On Persevilience with Alastair Campbell

0:15Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Our guest this week, back for more, is Alastair Campbell, who is most obviously the co-host of The Rest is Politics with Rory Stewart. it. His new book is Percivillians, the word the world needs now, which went straight into the Sunday Times bestseller list. In it, he coins a word for the ability of an individual, group, or organization to turn any situation, setback, or meaningful experience into a positive opportunity to grow, to advance and secure their core interests. His case is that perseverance and resilience are both negative, defensive ideas, and that our time calls for a more positive mindset built on belief and integrity.

0:57The book makes its political analysis with personal reflection on grief, disappointment, mental health, friendship, family, love, and more. Alistair was Tony Blair's press secretary from 1994 and then director of communications and strategy in Downing Street from 1997 to 2003. Before that, he was a political journalist for the Daily Mirror. In 1986, he had a psychotic breakdown, and since then he has campaigned on depression and mental health. His other books include several volumes of diaries, Winners and How They Succeed, Living Better, How I Learned to Survive Depression, and But What Can I Do?

1:37He supports Burnley football team and plays the bagpipes quite brilliantly. We talk about why he wants to coin a word and have it added in the dictionary. What perseverance does that resilience and perseverance don't. That life should be easy is the real mindset problem. The gap between perception and our reality. Why people who hate you online are the loudest. Whether labour should stop trying to out-reform reform. The serenity prayer, depression and feeling everything fully. agency and trying to write your own script. Let's begin.

2:20Hi, this is Umid Ashtari. And Natasha McElhone. And with us today, we have for the second time... Alistair Campbell. Hey, Alistair. How are you? Welcome. We've just read your book, The Civilians, which... But I've just had an epiphany about you. Can I share it? Yeah, go on. Basically Okay You want to be in the English dictionary And you were quite transparent about that But you also want to be knighted No Those two things 100 % That's what I got from the book 100 % not 100 % not God I thought you were really going to say something profound and interesting That I never thought of How long have I known you?

3:00Most of my life Yeah You surely know me well enough to know that I would never ever ever ever I just thought along with this new word, there may have been a whole Alistair revolution. No, 100 % law. Oh, my God. I think we're going to say something. Okay, well, you heard it here, guys. I thought you were going to say something like... He's going to reject that knighthood. No, it's not going to happen. It's never, ever, ever going to happen. Ever. Okay, let's catch everybody up what's going on. So, perseverance, resilience, perseverance. What does the word do that the other two don't? It's positive.

3:37and do you think the other two are negative yeah yeah perseverance you never you you've just been talking about nice films okay you never ever say i went to see a great film and i persevered all the way through because you're not enjoying perseverance is is it's a struggle it's doer it's resilience is like this table's resilient if i bang my head against this table for an hour it's table still going to be there and my head's going to be sore i'll be resilient because i bang my head against the wall for an hour. So perseverance is how do you take the negatives of an experience that requires perseverance and resilience and turn it into a positive?

4:16And here we are today, two very good examples in politics. Lula in Brazil. Right, yeah. Perseverance. Loses the first round. Fuck this for a game of soldiers. Motivates enough people to come out and vote. Get good out of bad. The students in Serbia, right? 14 years, Vucic is in power. They think he's a sort of terrible autocrat. They want to get rid of him. They mobilize. It's Percivillians. So they haven't seen themselves. I guess you could say Lula, yes, he's resilient. Yes. But it's more than that. So that's what it is. It's turning those things that I think are negative into a positive. First of all, the wonderful chapter about Finland and that word.

4:56Sisu, yeah. A bit like the way that we commandeered hygge, that Danish word for sort of coziness or warmth or whatever. I thought, oh, you could have done that. Like, we could just have that. We could use that word. We could. Because it's very difficult to spell. What, perseverance? Yeah. No, it's not. It's really not. That's two really silly things you've said, lad. The knighthood. It's really hard to spell. Spell persevere. No, okay. I mean, it's possible, but it's just hard. Okay. So what I was going on to say. Sisu is not an Anglo-Saxon word. I like sisu. I love the sisu word. Yeah. I mean, it's lovely to have new words, isn't it?

5:35Don't you think? That already exist, that are ancient and that we can use. Yeah, but we're not Finns. Look, I'd be very happy. But you're celebrating a Finnish quality, a sort of trait. The great thing about sisu, I think, this, you listeners should know, is a Finnish word that sort of means grit. It sort of means resilience. But what's interesting, when you talk to Finns about it, it kind of means whatever people want it to mean. Whereas perseverance is what I want it to mean. Now we're getting to the end of it. I think we've introduced words like zeitgeist and schadenfreude and all these things as well, right?

6:12Yeah, but they're existing German words. Yeah. Sisu is completely made up. Oh, I see what you mean, yeah. Sisu might be in the dictionary for all I know. It's been around a long time. What I was going to go on to say was just the things for me that are contradicting themselves is you say, oh, listen, I want to do away with perseverance and resilience on their own. I want to combine the two because they've both got great qualities and make this work because they're a bit joyless. Then you proceed throughout the book to talk about how it's really important not to chase happiness and to find a sort of state or a way of being and living that's about meeting challenges and turning them into generative experiences thereafter.

6:52softer so why are you trying to make this word that you say is so much more positive because I feel like on the one hand you're almost kicking against our current culture of trying to make everything softer everything's about you know your comfort or not I'm definitely not saying that yeah but no I what I'm trying to say it's not that it's not difficult it is difficult so you know in some of the examples i give i talk about my friend lindsey who's just had so much kind of grief and trauma right so that's been really difficult and it's still very difficult but somehow she's managed to keep her mind and her life in a place that she can she can always cling to positives even when it's as dark as her say that the reason she's never taken her own life is because the people she's lost value life more than anything.

7:49So it's not that it's easy. I'm not saying, oh, you know, everything's going to be easy. On the contrary, I actually agree with the premise of your question. I think we've got a real mindset, cultural mindset problem that we do think life should be easy. We do think we should get everything on a plate. And life has never been like that and it never will. But I think this is just… Or rather we're being told that that's what we should think. I think everyone's own experiences prove that that isn't the case. So therefore, they feel sort of alienated and disenfranchised because we're meant to be with whatever algorithm you're following in your phone or looking at.

