one another to communicate in good grace and openness.

54:48We cannot yield to censorship, not because we want people to feel the air with toxicity and hate, but because we know that if we try to control it, who has the right? Who are we granted the right to now? Have you investigated any of these organizations? Have you investigated their funded, their affiliations, their agenda, their imperative? Because to some degree I am sorry to report that I have and I have found them wanting, they will not be getting my consensus for authority any time soon and I would offer you this, you have more in common with the people you are fighting with, those you most loath, whatever you persuasion or a cultural garment you've conveniently strewn upon them, then the people that are saying that they will protect you, the institutions that are saying they will protect you.

55:38Are you optimistic? Yes, God is real. You are optimistic that we will get to a place where we recognize that our similarities are greater than our differences. And so if I make Russell Brand, I don't think this is a role you want, but if I make you Prime Minister or President of the world, how do you systemically change things to help us achieve the objectives you've described in connection, community kindness and togetherness? What are the things? I've asked so many people this question, no one's ever wanted to answer it. Because it's so big in this. I am. Bring power as close as possible to the people affected by it.

56:18Default to decentralization and localization wherever possible. Of course this will not immediately yield perfection, but have you looked out of your window? We are not competing with perfection. We are competing with corruption. So what do we want most of all? We want true democracy. All the values that people espouse are the values we should be practicing. They say the world does not need more people to believe in God just for those of us that do to start acting like it. To start acting like you believe God is real.

56:54redistribute the control of municipal facilities to those that are affected by them. Do not have water companies in the United Kingdom like Tim's water owned elsewhere in China or Canada or QA or Qatar or wherever those facilities are held. I have municipal facilities run by the community that is affected by them. I'm not talking about re -nationalization. I'm talking about community. The community runs its water wherever possible. I recognize that there is some complexity when it comes to electricity, municipality running roads, running hospitals. But who among us has ever been into a hospital and not marveled at the beauty, compassion, the ingenuity, the commitment, the devotion of the people that work there?

57:42Wouldn't it be better if the people that clean the floors in the hospital felt that they were invested in it, that it was their hospital, the nurses that worked there, the doctors that they have real power, that those are their hospitals? Wouldn't it be better if both sides of our political conversation, I'm talking about the United Kingdom right now, hadn't agreed already that privatization is the way to go and they're not going to do anything about it? I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with capitalism in its basic format of we create a product and the people want the product and look at that, we made a little bit of money.

58:11I'm talking about this gigantic, metastasized monster devouring everything right down to spirit. We must recognize where centralized authority is coalescing most and this we must address, this we must address, whether it is financial, corporate or state power, wherever it is possible, we the people, we the people, those three magical constitutional words, if they were listened to, if they were lived by, it's already there. The kingdom of heaven is spread upon the earth and man sees it not, it's already here, it comes from inside your consciousness, you awaken, you believe it's possible to change, you act like it's going to happen.

58:58That's how these things unfold, it's happened again and again. The miracles of transition and change, the great beauty of science and medicine and technology, when it is freed from its tendrils, when it is antithead from the mendacious objectives of a system that sees all things as dominion for materialization and commodity, when it is freed from that, you will see the true genius of our scientists, the true genius capable in technology, if we can just address the model, if we can just have as an agenda, an awareness that we are just on one little rock, in infinite space right now that we're all participating in this one centralized idea and yet infinite diversity, infinite individual freedom, infinite ways of being human, we must all take responsibility for becoming the person we're intended to be and if you don't know who that is, you find someone who does and you find a system and a program that can help you and we'll all do our best together and it's going to be glorious, glorious, about beyond glorious, it is necessary.

59:57One of the things you said within there was about empowering nurses, for example, cleaners in a hospital and it reminded me of a study I read many years ago that showed nurses that were given ownership about the decisions within a hospital, had higher satisfaction, there was less accidents, there was less accidents with misprouscribed medications, there was higher attention and when they leveled out the payment, the remuneration policy, so there was less unfairness and how people were remunerated, all the standards of the hospital, there was less accidents, there was less accidents with misprouscribed medications, there was higher attention and when they leveled out the payment, the remuneration policy, so there was less unfairness and how people were remunerated, all the standards of the hospital, because people were empowered, they had autonomy and control over their lives and work, so I completely relate to that.

