스크립트
00:00:00how many shows did you do last year uh maybe oh god i don't know 250 300 something like that
00:00:06it's the it's the two shows a night thing that that ramps up the numbers and that's been the
00:00:10big kind of innovation in my touring not like going if you yeah there's no line um i think
00:00:16was bb king said it i do the shows for free they pay me to travel and i kind of feel like that i
00:00:21feel like getting there is the hassle doing the show is a joy and so i do a show at seven and then
00:00:27a show at 9 30 in most places so it's that thing of like it's one for me one for hmrc
00:00:33right one goes to the tax man the other one's just all does it really mind yeah pretty much these
00:00:40days yeah definitely be after that much scrutiny what's your relationship with worry like do you
00:00:46get overwhelmed that's a pretty intense schedule oh no no i mean not at all i think that thing about
00:00:51if anything that um decreases the stress level doing that many shows makes you less nervous
00:00:57because it's it's kind of like being an airline pilot it's about sort of hours in the sky
00:01:01so if you spend that much time on stage and then you know i i film everything now so it's often
00:01:07you're you're kind of in the shows you've got you never get bored of it because you know a good third
00:01:12of it is just that night just that show and it changes all the time that's interesting i was like
00:01:17i i sort of used to think about jealousy and envy a lot like the idea that they're different
00:01:22and one is i don't want that person to have that thing and it's a really dark energy right and then
00:01:28there's envy which is telling you what you want you see someone's got something you go oh wow
00:01:32i want that and i remember looking at like um uh matt rife and andrew schultz and their video content
00:01:39online and they were kind of blowing up and going i should i should do that i should take someone on the
00:01:43road and film it and just you know copy that methodology and i did it and i've absolutely
00:01:49loved it it's really kind of changed the way that i that i gig
00:01:52why is it the case that you're not i mean i've been backstage with you before you go out and within
00:01:58minutes before you're about to go on stage you snacking on an apple not really thinking about and
00:02:05then going out and performing in front of 7 000 people is then just reps now under the belts that
00:02:12nerves kind of don't i think it's also like it's it's quite self-selecting being a comedian at sort
00:02:17of at that level where people are you know if i play a club then people have just gone out to see
00:02:22comedy but i'm i'm not in the entertainment business i'm not in the comedy business i'm in
00:02:26the jimmy car business and people have come out to see my show so they kind of know what they're
00:02:31going to get if anyone's offended at this point it's like they bought tickets for a horror movie
00:02:35and they're complaining they're scared it's just it's like okay dum-dum it's like it doesn't it
00:02:41doesn't count it's like so it's also that thing of like the the moments you can have with the
00:02:45crowd now are because they've seen it online because they know what what you do they're they're
00:02:50expecting it okay oh wow i can't believe my luck thank you the service is fantastic there's this line
00:02:56that um made me think about the level of intensity perhaps that you go through with your touring your
00:03:03life does not need to be easier it needs to be simpler your system is designed to handle stress and
00:03:08challenge but not complication you probably handle hard things pretty well but feel overwhelmed when they
00:03:13become messy do not attribute to difficulty that which can be explained by complexity it seems like
00:03:18if what you're doing is touring and focusing on touring and doing the live shows and getting to
00:03:22the next show and being in a good mood and performing well it's kind of one thing all the way as opposed
00:03:27to trying to do that whilst number two and number three and number four and number five well i think it's
00:03:32also that thing of like it's not repetition it's like how many gigs last year you go uh you know 250 or
00:03:37300 and that sounds in a way kind of boring like it would be the same thing again and again and
00:03:42actually it's not it's never repetition it's iteration so you're changing it subtly every time you're
00:03:46changing the jokes you're trying new jokes in at every show every single show at the end of the show
00:03:51you're trying new things so it's con it's quite it's very um stimulating intellectually to
00:03:55to be writing why do you think people get stuck in overthinking uh well let's let's have a think
00:04:02about it that'll help it's like trying to sniff our way out of a cocaine problem it's just like
00:04:07correct how like the fact that you're the person asking that the the rumination king um i don't
00:04:13know i think it's like it's it's anxiety i suppose is what it is overthinking in in in a larger form
00:04:19and my sort of view on it is anxiety is thought without control your thoughts are just wild and a
00:04:27flow state is control without thought and so on stage you are in a flow state you you know what
00:04:34you're doing you know what the jokes are they're just like you don't even have to think about it's
00:04:38the next thing and then people are talking to you and you're just being sort of yourself you're just
00:04:42being loose so it's it becomes like it's a flow state it's not you're not being anxious about
00:04:47anything so finding something where you can do that is that's the secret source finding something that
00:04:54you enjoy doing that you can be in that kind of flow state a thought without control is an interesting
00:04:58insight i think helplessness a lot of people have this sensation that i can't enact my will on the
00:05:06world i can't ensure that this thing is going to uh behave in the way that i want to but if i think
00:05:11about it enough it's kind of the same as preparing for it i i wonder are we um mark fisher
00:05:17wrote about this beautifully about the privatization of anxiety and stress and the idea that we're
00:05:23blaming the individual for mental health problems when if you look at the numbers now if you look
00:05:27at the stats of how many people are suffering with depression and anxiety i think you have to
00:05:32uh conclude that it's a societal problem we're not arranging our society in a way that is uh conducive
00:05:40to good mental health people are incredibly stressed in the world and it's a collective action problem it's not
00:05:47something that you can solve on your own if you're a depressed young man you cannot solve the problem
00:05:52on your own you have a dispersed identity if you want to be happy go and make some other people happy
00:05:57it's a vicious cycle though right because the thing that you need is to rely on other people but given
00:06:04that you're around fewer people than ever before you don't have the same level of cohesion as you
00:06:08would have done a few thousand years ago look at look at what we've done everything's now for the
00:06:11individual right so what used to be a game of five aside you know you know on a on a wednesday night
00:06:17is now a personal best at the gym well that's isolating and the idea that you're tracking your
00:06:23steps every day rather than going for a walk with a friend it's like it's it's very isolating so i'd
00:06:28think of like you know think about the the manosphere um you know there's a lot kind of talk about it the
00:06:34last six months after louis through's brilliant documentary and you you kind of look at it and you go well
00:06:39it's it's the wrong prescription for the right problem there is definitely a problem going on
00:06:44so i mean my my take on it is i'm very i'm pro-gang pro-drinking pro-gambling let me let me let me give
00:06:52you the argument right so pro-gang where should men be together men are really good at checking other
00:06:58men gangs have got a bad reputation because some of them do shoot people and deal drugs okay but that's
00:07:03a very small percentage mostly it's like guys with other guys you know hanging out and they kind of
00:07:08check themselves and it can be an incredibly positive force and i'm very pro uh drinking i mean scott
00:07:15galloway has the best line on it the risk to your liver is as nothing compared to the risk of social
00:07:20isolation so i think we should like lower the drink i've set up these like youth clubs around the world
00:07:27uh they've got like jukeboxes and pool tables and they play sports on a big tv they're really fun
00:07:33uh they're called pubs and they're everywhere right and what we should do is just lean into that go the
00:07:39youth clubs are already there they're called pubs we should lower the drinking age to 16 because if
00:07:44you think 16 year olds aren't drinking well you're living in a fantasy world anyway certainly in the uk
00:07:49i don't know about how much do people drink in the us at 16 quite a bit right yeah yeah people drink at
00:07:5516 here's what you do though you legalize drinking at 16 not for individuals so you've got to bring
00:08:00three mates with you so you can get hammered in a group but not on your own yeah well you're not going
00:08:05to get hammered there's four of you you're going to check yourself you're going to make sure you don't
00:08:07get kicked out of the pub i don't know sometimes i've got friends on in a group of a group of people it
00:08:12gets worse sometimes yeah but you know but maybe but i'm very happy to i'd rather they were
00:08:16together doing that in a space with other people and people of all ages and there's other adults in
00:08:21the room i'd rather that than they were drinking in a park i'd much rather and gambling is like
00:08:26there's a there's a huge problem with gambling at the moment where people are gambling um you know
00:08:30online and sports betting that's like it's a because you're trying to game the system because you can't
00:08:34see a way out right you've got to deal the younger generation in but i think gambling should be
00:08:38it's the bigger things it's taking a gamble on yourself taking a gamble on a career that's the big
00:08:43gamble the big risk saying that you want to do something and kind of coming out someone that's
00:08:47you know ambitious i don't know i think the the younger generation sort of need to be dealt in
00:08:53in a way that they're not at the moment you know what hope is there to to buy a house and start a
00:08:57family it's not that they don't want to it's like they're not given the conditions to do that
00:09:01i don't think there should be any tax on the under 30s have you seen rory sutherland's one which is
00:09:07he thinks i think your first 250 grand should be tax free which is an equivalent that's a great idea
00:09:12yeah so you just get that first 250 000 pounds dollars and no tax on that and then the tax kicks
00:09:19in afterward it's a great idea it's a great idea i mean under 30 is just like that thing of like that
00:09:25life stage of like going just trying to get sort of to the table it's the same reason that bill
00:09:30pokins suggests giving your kids their inheritance when they're 30 because if that that book died with
00:09:36zero is so brilliant it's it's kind of about so much more than that as well that kind of what you
00:09:40should be doing at what stage of life correct so the idea that there's young people you know feeling
00:09:43anxious yeah great well we've arranged our society incorrectly then if everyone it's almost like
00:09:47we've inverted maslov's hierarchy of need you know that kind of pyramid thing where you go okay so you
00:09:54need food and shelter and security on everyone's trying to self-actualize without any friends or a
00:10:00house yeah so so 200 years ago people worried about starving but proud of their name and now people
00:10:06are you know calorifically they're fine and they're anxious it's it's it's not a great situation yeah
00:10:12it's like it's it's kind of you get into kind of i suppose slightly buddhist almost immediately because
00:10:18it's like i think happiness is a time machine i think depression is is thinking about the past and
00:10:23anxiety is a worry about a future self in the moment you tend to be fine but it's you know people people
00:10:31don't have a sense of you know being able to do that being able to kind of sit in the moment well
00:10:35it's interesting with the flow state thing because at least in my experience when you're in the deepest
00:10:39flow state possible you actually don't have much memory of what happened like when you turn around
00:10:44and think about what you were doing at that time i guess it might be the same at least when i've done
00:10:48my job we did shows within days of each other in sydney at darling harbour a few months ago and when
00:10:55you drop into the show you actually someone said how did how did that section go or how did how did the
00:11:02i have no idea what happened yeah you were in the moment because you have moved yourself out of the
00:11:06way and it's i don't know it's it's interesting that what we say that we want is more memories
00:11:10right we want to have time expand and for us to be able to look back and yet the most enjoyable way
00:11:15to spend the present moment is in a way that we won't be able to remember in future it's this sort
00:11:19of odd yeah it's an interesting yeah it's cute but i mean the worst thing is to go oh well i can
00:11:26definitely remember what happened but i remember that i wasn't there i remember that i was worrying
00:11:32about this thing that was going to come up next or that i was fearful about this or i was distracted
00:11:36i wasn't really in the moment that seems like the worst way to spend the present that's kind of the
00:11:42the eckhart tolle story isn't it you know that story about him like he was horribly depressed in
00:11:47his 20s i mean really you know kind of thinking about ending it all and he was on a uh park bench
00:11:54park bench and then he thought to himself i can't live with myself and in saying that he went well
00:11:59who's i and who's myself wait a second and just realized you can kind of separate those two things
00:12:04and get kind of beyond that and and kind of there's a equanimity in in being able to kind of separate
00:12:10yourself from your thoughts sometimes i really do think that the worry is about control right
00:12:13it's strange because no amount of anxiety is going to make any difference to what's going to happen
00:12:18but control is what controls an illusion right the way down i mean i've said this before i think it's
00:12:22i blame the plato and the um zarathustrans for coming up with the idea of heaven and perfection
00:12:29there is no heaven and perfection it's all you know i'm i'm with nietra on this it's it's embrace the
00:12:33chaos that you can't have control over what happens only how you react to it so it becomes
