Brent Pope tackles men’s mental health and modern sports punditry

27:50And I just thought at one stage, you're a bit of an imposter, Brent. Even when I missed out on the World Cup in 1987, it devastated me. A small kid coming from a small rural town finally had achieved his dreams of playing in a World Cup for the All Blacks at that stage, for it to all get pulled out, not through talent, just through an injury at the last moment. and it devastated me psychologically. But there I was on the TV when people asked me, saying, oh, well, all the cliched stuff. Oh, well, you know, there'll be another, you know, just get back from injury and there'll be another World Cup and that.

28:26But what I was hiding was depression over that event. And that started a slide in a lot of areas of my life. But I just couldn't admit it. Do you believe, OK, so the part of history I was given about your background in the mental health situation was that as a young boy, you were very happy. and that there was no indication necessarily. No, not at all. And it was only in your early teenage years that you began to feel inklings of... It started with anxiety. Anxiety, yeah. What we would describe as panic attacks now, I suppose. I just didn't understand because you're right. I had a Huckleberry Finn lifestyle in many ways, coming off the land, plenty of friends, good at sport, popular at school, all those things.

29:09And I just went through a period of my kind of, for instance, I found a book that actually makes me sad now. I found a book that I'd kept. I won't tell you what's inscribed in the back of it because it's very private and it'll be private for the rest of my life. But the book wasn't anything to do with rugby. And I bought it when I was about 14 or 15. The book was entitled When Will I Ever Be Happy? and it was so I had some prior knowledge that something wasn't quite right that I just I don't know what being happy was at that stage or what it's it's too long ago I just know that I started to go through periods of intense catastrophe anxiety is what I would call it if anything's going to go wrong it's going to go wrong in a big way it's not just you're not just going to fail an an exam or something, a school cert or a leaving cert, you're not just going to fail it.

30:03You're going to bomb out completely and your whole life's going to change. If you asked a girl to out on a date or something, she was not only going to say no, she was going to ridicule. So there was a kind of a fear of humiliation, a fear of... There was a fear of failure in anything you did. I just don't mean a failure about an event or something, but it was just I was going to fail at everything I set out to do. And yet on the other side of things, the whole kind of, I suppose, the other thing people don't understand was on the outside looking in, I was achieving everything. I went to university on a scholarship.

30:39I got a scholarship a year before I ended school, being in the top percentile of exams in New Zealand. And, you know, played for a lot of, you know, sporting career was going well. You know, socially I was going well. I just had these periods that became more frequent, because if you have anxiety for a long period of time, people always ask me about anxiety because you get everybody saying that they suffer from anxiety. And that's fine. That's fine. It's when it becomes generalized. Like there were some days I just wake up and I'm anxious. I don't know why. There's been no trigger. There's been no event coming up.

31:18I just feel anxious. And that's all I couldn't understand. So over the years, through my teenage years, then those anxiety issues become more of a problem, and then you started to feel kind of lost, and that's when the kind of depression started probably creeping in. Yeah, so you separate anxiety from depression. Yes, although I call them the dirty little cousins of each other because if you suffer from anxiety for a protracted period of time, I'm not talking about an event or something coming up. That's just natural to be nervous. or anxious about going in and doing your driving test or entering a new relationship, anything.

31:57That's natural. And use it. Use it in that way. It's a fight or flight response, actually. But I'm just talking about generalized anxiety that then becomes difficult to manage on a sort of a chronic basis. Yeah. And then it rolls over to kind of when am I ever going to feel okay or normal again? And am I living a lie? Am I imposter here? You know, because there was no one I could talk to. Yeah. You see, that was the difference. That's what I'm trying to get the message out now. In your 20s, you described that you had a full-on emotional breakdown. Can you describe to me what that is? Oh, man, scary.

32:34Yeah? Really scary.

32:39Rugby was the one thing that I held on to in a sense because that was the thing at that stage that gave me the enjoyment. I was good at something. I was really good at something. and I've always been sort of front and centre in the media too from an early age. Like when you play rugby in New Zealand at that level, your face would be in the newspaper every weekend. I've always had that life. I've always had that life. And I suppose that came with a bit of judgment of who I should be. I always liked to think I was a bit different. I always like to think I broke down the stereotype of what a New Zealand rugby player should be like, including writing children's book.

