#953 - Jimmy Carr - Decoding The Secrets Of A Meaningful Life
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This is a big deal for me because I listen to the show so much. I absolutely love it. I slightly could fanboy about the whole thing.

I really love, 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. Will 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 listened to this show and even stuff that I'm, oh, 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 oftentimes it is something where someone says something and 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

I think you said it here, where you're sort of a, if you tell someone the last five podcasts they 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 I like anyway. It's very positive to listen to. But it's also that everyone you have on is trying to make your life better. It's very well-intentioned as a show. I think it's terrific. And the transformation in you, I think, has been amazing.

sort of extraordinary, the journey to this is just kind of amazing. When I see you, I mean, I genuinely got quite emotional with the Naval Ravikant thing 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 the broader sense as well, like 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 J.D. Salinger of the podcast world. And then you get him on the show, and 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' glove with the different Infinity Stones. So it was, before I started, Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Alain de Botton,

and Naval Ravikant. That was before I started the show. Those were 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 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 bucket date and bring me on the show. Him on. So he's self-invited. So I was like, Joe, give over. You know, I've got so many other people to speak to. But yeah, there's definitely a little bit of a sense of like gold medalist syndrome where I think, fuck, 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 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 two. 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 Housel?

uh the the the genius that is morgan housel that said it's that like success is not moving the goalposts it's that thing if you constantly like that that uh uh hedonic 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

They should be, you should be heading for a feeling. And if it's process driven, because kind of success is a moment. You know, even if you get the big thing, whatever it is, and there's lots of those markers along the way. And I've kind of, 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 Naval Ravikant comes on your podcast. You do a co-headliner with-

Whatever the thing is that you go, oh, that's cool. Celebrating that, like celebration is gratitude in action. And that thing of like gratitude being the mother of all virtues. Because if you kind of track it back to that, my kind of fundamental belief is that disposition is more important than position.

So where you are in the world, you could be miserable or you could be entirely at ease. And 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's missing or who's doing better or the other thing. But kind of being grateful in the moment. And the thing that seems to shift that is gratitude. And celebration is a form of gratitude.

Like trying to reframe a lot of stuff in my life in a positive light. So that thing of like, I travel constantly, which is an incredible sort of privilege, but also incredibly boring a lot of the time. It is, right? Travel is boring, 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. I've like, 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, right? You kind of allow yourself to be bored and you allow yourself to kind of just have that kind of space. I think it's very difficult to white knuckle creativity. I'm aware that you, as someone who has quite a sort of

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, motherfucker, 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 Rife selling out arenas across America and I was, how are they, what's going on here? And then I know those guys a little bit and I like them a lot and it's happening and they're putting out crowd work.

See, well, I do a lot of crowd work. But... What? Oh, I should do that. Oh, dummy, every day's a school day. So I kind of watched it and started putting out these crowd work 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 no it doesn't doesn't touch the written material and it's a lovely thing where as a comedian you want to kind of 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? I respect you. You've paid money. You've come out. You've given me your time and attention. There's nothing else. All that we have in life is time and attention. And they give 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 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 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. 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 Evel Knievel.

Sid Evel Knievel 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 fucking 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 filter. I was going to ask this. 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 this show are.

But it's so nice to hear your interpretation of ideas that really mean a lot to me that maybe the inspiration consciously or subconsciously is percolated through. So I'm like, fuck, that sounds familiar.

Fuck, that's like, that's like a, that's a, that's a work on a whole mosey quote from 2000 to 2023. Yeah. I try and give you prompts. Oh, you do? All the time because it, yeah, but it is that thing where you go, it's your, your, your friendship group and your, 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 Malcolm. There's a coterie 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 lovely. But I think really the sweet sauce of this show is, I think most people that listen to this show have that relationship with you as well. It's just they didn't get to go for steak last night, but they kind of go, you know, I think it's the same thing of going...

I think probably most people listening to the show are like low level, a bit concerned about your health at the moment. Like, cause 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, 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 matinee, I think, on that evening. I think you'd done two in Wembley. Oh yeah, one at 7, one at 9.30. One for me, one for the tax man. That's how I operate my touring system, two shows a night. Very good. And your set is incredibly lean. There is very little wasted time, including in the warm-up, which doesn't exist. And I realized that if you were to have, when I first started this show,

And still now, just because of my disposition, if you were to have Rogan at one end, which is information dense but can meander because he likes to vamp and chat shit, and then if you were to have Tim Ferriss at the other end, which is very sort of structured, it's almost like a Blinkist sort of cut down. Well, I'd even go further. I'd say to the absolute extreme, Morgan Housel has a 15-minute podcast that you listen to and go...