00:12:38very stoic very quickly because you just go well i'll i just i'm in charge of how i react to this
00:12:42stuff i definitely think a lot of people blame themselves and to some degree i understand why
00:12:48because you want to feel like you have agency over what's going on you want to be the person that's
00:12:52in control you don't have to rely on anybody else but a good question to ask yourself is am i depressed
00:12:59or is my life depressing right like am am i anxious or is my life anxiety is it is it depression or
00:13:05sadness you know if it's circumstantial then i think it's sadness i think it's much more acceptable to
00:13:09sound depressed than to say i'm sad but if it's if it's circumstantial and you could do something
00:13:14about it then then great i've been thinking about a thing recently okay i don't believe in generations
00:13:20and you won't find someone who's a bigger neil howe fan than me you know the guy that coined the
00:13:24phrase millennial but i don't really believe in generations i think like putting a whole cohort of
00:13:29people into one box it makes about as much sense to me as horoscopes so you go the idea there are
00:13:35people that are um entitled and there's people that are ambitious in every cohort you know i mean
00:13:42donald trump and joe biden are in the same generation they're very different right so you go
00:13:47well actually there's entitled people that are young and there's there's people that are very ambitious
00:13:50and the difference would be where you are where you want to get to if you want to do something about
00:13:54it you're ambitious and if you want someone else to do something about it if it's their responsibility
00:13:58then that's entitlement it's a pretty good working definition there's lots of you know you meet young
00:14:03people that are just that are you know that are great and they get lumped in with this oh millennials
00:14:08be like this nonsense but there has to be some sort of delineation and i do think that there are
00:14:15changes that occur across time right across group from a long time ago to now there are changes and if
00:14:21you just put these random bars in between them to break them up does that not make sense i don't
00:14:28think i don't think it's helping i don't think it helps um and i think it's uh well i mean listen
00:14:35you know there's me sort of saying i'm contradicting myself and say well i do think we need to do
00:14:39something for the younger generation i think we need to sort of change the world because effectively what
00:14:43have we done we've raised the school at leaving age in the uk to 21. because it's mandatory to get
00:14:49a degree now yeah every everyone you know goes to university and you know a university is a university
00:14:54degree is a luxury item it's a louis vuitton handbag right it's it's that's what it is and you go and
00:15:01if everyone's got one the value of that obviously decreases so you get into peter turchin talks about
00:15:06the end of civilizations he's a brilliant you know peter turchin right he's probably been on the show um so
00:15:11he talks about there's two things two reasons why a society collapses and one is the inequality of wealth
00:15:16which we've almost supercharged now with social media because everyone can see everything all the time
00:15:20and then he talks about the overproduction of elites so when you overproduce elites um and they
00:15:26don't get what they're promised so if you go out and you work hard at school and you get a degree
00:15:31from a good university and then you go well where's where's my four bedroom house where's my
00:15:37wife and family what's what it hasn't delivered then that elite that feels let down by the system and what it
00:15:43tacitly promised them becomes the counter elite and that counter elite fights against the system
00:15:48and tries to bring it down so i think that's why we're kind of in the in the the beginnings of a
00:15:53revolution at the moment i think that's one of the reasons why america has more prevalent victimhood
00:15:59culture than somewhere like the uk does and that's because when you're growing up in the uk you're
00:16:05not really told that you can be whatever you want to be that kind of blue sky thinking helicopter
00:16:09vision i don't think is given to british people in the same way if you diverge from the path that tall
00:16:16poppy syndrome kicks in and you tend to be chopped down pretty quickly whereas in the us for all that
00:16:20it's a horrible misogynistic judgmental xenophobic country trying to keep everybody down the american
00:16:25dream still kind of is accepted it's part of the fabric i think that most people believe and that
00:16:32means that if you did everything right and then grow up and become an adult and the world doesn't deliver
00:16:37to you that which you were promised as a kid quite rightly you feel indignant like hey where's my stuff
00:16:43i think it's the uk i don't think you want there to be some social mobility you want to be able you
00:16:47want essentially you want your kids to do better than you did in life you that's what you kind of want
00:16:52but it really i suppose and the kids also want to do better than you did as well yeah sure i think
00:16:58i think that thing about going you know from a political point of view i'm less concerned with
00:17:02equality you know peter turchin's very worried about there being equality i'm more concerned with
00:17:06abundance you know what does the future hold is it going to be um uh star wars or star trek
00:17:14in 50 years time and i'd love to believe it could be star trek i'd love to believe that there is
00:17:20abundance although even if there is we'll get used to it because the world that we live in now if you
00:17:25showed your great great grandfather your life now he would think you'd be made emperor habituation's a
00:17:30hell of a drug yeah you just you get used to this stuff right so but you know rich and poor is always
00:17:35it's going to be relative and whatever we you know but the idea that everyone's needs are taken care of
00:17:40because really people think they want more money but really money is is the is is the thing that gets
00:17:46you what we really want which is you know good health care and good education and the right amount
00:17:52of calories and you know until you start to fold status in right because one of the big reasons that
00:17:58you want money is to have more money than the guy that lives next door yeah well i think that thing
00:18:02about taking care of everyone's um physical needs in society is is a collective action problem making
00:18:08sure that there's a safety net there that isn't a hammock but but you can't take care of people's
00:18:13metaphysical needs and so the difference would be between you know a casio watch that tells the time
00:18:18perfectly reasonably and a blingy rolex that shows that hey you made a baby or whatever that that
00:18:25whatever the the the extra value you get from what it means to you rather than but i mean you you know
00:18:31get into that kind of renee gerard where we're full of kind of mimetic desires we don't know what to
00:18:35want and that thing of like not having to impress other people that's the superpower yes yeah that's
00:18:40the thing that really makes a difference to the quality of your life if you if you know what you
00:18:44want you don't have to impress other people like that really does simplify life that would be a
00:18:47wonderful gift i don't know how the hell you would give it to people but the gift of being able to say
00:18:51you don't have to impress anybody else would liberate so many people from perverse desires from being
00:18:58distracted by things that they don't actually want to do that they're only doing to perform it's the
00:19:03hidden versus observable metrics thing that me and george talk about all the time it's interesting
00:19:07getting getting stuff is fun having stuff isn't fun getting stuff is fun um and that's it's a it's a
00:19:12weird kind of lesson i mean you talk about that the 2d 3d lessons correct it's a real 3d lesson you
00:19:17have to experience that correct you kind of go wilkins was my first big 2d 3d lesson thing i read
00:19:22the book and then i brought him on the show that's like a 2d and then maybe a 2.5d lesson getting to
00:19:27sit down with him and talk about these ideas about how to structure your life and to focus on having
00:19:31fun and spending money in smart ways that brings you together with other people and then we finished
00:19:36the episode and he said what are you going to do now and i was like i'm probably going to go home
00:19:41and write the show notes for this episode and upload to get the file across to my editor and stuff
00:19:45and he says do you want to come wake surfing it's like okay of course i do went went downstairs
00:19:50he had a driver outside waiting for us we got on the boat with the boat captain who had swim shorts
00:19:55and a towel and then we did that and then we went back to his house on the lake which is the most
00:19:59expensive house ever sold in austin and then we did this thing and then his driver on the way to take
00:20:03him back on his jet dropped me off at home i was like oh that's a that's a 3d lesson like i could
00:20:09have read the book 50 times and not had the same tangible visceral experience yeah and that what
00:20:16should be what you yeah what you should be doing right now is is it's hard to get your head around
00:20:20that though i think it's uh it's not easy for young people i think it's it feels like it feels like um
00:20:28limitations are very freeing correct feels once you decide what you want to do and what you're going to
00:20:34work out and who you're going to be with life gets very simple because you you stop thinking about how
00:20:39to live and you start thinking about living well yeah i i guess an analogy would be if you were
00:20:46in a boat in the middle of the ocean if you just have to row real hard and you know the direction
00:20:51you're going in that's yeah probably not that's a muck is really a slide isn't it the uh if uh
00:20:57if you don't know where you're going no wind is favorable uh yeah yeah not not too dissimilar but
00:21:00i suppose if you're also having to direct yourself you're lost in the rumination of i i took five
00:21:06miles in that direction but maybe i should if i take a slight right here and so yeah i mean david
00:21:11epstein's new book is all about this it's all about the power of constraints and how they breed
00:21:14creativity and yeah people think that they want as much optionality in life as they can get
00:21:20homozy's very good on this i i met homozy the other day for the first time but we kind of felt it
00:21:24felt like getting together with an old friend i can't imagine two people that are sartorially more
00:21:28different than you and alex yeah it was we did we looked slightly slightly odd at dinner um yeah it
00:21:33was uh it was really interesting it was uh it's really interesting because his thing is like
00:21:37he's knew what big idea was like there's too much optionality and if you never cash in those
00:21:41options what's the point i like getting a you know an mba you know masters and then a phd in
00:21:48business it's like no no just start a business it doesn't matter if it goes bust start another
00:21:52one the map is not the territory get out there and do the thing yeah there's a i think that's
00:21:58another challenge that young people have everybody has saying young people it's anybody that is existing
00:22:03in this current world which is that your ability to say things as opposed to do things
00:22:09has never been more tuned up like you are what you do not what you'll say you do and unfortunately
00:22:19talking about the thing and doing the thing vie for the same resources right you need to allocate yours
00:22:23appropriately yeah don't tell me about your priorities show me last week's diary yeah that's
00:22:27what you actually did yeah yeah yeah and i think if the prospect of being able to kind of talk your
00:22:34way or proclaim your way publicly and privately right to yourself i'm going to put this plan together i've
00:22:39got this this is one of the issues of obsessing over productivity too much that productivity ends
00:22:45up becoming the goal not the means in order to be able to get a goal the sort of masturbation of
00:22:52of productivity keeps on happening and they're off yeah away they go most people don't realize how much
00:22:59being dehydrated impacts their performance which is why for the last five years i've started pretty much
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00:23:50slash modern wisdom there's a mark manson line i wanted to get you to react to
00:23:55the small thing you didn't say six months ago has been collecting interest ever since
00:24:00by the time resentment shows up fully formed most people have forgotten what the original
00:24:03conversation even was and i think that the same thing is true for when we don't keep promises to
00:24:09ourselves as well when you had this plan you made this deal with yourself a long time ago you can't
00:24:16quite remember it but there's this latent distrust in you doing what you said you were going to do
00:24:24and no one else knows about it it's just you it's your relationship with you i said that i was going
00:24:28to do this thing and i didn't show up and i didn't show up and i didn't show up and after a while you
00:24:34begin to resent the part of yourself that makes plans because you don't think that it's going to
00:24:38come into fruition yeah well i suppose it's that thing of like you know having a six pack it doesn't
00:24:43give you confidence being the guy that shows up at the gym every day gives you confidence like the
00:24:48you you take care of yourself i think it's that yeah it's a it's a very interesting sort of i think that it's about compound interest really because compound interest on money is miraculous
00:24:57is miraculous when you when you look at you know buffett and his wealth most of it was built through
00:25:03time time is the factor that people don't take into consideration they're a very smart investor but
00:25:08really time was the thing 90 of his wealth was accumulated after the age of 60 is exactly right
00:25:14yeah it's it's like but compound interest on your skills is insane if you put the reps in if you do the
00:25:20work it's insane what you build over time but it's it's it gets back to that thing for me about your your goals
00:25:26will be beaten by your systems every time everyone's got great goals everyone's got big ambitions but
00:25:32like what are you going to do tomorrow what's the small thing that you can break off and it's manageable
00:25:36and you can do it today it's why i love kind of what i do you know mainly it's jokes and writing jokes is
00:25:42is comparatively easy because you can just sit down and write one and then you test it there's no point
00:25:47discussing it there's no point having a meeting where you go through it with some some friends just go out