1:00:33My question though is about step one, because what you described there sounds like it's at the top of Everest and sometimes when something feels, even for me it feels like it's a long way away from where we are now. So I'm asking what's the first pebble, what's the first domino that has to fall, what's the first thing that I can do as an individual to help us get closer to that world? Well firstly Stephen, people climb Everest every single day, they have to clear the litter from that mountain now, once it was considered inconceivable, and every time there is an epochal shift, every time we say, oh it seems that the sun doesn't go around the earth, it seems like the earth goes around the sun, oh there are things that are smaller than atoms, it appears that these subparticular phenomena that are so small is even difficult to label them, exist in a unified field, that they are emanating, but somehow connected to, I'm speaking of course of quantum entanglement, if you reverse the charge of a particle, thousands of miles away, the partnering particle will reverse its charge also, there appears to be some unitive force.

1:01:41What I'm expressing is the most simple, practical, effortless achievement that we will ever yet undertake, it is merely the realization of the truth that we are individual, yes, but we are connected also, that there are goliaths that have incrementally coalesced due to the progression of the great sometimes unacknowledged revolution, some are saying that it's acknowledged agriculture, industrial revolution, technological revolution, that all of these have been undergurbed by principles of dominion that might as well be feudalism. In a sense, there is no change at all except for the individual change that you yourself can make, this is why I think people get a lot of traction when they say look after yourself, this is part of it, eat well, awaken, pray, meditate, recognize that it is normal to feel sometimes total despair and total despondency, remember all of these great journeys that we're describing that you're fascinated with, begin with exactly that, exactly that, that the great sages and secular saints that we have been granted have shown us and told us be the change, that you want to know what we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing that we are doing, that we are doing, that we are doing, that we don't need 90 % of all of thoseAwićs that I mentioned in the800 Genesis, is waterproof and safe for us, is so much like that is because I didn't even drop off as I was saying this sitting down.

1:03:20you are online, you are on the grid, you are responsible for whether or not you believe this is possible. Nobody else can tell you what to do there. That is your private kingdom, your private domain where you can be for now, for now, whoever you want to be in there. Please do not relinquish that right by not taking it now for I tell you authoritarian forces are abundant and abound. They are looking to colonise the very space of attention that exists right now this moment. This is what is being colonised, attention, data, data on what, you. The territory of the self, this is fertile, this is not nothing, it is not nothing to awaken to the reality of who you are in this very moment, that is not nothing Stephen.

1:04:08Q1 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 have learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is NetSuite. They are also a sponsor of this podcast. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform you will 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 have moved out of startup mode and interscale at mode.

1:04:43We 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 would 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 is netsuite .com slash Bartlett. One of my team members had a question for you, I was just chatting to them about you and they said, do you know I really want to know how he lives? On a day -to -day basis. Because I know from your books and stuff the Russell that roam the streets of shortage once upon a time.

1:05:19The Russell I see now is through the lens of YouTube and I see him what it looks like the countryside somewhere. Like some logs in the back. How do you live your life? Now I'm glad you've asked this because this is proper die of a CEO stuff because this is actual scheduling. I have to live sort of like a monk basically. I have to be conscious all the time. I have to be conscious about why I eat otherwise I'll eat something stupid. I have to be conscious about what I say. I've always asked something stupid. I have to be conscious about what I do. I have to familiarize myself with extremes continually.

1:05:52So I thank you God, have access to hot temperatures and cold temperatures. I expose myself to them regularly every day if possible. Do a lot of cold therapy. I get right in that cold. While I'm in that cold, I think this thing taught to me by Michael Singer and anyone who's willing to watch Michael Singer stuff. The moment in front of you is not bothering you. You are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. Then I get in very, very hot temperatures and I think the same thing. The moment in front of you is not bothering you, you're bothering yourself about the moment in front of you.

1:06:23I do Brazilian jujitsu because for me it was not natural to tangle like that. And I love Brazilian jujitsu so much. Cause of Roga naturally with the first person I talked about with that staff and I do that a couple of times a week. I do. Why? I need more detail on why. We see why it's good for I think people to touch one another in a way that is playful and absolutely consensual but sort of assertive. It's like kind of I heard a YouTuber say like dance actually. And it's very good for me. It really puts me in my body. It's not cerebral. I don't know about you Stephen but I suspect you're the same.

1:06:59I am very intellectually oriented. I live in here. I'm if I find it very easy to be self obsessed and to get just caught up and all that stuff. So things that put me in my body, the body, the body holds the key, the body, the body, you've got a body is important, the body of Christ. It's very important to get in that cold water. Very important to get into that yoga. Very important. These things are important and beautiful and connecting. So I do a lot of BJJ. I do a lot of yoga. I do a lot of other type of exercise, calisthenics, body weight types, staff to try and stay fit. I got, you know, I've got young children.