I, all right, I need, I need half an hour to process that. Yeah. Cause it's so dense. Yeah. It's the Almanac of Naval Ravikant of podcasts. Yes, he did. He did one the other day, which was like, Oh, it's just like 15 things I've been thinking about. And after each one, you had to kind of pause it and go, Oh,

I need a day. Right. Okay. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, he's, he's fucking brilliant. So 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 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 a

Like they'd 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, insights, uh, creator, this beautiful work on, uh, the magic you were 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 fucking love that. The answers you're looking for is in the silence you're avoiding. You need fewer inputs, not more. I'd agree with that. Yeah. That's really, uh, it's very, it's, it's interesting that thing of like, cause 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, George Mack had a great line yesterday. I went for a walk with George and he was talking about, uh, you know, Britain's very cynical. Uh, America's full of bullshit. Yeah.

It's just such a great kind of... It is. In England, you need to be aware of the cynics and avoid them. And in America, you need to be aware of the bullshit artists and avoid them. And both of them are applauded. The cynics are praised by most of British culture and the bullshit artists are praised by most of American culture. But...

Yeah, 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's friends, Mosey, 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 sweet spot between being very sincere, but you don't need to be serious. You're real, but it's not...

And it's very, I always think that thing of like, it's very easy live as well to switch. Um, you know, cause 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 someone needs it.

I've seen a few of those. There's a couple of those moments like in a show where I feel like I need to earn it. I feel like, yeah, if I do 20 minutes of fastballs, then there could be one nice moment where you make a point. 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 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 wizened fingers that look like a fucking 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, 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 uh which kind of a biography slash self-help and it was like it's that thing of going it's um eckhart tolle 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 McGraw, who I think you've had, have you had on the show? 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 expecting expectations of life pattern 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 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 fucked 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? Because can you think of a joke that shouldn't be told? Saying something is too serious to joke about. It's 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? How skilled could you be in doing that? Andrew's response was when I said, is there anything, is there a joke so abhorrent that you shouldn't make it? And his immediate response was, is it funny? Yeah. And he's like, if it's funny, you can get away with whatever you want.

Yeah, I think so. It's not even getting away with it, though. The idea of, like, I don't buy into the... Get away with? Yeah, and the punching up, punching down. I don't buy into that because in order to buy into that, you have to buy into the Frankfurt School and Foucault and Derrida and Lyotard and all of that. And the idea that power dynamics and that cultural, any cultural 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. Sexy the first time around. Yeah. And it was, no, well, it was, it was very, very interesting and valuable in the lab.

And very much like COVID, it escaped the lab. Great in theory, horrible in practice. And it's had horrific effects. It's out of the lab. The R0 number keeps on rising. It's 28 days later, but with a meme, but with an idea. And I don't buy into that punching up, punching down, because in order to be punching down, you'll be looking down on someone. I'm not looking down on anyone.

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Try it for a month. And if you do not like it, they will give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get a 20% discount and see everything I use and recommend by going to the link in the description below or heading to nomadic.com slash modern wisdom. That's nomadic.com slash modern wisdom. 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. But 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, it can be no equality because we're all born different, right? So it's that thing of going and it's not better, worse, all the same. It's just different. Everyone's kind of different. And I think that for me, that,

The idea of going, you can't have an easy life and a great character. You've got to kind of go out there 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 wishing wells work, but they don't work when it's not the magic. The magic is you going, oh, what I wish for.

What do I want being the fundamental? Like, if you know what you want, that's incredibly powerful. Most people don't know. Most desires are mimetic desires. And you get into René Girard and the idea of going, well, I want that watch because he's got that watch. And I want that car because 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...

Yeah, they're in love with what other people think about them. For having that. It's that Will Storr thing, that status game book, which is, again, I mean, it's just, he's such a genius writer. I love him. He's got a new sub stack, by the way, all about storytelling. Wonderful. He comes out this week on the show, A Story is a Deal. Yeah. He's an outstanding, outstanding human. But that idea of like, you choose what status game you play.

You know, so, so what studies came in and again, another thing for modern wisdom, that idea of going, well, there's, there's fuck you money and there's fuck you freedom and there's fuck 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, 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. Keep learning. Yeah, because what the world needs is someone who's all right at maths. Semi-competent at maths. No, but you're brilliant at English. Well, fucking lean into that. Spend all your time doing that. Specialise, especially as the world changes. I think leaning into maths

You know, you often get, I don't know what it is about age or my position in life, but I often get asked, like, oh, what do 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, Dickie, one of the guys, came up with a fucking wonderful, I haven't written about it yet, but it'll be in a newsletter soon. It's a 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. 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 liminal 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 20 minutes? An hour? The answers you're looking for in the silence you're avoiding. Being alone with your thoughts, that's a lovely thing. How do you think about that? Because you're spending all 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...

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. 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 important.

essential like that's the key thing you can work so hard on bullshit and distract yourself with it and like my job's quite easy because it's easy to analyze and 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, um,

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-

How do people know what they should be doing with their lives? People coming up to you and asking you for earnest, sincere life advice. How do you work out what someone should be doing with their life? I don't know. I mean, it's very odd to be... I'm quite taken with simulation theory 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 touring international comedian with lovely kids and a great life and great friends. That's an incredibly privileged position. I think thinking about the world 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 are your metrics?

