Man vs Australia (with Jimmy Carr)

This is a new level for me. I am trying to push the limits of what I'm comfortable with. That's exciting, but it's also very stressful. It's me screaming into a mirror reminding myself of all of the that I need to keep an eye on. It's exciting, but it I'm feeling it. I'm really feeling it. Guess what? Tour's back, baby. I'm about to fly across the world, actually, to go to three countries and play eight shows in 3 weeks. So, Australia, New Zealand, and Bali, I will soon be inside you. We made it. Landed in Sydney. Body clock has no idea what time it is. Today's Sunday. It's an Australian Sunday, but it's everybody else's Saturday. The show's on Thursday. So, the plan between now and then is to just take care of myself, acclimate, try and get my body clock in line. Name of the game today is don't fall asleep. That's it. If I fall asleep, rest of the week's [ __ ] Where am I? Right. When in Australia, do as you're The last time I had some of these on, I was right there. Jimmy's what? I'm I'm watching the kit. The kit? I'm at the kit. He's got to watch the kit. Dad's Dad's looking after the kit. We're going to have a We're going to have a dip, and then we'll be back. Yeah, Jimmy's all just looking after his stuff. Good on my boys. Awesome. I was a belly flop in a hole. Lame for his gig. Jimmy's lame for his gig cuz we haven't come back to get the [ __ ] club. Why didn't Jimmy Carr get starts so late at his gig? Well, apparently, James Smith and Chris Williamson's decade friends didn't get out of the sea for long enough. Cheers, Dad. Jet lag update. I think I've completed it. I think this crazy sci-op inverted wake up first thing in the morning thing. I think it's worked. I went to bed 11:00, and I woke up at 7:30, and I actually feel like a functioning human. But, I'm not allowed to see sunlight yet. So, I feel like uh like a slightly mincy Batman. I keep the curtains drawn, put the glasses on, keep the lights low. Today's going to be fun because going to get to run through the show with the boys cuz they haven't seen it yet. Max, Dean, Alex, none of them have seen the show. So, the boys are going to come around today, and we're going to have a look at everything that I want to do from a production standpoint, which is exciting. It means I can get creative with how we film it, how we make the socials off the back of it, how I want the lighting to be. I think today will be fun unless I crash at 3:00 p.m. This is Darling Harbour in the middle of Sydney. And that's the Darling Harbour Theatre. [ __ ] cool. Last time, we did smaller show, medium show, bigger show on a show that I'd run 30 times before. This time, more people, 2 and 1/2 thousand people for a show that I've never done before. That's me. Makes my butt hole feel like this. The inner colonist in me wants to board these ships and retake THIS GREAT LAND. DON'T BE SHY, DARLING. WAIT. We were friends once before. I mean, by the way, I mean board the [ __ ] wooden thing. I don't mean the actual warship behind it that's got [ __ ] modern weapons on it. No, no. I want me, my friends, and a cutlass. >> Dude, imagine shooting cannons with the boys. Give them THE TRIPLE CANNONS. THE MODERN BOYS WOULD NEVER get to understand how good it is to go plundering with your mates on the weekend. Plundering. When's the last time you plundered? You haven't plundered anything. >> Couldn't tell you. I I haven't plundered in years. You better not be out plundering again, Alex. Oh, Mom. But I don't want to. >> Mom, all my friends are plundering. I think I'm going to go and do it. Hey, how are you? Yeah, I'm good, man. Good to finally meet you. How are you? Is this where you did your coffee like competitions thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like yeah, this is where I trained to become a world-class barista. I can't bring gifts. Oh, amazing. I was going to say, did you bring merch? I did. So, Sydney's going to be a big one. [ __ ] two and a two and a half thousand. Yeah. Uh I feel okay. It's 4:00 p.m. Jet lag's a myth. Jet lag's a myth. It's been good. Went to lunch with Ali Abdaal and Matt surname I can't pronounce. How do I pronounce it? >> Matt D'Avella. Matt D'Avella. He [ __ ] rules. OG YouTuber now turned super dad. Ali, OG YouTuber now turned super dad. The show's in 3 days and I need to kill probably about half an hour of material. And each word that I get rid of makes me hurt inside. It pains my heart, but I can't do a two and a half hour show. That would be insane. There's no interval, either. No one's got a bladder that big. The next 2 days are just going to be dedicated to trying to get the show completely dialed, which basically means killing all of the bits that I can't use anymore. I say that's the next 2 days. Tomorrow morning I'm doing Australian morning TV, and And tomorrow evening I'm going for dinner with Tony Abbott. I think was the ex-pres- prime minister something of He's