1:07:35I have another child coming. I have to stay fit. I have to be able to be God willing. Present for these children going forward. And I love it. And it's what we're men and do. We're animals. Again, this anthropological idea. How might we have lived for those hundreds of thousands of years that predate the great miracle of agriculture? How might we have lived? We work. We touch one another. We are socializing. We groom and we graze together. It's nice. The kind of trust you develop with people in Brazil and Jiu -Jitsu, like the choke you to the point of unconsciousness, but then when you tap, it's over.

1:08:08And this is something that you share between you. There's a trust in that as well, isn't it? Yes, trust. Good to embody the trust. That experience, the trust, as they say, if you want to know if you can trust someone, trust someone, and maybe it's difficult to seek out those kind of opportunities where it can play out, you know, so microcosmically and practically. I did a Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu lesson or two, and that man could have killed me at any moment. I really knew he could have killed me. He had me tied up like a ball of elastic bands. And I knew at any moment he could have killed me, but I trusted him.

1:08:41And I didn't know this man. It's lovely, isn't it? There's something amazing about it. And it's an instant bonding that this man has his life in my hands. Yet he's teaching me an art for me, teaching me a discipline, and holding my, literally, my life in his hands. It's funny because I didn't know him, but I felt like he was my mentor, my father, my immediately after. Because I trusted him with so much my life, right? So, it's a wonderful thing. Touched very important for us late ape creatures. That's why our hairdressers, you tell the hairdresser, or the barber, staff, this is why I'm strictly come dancing.

1:09:16They can't stop falling in love. They're performing these rituals that are designed to elicit certain states. That's the vulnerability, isn't it? That's the connection. The vulnerability, the touch, the awareness of sameness, but differentness, the acknowledgement that we are creatures, that we are embodied creatures, all of these things I think contribute to that. So for me, on my day, yes, every day, prayer and meditation, first thing, every day rigorously insured that I have done things for other people, preferably without letting other people find out that I make myself available to other, in my case, in particular, men that require help with their issues around addiction and mental health, that I have checked in with other people that I consider to be peers around the challenges that I face psychologically, that I don't spend all my time obsessing just about what I want.

1:10:05But I have to do quite a lot to not be crazy. I have to do quite a lot to not be crazy. So the hot, the cold, the BJJ, the yoga, there's someone I work with, once we've said, every day, I get up, I meditate, I pray, I do exercise, I do green juice, I do hot cold, I attend a support group, and then I feel okay, okay. That's what I get to feel if I do all that. Then I don't feel like a lunatic, a vasolate, in wild, glassou of mad vicissitudes that could lash around anything in search for connection. Is there not another way at this point? This also is attached to another question I've often pondered from doing what I do here, which is about how, I mean, Stasas Steve Peters, who's a psychiatrist, I believe, talks about these goblins and gremlins, and I spoke to Gabel Mattey as well.

1:10:57I know you've interviewed him, and I watched that fantastic, I'm an evil guy, but I wonder if the traumas, the things that are hard, I use the word hardwired tentatively, but the things that are hardwired into us are ever overcomable. If they, if we can ever take them to zero in terms of the power they have over us or infants, we have over, all we will spend our lives managing. I was taught from the wound comes the south, from the wound comes the south. The place of the deepest wounding will provide your salvation. This is what you must investigate. It is not, when people love you, we always feel it's because of the strength or the capacity or the virtuosity, but often it's the vulnerability and the fragility because we all know that this vulnerability and fragility is something we share.

1:11:45This is what comedy is to me, Steven, is the ongoing acknowledgement everyone's running some game. I'm this, I'm doing this, I've got this going on, you're going to die. It's all going to fall apart, it's all going to fall apart, except for these permanent principles and a connection to the eternal achievable through consciousness. This is why I need ceremony, this is why I need practice. This is why I need peers and mentors and mentees. And from the wound, from this place of I'm not good enough, nobody loves me. I don't fit in the only way that I can achieve trust is through having some authority or value as accredited by a culture that I don't even bloody trust as compared with a metric that I don't even agree with instead of this now.

1:12:31And not suggesting that I am any better than anybody else, just that I'm not any worse than anybody else. That's the biggest thing that I'll offer. It's ongoing, it's continued, but the thing I'm glad of it now, I'm glad of the wounding and you will be too, whoever you are, you will be glad of the wounding too because it is sadly a gift to you. That doesn't mean it was right or that there weren't perpetrators or that it's not bad or that the culture doesn't need to change or any of those things, all those things are definitely true. But from it, all of the time you see it, go great almond street, go anywhere, watch the Paralympics everywhere, it's everywhere, people overcome.

1:13:12And I ask that because so many become frustrated that the wounding, they haven't been able to overcome it. They become frustrated by that because a lot of the, I don't know, maybe spiritual doctrine, maybe whatever says you can take this pill or you can do this exercise, you can do this and then you won't be a narcissist or you won't be a whatever, right? And then they try it, they buy the course, then they still are. They find themselves reacting in those old ways and being triggered in the mechanical machinery that you spoke of that comes up when we're triggered. It's still there and they go, fuck!