And I think when you really kind of analyze it and went, well, 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 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 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've 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 a hundred percent of the time. Yeah. Much better question to build on that. What looks like play to you, but it looks like work to everybody else is what pain do you want in your life? And there's

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. 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, fuck, I spent ages on that. No, no, forget that.

You've got to enjoy taxi rides to the airport. Correct, yeah. You have to enjoy the whole thing. Correct, correct, correct. And as soon as you go, oh, no, no, I just like the bit where I'm on stage. No, that's not how life is. You have to take the whole package. Yeah, James Clear has a fucking 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 wracked with self-doubt, constantly uncertain. The whole experience is going to be tarnished in this like

weird, liminal, 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're 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. So if you enjoy that, if you love it, then great. A good question on what should I be doing with my life? You said before, if people were making a movie about your life, what would the key scenes be? It's a weird thing actually where like,

The cancellation episode, I always think like whenever you get canceled or not canceled, dragged, whenever you get like a tough time, it's like, if my life was a movie, this would be the best episode. If my life was like a 10 part on HBO, they'd 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, you know, there's different types of cancellation. Like oftentimes it's, I told a joke and some people didn't like it.

Okay. Yeah. It's like, who cares? There's a, um, the patron saint of comedy is St. Lawrence and St. Lawrence. Your industry has a patron saint. Yeah. And he's a third 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, uh, a metal, uh,

kind of, I don't know, like, I don't know what you would call it. Like a fucking 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,

of bravery and fuck you is very inspirational it's like that thing of like going it's almost like stoicism to the extreme like the what we can't control the world we can have a strong influence but we can't control anything and shit 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 yes I think that was Socrates wasn't it Socrates thank you yeah

There's a great story about him. Apparently very big fuck 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.

It was a jury of like 150 people. This is how much. And typically what you're supposed to do is be groveling. Socrates is supposed to come up and bring the crying wife, bring the crying children. He didn't do any of that. 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 clearly whatever it was disturbing the youth you know this sort of frivolous claim accusation and he gets sentenced to death and he's supposed to drink hemlock hemlock and he's back at the cell and all of his families 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 friend 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 can like stay, you can 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 fuck you it was. Like you all think.

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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 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 that 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, whether it's linguistic or observation more generally, is you're really recognizing stuff.

Trying to see things for the first time. You're really sort of seeing things in a way that 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. And also that unique experience of like touring around, seeing different places. It's such a unique experience. Literally, you know, when you... I've done...

20 shows in my life, 20, 30, 30 shows in my life. I remember a bunch of different scenarios. There was a nine-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 C-bomb throughout all of his warmup act. And mine was a little bit, you know, there's fingering jokes and stuff like that. And I was like, parents, I'm so sorry for like what's happened to your nine-year-old daughter. She was like, it's all right. She's Australian. And everyone broke out laughing. I'm like, I can't,

until Parkinson's comes and rips my fucking 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 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. But 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 structured and routinized and having habits. Well, it's interesting finding that balance of going like, because that is that thing of like, you could go somewhere different on vacation every year, or you go back to the same place. Because what are you solving for? Are you making new memories? Or do you want relaxation?

You know, 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, 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

than it is in my second. Tell me about 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 serotonin from old music. People listen to old music. They listen to the stuff they like when they were in their teens and twenties. And they listen to, and they watch new movies, dopamine, new stories. Where's this going? What's going to happen? I kind of change it around.

I listened to that Quentin Tarantino book, The Cinemaster 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 things. How does that affect you? Well, I think that thing of like going, being slightly out of your, like new music's really interesting because 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 don't think movies go, because it was like there was an industry there, but it wasn't fully, I don't know, it wasn't blockbusters yet.

Still experimental. Yeah, there was auteurs and the suits were giving the best directors the money to go and do the thing. Go and do the thing. Because we don't have an established process of how this should be done so we can allow you to have a few more degrees of freedom. Yeah, it was, I don't know, it's just a wonderful time. I kind of feel like it's very analogous to how comedy is now. Comedy is really...

having a moment culturally that's very, very special. And I don't know what that is. Maybe it's authenticity or there's something about people wanting to be part of a tribe. I sort of think, 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 gathered around, we watched the shows and talked about it the next day. And then suddenly it was the phone and I'm over there and you're in your room and we're kind of isolated. And I think that thing about coming out to comedy or going out to festivals or going and seeing stuff is my, I suppose, play. We are playing creatures. Someone wrote a book about this in the...