8:25Or an apparently book telling you something. Yeah. So this book is for the times. It was never thus. I think it is. Because I think there's so much happening in the world that wasn't happening before. I start right at the beginning. I talk about the polycrisis. Now, there's always been challenges, but I don't think you've ever had so many come together at the same time and give people a feeling of existential threat. So blitz spirit was easy because we came together over, but more focused and less confusing. Look, we're seeing this now. One of the reasons I say Finland is the most per-civiliant nation on earth is because of the population of 5 million.

9:06They've got almost a million military reservists because they understand that the threat from Russia is real. I saw a poll in the UK the other day. It was something like 50 % said under no circumstances they would fight. So the Blitz spirit, it was real. People came together. They all understood that they needed to be on the same side of an argument. I think today that's very difficult for any argument. And even in Finland, there are a pretty small number, but there are conscientious objectors who just refuse to take part in this. But I think the reason why I think it is now, you go through it, climate change, AI, the fact that this is the first, you know, your kid's generation is the first growing up without any even remote guarantee that they're going to be better off than you.

9:55That's the first time that's happened. I think that is the driver of a lot of the kind of angst that people feel. We feel it on behalf of our kids and they feel it in their real life. so these are all to me things coming together that require us to have a different mindset otherwise you get drowned you get i can see the positive of this ai stuff too you know i do think in a way so the reality is i feel that a lot of this stuff um is just an awareness of things that are happening that we never had before to that extent i think a lot of crazy things and weird things were happening all over the place years before.

10:35They may have not been as global because we're more interconnected. You know, there is interactions between faraway places in our world, right? And that wasn't the case 50 years ago because the world was not as interconnected. Let's just go back to the time when the biggest fear in the world was that America and the Soviet Union were Yeah, exactly. Cold War, you know, Cuba crisis. And so that was the big fear. Yeah. Okay. Now one, that would have been horrific. It wouldn't have wiped out humanity necessarily. It could have led to that, but the reason I say AI, two reasons. You're right that we keep hearing they'll find a cure for cancer.

11:15Well, bring it on then, but I haven't seen much sign of it yet. There's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff. But my point is that when you have the architects of it, on the one hand, in many cases, the same people who have given us the social media revolution, which I think has been a catastrophe for the world. And secondly, are saying themselves there is somewhere between, some say 5%, some say 10%, some say 20 % chance of us wiping out humanity. All I'm saying is I think that is good reason to be worried. Yeah, 100%. Right. So what you're doing is Percivilian. You're basically saying, well, I'm going to look at the positive.

11:53Right. Okay. I'm doing a different form of Percivilian, which is to say at a time of potential polycrisis for the young people, our responsibility, all of us, is actually to think about how we avoid this polycrisis overwhelming their lives. So that's a percivilian mindset as well. So it all depends what the column inches of news and information you're looking at, as you know, and how supported it is, where the data's from, where the stats are, what polls you're looking at, whether they're even human polls or bot polls. And one of my biggest bugbears is that we just constantly hear this very, very negative narrative about how this new generation will never supersede their parents' economic success.

12:40It's like, one, is that the only metric by which to find happiness or to progress or look at all that they have access to? I agree. No, but I don't understand. I mean, look at Grace and how she has. My daughter. I mean, she does and was doing when she was incredibly young, all these innovative things with this technology and getting people to come and see her shows. There are massive opportunities there. I'm simply making the point. You know, the question was whether it's worse than before. And I'm simply saying, look, clearly our lives are so much better in so many ways, okay? And not least the access to opportunity and culture and tech.

13:20and said there's so much more that we didn't have before. I'm simply making the point that there are a number, I think a large number now, of relatively new factors, perhaps old factors in new form. There's always been technology, but the technological development now is so quick and it alarms a lot of people. We now have a breed of political leadership that we've not really had since the pre-democracy. Well, we have had Nixon and these type of people before. Of course, they're not the same thing. I agree with you. I'm not saying that, and by the way, one of the things I try to do about young people, I don't buy the idea that this is a snowflake generation that doesn't know what it's doing, that's addicted to them.

14:06I don't buy that at all. The fact that that is a general view of them, and sometimes that is their view of themselves, that is what I'm trying to change. Absolutely. I completely agree with that. I think the only point to make here is that we should discount the general dread and negativity by the amount of amygdala hacking that is happening to get our attention to make money off of it. Yeah. Right? I mean, I think that's basically what I'm trying to say. Sure, everything you say, fine, but let's take 30 % off the top because there's a lot of stuff that is done to us. Russia's misinformation bots, we know this stuff, right?

14:42We know what they say about the London Shakira law that's going to happen here. And MAGA people say it as well. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. MAGA people are probably driven by some bots here and there, whatever it is, and that we live in a crime hellhole. All this stuff is not true, but this perception is still hanging over us. And I have some really good, like, educated friends that are afraid of going around in London, you know? Because, again, the perception that is created does not fit the reality, and that's all we're saying, basically. I agree with that. And also, it's terrible. I mean, London, which I still think, I think it was yet again voted.

15:16to the city of the world. Yeah, exactly. There's London. You've got the Russians pumping this stuff out about, you know, you can't walk down the street without being stabbed. You've got the Americans pumping this stuff out that is a Muslim hellhole with this brown-skinned mayor that Donald Trump has a weird fixation with. So I'm saying that the percivilian mindset does not say absorb that. It says challenge that. Right. It says push back on that and actually try to get out a sense of a reality. Fine. We're on the same page. We agree. We agree. We agree. Would you take a Dame Hood? I mean, what I'm taking about this interview so far is that we really want to be Dame Natasha McElroy.

