Sharp Truths From A British Comedian - Jimmy Carr

This is a big deal for me. Uh because I listen to the show so much. I absolutely love it. I slightly could fanboy about the whole thing. I really I I I love what you do. I love this show. I'm nervous about it because I kind of go, "Well, normally it's an expert with something to say and I'm like, "Oh, I've got dick jokes if you need them. Well, that do." Why are you such a fan of it? I don't know. I think the breadth of the subject matter and I think that thing of going it's in a there's a lot of it's that signal and noise. There's a lot of noise out there and I love the idea that I listen to this show and even stuff that I well maybe I wouldn't read that book but I'm interested in listening to them for an hour and a half or two hours and then often times is something where someone says something you go wow that's brilliant I've got to go and look at their channel or I'm going to go and find something. So, I'm using it almost kind of as a your research as a resource for me. And I think a lot of people talk about diet and exercise and they talk about um how it makes them feel and they're eating right and they're staying away from processed foods and they look fantastic. And then you ask them what they're watching and they go, "Yeah, I'm watching Love Island, but like the old series and I'm smashing through it." And I don't know if you're aware of Love Island, but it's it's for it's for it's for terrible people doing terrible things. I mean, the idea that you go that information diet is such an important thing of like I think you said it here where you're sort of a uh if you tell someone the last five podcasts I listen to, it's a pretty good read on who they are and what they want to do. And I love the other thing I love about this show is I think it's got it's aiming up. Everything seems to be like the way that you conduct interviews and the way that you engage with people. It seems to be you're trying to bring the best out of them, which which I I like anyway. It's very positive to listen to, but it's also like everyone you have on is trying to make your life better. It's it's very well-intentioned as a as a show. Um I I think it's it's terrific. And the the the transformation in you, I think, has been sort of sort of extraordinary. the journey um to this is is just kind of amazing when I see you I mean I I genuinely got quite emotional with the Naval Racadant uh thing of because I knew what that meant to you and as someone who's a big fan of podcasts and a big fan of I suppose modern wisdom in in the broader sense as well but someone like Naval who's done maybe five or six podcasts ever and one incredible burst of wisdom on Twitter you go, it's slim pickings if you're a fan. He's the JD Salinger of the podcast world and then you get him on the show and it's like I felt like that was the Is that your Mount Rushmore completed? One more Rogan. So, it was a Mount Rushmore, but then I realized there was five. So, it's more like Thanos's glove with the different Infinity Stones. So, it was before I started uh Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Alander Boton, and Naval Ravicant. That was before I started the show. Those are the five I wanted and I've got four. And after the last episode with Rogan, I woke up the next day as you have today with still the anxiety of well, you know, I didn't put my foot in my mouth too many times and so on and so forth. And uh he texted me and was like, "Love the show yesterday, man. Like always a pleasure to sit down. By the way, we still need to get a book a date in to bring me on the show." Him on. So he's selfinvited. So I was like, Joe, you can give over, you know, I've got so many other people to speak to. Um, but yeah, there's a there's definitely a little bit of a sense of like gold medalist syndrome, uh, where I think, [ __ ] like, what do you do when you've completed the things that you said that you were here to do? And I imagine that that must be the same in your industry as well. you know, when when I can start selling out theaters, when I can start selling out arenas, when I can start selling out stadium, when I get the Amazon Prime deal, when I Well, we've got to run it back for season 2. I've got to ensure that it wasn't a fluke. I've got to do it twice. That's the problem. Is it not Morgan Hel uh the the the genius that is Morgan Hel that said it's that like success is not moving the goalposts? It's that thing if you constantly like that that uh uh hydonic treadmill of like as soon as something good happens you go yeah but but what about the the next thing and yeah I said it was that amount of money but now it's this amount of money and I think the um most ambitions should be um internal they should be you should be heading for a feeling and if it's process driven cuz kind of success is a is a is a moment you know even if you get the the big thing whatever it is and there's lots of those markers along the way and I've kind of um I'm trying to think about celebration in a different way. I'm trying to think about like celebrating those moments like the equivalent of Nal Ravank comes on your podcast. Um you do a co-headliner with Dave Chappelle and show what whatever the thing is that you go oh that's cool. M um celebrating that as being like celebration is gratitude in action and that thing of like gratitude being the mother of all virtues because if you if you kind of track it back to that my kind of fundamental belief is that um disposition is more important than position. So where you are in the world you could be you could be miserable or you could be you know in entirely at ease and it's it's kind of dependent on your disposition. Are you looking at the donut or the hole? because you could always look at what you don't have. You could always look at what what's missing or who's doing better or the other thing. But, you know, kind of being grateful in the moment. And the thing that seems to shift that is is kind of uh is gratitude and celebration as a form of gratitude. Like trying to trying to reframe a lot of stuff in my life in a positive light. So that thing of like I travel constantly which is incredible sort of privilege but also incredibly boring a lot of the time. It is right. Travel is boring, but um but going places is fun and you're seeing new things and it's this idea of like boredom as unappreciated serenity. There's guys up mountains in Tibet for 30 years trying to get to where I get to in Denver airport of like h and slightly like not being overstimulated like like allowing yourself to be bored seems to be the that's kind of where creativity bubbles up. Mhm. Right. You kind of allow yourself to be bored and you allow yourself to kind of just have have that kind of um space. I think it's very difficult to white knuckle creativity. I'm aware that you as someone who has quite a sort of uh structured creative process, but I would imagine that if you look at the absolute big winners that you've come up with, they've probably kind of been bestowed from above in a oh [ __ ] that's it. It's that thing. It's sort of almost divine inspiration that then gets refined in the process. Yeah. I think there's something about Yeah. I don't know about the refining really. I mean often it's that thing of like you're writing on stage because you're in a flow state. So I started doing a thing a couple of years ago where actually what it was I mean jealousy really. I was looking at Andrew Schultz and I was looking at Matt Refe selling out arenas across America and I was how are they what's going on here? And then and I know those guys a little bit and I like him a lot and what's happening and putting out crowd work. See why I do a lot of crowd work but but what oh I should do that. Oh, dummy. Every day is a school day. So, I kind of watched it and started putting out these crowdwork videos and it has grown. I mean, and it's also that weird thing of like going I hadn't realized how much improv I was doing in a show. It's like 20 minutes a show of stuff we can put out that's unique to that show and doesn't kill the sad doesn't doesn't touch the written material. And it's a lovely thing where as a comedian you want to kind of I I think I'm in the service industry, right? and I I'm going to be fine because I I make something people want. I make them happy. No one remembers what I say, but they remember how I made them feel. And I tell jokes and I want to turn up suited and booted because it's a proxy for respect, right? You I respect you. You've paid money. You've come out. You've given me your time and attention. There's not there's nothing else. All that we have in life is time and attention. And they've given me that. So, I want to prepare a show and make sure there's like 150 incredible banging lines that are like and they've been filtered from a thousand lines that were okay but not didn't quite make the cut. And then it's that thing where you go and also I need to hold that space where okay perform those jokes and then okay what do we got? Shout out anyone got anything? Join in. And it's like I suppose the analogy was would be it's like doing that kind of improv. It's like watching a magician do real magic because you're doing the thing in real time and it's freestyle rapping. Yeah. And it's the I wonder how much of Chappelle said this thing a while ago and it really struck with me of like he was talking about a bad gig that he had and Dave does not have many bad gigs but he was talking about Evil Conval. He said evil conval wasn't paid for the jump, he's paid for the attempt. And I was thinking that's a brilliant way of looking at it because actually how much of what we do as comedians is bravery. How much of it is being paid to Yeah, there's freedom of speech, but it isn't freedom of consequence. And this [ __ ] lunatic is saying anything. This guy's I'm taking all the filters away. And if you think about what friendship is for me, it's the person you have the least filter with. Again, another thing I got from Modern Wisdom, but it's the least the least filter. I was going to ask this. I was like, this is like a best of episode of Modern Wisdom. I know. It's really lovely to hear you on other shows and I wonder how many other people pick up on it. I'm not to say that I'm your intellectual daddy or that the people on the show are, but it's so nice to hear your interpretation of ideas that really mean a lot to me that have maybe the inspiration consciously or subconsciously has percolated through. So I'm like, [ __ ] that sounds familiar. [ __ ] that's like that's like a that's a that's a work on a homosy quote from 2000 2023 that I and I try and give you prompts. Oh, you do all the time because Yeah, but it is that thing where you go it's your your your friendship group and your the the things that you're taking in. I think also like for a lot of people, right, I'm in a very privileged position. I'm fully aware of that. I get to know you. We get to be friends as well. If there's a question you want to bring up, we can WhatsApp each other and we get to be friends with George Mack. There's there's a cery of people that, you know, we know each other and there's a lot of mutual respect there and I feel that and it's it's lovely. But I think really the sweet source of this show is I think most people that listen to this show have that relationship with you as well. It's just they they didn't get to go for a steak last night, but they kind of go you, you know, they're I think it's the same thing of going I think probably most people listening to the show are like lowle a bit concerned about your health at the moment like because you you sort of you don't really talk about yourself that much. I think the other thing about the show is it's it's very much about it's kind of it's very dense compared to other podcasts. I wanted to that was the point I was about to make with regards to your set and I saw you in Wembley at the second of a matinea I think on that evening. I think you'd done two in. Oh yeah. One at 7, one at 9:30. One for me, one for the tax man. That's how that's how I operate my touring system. Two shows a night. Very good. Um and it your set is incredibly lean. there is very little wasted time, including in the warm-up, which doesn't exist. And uh I realized that if you were to have when I first started the show and still now, just because of my disposition, if you were to have Rogan at one end, which is uh information dense but can meander because he likes to vamp and and chat [ __ ] and then if you were to have Tim Ferrris at the other end, which is, you know, very sort of structured, it's almost like a Blinkist sort of cut down. Well, well, I'd even go further. I' I'd say to to the to the other absolute extreme, Morgan Hel has a 15minute podcast that you listen to and go I All right. I need I need half an hour to process that. Yeah. Cuz it's so dense. Yeah. It's the Almanac of Naval Ravoc podcast. Yes, he did. He did one the other day which was like, oh, just like 15 things I've been thinking about and after each one you had to kind of pause it and go, need a day. Right. Okay. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, he's he's [ __ ] brilliant. So, and I think that I sit, you know, I'm a bit more Ferris Pilled than Rogan Pilled, but I like I like people feeling like, huh, that I really got a lot out of that. I feel like it's I I think it's really true of comedians, and I think it's increasingly true in the in this in this world, the podcast world of like you leak. You don't say a lot about yourself on the podcast, but you leak like that. Like who you are sort of Oh, okay. There's like clues. Yeah, there's there's little clues and it's you can't hide who you are in this kind of long form for long, you know, there's no pretense. It's really it's great. Uh just on your idea around uh boredom being an uh insight uh creator, this beautiful work on uh the magic you are looking for is in the work you're avoiding. It's a twist on that. The answers you are looking for is in the silence you're avoiding. Yeah, I [ __ ] love that. The answers you're looking for is in the silence you're avoiding. You need fewer inputs, not more. I' I'd agree with that. Yeah, that's really uh it's very it's it's interesting that thing of like cuz it's two British guys, so we feel like we should apologize for saying anything deep. There's there's like there's a natural uh don't get ahead of yourself. George Mack had a great line yesterday. I went for a walk with George and he was talking about, you know, Britain's very cynical. Uh America's full of [ __ ] which yeah, such a great kind of It is. Yeah. In in in England, you need to be aware of the cynics and avoid them. And in America, you need to be aware of the [ __ ] artists and avoid them. And both of them are applauded. The cynics are praised by most of British culture. And the [ __ ] artists are praised by most of American culture. But yeah, I uh I think I've realized the sort of people that I like and I think it's why me and you have become friends. I think it's why George is friends. Mosy, Brian Callen, you know, like this little whatever we want to call it, squad of degenerate people trying to work out how the world works. I like earnest people. Like people that are earnest, and my working definition of earnest is the bravery to take your emotions seriously. Yeah. I think you can be I think there's a there's a sweet spot between being very uh sincere, but you don't need to be serious. you could you you kind of you're real but it's not you know and it's very I I always think that thing of like it's very easy live as well to to switch um you know because there's slightly a code switch thing going on where you go well on stage I'm there to do a job we're in a theater this is the space you're there to be funny but occasionally now and I'll allow myself put it out on social media as well if something comes up that's heartfelt or or or beautiful sometimes you answer a question seriously sometimes you just go so or someone needs it uh and seen a few of those. There's a couple of those moments like in a show where and I feel like I need to earn it. I feel like yeah, if I do 20 minutes of fast balls, then I can there could be one nice moment where you make a point. But I but no one wants that. No one wants to come to a comedy show and have someone uh wag a finger at them and talk about, you know, being progressive. It's it's that thing where you go, "Okay, I'll be super funny." And then I feel like my audience will go, "Okay, he's he's made a good point there." and nothing overly controversial, you know, it's not like uh but it's like that thing. It's really interesting that thing of um I don't know whether it's an age thing, but feeling like I can do that a little bit more now. Yeah, there's certainly an extra kind of credibility that comes with age that I'm I'm feeling too. Uh you look at Peterson and he's got this sort of patriarch persona, right? He's got sort of the gray hair. He's got the wized fingers that look like a [ __ ] druid and you think, "Yeah, he's able to, you know, talk to you about the deeper meaning of life and stuff like that." But if you wear your cap backwards and walk in in Crocs, really, you've capped your upper bound on how much of this you can be taken seriously when you talk about, you know what I mean? So, I think I don't know because I think it's much more um it's much more relatable. What will people listen to? Like it's always that thing of like I wrote a book a couple of years ago u which kind of a biography self-help and it was like it's that thing of going it's um echartle for for dummies. It's it's because there's a lot of people that love that kind of stuff or would love that kind of stuff but they're not going to read that kind of stuff. It's like there's no going to find time in their day sufficiently accessible. Yeah. And it is it's tough. It's tough to kind of uh to get through because that stuff is actually it's um it's sincere and it's very serious and I think actually you sometimes do need to sugar that pill. I think comedy does that. I mean Peter McGro I think you've had have you on the show Peter McGro? Um so he's got the theory of benign violation. I was chatting to Joe about this yesterday. the idea of like um uh violations being uh anything that um messes with the norm, what you were expectations of life, patent interruption. So something terrible happens in the world and you make it benign by making a joke about it. And so this idea that jokes cannot be offensive because there's a um there's a by making it a joke, you're putting it in this kind of sacred space. It's like kind of like alchemy. Yeah. your your your process. Well, I often think like if someone's offended by a joke. I I I I [ __ ] up my I didn't use strong enough juju. Not enough magic on that. That wasn't funny enough to make it worthwhile for them to go to that place. I asked Schultz the same question. I said, "Are there any jokes that shouldn't be told?" Like, is there can you think of a joke that shouldn't be told? So, saying something is too serious to joke about is like saying, "Oh, that that disease is actually too serious to treat." or saying to a journalist, "Oh, we can't report on this story. It's horrible." Like, you'd never dream of saying that and you go, "Well, I feel sort of the same way about comedy. It's all sort of fair game." It's a question of how funny could you be. Well, that was how how skilled could you be in in doing that. Andrew's response was when I said, "Is there anything is there a joke so abhorentt that you shouldn't make it?" And his immediate response was, "Is it funny?" Yeah. He's like, "If it's funny, you can get away with whatever you want." Yeah. I think so. I think it's not even getting away with it though. The the idea of I don't buy into the get away with Yeah. And the p the punching up, punching down. I don't buy into that because you in order to buy into that you have to buy into um the Frankfurt school and uh Fukco and Derida and Leotard and all of that and the idea that power dynamics and that cultural any cultural uh work is a demonstration of power and I I frankly I don't I mean I was I was kind of brought up in that. That's when I was at university that was all um postmodernism was was thriving. the first time around. Yeah. And it was well it was it was very very interesting and valuable in the lab and very much like co it escaped the lab. Great in theory horrible in practice and has had horrific effects. It's ah it's out of the lab. It's the not number keeps on rising. It's uh 28 days later, but with but with a meme, but with an idea. And I don't I don't buy into that punching out, punching down, because it's a in order to be punching down, you'll be looking down on someone. I'm not looking down on anyone. 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I heard a quote of yours, if you're going to have an interesting life, you can't have all of the other interesting lives you would have had. What's that mean to you? Well, I suppose it's that thing of like it's incredible the things you won't do. Like when you think about like the potential that we all have like we've all we're all privileged in a sense right because we all get one life and then we get given you know different gifts right so there's no there can be no equality because we're all born different right so it's that thing of going and it's not better worse or the same it's just different everyone's kind of different and I think that for me that the the idea of going Um, you can you can't have an easy life and a great character. You can't you've got to kind of go out there and and decide what you want. That's the first great adventure. And then getting it is the second great adventure. So, it sort of speaks to that thing of like wishing wells work, but they don't work when it's not the magic. The magic is you going, "Oh, what do I wish for? What do I want?" Being the fundamental goal. Like if you know what you want, that's incredibly powerful. Most people don't. Mo most desires are mimemetic desires. And you get into Renie Gerard and the idea of going, "Well, I want that watch cuz he's got that watch and I want that car cuz he's got that car and I'd love that girlfriend." It's like, how many guys are dating girls incredibly hot? They look amazing, very impressive. They don't even like the guy. It's like it's a weird flex. Yeah. They're they're in love with what other people think about them for having that. It's that Will Store thing, that status game book, which is again I mean it's just he's such a genius writer. Uh I love him. He's got a new substack by the way all about storytelling. Wonder book. He comes out this week on the show that uh a story is a deal. Yeah. He's he's he's an outstanding outstanding human. But that idea of like you choose what status game you play, you know? So, so what steady this game came and and again another thing from modern wisdom that idea of going well there's there's [ __ ] you money and there's [ __ ] you freedom and there's [ __ ] you family. I really I mean that really I took to heart as going oh that's very interesting and the idea of going what are the things that you're not going to do because we live in a world that rewards specialization and it strikes me that our whole school system is like geared wrong to get you to do all the different things you know and and really you know young kids are like what are you going to get from being okay you're terrible at maths but we're going to get you up to a C grade yeah because what the world needs is someone who's right at maths. No, competent at maths. No, but but you're brilliant at English. Well, [ __ ] lean into that. Spend all your time doing that, you know, specialized, especially as as the world changes. I think leaning into, you know, what it's that you often get, I don't know what it is about age or my position in life, but I often get asked like, oh, you know, what you think I should do? And it's that thing of like, what do you think about all the time? That's the best indicator. There's a at Georgie's birthday this year in Austin, Dicky, one of the guys, came up with a [ __ ] wonderful, I haven't written about it yet, but it'll be in a newsletter soon. It's great idea. He calls them shower thoughts. And the shower being one of the very few places reliably that people don't have some sort of external input going on, right? And he said, you can tell what you care about by what you think about in the shower. Tell what you care about by what you think about in the shower. When there's no other inputs going on and you're in this liinal space between being unclean and then drying yourself off with a towel, what do you think about? Where does your mind go? It's like that's what you care about. Yeah. I think expanding that space to uh 20 minutes, an hour, the answers you're looking for in the silence you're avoiding. That kind being alone with your thoughts is a that's a that's a lovely thing. How do you think about that? cuz you're spending all of this time on the road, airports, could watch a video, can listen to a podcast, can do the whatever thing. How do you try and purposefully uh create that space when you're busy all the time? I suppose that thing of like going if I do eight shows a week or be more than that on the American tour, but it's normally eight shows a week. So, it's that thing of like going well, I want to try new jokes at every show. Uh it's quite sort of stoic really. I mean, it's just like that thing of like going, well, there's I always think how hard you work is important, but what you work on is essential. Like that's the key thing. You can work so hard on [ __ ] and distract yourself with it. And like my job's quite easy because it's easy to analyze and to to pinpoint what's the thing that makes a difference. And it's for me it's jokes. It's the love language. It's the the model. And the more that I spend time with them, you sort of go, it's sort of like time in the gym, I suppose. So, when you're uh thinking about nothing and letting your mind wander, that's the that's when it comes up. Or you're listening to something and it's outside of your purview. You're not listening to comedy. You're listening to someone talk about uh economics or politics or philosophy. And you're then thinking, what could I make a joke of that? So everything's within you're seeing it through that the lens of be very careful if if you are the average of the five podcasts you listen to the most you got to be careful because that's going to shape your you listen to too much Gary Stevenson you're going to be talking about Marxist economics and stuff like that be very careful what sort of algorithm holes you fall down in in particular yeah good right good be careful how do people know what they should be doing with their lives people coming up to you and asking you for earnest you know sincere life advice how do you work out what someone should be doing with their life I don't I mean, it's uh it's very odd uh to be like I I'm I'm quite uh taken with simulation theory. Mhm. Um because I don't think it's true. I don't think we are in a matrix and this is a video game. But if we are, I've definitely got a cheat code, right? Where I get to be a a touring international comedian with a, you know, some lovely kids and a great life and great friends. Like that's an incredibly sort of privileged position. I think thinking about the world as as if simulation theory is real and this is all a simulation is very interesting because if you imagine life as a game, what are you solving for? What's what are your metrics? And I think when you really kind of analyze it and went, well, if if this was going to be a scoreboard at the end and you're only really competing with yourself, there's nothing in being better than anyone else. there's only um honor in being better than yourself last year. So the idea of going well what would be the important things what would be the you know it's and it's that thing of you go it's not the um the the achievement so much as the uh process enjoying the process seems to be it. So that thing of like I you know what what should people be doing? It's not for me to say it's all life is self assignment. It's that thing of like what are you happy doing? What where's the where's the flow state for you? What's the thing that brings you joy? It's not even like the 10,000 hours I slightly think