I think it was the late thirties about human beings as a playing animal. I play being upstream of cooperation and cooperation being the secret source of humanity. And the idea of like, I 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. I'm going to go and see the, the, the concert. Uh, the killers are playing live. Oh, I'm going to go and see them play. Oh, I'm going to go 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're, 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 can, you would 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 while 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 that you'd have a tough time having a tough kick because a thousand people bought a ticket to see you they want to see you when came to play

No, but there's an illusion, isn't there? The illusion is, and your ego could get taken away. Oh, I'm on stage. It's me. I'm performing. You don't see the audience. The audience are performing. I saw it last year. I went to see Taylor Swift live in Wembley last year, and it was transcendent. And she was amazing, a great songwriter, an incredible musician, wonderful performer. She was great. The audience were amazing.

next level like it was girls and their mums and their best friends like quite a lot of this action they knew every word to every song they were because i was watching it and i was also kind of watching the crowd and watching that it's performative 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 and

You know, you put out some heckle video. I think I'm not funny. Yeah, but you watched it with the sound off and the subtitles. It's like saying 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 when you're there, it's permission. It's the, I suppose that thing with like, you see Bruce Springsteen live. How you doing? Yeah.

If someone in Starbucks says it, it sounds psychotic. It's great. You allow yourself permission to be in that space where you can perform. It's wonderful. Collective effervescence 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 some local DJ that plays great songs and every song that everybody knows and you get to dance together. You think like, fuck, 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 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-y style lecture come whatever with a few fingering jokes. There's something going on there. Well, I wonder what people are looking for when they, our mutual friend, Alain de Botton, 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 a deity, but they still want to go. Cause you know, church works, but church works not because God is happy, but because people are coming together.

And, you know, they're kind of there. You 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 two was the biggest mistake in, in the church's history, because what they did was they, they translated, it goes back to Ian McGilchrist.

Have you read that, the Mastering the Chemistry, the left brain, right brain thing? So the incredible thing about the left brain is it orders things and makes lists, and it's very – we live in a left brain world. Procedural. And the only thing more impressive than that is the right brain, the idea that it can see the gestalt, it can see the whole thing. And you go, the problem with Vatican II is they took religion and they made it – they translated it into your local language.

And you could just go, oh yeah, it 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 fucking 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? Can you remember any of the one line? I think he did a

He did a joke about roadkill? Yeah, no, can't remember anything. He gave this really nice answer. He gave this earnest answer to this guy about something, something, something, something. But I remember the vibe. The vibe was quite relaxed. It was intense, actually. It was kind of quick. Is it Maya Angelou? People don't remember what you say, but they remember how you make them feel. I've got to round out that movie thing. You mentioned movies before. Two questions about...

People ask, what should I be doing with my life? 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 fucking obvious. Leave the job. Leave the room. You need to get like, it's your brother. It's the, you know, the fucking 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, huh?

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 waited a long time. I didn't. 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 because it's not a noun, it's a verb.

So you have kids and then suddenly you feel, hold a kid and you feel fucking manly. This is fucking great. And then you don't know who you're going to be as a dad. How has fatherhood changed you? I don't know. I think it's, I don't know about change. I think it's like you sort of, you know that thing of like 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 kind of a deeper level it's 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 kind of go, you sort of got a personality. I don't know where that happened. And then the other one's got a totally different personality. Oh, because I think everyone with one kid is nurture.

Oh, well, we gave them this. So they've done that. And we were always, we read books like that. So they did this. 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 lovely. 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 revealing thing. You kind of go, oh, I'm that kind of guy. Okay, that's fun. Great. Did it teach you much about yourself? I don't know. I suppose it's that thing of like 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, I suppose it's closed off.

an existential angst that I always had of like since losing my I lost my religion my mid 20s quite sort of late I was a Catholic and I lost my faith and was an atheist and not having 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 a random collection of atoms coalesced 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 an ex-life. It's them. It's the DNA. Dawkins was right. It's the gene. I'm just the vessel. And I found that incredibly comforting. So you're saying that the denial of death and the death anxiety can be assuaged, at least in part, by making more of you? Yeah. I think the death anxiety, the death is the...

it's the certainty it's you know it's coming coming for all of us i think the more that we talk about it and acknowledge it and the better that idea around 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 this we sort of want you to be happy yeah yeah yeah well i can't wait you know i keep on saying it 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 you're

Club promoter? Love Island? Shallow and vapid? Yeah, I know. Shallow, vapid, how dare you? What can I say? It's a wonderful industry. It's very insightful, incisive, you know. My prediction is you should, not my prediction, my dream for you is that you have a big family. Because I think there's a... There's an only child, that sounds terrifying. But there's a theme...

The only child thing comes up a lot for you. 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, the birth of the... It's Plato to NATO. That's Western civilization, right? Incredibly important figure. But I got issues with Plato. If he was here, I'd tell him. It's Plato and the Zarathustrans. And they both independently came up with the idea of perfection.

So the Zarathustra's 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, obviously, a lot. And I think it gets in our heads like, well, if it can't be perfect, 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 go, well, problems are...