16:03But so, I mean, we are talking about this generation and you brought it up, which I think is good. But do you believe that like previous generations that had to go through more adversity were more trained to be per civilian? Or is it something that we need to teach? Is it a skill? I think it's a mindset. And I think it can be developed for sure. Whether you can teach it, you can't necessarily teach it. It's like people say, can you teach resilience in schools? But you can certainly teach people about situations that require it and people who demonstrate it. And that's one of the things I try to do in the book, show different ways of demonstrating it.

16:38That's the point. Your book, it feels like it clarion called to something from yesteryear that maybe we've lost because perhaps there isn't enough adversity and perhaps we're not being challenged enough. It's sort of the opposite of all the woes that you've just said. This poor generation coming in. There are a lot of challenges. There are a lot of challenges. Look, when you and I went to school, we didn't have to walk past people sleeping on the streets. I don't remember it. I don't remember that. Do you? Yes, of course. Or you're younger than I am. I mean, of course. Yeah? Yes. Well, I think it's worse than ever.

17:15I think it's worse than ever. I think there's an, well, put it this way, I think there's an acceptance of things that we would have considered highly abnormal. And so if something's there that you think is abnormal or wrong, my point is we all have agency and the ability to challenge that. The book starts really with politics. And in fact, it started out almost entirely politically. It became something very, very different. But I think we have a number of very, very high profile, quite powerful, strong political leaders around the world who basically want to destroy our agency, want to make us feel that we're powerless to make change.

17:53That's why I say Lula, and that's why I say Mark Carney, why I say Albanese winning again, why I say all the – why I say Andy – I start with, you know, Andy Burnham, he's become prime minister. Extraordinary kind of act of perseverance in many ways because he's taken out a serving prime minister with a huge majority because he's decided, and I think he was probably right, that if this goes on like this, the Labour, and in his view, the country, are going to a very, very bad place. We've got to stop it. That's Percivilians. But you don't think Keir is Percivilian? I think he had resilience. You see, if we had looked at Keir after he came in and won the election, you may have called them Percivilian.

18:38I would, probably, because if Percivilians is taking any bad situation and getting good out of it. He did that. Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. He stayed the course. So yeah, I probably would. So post-factum, you can change your mind. That's true. That is definitely true. And that is, but you know, everything's like that. You can analyze after the event. But let me tell you, there were definitely people who were saying at the time, this isn't going to work. Andy Burnham was one of them. I talked to him about it at the time and he said, this isn't going to work because they don't get politics. and so there were always doubts.

19:12There were doubts from day one. Does he have a plan? Right. Now, we're yet to see fully what Andy Burnham's plan is. He keeps saying we have this 10-year plan. But, and I say in the book, you know, it's early days for Andy Burnham. No, you do. And also you say that you didn't recognise or see early signs of him being a leader. But that is what I love about your whole book, is that life is full of surprises if you allow them to happen. don't make assumptions about because this and this and this have happened, the rest is going to be shit. And I feel that's what our media does, is it says, if you can't afford to buy a flat or to rent a flat, it's over, and you should be angry, and you should rise up.

19:56Well, I just find that messaging is so incredibly, not just negative, but it does the opposite of, what's the opposite of galvanizing? It's exhausting. this tsunami of some of my kids friends who seem incredibly optimistic they sort of say you know it's very difficult to say that you feel really positive and excited and optimistic about the future because people sort of think you're silly or you're not really tuned in I don't want to tune in because I find half of what I have to tune into just isn't true a lot of the amplification is from quite a certain mindset and there's another mindset which is just out there getting shit done and doing things and not partaking in this narrative but you know what's um interesting when i'm out and about talking to people and i do all these events you know business and schools and colleges and you can have a conversation because of the media landscape in which we're in so social media negative negative negative most of the mainstream media negative negative negative trump nightmare putin nightmare climate change nightmare all this stuff and that all comes up okay and i try and be positive and per civilian but it can get quite down okay and at the end i always say or you know i say a lot of the time okay we've had a pretty dark depressing conversation hands up who's broadly happy with their own life virtually everybody puts their hand up and i think it's this disconnect between the world that we live in where even with big challenges, a lot of people have good lives, and a narrative in our media and our politics that is relentlessly negative.

21:36Absolutely. So that's the disconnect. And essentially what I'm trying to say, and by the way, as somebody who's been in journalism and then in politics, I've been as, you know, as much a driver of that negativity at times. You know, when we were trying to get rid of the Tories, we were just, shoo, negative, negative, negative. Just highlight everything that was wrong. Yeah. And when I was a journalist, you know, bad news sells. Looking for bad things, yeah. Looking for bad things, yeah. So once you escape that, and here's the upside. I mean, the downside of this book I've just been reading about, the way that sort of screens are killing our reading and our capacity for long-form reading and newspapers dying, etc.

22:16There's an obvious downside to that. The upside, in a way, is that if you don't want to, You can escape the disconnect by escaping the media landscape. I mean, Fiona, you know, Fiona, my partner, she's not been on social media now for years. And I will mention stuff. She hasn't got a clue what I'm talking about. Because now she knows all the big stuff that's going on. She knows that Lula won the election. She knows that Serbia's just had a change. She knows that Andy Burnham's, you know, just been on breakfast telly talking about Europe again. Right? But she doesn't know all this stuff that she probably doesn't need to.

22:52the shit on social media yeah and i think it's by and large true that the digital twin that we've created about the world is as evil as possible as the twin right like it's not the reflection i think what's happened is that we frayed proximate social connections for these digital friends and people that we have in our lives and those digital places that we occupy are anonymous and pseudonymous and all these people can be the worst selves. And that becomes a reality while our proximate social networks that have been frayed, that we no longer occupy and we're no longer part of as much, are actually still very normal places.

23:34You know, when you speak to somebody on the tube, they won't jump at you. You know, they're actually pretty decent human beings. Even if you feel like you actually walk around with a t-shirt that says immigrant and like a person is probably of a different political... By the way, he's wearing a t-shirt that says immigrant. Of course, if the podcast was filmed, we'd know that, wouldn't we? Right. And so even if they're of a different political ilk, they won't jump at you. They won't do the things that they will do online. Well, and to that point, I remember, this is when social media was nascent, but being with you when you had a job that was influential and we had a lot of haters and obviously a lot of supporters, but the haters definitely had a much greater presence.