33:27I think I was the first rugby player in the world to write a series of books for children that weren't anything to do with sport. Because I just wanted to say, hey, this is the softer side of Brent Pope. The aggressive side, the hard man image or something like that. Everybody could see that. what they couldn't see was somebody that was struggling with the emotional or the feeling side of his personality. There was no problem fronting up and tackling. I mean, at one stage they used to call me Puss Pope because I used to be covered in rugby wounds and they would all be infected and stuff like that.

34:04And I'd go out after a game on a... I was the type of player that if things weren't happening in a match, I would lie on the ball and get the opposition to stomp all over me because then at the next ruck or whatever, I'd go in there flying like in like a madman. That's how I kept myself motivated. Rage. Yeah. Rage and anger. Like, you know, I'd give somebody a biff in the line out of something. And so in your 20s, then I'm beginning to think, I think you've hinted at it, that the rugby thing went. Yes. Well, I don't know whether that was a trigger, but it certainly didn't help. I think what it was at that stage was just what I say to men out there.

34:42we have a habit of all in our lives of pushing our problems under the carpet, under the rug and hoping they don't revisit us. And I'm testament to, yes, they do come back. And I don't know whether it's a stalactite or stalactite, somebody might be able to tell you what comes down. I never know that. Yeah, I don't know either. Stalactite or stalactite, yeah. But it was like that. I was adding all through those teenage years, I was adding to the layers, adding to the layers and then something at some stage just broke the camel's back and I don't know whether it was just an isolated for those listeners now he's just looking on his phone to come across his educated man about ice formation They're the ones that go down Brent Yeah, yeah, yeah So yes, then I really spiralled then I lost a lot of weight at the time that was the physical manifestations My skin was awful.

35:40I looked unhealthy. I would play a match on a Saturday and just go back to my little apartment. I started spending more time on my own because there was nobody I could talk to. I had plenty of friends that I played rugby with. Did you drink? Yes, I did. Did drink exacerbate the feelings? I don't know. Sometimes, in fact, sometimes I think probably it was the opposite for me possibly that when I was having a few drinks, it allowed me to relax a bit and take the thoughts out of my mind because I called it in my book, autobiography, I called it my Gatling gun. That's my own word for it. And what is that like?

36:22It's like, it's like those old machine is under the spitting out bullets of negativity, you know, and, and, and that's what it felt like. You will fail at this, Brent, you know, don't take this on because the results are going to be the same. Brent, And do you think that the, I'm sure you've looked up this and talked about it with therapists, etc. But do you think that it is purely environmental or is it purely, are you predisposed to it genetically? Is it a mixture of both? I think it's a bit of both. So if it's a mixture of both, what do you think the environmental aspect of your anxiety, stroke, depression was?

37:01That's a good point, really. I haven't thought about it that much because I look, I think at the end of the day, my father was a very anxious man, too. And, you know, and I think my mother actually, too, probably went through bouts of depression. My brother had probably I'm not portraying us as a family of of sort of, you know, victims are not. No, I just think it's why I'm trying to educate people on looking after your mental health. I just don't think I could deal with it. I couldn't understand why I had these feelings. I still can't now. I can't understand why they can just suddenly come out of the blue.

37:52And whether that's environmental, whether it's been triggered by something, I don't know. I don't seem to have been able to work out my triggers. All I know now is the lesson I tell people is I've found a way around it. And that's the important thing for people to know that there is a way around it. If you had two things to say to people, what are the principal ways around it? The first thing is where the elephant in the room was created. The first thing I'm saying to people is, look, everything good in mental health starts with a conversation. Everything good. Otherwise, it's like asking somebody to go to the 12-step alcohol problem if they're not first ready to admit they've got a drink problem.