1:13:45And he's a buyer of the course. We do need to be very self -compassionate and I think we have to perhaps recognize that it is not a commodity that can be externally required but an external coordinate can indeed ignite that which is already there, dormant and latent and awaiting a beborn. It's precisely the necessity for initiation we return to here. The initiation is to activate, activate that which is already there, activated surrender, not passive surrender, but not passive surrender, activated surrender. I'm a vessel. I'm here for whatever you are. I trust myself God. I pray to you God, not my limited conception of you God with my tiny little mankind mind.

1:14:27I pray to you God, as you know yourself to be and I offer myself to you God 100 % and totally please use me. Please take away from me. Everything that is not of use to you put aside all my preconceptions and use me God. This, this utilizes the wound. The wound becomes a port or you become a vessel. I want to stay on how you live. So I understand you're sort of mourning routine there but if I zoom out on where you live, why you choose to live there, your relationship with work now now that you have this I think greater clarity on institutions and how you balance that. Well, I have to make a lot of content because every day I'm on rumble every day I make an hour of content.

1:15:07Every day we make an additional 10 to 15 to 20 minute video on a news subject that generally encompasses an establishment narratives and a way of explaining that that is hopefully inclusive. Every day we have other social media content. We have a business like that. I'm part of a significant business endeavor that I regard as a movement rather than a business but as you are all too aware if it doesn't function as a business it will not function at all. So it has to have good hygiene and housekeeping. You're a CEO. I literally am here not under the pretence of being a CEO but because it is part of my job and I do have a diary, although I don't keep it myself and I try not to look at it but it exists.

1:15:58And so I have to participate continually with that and ensure that an organisation is around me that is able to facilitate the things that I'm good at and accommodate the many things where I am currently looking to improve. I have to make order of content. We try to do this in three days. That means a couple of days a week I'm available for different types of expedition and adventure such as this one. This is why for me the spiritual life it has to come first but not out of a sort of an ethical evaluation. Spiritual rally in the end is a survival technique. It's not like esoteric. It's not like I'm doing this thing like waving around incense or dressing up in a row.

1:16:37I'm trying to not go crazy and end my life and damage the life of people around me by devoting myself. They say only the really crazy people become saints. Only the really crazy people would even consider it. You have to need it. It has to be beyond wanting because wanting is just here to keep the blob going. How does it feel to be in your mind? Could you describe it to me? No, it's amazing but sometimes it's very very very sometimes it's very very fast. Sometimes it's very volatile. I feel like it undulates a lot. This I understand to be very common to addicts. Experiences of extreme high extreme low fastness not natural to be serene evaluating information very very quickly.

1:17:18It feels fast sometimes very fast and it has a strong sense of craving and longing which is a type of magnetism I suppose and I suppose magnetism is a longing for unity connection. It's very difficult to discern physical forces because they are by their nature non anthropological and it's very easy to anthropomorphize physical phenomena like gravity or magnetism or whatever. So what feels like if me is that there is a great deal to get done. That's what it feels like. There is a great deal that needs to get done and in order to do it I have to surrender strongly otherwise I will mess it up badly.

1:17:57That's what it feels like. So that's why there's a lot of ceremony that is communing with that which is unknowable. Prayer, ceremony with other people, acknowledging the sacred, not forgetting the sacred that the most important things are difficult to measure and weigh but they are there anyway. So each day there is much work to be done and I am a father of young children and I have a dog that I adore and I have many animals so I have a lot of very simple pastoral duties that have to be done and I have a lot of spiritual things that have to be done. So there's a lot to be done and then often I get to a point where I'm so tired that the whole enterprise feels like it could collapse inward like a narcissistic semi -gothic souffle.

1:18:44So there has to be a lot of caution, a lot of caution. Also I'm a person perhaps you identify and agree with a sense of purpose and mission and a deep, deep belief that the most profound and significant changes imaginable are possible by virtue of the fact that they are imaginable in fact because the role of imagination we see all around us in every building, every object, every book, every cultural artifact as well as the many flawed and defunct aspects of our culture also imagination is the device that brings the unmanifest into the manifest. Do you ever find yourself because you are a content creator?

1:19:17Do you ever find yourself slipping in and when you play that game you're dealing with algorithms and metrics and numbers and rankings and I'm trending and I'm not trending. Does that ever trigger your old, you know, the old machinery? Yeah, I try to not go near it. I try to. Really? Because in a sense, back to basics for me recovery is somewhat based on abstinence. Like I don't have a drink or the occasional line or the occasional or the occasional. I don't do it. I don't do it. So I try to practice good hygiene there because if I start it's very difficult to stop and another momentum takes over.