24:17Yeah. Or just they were more vocal and they got a lot more coverage. And I remember being so surprised if I got on a bus with you or we went for a cup of tea or something, the number of people that came up and wanted to shake his hand and just say, I love what you said the other day about that. Can you tell Blair from me? They would entrust their opinions, their thoughts. They would solicit your idea. It was extraordinary. I mean, you couldn't move. That's what I mean by the disconnect. Yes. But I'm just highlighting when you list all the woes, that is not what I see as lived experiences. That's exactly my point.

24:51No, I agree. No, it's interesting. I write in the book about how, look, there are haters, okay? There are real haters and there are people who really, really want to do damage to you. But most people are not like that. And it's funny you talk about the tube. Rory Stewart was telling a story the other day about a friend of his who came from South Africa. I think it was South Africa, and he got on the tube, but he went around and shook everybody by the hand because he thought that's what you did when you... Oh, come on. Sitting next to someone. You know, people would shake each other's hands when you were on the tube.

25:27People thought it was a bit weird and eccentric, but they didn't sort of beat him up. Yeah, exactly. So, no, I think the... I think this... But this thing about kind of, is it possible to have... Because where I agree with you, I think our media culture, exacerbated by social media, exacerbated by this war that's being waged against us by all sorts of different forces, is deliberately trying to make us feel more negative about our own selves and our country, and secondly is trying to deny us any sense of agency. And what I'd say to people, and this is why I love going to schools, because actually kids get this.

26:01If you give them permission to have agency, they'll seize it. But I think too often they feel they can't. So, yeah. What about a dame? You didn't answer. Would you take one? Oh, no, but you've written about it. What about knighthood? Yeah. When? In your book. No, I haven't. Should we look it up? I don't know if it's about knighthood, but it's about Charles' speech. Is this where I say that I've given up the Republican fight? Yeah, but that isn't to get a knighthood. that's that's sisu that's sisu that's you've got to know right yeah you've got to know when to give up i've got a lot of fights on i'm still fighting yes so yeah the point was that you uh have decided that it's a benign thing and that you don't need to fight it anymore actually that it has some beneficial but that might just be me giving myself an excuse not to rage against it as much as i i have done through most of my life yeah but i and i do think i thought it was i just thought it was interesting i i sat down and i thought right i've done a persevere in country finland yeah and persevere in people and persevere in politicians i've done perseverance in myself mental health and then i thought about institutions and i just so i actually had a short list um and do you know what there weren't that many there weren't that many that i could really think of alcoholics anonymous was an obvious no-brainer to me but i think the thing about the monarchy is it is unbelievably power civilian.

27:32People think it never changes. It changes all the time. It adapts. It weaves. And I do think his speech in Congress was just superb. And I loved your analysis of it as well. And also, it was the moment when I thought, I actually thought, listen, this idea that once the Queen dies, it's all over. Forget it. They've adapted. The Queen would never have made that speech. Yeah. She would never have made that speech. She'd have done something very different and people would have been hugely respectful. It was very playful, actually. I mean, was it Oscar Wilde? Who was it that said you telling people they should go to hell and they should enjoy the ride, something along those lines, right?

28:11It was that, right? It was just like... And also it was the theatre. It was like, you know, there was J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance, I think, was the only person that... Who picked up on. He knew what was going on. He knew what was going on. But at no point did I say, please, my haven't I heard? No, I know. I was teasing you. It was a tease. Well, I'm teasing you now. On AA, though, because you brought up AA as the second institution that you think is percivilient. One of the big tenets of AA is actually patience, right? And the serenity to accept things that you cannot control, which I do think is antithetical to your general kind of philosophy.

28:47It is, yeah. How do you square that circle? I square that circle by saying that the organization and its principles are percivilient. it's an extraordinary thing and i just love the story i guess it's also i'm trying to say this quality can produce amazing things and it can start from literally next to nothing yeah like that guy two guys two guys one guy gets off a plane he's trying to stay sober he's desperate for a drink he asks around he looks up churches he looks up all these places to the people at hotel, you know, anybody's trying not to drink. He finds this guy and that's Bill and Bob and they get together.

29:27And from that, there are literally, right now as we speak, thousands and thousands of people around the world who are having to be patient, who are having to be serene. My point is that has stemmed from what I call a kind of extraordinary act of perseverance. A lot of people that are in the rooms say, why can't government structures be like this? Why Why can't we find a way to rule ourselves in some kind of citizens' assembly that's formed like this is non-hierarchical? Well, I'm a great believer in citizens' assembly. I think we should have them for different things. I don't think you govern on a principle of AA, but I think the value of people just contributing or as little or as much as they want to a discussion at a different point, knowing that everybody in the room is, you know, to greater and lesser degree confronting the same things, but all in completely different ways.

30:26I think it's just a phenomenon. And also the Al-Anon thing as well. I mean, like, you know, writing the book about... But how much of it do you think that it's not transactional in terms of there's no money involved principally? I mean, I'm sure there's money involved for renting. Yeah, you put money in for the tea and all that stuff. But basically, you're not paying anyone to listen to you or you're not asking for... That's my point, is money has to be one of the separators. But I think the other thing is, it doesn't mean that, by the way, you don't necessarily have difficult conversations in there or that there aren't personality clashes and all that stuff.

31:05It's not like it's a kind of panacea and also… Well, that would be dishonest. I mean, we're talking about being able to have healthy, vibrant discussions where we disagree and people grow through that disagreement and then think differently than they did before, right? Or they hear and witness someone's experience and their prejudice melts away because when that person walked into the room, they thought there were a certain set of things that they turned out not to be, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, but it's, I think, yeah, the two things, I think listening and being forced to listen, which a lot of people in the room maybe didn't before, they just liked to speak.