misses a trick because although I buy Yeah, you got to work really hard and really long to get good at anything to get competent at anything is hard. But what could you stand to do for that long? Because if it's I mean it's Naval if it's play to you and work to them you're going to win 100% of the time. Yeah. much better question to build on that what looks like play to you but looks like work to everybody else is what pain do you want in your life this is Mark Manson's twist on it he says any pursuit no matter how existentially aligned will regularly come with a huge side order of pain like it doesn't matter how much you love doing comedy if you want to be a comedian that means you need to spend an awfully long time writing jokes that never see the light of day apart from one set where no one laughs you go Yeah. [ __ ] I spent ages on that. No. No. Forget that. You can't enjoy Taxi Rides to the Apple. Correct. You have to enjoy the whole thing. Correct. Correct. And And as soon as you go, "Oh, no. No. I just like the bit where I'm on stage." Well, no. It's not That's not how life is. You have to take the whole package. Mhm. Yeah. James James Clear has a [ __ ] unbelievable take where he talks about if you want the life but not the lifestyle, you guarantee disappointment. Like if you're going to pursue this outcome, but you're not prepared to do what it takes to get it. Okay, you want to be a touring musician. Sounds fantastic. You need to spend probably between five and 10 years just learning the instrument. This is before you get to perform. You don't really get to perform on stage for that long. And then when you start doing that, the first 10 tours that you do are maybe going to be in someone's borrowed van in the back of a van. You're not going to have enough money for hotels. You're going to be playing to 100 people. No one's going to care about you. You're not going to have any money. You're not going to know if it's going to work. You have no promise of glory on the other side. You're going to be racked with self-doubt, constantly uncertain. The whole experience is going to be tarnished in this like weird liinal like discontent about whether this is actually the right path to be on. And then maybe you reach a tiny bit of escape velocity and perhaps get toward micro notoriety. Okay. And then we maybe get a tour manager and then we start to get looked after. That is the process of becoming remotely great at anything. Yeah. I always think that thing of like with young comics, it's quite easy because you go if you're going out 300 nights a year to do open mics, it's kind of the same life as playing arenas. It's not vastly different. You going out and telling jokes, you go out and do a show like where you go to and how whether it's an audience of 50 people or 15,000, it really is a very similar process. M so it's if you enjoy that, if you love it, then great. Uh good question on um what should I be doing with my life? You said before, uh if people were making a movie about your life, what would the key scenes be? Well, it's a weird thing actually where like the cancellation episode, I was thinking like whenever you get cancelled or not cancelled, dragged, whenever you get like a tough time, it's like if my life was a movie, this would be the best episode. Mhm. If my if my life was a like a 10 part on HBO, they they dedicate an entire episode to that. You saw the episode where he said the terrible thing and people got very upset. I mean, I always think you've got to right size it with with uh you know, there's different types of cancellation. Like often times it's I told a joke and some people didn't like it. Wow. Okay. Yeah. It's like who cares? There's a um the patron saint of comedy is St. Lawrence and St. your industry has a patron saint. Yeah. And he's a 3rd century martyr and he was a early Christian obviously and uh St. Lawrence was uh condemned to death and they burnt him alive. Uh so they put him on like a a metal kind of I don't know like I don't know what you would call it. A [ __ ] skillet. Yeah. Like a big skillet. Skilleted. And they and they they cooked him. Okay. And he said after 10 minutes of being burnt alive, uh, turn me over. This side's done. And that level of bravery and [ __ ] you is very inspirational. It's like that thing of like going, it's almost like stoicism to the extreme. Like the what we we h we can't control the world. We can have a strong influence, but we can't control anything. And [ __ ] is going to happen to you and how you react to that is life. Was Plato the guy that was forced to be killed by the government? Was that him? What drank poison? I think that was Socrates, wasn't it? Socrates. Thank you. Um, there's a great story about him apparently. Very like big [ __ ] you energy. I think I need to channel my inner Socrates a little bit more. And the way that it worked when they condemned him during the trial, he was saying, "You think that you're punishing me like it was a a jury of like 150 people. This is how much." And typically what you're supposed to do is be grling. Socrates is supposed to come up and, you know, bring the crying wife, bring the crying children, do he didn't do any of that. Yeah. And he started chastising the jury and he said, "You all think that you're punishing me, but you know that I'm an innocent man. So really, you're punishing yourselves. There's nothing that you can do to me because I know that I haven't done the things you whatever it was disturbing the youth." You know, this sort of frivolous claim that accusation and he gets sentenced to death and he's supposed to drink hemmlock. Hemlock. and he's back at the cell and all of his family's around him and his friends are around him. And the way that it worked, there was not really a time limit on when you had to drink the hemlock. His friends said to him, you know, you don't need to you don't need to drink this. You can spend some more time around your friends and your family. You can you stay you like play the system and drag this out and he just drank it in front of them immediately. I just love how much of a [ __ ] you it was. Like you all think that you're condemning me, but really you're condemning yourselves. You'd think you're punishing me, but you're actually punishing yourselves. There's nothing that you can do to me. A quick aside, you've probably heard me talk about Element before, and that's because I'm frankly dependent on it. For the last 3 years, I've started my morning every single day with Element. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mixed with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. Each grab-and-go stick pack contains a sciencebacked electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium with no sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients, or any other junk. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue while optimizing your brain health, regulating appetite, and curbing cravings. It's basically a magic elixir, and this orange flavor in a cold glass of water is how I've started every single day for over 3 years. And I can genuinely feel a difference when I take it versus when I don't. Best of all, they've got a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. So, you can buy it and try it for as long as you want. And if you don't like it for any reason, they give you your money back, and you don't even need to return the box. Plus, they offer free shipping within the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklnt.com/modern wisdom. Do people want more time or do people want more unique experiences? I would argue that like the great gift of being a comedian is you see stuff. You see it when you've got kids, right? Kids are seeing stuff for the first time and they're excited. And what I think a lot of people are doing past a certain age, I don't know what the age is, but let's say 40. You're remembering stuff. You've made that drive before. You've seen sunsets before. You're kind of remembering stuff. So then your mind is kind of filling it in and you're not in wonder. And I think a lot of what comedy is certainly that kind of the observational element of it is whether it's linguistic or or uh observation more generally is you're you're really recognizing stuff. You're really seeing things in a in a in a way that that uh an artist would. You're trying to see it for what it is. If I'd never observed this before, what would I notice? Yeah. Yeah. And also that unique experience of like touring around seeing different places. It's like literally, you know, when you I've done 20 shows in my life. 20 30 shows in my life. I remember a bunch of different scenarios. There was a 9-year-old girl sat in the fourth row of the show that we did in Sydney and she asked this amazing question and James had been dropping the sea bomb throughout all of his warm-up act. And my mine was a little bit, you know, this fingering jokes and stuff like that. And I I was like, "Parents, I'm so sorry for like what's happened to your nine-year-old daughter." She's like, "It's all right. She's Australian." And everyone broke out laughing. I'm like, "I'm I can't until Parkinson's comes and rips my [ __ ] like consciousness out of my head. I'm not going to forget that." So, you have You're right. The two ways that human memory works is novelty and intensity. If it's something that's new or if it's something that's really emotionally salient, which you could just look at as another form of novelty, right? The intensity thing. So, uh, someone will make a drive to work. They've been at this job for four years. You're like, you've made that drive there a thousand times and back a thousand times. No memory. But it's been condensed down into one journey. So apart from that time when it was icy and the guy next to you skidded and oh nearly that's novelty and intensity and you go [ __ ] I remember that one and I remember the first day I went to work. Yes. And I remember when the road was closed and I got in late and I did whatever. Unless you purposefully inject novelty. And this is one of the sort of ruthless double-edged swords to routine, which is a lot of the gains in life are to be made through being being structured and routinized. What's interesting is finding that balance of going like cuz is that thing of like you could go somewhere different on vacation every year or you go back to the same place cuz what are you solving for? Are you making new memories or do you want relaxation? You know what what's the what's the what are you trying to get out of this? What do you want? You're back to that fundamental question. I think this is one of the reasons why uh as people get older, their openness to experience goes down because the assumption is I've been on loads of holidays. I know where's good and I know where's bad. And the likelihood as somebody that's been on lots of holidays of beating the best one or even getting into the top 10% is way tougher in my sixth decade than it is in my reversing like that thing of like trying to go against the grain of what normally happens. So serotonin and dopamine, right? Both very important. And we normally get our uh serotonin from old music. People listen to old music. They listen to the stuff they like when they were in their teens and 20s and they listen to and they watch new movies, dopamine, new new stories. Where's this going? What's going to happen? I kind of changed it around. I listen to that Quinton Tarantino book, those cinem speculation. And when I haven't seen any of these 70s movies or maybe I saw them when I was a kid, but I haven't seen them for years or whatever. I'm going to watch 70s movies and listen to new music. And it's a really it's really fun. It's a really fun way to kind of change. Thank you. Well, I think that thing of like going being slightly out of your like new music is really interesting because it's it's such a pleasurable thing to listen to new stuff and old movies I think the 70s was the high point for movies. I I don't think movies got because it was like there was an industry there but it wasn't fully I don't know it like the it wasn't blockbusters yet like experimental. Yeah, there was there was alters and the the suits were giving the best directors the money to go and do the thing. Go and do because we don't have a established process of how this should be done so we can allow you to have a few more degrees of freedom. Yeah, it was it was I don't know. It's just a a wonderful time. I kind of feel like it's very analogous to how comedy is now. Comedy's really uh having a moment culturally um that's very very special. And I don't know what that is. Maybe it's uh uh authenticity or there there's something about um uh people wanting to be part of a tribe. I I I sort of think right so in our culture there was a fire and we gathered around the fire and we did this spoke right and then there was the radio and we gathered around the radio and we listened to it and chatted and then there was a TV. We gather around, we watch the shows and talked about the next day and then suddenly it was the phone and I'm over there and you're in your room and it's we're kind of isolated and I think that thing about coming out to comedy or going out to festivals or going in seeing stuff is it's my I suppose play. We are playing creatures. Someone wrote a book about this in the I think it was the late 30s about human beings as a playing animal. Like play being upstream of cooperation and cooperation being the secret source of humanity. And the idea of like think about what people are interested in, anyone you know, anyone you speak to, like what you excited about? Oh, well, I'm watching the game on Saturday. You're watching people play. Oh, I'm going to go and see the the the concert. The Killers are playing live. Oh, I'm going to go and see them play. Oh, I'm going to go and see that comedian. Okay, it's just a guy playing on stage. I'm going to go and see uh a musical. I mean, whatever you're into, you you want to see people playing and what is this conversation? It's it's kind of play, right? It's curiosity and it's you with sort of sorting out ideas and picking little things and strands and it's playful and it's you sort of it's it's incredibly