00:25:53find an audience tell them they'll tell you whether it's funny or not great feedback loop
00:25:57i suppose the problem with most other projects is that you can't iterate a product and get audience
00:26:03feedback quite so quickly you can't work out whether or not you want to release a t-shirt design in one
00:26:09small chunk go through all of the process of getting the t-shirt design get it printed see how
00:26:14many people want to buy oh one person well let's update it again the iterative nature of that is is
00:26:19pretty cool yeah it's it's it's harder it's hard i mean i've you know i'm very lucky i think to be in
00:26:24a business where it's it's that thing of like if the audience like it they tell you straight away
00:26:28and they can't not tell you either even people can dislike you but if you tell a joke that's
00:26:33sufficiently funny i think that the response just sort of kicks well even if it's like my favorite
00:26:36noise in comedy is still that kind of cognitive dissonance laugh where there's a laugh followed
00:26:41by a deep where they go they're shocked at themselves for having just oh i guess you laughed
00:26:47at it because you're you're the laughter kind of betrays you i think you're laughed like it's kind of a
00:26:51deeper level of view i suppose actually i might be a little bit wrong there if you really really don't
00:26:56like somebody and you decide to sit in the third row with your arms crossed you know go on then funny
00:27:00man make me laugh i think you can will yourself or convince yourself into not liking somebody that's
00:27:09doing well at their craft in comedy i don't think that the same thing is quite so true in music i think
00:27:14that an absolute banger pierces through your defenses even more so than comedy i think
00:27:21something that would be less than that would be a conversation right conversation between two
00:27:24people on stage or some sort of like keynote speech or whatever i wasn't even that interesting
00:27:29i didn't find it engaging comedy is deeper and then music is deeper still it's like the art
00:27:34the art and the artist and can you can you separate them can someone that's done a terrible
00:27:37thing and you know they've done a terrible thing can they still be funny can they still be musically
00:27:41gifted yeah yeah i think you probably can tease it out i think it's probably fine
00:27:46peter crone's got a question who could you be in the absence of your concerns it made me think about
00:27:52that's it that's that's really good isn't it like that's that's uh you could you be in the absence of
00:27:57your concern there's a great line i have to think of which is the um uh you can do anything you want
00:28:03you only have to face the consequences it's like it's really powerful because it's that thing of like
00:28:09going you've got absolute freedom but you have to wear it like there's freedom of speech but not freedom of
00:28:13consequence and i think about st lawrence a lot you know the story of st lawrence no he's the patron saint
00:28:20of comedy and st lawrence was um he was burnt by i think it's like it's a really good name for an
00:28:26emperor some like it's something like voldemort like this emperor burnt him alive over a fire and
00:28:33as he was being burnt alive so lawrence went turn me over this side's done and it makes me think of
00:28:40bravery right that's that's a very brave thing to say in a pretty awful moment but the only reason we
00:28:46remember him is because he said that you go there's there's a certain amount of like bravery like yeah
00:28:50no say the thing say the thing good luck some people won't like it be all right who could you be in the
00:28:56absence of your concerns but me and george keep on talking about the fact that so many people are held
00:29:03back by a lack of confidence rather than the lack of competence like their self-belief is
00:29:09the biggest rate limiter on what it is that they can achieve yeah but i mean that self-confidence comes
00:29:16from mr mosey's line yeah it's you know self-confidence comes from giving the world irrefutable proof you are
00:29:21who you say you are so it's that thing of like find something small that you can do you know do what
00:29:26what you can with what you've got where you are you know it's you could wish away the first two i wish
00:29:31i had different things and i was somewhere else just you know accepting the reality of where you are
00:29:36and working with that seems to seems to be pretty powerful because you just you know start off and
00:29:40you know you can't choose where you start you just choose where you finish what's your relationship
00:29:44like with gratitude well i do a lot of gratitude practice i think it's there's a uh meister uh tole um
00:29:53said uh if you only said one prayer and it was thank you that would be enough i think that's
00:30:00bang on i think it's the the only thing is disposition is more important than position
00:30:05where you are in the world doesn't matter your disposition is everything and the only thing
00:30:09that seems to shift disposition is a sense of gratitude so across sort of time and space like
00:30:14we're lucky to be here now and we're lucky to have the friends that we have we're lucky to have
00:30:18living the world that we live in it's extraordinary that we're in a privileged position uh and i think
00:30:24acknowledging that on the regular is is great are you able to take time to celebrate when you're
00:30:29moving so quickly yeah i kind of think that thing of like celebration and gratitude are kind of linked
00:30:34i think done correctly celebration is gratitude in action like you you know you throw a party and you
00:30:40invite everyone you celebrate and you you know there's kind of a there's something lovely about that
00:30:44kind of connection to other people and and kind of doing it with others i don't think you can really
00:30:48celebrate on your own i think being grateful with other people is really good as well
00:30:52you can sit down and chat with other people about how great is this it's really nice i think a lot of
00:30:57people struggle especially when they're at their busiest to take time away from doing the thing
00:31:03to think about the thing and to realize how fortunate that they are to be in that situation yeah well
00:31:07chairman mao isn't it uh you can't smell the roses from a galloping horse i think i should i should
00:31:13put together chairman mao quotes i should i should put together a book i was thinking about this and
00:31:17put together a book of like incredibly wise stuff from dead by shitty people like it'd be quite a good
00:31:24quote book of like going well i guess you know stop watches right twice a day it would be nice to
00:31:28have the quote on one page and then the person that said it on the next page yeah oh equanimity with
00:31:33impermanence wow hitler oh damn it yeah that's ruined that for me yeah uh but uh not that he
00:31:40never said that it is a it is it is an interesting challenge right when things are going well and
00:31:45everything's busy and you're not really paying that much attention that is the time when gratitude is
00:31:50probably most available to you but you're so busy and the calendar is always packed and you're moving
00:31:55forward you're excited about the future so taking time to reflect on the present is pretty tough and
00:32:01then when things slow down and stuff starts to go a little bit worse that's when you wish that you'd
00:32:05had the gratitude from before to be able to rely on and you retroactively trying to think about it's
00:32:10the frames as well it's how you think about stuff it's like problems right problems are a feature not
00:32:16a bug a problem just means something needs your attention and i think i think people have a crazy
00:32:22notion if they stop and think about it that one day their problems will be over they'll have dealt with
00:32:27everything and it's done and it's it's well obviously not there'll be you just level up
00:32:32all you do is level up and you get more complex complex problems if you can solve really complex
00:32:37problems you're doing very well in the world you know elon musk is a trillionaire why because he
00:32:42solved some very complex problems and there's money to be made doing that right so you go so problems are
00:32:47a bug a feature not a bug that they're they're great it just means something needs your attention you
00:32:52should be grateful for that someone needs your time someone needs you need to take this call you need
00:32:56to deal with this thing boredom i think is um boredom is unappreciated serenity it's just you're in a
00:33:04serene moment there's nothing going on great doesn't happen often like i can get to where tibetan monks
00:33:10get to in an airport lounge in detroit nothing going on as long as you don't get your phone out yeah it's
00:33:16fine just yeah well that thing of like we're kind of we're carrying the phone everywhere with us now
00:33:21the the the it's it's like the mobile labor camp tracking our every mood crazy i was in the gym
00:33:30a couple of months ago of course you were look at you yeah and one of my friends was talking to me
00:33:36about how his wife keeps on complaining at him that he uses his phone at night and he's always sending
00:33:40messages organizing stuff running businesses or whatever and he came up with a very fortunate
00:33:46but uh i think actually philosophically pretty interesting excuse which is he said
00:33:52i've got a mind that likes to solve problems i'm just trying to give it good problems to solve
00:33:58i think lots of people have a problem solving brain yeah but only some people have great problems that
00:34:03they're going to solve with it well that's what i think of with anxiety like my mind is often racing
00:34:08often like wake up um with i suppose what you call a panic attack at like four or five in the morning
00:34:14i wake up when my mind's just on and i'll worry about stuff and it's it's often counterfactuals
00:34:21worried about you know things going wrong people getting hurt you just kind of ruminate on
00:34:25crazy stuff and if i give it like oh we know but we need to write a joke about keir starmer
00:34:31or andy bernie or something you go okay right great give it something to do
00:34:37so using action as an antidote to anxiety then yeah i love that i love the idea that you go well that's
00:34:41that cures it pretty pretty well it's very difficult to worry about the future when you
00:34:45feel like you're moving yourself toward it and yeah that that problem solving brain thing is interesting
00:34:50because i wonder how many people are churning themselves up inside because they have a brain
00:34:56that likes to solve problems but they don't have any good problems to solve so they pay attention to
00:35:02politics or porn or their ex or this situation that's outside of their control in some foreign
00:35:09country that they they can't get access to well have we is that not what the news is though i mean if
00:35:13you were trying to design something to um engender mental health difficulties you'd make someone aware
00:35:19of a problem and and give them no agency right and that's what reading about the middle east is right
00:35:24so you just go it's a absolute clusterfuck of a situation and there's nothing good luck dealing with
00:35:30that we can do about it there's nothing we can there's nothing that you can do about it yeah
00:35:34because if i don't know i wonder whether it would feel better or worse for the situation to
00:35:40actively have nothing you could do about there's an asteroid coming to earth no one can do anything
00:35:44about it it's the the simulacrum that someone could fix this but not you yeah i mean we're not
00:35:51we're not in that game it's uh yeah it's it's very i think that thing about having uh agency at a i think
00:36:00i think that okay there's a there's a bigger thing here which is i think we give maybe empathy to
00:36:05people that we like and agency to people that we don't like so if you imagine there's two marches
00:36:13right and one of them is like super far right uh dudes marching with skinheads and jack boots we
00:36:20give them agency if they put a brick through a window we say right lock them up and throw away the
00:36:25key right and then there's another um march and it's people marching for social justice right and we we
00:36:32and they throw a brick through a window we go well you know that's the language of the the streets you
00:36:36know the unheard at that thing of like so we give them empathy and then agency and actually you should
00:36:40give both both you need agency and empathy for everyone like the idea that you go believe that
00:36:48people can handle it and believe that they're you know everyone's got like um a part to play
00:36:55we need to be responsible for the things that you did but also you're enmeshed in the situation that
00:37:00sort of brought you to that point too like the motivations of what got you there but yeah that that
00:37:05that problems thing i really do think i i wonder how many people would all that they need are better
00:37:13problems to solve all that they need is something to focus their time and their attention on in a
00:37:18better way and yeah if you've got this situation that's occurring overseas i came back from a
00:37:22meditation retreat last week i'd spent seven days without my phone almost exclusively in silence and i
00:37:27came back and i was flying out of sf and walked into the departure terminal and one of the pieces of
00:37:33advice that we've been given was to put sunglasses on and put airpods in because you've basically been
00:37:37in silence for a week and no screens no nothing like it's a lot of stimulus to go from zero to a
00:37:43hundred i went and sat down in this some airport restaurant thing i looked up at the screens and
00:37:51it was wildfires in europe raging that was the first thing i saw on a screen basically since i'd got
00:37:56right off of this retreat and i remember feeling this strange constriction inside of me and i'm like
00:38:03right i better get a hose why yeah why the fuck is that what's on i'm aware like is it newsworthy
00:38:09like yeah kind of but like what is it do it's it makes us feel like we're being informed about the
00:38:15world but really all it's doing is just piercing our nervous systems and making us feel worried about
00:38:19the stuff strange and yet i want to be informed about what's happening in the world i feel like i
00:38:24i'm so i guess addicted to that like i like knowing what's going on i like thinking about what the
00:38:28solution might be but i guess you don't you know you get to chat about it but you don't really get to
00:38:34uh influence what happens before we continue most people in their 30s are still training hard their
00:38:40protein is dialed in they sleep better than they did in their 20s discipline is not the issue but recovery