1:20:00So yes, it is. Of course it is because these are part of the game part of the blog, part of the primal ooze competition. It's part of who we are. It's the state of this part of who we are. So I try to stay out of the ring as one of my teachers says, stay out of the ring, stay out of your ring. What are you working on? What are you working on improving? You highlighted, you said your strengths and then your things you hope to improve. What are the things that you hope to improve? For me, always patience, patience, try to be patient because impatience is ridiculous to think I know when something should happen is a mental concept.

1:20:34So I try to work on patience to be very, very patient. Mostly I work on this. There is more to be achieved by surrendering self -will than can ever be achieved by utilizing it. That's a very, very, very, very difficult thing to practice particularly when agitated. What does that mean? I didn't understand. Ah, okay. We achieved so much through will. I'm going to create a podcast. I look, I did that thing I was going to do. Now I have to create various sets around the globe. But to believe that there is a greater power that will come into being if I surrender, but become intuitive to what one of my teachers calls the whispers on the wind, that I will be directed, that I, my job is to stay out of my way, that my life is none of my business.

1:21:22To not look at my day, like it's a chunk of thing that I want my day, I'm going to eat it up. This is, oh wow, this gift, I'm alive. Oh my God, what a miracle, this incredible. And to stay in that feeling of grace and stay in that feeling of gratitude. And to spot as quickly as possible when I inevitably give it up, give up your connection to God for a biscuit, give up your connection to God because someone has a nice car, give up your connection to God because someone says something about you on the internet, give up your connection to God because people lie about your attack you, don't give up your connection to God.

1:21:52And in order to not give up your connection to God, you are going to have to cultivate a very strong connection to God because elsewhere, as you say, much noise, much distraction, what a coincidence. We live in an environment that seems to be cultivated in order to distract us from the ever -present divine. When you say God, yes, are you talking about a religious, specific religious deity, or is there, how do you define your God? Loving unity and absolute respect for individual identity within that. Do I find this God in a particular book or every book? It's up to you, mate.

1:22:30Do you consider yourself to be part of a religion? I do. Yeah, I mean, this one, the only one, they're all the same. I suppose if you want some help, perennialism by Aldous Huxley is a good place to look at, where he identified, in the same way that Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, it could be said, identified, respectively, that there are mythic tropes that appear to recur in all cultures. He began a famous book, which I believe gave the name to the phrase perennialism in which he observed, the Eastern mysticism, sufism from the world of Islam, and certain aspects of Christianity, particularly, mystic Christianity and what is commonly regarded as first century Christianity, had within them not archetypes as in the crucifixion, which we know occurs in many folk tales and not just in Christianity, not narrative devices or characters that recur, but ideologies that recur principles, values that occur in all of them.

1:23:34And many of them, Aldous Huxley's, his Huxley offers, are about overcome the self. There is something bigger than the self. You're not real. Who are you when you don't have your name? They call it the unborn in Buddhism. Marcus O 'Rellius says, you are dead. Your life is over. Now live the rest of your life properly. Get rid of it. Put down the corpse, they say, in Buddhism. In Christianity, die that you may be born again. The flesh man must die. The carnal man of wanting and longing must die. That the transcendent man be born. You're getting in the way, you're getting in the way with your memories and your story and your projects and your values and your virtues.

1:24:17All but the universal ubiquitous, ever -present archetypal virtues that Huxley explains and elsewhere for a young and Campbell, we get the idea that there's some sort of ulterior cultural force, not cultural force beyond that, but beyond, way beyond culture, culture, culture is what we create. Indigenous, primal reality, trying to, not trying to, expressing itself through us. It's talking to us all the time. All the time, it's here, it's everywhere, it's waiting to be discovered by us collectively and individually. What better job could we have than to find it ourselves and help others to find it?

1:24:51I think the reason why is because when people hear the word God, they think of a man in the sky. Well, they should stop that. That helps them. That's good. If you don't behave, you're going to go to hell. That's an idea that a lot of people struggle to get on board with. But it's because people have been lazy, because we are in the Karli Uga. We are in a time of darkness. They're forgotten in this darkness. But when people say there is a father, they mean there is a figure that is more powerful than you, that loves you. And if you don't do what's right, you are going to hell. Not after, you are in it.