31:40and secondly the lack of it being anything to do with money or status. I think what I like about it is that it's declaratively describing a different rule set for engagement. You know, the thing is like I feel we miss this. Like for instance churches are similar, right? Or places of worship as well. You enter that space and there's a different rule set for engagement that is implicitly explained through the tenets of that religion. And we have very few places and communities that are as explicit about a different rule set being applied in the space. And I think doing more of that, like having spaces where the rule set is explicitly, you know, forced upon people in a way of engagement with each other can create so much more beautiful interactions between people.

32:29And we don't have many of those places. Well, we have far fewer than we did. Well, that's one of the big regrets about social media is that that was never thought about enough. People think that is their, you know, even the word friend, you know, Facebook friend. Well, they're not friends. They're people you just decided to follow on a social network. No, I think what I like, the other thing I love about AA is just the people are everywhere, you know, and they go out, they go in a room and they go out and then they're just sort of. They're part of society. Yeah. I think it's one of the greatest things that has ever been achieved by two people meeting.

33:07Yeah. Yeah. And you don't think psychedelics were involved.

33:13How do you feel stoicism relates to perseverance? Oh, I got asked that this morning. Oh, yeah. Okay, interesting.

33:24I, well, I guess this is me hanging on to the idea of more positivity. Is stoicism kind of, you know, stoicism to me feels a little bit, you've got to take what you're given. and you've got to, so it's more the persevere, resilient style approach to life. And so, but I get it. I get why people can see the parallel. I just feel we're in this mindset. It's not a crisis. We're in a mindset problem. And what I've learned in relation to my own mental health, and it took me a long, long, long time to learn it, is there's so much we can do to change our own mindset. Right. And I'm thinking if I can do that as an individual.

34:05Oh, it's the absolute superpower. Your jam jar. My jam jar. And just my whole approach to how I think about my mental health. And describe your jam jar. So my jam jar is… Was it a psychiatrist who told you about it? Well, it was a geneticist who I was interviewing about depression. And she said at the end, it was a documentary about depression. I was asking her about whether it's genetic. and that was the purpose i was there she was in canada uh and then at the end and i've normally got a really good radar for people with depression she wasn't on my radar at all so at the end she said so how do you deal with your depression to me and i said oh well i see a psychiatrist and i take pills oh okay she said because i get very bad depression and i was like whoa really oh janine really you do yeah i do yeah i said how do you deal with it and she said i've got a jam jar and And she's the one.

34:59She's the author of my jam jar. So the jam jar, see, if this podcast was filmed, I'd be able to show this to the people now. But never mind. You're allowed to say that three more times. Okay, okay. How many times can I say the day would? None. I think you're doing it a lot. You're not getting a response. But you're a good journalist, so you'll keep going. So there's my jam jar. And at the bottom of the jam jar, I said, is your jeans. Nothing you can do about that. It's just sediment in the jam jar. The rest is your life. and your life, all of us have literally billions of experiences and billions of thoughts and billions of stuff that happens.

35:35And the big stuff stays in, good and bad, okay? Births, death, marriages, crises, happiness, all the big moments stay in there. And some of the other fluffy stuff as well. Most of the time we're coping and we're managing to keep our life under control. When it gets too much, the jam jar explodes. and that is when we get ill. And she said, we spend all our time trying to undo what's in the jam jar when actually what we should do is grow the jam jar. And I didn't really fully understand it. But about five days later, I was back in London, woke up in the middle of the night, I got it, I understand it.

36:16In fact, weirdly, because I was asked about this as well this morning by somebody else, they said, would I send them the picture of, My jam jar. Your maison. No, no, that's La Bon Maman. La Bon Maman is the real jam jar on my desk. But this is the one that I drew. And I've got to tell you, it's faintly obscene. Show us. I mean, unfortunately we can. Oh, okay, yeah. Okay. Jeans. Life. Then it goes FFF, going to family friends. MA, meaningful activity. Sleep diet exercise. Then it's the personal stuff. Burnley Football Club, bagpipes, my dog, my bike, et cetera, music, curiosity, creativity. And I've got all these things.

37:00I'm right at the top before I've got to psychiatrists and medication. And since I've done that, and since I've got my word, it could be just age and life being in a different place. But my depression, I still get depressions, but I've just got it under control in a way I never did before. And I think that was a turning point. so that's like you know and it's it's and what it what it means is now when i get a depression coming on yeah i i just i just do things in relation to all the things that i know i've helped before yeah um the the thing about stoicism in the traditional sense i know we kind of took the word in various different directions in the modern sense is that you should feel everything fully your response can also be to weep that is absolutely fine it's not that stoics are supposed to not weep or keep it all in matter of fact you can respond to it with your full range of emotions because life is to be fully lived but you then move on knowing full well that that is what you're supposed to do that these things will yeah defined like that is very similar yeah exactly i think that's what i wanted to say does perseverance allow you to also take life at the full range of emotions and feel it yeah oh yeah oh yeah and and but but i think the thing i often feel is the only things we can actually control as individuals are what we think and even then it's not always the case but what we think what we say and what we do and what we and what we do and what we say about what we do that's nothing else okay so as long as you're understand that as you do that there are going to be big setbacks and also i mean i've got a chapter in the book about grief I just think grief is such a fundamental part of who we are.

38:48And it gives us, I mean, you know, talking to you, it gives us some of the worst moments of our lives, and yet then becomes the foundation of something bigger. I've been amazed how much, one, how many people I've lost, but how much I still feel them in my life. I just want to go back to We can control what we think I think I disagree with that Okay, no, I don't normally say that Why did I say that? I normally say say and do But I threw in the thing I'm just really thinking Put it this way, what goes on inside our head Well it's the Homunculus thing That homunculus thing that right from the beginning Of the day, and I'm sure it's manifest Greatly in depression Where the the negative talker or the negative voice in one's mind, which could be called thought, is telling you how useless you are, how hopeless you are.