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00:39:51and modern wisdom at checkout the gratitude points is michael smoke's got this line where he says i have
00:39:59a hard time celebrating my achievements because in my mind it was my obligation to achieve it a lot of
00:40:04people that are high performers have this sense that the higher that you climb the further you have to fall
00:40:09as you get better your standards are always going to increase so you're always going to suck in
00:40:12comparison to what you think that you should do that's great because it continues to push you to work
00:40:16harder to improve but also it means that success isn't a cause for celebration it's just the minimum
00:40:24level of acceptable performance and anything less than success becomes a failure yeah well i think that that
00:40:30that thing then you need to you need to be in a state of um uh i guess imposter syndrome once every 18
00:40:40months two years you need to level up constantly where you feel like you're in a space where oh well
00:40:45this is this i can't believe i did that that was good uh like push yourself a little bit i think try
00:40:50and do something else is that difficult when you've got close to the top of your game
00:40:54well it depends what game you're in you can change games you can you sort of do things a little bit
00:40:58differently so that thing of like going it's um it's about i suppose you know my my business is uh
00:41:04you know you i'm in the service industry right i make something that people want i make them happy
00:41:10and no one seems to remember any of my jokes but they remember how i made them feel and the show tonight
00:41:16is nothing more than an advert for the show when i come back next time that's the way i'm kind of
00:41:20thinking of it and then you're trying to find these moments now i've the show's changed over the last
00:41:25couple of years where there's moments in every show there's like a moment someone will ask something and
00:41:29you'll chat to them and it'll be slightly more um heartfelt and they'll always be kind of they're
00:41:35kind of sweetening the pill with laughter why did you change that i i think it was i don't know what
00:41:41happened i don't know what you know went on that i suddenly started chatting to people in the audience
00:41:47and we started to connect in a slightly different way it's been really lovely and people i think
00:41:54i think comedy is it's a i love that line laughter is the shortest distance between two people
00:42:00and i've often done this thing i've spoken about it i think to you before about um
00:42:04if you your best friend is the person you have the least filter with right so so if you meet someone
00:42:09on a plane and you go wow i see the world cup it's a good game on it nothing right surface level and if
00:42:15you say oh my god you have to see these hemorrhoids it's incredible like it's a you know it's connecting
00:42:20at another level you're just like you've got no filter with that person that's your best friend in
00:42:23the world and if you treat the audience like that you get paid back um 10 times over like people feel
00:42:29that oh okay there's no he's treating us like adults he's saying the things that he thinks are funny
00:42:34and there's a real there's a connection there and then increasingly like people aren't talking about
00:42:39things in the in the in the media in the mainstream media so there's a gap there to chat about things
00:42:44that you know what's going on in the world isn't it interesting that what you're looking to do with
00:42:49comedy to kind of say the thing that maybe lots of people think or hadn't realized that they thought
00:42:55and to say it with a degree of uh no fucks slash bravery that mean that you're the person that
00:43:03that uh pushes the boundary in that regard well i think the overton window like people talk about
00:43:07the overton window in politics the idea that you go there's what's the most left-wing and what's
00:43:11the most right-wing thing you could say that's socially acceptable at a dinner party right that's
00:43:15the overton window of conversation right and it's expanded massively in politics the last couple
00:43:19years to the left and to the right for better for worse i think comedy does that for conversation
00:43:25i think the real benefit of going to a comedy show isn't necessarily the two hours you spend laughing
00:43:29at the jokes at the show it's the conversation you have on the way home where you've the conversational
00:43:34overton window has has broadened i don't think people were as open talking about sex and politics
00:43:39uh before and after george carlin and richard prior came along that's interesting they expanded the
00:43:45window and i think you know someone like you know chapelle's out there expanding the window
00:43:49of what you can and can't talk about so you've got that with uh i don't know what to say
00:43:54how to categorize it spicy topics uh um insights that might be somewhat controversial or inflammatory
00:44:02or on the edges of what people would typically do but there's another dimension which is the sort of
00:44:07level of sincerity or earnestness or emotionality a depth maybe uh uh unapologetic
00:44:17self-deprecating sometimes exposing look how people are motivated and maybe how you are motivated or
00:44:25maybe how somebody in the audience feels about something and that almost feels like another type
00:44:30of overton window and it's separate from the first one it doesn't all need to be um you know you talk
00:44:35about the incredibly controversial thing i'm very happy to talk about third rail topics and try and be
00:44:39funny about them but i'm also very happy to to be earnest and to be sincere about it there's a level
00:44:44of earnestness as well which is commonly publicly accepted and there is a level of earnestness and
00:44:50depth which pushes outside of that as well kind of obsessed with this idea that people are desperate for
00:44:55authenticity but they're allergic to sincerity that people love the idea of someone just being themselves
00:45:01speaking their truth forward but when you see a father break down crying because his wife left him
00:45:09there's a a lot of the internet has this sort of allergic aversion response to that
00:45:14that the there is a we want people to show themselves i think if you if you're going to do
00:45:18anything that's that's even vaguely out there you've got to turn off the comment section yeah other
00:45:24people's opinion of me is none of my business just you do your thing and you go you've got your
00:45:28audience and they come and they enjoy it and we have a good time great like anyone kind of you know
00:45:33throwing shade on that and going well you know how can how can you talk about serious things he's
00:45:36he tells offensive jokes okay well i mean we all contain multitudes you get what i mean though here
00:45:41right like you have the classic overton window and then you have this emotional overton window as
00:45:45well which is how how deep are you prepared to go in a live show how how edgy are your jokes
00:45:51allowed to be and how earnest are your conversations allowed to be and there is a limit there is a
00:45:56not even a limit but there is an expected bar beyond which oh like that people really
00:46:02sort of prick their ears up and pay attention and have a kind of they have a more animated response
00:46:07to it and i think that one of the areas that you can dig into is like holy shit like he really
00:46:12he really went there or when you're sat down with a friend or you have having a conversation with a
00:46:16friend over dinner and it's you know bouncing between the level of emotionality that's normal
00:46:22and then it descends into one that is not so common well i think it's a thing about what are you what are
00:46:29you solving for in a comedy show like laughter is the main metric right for comedy you want there
00:46:33to be three big laughs a minute and you want to have that frequency with the jokes but also silence
00:46:40don't be don't be afraid of silence like a silence where there's a poignant moment and everyone
00:46:44has a little thing good fine we can have that as well but it's nice that it's changing because i
00:46:50mean it keeps it very exciting for me that you're not you're not doing the same thing again and again
00:46:53it's not like you're doing the same show that we've got kind of different flavors certainly
00:46:59you're looking to optimize for memorability to a degree as well like for people to go like yeah i
00:47:04really really loved that sensation as opposed to what did you do what was it like to go and see this
00:47:11artist last year and you're like i can't remember well the memorable is interesting because if someone
00:47:14choosing to come and see you live it's a big deal right but really i think people want to go out to
00:47:19festivals see music see they want to see play but also like we used to gather around the fire and talk
00:47:27right and then we gathered around the radio and we talked and then we gathered around the television
00:47:32and we talked and even something like the royal family you know that remember that sitcom in the uk
00:47:37right yeah it's like a distant memory people watching tv like that because now we have the phones
00:47:42and people are on their own they're watching their own thing they're watching their own stream even if
00:47:47they were in the same living room together each person would be on a screen of their own that nobody
00:47:52else is looking at and i suppose hey have you seen this thing but yeah you are right the royal family
00:47:57which i guess americans are definitely not going to understand the reference but people sitting around
00:48:01watching the television together as a family and you would watch shows that you weren't necessarily
00:48:05that into because mom liked it so you go oh i guess we're watching desperate housewives whatever it was
00:48:10there's only one tv as opposed to five tvs per room i was thinking about this recently about the
00:48:16the idea of social media and the the issues around it the bigger picture there used to be a thing
00:48:22when i was at school where people talk about um the native american peoples having this belief that if
00:48:28someone took their photo it would steal their soul okay and i remember thinking oh that's crazy that is
00:48:35ridiculous they think their photo is going to steal their soul and now i think yeah i mean it might
00:48:41not be one photo but a thousand a day that'll do it that'll absolutely do it that will that will break
00:48:47you away from who you are that'll you'll you'll be alienated from yourself and then i was thinking
00:48:52about that even the language of it it's not hiding it's nets and webs the internet
00:48:58how so it's the web right it's the internet what do nets and webs do they catch people
00:49:05that's what it's doing i think aldous huxley was right about this our power will not be taken from
00:49:10us by some overlord i think we'll give it away for cheap dopamine and aldous huxley said it was uh soma
00:49:16which was the tablet right and he was even right about that it's just a different kind of tablet
00:49:21so not some equivalent here of uh treating people like slaves caused them to not work as hard as
00:49:28you might want them to and they would rebel and sometimes they would be lazy but if you can manage
00:49:32to create a system where people actually want to work as hard for you as you want them to work by
00:49:38incentivizing them on the back end then you'll get them to continue to drive themselves insane as they
00:49:43work harder and harder i guess it's kind of the same here but with regards to distraction and freely
00:49:49giving away your information and giving away your attention as well you don't need to demand it from
00:49:53people you just need to make the incentives align that they want to give it to you yeah it's i mean
00:49:56it's a really interesting time i think we haven't got this it's a very new technology as well these new
00:50:00technologies are coming along we have to sort of integrate them into our society i think it will be
00:50:05ultimately the trajectory will be up and it'll be better but we have to learn how to work with this stuff i mean
00:50:10ai is the other thing that everyone's kind of talking about you go we haven't quite figured out what it
00:50:14is yet i think ai is like a musical instrument and anyone can sit down at a piano and make a noise at
00:50:21the piano but it takes time and attention and practice to direct it into creating a symphony right it's
00:50:30it's it's like an instrument you're we're going to be using that tool but how do we use it and at the moment
00:50:35it's it's very sort of early stages it's that thing of um my take on ai is like i don't have religion i
00:50:42don't think we were made in god's image but i think we so wanted there to be a god we created one in our
00:50:48image it's all-knowing all-powerful can create miracles and lives in a cloud well what am i talking about
00:50:57i think it's like that that's it's hegel and nietzsche had the idea hundreds of years ago the idea that
00:51:02the god wasn't there for the big bang but the universe is a device for creating god
00:51:10and then we are the universe experiencing itself everyone's very impressed with ai
00:51:16because they've forgotten what they are yeah we are much more impressive than ai ai is really good
00:51:21at left brain chip really good at left brain stuff but the right brain stuff and and the left brain
00:51:27um apprehends but the right brain comprehends it's all ian mcgilchrist's stuff and that idea that you go
00:51:34the gestalt the whole the complex stuff it can't do it can do the complicated though so well so in a
00:51:40sense maybe it'll take away the drudgery of life and allow us to be more human and to do more artistic
00:51:47fulfilling fun things with our lives that make us feel more connected that's the dream yeah that's
00:51:54that's the dream that's being put forward i think a lot of people have kind of forgotten about the
00:52:00connection comprehend side of things of their own existence so much that if there is a threat to the
00:52:10drudgery being taken away and that's not to say that that's all it's going to do right it very
00:52:14well might take away everything else as well well but we can only see the jobs that will take away
00:52:18because they already exist we can't see the jobs that will create because by definition they don't
00:52:22exist yet so it's that thing of like going well it's it we're in this we're in a pickle now and it's
00:52:27this has happened before this is precedented the industrial revolution really made physical strength
00:52:34obsolete you don't need that anymore to farm the land to to to make things you don't need physical
00:52:40strength machines do all of that for us and then this is taking away some of the the drudgery of
00:52:45white-collar work but hopefully the creativity will become will be uniquely human favorable conditions