important. Most important thing is that jet lag is a myth. And I vow I I vow I vow I vow I I I I vow I vow I vow alpha that. I vow alpha that. I vow alpha that. But Tony Abbott You're only keeping Irish. Think so? Save it for St. Patrick's Day. He's our leprechaun. What the [ __ ] do you mean? Are you ready? How long do you need the green ones? [ __ ] prick. I thought I looked all right. Well, this is a professional. A professional. >> This is a professional and I asked, "Do I look ready?" And you said It's gorgeous. See, this is the sort of gorgeous This is the sort of gassing up that I need. Welcome back. He's gone from reality TV star to global podcasting powerhouse. Across 1,000 episodes, Chris Williamson's Modern Wisdom series has started conversations changing the way people think, feel, and look at life. Over a billion downloads, billion with a B. So, you've obviously inspired and motivated a lot of people of the listeners. But what have you taken from the people that you've interviewed? One of the lessons, especially given that I reinvented myself at 30 32 and then moved to America at 33, was it's never too late to reinvent yourself because people have got short memories. And most importantly, they just don't care. So, whatever it is that >> Yeah. You They're not thinking about you. Um and one other one is that adversity is a terrible gift to waste. That most of the growth that you have in life comes from your lowest moments. So, you know, in the mid-90s, there was a woman who was living in Edinburgh in quiet poverty. She was married in a relationship that she called abusive. She fled to Portugal with her daughter and this manuscript of a book that she was working on. Her husband tried to stop her from leaving by hiding the manuscript. She said she was clinically depressed and suicidal. She used to walk her daughter to a cafe because she couldn't afford to heat her apartment so that she could be warm while she wrote this book. She got rejected by 12 different publishers. That's 12 different people saying that she wasn't good enough, right? This rejection wasn't just a small thing. It was an existential crisis and each rejection further emboldened her to go and work harder to get this thing done. So, clinically depressed, suicidal, abusive relationship, got this daughter, doesn't have a heated home. J.K. Rowling went on to sell 500 million copies in the Harry Potter franchise and became richer than the queen. Adversity is a terrible thing to waste. >> your podcast. What about this live tour? That's what you're here for. Tell us what do people get on in your in your live presentation? It's a solo show of me on stage. It's kind of like a TED Talk with a ton of jokes in it. Uh, it is in Sydney this Thursday at the Darling Harbour, then Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane. Perth and Brisbane are already sold out. And, um, it'll make you feel less alone and help you understand yourself more. That's what I'm here to try and do. I suspect it was all those years as a nightclub manager that set you up for this, like an understanding of people. A little bit, yeah. Human nature Human nature is that it's most transparent when people are five drinks deep. We hear that a lot in television. It's quite quite extraordinary what you've been able to achieve. Thank you. I appreciate that. I think what's most extraordinary is I managed to tell J.K. Rowling's origin story in 30 seconds. I wasn't The girl The girl with the dog just walked past, but looking in, and smiling like and then she came back the other way doing the exact same thing just Don't be obvious. Don't be obvious. >> charming. >> We double as Chris's bodyguards. All right, should do this. Oi, day three in Australia. Thank you for getting us all here safely. Thank you for helping us spread the needle of jet lag. What an unbelievable fluke that is that I actually feel a human and I think the boys do too and we've only been here for 3 days. Got one more day. Relax. Get ready before chaos and war zone begins. Keep us calm and regulated. Let us do the work that helps make the world a better place. Or at the very least fulfills that. Amen. Amen. Let's go. Most secular grace of all time. It actually becomes a bit of a wish list after a while. It's like, "And I want I want my knee pain to go away. And I I I I would like uh uh blazer with a with mostly hand movement. And I would like Spent the last 24 hours sleeping, eating, and preparing. I didn't have my set completely finished because I had to rush from the last working progress in Austin last Monday. I just rushed out here. So, it's been a bit of a sprint finish to get the show done. And that's exciting, but it's also very stressful cuz the first show is the biggest show of the entire run and the time when I've got the least experience of doing this set, this brand new show. I'm doing some things tomorrow that I've never seen done live. I'm not doing [ __ ] back handsprings