39:49And it's very hard to control that. Yeah. No, in fact, I retract that. You're allowed. That's good. Yeah. I wouldn't retract that. No, wait a minute. Most of the time, most of the time, most of the time, we can control what goes on in our head. I think what we hold on to. Sometimes we can't. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, listen, we don't have to talk about the moments of a mania or like, you know, where we're super impulsive or something that those are extreme states. And in a normal state, I do get to choose what I want to hold on to, you know, as am I going to be am I the ADHD brain or am I the person that is a little bit like overly jumpy here and there and can actually come up with a lot of different ideas and the spot and like moves around a bit too much.

40:34You can choose which label you want to apply. And I think that is actually a superpower. And that in itself is generative. But choosing a label or self-identifying as something or not choosing it or dodging it, I still don't think that's thought in one's mind that does run rampant and cause so many issues for human beings. And that's what makes us so complicated and what makes AI are trying to align or trying to align AI to us. It's a nonsense. No, some of my worst times have actually been when I'm clearly unable to control what I think. Yeah, of course. Yeah, particularly when I can't sleep. Of course.

41:14And my mind is literally racing in... It's a compulsive thing, right? But even then, even then now, with my jamcha, with my perseverance, I think I'm better at being honest with myself. This is happening. Yeah. And it's happened before. it's like that happiness curve isn't it after 60 people report being a lot happier isn't that just to do with how many times you have been around the circuit and you're able to recognize these signs earlier and earlier and earlier i would say it's more like you know on you unlock levels as you live right in the beginning you live as a teenager i was talking about this like as a teenager you just live inside your own head and you do what you think and all of a sudden you realize okay this other person has an opinion on what i say as well and then society has an opinion on what i say and then i actually start questioning whether society's opinion on something is right or wrong and whether the other person's thinking about me is right or wrong and how i want to be and how i am and where there is a gap and i want to you know these are all things that we unlock over time it's not that it's there and i think you've when you age you obviously unlock the levels and when you unlock this level where you can say okay this is what something that's happening but i have the metacognition to take distance from it let it happen and let it pass me by, I can see myself going through it, but I don't have to identify with this what's happening right now.

42:35That's, I think, the level that you unlock eventually. And not everybody can unlock it. You mentioned in your book, because you have spoken a lot about your breakdown, the early one, that kind of changed the course of a lot of how you approach life and your habits, but also just it seemed to me to change your relationships really dramatically. Someone said to you, do you think you hearken back to that? Both of you and my sister say that. Okay, both of them. Okay, they're two of your closest relationships. I just wondered if it was like one of those criticisms of someone self-identifying as a depressive or as a this or as a that, or was it just them thinking, listen, you're not that person anymore.

43:18Why are you still carrying that big rucksack around? Yeah, yeah. And the answer is because I don't carry it as a big rucksack. I carry it lightly and I carry it positively and well. It's not baggage. I don't feel baggage. No, I feel empowered by it. Whereas I think they... But without discrediting how serious it was at the time. No, no, it was really serious. And I understand why they would... I think for my sister, because my brother had a far worse mental illness than me. He had schizophrenia. I think my sister probably thinks, you know, it wasn't that bad. in that sort of judgment, she's not being judgmental about it at all, but I think she just feels we have carried a lot of baggage on the mental health front.

44:04And I think with Fiona, it's just that it happened a long time ago. Why did I go on about it? But the reason I go on about it is because I do feel it. Because you're here now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it feels fundamental. And as I say in the book, you know, it was also, I thought my career was finished. I thought Fiona would leave me. I thought my health was going to be like this forever. I thought it was schizophrenia because why would Donald get it and I didn't so all of that is going on and I just, it's a yardstick in a way for how well I do now and how lucky I am now. And that maybe it was propulsive.

44:39It was, no doubt I've heard it, yeah. The day itself when I had the breakdown was like probably the worst day ever. You describe it really brilliantly in this book and I've heard the story a few times but I thought it was Rory about the book I think you brought it up as well I thought it was really good the what? you chat with Rory about the book oh the interview yeah Rory did really well but don't listen to that because it's not it's a podcast it's called The Rest is Politics exactly it's the number one podcast in the country nobody cares about that one no the thing that is interesting that you bring up in the book that we haven't touched on yet is that evil people can also be percivilian yeah but I've reflected on this okay tell me if I've reflected on this with the help of quite a few people i did an interview on news night and i talked about how look i hate trump i hate what he stands for putin's clearly evil but you have to say if you're you've been in power 25 years in russia 26 you've got perseverance and trump you know to have lost an election still denied it and anyway somebody wrote quite a few people got in touch and say it said no because And this woman put it really well.

45:52She said, as I read it, your definition of perseverance is getting good out of bad. He gets bad out of good. That's so true. So what I need to recalibrate this is they have many of the characteristics to associate with perseverance, but the most important, getting good out of bad, they fail on that. Because just for our listeners, this all starts with the heroes like Mandela having perseverance. Well, he's the patron saint. Exactly. So you read and you think, oh my goodness, yeah, and who else is there? And then we go into the start, end of the spectrum. But I think you have technically, is that a form of perseverance to lose seven elections and keep going?

46:35It is. Trump's energy alone, I don't care what drugs he's on, his energy alone. at his age is, it's an act of perseverance. But I think the values piece and the integrity piece is so important to this. That's right. And what I got mostly from the book was just how to live with integrity. I mean, the new word, I can take it or leave it, the value system. You like it. You love it. Well, I love the book. Such an easy read for anyone who's thinking about to get someone for Christmas. Yes, yes, this is what we're here. And you cover so much territory in a really gentle way. and it's sport and it's politics and it's personal and it's short why should it be short if we're talking about Percivalience it's the long road isn't it it shouldn't be short it is the long road yeah but I think there are going to be offshoots okay no doubt I think there could be a Percivalience book for sport I think there could be a Percivalience book for kids yeah I think that that one would be good I think there could be I think but I'd say kids could read this yeah they could yeah but I'm talking about you know primary schools I know I know yeah because my last book I did for the old politics films and then kids yeah yeah so there's this Yitz quote the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity you know when we talk about Trump and Farage and all those guys right it just feels like the populist right has that right now and people in the centre are kind of lacking it do we need to get more percivilian in the centre or oh yeah yeah and also see this is what I think I do think Andy Burnham is is doing something really quite interesting.