00:52:53never come there are always plenty of rivals to our work we are always falling in love or quarreling
00:52:58looking for jobs or fearing to lose them getting ill and recovering following public affairs if we let
00:53:03ourselves we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really
00:53:08get down to our work the only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that
00:53:12they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable favorable conditions never come yeah that's
00:53:18really good isn't it but just there is this sense that at some point in future my problems will be out of
00:53:27the way and i can finally get down to doing the real thing as opposed to thinking this is the situation
00:53:35that i'm existing in i'm always going to be faced with problems there is never going to be a time
00:53:39where i have none like completing a video game and arriving at a level where there's no more enemies
00:53:43that's just what life is yeah well you want people to have some idea that there's a future that there's
00:53:50a um that they want to start families that they want to um live a life you know there's you know
00:53:57shocking statistics about the abortion rate in the uk you heard this i don't know so it's i think it's
00:54:04one in three viable pregnancies now and an abortion in the uk which you know put the morality to one
00:54:10side um that's not my business but the idea of going well what does that really suggest that people
00:54:14feel that they can't start a life they can't build a family they can't you know settle down they don't
00:54:20feel able to with the you know the the climate that we have at the moment yeah favorable conditions
00:54:25never come yeah the favorable conditions you want people to feel like they can you know that life's
00:54:29going to be better for their kids well it's going to be better for them wouldn't it be wonderful
00:54:32if favorable conditions felt like they were here even when they weren't like that's the kind of
00:54:37world that you want people to be in right an abundance mindset as opposed to a scarcity mindset
00:54:41like believing that you need to wait for favorable conditions in future is by definition a scarcity
00:54:46mindset right now is not enough and in future it may be better if i can construct the world into this
00:54:50very specific kind of a way it does feel like we're living through a very kind of unique time
00:54:55i mean i suppose everyone always thinks this but like did they in the 90s there was nothing
00:54:58going on in the 90s there was i mean you you lived through it you tell me yeah relatively
00:55:02quiet right yeah it's the kind of the end of pax americana and really since this phase of history
00:55:09sort of starts in 89 91 it's the berlin war collapses the soviet union's gone and suddenly you go from
00:55:15being a bipolar world to a unipolar world and no one noticed for you know 30 years but just as the
00:55:21american navy got smaller like the canary in the coal mine was the somali pirates like that never would
00:55:28have happened when the us navy was at full strength with an enemy in russia that it was you know it
00:55:34would have policed that no problem at all safe navigation yeah they would have they would have
00:55:38schooled them and and then suddenly sort of things fracture suddenly you've got all these sort of
00:55:43different things we live in a multi-polar world now and it's very confusing it's you know on a
00:55:48geopolitics level it's it's a very strange time and you're seeing this revolution go on
00:55:53you know if you take revolution to mean the replacement of elites like the mainstream media
00:55:59is being replaced um the the academia there's a replication crisis and they've lost a lot of
00:56:05credibility um politics now the the major parties in the uk may never win another election uh the ones
00:56:12that we've had the last hundred years it's it really is kind of a a fracturing of our system
00:56:18i suppose it gets back to robert frost and the idea of civilization is a clearing in the forest
00:56:23and we have to re-litigate and rebuild all of this stuff did you know your gut controls your
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00:57:20at checkout do you think that people are going to look back in 50 years time 30 years time at 2026
00:57:26and go those were the good old days the nostalgia that a lot of people have for the 90s i don't know i
00:57:32think there's there's something about the uh the what's that lovely quote the uh strong men make
00:57:39good times good times make weak men weak men make hard times hard times make strong men and so it goes
00:57:46and i think there's something about we're in a very tumultuous time now like the tech you think this is
00:57:52hard times yeah yeah i think this is this is hard times i think it's it's very tough out there for people and
00:57:58um i think that there's a lack of leadership and there's you know you look at how countries are
00:58:03being run it's it's yeah it's clearly these are these are hard times you know the idea of kayfabe
00:58:09right that thing from wwe where it's all about the kind of the meta game that's being played the optics
00:58:14it's everything is unreal and surreal and definitely if you look back i mean there was that um debate
00:58:22analysis between obama and i can't remember who it was that he was going up against uh in sort of 2012
00:58:322008 and before they begin they just wanted to i just wanted to say my opponent i respect him very much
00:58:39and i appreciate that this thing and then you roll the clock forward to this literal wwe event
00:58:47where there's personal insults and swearing and back and forth and you think i i don't know the the
00:58:55is statesmanlike behavior unnecessary stodge is it this sort of uh the prim and proper
00:59:04pomp and circumstance which isn't needed or has something there been if not lost like caricatured
00:59:12sort of turned into this this uh uh exposition of itself this sort of ridiculous role-playing
00:59:19game everybody's larping is what they're supposed to be and it's all being turned to extremis
00:59:24it certainly feels very extreme at the moment i mean it really it really does but i think i don't
00:59:28think it's unfixable i think we've been in worse spots than this in the past you know there must
00:59:33have been there must have been people sort of in 1943 going this is we're in the middle of a world
00:59:38war this is bad isn't it this is bad what's going to happen how are we going to straighten this out
00:59:42i think about that a lot i think about how sort of kinetically and literally things were significantly
00:59:47worse at almost every period in human history up until now but i wonder whether sort of metaphysically
00:59:52and symbolically things were quite as bad i wonder whether we have the most sort of confusing time now
00:59:59even if it's not the most kinetically dangerous time yeah i don't know i don't know i mean i think
01:00:03there's there's solutions out there and i think it's a it's a question of um i think statesman is
01:00:09really the thing that you you need you need great leadership in these kind of times he's someone
01:00:13that's good thinking about sort of 20 years in the future rather than the election cycle what's
01:00:18happening in the uk at the moment i've not been back for a while the uk is not it's not in a great
01:00:21situation and i mean i think andy burnham's gonna take over and uh i wish him well and i don't know
01:00:27what's going to change i think it requires some sort of radical realism you know if you were going to
01:00:33fix the uk what would you do i think the fundamentals are it needs to be more competitive as a nation
01:00:40and what makes a nation competitive well two percent on income tax either way or changing the stamp duty
01:00:46laws it's all kind of nothing just rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic they need someone to
01:00:53come in and actually address the real problem there's four things that affect a country's competitiveness
01:00:59i think there's the currency the rate the currency there's the energy cost there's the amount of um
01:01:06uh would you call it um red tape bureaucracy uh and and there's that well and then hang on i'll have
01:01:14a drink culture no no uh sorry i'll give you that again um so you've got the currency yep you've got
01:01:23energy costs you've got um red tape and you've got tax and you can do things to all four
01:01:29of those to make the country more competitive and really britain needs to be competitive on the
01:01:33global stage when you know when we left europe for better for worse people voted for for that
01:01:39and we never really did it and we never really competed so i mean if i was in charge right if you
01:01:44if i was in charge for the day i devalue the currency i devalue the pound i think pounds overvalued
01:01:51and you know why applying 750 in london well because it's overvalued as a currency uh the the idea that you
01:01:58you would decrease the value of the pound people talk about redistribution of wealth to the north
01:02:03we keep it high because of the city of london and actually i'm not really concerned about the
01:02:08exchange rate affecting your holiday in france being more expensive for two weeks of the year
01:02:12i'd be more concerned with the other 50 weeks of the year where you work we've got to be a net
01:02:17exporter of things so our things need to be cheaper and in order to do that we have to lower the
01:02:22the currency value which is relatively easy to do people say that the uk is the seventh biggest
01:02:27economy in the world but it's not it's the seventh biggest city in the world surrounded by a very poor
01:02:32country yeah and then but you want it to be redistributed you want there to be you know
01:02:35factories being as far away from london as you can get yeah yeah it didn't feel like the wealth of
01:02:40the city of london was reaching newcastle and middlesbrough and we have the most expensive energy
01:02:45in the world i think it's like four times higher than no way and you go it's crazy we you know and
01:02:50it's systematically being um being i mean is this green new deal stuff is that why well there's a
01:02:56bit of that but i mean it's like we i'm all for the green new deal just give me a long enough runway
01:03:01give me 25 years and i'll give you net zero not 2013. but but what i want to do i want to be
01:03:06as technologically advanced if you can imagine this for ambition as technologically advanced as france was
01:03:11in the 70s so france in the 1970s built 56 nuclear plants they've got the cheapest energy in europe
01:03:18they give a what russia says or what's going on in the middle east because they've got their
01:03:22they've got their energy sorted do that do that and then but it's a very long range anyone that says
01:03:27can fix energy in in a in two months like you're living in a dream world it's a very long range
01:03:32problem and then regulation the red tape the regulation just cut all of that cut all of that
01:03:37we're like we're like the sort of it's like the end of the soviet union the amount of regulation you need
01:03:42to do anything in the uk now they could cut an awful lot of that red tape and and kind of free people
01:03:48to be more um entrepreneurial everybody likes the idea of being in a country that's got an illustrious
01:03:53history it's so esteemed like how long it's been a rise god you get a guy comes out he's got this mace
01:03:58and he dots his cap and there's wood everywhere everything's fucking mahogany you go yeah that's
01:04:03great but you also do accumulate a lot of along the way and a lot of bureaucracy and there's a lot
01:04:08of hurdles that you need to jump over in order to get stuff done you know the tax thing as well it's
01:04:12very close to my heart but the tax thing is like if you go to like estonia post the soviet era they
01:04:17went oh we've got to do something and they didn't have much time to think and they've got one tax form
01:04:22estonia has one tax form estonia has a law where the government can't ask you for the same bit of
01:04:26information twice so if you give it if you give your address to your doctors they assume that the taxman
01:04:32knows your address and everyone else because it's all joined up right so and that the tax form is one
01:04:37page and they have a flat rate of tax and they collect an awful lot of tax i'm not interested in
01:04:43equality i'm interested in abundance like what would be the thing that would just get everyone living in
01:04:47britain we just have to compete with other countries and get people to come to us start businesses and want
01:04:52to live where we are we've got the same number of universities in the top 10 as america does but we
01:04:58produce five times fewer entrepreneurs get out of those universities i think we probably produce the
01:05:05same amount of entrepreneurs but they end up somewhere else they're not in great britain
01:05:09brain drain yeah they're all somewhere else yeah which is i think it's like that it's possible to you
01:05:14know to change it i mean listen that's that's what i would do with the uk i'd go right currency lower that
01:05:19energy you need a you need a 20-year plan for energy in the uk regulation you cut a bunch of that and
01:05:25you have a flat rate of tax and and then just you would you would see if that works and then if it
01:05:30doesn't you would you would change it but i think that's that'd be a kind of a positive thing to do
01:05:34i think america's like america's like i think i could fix america in two moves okay all right so i would
01:05:42have um open primaries for congress senate presidential everything would be open open so
01:05:52people would have to they'd have to go to the center you wouldn't be appealing to your constituency
01:05:57you'd be appealing to the center 90 of people agree about 90 of everything and then i would have term
01:06:03limits for senators uh and congress because it like i don't blame donald trump for being powerful i blame
01:06:11the checks and balances for not checking and balancing they haven't done their job it's an
01:06:16amazing piece of technology the american constitution but you've got to you've got to work it it doesn't
01:06:21just sit there you've got to it's it's an active thing i mean i had bernie sanders on the show and
01:06:25he's been in government longer than i've been alive yeah all right i mean it's pretty intense yeah that's
01:06:32it i think the idea like 20 years maybe 20 years doesn't sound that sounds reasonable is the term
01:06:36limits in the uk um no right but there were term limits that there didn't used to be a term limit
01:06:42on president i think it was they brought it in with roosevelt right roosevelt did i think three times
01:06:46he was trying to go for three yeah yeah well anyway yeah that's we solved the problems of the world
01:06:51that fixed it yeah it's super uh have you heard david ogilvie's line you can't save souls in an