All a problem is, is something that needs your attention. That's great. And there's no such thing as no problems. There's just different problems. Higher order problems. If it helps, call it a puzzle, not a problem. Like just, there's going to be problems. It's going to be messy. Like Nietzsche had this great line which embraced the chaos.

It's quite chaotic life and it's not terribly orderly and it's never going to be orderly. And I think there's something about having kids kind of lets you just kind of lean into that a little bit. The illusion of control really disappears. You've got influence, but very little control.

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slash modern wisdom. That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. That's interesting. I learned this idea called deferred happiness syndrome from Gwendo Bogle. The common feeling that your life has not begun, that your present reality is a mere prelude to some idyllic future. This idyll is a mirage that'll fade as you approach, revealing that the prelude you rushed 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. It's a brilliant observation. Once I've got this done, once I get my degree, then life will begin. Once 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 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, we're going to end up being Buddhists, aren't we? Because it's like, I do slightly disagree with the over-pathologizing life, but depression and anxiety, which I would rather call sadness and worry, but, you know,

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, but it is that thing of like, it's very, it's kind of easy to,

It's easy to say. I mean, I love that thing as well. I'm such a fanboy of the show, but the 2D and 3D lessons. But 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. But not having the watch won't make you happy.

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, uh,

long term. It's like, 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, I know. You weren't expecting that. Well, a stopped clock is right twice a day. That's true. But 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. It's like, I don't know what for, but it's the, but fame and fortune is the, a secular heaven 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 can, but you've got everything.

You've got different problems. It's again, it's problems as 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. What's that great Will Smith line? I'm not the biggest Will Smith fan in the world. But the idea that he went, I was poor and miserable and it was okay because I thought, well, I'll just get some money and then I'll be all right. And then I was rich and miserable. It was like, oh, yeah.

Oh, fuck. Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah, that's Mark Manson's memoir about it. There's nothing else to do. Yeah, yeah. Originally, that was going to be a two-part series Mark was going to write because the first book's called Will. He wrote that with Will Smith and the second book was going to be called Power. It should have been called I Am. That would have been a copyright issue. 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 mind is stuck on a joke. Okay, so when the Will Smith and Chris Rock thing happened, okay, obviously, Chris Rock is like, for me, a godlike figure. I've met him a couple of times and I just...

I'm so in awe of his skill and work ethic. Do not touch our profit, okay?

If I thought of that on the day, I was genuinely annoyed with myself. Like, oh, come on. Come on, brain. Think about it on the day. No use now. But 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 answered by, you know, there's other people on the same road and it can feel sometimes quite sort of, I don't know, 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 yeah 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, 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 shit. 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 non fungible human and someone goes, well, no one else is doing what he does. Other people are in the same industry. It's like Iron Maiden had a great line about this. The Iron Maiden was like, I think they did an interview with their manager. And he went, well, we're not in the music industry. We're in the Iron Maiden industry. That's a fucking slammer. Oh my God. He went, I don't care what's happening now.

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, but I think Bruce Dingsham was sort of saying fame is, um, it's, it's a, a by-product of what we do. It's the, it's the, uh, it's the excrement, uh, fame is the excrement of creativity.

Like something that you need to deal with, but sometimes can be enjoyable. It's like, yeah, okay. Well, it's interesting when people pursue fame for fame's sake. I want to be famous. No. Sorry, you were on Love Island when? Sorry? That's true. Yeah. Look, 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 has been told profusely.

properly we chatted about this last night at dinner but 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 were going into love island and okay you've 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 like the it's crazy 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 mutually fillet each other you are by a margin the hardest working comedian on the planet

I don't think that if only I had a bit more talent, I'd 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

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 self-worth from things other than your work and your level of busyness. Let's say that in the past you used busyness 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 busyness 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 busyness 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. Milan Kundra wrote this short book called Slowness. And kind of the nub of the book, the message is that memory and speed are inversely proportional. 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 moment,

boredom, I guess, of not being busy, not being chaotic. There was a real, oh, can I look around? I don't know. Didn't you have a Chairman Mao quote that was similar to this? What was the Chairman Mao quote? I don't know. You can't smell the roses from a galloping horse. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a good, that's Mao.

What? Who knew? Chairman Mao. We can take good shit from Andrew Tate and Chairman Mao as long as it's good shit. Because that's really who you need to be associated with right now to help rehabilitate your public image. Sure, sure, sure. Chairman Mao and Andrew Tate. Yeah, but it's true. Slowing down once in a while is very good for you. And finding that balance in life. But I think, I don't know, I think working hard's 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. 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. 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 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. 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, um,

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 a provider, 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. Uh, oh, they've, they, they haven't got a side by the man. Yeah. They haven't got a side hustle and a grift. And 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 because his father had quite a boring job, but he was so passionate about his hobbies. And 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.