and stuff. There's not going to be a break dance number or a [ __ ] musical, but I am trying to push the limits of what I'm comfortable with. And I'm I'm doing some things that are very revealing and push the audience to reflect. There's way more audience involvement. It's adventurous and kind of feels dangerous and that's what's cool. It feels like a high wire act that could sort of go wrong. So, there's there's stakes and it's exciting but it I'm [ __ ] feeling it. I'm really feeling it and I just want to enjoy it. I really think I'm going to enjoy it. But, the reason I'm going to enjoy it is because of how terrifying it is. This is a new level to me. This is the first show of the Aussie New Zealand Bali tour. This is a big boy. This is 2 and 1/2 thousand people. This is the second biggest show I've ever done. And the first time that I've ever done this set live. You just don't know exactly where it's going to hit. Like, you're not sure of the direction. Everyone's still a little bit unsure of what works, what doesn't work and you can only really gauge that with an audience. And also coming to a venue like this cuz it's so schmick, so professional. There's so many different options that we've got. Sometimes you can't have too many options. It can fight a little. So, yeah, some of the things that we're dialing in for vision. Getting the timing right for vision, getting the timing right for lighting, getting the timing right for walk-on tracks, all the audio cues, the switches between some of the different lighting scenes and the different phrasing that we're using. Make sure we can hear what's going on out the crowd. Then you've got the lights. Also, communications between the tech team that have literally only just seen the show during sound check and then having to communicate that. There's a lot of those little moving parts going on. Some people could think that because I used to be the headliner, I'd be better at it. I'd be better at it, too. I'll tell you the truth. I should prefer I prefer being a number two. Way less pressure. Real change is very difficult. This was something I talked about in the last show. People will lose 5 lb, they'll move companies, but how many people do you know that have lost 50 or 100 lb or have changed careers or moved to a different country. And most people only get to deep deep change when they're in deep pain. Like all of your biggest points of growth in your life have germinated from your lowest moments. So that line that J.K. Rowling had a rock bottom is a very firm foundation to build from. You want to try and do it before you get there. But change is very individual. So it's difficult for me to say without going So what is it you want to achieve? What are the obstacles in the way? What are the specific specific fears? Uh gentleman there. Yes. What does fulfillment look like for me? At the moment it's just enjoying each day. Like especially for the last couple of years I've achieved so much objectively. Like one of the big takeaways from tonight which hopefully it will help the boys is um Why is it that we feel like we have achieved a lot objectively but it hasn't touched us subjectively? And there's all of these different stories and lessons and things that I try to bring in. I think it's a much more difficult show. The first one was getting from zero to one. Need to get your life together. And as you change people are going to go wow, you're different. And that's hard, right? That's the lonely chapter stuff. This one is about the problems and the challenges that people make, intelligent people make whilst doing everything right. Why is it that I feel deeper than most, work harder than most, achieve more than most and yet I still feel existentially empty? What the [ __ ] It's like there's this bottomless pit. Like going to a buffet and never getting full. I've spent a long time sacrificing the way that I feel for something that I want to achieve. And now I'm significantly more happy to sacrifice things that I want to achieve for the way that I feel. >> Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Williamson. Yes. Overcoming burnout. Overcoming burnout. You are speaking to patient [ __ ] zero here, my friend. Obviously, spaciousness. You need a little bit of time. The problem is how much of our sense of self-worth is taken from how hard we can push ourselves. We will just keep on going nose against grindstone because that's where we get our sense of self-worth and belonging. That's where the world has started to give us a degree of love and acceptance and praise and now we matter. You need to learn that after a while working harder is not going to fix your problems. There are very few problems in life that working harder won't make better. But there is a certain category of them that working harder will make them worse. And burnout for me, I used to have this happen to every October. So, freshers week when university students come