38:34And when you say a conversation, you mean a conversation with a professional? No. No? No, not necessarily. A loved one? Somebody. Somebody. And especially for men because that is what men fear the most. And I know it's in our DNA. I know it's in our DNA because if you go back, if you track back, And I have studied psychology and to a reasonably high level. I am a qualified psychotherapist. So some of the elements of our DNA as men is an inability to think that a man that's coming in to the pride or into the cave is threatening. That's the way we see it. Women see it a different way. They see it as being nurturing.

39:16They have a nurturing nature that they, when something happens in their life, they bring in groups of people, they talk to friends, they have groups, they have wine clubs or book clubs. They make an effort. So you're saying, let me get this straight. So you're saying that because men in their DNA and in their kind of almost primordial, a kind of primordial makeup, they have it in their makeup that if another man was to come into my cave and want to talk to me, he's threatening. Yeah. Right. So why would I talk to another man because that other man will perceive me as threatening. It will perceive you as weaker.

39:51Like when a male lion comes in to try to take over another pride, suddenly there's a fight between the two, who's the most dominant. Yeah, well the male, the lion doesn't come in and kind of go, listen male lion, I'm having a little bit of a... I'm having a down day with my mane. It's been a few weeks since I did a killing, right? And I'm not sure if I'm even cut out for kills at the moment. Is there any way we could talk through it? But nature is like that. And I'm just watching these things on Netflix. I find nature fascinating. But all animals have a language of dominance. Even looking at those shark chases and that.

40:30They have a language of, especially when it comes to... Territoriality and dominance, yeah. Of dominance. So who is the dominant male in the group? Trump. Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. But I have a rule. Well, there you go. No. We have to get Trump into every, every single episode of the podcast. But it's the same as, you know, those things you were showing on YouTube, how to handshake if you want to be dominant. You come in from the sort of top down. Pulls the guy in, throws him around the place like a rag doll. Grab the end of the fingers. That's a loser. You know, when you get that, miss the grip.

41:00Oh, Jesus. Like, you know. But no, so that's where it stems from. So I get it. I get it because I was the same. I couldn't sit on a bench with aspiring rugby players, those New Zealand rugby players all looking up and wanting to be all blacks, big strong men, how do you think I would have felt to him and said, oh, you don't mind having a bit of a chat about, you know, I'm just going through a few feelings or emotions. I see what you're saying. But I'd end up saying, your man's mad, nuts. And that was the feeling I had about myself because that was the language around mental health in those days.

41:34I mean, I remember even from Frank Bruno, who was heavyweight champion of the world, boxing champion, no more macho sport than that, when he came out about his bouts of depression, the Red Tops next day had bonkers Bruno. You know, bonkers Bruno. You look back at now and it's cruel. Oh, totally. It's cruel. Very well explained, Brent, and I love that psychological analogy there. Even though nowadays, I mean, we are inundated with podcasts about mental health. We are inundated with people who are experts on mental health, non-experts on mental health, practitioners. You know, everybody's doing it, right?

42:16I mean, there's a monetisation to it as well. There is an industry around it. And so it's safe to say that there is no problem talking about mental health anymore. Now, having said that, your opinion is that in the last 20 years in Ireland, it hasn't improved. No, my take on that is the question should be not when people come up to me with this all the time. But, Brent, you know, young people are talking more about mental health now than ever before. Yes, I get that because it's more out in the domain. The question I said you should ask is what are you talking about and who are you talking to?

43:01Because that's more relevant to me than just opening up for natural talk. because I'm still getting a view from young people, oh, I don't really want to talk about that. Even though you're right, it's out. And in some regards, from somebody that's struggled like me, it's too out there too. It's on every TV program. People are going, of course, in the States, everybody has their therapist and everybody's going to see somebody. But that's not what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to really to appeal to the people that may be listening to this that are places that I have been where they're really, really struggling.

43:40It's not about just having a conversation down the pub and saying, OK, it's all right to cry. Even the other day when the young guy scored the winning goal in the tip match there, he broke down in tears. And I thought that was lovely. I thought it was lovely because we should be able to express emotions on the good days were overwhelmed by emotions. And I just thought it was lovely. But I could see that there were people out there who were saying, oh, you know, that's not part of the sport. You know, like even though they can see it when somebody's disappointing, they don't seem to accept that somebody can be happy in the moment and also be overwhelmed.