1:25:25If you don't do what's right, you are, oh no, I'm so unhappy. I'm in this bed seat that we talked about earlier. Why? Because you didn't listen to the father, because you perhaps couldn't find the father, because as I've alluded to many times, you live in a culture that wants to distract you from the father or the mother or whatever word helps you. That is there within you waiting to be born, that you've been distracted from, understandably, because of the primal urges to compete and acquire and eat and defecate. All of this is normal, ordinary, forgive yourself immediately. And now move forward to what it truly means.

1:25:54What you understand to me, I understand the problems of religion. Religion, the shouldn't make you hate other people. Religion should make you love everyone. They've all got that written in there. Why don't we focus on that bit? Because if people start doing that, you can't manipulate and move around on a little chess board and turn them into little consumer blobs, obviously. Obviously. What way does love fit into one of that romantic love? Because I thought about some of the stuff I said about our ancestors. Is monogamy? Is monogamy the path forward? Is romantic love a framework for stability that we need to find God?

1:26:23Oh, my friend. Well, there is an argument that romantic love is derived from the idea of chivalry, which was as though words suggest a kind of late medieval notion that we should focus our ardour on an individual like a knight would attach the colors of their bequeathed, betrothed or beloved to their lance as they jousted metaphorically. And really though, this chivalrous idea is but one aspect of love. And they know that many people never had actual conjugal relationships with the symbolic feminine divine feminine figure that they would attribute that quality to. Romantic love, I feel. Romantic love perhaps.

1:27:02As all forms of love, obsession, attachment, ultimately, I was taught this. I didn't make this up. The inappropriate substitute for the true love of God. What is love? Whether you love West Ham, you knighted or your wife or your children or your beautiful, it sounds new, breath worker girlfriend, except for the desire, longing, yearning to be at one with, to be connected to, to acknowledge that what's in there is the same as what's in here that we have a shared purpose. Isn't love the felt awareness of the true unity that undergirds apparent separation? We come into form for a little while. All of us were twice, twice before we were a single cell.

1:27:44You were a single cell, then you were two cells in the belly of your mother and way, way, way back. You were in a meabour. And there it is in your programming and your coding. The unity is there materially and practically forget esoteric theology, forget ontology. It's there as a fact is an observable fact. It's there as a cosmic fact. There was a big bang. Unity is there. Love is the felt remembrance of this. Why does love feel good? Although love, as we know, can be very painful when love is not reciprocated, when love is rejected, when love cannot unfold. This love is more than a sensation.

1:28:16It is a duty and it is the deepest truth of our kind. That when we love one another, we acknowledge the truth that we're not separate from one another. Isn't it glorious to move from that position? I don't like that person. I don't like that person. Then, oh my god, they're the same as me. I love them. I love them because you have recognized the truth and truth and beauty are one as wild says that there is something we it rewards us. It rewards us. It's speaking to us. I heard it argued that once there was a great unity and the infinite intelligence for its own amusement lost in the atemporal a spatial abyss sent all things into fragmentation only to see which ones were awakened and recognize the unity of our origin, the deep unity of our origin.

1:29:00When will we come home? When will we come home to love? You fell in love. Then you had two children. You've got a third on the way around the corner. That's a very special love that you've found. Fatherhood. What is I'm not a father yet? But I'd love to look down the road and get some lessons from you as a father. What lessons did fatherhood teach you about life and how we should be living? Teachers, you teach me taught me there's a lot more important things in this world than me, but I learned this lesson in a variety of ways now. There's a lot more important stuff in this world than what I want and what I think and what I reckon.

1:29:42It don't amount to much amidst the infinite. It taught me that love is real. That the most miraculous things are accessible and ordinary and animal that you can procreate life into being what a gift in it flows through you and we're part of an endless chain and God has no grandchildren. They belong to the world. They don't belong to you and it's your job to just stand there and bring out of them whatever's in them and just stand back and marvel and weep at what's in them. Weep. The horror, the beauty, the horror, the dreadful beauty of what a child unfolds into. The awareness that they will, that they're in the best case scenario, the best case scenario.

1:30:26They are walking into a future that you will not be there to guide them through.

1:30:45So I suppose what that asks of you is an understanding of your place in this world and acknowledgement both of your relative insignificance but simultaneous omniscience, omnipotence, simultaneous. It's a paradox. All energy come from polarity. It can knowledge the polarity. Don't hate the polarity. Don't hate the others. Don't let them tell you those people are different from you because they wear a baseball cap or they voted to leave Europe or because they identify with these pronouns or because they believe in this cause or that. The absolute unity. It shows you that the way you love your children must become the way you love all people.

1:31:31Love as Ram Das was told by his teacher. Tell the truth and love everyone, not easy. Not easy if you tell the truth to love everyone. It teaches you everything. It teaches you everything to become a father. It teaches you going to need other fathers, it teaches you you're going to have to become a father, it teaches you going to have to become a father to that little boy. It teaches you everything. All lessons are there. All lessons are there. A future you're not going to be a part of. Wait, wait. It was so visible in your body and in your consciousness that that particular sentence was difficult for you to say as it relates to your children.