48:13So when we had Jeremy Hunt on a podcast called The Rest of Politics, and he said something really interesting, which I've thought about a lot, because this was when Keir Starmer was prime minister, and he said, Keir Starmer needs to take a leaf out of Donald Trump's book. Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. Bear with, bear with. He said, I don't mean by lying, I don't mean all the bullying, I don't mean all the sort of making up nonsense, but he is ever present in the conversation. And I think in the modern age, leaders have to be ever present in the conversation. And that Andy Burnham is... What do you mean ever present?

48:49He doesn't listen to anyone. No. No, he's everywhere. He's everywhere. Oh, I see. Sorry, sorry. I was saying he's at least present whenever I've seen him filmed having a conversation. Oh, no, he just... There's no listening. What I mean is what he says is in our conversation. Oh, yeah. Unfortunately, I was hoping we could avoid talking about him. Well, that's why I'm talking about Andy Burnham. So Andy Verner at the moment is ever present in the conversation. You know, you wake up this morning on breakfast telly again. And he was on your pod as well. He was on the podcast and said something consequential about Russia.

49:20Yeah, that was, I think, a big moment, by the way. But that's why I, and I never say this kind of thing about what my allegiances are politically, because I don't really have any. Very Labour. I just try and take the best out of whatever anyone's offering. But I did feel that Keir Starmer, the reason why he wasn't ever present on media is because he was actually doing some frigging work. Work takes time and it takes focus and attention and concentration. How can you be flying all over the place with your face on TV shows if you're really doing the work? I don't understand it. Well, because I think it is part of the work, I'm afraid, whether you like it or not.

49:59I think in the modern age. It's a part of it, but there still has to be real work going on under the table. Well, and I'm pretty confident in this, but I was worried at the start because it felt a bit lymph lamp. And I was talking before we did the podcast with him. I was talking to one of his communications people. You're talking about Brennan? Yeah, logistics and all that stuff. And I said, are you worried about this? The Tories call him the TikTok prime minister. And they said, do you know what we do? The social media team get 10 minutes in his diary every day. And we have a few ideas, he has a few ideas, and we film a couple of films and we pump them out.

50:40And I think you have to do that. Effectively. And it's an effective form of communication. And the thing is, at the moment, he is in part driving an agenda through the communication. It's interesting, the Brexit thing, he's done it again today. It's like, just keep doing it. Yeah, yeah, very gently. Keep going, social care. Just keep on it. There'll be something in the budget probably. You know, so I think Keir tried too much, or his strategy was too much about thinking, we've lost these people to the right. Okay. Now, a huge proportion of the people who voted for reform never voted Labour before and will never vote Labour in the future.

51:20Okay. You can get that from the polling. Some maybe. Some maybe. But we've spent too much time worrying about trying to get people back that we'd never lost. We'd lost other people. Yep. And what's happened, I think, is that Labour have stopped trying to out-reform reform. The Tories have stopped trying to out-reform reform. And as a result, both are doing better. And here's an interesting thing in the interview with Andy Burnham. Kenny Badenow's speech at the Tory party conference, a lot of it was really critical of Andy Burnham and of Labour. Okay, it was a pretty traditional, you know, anti-speech.

51:54Yeah. When we interviewed Andy Burnham, you know, it wasn't the interview. It was somewhere where I saw him speaking. the only part of the speech that he mentioned was when he talked about, and I thought she did something really important. Yes, it was with us. It was with us. The really important part of that speech when you attacked reform over, over racism and said, you know, don't nobody ever tell me my son's not English. And it was interesting how that's the one thing he took out of it. In other words, he ignored all the stuff where he's saying Andy Berlimits, Andy Berlimits. And I just thought that was really clever.

52:26so I think we're getting close to top of the hour if we wanted to give people advice how they could become more percivaliant what would you suggest? poor obviously get the book for Christmas read it take take this is a manifestation take Dame Natasha's advice I mean I think I hate answering questions like that Yeah, I know. Because it's like, you don't know who you're... It's a very personal thing, no doubt. Yeah, I think so. But I think what I would say is every single one of us has agency. Every single one of us can do something to make our life better without anybody else's help. Every single one of us can care about something, decide what we care about, and make a difference.

53:22so I think the important thing is is actually deciding for oneself what are the things I really care about and then really care about them um and then do something and show you've got agency and I think the more you in in little in small things show you have agency then I think it just becomes a habit that you want people I think people may enjoy agency they enjoy thinking oh i did that so i think it would be to to identify and seize agency you know 100 i think a lot of people have become automatons as in you know they're forced into just reacting in a way that is pre-ordained uh yeah write your own story write your own script that's why i do think the the whole look i'm as bad as anybody i've got my phone here i'll I don't have it on at night, I turn it off but I look at it first thing in the morning I'm checking it the whole time for this, that and the other but I've got better at just thinking that is not real life write your own real life story over here that's over there for phone calls, emails information, stuff you want to see but root it out yourself write your own story I think is what I'd say I feel like you're not misrepresenting your book but maybe I want to add something or reflect something back that I got from it which was I've read you know quite a few of your books and even though I know you're a socialist quite often when I hear you talk about certain things it feels quite individualistic okay and I feel actually what I got out of it was the opposite what I got out of relationships no actually acts of service like the people that you celebrated most are those who are out there doing stuff for other people, which I don't mean to sound, yeah, in hectoring or, yeah, you know, if you stop looking at stuff, help someone else.

55:22But I feel like so much of what's turned your life around is actually caring about how these things affect other people. Yeah, but that's what I mean by write your own story. I didn't mean that, write your own story as in. No, it's just in case it comes across like that. You know, like in the primary schools, it sort of has, I just remember being stunned by this when I was looking around the schools, all the messaging on the walls is, you know, You know, individualistic. Yes, it's all about you can realise your dreams, reach for the moon and you'll hit the star. But it's all about you, you, you, you, you.