44:20And it's something that's really come into play now with YouTube. People are fascinated by people sort of crying on stage or something and stuff like that. So we have moved on in that regard, that it's far easier to be more vulnerable now. Now, having said that, Brent, just to clear up that thing about the tip guy, just a slight, he was crying in utter victory. Yeah. So he had fulfilled the dominant male thing. So it's okay to cry when I'm, you know. That's what I mean. I would have been more interested in the Kilkenny player that cried. But you probably had a Kilkenny player crying. That's what I was trying to say in a roundabout way, that that's wonderful now.

45:01because we always could see it over the years and kind of, you know, in different regards, but not two separate emotions on the one pitch at the one time because obviously there's going to be winners and losers and the losers are going to be, but in my day, you know, you weren't there to show that. You weren't, you know. So just to give a decision, so rather than just congratulating ourselves for having loads of podcasts and TV programmes about mental health, what you're more interested in is spreading the message that if you feel these feelings, reach out to somebody close to you and talk to them.

45:36And for those people as well to be receptive to that kind of chat. And to know that someone cares. I've lost too many people. This is where I get emotional. I've lost too many friends and people that have taken their own lives in the last 20 years. More than 10 that I've known. And I despair at that because suicide numbers, numbers, whatever way we want to front with it, aren't going down. Yeah. There's increases. And they're being covered up as well. There's certain, yes. I mean, I don't mean that they're being covered up. I don't mean they're being covered up perniciously. I mean that there is a complete social stigma still against suicide.

46:14Absolutely. And in an Irish case, it's based in religion. Suicide is a sin, isn't it? And there always will be, and people will say, maybe there always should be, because that's, you know, So that's kind of the inspection that people don't understand. But my point of view coming from someone that has been in that situation and has felt like that, it's pretty scary that how quickly you can go to that place. And what we don't see or understand, we fear the most. That's what we fear. I could be standing up and talking to 500 workers on a construction site that could look at me. if I was up there in a wheelchair with a broken neck from rugby, if I was up there as an amputee and something like that, they could understand.

47:05They could get it because they could see it. When you're up there talking about mental health, they can't see it. And that's a warning in that because I say to people out there, especially to men, it's coming. And they look at me like that and say, what's he talking about? I said, it's coming because at some stage in your life, Nobody avoids having their mental health in a traumatic situation. You could go home this afternoon. You could lose somebody in your life. You could go down this afternoon and something else could happen. That suddenly puts you in a bit of a spin. That's when you need to know that it will be okay 99 % of the time if you can just get to talk to someone.

47:44Say, look, this is what's happening. It's alien to me. I haven't felt this way before. or whether it happens for five minutes, five weeks, five years, it doesn't matter that it's alien to you and I need help. And for that person not to be a fixer, but to be a listener, for somebody to say, I'm here for you, Mara. I don't fully understand. You don't have to understand. I think the greatest thing that resonated with me was something a mother said to her daughter, and the daughter said to me, it's the longest story in that, I said, what changed? And she said, a mother said to me, threw out her arms one time and said, I don't get it, but I get you.

48:20And I thought that was lovely. And that sums it up for me. You don't have to understand it being mental health, but you do have to get the other person. You don't have to be there for them and say, hey, I'm here for you. I care for you. I love you. I support you. That's all it takes sometimes. And that's the message. Simple. Do you still talk to people all the time, Brent? Yes, I do. but I still have a problem doing that, you know, to a certain degree. But yes, I have learned to get better. I do have certain friends that I can go to that I have on my sort of speed dial that I know that won't try to tell me, you know, go for a walk in the park or meet up with a few friends for pints and whatnot.