important that I love that um George Bernard Shaw line uh that we don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing. And there's a wonderful thing in um my privileged life as a comedian where I'm a grown man, but I also get to be in that mind space where I'm playing all the time. And the audience come out and they they bought a ticket and just I mean it's very self- selecting the audience like you you'd have a tough time having a tough gig cuz a thousand people bought a ticket to see you. They want to see you win came to play. No. Well, there's an illusion, isn't there? The illusion is um and that your ego could get taken away. Oh, I'm on stage. It's me. I'm performing. And you don't see the audience. The audience are performing. I saw it last year. I went see Taylor Swift live in Wembley last year and it was transcendent. And she was amazing, right? Great songwriter, incredible musician, wonderful performer. She was great. The audience were next level. Like it was girls and their moms and their best friends. Like it was quite a lot of this action. They knew every word to every song they were. Cuz I was watching it and I was also kind of watching the crowd and watching that it was performative. Mhm. And then you saw I was kind of watching it and going, "Oh yeah, well in my audience people don't they wouldn't laugh if they saw the clip on their phone on the bus, you know, or with you know sometimes people will post under an Instagram, you know, you put out some heckle video I'm not funny. Yeah, but you watched it with the sound off and the subtitles. I saw a clip of Taylor Swift live and I didn't sing along." Yeah. Well, you're not singing along when you see the clip, but but when you're there, it's permission. It's the the I suppose that thing with like I don't know you see Bruce Springsteen live. How you doing? Yeah. You someone in Starbucks says it you sound psychotic. Mhm. It's it's great. You allow yourself permission to be in that space where you can perform. It's wonderful. Collective effvescence is a wonderful way to get out of your own head. And yeah, I think to fly the flag for my old industry, the demise of nightclubs that don't require quite as much effort, that aren't as rare, that allow you to sort of be in that space and see a DJ. There's just, you know, some local DJ that plays great songs and every songs that everybody knows, and you get to dance together, you think like, [ __ ] like, how increasingly rare is it that you're in a room with a bunch of people who you both do and don't know, all feeling a kind of vibe that's together. And yeah, maybe the the the resurgence that you're seeing with with comedy, with live stuff, even the sort of things that I do or, you know, like more like a Petersonian style lecture, come whatever with a few fingering jokes. Um, there's there's something going on there. Well, I wonder what people are looking for when they uh our mutual friend uh Alan Debot uh you know, he's got the school of life, which is ultimately they were running services on a Sunday. I think they still do run services on a Sunday which is sort of church for people that can't they can't sort of believe in uh a deity but they still want to go and because you know church works but but church works not because God is happy but because people are coming together and you know they're kind of there you you'll have heard me talk about this Latin mass thing which is kicking off at the moment. People going to Latin mass. Well, I've often said Vatican 2 was the the biggest mistake in in the church's history because what they did was they they translated it goes back to Ian McGillchrist. You have you read that the master in mystery the left brain right brain thing. So the incredible thing about the left brain is it it it orders things and makes them uh makes lists and it's very uh we live in a leftrain world procedural and the only thing more impressive than that is the right brain. the idea that it can see the gestto, it can see the whole thing. And you go, the problem with Vatican 2 is they took religion and they they made it they translated into your local language and you could just go, oh yeah, doesn't make sense. That can't happen. Can't come back from the dead. It's crazy. But before that, when it was all in Latin and there was a lot of incense, it was you were just in awe. So I had the same effect of like standing in nature. Did it just Do you know what it is? I I [ __ ] wish it wasn't this, but the more that I think about what it is people want to take away from life, it's all just vibes. It all just comes back to vibes. So, what's the vibe? What was the vibe of his show? Do you remember any of the one line? I think he did a think he did a joke about about roadkill. Can't Yeah. No, can't remember anything. And he did he definitely did he gave this really nice answer. He gave this earnest answer to this guy about this something something something. And uh but I remember the vibe vibe was it was so relaxed. It was like intense actually. It's kind of quick. Um, and is it my Angelou that people don't remember what you say, but they remember how you feel. How you make them feel. I got to I got to round out that that movie thing. You mentioned movies before and uh two questions about uh people ask what should I be doing with my life? Um, if your life was a movie, what would the key scenes be? I think that's important when you're looking backward. But a much better one. If your life was a movie and people were watching up to this point, what would the audience be screaming at the screen telling you to do with your life? What would they be? Just it's [ __ ] obvious. Leave the job. Leave the you mean get like it's your brother. It's the you know the the [ __ ] killers hiding in the cupboard. Whatever it might be. What would the audience watching the movie of your life be screaming at the screen telling you to do? And I think it's a very orthogonal way to look at h I already know the answer of what I should be doing. I'm just scared of making the commitment and having the conversation. Yeah. I I I I waited a long time. I didn't uh I had kids very late in life and it was because I was waiting to feel like a man. And obviously I had it just backwards. It's a it's cuz it's a it's not a noun. It's a verb. So you have kids and then suddenly you feel hold the kid and you feel [ __ ] manly. This is [ __ ] great. And then you don't know who you're going to be as a as a dad. How's fatherhood changed you? Um I I don't know. I think it's um I don't know about change. I think it's like you sort of um you know that thing of like uh uh power corrupts. I think it does. I think power reveals and I would say sort of the same about sort of parenthood like you don't you don't change. It just reveals who you who you are at a kind of a deeper level. It just like the the there's a there's a side of you that was always kind of waiting. Uh, and you you come out and you don't get it's almost like the kids come out with their factory settings, right? Like how much of what they have is heritable and they just come out and they are who they are and you watch these little creatures and they and they you kind of go sort of got a personality. I don't know where that happened. And then the other one's got a totally different personality. Oh, cuz I think everyone with one kid is nurture. Oh, we we gave them this so they've done that. And we were always we read books like that. So they did this and did because you haven't got to run the experiment a second time. Yeah. And then as soon as you get the second one you go I don't know I don't know. Yeah. They just she likes that. So what are you going to do? Yeah. It's it's it's lovely. Um and I think it's the same with parenting. I think you don't know who you're going to be as a parent. And it's a it's a revealing thing. It's it's you you kind of go, "Oh, I'm Oh, I'm that kind of. Okay, that's fun. Great." Did it teach you much about yourself? Um, I don't know. I I I I don't know what the I suppose it's that thing of like it's a uh it's a feeling that's very difficult to put into words without you know it's a sort of cliched thing but it does feel like it's um I suppose it's it's closed off uh an existential angst that I always had of like since losing my rel I lost my religion my mid20s quite sort of eight. Uh I was a a Catholic and I I lost my faith and was uh an atheist and not having a an afterlife is it's a rush of blood to the head, right? So I've got to do something with this life. I've got to take opportunities and risks and have fun now because um a random collection of atoms coalesed into a form that can contemplate its own consciousness for 4,000 weeks and then disappears again. That's it. We're in this brief shaft of light between two oceans of darkness. And then suddenly you have kids and you go, "Oh, there is there is an ex life. It's them. It's the It's the DNA. It's Dawkins was right. It's the the gene. I'm just the I'm the vessel. And that's I I found that very I found that incredibly comforting. Oh, so you're saying that uh the denial of death and the death anxiety can be assuaged at least in part by making more of you. Yeah. I think the the the death anxiety the death is the uh um uh it's the certainty. It's, you know, it's coming coming for all of us. I think the more that we uh talk about it and acknowledge it and the better that idea around I I will become a dad when I become a man. Uh I I will um that's clearly like the movie of your life, the guys listening to the podcast, the girls listening to the podcast, the whole I mean we're all screaming at the podcast. go and like use the genes. Use them. We sort of want you to be happy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can't wait. I, you know, I keep on saying it. I I I really really do look forward to becoming a dad. Like, I think it's going to be uh I hope that becoming a father makes all of the things that I've done up to now feel like shallow, vapid attempts to get recognition from the world. Sure. club promoter, Love Island. Shallow and vapid. Yeah, I know. Shallow, vapid. How dare you? What can I say? It's a wonderful industry. Very insight, very insightful, incisive. You know, my prediction is you should uh not my prediction, my my uh dream for you is that you have uh a big family because I think there's a um there's an only child. That sounds terrifying, but there's a there's a theme in the the only child thing comes up a lot for you. Mhm. Like it's a it's a recurring theme. And I think what you need is a really loud messy house. Let's go back to Plato, right? So my issue with Plato obviously, you know, the the the birth of the, you know, it's Plato to NATO. That's Western civilization, right? Incredibly important figure. But I got issues with Plato if he was here. And I'd say I'd tell him it's Plato and the Zarathustrans. And they both independently came up with the idea of perfection. So the zarathusans were the first religion I believe to come up with the idea of heaven perfection and the platonic ideals of Plato and I think in our heads we think of perfection as an ideal uh obviously a lot and I think it gets in our heads like well if it can't be perfect I don't want to I want to get to the bottom of my list I want to cross everything off I want to deal with all these problems and then move on. You can go. Well, problems are all a problem is is is something that needs your attention. That's great. And there's no such thing as no problems. There's just different problems. High higher order problems. If it helps, call it a puzzle, not a problem. Like just it's there there's going to be problems. It's going to be messy. Like nature had this great line which that embrace the chaos. like it's quite chaotic life and it's it's not terribly orderly and it's never going to be orderly. And I think there something about having kids kind of let you just kind of lean into that a little bit. It's the illusion of control really disappears. You've got influence but very little control. Before we continue, if you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like, getting your blood work done is the best place to start. which is why I partnered with Function because they run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that take the data, put it in a simple dashboard, and give you actionable insights and recommendations to improve your health and lifespan. They track everything from your heart health to your hormone levels, your thyroid function and nutrient deficiencies. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one, which is five times more data than you get from an annual physical. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands. But with Function, it is only $500. And right now, the first thousand people can get an additional $100 off, meaning it's only 400 bucks to get the exact same blood panel that I use, just go to the link in the description below or head to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. That's functionhealth.com/modern wisdom. That's interesting. I learned this idea called uh deferred happiness syndrome from Gwinder Bogle. The common feeling that your life has not begun, that your present reality is a mere prelude to some idilic future. This idol is a mirage that'll fade as you approach, revealing that the prelude you rush through is in fact the one to your death. It's this strange Is that not John Lennon? Life is what happens while we're making other plans. Like it's it's Yeah, it's brilliant piece of it's a brilliant observation. Oh, once I've got this done, once I get my degree, then life will begin. Once I've I've just got to pass these exams and get to that thing and buy that house and then I've just got to pay this off and then I've got to and then we can start. It's a very instrumental view of life that everything is done in order to achieve the next thing. So at no point do you actually arrive? It's a great question. Okay. When are you going to arrive? Tell me. Tell me when you're going to arrive at life. When are you going to feel like you've actually got there? Well, it's we're going to end up being Buddhists, aren't we? because it's like I I do slightly disagree with the over pathizing life but depression and anxiety which I I would rather call sadness and worry but you know it's very serious for some people right and depression is always about the past and anxiety is about the future and in the the more you can just be in the moment you're kind of you're sort of all right you're sort of okay you know today enjoying that thing of like enjoying this bit of the process. Mhm. But it it is that thing of like it's very it's kind of easy. It's easy to say. I mean, I love that thing as as well. I'm such a fanboy of the show, but they the um 2D and 3D lessons. Oh god. But it's it's so true in terms of like you can't say to a young person like the material possessions they're not going to bring you happiness because actually they kind of will. Mhm. But not having the watch won't make you happy. Getting the watch. Getting it is fun. Having stuff is getting stuff is fun. The journey is is so fun. like that that thing of like and it's partly the dopamine of like it's it's the uh the the thrill of uh the acquisition but the stuff that gives you pleasure long term it's like it's it's um it's feelings. Yeah. Having things isn't fun. Getting things is fun. That's Andrew Tate by the way. But you have this is it? Yeah, that's Andrew Tate. Yeah. Like you weren't expecting that. Well, a stopped clock is right twice a day. That's true. Um, but you had the you had the inverse of this when it comes to work rate, which I think probably classes as one of the best insights over the last few years. Everyone is jealous of what you've got. No one is jealous of how you got it. Yeah. I think that thing of like but it is that thing where you go when people say I want to be famous and but they don't have a thing they like I don't know what for but it's the but fame and fortune is the a secular heaven for for fame read heaven it's the land of milk and honey everything's going to be okay and then when you it's kind of annoying when famous people complain about stuff because you go but you got No, you just got different problems. It's again, it's problems as a as a a feature, not a bug. The issue you have, the issue that I think a lot of famous people have is I am certain that my inner void will be filled when I and the benefit that people who are not yet as rich or as famous as they want to be is that they still have the potential panacea for them to get to. was that great Will Smith line. I'm not the biggest Will Smith fan in the world. Yeah. But the idea that he he went, "I was I was poor and miserable and it was okay because I thought, well, I just get some money and then I'll be all right." And then I was rich and miserable. It was like, "Oh, fuck." Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah. That's Mark Manson's uh nothing else to do. Yeah. Yeah. Um originally that was going to be a two-part series. Mark was going to write cuz the first book's called Will. He wrote that with with Will Smith. And the second book was going to be called Power. And should have been called I Am. How would it be? Uh, very good. A copyright issue. Which which way around does it work? Interesting. When it comes to trademark, I'm going to get this the wrong way around, but Europe and the US have different laws when it comes to how words can be trademarked. My my mind is stuck on a joke. Okay. So, when the Will Smith and Chris Rock thing happened, okay, obviously it's Chris Rock is like for me a godlike figure. I've met him a couple of times and I just I I'm so in awe of his skill and and touch our profit. Okay. Work ethic. And like I was so annoyed. So I I I was uh chatting about chatting about it a couple of weeks ago with a friend and uh and said, "Oh, uh uh somehow it came up and I said, "Oh, Chris Rock, he was uh he was at the Oscars. Yeah, he was really starruck. Like 3 years too late. I thought of that on the day." I was really genuinely annoyed with myself like, "Oh, come on. Come on, brain. Think about it on the day. No use now. But there is there is this sense of what happens if you achieve the things that you say that you want. What happens if you get there? Just imagine for a second the perennial insecure overachiever optimizer people. What happens if you get there and you still have the same problems? Then what do you do? That's a difficult question. Yeah. But I think it's I think it's answered by um you know there's there's there's other people on the same road and it can feel sometimes quite sort of I don't know you sort of you're out there battling trying to trying to achieve whatever you're trying to achieve and you you kind of do it and look around and you go well there's other people I think having friends in other fields is really helpful and you because that thing of like if if it's too close to your industry it can sometimes be a little bit kind of frenemies Um, but I think that thing of like, well, comedy is really good for that because it's kind of we're out for ourselves but in it together. There's a lovely thing about sense of camaraderie. Yeah. And it's not like we're actors. It's not like we're, you know, it was there's only one role for the next Marvel movie. There's only one James Bond, and I'm afraid you didn't get the part, but he did ah, his life's amazing, yours is [ __ ] whatever that thing is. Um, with comedy, it seems to be that there's a there's a a camaraderie and a it's also comes back to that thing of like don't be the best, be the only. Like if you're a nonfgeable human and someone goes, well, no one else is doing what he does. Other people are in the same uh industry. It's like Iron Maiden had a great line about this. the the Iron Maiden was like they I think they did an interview with the um their their manager and he went well we're not in the music industry. We're in the Iron Maiden industry. That's a [ __ ] slammer. And and they went he went I don't care what's happening in that field. We can only plow this field and like it's just you go. Yeah. I mean they had so many great lines actually. I think Bruce Dings was sort of saying fame is um it's it's a a byproduct of what we do. It's the it's the uh it's the excrement uh fame is the excrement of creativity. [Music] [Laughter] Like something that you need to deal with but sometimes can be enjoyable. Well, it's like okay. Well, it's interesting when people pursue fame for fame sake. I want to be famous. That No, sorry. You You were on Love Island when Sorry, that's true. Hey, look, I'm allowed to talk I'm allowed to talk about this because I went up the mountain and came back down. Well, I think it is that thing of like the I don't think that story's been told properly. We chatted about this last night at dinner bar. I think to tell that story fully, I think is very inspirational because you go it's the you've worked on something that is a uh like like any other muscle, you know, we going into Love Island and Okay, you got great forearms. Wonderful. Good luck. God bless. And then you've worked on that for how many years now? Six, seven. This is year eight. Yeah. Seven and a half now. Yeah. Okay. Wow. The results. Mhm. Like the the like you're you're an advert for it's not even work ethic. It's just it's it's it's not like ambition. It's systems. It's like three shows a week, every week. I know what a tough year you've had. And the idea that you just keep on showing up. Come on. Come on. To to mutually fate each other. You are by a margin the hardest working comedian on the planet. I I don't think that funny I had a bit more talent. Take a weekend off. I I'm blown away by the schedule that you have. Um I did actually want to read you an essay of mine um based on people that work very hard. The gastric band surgery of being busy. After undergoing gastric band surgery, people's risk of suicide goes up. That's perhaps unsurprising. Gastric band surgery is a big deal and can sometimes have complications, infections, and painful outcomes. But one of the unseen reasons for the increased suicide risk is actually due to the surgery going right, not it going wrong. Many patients used food as a way to deal with issues in their lives, emotional challenges, loneliness, anxiety. After having their stomach shrunk, the ability to use food as a comforting crutch has been removed, but the emotional challenges still remain. So, the coping mechanism has been taken away, forcing patients to face their issues without a release valve. I think there is an equivalent dynamic happening when you try to elevate your life to take your sense of selfworth from things other than your work and your level of busyness. Let's say that in the past you used busyiness as a chaos and as a way to distract yourself from feeling unwanted emotions. It meant that you didn't need to reflect on your decisions or sit in discomfort. That you're moving so quickly that you never fully connect with the things that are happening in your life. Lost relationships, disconnected friends, poor decisions, and accumulated negative character traits are all swept away so quickly that you didn't even have time to consider them by manic work rate. Eventually, you realize that chaotic busyness is not your highest calling in life. Maybe you value different things now. Maybe you've outgrown that phase of your life. Maybe you realize that busyiness for busyness's sake is detaching you from connecting to your existence. So what happens when this coping mechanism gets taken away? You're forced to face your issues without the highly distracting release valve that you're used to. The busyiness anesthetic that you've used to previously rely on has now been removed, leaving you with two choices. Number one, ignore the lesson that chaos is not fulfillment and go back down this road that you just escaped from by force-feeding your way through this figurative gastric band. Number two, actually learn to handle emotional discomfort without distracting yourself with work. Yeah, that's beautiful. It really reminds me of that um Milan Kundra wrote this short book called slowness and kind of the the nub of the book the message is that memory and speed are inversely proportionate. So the idea like the best example I can think of is when COVID hit and the world slowed you kind of took stock and remembered stuff and sort of had time to contemplate like in that boredom I guess of not being busy not being chaotic there was a real oh can I look around I don't know I um didn't you have a chairman Mao quote that was similar to What was the chairman mail? I don't know. You can't smell the roses from a galloping horse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good That's male. What? Who do you chairman? Look, we can take good [ __ ] We can take good [ __ ] from Andrew T and chairman M. As long as it's headline, cuz that's really who you need to be associated with right now to help rehabilitate your your public image. Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah. But it's that the uh it's it's true like slowing down once in a while is uh is is very good for you and and finding that balance in life, but I think um I don't know. I think working hard is not it's also like I know people that really work hard. Like I work it hard in showbiz like are the hardest working man in comedy. Yeah. It's like being the best looking guy in the Burns unit. Mhm. Right. It's not It's not really a flex because even if I do two shows a night, oh my god, sometimes I have to work for four hours. I'm not sure I'm going to be okay. Like, what do you It's It's nothing. But there's people with real jobs that work really hard. And there's people actually that don't love their job that they they work in order to facilitate a life that they love. Well, great. Good on them. There's a there's a there's a there's an honor and there's a worth in that. I think we've slightly lost that in our society, if I'm honest with you. like the hero of the working man that provides for his family puts food on the table and a roof over their head. I think it's a that's a good point that um we've sort of pedestalized passion so much that we assume the only reason that anybody does a job is because they want to do it and there is a an additional type of nobility that comes along with drudgery. You think well not only do you do this thing which is maybe hard but you don't want to do it but you do it anyway. Yeah. I know being being a provider um taking care of I mean yourself and the people that you love just doing that and working hard it's not like something shifted in our culture where that isn't um those those people are seen as being chumps or you know a mark oh they they haven't got a they're by the man. Yeah. They haven't got a side hustle and a grift. You go, "No, that's some people work like that and they work really hard and they provide for their families and they they are doing great and they're taking pleasure from their hobbies and their interests." And actually a friend of mine was talking about this cuz his father had quite a boring job but he was so passionate about his hobbies and it was really it was really interesting that he was like he didn't like the term hobbies even because he was going that's what brought him joy in life. That was the thing for him. Great. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Momentous. If your workouts feel flat, your recovery is slow, or you've just been feeling off, it might not be your training plan or diet, might be something a bit more boring like your testosterone. So, if you're not performing in the gym or the bedroom the way that you want, or you just want to naturally improve your testosterone, tonatali is a fantastic researchback place to start. And when this is stacked with zinc, it can make a huge improvement in testosterone production, strength, recovery, and energy. Which is why I'm such a huge fan of Momento's zinc. It supports testosterone, boosts vitality, and helps keep everything running like it should. And if you're still unsure, Momentus offers a 30-day money back guarantee, so you can buy it and try it for 29 days. If you don't love it, they'll give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to live momentous.com/modern wisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's lim n li.com/modwisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. There's a line from Visakan Verasi. He says, "I have not yet grown wise enough to deeply enjoy simple things." And this is an idea I've been thinking about recently. The there is a kind of embarrassment in the modern world at taking pleasure from ordinary pursuits. this sort of sense that my the things that I feel particularly proud about and that I take a sense of selfworth from and fulfillment, they should be grand because how feeble, how shallow, how unimpressive a life it is that lying in a hammock for a couple of hours can be one of the greatest sources of joy. No, no, no. are supposed to be base jumping from the the edge of a skyscraper, you know, just off the back end of some VIP trip to Athera to go and watch, you know, it's supposed to be this grand thing. And that line, I have not yet grown wise enough to deeply enjoy simple things. I think is a pathology of the modern world. Should we quote Naval? I mean, he's the best of us. If you're not happy having a coffee with a friend, you won't be happy on a yacht. Yeah, I did have coffee with a friend on a yacht recently and went, "This is I've done this good. I'm enjoying all of it. This is great. It is better. It's a big boat." Yeah. But no, there's an interesting um there's an interesting challenge there, I think, for people that are perennial overthinkers because a lot of them will feel things more deeply than they should do, including the shame of feeling things more deeply than they should do. It's this odd sort of recursive loop. Yeah. Are you en are are you allowing yourself enjoy anything at the moment? I'm trying to as much as I can. I mean, look, some of the things that I've learned this the celebration thing is gratitude and action, I think, is a a beautiful way to summarize something that I've kind of been floating around. I'm trying to get I'm trying to build a studio in an office here in Austin because I basically took the working from home pill during COVID and then never realized that CO had finished. Just I'm just going to, you know, soloreneur degenerate loan ranger. my way through this thing. But we hit a million subs and I got to ring Dean. We hit 2 million subs and I think I broke off from work for a little while. I hit 3 million subs on a plane and I just didn't, you know, it's just another thing that happens despite it being something that we worked toward for a long time. And you might go, well, you're not doing it for the subscriber count. Okay, so at what point are you going to allow yourself to arrive? When are you actually going to celebrate this sort of a thing? Well, it's interesting. I you know that thing of like when it gets to a certain number of subscribers, you do a Q&A. Mhm. I think the Q&A should just be a regular thing because I think it's like it's a bit like the newsletter. It's like just it's sort of almost allowing people check in with you on a regular basis. And I I think you don't allow yourself do that because like if your whole interviewing style is about the guest, yeah, you're very much in service of the of the guest. And my goal is to make you or whoever sat in front of me look as good as possible, not to make it about me. Okay. Well, when's that going to shift? When's it going to shift? Because how many books do you need to read? How many people do you need to sit with and talk to and add value to? How many quotes do you need before you go, I'm enough. I've arrived. I can just talk. I can I can just talk about life and what I think and it's I'm enough. It's a good It's a It's a good question. Um, there is definitely still a a kind of imposter syndrome. not around what I do, but around stepping into the more sort of guru side of this stuff. And I think that in some ways that's healthy because there's certainly a lot of people who completely bypass the learning thing and go straight into the proletizing thing without having done any of the work to get up there. I mean, I'm a big fan of imposter syndrome. I sort of think if you're not feeling it every 18 months, you're not pushing yourself. Mhm. So that thing of like doing things that you're not quite comfortable with on a regular basis is it's it's a pretty good sign you're moving. You're making some progress. Is that difficult for you given that kind of all of the things that you sort of can do now? Like what? Yeah. Yeah. No, I I like I put arenas in in the UK. So I'm playing arenas at the end of the year. No way. And it's like that's a that's a like I'm used to playing theaters and I do arenas in different markets in the world. Like in Australia and New Zealand, I'm playing arenas next year. But in the UK, I kind of haven't done like 10 cities around the UK. And then I, you know, in Australia and New Zealand, what? Everywhere. Yeah. Do you know what dates you're doing in the UK? When is uh I'm doing like it's uh November and December. Uh and it's but I'm playing in the round. Um because it's that thing where I I just I did a gig I was in I was in Melbourne. um had one night off in the tour and Chappelle was in town and he called and said, "You know what's popping?" And I said, "Oh, you're doing a show." "Oh, I'll come down and play." And he played it in the round and it was like being a boxer and you sort of realized there was like 14,000 people in there, but no one had a bad seat. Wow. Cuz there screens above. Mhm. And you're just kind of gently rotating and delivering to You're like the the lazy Susan of the Commonwealth. Yeah. It But it was literally It was so exciting. and they're walking on and it was that thing and it was outside and I loved how nervous I was walking on. Oh, so you did a little warm up boy for him. Oh yeah, like a half hour or whatever. Um, only a half hour for it. But it was so fun and then I kind of thought sick. I love I love being friends with you. I think it's so cool to watch you do this stuff. But pushing yourself and getting to that space is is it's really exciting. and then playing America like playing sort of traveling across America and really trying to I suppose it's that thing of the it's the same as the Beatles you know you're you're taking something that is standup is an American medium really if you think about what America's given the world culturally it's the western jazz music and standup comedy but I mean this is a George take where he says Britain has some of the funniest people some of the funniest comedians but so few of the world's biggest comedians what do you think's going on there why is it that the UK is able to reliably produce a Jimmy Carr, Ricky Jves, but most of the big names come out of the states. Um, I think that might change over time. I think the club culture here has is very very healthy. If you think about the comedy seller and the comedy store in LA and the communities that they've engendered and then later the mothership in Austin uh that Joe set up and you know you know Yellow Springs is is uh is Dave Chappelle's new thing as well which is an amazing space. Um I I I think that thing of like you can't beat your environment and the being around other people and coming up like it's it's it's scenes it's groups of comedians that come up sort of together. So if you think about um uh Jerry Seinfeld and then um you know beat Chris Rock beat Louis CK all out of the same kind of comedy seller crew and they're all around each other all the time. I think that really helps to be part of that that group. I wonder whether uh the classic British aversion to aiming too high or doing something too different is causing that scene to just stutter a little bit as it grows. Cuz when I look at the best for me, when I look at the best scene in the UK for comedy right now, I'm thinking about guys like Adam Row, Finn Taylor, uh Vtorio, um uh uh the screen rock guys, Jacob and Jake. like this is kind of the equivalent of the DGEN podcast bro circuit from the US over in the UK. I wonder with the with the UK as well. It's it's it is a great comedy market like the UK there's a lot you could busy yourself very happily for 2 years touring the UK and not have to drive far and not and and be home in your own bed every night and then write a new show and go again. So the the the wonder loss that I have to go out to 47 countries on tour is maybe slightly unusual but I think I think as the comedy's gone global relatively recently right was Netflix decided to and obviously Netflix is based in America so it's going to lead with the American comics and then I think it will gradually go out around the world and well I'm hoping that it just becomes a bigger and bigger thing because going to be such a a a broad church it's It's kind of wonderful. I mean, I kind of get annoyed when if ever I see a comic slag off another comic, I'm always like that narcissism of small differences. We sort really doing exactly the same job, doing the same thing. This is different stylistically. What do you Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that Iron Maiden line. Uh, you know, don't try to be the best, try to be the only. Um, I suppose that really only works if you're actually good at what you do. Because if you're if you're not good at what you do, you're like, "Yeah, I mean, it's awesome that you've created your own unique brand of World of Warcraft stand-up comedy. Uh, it's a shame that nobody except for you is into it." So, but I, you know, I do think that thing of like there's a with comedy, you find your your audience. You can joke about anything, but not with anyone. And that kind of goes both ways. It's like you you go your audience is kind of is cool with this stuff and maybe other people wouldn't be but it's they you attract your crowd and you get the audience you deserve ultimately. I mean if if you look out and you don't like your audience you [ __ ] up. Yeah. I mean that is one of the most fortunate things I think about doing doing work that is interesting to you is that you will accumulate an audience of people that you would happily hang out with. I look out at the audience at any of the live shows, the one we did in London last year. Uh sold out the event in Apollo, which was [ __ ] mind-blowing. I'm like, there's 7,000 eyes looking at me and I would happily go for a coffee with like any person in this. That is such a weird way to think of three and a half thousand people. 7,000 eyes. Yes. Well, you see them in No one is No one thinks like that. That's a bizarre way to think about It's a good way to artificially inflate numbers, though. Jimmy, you're you're talking to a club promoter who used to inflate numbers for a very very long time, turning 3,500 people into 7,000 eyes. It's packed in there, mate. It's packed in 400 eyes. Yeah. Uh but um yeah, and I would happily go for a coffee with any one of them. And I know for a fact that there are [ __ ] tons of people in my industry that couldn't say the same. Yes, I think that definition of a grifter is is really powerful. Somebody who is selling a product they wouldn't use themselves. That's it. So I and we've had a conversing conversation about this. I have an issue because I think it's kind of like the racism concept creep of the online course bro and influencer world that if grifter and shill means everything, it means nothing. And it's just a uh insult that gets thrown around to anybody that seems to be kind of commercializing. It's like if you're selling anything at all that isn't just yourself or Patreon access, this is some sort of a grift. And what they basically mean is you're monetizing in a manner that I'm uncomfortable with. I think it's I think it's very different for different people. Like I did uh Kill Tony the other night, Tony Hitchcliff, and they got a ton of merch. It's like a merch table out the front and I saw lots of people buying it and they're big fans of the show and they love it. And I sell books at the tour shows and that's it. Mhm. And I don't sell t-shirts. I don't sell pens. I don't sell mugs because I wouldn't buy it. It's that's not to say that other comics can't do that because for them they'd go, "Yeah, no, 100%. I would wear that. I would wear that hoodie. I would wear that t-shirt. What What am I going to do?" That's why you've got shares in men's wear company in Savo. Sure. So, yeah. Go. I'm going to sell Tom Sweeney suits. I'm going to have Taylor on standby in the lobby. Yeah. Uh, but I asked on Twitter. I was like, for the people who use the word grifter or a shill, give me your best working definition of what that actually means. Like, what is a grifter or a shill? And I was kind of, it was a little bit of a a red herring question cuz I just assumed that nobody would be able to come up with a good definition. That's a great definition, isn't it? The you would sell something you wouldn't buy yourself is so kind of QVC from the 80s. It slices, it dices. You're going to have one of these in your life. Well, I just think, okay, that's cool. But in that case, if you have this functional definition, it's pretty easy to work out whether somebody Thank you. You have a neutronic neutronic. Jimmy, there's no R in it. All right. I came here with a I came here with a [ __ ] uh what's the make of the bag you put me on? Nomatic. The nomadic like the Yeah, you are fully wisdom pilled. Yeah. Oh man. Uh, but I did think sometimes you have a LMT uh in the in the morning in the cold plunge. I got the I got the new brass monkey cold plunge. Jesus wept. So it's the one it's the lie down one and it has ice that you break through at the top so you feel like it will throw up ice in the morning. So no, it's just it just feels better. I mean I can't do as long in there obviously cuz it's it's really cold but it's so good. I love how we've slowly sort of rebroaded you there as somebody that sort of turns up in the three-piece suit and all the rest of it, but behind the scenes, it's Crocs and socks and cold and element and nomatic and [ __ ] pneonic. I tell you my uh my uh let me tell you the story. So, I was in I now stay in hotels based on sauna cold plunge, right? If they've got a sauna and cold plunge, I'll stay in that one, okay? Because I I like to do it every day. I find it very energizing. I'm not great with meditation, but I think there's a lot of people like me that aren't great with meditation, but I mean, I love Sam Harris's