01:06:56empty church heard it a couple of weeks ago and i've kind of been obsessed with it since this sort of
01:07:01idea that if you believe in something you have a moral duty to spread that message around and that
01:07:10a lot of people insulate themselves from having to have their ideas meet reality
01:07:16by it's just so it's so sophisticated and refined that's the reason that it hasn't managed to become
01:07:22sufficiently popular it's like being the underground band whose music is just you know it's it's very
01:07:27it's sort of virtuoso type that it would be very hard for you to the the the proletariat they
01:07:32wouldn't be able to understand how sophisticated it is that we're doing um but yeah you can't save souls
01:07:36in an empty church to me makes it kind of incumbent on anybody that believes in a thing to find a way to
01:07:43get that message out and to monday morning quarterback whatever it is that you care about whether it's
01:07:49climate or young people or suicide or the birth rate or art or taxes or whatever yeah it is kind
01:07:57of incumbent on you to find a way to i don't know yeah i mean i totally agree i think that idea of
01:08:02like talking about those things that are uh third rails and getting a message out there is really good
01:08:07it's probably the most um difficult but the most kind of beautiful bit of my show at the moment is uh
01:08:14uh i talk about suicide in the show and i say why i tell people the terrible truth which is suicide
01:08:23doesn't work people commit suicide because they want to get rid of the pain but you can't get rid of
01:08:29the pain all you can ever hope to do is redistribute the pain to the people that loved you
01:08:36and it's a big moment it's like a people that are you know and there's a non-zero number of people in
01:08:43the audience that are suffering that go oh right oh this is this is my burden to carry it's a it's a
01:08:51tough thing but it's it's kind of it's interesting to talk about that stuff it's interesting to have
01:08:55that platform and to feel like okay i can i can say that that's a terrifying realization
01:09:04yeah yeah it's it's it's big but but if if if if one person listens to that and goes
01:09:11oh right okay yeah that means i can't great there's some data from the george from the tin men
01:09:18told me that i think 90 of men who took their own lives had sought help from a mental health
01:09:25practitioner before they did it so the we just need people to sort of open up and talk to the
01:09:30professionals thing it doesn't seem to be working in the way that we anticipated it to yeah it's it's
01:09:36real charisma feel everything beauty and terror no feeling is final yeah well unfortunately it can be
01:09:42if people decide to make that make that decision yeah i am there's a something similar from blake
01:09:49burge one of the best pieces of advice i ever got if you want to calm a life you need to address small
01:09:55problems while they're still small the cost of dealing with an issue rarely gets cheaper with time
01:10:00procrastination turns uncomfortable things into unavoidable things basically like if it doesn't fit
01:10:06eventually it'll hurt wearing it yeah i think that's that's really that's again it's on the that kind of
01:10:12compound interest yeah on the positive things and you know if you're saving money it works if you're
01:10:17building skills it works but also if you have problems you don't address them it's going to get
01:10:22worse over time um so addressing that and having that tough conversations i think getting a quality
01:10:28of your life is kind of is you could probably track it with how many uncomfortable conversations
01:10:32are you willing to have or do you feel comfortable to have right how many people around you can you speak
01:10:37to with no filter and then there's the other half of that which is who can you sit in silence with and
01:10:41not need to fill it the most it's the way that you can work out who your best friend is
01:10:45yeah make a terrible podcast yeah but it would be wonderful regulating for the two guests that were
01:10:50there just don't publish those ones publish the ones where you talk with no filter yeah but
01:10:54yeah it's uh i don't know i i really feel like we're on the cusp of something happening
01:11:04where okay we've got these new technologies and they're atomizing people and they're distracting
01:11:09them and then everyone kind of becomes a little bit aware of the fact that maybe they're dangerous
01:11:13or maybe they're making us live our lives in a way which is maladaptive and although immediately
01:11:19gratifying uh ultimately becomes kind of destructive and now we're just about getting to the point where
01:11:26people are thinking i probably need to take some really intense action to try and get rid of that
01:11:34out of my life i need to join a run club i need to start going out to shows i need to force myself
01:11:38to head to a coffee shop i don't want to be working from home anymore but the self-imposed working
01:11:42from home i'm going to go back into the office i'm going to spend time around people i'm going to
01:11:46you know try and change the scope of my sniper rifle to adjust for the wind which is blowing
01:11:53toward me so that i can start to shoot more toward the target that i want to live my life like
01:11:57but yeah like people's ability to adapt to new technology technology is able to move so much
01:12:01more quickly than our habits are and that means that for a long time last decade decade and a half
01:12:07people were on the receiving end of it and now i think people are starting to realize okay well yeah
01:12:13i mean i think it's knowing what we are as well it's that it's that great quote of the uh paleolithic
01:12:18emotions medieval institutions and godlike technology well let's roll the dice on that and
01:12:22see how we do i mean it seems kind of it it's crazy and it's only going to get worse i think now with
01:12:28um the interface of ai the idea that this this new technology has kind of come along and how's that
01:12:34going to change the world so it's kind of shifting sands i just think people people do you know we are
01:12:40we need to be connected and that's kind of the business model of what i do is like getting people out to
01:12:45shows and to sit in a room together and to laugh if i'd put pants on it's a big deal yeah okay but i
01:12:52do think that thing of like that's what people kind of crave going out and being together but
01:12:55they don't necessarily even have to know the other people just to be there it's like sort of it's
01:12:59like church they're kind of coming together and finding something you might not believe me but this
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01:14:04slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout yeah the addressing problems while they're small
01:14:10thing i think works very much personally as well like the way that you degrade your trust in yourself
01:14:17like we were talking about earlier on happens with one missed promise with one uh attempt at a change
01:14:24that you decided against doing or that you couldn't hold yourself to doing and this is why
01:14:29yeah small changes do end up compounding it's also why it feels very unfair that people can look at
01:14:34someone who's at the top of their particular industry and say well like why is it that all of
01:14:38the gains accrue to that person it's like well because the compounding interest is working in
01:14:42their favor and the same thing happens in reverse unfortunately too that people kind of spiral up
01:14:46but it's another thing i do worry about the the arts for that reason like the um uh oligarchy of the
01:14:53arts there's an oligarchy in the arts now where you go with movies um it's existing ip or it's sequels
01:14:59or prequels that dominate i mean really dominate it's like five big movies a year that dominate like
01:15:0490 of the box office and with music it's the uh oligarchy of like five huge artists that dominate
01:15:11globally yeah you know and it used to be a hundred artists or 200 artists that all sold pretty well
01:15:16books is the same you know books are the same um you know i hope comedy is broad enough that there's like
01:15:22people can pick their favorite stuff and it doesn't get dominated too much by big names that you you
01:15:27want it to be so that there's lots of different people enjoying it i think i mean my big kind of
01:15:32driver is i want to get more people interested in doing comedy rather than just going to see it i mean
01:15:37i've written this book um on jokes with my friends um abby grant and amanda baker and it's like how to be
01:15:45a comedian really essentially how to how to write jokes can anyone become funny i think so yeah i think
01:15:50so i think everyone's got kind of a story to tell and if you think about what stand-up comedy is right
01:15:54it's um ordering your thoughts writing them down and finding your own authentic voice
01:16:02that strikes me as an incredibly worthwhile activity that should be taught in schools
01:16:06that's probably got more um going for it than learning music music's very valuable to learn as
01:16:11well but you go grade eight on the piano won't come in handy when you're doing a best man's speech or a
01:16:16presentation at work or talking to your partner and actually having that ability to um write down your
01:16:22thoughts and find find some perspective in life which is also kind of what comedy does it's it's
01:16:28it's very good at um waking us up i think about what jokes are right it's it's kind of like cardamom
01:16:35is it cardamom um uh thinking fast and slow canada canada okay so um first order and second order
01:16:43thinking so the setup for a joke is first order thinking it's it's you you make an assumption
01:16:48about what the guy is going to say and then the punchline kind of snaps you into oh i actually had
01:16:53to think about that oh okay so it's that idea of the brain way to think about it the brain is designed
01:16:59to not have to think it's your brain is designed to yeah it's a brain's an llm yeah it's it's pattern
01:17:03recognition it's exactly llm yeah right so and then comedy makes you kind of oh oh okay i'm thinking
01:17:08i've got to think about that in a new way they've actually got to think about that thing it like
01:17:12snaps you awake i think it's quite childlike in a sense because children really think
01:17:17and grown-ups tend to be like beyond a certain age you're just pattern recognition you've seen
01:17:20this all before and so comedians have this ability to already think about stuff it's very attractive
01:17:26um uh way of being i think teaching that is is a i'd like more people to kind of get into it i think
01:17:32they'd enjoy watching it more if they knew a little bit more about it and also i think the idea of
01:17:36going there's so many great it's quite a new medium comedy it's not been around for as long as music
01:17:42you know what the um well hang on i'll have a drink i'll tell you a story
01:17:51you heard of gregorian chants yes okay do you know why you've heard of gregorian chants and i will
01:17:57tell you don't panic okay so pope gregory i don't know a thousand years ago is wandering around the
01:18:04vatican and he goes to some local churches and they're all singing the songs differently
01:18:09and he goes well this is some nonsense i want them all to be sung the same
01:18:13um write down the music and the guy the bishops or whatever go ah the thing is though you can't write
01:18:20down music because it's sort of ethereal it's like from another um realm and it just has to be it's
01:18:26about soul and a groove and whatever the they said and he went here's the thing i'm the pope write it
01:18:32down and so they wrote down the music and we know what gregorian chants are now interestingly fast
01:18:39forward 400 years from that and you have bark and mozart beethoven which couldn't have existed
01:18:48without musical notation so writing down comedy like there's too much magical thinking in my business
01:18:55there's too much oh that guy's just got funny bones or oh he just gets up there and does the
01:18:59thing and oh he just wings it he's just funny no it's like jokes they're jokes it doesn't it doesn't
01:19:06diminish the um enjoyment of jokes to know how they work i think it's uh and and the less magical
01:19:13thinking the more everyone can go yeah can you learn how to be funny yeah kushka kushka and you've got
01:19:19a story to tell and you've got a voice most men live lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave
01:19:24with a song unsung i don't want that to happen i'm on jokes right so you're kind of arguing that unlike
01:19:32music or acting or writing comedy's never had a a shared vocabulary and you can invent one you've invented
01:19:41one why do you think i suppose it's about putting it together i mean you're standing on the shoulders
01:19:47of giants you kind of didn't invent anything you just spotted what was there in the same way as
01:19:50musical notation doesn't create music it describes music that already exists yeah and then can you
01:19:55reverse engineer it and and see if it works so i'm working on i've written the book that's coming out in
01:20:00october and then or we've written the book it's abby and amanda and i um and then we're working on
01:20:06putting together a kind of a course like like kind of an interactive course whereby you could sort of
01:20:13there's such great teaching methods out there especially using ai as a teaching method it's really
01:20:18it's really interesting like what what can you achieve with that i mean is it going to grow corn
01:20:23can i can i build a comedian with that if i can then great you say that you've got the first scientific
01:20:28theory of what actually makes jokes work well i don't know if it's a scientific theory you know
01:20:34we've got it's it's kind of it's it's all in them it's a bit inside baseball but that thing of like
01:20:39the different ways the jokes work and the i mean it's it broadly speaking is that thing of like um
01:20:45taking that that pattern recognition and reversing it like making sure that you're waking up the mind
01:20:52the sudden revelation of a previously concealed fact it's it's so simplistic in a way but that
01:20:57trick is just delightful have you ever felt guilty at giving the trick away like do you think that
01:21:03other comedians are going to get annoyed at you for demystifying it no it's like the it's like the
01:21:08everywhere had a a guild right everyone had a um a secret society it's like the magic circle
01:21:15of comedy i think most comedians that i know don't really know how they write jokes
01:21:20they kind of they find it on stage or stuff occurs to them and they they note it down and
01:21:24they remember it and but they don't have like they're virtuoso musicians but they don't know notation
01:21:28yeah it's a it's a they wouldn't be able to teach it because they haven't thought about it in that way