1:32:14Because it's so ordinary, Stephen. Any old lady, any old man, who's chat to anywhere. Oh yeah, my mum was like that. My dad was like that. My little girls. It's just, it's just so beautiful.

1:32:41What are the lessons about the future that they you you try and give them if any at all? And how do you feel about the future that they're going to go into? I'm trying my best to arm them. I'm trying my best to arm them. I'm trying my best to arm them like Sarah Connor or something. I was just trying to tell them. And also, they are them. I see every day how they're more powerful than me already. So, you know, they'll be all right. God has no grandchildren. They'll be all right. They've got their path. I know they're going to hurt me, you know. I know that. All we can do for each other beyond father, daughter is become who you are, become who you are, become who you are, become who you are.

1:33:34Trust that it's going to be beautiful. You're not ugly, that you're not hideous. You've made mistakes. You've done stuff wrong. You've had stuff done to all of this, all of this and yet become who you are, become who you are, become who you are. So all I want is I try to not go, this is everything, I think. Don't go unconscious. Don't go unconscious. Stay present. They present. Things will make you go unconscious. It might happen as I leave this room. It might happen when the people from the next room come in. You can go unconscious at any moment. Don't go unconscious. Stay present. Stay present now.

1:34:05God is now. May you find God now.

1:34:10That's now. Find it. Find the absolute, when I say God, I mean absolute unity, absolute inclusivity, absolute love, absolute unity among us all. So me, I'm basic. Look, you know what I mean? You can't live like that with my kids. Kind of like banging on it and like John Wesley from the pulpit or MLK. I just got to say, all right, how's it going to work that to me? I'm not letting you eat that. I'll come to why not? You know what I mean? I'm like, if you want to tell me stuff you're done at school. What do you mean you got a boyfriend? I'm doing all that I'm saying. All the normal chats. Everyone's happening.

1:34:40Having. But what I'm trying to do is recognize they ain't going to get a better conduit than me for good or for real. So I better get a cut away. I go get out of the way for them. You know. Russell, thank you so much. Thank you for, thank you for being an inspiration to me in so many ways. One of the ways that I think, I mean, you're completely in a, in a league of your own. Outside of the comedy and all that is the way that you communicate ideas in a way that is so, but, and I know you must be aware of this. They're so brilliant and poetic. And you said it halfway through this conversation that it's intentional your use of words.

1:35:17Yes. You could, you know, you could use a simple words. Yes. But you choose the poetry. That's the way I can describe it. Why? Because it's so, it's the way I, why it's not only erudite to talk like that. I think of perhaps one of the great archetypes of the working class we have now, Bays, Danny Dyer, he's a poet. It talks beautifully. It's nice to be specific. Yeah. If you can. Be specific. What do you mean? What do you mean? And to be honest, it's, you know, it's always been there. It's always there. It's there. It's funny because as I was observing you today, you seem like you're just one step ahead of the thing coming out of your mouth.

1:36:06And that's why you're able to string this poetry together in such a cohesive way and a coherent way because your brain seems to just be one step ahead of Mark, like, of the way that I would speak. It's wonderful to observe. And it's a, it's a wonderful talent. I observe it as well in your, your new show. Oh, yeah, yeah. Good. Brandemic. Oh, darn. Jesus. No, no, no, no, but it was a one, it's wonderful. I watched all of the clips. I watched the trailer, what you managed to do in that show. So for anybody that doesn't know, Russell has a show called Brandemic, which is going to be available for just two weeks from June 25th, which you can watch online globally, you can pre -order it now.

1:36:39I've pre -ordered it and my partner's pre -ordered it. So we're, even though we're going to be watching on the same screen. So there's two pre -orders, but it's this wonderful confrontation of the last couple of years of our lives mixed with comedy at the heart of it, with also this permeating, really important message underneath there somewhere, which I think you use comedy in such a wonderful way to, if I may say, inject an important message into me through the, through the medium of humor. And it's a wonderful skill that I've seen in some great comedians. Some of, you know, Jimmy Carter, he's credit, he's wonderful at what he does.

1:37:11He uses a different form of comedy, but the form of comedy you use to address very important subject matter is genius. It's very, very hard to do. And in fact, when I sat here with Jimmy, he said he's trying to do more of that. I've seen a few great comedians like the Chappell's of the world, who I saw in New York a couple of weeks ago in Aziz. And Zari, Aziz, Aziz, Zari. He's fantastic at that. I saw him at the store do that as well. I highly recommend everybody go and get pre -order brand -emic. It'll only be available for two weeks. And if you go check out the trailer and YouTube it is fucking hilarious.