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line from Visakhan Varasamy. 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. 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 self-worth 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, no. You're supposed to be base jumping from the edge of a skyscraper, you know, just off the back end of some VIP trip to Ibiza 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. I did have coffee with a friend on a yacht recently and went, this is good. It's even better. I'm enjoying all of it. Yeah. This is great. It is better. It's a big boat. Yeah. But no, 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 allowing yourself to 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, the celebration thing is gratitude and action, I think is 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 COVID had finished. Just thought I'm just going to, you know, solopreneur, degenerate, lone ranger my way through this thing. But we hit

A million subs, and I got to ring Dean. We hit two million subs, and I think I broke off from work for a little while. I hit three 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. You go, 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. You know, that thing of like when it gets to a certain number of subscribers, you do a Q&A. Mm-hmm.

I think the Q and 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 to 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's sat in front of me, look as good as possible. Okay. We'll 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 just talk about life and what I think. And it's, I'm enough. It's a good question. There is definitely still 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 proselytizing 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. 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, 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, cause I'm used to playing theaters and I do arenas in different markets in the world, like in Australia or New Zealand, I'm playing arenas next year, but in the UK, I kind of haven't done it. Where are you playing?

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 I'm doing it's November and December and it's but I'm playing in the round because it's that thing where I did just I did a gig I was in I was in Melbourne and one night off in the tour and Chappelle was in town

and he called and said you know what's poppin i said oh you're doing a show 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 because there's screens above and you're just kind of gently rotating and delivering to like the lazy susan of the comic world yeah it was but it was literally so exciting they're walking on and it was that thing and it was

And I loved how nervous I was walking on it. Oh, so you did a little warm up with your boyfriend? Oh, yeah. Only like a half hour or whatever. Only a half hour for Dave Chappelle in an arena. But it was so fun. And then I kind of thought, oh, this is the way to do it. You're so sick. 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 really exciting. And then playing America, like playing and 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 taking something that is... Stand-up is an American medium, really. If you think about what America's given the world culturally, it's the Western jazz music and stand-up comedy. Great gifts. 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 or Ricky Gervais, but most of the big names come out of the States? I think that might change over time. I think the club culture here is very, very healthy. If you think about the Comedy Cellar and the Comedy Store in LA...

and the communities that they've engendered. And then latterly, the mothership in Austin that Joe set up. And, you know, Yellow Springs is Dave Chappelle's new thing as well, which is an amazing space. I think that thing of like, you can't beat your environment and the being around other people and coming up. Like it's scenes, it's groups of comedians that come up sort of together. So if you think about...

uh jerry seinfeld and then um you know baguette chris rock baguette 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. Because 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 Rowe, Finn Taylor, Vittorio, the screen rock guys, Jacob and Jake. Like this is kind of the equivalent of the D-Gen podcast bro circuit of

from the US over in the UK. I wonder with the UK as well, it is a great comedy market. Like the UK, there's a lot. You could busy yourself very happily for two years touring the UK. And not have to drive far. And be home in your own bed every night and then write a new show and go again. So the wanderlust that I have to go out to 47 countries on tour is maybe slightly unusual. But I think as the...

Comedy's gone global relatively recently, right? It 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 what I'm hoping that it just becomes a bigger and bigger thing because it can be such a broad church. 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 should go, really? We're doing exactly the same job, doing the same thing. This is different stylistically. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that Iron Maiden line. You know, don't try to be the best, try to be the only. I suppose that really only works if you're actually good at what you do.

Because 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. It's a shame that nobody except for you is into it. Yeah, but, you know, I do think that thing of like there's a – with comedy, you find your audience. You can joke about anything but not with anyone.

And that kind of goes both ways. It's like you go, your audience is kind of, it's cool with this stuff and maybe other people wouldn't be, but it's that you attract your crowd and you get the audience you deserve ultimately. I mean, if you look out and you don't like your audience, you fucked 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, sold out the event in Apollo, which was fucking 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 there. It's such a weird way to think of three and a half thousand people. 7,000 eyes. Yes. Well, you see them in there. 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. 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. Yeah. It's packed in. 400 eyes. Yeah. Uh,

But yeah, and I would happily go for a coffee with any one of them. And I know for a fact that there are fucking tons of people in my industry that couldn't say this thing.

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 conversation we've had such a great thing we've had a fucking 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 are monetizing in a manner that I'm uncomfortable with. I think it's very different for different people. Like I did Kill Tony the other night, Tony Hitchcliffe, 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 the big fans of the show and they love it.

And I sell books at the tour shows and that's it. And I don't sell t-shirts. I don't sell pens. I don't sell mugs because I wouldn't buy it. Yeah.

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 am I going to do? That's why you've got shares in menswear company in Savile Row. Sure. So yeah, I'm going to sell Tom Sweeney suits. I'm going to have tailors on standby in the lobby. Yeah. But I asked on Twitter, I was like, for the people who use the word grifter or shill, give

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 red herring question because I just assumed that nobody would be able to come up with a good definition. That's a great definition, isn't it? 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 fucking...