01:21:32great but they're doing their thing and they're doing great fine and but i think the idea of being
01:21:36able to be more systematic about it is is a really sort of positive idea and i'd like to have that
01:21:42i'd like to give that gift to people to to be able to um throw the rope down and say come on
01:21:49we can all do this is writing harder than performing i think writing's that yeah writing's the job and
01:21:55writing is self-assignment you've got to sit down and no one ever tells you there's no point in a
01:21:59comedian's career career where their manager sits down and goes all right you've got to write
01:22:02it's like people just assume that um and you know and you you that's the preparation that's the reason
01:22:09that you sort of you know succeed or fail you've got to sort of deliver on that how do you feel about
01:22:15comedians having writers or buying jokes off other comedians i guess you know if you write on tv shows
01:22:20or whatever it's the absolute norm as like on eight out ten cats or last one laughing or any of those
01:22:25shows that i do we've got like a writing room and we they're brilliant absolutely brilliant some people
01:22:29are great at writing some people are great at writing and they don't really want to perform so
01:22:32that seems pretty valid yeah there must be a comedian today he thinks sort of embodies everything the
01:22:38books trying to teach and then presumably there's someone who you think is great despite discarding
01:22:46many of the rules well i think you know it's comedians you're dealing with so i mean i think
01:22:49knowing what the rules are is the first step and then breaking them all will be who do you think
01:22:54breaks them the most uh in terms of comedically i'm just trying to think of like someone um that's
01:23:01funny and i mean it might be someone like bob mortimer um which i don't think vic and bob might
01:23:08be slightly lost on your american audience but the like really surrealist comics where you kind of
01:23:12absurd i can't quite put my finger on why that's funny but it's really really funny and it's taken me
01:23:18kind of back and by surprise and out of nowhere is that stuff less formulaic is that a little bit more
01:23:24kind of the jazz virtuoso improvisation yeah it's less fungible i think so but i mean but
01:23:30vic and bob love jokes as well so i mean it's it yeah and no and it's it's whatever you want to be i
01:23:36mean they're they're very unique i think also they kind of fall into that thing of going this if done
01:23:42correctly i think learning how to write jokes and then you put yourself into it so it's that thing of
01:23:47like with comedy you you don't want to be the best you want to be the only there's no best in comedy
01:23:54there's no oh he's the best comedian like a top 10 list is meaningless because it's what makes you
01:23:58laugh what do you like and the more someone is themselves on stage the the more people sort of
01:24:04gravitate towards them so the idea of going it's it's like it's not a competition it's like it
01:24:08doesn't matter how many people do well it just makes it a bigger pie let's say that you had
01:24:14six months with someone completely unfunny to try and make them as funny as possible what would
01:24:20you be teaching them first i think the i think the first thing would be to recognize you know
01:24:26that their story what do they want to say what could they say that no one else could say
01:24:32what's their story what's their take on life what's there and it might be they want to tell a personal
01:24:37story it might be they want to talk about politics it might be that they're interested in sports or
01:24:40whatever they want to talk about you sort of assess that and then okay how do we how do we get into
01:24:45that how do we get how do we make that surprising and delightful to listen to it's nice because i think
01:24:51everyone needs i think everyone's got a sense of humor it's like everyone's got like like you say
01:24:56someone unfunny everyone's got a sense of humor how dark or sardonic or sarcastic it is that varies
01:25:03and what you like varies it's it's that thing of like your taste in comedy is like your taste in
01:25:08food and sex some people like spicy some people like vanilla it's great what about timing what's
01:25:16the secret to comic timing there seems to be a pattern in rhythm that's the kind of the the
01:25:24the proximate speed of development where if you speak at about sort of 92 beats per minute if you
01:25:30speak in that kind of in that rhythm um that tends to be not just for comedy actually for spoken word
01:25:36for political speeches as well that seems to work very well for people that they they get into that
01:25:41that rhythm and you can see the audience kind of respond to that so if you if you're it seems almost
01:25:47kind of um magical i don't think it is i think it's like a uh there's something about that cadence of
01:25:52speech that just lends itself to an audience being able to kind of tune into what you're saying and focus
01:25:58and some people kind of they rush it and it feels a bit garbled and they're all over the place and that
01:26:02doesn't mean speaking far fast or slow it's like it's where you put the the intonations where you
01:26:06put the beat so i think the rhythm is incredibly important uh i have a dream is at 92 yeah i think
01:26:14there's a winston churchill one as well obama's obama's 92 and he speaks quite slowly but he's he's
01:26:19on that on that beat and he's a magnificent public speaker what joke template do you think has survived
01:26:26longest what's the most classic the most classic is i i guess you know the the pullback reveal
01:26:33where like it's almost like a comic strip where you you're kind of looking at this thing and then
01:26:36you pull back and he's on the bus you know that that thing is that seems to work sort of universally
01:26:42across time and there's wordplay i mean i think that you know jokes are the the ha-ha and the ah-ha
01:26:48are very similar they're often kind of insights into something and when people kind of um realize
01:26:55something i think the oldest joke is the uh it's like there's a the lover of laughter it's an old
01:27:04roman book of jokes and it has a joke in it that still works i think
01:27:10where a guy's in the barbers getting his haircut and the barber says how do you want your haircut
01:27:14and the guy says in silence it's almost like four thousand years old it's joke shaped i wouldn't open
01:27:22with it but yeah what's been the change since doing more of the crowd work stuff and putting
01:27:33that online so seeing an awful lot of that at the moment i think it's it's made it slightly uh bigger
01:27:38um in terms of the audience is like you know it's growing um i think it's there's there's more of a
01:27:44connection to people now so you kind of come up and it would have been you know five years ago people
01:27:49might come up and say well i saw the show and i thanks a photo and now people kind of want to have
01:27:54a conversation about something it's very nice it's deep in the connection yeah i think so i think i'm
01:27:59trying to kind of okay so it was like i had my stand-up sort of persona on stage telling jokes
01:28:07and then this kind of you know podcast mode and they're merging and i'm really excited about that i
01:28:12really like it i really like the idea that there's like there'll be don't don't panic there'll be 90
01:28:18minutes of bang on one-liners in the show but they'll also be half an hour of this chatting about
01:28:24stuff and life great how much has that influenced you because obviously you know you were pretty well
01:28:29established doing the the jokey thing and then even though you've been well read and you did the
01:28:36university stuff and all the rest of it the it does feel to me like there's been a pivot and you know
01:28:41fortunately me and george have been able to like be a part of that and like be friends and hang out
01:28:45and stuff how much is the wisdom verse come podcast world influenced that i think it's been a huge
01:28:53influence it's also that thing of like it it's what are you interested in talking about you know it's
01:28:58it's like it's not it also you want to be one note like like if you see a band play on stage and they
01:29:03and everything is a is uh a floor filler but sometimes you want to slow it down you need a
01:29:10couple of ballads in there so it's it's nice to have a mix in the set where you go okay well i know
01:29:15you know you go out there and you 20 minutes of just one-liners great but then you want to have a
01:29:20little bit of a chat with people and see where the evening takes us and to also make it feel like
01:29:24it's just live in the room and this is happening now and it's not going to happen again the quick
01:29:29silver of it's really nice the idea that it's like okay this is happening now and then the moment's
01:29:33passed yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i i've been thinking a lot about some of the
01:29:43reliance that me and the boys have had on like really trying to drill home a bunch of core principles
01:29:49and i came across this nabeel qareshi quote that said a cursed fact of the world
01:29:53is it the most important life lessons you learn are the hardest to communicate to others
01:29:57because they always sound like cliches yeah and i understand why permanently drilling the same
01:30:06or what appear to be variants of the same kind of like trite insight around well you know you
01:30:12fake it until you make it you need to believe in it beforehand is it right though well i don't think
01:30:16it is i think it's like that thing if you go through but it's also that thing of like if you read the
01:30:20comments you know it would be someone being terribly kind of um above it all going rubbish oh oh systems
01:30:29beat goals oh whatever yeah okay what have you done well there's definitely a question of if if you're
01:30:35so smart how come you still haven't done it like if you get bored of people talking about cold dark
01:30:40quiet for your bed yeah okay why is it that your sleep still sucks yeah it's it's okay as well it's okay
01:30:46to go through that i think you know early 20s is really the best time for that if you want to be
01:30:50super cynical and on everything great do you think and then at some point you go right who's who what
01:30:56can i do what what i like because it's that thing of like there's two different ways of learning like
01:31:00sometimes some lessons you have to go and like the reason to write the book on jokes is i feel like
01:31:05i macheted my way through the jungle to become a comedian i feel like it was not a well-worn path
01:31:12you have to kind of right get there and how do i write this and how do i put on a show and
01:31:15how do i do the thing and okay doing two shows and whatever that thing was i kind of i've created
01:31:20this career for myself and i feel like now it's incumbent on me to help and to say well look just do
01:31:29this do this do this that'll help that'll definitely move you that won't be wasting your time if you
01:31:34want to do the same thing as me just that's how you write the jokes great then go and do your own
01:31:39thing but i i think the idea of like not repeating the stuff because you think well people heard this
01:31:45before well maybe but i think it is that what's that great quote about um in the work of genius
01:31:53we see our own discarded thoughts yeah so the idea that we we're constantly uh we're hearing
01:31:59stuff that we kind of know a lot of the time it's like there's nothing that i'll say that people
01:32:05will go oh that's totally new but they might go oh i've kind of forgotten that i think if it's
01:32:09something that is totally new often people probably will be more likely to discard it
01:32:14i've got no anchor point at all you need to be incredibly uh brave and have quite high conviction
01:32:20around whoever it is that you're listening to to pivot your entire world view based on something
01:32:24that you had no reference point prior to but yeah i don't know what the critical mass is of people
01:32:30needing to hear an insight before they become convinced by it but i know that it's usually not
01:32:34once and with that in mind yeah i i look i i really like trying to drill home
01:32:42pithy insights that are condensed down in a way that you can remember like my memory is not that great
01:32:47so for me synthesizing or condensing down a big idea into a pithy little aphorism or a mantra but
01:32:54it's almost like it's what remains right so let's say you read a book and it's 500 pages long you
01:32:58remember one little quote from that book well that's what remains that's the the thing that you just can't
01:33:03get rid of you can't get out your head it's just it's in there and you go well that's that's kind of
01:33:08brilliant this is great that's that's the the nugget that you were looking for and then you
01:33:13you walk with that and if it changes how you interact with the world a little bit then fantastic
01:33:17has your opinion on trajectory and position changed given that your trajectory has sort of continued to
01:33:24rise now to i think whatever the most dates in the world or something like that that you did last
01:33:29year or the was it the biggest global tour by tickets sold in comedy something like that
01:33:33you'd struggle to find anyone to care right but yeah it's like i think the trajectory is is very
01:33:38good it's kind of it you know it's building nicely and i think more important than that i think when
01:33:44are people happy when they're getting good at stuff i think competence is the um it's such an important
01:33:52thing for people like to get good at something it doesn't matter what it is and to feel like they're
01:33:56getting better as well and you think about like kids kids learn lots of different things they learn you
01:34:00know how to ride a bike right so you couldn't ride a bike and then you struggled and then you could
01:34:05it's really fun to learn how to do stuff right and then some people get better at it and they
01:34:08could do tricks and mess around or whatever comedy is something that there's endless amounts of tricks
01:34:12so you just keep on getting a little bit better all the time i really like that um is it kaizen
01:34:18i think is the name of the japanese thing like getting very like british cycling does it really well
01:34:23getting very slight improvements incremental improvements over time brings an awful lot of
01:34:28satisfaction i kind of think that thing about going that's very exciting to me and then trying to put
01:34:33myself out of my comfort zone every 18 months or so trying to put on bigger tours or play different
01:34:38rooms or do it in a different way that makes me feel slightly uncomfortable maybe try and hold
01:34:43some silence and space on stage for people in a way that feels new to me you know what else
01:34:48is interesting about the spiraling up or the compounding of doing things and becoming brave