out waking up. Fantastic. I do my best. I I'm better at listening to talks about it than I am at doing it. Okay, that's fine. But then I find I can sauna and cold plunge and that's sort of the same thing, right? It's the same vibe of like just take some time. So staying in these places and I'm staying in this place in Austria. They've got an amazing sauna cold plunge, right? So I go into the sauna. like beautiful facility, huge, like 95° in there, properly hot. So, I'm in there and the guy goes, I don't speak German, but shorts, shorts, and like I weren't supposed to be dressed. Oh, you can't. Okay, well, I take my shorts off and fine. There's like three guys in the sauna. Everyone's naked. Fine. We got towels. Great. Then I do the cold plunge and I come out of the cold plunge and I don't know if you've done you know it's like 5 minutes in six°ree water and there's some baby dick going on right there's some baby dick and then another guy comes into the sauna as I get out of the cold plunge. He has no evidence I've been in the cold plunge. I'm just walking around and I'm like I need a disclaimer. Could you come into the sauna with me for a couple of minutes until this and then what? Ah, so Sky that you've just met, uh, very odd. We went to his bachelor party in Houston and he likes Asian things, which is why the office looks like that next door. This is not not great for him at the moment. If he's listening out there and I've just said, "Baby Dick," and you've gone, "Oh, I've got a story about Sky. I've got a story about Sky." Yeah. Um, he made us go to I think it's called the Golden Temple or something. It's the biggest Asian spa in Texas. And this thing has five nine different sauna rooms and a a [ __ ] snow room and this weird hut thing that you've got to clamber into and the floor's heated and it's insanely hot. Uh and through the back of the gents kind of classic Asian spa approach is load of uh unisex cold plunges and sauners, but you've got to everyone's dick out. Uh so first off, I was the only person in there with a foreskin. That was interesting. But I walked in to see Sky laid down on a bed with this small Asian man and a loofah and he just had a a towel covering his junk. And this guy, you know, like how people plain the top of varnished uh tables where like we're going to get the we're going to get the varnish off the top of this table. I'm going to retreat it. Then we're going to revarnish it again. This guy had a loofah and I was watching him like scrub very aggressively. Like I get that this might be a cultural thing. Everyone in here is naked. The guys getting out of the sauna per you sort of hands are open. I've got no problem with my manhood. Everybody getting out of the cold plunge was a little bit more sheepish about the way that they walked around. Oh yeah. This is I tell you you've come a long way for Is it Middlesbrough you're from? Stockton. Yeah. The [ __ ] of Middlesbrough. Yeah. Stockton. Stockton aunties. And that's your idea of a stag do now? That was sky. Shame on you. I know. Shame on you. You should have been in benadorm. You should now have some kind of antibiotic resistant STI. You went to a sauna. Not even that kind of sauna. You had a Jeffersonian dinner that that weekend as well. Uh and followed Shabbat at the same time. Yeah. No, I My friends are unbelievably weird. I have the I have some of the strangest friends in the world. I mean, you've been you were at dinner with us last night. He rocked up to dinner and we've got Craig Jones, second best grappler in the world, maybe the best troll on the planet. Seth Balilele, who is his handler, I suppose. Uh, George Mack, your soon to be one of the best writers on the planet. Zack Telander, signed to Conor McGregor's record label, but an ex weightlifter. Your videographer, me, ex [ __ ] reality TV turned podcaster person. Brian Ken and you. And I'm like, this is the shittiest version of the Avengers that I've ever seen. But what an eclectic mix. Yeah. I don't know what crime we were planning, but it it wasn't gonna go well. Yeah. [ __ ] Um I don't know, man. I I really like I've liked breaking out of whatever format the UK or whatever life it was that I was supposed to lead. I think cuz I don't think I was supposed to lead this one. I I feel like this was kind of You talk about self- authoring an agency. I I think this was something that kind of wasn't written in the stars all that much. I don't know whether you feel that way. You started your I think you made you made a very big move like a physical move. Mhm. But I think you could have done this in the UK. I think it's the um it's not so much the physical location. It's the it's where you chose to go. I think you you know you made the move seven years ago. You made the move seven years ago to sit in your bedroom and to go well I'm going to talk to interesting people about interesting stuff. That's what happened. Like everything, the fact now that it's on a grander scale, neither here nor there. Process-wise, it's the same thing. You're as inquisitive as you were early on. Unfortunately, even more, actually. I think. Yeah. I don't know. Look, I It's one of the things I I have two tensions, right? I have I have a tension between two different polls. One is I don't like to get too big for my boots. I know that it is a bit of a turnoff to people to see someone who seems to be too full of himself, especially someone that like presents in the way that I do, especially someone that's doing it through an art form that on the surface anybody can do and lots of people do do. It's slightly different if you see somebody that plays an instrument cuz you think, well, as much as I might not like the fact that they're successful at the saxophone, I can't [ __ ] play the saxophone, right? So, there is a kind of hurdle that you need to get over. So, the narcissism of small differences, I think that the differences are much smaller when it comes to the art form of podcasting because let's, you know, it's having a chat. It's just having a chat. Well, hopefully when you do it effectively, I don't think anyone thinks that. I mean, I think you'd have to be insane to think that. It's, you know, if I look at the work that goes into it, if I give it just a the briefest thought, cursory glance, a cursory glance at like the questions you asked, the reading that you've done, the research, the amount of books you have to get through, the the the way that you you need to kind of go, okay, so they've written a book, it's whether it's really good or really bad, you you kind of have to get them to present their whole thing. It's like the presentation. It's it's a phenomenal skill set. I I appreciate that. So that that's on but but sorry your perception is that you shouldn't appear too successful because not only appear too successful, just appear too full of yourself. It's like ah you're not that special. Again, it's that British working-class mindset that I'm trying to rid myself of. It's why being around people like like George, like Zach, like Brian, like yourself, people who've got big dreams and sort of blue sky vision, it I I I refer to myself as a criticism hyperresponder. I overindex on uh the criticism of others. Uh and but so that's one end, right? That is one end. But the other end is if somebody that comes from the most backwater working class [ __ ] town, three people living on one person's wage in the northeast of the UK, goes to a school where your entire 200 person group has maybe one other person that goes to university out of it. Everybody is born, lives, and dies within a 20 mile radius for the most part is able to kind of rip some [ __ ] project off the launchpad and get themselves out to escape velocity in orbit. Yeah, that should be a really relatable story for most people because it's this pretty accessible combination of effort, curiosity, and stubbornness to not stop. I think it's I think you're very workingass in the best possible way and you don't waste anyone's time. remember like seeing the you know that kind of inside the actor studio thing the masterclass there's a masterclass thing and Michael Kane did it lots of actors have done it and most actors do it and they tell their life story and I did this and then I did this and then I did this and Michael Kaine did it and Michael Kane's workingass and Michael Kane goes when you look in the camera I can't do a Michael Kane but when you look in the camera have one eye look look at the someone in the eye but look at their look at their left eye and cheat it and then look the other side. So you just look at one of their eyes and the in the camera it'll look as if you're looking directly down the lens but also looking at them and it's like a practical tip. He's not wasting anyone's time. It's very spitting and sawdust. He's a working class guy. He's telling you how to do the functional thing. Weirdly I'm I'm more workingass than you think because I'm from slow and from the farm road in slow next to the Mars factory. I grew up on the the biggest education and the current thing of like you go I'm very aware of like there's there's reputation and there's character there's how you are perceived very important to know how you're perceived you're very aware of how you perceived there's also there's character there's who you know you are that thing within you and like where you've come from and the idea of like I think people assume I went to private school people just go well yeah probably No, of course not. But I kind of know that. But you go, you can't change how people people just have that perception. Yeah. But it's okay to lean into that. I think as long as you know, um, yeah, reputation management is an interesting one that people have. I think so many people are concerned about what other people think of them, not who they are. I had Dry Creek Dwayne. Did you watch that one? The guy with the the the uh Wrangler horse dude with the big beard. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And um he just had this [ __ ] lovely line where he said, "I like me. I'd buy me a beer." I thought, "What a [ __ ] beautiful self assessment. I like me. I'd buy me a beer." But he hadn't arrived there overnight. It took him a long time to become the sort of person that he liked. And I guess some people start further off. Maybe some people are more scrutinizing around who it is that they feel they need to become before they would buy them a beer. But I thought that was a lovely internal metric of a place that we should all want to get to. I want to like me. I want to be the sort of person that I'd buy a beer. Yeah, I'd buy you a beer. This has been great. I want to know what relationship people should have with their inner critic. Um, I think it's I don't know. I I think it's very healthy, isn't it? It's very healthy to have um an inner critic, but it's also it's the there's the golden rule and then there's the there's the platinum rule, right? There's the treat others as you want to be treated. Mhm. And then there's the treat yourself as you treat others. Most people are very kind. Like you're nicer to me than you are to yourself. Mhm. Mhm. Like I if you said the [ __ ] you say to yourself to me, we wouldn't be friends. Um and I think that thing of like the the inner critic has to be it's um as long as it's process driven. I think it's it's very very healthy. It's like imposter syndrome. Yeah. Okay. Feel like an imposter for a while as long as it gives you as long as you can get that to a granular level where it gives you something to work on. Like the inner critic can't just be it can't just be like that's bad. It's got to be oh that that didn't work so we need to change it or that one's that one's not going to work so we're going to write something new. It it's got to be something that's like uh you're working towards something you're aiming up and I think criticism is very important. I mean, Walt Disney used to do this thing where he had like the he had three rooms. You know this thing of like one for creativity uh one for sort of um management like how would you do the idea and then it was only in the third room that you were allowed to be critical. It's kind of fun idea of like going to sort of comp compartmentalize. Well, I do think that thing of like never refuse the muse. If you're working in anything creative, just write it down. something comes to you, you just one, right? Inspiration is perishable. Act on it immediately. Yeah. Yeah. There's a Tim Ferris says, "The world rewards the specific ask and punishes the vague wish." And I think that sort of inner critic voice can expand out into I don't feel good about the thing I did. Okay. Well, that's probably the first place everybody gets. I'm not not really too sure about why, but there's some sense of discontent about something that just happened or something that I'm about to do. Probably very normal. You don't know where it's coming from and you don't know what it's about and you don't know what to do to fix it. Okay. So, how about we get away from the vague critic and we move toward the specific coach with regards to this. Okay. So, what precisely is it that you're concerned about? Well, I don't feel fully prepared for the presentation I've got to give tomorrow. Okay. Is that fair? Do you know that it's true? Do you think that you haven't prepared enough? Well, actually, I have prepared quite a lot to be honest. I think this is probably just my fear trying to be sneaky and sort of turn itself into a way that I'm going to believe it. All right. Well, what are you going to do about it? Well, I'll just check my notes a few more times. And actually, huh, it seems like I do know this pretty well. the the yeah you know the inner critic it's not often wrong just you can say it in a nice way you know it's it it's sometimes it's right sometimes you [ __ ] up sometimes it's not it's not it wasn't good enough and that's okay it's like it's the um it's the idea of like going um it's not repetition it's iteration it's like lots of different you know doing the same thing again and again doesn't make you better but like tweaking it and knowing what to tweak is that you have to listen to an inner critic. I think the the um uh is it Hoszi? Uh it's Hosi is so good for quotes, but