49:09I've been told all these things all my life, you know. Oh, well, this works for me, Brent. Get back to the gym. You know, I was even told that when in the sort of peak of my sporting career, when I look for help and to go and talk to someone, that's all I was given. It was always reverted back to the physical. And that's the thing that scares me the most. And you can talk about change. But here's a stat for you that I don't understand. When you're talking about business, for instance, if we know that the biggest costs in the business world is job retention, lack of productivity while you're working, and also time off work.

49:42That's the three biggest cost areas. The reasons for those three, the biggest reason for those three is anxiety and depression. And yet the lowest cost, the lowest spend budget is on mental health. I don't get it. What am I missing here? Because I get companies come back to me and say, oh, well, I said, what have you done for mental health last year? Oh, well, Brent, you know, we put a new gym in, fabulous new gym, exercise, gym membership. I said, but that's not mental health. What do you mean? It's all about well-being. But it's not about mental health. It's about spending as much time educating your people on what it means to be in a psychologically safe and vulnerable space that you can be in.

50:29That's the most important thing. And this gets us, this is the best time to go to this because the brainchild of you is these beautiful sculptures, these beautiful elephants, colourful elephants. you can put them in any workplace any place your home school sporting No they're going everywhere Tell me about the elephants who came up with the idea of the elephants why the elephants and where are they? Well why the elephants is pretty easy when we think about it because if I in conversation to you 10 years ago in Western society if I said something was the elephant in the room that would signal to you shut that conversation down if you came to me and you talked about missing out on to say a rugby team.

51:10I said, Mara, that's the elephant in the room, mate. Something so obvious we should be talking about, but something we're not talking about. So that's where the idea was born. And I went to, you probably saw those cows years ago around. Okay. Yeah. The guy that created that was an Irish guy. Well, he didn't create it. It's not his idea, but he brought the cows in for a start. So I saw these cats down. I was doing a mental health talk in Kilkenny, and I come out of the hotel, and there was a wonderful big sculpture cat, all painted. I said, I love it because I love art. An art gallery for a couple of years.

51:46That's another day's conversation because I champion art from art uncooked by culture. People doing art from the streets or prison art or all that. I'm fascinated. So I went back to the manager and I said, where did you get those made? I didn't know where to start. I know I wanted an animal and I know I wanted to relate it to mental health because we're told all the time taking things out of your head and putting them down on paper, being creative is good for your mental health. We all know that. Painting, hobby is all good for your mental health. And he put me onto this guy, Owen Byrne, I think did a bit of stuff in RT at one stage.

52:25So we went back and forth, myself and Owen, took us about six months, a year, and then we just came up with the elephant in the room because I think I was mentioning somebody had said that was the elephant in the room. I think it was the construction guy said the elephant in the room for him was he couldn't tell other people on site that he didn't like drinking. And he said, that's the elephant in the room for me, Brent. He said, because I come from a culture, Eastern European guy, come from a culture, he said, where it seemed to be manly to have a few beers after the site. And let alone if you work in construction, you're six or seven times more likely to take your own life if you work in those sort of male-dominators.

53:02Six or seven times, man. So I'm all about talking to construction workers, the guards, the prison officers, these pharmaceutical engineering industries. And so that was born. So then we had the idea of, look, we'll bring these sculptures in. We'll tout around to the corporates or something, get them branded up. And they come on a little plinth. And on the front of the plinth is a plaque. And the plaque says, while you're working at Deloitte's or whatever like that, you are in a place where it is encouraged to have conversation around mental health. Or words to that effect, they can put on the plaque whatever they want.

53:39They name their elephant. They're branded up with what it means to that. The metrics have been incredible. Yeah? Metrics have been incredible. We've got teachers back from some of the schools and sort of what would be deemed as lower socioeconomic groups. For the first time ever, they've got kids coming up, pupils coming up, and writing what their problems are and struggles on the side of an elephant, either on a postage or in place. And some of these stories from these children are harrowing. They're putting up, you know, dealing with problems at home, being bullied, social media, all these problems.