What's the make of the bag you put me on to? Nomadic. The nomadic, like the- Yeah, you are fully wisdom-pilled. Oh, man. But I did think sometimes you have a LMNT in the morning in the cold plunge. I got the new brass monkey cold plunge. Jesus wept. So 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. Super hardcore.

So, no, it just feels better. I mean, I can't do as long in there, obviously, because it's really cold. But it's so good. I love how we've slowly sort of re-bro-ed you. There's 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 plunges and element and nomadic and fucking new tonic. I tell you my...

Let me tell you the story. So I now stay in hotels based on sauna cold plunge, right? If they've got a sauna on cold plunge, I'll stay in that one because 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. It's fantastic. I do my best. I'm better at listening to talks about it than I am at doing it.

Okay, that's fine. But then I find like 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, it's like beautiful facility, huge, like 95 degrees in there, properly hot. So I'm in there and the guy goes, I don't speak German, but shorts, shorts.

It's like- We weren't supposed to be dressed. Oh, you can't. Okay. I'm going to take my shorts off and it's fine. There's like three guys in the sauna. Everyone's naked. Fine. We've 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 five minutes in six degree 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? So Sky that you've just met,

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 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. Let me think about Sky. I've got a story about Sky. Yeah. 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 nine different sauna rooms and a...

fucking snow room and this weird hut thing that you've got to clamber into and the floor's heated and it's insanely hot and through the back of the gents kind of classic Asian spa approach is load of unisex cold plunges and saunas but you've got to everyone's dick out 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

And he just had a towel covering his junk. And this guy, you know how people plane the top of varnished tables? We're going to get the varnish off the top of this table. I'm going to retreat it. Then we're going to re-varnish it again. And this guy had a loofah. And I was watching him scrub very aggressively. I get that this might be a cultural thing. Everyone in here is naked. The guy's 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 coal 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 is it Middlesbrough you're from Stockton yeah the shit bit of Middlesbrough Stockton Stockton on T's and that's your idea of a stag do now that was shame on you I know shame on

on you. You should have been in Benidorm. You should now have some kind of antibiotic resistant STI. You went to a sauna. No,

Not even that kind of sort. He had a Jeffersonian dinner that weekend as well and followed Shabbat at the same time. Yeah. No, my friends are unbelievably weird. I have some of the strangest friends in the world. I mean, you were at dinner with us last night. You rocked up to dinner and we've got Craig Jones, second best grappler in the world, maybe the best troll on the planet. Seth Belisle, who is his handler, I suppose. George Mack,

Your handler. Soon to be one of the best writers on the planet. Zach Talander, signed to Conor McGregor's record label, but an ex-weightlifter. Your videographer. Me, ex-fucking reality TV turned podcaster person. Brian Callan and you. And I'm like, this is the shittest 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 wasn't going to go well. Yeah, fuck. I don't know, man. 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. Because I don't think I was supposed to lead this one. I feel like this was kind of, you talk about self-authoring and agency. 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 thing late. No, I think you made a very big move, like a physical move. Mm-hmm.

But I think you could have done this in the UK. I think it's the, 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,

as you were early on. Unfortunately, even more, actually, I think. Yeah, I don't know. Look, it's one of the things, I have two tensions, right? I have a tension between two different poles. One is, I don't like to get too big for my boots. I know that it is a bit of a turnoff to

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 because you think, well, as much as I might not like the fact that they're successful at the saxophone, I can't fucking 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 the briefest thought. A cursory glance. A cursory glance at like the questions you ask, the reading that you've done, the research, the amount of books you have to get through, the...

the way that you need to kind of go, okay, so they've written a book, whether it's really good or really bad, 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 appreciate that. That's on... 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, oh, 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 George, like Zach, like Brian, like yourself, people who've got big dreams and sort of blue sky vision. I refer to myself as a criticism hyper-responder. I over-index on...

uh, the criticism of others. Uh, 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 bullshit town, three people living on one person's wage in the Northeast of the UK, uh,

goes to a school where your entire 200 person in your 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 fucking project off the launch pad and get themselves out to escape velocity in orbit. That should be a really relatable story for most people because it's this...

a pretty accessible combination of effort curiosity and stubbornness to not stop i think it's i think you're very working class in the best possible way and you don't waste anyone's time i'm a bit like seeing the you know that kind of inside the actor studio thing the master class there's a master class thing and michael caine 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 Caine did it. And Michael Caine's working class. And Michael Caine goes, when you look in a camera, I can't do it, Michael Caine, but when you look in the camera, have one eye, look at someone in the eye, but look at their left eye.

and cheat it and then look the other side. So you just look at one of their eyes and 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 spit and sawdust. He's a working class guy. He's telling you how to do the functional thing. Weirdly, I'm more working class than you think. Yeah.

because I'm from Slough and from the Farnham Road in Slough next to the Mars factory. I grew up on the biggest industrial estate. If you forget the education and the current tax bill. Yeah, but that thing of like, you go, I'm very aware of like,

There's reputation in this character. There's how you are perceived. It's very important to know how you're perceived. You're very aware of how you're perceived. There's also this character. There's who you know you are. That thing within you and where you've come from. And the idea of like, I think people assume I went to a 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 just have their... It's perception. Yeah, but it's okay to lean into that. I think as long as you know. Yeah, reputation management's 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 wrangler horse dude with the big beard. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and he just had this fucking lovely line where he said, I like me. I'd buy me a beer.