1:37:41It confronts all the things a lot of people, but it's too scared to confront. But with a real, a real elegance, a real class. So thank you for that. And also I have to mention community, which is an event that's taking place. When is it July? Yeah, July the 14th to July 17th. Is it polite for me to ask your girlfriend's name? Melanie. Melanie. Yeah, come with Melanie. She's, it'd be right up her alley. Well, there beets, simpkins, there, Vandana Shiva, proper leaders, both in political and spiritual spaces, because in the end these are fake divisions. There is only one space. You'll love it. Come, come and do a turn on the Saturday night.

1:38:20I saw a poster for it and I thought this can't be real because of the people that are there and they're all gathering. I thought it can't be in person. It must be online. And then I found out it was in person as well. So 14th of July to the 17th of July in Hay on Way. Hay on Way. Why is there a river that like the bifurcates England and Wales or at least separates England and Wales, although actually England and Wales was both conceptual. So bifurcates that bit of land that is currently called England and Wales. It's over there. So on a campsite I went to during pandemic. I went there on a holiday in a one in Vans, you know, that you can do up from within.

1:38:57And we're such a lovely time there. And we did a small festival last year and this year we're doing a bigger festival. And the money that we make, we give to people with addiction and mental health issues, various charities that we support for this day free foundation is proper. It's an attempt to live how we might live. That is probably the most compelling thing to me because I literally read a chapter in my book called The Journey Back to Human. And so it's wonderful to see something called community that's doing exactly that bringing us back to what it is to be a human. And as you say, the cause is that the proceeds of this event going to our phenomenal, including a plymothian charity, I believe.

1:39:30Which one is that? It's a charity implement that I think would do. Oh yeah, yeah. To the me. Trevy. Trevy. Yeah. Trevy women. That's the only treatment center in the country that is able to take women with, with addiction issues and complex needs that have kids already. Because obviously it's very difficult to look after women at a drug addicts that have kids and stuff. So that place though, they do a fantastic job down in your ends in plymoth. I would neck of the woods. So you can heal yourself, but also the proceeds will help to heal others, which I think is a phenomenal thing. So thank you for that.

1:40:00We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for.

1:40:12You can have a 60 second conversation with anyone in your life, but it is the last conversation you will have with them. No, I can't. This is all that's a brilliant or evil question. It's evil. I always tell the guests I say, because they've all been stitched up by the last questions. Where's his stitch? Pay it forward. You know what? You've already got another minute, 60 seconds. It's the last conversation you have. Who'd you call them? What'd you say? The thing is, is that can I just break this down a bit? You're dispatching them after that. Yeah. So it's in a way. And do you have to know them?

1:40:42Is that contained in the connection? Well, it's you can interpret it. It's only 60 seconds, 60 seconds. And I'm never seen them again. I mean, there's no one in my life that I love that I want to give up on that. So 60 seconds. I'm never going to see them again afterwards. Yeah. God, there's some good people that I've met. No, I know. Because I'm going to pluck a straight like a virtual stranger. A virtual stranger. Interesting. Because why is only 60 seconds? Are you letting go of them? I don't think it means that you can never see them again. I mean, I'm not daughter. I mean, why for the world?

1:41:13The way I interpreted it was, you're last day on earth. You got a phone call. This is getting worse. There's no more me. Oh, my God. There's no road. This question. Some evil. I'm joking. You don't tell us it's anonymous. Sometimes it's so it'll eventually come out on a card that people can play with their friends. Oh, you're busted. You'll find out. Always have slur. Have slur every day. All right. So just say someone I love. I'm going to talk to you for 60 seconds. But then they're alive already. You can't even get someone that's dead. Brack. I'm a man. I'm kind of a man. I'd love a million.

1:41:50I take my name. I take 60 seconds. I mean, I love you. I'm all right. I'm not so crazy. You were right about the drugs though. Why? Because she was so lovely. She loved me so much. It was so unself conscious. It was so unself conscious. You are darling. Shame on you. I will out of all to West Kairbosh. What's that drug? She's doing. I'll tell you, I see on Kilroy, it leads to worse things. 60 seconds. Let her know you're okay. Yes. You're okay? Yes. Perfect. Thank you, Russell. I'm honored to meet you and thank you so much for being here. You could have been anywhere. So I really appreciate your time.

1:42:29I really, really appreciate that. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It was a really lovely intense experience. The scenery, the environment, so gray and the conversations are colorful. Yeah. Intentionally, I'll tell you. Excellent.

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