54:14And it's allowed the counselors or the teachers to get to those pupils before it's too late. And we're seeing the same. I get emails every day, Mo, about how the elephant is working. I got a lovely email about a month ago from a young Indian girl that took a job out by the airport in a company that had an elephant. She just took the time to write me an email and she said, Brent, I don't know you. She said, I've only just arrived in Ireland from a different country, from a different culture. And she said, my first day I'm working, she said, I saw one of your magnificent elephants. and she said, I just felt relief and I felt I was in a safe place that someone would care for me.

54:54And I thought, that's enough. That's enough. If that's all I do, if I affect one person's life, I'm not egotistical about this. If I change one person's life, if one person gets something out of listening to me talking, then it's all worth it. Now, I know that's a cliche that's often said, but it is to me. If I get a man coming up to me and putting out his hand, what happened last weekend just saying Brent you know you saved my life and I thought that if ever I got a chance to thank you I would and I just said thank you very much it's wonderful and that's beautiful and come here so the elephant in the room the elephant in the workplace the elephant in the place that is a kind of if you like a signal then a signal to people this place is a place where it is welcome to you to what specifically are they saying is it saying is that this environment is a place where you can talk to other people.

55:48It gives, the two main things I hope it achieves is one, it gives people permission. Permission that it's okay in this company to speak about things, that it's okay, that you won't be judged. Because companies come back to me all the time and say, we've got these wonderful websites around mental health. We've spent hundreds of thousands on this website. And I said, who's using it? Well, that's the problem, Brent. And I said, I tell you why they're not using it because they feel at some step of the way, somebody's looking over someone's shoulder and saying, okay, well, we're not going to give that guy a job or her a promotion because she's got problems with anxiety.

56:21So they feel judged. So I'm just there to say, A, it gives hope, that there's hope for recovery. Whatever you're going through, try talking it out, because a problem shared is still a problem halved, and that you're in a place where someone cares about your mental health. What I want the schools to see, and we're just running out with the help of A Kind Foundation, was the charity that was set up a couple of years ago, Dave and Jacqueline Klein. Them and Corn Market have helped out, and An Elephant for Sarah, which is a wonderful story, if you've got time to listen about that, about a young girl that came to me, wanted to raise money, awareness for a sister who took her own life last year.

57:03Beautiful young girl, 26 years of age, and her sister loved the elephants, so she wanted to do something around that. So we're committed to donating these elephants into the schools. They follow a roadmap for the year, for their mental health, for the next couple of years, putting something in place for the school. That's the commitment they have to make. But it's just I want it to be a symbol that the school kind of adopts so that when that person is on the first day at school or the last day at school, they can look at the elephant and say, hey, I'm in a place that's not going to be as hard as I think to go and talk to someone because we're all in it together.

57:39Yes. Just to give them that bit of confidence. Got it. And the metrics we've got so far, we had a company come back to us about three weeks ago and said we have seen a 400 % increase in people talking to someone in HR, talking to someone about that. 400 % increase just since they've had the elephant in. I'm not saying it works for everybody, but it does at a level work for everybody. Everything is the elephant in the room, though, Brent. Yeah, but that's what I mean. When you're in a school or in a workplace it is populated 100 % by people who are putting on an act. Exactly. We are all putting on an act.

58:16That's it. None of us are our true selves. We are a version of ourselves. That's it. And to be our true self would be ridiculous. No, you're right. We would be acting out. It would be strange. We all have to follow the social mores of society. But to do that we have to cover up. Absolutely. We have to cover up what's really going on inside us. You've got it one. And what's really going on inside us is sometimes okay, is sometimes placid, is sometimes benign. But sometimes what's going on inside people is raging and anger and harm and affected and poisoned and upset and out of sorts and completely out of kilter.

58:55They're scared to be different. They're scared to be different. They're scared to be themselves. Especially in modern society when you've got all expectation, validation, social media, YouTube, all this stuff just portrays this image that you've got to be someone other than yourself. So when I look at the elephant, I look at it, you know, away from the big three of mental health. Everybody talks about mental health in the big three, as I call it, which is kind of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideology. When anybody talks about mental health, that's what I talk about. No, I say to people like, exactly like I'm saying to you, we all have our elephants.