it's I think it was um uh self-confidence without evidence is delusion. Mhm. Some version of that. Confidence. Confidence without competence is delusion. Yeah. It's it's so true. And you do meet people along the way that have that incredible confidence or they they they sort of exude that and then they they don't have the the confidence to back it up and you go well no you need to you need to be able. So finding that I think it's very I think without that inner critic I think we would all be kind of delusional wandering around going yeah you know. Yeah. George says uh does someone with half your talent but five times yourself believe making 10 times the money? Yes. And that that's true for for every British person. And there's an American. Exactly. Well, I mean, look, I I think for the perennial overthinkers, reframing this very welltrodden landscape of inner criticism. A lot of the way that you can look at that is I'm fragile. You know, my my self-belief exists on a knife edge. It feels like I'm tightroppe walking confidence. Perhaps I think a better way to look at it is you're not fragile. you're just finely tuned. And in the same way as a Ferrari can go really, really fast, especially around a track. But if you don't treat it very well, it's probably going to break down quite a lot actually. And if you treat it really well, it's still going to have a couple of hiccups and days where it doesn't fully operate rightly. But yeah, you're not fragile. You're finally tuned. Is a nice reframe. It's so easy to be kind to other people and sometimes so difficult to be kind to yourself. It's like you wouldn't let someone else speak to a friend like that. You just wouldn't stand for it. Mhm. And yet your inner critic, you're just like, "Yeah, yeah." Say terrible things to me. Just accept it as it comes. Yeah. I uh that idea on you had uh position and disposition. This has happened a couple of times. I misremember things that guests uh tell me and then I write about the thing that I misremembered and what you realize is that you've actually built on something that they didn't mean. And I think I told you about this before, but I'm gonna I'm going to tell you about it again. So, uh, this is after our first episode, 18 months ago, something like that. My chat with Jimmy Carr a few weeks ago inspired an idea. I've been reflecting on how your trajectory is way more important than your position. If you're number two in the world, but last year you were number one, that is way worse than sitting at number 150, but being on a huge upward slope from 300 12 months ago. There's a few reasons for this. Recency bias. If your value is increasing right now, that means you have to be popular at the moment. By looking at recent trajectory, you are selecting for only the few people who are trendy right now, which is really all that we can remember. We can also romanticize where someone will be in future if they're currently hot stuff. How high might they climb? Who knows, maybe to the top, maybe even beyond the top. Humans struggle to realize that everything is temporary, including growth and decline. Instead, it's easier to label people as heroes and losers based on what we know of them right now, so we don't have to predict a messy future. There's an old saying saying that there's three types of people on the ladder. One at the bottom, one at the middle, and one at the top. Which one is the best to be? The one that's still climbing. Yeah. No, I think I think it's fantastic. It's very well put. Um, yeah, I think that especially in show business, trajectory really seems to be such an important metric and it's like you could be half the size of some other comic, but they've been around 20 years and they always sell out the arena so who cares. It's like it's novelty, dopamine, this is new recency buyers. Yeah. I think there's a there's a thing this year where um Oasis are playing uh and it's a big deal. People are very excited about it. And I think Coldplay are doing I think it's 10 or 11 nights at Wembley Stadium. Everyone's like Chris Martin bored of you. Been around for ages. Yeah. Well, of course you are. Yeah. You're a big band. But it's like but it's not like uh an event culturally in the same way that Oasis coming together is. There's a there's a narrative to that and a trajectory of kind of where they are that's and Coldplay have just been steadily listen and if Taylor Swift does 15 nights next year, it'll be a Yeah. Yeah, of course. Of course. Accepted. Yeah. So, that thing of like other people getting excited about it and I think I don't know what it feels like to be uh you know in Coldplay at the moment and maybe people aren't making as much fuss. I hope they're celebrating. I hope there I hope they're taking time to go this is fantastic. It's a question again of what what happens when you arrive. Let's say that the things that you want to have happen happen. What then? Like, okay, I I will be happy when I get to do Wembley. Ah, but no, I need to run it back because I need to prove that it wasn't a fluke. I It's got to be two nights at Wembley because, you know, the gold it that's the reason the gold medal didn't feel right because it could have been a fluke. So, I need to I need to do it twice to prove that the first one wasn't a fluke and Oh, I Well, because the three cuz or is it a process thing? Well, they just go, "Yeah, keep doing what you're doing. Keep doing what you're doing. keep, you know, if it's, you know, however you want to frame it, you know, if you're hard charging, if you're like, if you're working hard because you go, well, this is this is an opportunity. It's what I like to do. Yeah. I, you know, as I've reached whatever level of microniche, degenerate, fame, success thing that I have done, the I think it's okay not to do the throat clearing on that. The British the British person in me has as I've reached this level of success, it's okay to say that. Thank you. as I've reached this level of success. Yeah. Uh the thing that I've realized is if you create all of the external accolades that are associated with success, but the thing that you have done to get there is not fully aligned. The success feels unbelievably hollow. And this is not something that I've done with the show, but you see it in micro wobbles when episodes that are I'm really passionate about. It's someone that I wake up on the morning, I'm like, I cannot wait to speak to this person. This is going to be so [ __ ] cool. Today was one of those days. And then there's other ones where I go, "Yeah, it's like I'm going to be I'm going to be interested in talking to this person, but I'm not like super fired up." Even if the other episode that I wasn't super fired up about does 10 times the place or 100 times the place, it's number one on Spotify and it does all of this stuff like it was okay, I guess. Like it was fineish, but it doesn't feel the same as something that's 1% as successful but much more existentially aligned. And again, this is another unteachable lesson that success derived from something that isn't authentic doesn't feel like success. Well, it's it's slightly that thing of like what's the you know money money won't give you happiness unless you earned it. Like a lottery win doesn't mean anything. It tends not to bring people happiness because they didn't earn it. But if you earn it then it's it's got a meaning. It's like there there's no benefit. I'm sure I could get some kind of helicopter to fly me to the top of Everest and have a look around. No one does that because there's nothing in it. The view isn't I'm sure the view is great. But it's the climb is the thing and the idea of going the episodes that really resonate with you and are important to you and you go well that's just that's giving you direction. That's the gift of going oh more guests like that less guests like that. Mhm. And then you're not looking and the metric that you're using is the feeling, fulfillment, vibe. So it's the vibe and it's you're not looking at the figures and going, "Well, that went through the roof, but it's not I didn't want to talk to that person. I want resonate in the same sort of Yeah. And I think actually for your listeners as well, I think it's actually very important to have the balance. I think it's what you don't want to do is is um it's not audience capture, but it's it's um you you're feeling a certain way at the moment and you go right well I want to talk to these people and you could be siloed into just okay well I'll just talk to these guys and it could just be health and fitness and then someone comes on and talks about economics so you go well this is boring I'm not really interested in in money in that way so whatever but the audience might be and then it might awake something in you and you'll ask more interesting questions of that person than they would have got somewhere else. So it is that thing of like going actually the for me certainly the idea of this show is that it's quite a broad church and if you don't keep on split testing guests that are well yeah know maybe I'll chat to them that might be that might be something you're not necessarily the best judge of what you're going to enjoy right it's I I kind of think and maybe this is the same when it comes to the comedy stuff too to avoid being too stagnant I think there's been a bunch of specials that I've seen recently Some of which have been, "Wow, that's like that's really really good." Others where you go kind of feel like this guy did this thing before and maybe this is a bit repetitive. Well, there's a there's a balance, isn't it, of like it's it's growth uh but also in service. So, you go I always think, you know, comedy specials um you go, "Yeah, it's it's all my comedy specials are exactly the same and totally different. It's me and it's 200 jokes in a row. And that's the thing and like you know how much crowd work you put in there and you know what kind of jokes it's as funny as I can be. And I think if I released one and it was a a heartfelt story about love people go well that's not no I didn't too much of a departure. You could Yeah. Yeah. And you can do a little bit of that. You can do a little bit of talking about stuff that is meaningful to you within that but you've you've got to serve as well. So, it's not all it's not all for you. It's for the audience. Yeah, it's an interesting one. I I I certainly think that if you feel existentially aligned with stuff, the more that you do that, the less you're going to feel like the more uh you're going to feel connected to the successes that come along with it. I just think that there is that thing of like the success in whatever term that is whether it's um a financial lifestyle feeling whatever it's it's um it's a lagging indicator of good decisions you made a long time ago 7 years ago oh I'll do three shows a week I don't know when you made that decision co yeah it's insane it's an insane work ethic and that's me saying this it's like it's a lot of prep to have to do it's a lot of work to put in. It's a lot of reps, but my god, it's paying off. Yeah. Stubbornness is uh and consistency. Stubbornness or consistency is a a hell of a performance enhancer. Just it's the one the one way, and you've spoken about this, too. How are you presuming that you're going to be able to beat somebody who does one thing if you're doing two things? At the very least, you need to be twice as good. Yeah. in order to be able to keep up just with where they're at. In order to be able to beat them, you need to be like two and a half times as good. Yeah. It's, you know, you and you see people that are spreading themselves incredibly thinly and they're taking I suppose it's that thing of like the things you won't do. Coming back to that, the opportunities that are presented to you in show business, the things that you could be distracted by, the invites you get, the stuff you could go to and you go, "Yeah, but I've got to go to work." This is another one of those insights that I think people early in the journey need to be aware of. Essentialism by Greg Mchuan was a huge influence on me. Okay. Doing less but better. You know, the highest point of contribution. Uh what is that? And get, you know, very very offensively get rid of all of the rest of the things. But if person watching this who is trying to get more clients than they have now as a personal trainer or a person that's writing on the internet and wants to get more opportunities to go and do live speaking or whatever it is that your goal is, as you continue to get better and better and better at the thing that you do, more opportunities are going to come along, which means that your nose need to be more discerning, not less. So you have this weird inversion where as more opportunities come along that are better that only 18 months ago you would have begged to have had the opportunity to be in the room to have pitched to have been able to say yes to, you now need to be able to say no. Dave Chappelle had a great line on this like I think someone told him very early on your only power in show business is no. He did a thing on uh series two of the Chipotle. I'm not sure if this is a known thing. I'm sure I can talk about this. Um, on the second series of the Chappelle Show, they were in negotiations and he said, "Um, make me an offer and if I don't like your opening offer, I'm walking." It's great. Someone gave me that advice years ago, like when I had a proper job. They said, uh, if you get offered a, you know, an amount of money for a job, whatever it is, don't even look at it. Just write back and go, "I'm a little bit disappointed." Don't even look at what the offer is. Just go, "I'm a little bit disappointed." Doesn't matter what the number. It It helps if you don't look because you think I can't say I'm a little bit disappointed, but kind of works. Jimmy Carl, ladies and gentlemen, Jimmy, you're awesome, man. I love you. And uh thank you for coming to see me. Thank you for staying for an extra day. So, I know you've got somewhere to go to. That's great. I think I think I think you know I like the show. Proud to be a small part of it. I appreciate you, man. Until next time. Lovely. Take care. 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