55:50And I just thought that's very difficult if you've got 30 kids in a class and they're only all thinking about themselves. What does that create? It creates some elbowing and some jostling. The school song was You Belong. It was all about together. I wasn't meaning to be individualistic about that. I don't think you were in the book, is what I mean. No, no, no. But even when I said there, when I said write your own story, I didn't mean about yourself. I mean, you decide what matters to you and go and change it. And I think it's trying to say to people. But when you were talking about clawing one's way out of depression, not only your own, but you were citing other people, whether it was Lindsay or Mandela in jail, he knew that he had support outside jail.

56:34But he also knew that he had a mission and a cause, and it involved making sure that other people didn't live under this oppressive regime. That was government. He felt this responsibility to others. When the question is, what advice would you give to people? That's why I hate the question. It has to be starting with the individual. Yeah, I think it's because, you know, there's only one Mandela. Yeah, of course. And by the way, I think there's an awful lot you can learn from that. Funny enough, I got a really nice message today from Jonas Garstora, who's the Prime Minister of Norway. who'd read the book.

57:10And he was telling me about, he was the first... Name dropping. It is a slight name drop, but it relates to what Dame Natasha just said. He was the first foreign politician to visit Mandela in jail. Oh, wow. And he was just sort of describing the whole thing. And so I remember once Tony Blair said to Nelson, but there's another name drop. Tony Blair said to Nelson Mandela, they were having an argument about Libya, and Mandela had got out and said some sort of pretty pro-Gaddafi stuff outside his press conference. And Tony said, the trouble is you're such a saint, you can say anything awesome. Nobody can criticise you.

57:48So he's kind of unique. But I think the things I learn, I take from him, is the attitude that he took to his own situation. You talk about the team. He had an amazing team of millions of people around the world. Most of them you'd never meet. And he saw his job as just to be and to inspire them. He decided he learned Afrikaans while he was in prison. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that he could talk to the prison guards and be nice to them. He did a law degree. He persuaded the other prisoners to do a degree while they were in prison. I mean, just an amazing guy. So he's kind of – so I guess my advice to somebody in prison would be do a degree.

58:32I think what you're also saying is maybe read biographies of people that have had a lot of agency in history and have done really interesting things. That would be another way to get there. The other thing that I would say is implicit in your message is that we have a global view, but we don't have to tackle the global thing. As a matter of fact, a lot of the things that you can do, you can do locally. And I think you should maybe consider the global landscape, but do not get overwhelmed by it. You don't have to act at that level. You can act at a very local level. And that's through that that you actually get some forward momentum.

59:16So that's, I guess, a starting point. Anyway, you can end up at the global scale. Well, it's interesting because Fiona would say that she definitely goes local. Yeah. But she's a great example of starting. I remember you talking about her being on the school boards when your kids were little and then continuing on after that. I just think that could be an example. I know she's not a self-centered person, quite the opposite. But even if someone is doing something for their immediate family or their own interests, that then actually can upscale that and it suddenly you can become useful and you're good at it, then you just stay on it and it becomes a much, much bigger thing than you ever intended.

59:53like so many of your experiences were you got asked to do something you got you find it hard to say no you got cajoled ah there's some resentment about i've got to go to you arrive and then you're surprised and you've put a ball camp example yeah and for sure in my life so many amazing things and connections and if i've ever helped or been effective in a moment it's always through something unexpected that i never yeah i never planned or anticipated and certainly didn't draw up. So say yes is another thing. Yeah, I think say yes until you have to say no. Well, I think, I think the other thing I'd say is just be relentlessly curious about what saying yes might lead to.

1:00:33Partly because of the depression and partly because I do have a reputation as being a bit kind of grouchy and, you know, argumentative and bolshy and stuff like that. I think people are probably surprised when I say I broadly have a very positive mindset. And I think it's become more positive over time. And I think I have done a lot myself inside my head to make that the case. Yep. And it might be age. It might be age. I don't know. You said the thing about when you get over 60. I don't know. But I feel I'm the same person, but I think differently. And that's because I've used the experience I've got to make myself think differently.

1:01:14And I think that's the other thing I'd say is you can, you know, be open. even though you as i say we can have a lot more control of ourselves be open to the idea that other other people might be able to help you yeah um i could i would be absolutely nothing without fiona i'd be absolutely nothing in the way i think about things had it not been for the i can't even remember how many years it was that i had this psychiatrist that i saw regularly um and i'd be nothing without the experience i've got and that's the whole network of people and institutions and so i think curiosity is incredibly important i think the other and curiosity by the way is part of agency because people the other thing that i think we do you said it automaton the other thing we do by sort of thinking that happiness is having a good time and this sort of endless scrolling on our phone is interesting when it's not in the main it's not is that we shut out real curiosity.

1:02:13Real curiosity is not looking at one TikTok video and then another. An opportunity, I think, in a way. An opportunity brings up, yeah. Yeah, and I very much resonate with the idea of being an optimist in so many ways, against all odds. I think that's part of Percivilians in a way. It's the core tenet of Percivilians in a way. It is about being an optimist. And you can only get the good world if you can imagine it. You can't get, you can't get, you're accidentally gets to the perfect utopia. You really have to work towards it. And so therefore you have to have a positive vision and a positive attitude towards it to begin with it.

1:02:53But look at the way, look at the way Zelensky communicates. I mean, how the hell he does it, it's beyond me. But he does it, he's still there, he's still, he's a positive life force. Yeah, that's it. well so to summarize grab the book definitely get it as a christmas present get it as christmas wait for the paperback with the dame natasha back on her quote on the front cover it's happening you said it um be open and curious to what's out there swipe list learn from setbacks and bad experiences right and and embrace them right rather than just parking them right and or by being defeated by them rather and yeah read Mandela's biography I guess no read his speeches his speeches I think so yeah oh and read the King Charles you set homework in your book you said that his majesty yeah Alja it's a pleasure to have you on I appreciate that you have come around for the second time you're our first guest and it's glad am I the first second timer no no I'm Maria Popova okay yeah okay cool but nonetheless We really appreciate it.

1:04:01Thank you. Thank you so much.