I thought, what a fucking 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 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. 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. Like if you said the shit 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. It's yeah. Okay. Feel like an imposter for a while. Um,

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 didn't work. So we need to change it. Or that one's not going to work. So we're going to write something new. It's got to be something that's like, 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, one for sort of 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 compartmentalize. Well, I do think that thing of like never refuse the muse. If you're working in anything creative, just write it down. If something comes to you, you just write it down. That's the Naval one, right? Inspiration is perishable. Act on it immediately. Yeah.

Yeah, Tim Ferriss 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 that everybody gets. I'm 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? Oh, I actually 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 inner critic, it's not often wrong. It's just, you can say it in a nice way. You know, it's, it's, it's sometimes it's right. Sometimes you fuck 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, that you have to listen to an inner critic. I think the, the, um, uh, is it Hormozy? Uh, it's almost, he's so good for quotes, but it's, I think it was, um, uh, self-confidence without evidence is delusion. Mm-hmm.

Some version of that. Confidence without competence is delusion. Yeah, it's so true. And you do meet people along the way that have that

incredible confidence or they sort of exude that and then they don't have the confidence. And you think to back it up. And you go, well, no, no, you need to be able to back it up. 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, does someone with half your talent but five times your self-belief making ten times the money? Yes, and that's true for every British person. There's an American. Exactly. Well, I mean, look, I think for the

perennial overthinkers reframing this very well-trodden landscape of inner criticism. A lot of the way that you can look at that is I'm fragile. You know, my self-belief exists on a knife edge. It feels like I'm tightrope 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 finely tuned is a nice reframe. It's so easy to be kind to other people and sometimes so difficult to be kind to yourself. I think you wouldn't let someone else speak to a friend like that.

you just wouldn't stand for it. And yet you're in a critic. You're just like, yeah, say terrible things to me. Just accept it as it comes. Yeah. I, uh, that idea on you had a position and disposition. This has happened a couple of times. I misremember things that guests 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 going to, 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.

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. You're a big band.

But it's not like an event culturally in the same way that Oasis coming together is. There's a narrative to that and a trajectory of kind of where they are. 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 they're, I hope they're taking time to go. This is fantastic. It's the question again of what, what happens when you arrive. Let's say that the things that you want to have happen, happen.

What then? Okay, 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. It's got to be two nights at Wembley because, you know, that's the reason the gold medal didn't feel right because it could have been a fluke. So I need to do it twice to prove that the first one wasn't a fluke.

And, or is it a process thing where 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 micro niche degenerate fame success thing that I have done.

I think it's okay not to do the throat clearing on that. 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. 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 I'm really passionate about, it's someone that I wake up on the morning and I'm like, I cannot wait to speak to this person. This is going to be so fucking cool. Today was one of those days. And then there's other ones where I go, yeah, 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 a place or a hundred times a place. It's number one on Spotify and it does all of this stuff. Like it was okay, I guess like it was fine ish, 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 won't give you happiness unless you earned it. 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 got a meaning. It's like 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

Let's guess like that. 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 to resonate in the same sort of way. 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'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 just talked 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 money in that way. So whatever, but the audience might be, and then it might awaken 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, yeah, no, maybe I'll chat to them. That might be something. You're not necessarily the best judge of what you're going to enjoy.

Right. It's 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 we 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.

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 i 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 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 certainly think that if you feel existentially aligned with stuff the more that you do that the less you're going to feel like oh

the more 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 a financial lifestyle feeling, whatever it's, it's, it's a lagging indicator of good decisions. You made a long time ago, seven years ago. Oh, I'll do three shows a week. I don't know when you made that decision. Yeah. That'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 a, and consistency, stubbornness or consistency is 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. 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 work. This is another one of those insights that

I think people early in the journey need to be aware of. Essentialism by Greg McKeown 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, uh,

If a 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 no's 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. I think someone told him very early on

your only power in show business is no. He did a thing on a series two of the Chappelle show. 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, uh, you know, um,

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. It doesn't matter what the number. It helps if you don't look because you think, I can't say I'm a little bit disappointed, but it kind of works.

Jimmy Carr, ladies and gentlemen. Jimmy, you're awesome, man. I love you. And 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 right. 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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