back was the middle of September until the start of October in the UK. The second week of October for a decade I got depression. I couldn't get out of bed for about 5 days. And it took me nearly 10 years to realize, "Oh, I hadn't slept for more than 4 hours like 3 weeks." I'd worked every single night at a club night and I'd been out drinking for half of them and I'd got up and just checked my I hadn't trained, I hadn't seen sunlight, I hadn't eaten correctly. I watched last night's Dominos and a a beer. Oh, that's burnout. And you can do that. You can just basically go as hard as possible, blow your engine, and then go again. But, in my experience, after a while, it's unsustainable. I can't do it anymore. Oh, dude, I love the show. So good. Second time seeing Chris. You think you've already soaked it all in because you've heard all the podcasts, but it's a very different experience, especially in person. Just being honest is how relevant it was for me. I recently started back at therapy, and so much of the conversation today actually mirrored a lot of the conversation I had this morning with my therapist. We talked a lot about overachieving, and it didn't necessarily surprise me cuz I kind of expected him to go there, but just how relevant it was and how much it kind of like hit for me during the entire show. It surprised me with the the breathing exercises and the groundedness. I think like as a whole, that was really beautiful. It was good just to when Chris was getting the crowd to take a deep breath and actually sit in the motions and the feelings and then have everyone grounded. >> I loved how together the audience felt, and he made everyone feel super comfortable. >> The meditation task actually just stood out. I found it very interesting how he did a lot more interactive content. >> You know, three times he did crowd work, and every time he managed to his tonality was just right. He knew when to speed up, he knew when to slow down. Take it in. Cuz if you've got high standards, you look past the moment. They're like always looking over the shoulder of the present moment for what's coming next. >> Bro, you nailed it with the thing where it's like you're you're a high performer, and your standard is to always succeed. Cost of confidence. And it's dude, when you said I was like Chris's show was like this unique thing where you can actually get immersed and feel like you're connected to him. There's portions when you can chat, comment, have instant feedback, and then points where you get real deep. If I could take something away, it would be to really dig deep into your purpose and why, instead of searching for something on the surface, search within. Being at peace of mind, giving myself time to really just know that, you know, I'm enough. And he can really just make that impact on making you just crystal clear know that it was amazing, life-changing. Oh, [ __ ] me, that's hard to do. Really decided to put the difficulty level up, mate. It's twice as hard as the last one. Oh. I mean, it's good. It's very exciting. It's very, very nerve-racking to do that. Super nerve-racking to do this show. So much that can go wrong. There's so many moments where someone in the audience can can do something or say something. We got the tech wrong tonight. Uh the lights were up too long. Song came on at the wrong point. It was fun. It was exciting. It was really exciting. So. I'm glad that I did something that wasn't safe, that didn't just run the old show back. And I really hope it landed. And uh I need to go to bed. All right, bye. All right. Melbourne tomorrow. Chris Williamson live at the Palais Theatre in Melbourne. Is he mostly wise? That was all right. That was [ __ ] Thing is, that the Australian accent, they always go right up at the end of the sentence until they finish talking, and then they go down. You see what I mean? Mostly wise? This one. It's me. Excuse me. Excuse me. [ __ ] you getting at you little I don't think you want to go down that path. Maybe you get specific tasks. I was at the Royal Albert Hall essentially. I was just sent to Chris and I was like The The thing that was weird is we started with the bigger show first. So I said he will give that the most importance. So he'll go Sydney's the Catalina Wine Mixer. Then he'll also forget it's the first time he's ever done that live event. And he'll go was it perfect? No, equals failure. Strange time before a show. You know, there's no loud music. James has [ __ ] off. He's on stage. I'm just waiting, thinking. Tonight I really want to connect with the audience as much as I can. Uh last night was completely road testing everything. I think I've got a good idea about what it is I should focus on. So I just want to enjoy it. Be here, have fun. Been here before, done this before, sold out. Beautiful Friday evening in Melbourne. If you had your life over again, what would you change? >> If I had my life over again, what would I