59:31We all have elephants, whether it's culture, sexuality, bullying, weight issues, body dysmorphia, whatever it is, that's what I'm saying. That is your elephant. And what I'm saying to everybody, no matter what your elephant is, it is better shared than kept inside, kept hidden inside. So you're better off going to someone and saying, look, hey, I'm worried about that people think I'm ugly. I'm worried about that I'm overweight. This is concerning me and it's affecting my mental health on a negative basis. And for somebody to say, hey, I'm with you. I went through that myself. I have feelings about myself.

1:00:05We're not alone in this. And yet we're left to be alone at times. There's people sitting on their beds tonight, like I was so many years ago, thinking about whether they want to live another day. And that's sad. We've got to get to those people and say, it'll be okay. Elephant is, I've always thought, I love nature myself. Everybody loves elephants. Do you know what somebody said to me once, or at least I heard it, and I think it's a good little epithet to bring with you. And that is, you know the way, obviously, it's taken for granted that we spend most of the time worried about ourselves. All right.

1:00:43So that whole idea of that whole idea of look at this spot on my face. All right. By the way, nobody's looking at that spot. Do you know why? Because they're all concerned about themselves. Yeah, it's true. And that's true, right? But one of the things I take with me as much as I can try to remember it is that when you're let's say angry with somebody or when you've got a beef with somebody or whether you've got a little problem with somebody try or you feel somebody is attacking you just try for one moment imagine that that person might be actually going through a lot of problems themselves You don't know what they're carrying Of course you don't So they seem to you like the lion coming into your cave I'm going to get you I'm going to get you just bear with you don't know what they're going through or when you attack somebody you don't know what they're going through so be careful no be careful and it's also what I say to everybody when I talk I leave them to this message that you know we can all save lives and people look at me like that I said look a smile at the right time a handshake a hug at the right time when you go down to the supermarket you know say hello to somebody smile at someone because you don't know exactly what they're going to on that day and just that smile or just that kind word, you know, that kind word might be enough to change the direction of someone's life.

1:02:02Yes. You know, so I'm all about that and, you know, I'm not... Now we've become more atomised in society staring into our phones so there's less chance of that happening. I think that's what you were referring, less of a community. We're less a community and more heads buried. from community. How can you say hello to somebody in a supermarket when your head is buried? And you know what the good thing about COVID was, the good thing about COVID was, we started to go backwards, to go forwards for a while. People were calling into neighbours. People were seeing if an elderly neighbour wanted somebody to do shopping.

1:02:30People were getting out and mowing lawns and that. Even to go out and celebrate somebody's life when they came round the road in the hearse or something that you wouldn't have done before. Then suddenly when COVID finished, everybody went back to their, what I call, sort of busy lives. Doing what at the end of the day? Yeah. You know, your purpose is found in giving back. And I'm not, you know, I'm not standing up on a soapbox here saying I'm, you know, Saint Brent or anything like that. But most of my life has been about doing something for the good of community, country, for other people. Thank God you didn't call it.

1:03:09Thank God you didn't call the charity King of the Jungle. It's a mental health. I have a new mental health. It's called King of the Jungle. It's kill or be killed. It's all about me, mate. It's all about boasting about your mental health. My mental health is going to kill yours. Exactly. Oh, God. Brent, thank you so much. You speak about it so eloquently. And you love it. It's clear. Your body language. Well, I'm passionate about it. Of course you are. And I love the stories about elephants as well. And elephantintheroom.ie? Yeah,.ie. And if you want to join the movement, we'd love to have you in any way, shape or form.

1:03:47You know. Yeah, that'd be great. Brilliant. Thank you, Brent.

1:03:54And my thanks again to Brent Pope for a fascinating insight into his life. And I love the Elephant in the Room initiative. And I've actually suggested it to our employers here in Today FM and Bar Media as well. And my thanks to you, of course. Please, if you like the podcast, tell one other person about the podcast. And my thanks, of course, to our great sponsor, deluxebathrooms.ie. Their all-star super August sale, now on ends on bank holiday, August Monday. Get down there. And my thanks, of course, to you, the listener as always. See you same time, same place next week. Bye-bye.