change? Jesus Christ. I'd fear less. I think a lot of what I've done, a lot of what's driven me to get to where I am has been fearing not doing it right, not getting it right, not being enough, not something and I don't know who the not enough is for. I don't know what the fear is of, but it's been one of the things that's pushed me. You know, this entire show is a thinly veiled autobiography. It's me screaming into a mirror reminding myself of all of the [ __ ] that I need to keep an eye on. Not running away from a life that you want, running toward a life that you fear thing. I don't think that you need to do it to improve your performance. I think that you can get to where you need to go without hating yourself in the moment. I don't think you need to use self-rejection as the fuel that pushes you that. What do you bench? What do I bench? It's a good question. My best bench was 140. What about James? James has got four-figure testosterone. The last time that we were on tour in Australia, him pointing at me in the gym as we were training and then the same thing around North America to then come in with he's brought [ __ ] hypodermic needles with him on tour. Mate, it's my peptides. No, it's not, James. It's your testosterone. Yeah. Awesome. This is [ __ ] unbelievable and I'm not allowed to throw my undies on stage, eh, Chris? So, this is the Modern Wisdom version of throwing your undies. I think the way that it was structured was just awesome. The way that got the crowd involved coming together as human beings, campfire, factory reset, you know, you're staring into the flames. It's awesome. I felt like the room was one. It was really nice to get 2,000 people in the same moment was very special. He makes you feel like you know him. He he breaks that barrier of you being the crowd and him speaking. It was it was super special. It was a reflecting point. By the end of it, I think I got a couple of things to think about. I'm trying to be a better dad, try and, you know, take life not too seriously, reflect, enjoy the journey, not just about the what's at the end of the rainbow. I think too much into the future, but I forget to live. I think And was the biggest thing for me that resonated. He makes I guess deep questions sometimes seem so simple. The answer can be so simple. Doesn't have to be as complicated as we make things out to be. Jonah Hill I'm like a little rabbit. All these girls Say goodnight. All right. You need to get out while you can. It's the day after the Melbourne show and we're still here, but Zach is playing a festival today. So we're going to go watch him. That's pretty [ __ ] [ __ ] that we're across the planet doing different things in the same cities at the same time. But the likelihood of this wasn't planned. It was going to be in Australia one way or another. He was only going to be playing for himself or playing for me. That was it. It is so much more fun to do this with my boys. The fact that I get to travel across the planet, see friends that I'm not with, hang with friends that I am with. It's sick. It's unreal. I'm just enjoying it. It feels like high pressure because this show is so [ __ ] new. Like changing 20% of the show every night, which is kind of terrifying, but also I guess this is where reps and improving the skill set of doing the live thing come from. And the whole point of this is to push the limits to try and do different things, to try and be adventurous, to build the skill of doing this live. It's kind of weird, man. You know, tour is awesome. It's [ __ ] rules. But it is very insulated. Like you're kind of kept in this weird bubble and then just deposited in a new place and deposited in a new place. What it sounds like is, "Oh, you get to travel and then do a bit of work." But it's not. It's you do work and the whole world moves around you and the work stays the same. So, I guess I'm That's a skill as well, enjoying tour, living tour outside of the bubble is a skill that We need to do this. We need to say, "Instead of going back right now so that we can get food so that we can go to bed or so that we can go to dinner and do the next soundcheck whatever." Like maybe we can just find 15 minutes so I can actually have a memory of being in Melbourne and St. Kilda and actually know what it feels like. So, not only am I learning the skill of being on stage, I'm learning the skill of being on tour. And those are two very different things. Learning to enjoy it, learning to relax, learning to make memories with the boys, learning to not take it too seriously, but then not take it so relaxed that you're not improving and constantly iterating. So, I guess this is the end of the first leg, but it actually just feels like the start of tour cuz I've got cities coming up that I've never been to before, shows coming up that I've never been to before, and countries that I've never been to before. I'm going to have some adventures with the boys, so stay tuned.