01:34:53at trying new things with a bigger skill set underneath i think that uh people's sensitivity
01:34:58to cynicism keeps them in place and as they don't do much more than the basically zero that they're
01:35:06doing now their fear of cynicism just stays the same you need to be able to kind of get past it
01:35:11because there are going to be people that just say i don't think that that's cool or that's a silly
01:35:15idea to try and do something new but the fewer fucks that you give the more you become acclimatized to
01:35:20not giving a fuck which means you give fewer fucks over time which means you can be more brave and
01:35:24you can be more experimental you can take bigger swings with a bigger skill set underneath but if
01:35:28people are welded in place by their fear of criticism or skepticism or cynicism yeah i mean they don't get
01:35:38started yeah that's a really it's a it's slightly tragic i think like worrying about what what other
01:35:44people are thinking of you the whole time and they're not wanting to i remember like mid-20s i remember
01:35:48when i um i left my job and i told my friends that i want to be a comedian and i'd left my job and the
01:35:56reactions were really like oh i think jimmy's having a breakdown i think he's because obviously
01:36:01they didn't see this they didn't see where it ended they just saw the beginning of it like going
01:36:06no no you've got a good job what are you doing you lunatic and it was like i was like yo ho ho a
01:36:12pirate's life for me and it's like seemed kind of crazy but if you'd listen to that it was that
01:36:17you talk about it very nicely that the the lonely uh chapter yeah where you kind of go you have to
01:36:22slightly leave who you were behind you have to say goodbye to that and there's a grieving to that
01:36:27and you have to sort of move on to that that new phase well there's two things there's a grieving of
01:36:32where you were and there's a fear of where you're going because you don't know that the next step has
01:36:37actually got any promise for you and again if you're in a world where you don't have an abundance
01:36:43mindset which i think a lot of people don't there's so much complexity and uncertainty and chaos what's
01:36:48going to happen in future i don't know if this thing's going to go completely terribly wrong
01:36:52why would i give up a certain five out of ten for an uncertain eight out of ten because it might
01:36:58be a three out of ten and that would make me feel really bad and if you've got high inequality too
01:37:03you can see not how high you could climb but also how low you can fall you know oh fuck i really don't
01:37:08want to fall low that looks horrendous to me yeah i mean it's it's um uh there's two most important
01:37:16days uh the day you're born and the day you find out why and the finding out why is like what could
01:37:23you commit to what could you say well i'm all in on this i'm going to do this thing i mean i'm a big
01:37:29advocate of specialization you know find the thing that you enjoy that you can't stop thinking about
01:37:33what's play to you and work for them that's kind of where your edge is that's going to be the thing
01:37:38that you're going to do you know better than anything else and the the safe option is you know
01:37:44it's it's fine you know some people some people don't find that in work they find that in you know
01:37:48hobbies and other pursuits and i was chatting to someone recently about someone in the crowd was
01:37:52asking about music and saying you know i'm i'm a you know musician you got any advice and i don't
01:37:57know anything about music it was like well if you would do it anyway then do it like it doesn't have to
01:38:02be the way that you make money doing something creative and fulfilling could be the hobby
01:38:06and if it if it becomes the way you make money well great but you should be it should be something
01:38:10that you would do anyway there's an interesting relationship between discipline motivation and
01:38:17obsession so discipline is saying i will make myself do the thing motivation is i want to do the
01:38:22thing and obsession is i can't not do the thing and a lot of the time when we look at somebody who
01:38:30on the outside appears motivated what they're actually doing it's just the cooled off version
01:38:35of a past obsession it's this thing that they were obsessed with 20 years ago that is now just
01:38:40it's formed into a part of their identity that's somebody that goes to the gym but they were
01:38:45completely obsessed with this is me like when i was in university i would not go on nights out and
01:38:50i'd stay in and read bodybuilding.com forums and i'd get up and make sure that my protein was right
01:38:54and all the rest of it and i'm like that's fucking lame at the time but now when i go to the gym it
01:38:58doesn't really take discipline to go and do it and not superbly motivated it just is who i am
01:39:04but people are kind of serial obsessives some people are serial obsessives but if you don't ever allow
01:39:10that obsession to sort of climb inside of you and and really weigh your life for a little while kind
01:39:14of like a puppet you don't get to benefit from all of the accrued gains down the line because this
01:39:21obsession isn't going to last forever it's this weird but those forearms are alignment this is true
01:39:25these these these are going to be the heat death of the universe is going to be gone before these finish
01:39:29up um it's like it's like talking to popeye that's true yeah but no spinach the uh the problem i think
01:39:37that people come up against is that if you don't allow yourself if you're not prepared to let that
01:39:41obsession kind of really really get inside of you and drive you forward you miss out on this like
01:39:47beautiful opportunity like lots of people go their entire life without having an obsession that's worth
01:39:52anything and sometimes people can become obsessed with that they really shouldn't be right which is the
01:39:56politics porn your ex gambling video games stuff like that unless video games can be quite fun but
01:40:02if you're the sort of person that is consistently becoming obsessed with stuff like that's good i think
01:40:07that you really should allow that to embrace your life for a period because it's this it's this odd
01:40:14alignment of like motivation and opportunity and skill set and timing and life situation it's all of this
01:40:22shit kind of comes into alignment in one go and then this weird kind of magic i don't think you can engineer
01:40:28obsession particularly well you can force discipline right which is why people love it people are obsessed
01:40:32with discipline because if you're prepared to pay the price it's always there right motivation is halfway
01:40:39house you kind of engineer it a little bit maybe you start to spend a lot of time around other people
01:40:44who do the same sort of thing it involves a bit of a feedback loop i think to a degree you can have some social pressure
01:40:49maybe you can listen to your favorite playlist you know get yourself amped up that motivation's
01:40:53halfway between the two but obsession you can't really engineer and that means that when it comes
01:40:57along it's got a a certain sort of magical quality to it and it's temporary that is going to leave
01:41:03you're not obsessed by the same things typically most people aren't obsessed at 50 by the same stuff
01:41:09that they were at 30 and that i think means okay if i'm gonna have people that are you've heard of
01:41:16correct because i think the people the people that have got that like because again it's the compound
01:41:20interest they've really like that really builds up over time if you can keep doing that thing if
01:41:26you're still interested in that thing it's the freest discipline and motivation that you're ever going
01:41:30to get right i can't not do the thing i it's what i think about when i go to the toilet it's what i think
01:41:36about when i fall asleep at night it's what i think about when i'm eating my lunch it's what i think
01:41:40about when i'm waiting in line to get into the airport all of every single part of your life is
01:41:45cohesing to get you toward this thing and that's cool and i know we have society has a really bad
01:41:52relationship i think with obsession because it comes laden with a lot of baggage that no people either
01:41:58don't understand it or they fear it well i guess it's it's linked to addiction you know i think people
01:42:03with addictive personalities never really get over the addiction they just get addicted to something
01:42:08else yeah so some of my best friends that are in you know a would have been then addicted to the gym
01:42:13afterwards or addicted to eating right or addicted to shopping whatever the next thing that comes along
01:42:18is but they'll be addicted to it that it's compulsive behavior but if you can direct that compulsive
01:42:24behavior to something that builds and and grows and feeds back then fantastic that's the problem
01:42:30solving brain thing again right it's like give yourself good problems to solve give yourself an
01:42:34obsession that's worth something and again you can't generate all of them but i think you can kind of
01:42:40help to to guide yourself so yeah i just that really is the the freest way to become great and it's your
01:42:47insight around like do what feels like play to you but looks like work to everyone else the bar's line
01:42:52if you can manage to i don't know find something that is positive sum and pro-social and isn't going
01:42:59to destroy you or the world around you yeah like that just let it let it fucking weigh you for a bit
01:43:04as long as it's not fentanyl great yeah well you know there's tranq now which is like fentanyl's
01:43:09fentanyl they just keep on releasing new versions that are more powerful at all i think fentanyl really
01:43:14scares me i think you know a drug is powerful if if you're using heroin to take the edge off it
01:43:20i'm gonna come down this is a bit strong i might put some heroin in this yeah like okay i cut my
01:43:25fentanyl with heroin enough now yeah yeah there's a there's a there's an argument that the fentanyl
01:43:30crisis is uh is china's revenge for the opium wars what were the opium wars because i've heard
01:43:35this but i don't know what the opium was it's when uh the british went to uh china and forced them
01:43:40to trade with us and we sold them a bunch of opium that's what that's what fentanyl is mostly landing
01:43:45in america yeah so the british started it and the americans are paying the price on the receiving end
01:43:51of it yeah but i can i can definitely see a connection we are we are greece to america's room
01:43:56right you know we're kind of part of the same thing really i mean i know they had the war of
01:44:00independence but come on a lot a lot's coming over the southern border through mexico yeah the fentanyl
01:44:05crazy yeah i've seen some videos there's this area in philadelphia i think uh where like constantly
01:44:14youtubers are going and filming the these like it's skid row skid row yeah it's so intense now i've seen
01:44:21it in some in some cities around america it's really uh it's well i mean look you know what happened
01:44:26though we we shut down all the asylums in the 80s because we saw one flew over the cuckoo's nest and we
01:44:31decided asylums were terrible places we didn't run out of crazy people you know there's a lot of crazy
01:44:36people out there so i think that thing of like going you know the homelessness problem is ultimately a
01:44:41you know a drugs an addiction problem and uh and a problem with um mental health and we need to treat
01:44:48that and and to take it very seriously rather than you know it's uh you know building new houses is a
01:44:54part of that but it's a very small part of it well the safety net in america doesn't sweep people up in
01:44:59the same way as it does in the uk i don't see in the uk the same kind of shuffly shouty at the sky
01:45:07clutching up there's still there's still too much of it there's still i mean it's like it's really
01:45:11it feels like a um there's other places you i mean i travel maybe 50 countries around the world
01:45:17on tour and you become very aware of the it's my favorite quote will william gibson the sci-fi
01:45:21writer from canada said the future is here but it's not evenly distributed i think the more you travel
01:45:26around the world you see how different places deal with different problems you sort of go oh right
01:45:30it's kind of like we could have a utopia if we took all the elements from all these different places
01:45:36like having the perfect outfit but you'd have to go to 55 different stores yeah yeah yeah that's
01:45:40interesting where's had the least intense problems with homelessness that you've been to
01:45:46well i think lisbon really turned it round because lisbon was one of the roughest towns in the world
01:45:50lisbon portugal was one of the roughest towns port town in portugal was really rough big heroin problem
01:45:55and they um they legalized drugs but that's only half the story it's a very small bit of the story
01:46:01so they legalized drugs but they basically said we're going to ring fence the money we spend
01:46:05fighting the drugs war i'm going to spend all that money on rehabilitation and education
01:46:11and uh some housing so they basically took that money legalized drugs and then went okay anyone that
01:46:17wants to get off drugs you come here anyone that needs to be housed you go here anyone and they
01:46:21basically solved the problem they ended up with very few people on heroin um that they can get from
01:46:28a pharmacy and the crime rate obviously falls off a cliff when you take illegal drugs out of the
01:46:35situation because people don't have to feed their habit and they don't petty crime goes goes down
01:46:38massively presumably organized crime as well also has the arse pulled out of it yeah a lot of it so
01:46:43it's that thing where you go that kind of solved the problem i think it's slightly creeping back a
01:46:47little bit now because the ring fencing that money you can do for a certain amount of time
01:46:51but then politics gets in the way and people go actually we need that money for something else
01:46:55and you because you take for granted the progress that's been made sure so the problem creeps up
01:47:00again but the idea of going there's always going to be you know uh a problem around that we're going
01:47:05to need to fight that it's kind of like the uh strong men make good times but the equivalent
01:47:11for government in relationship to well it's like kesterson's fence they forget why they're spending
01:47:17that money on that thing it only happened like 10 years ago yeah 15 years yeah yeah it's um yeah
01:47:22it's not yeah it's it's interesting those kind of problems that are solved i mean i've got quite
01:47:27i've got quite spicy views on drugs all right here's my here's my take on marijuana do you want to
01:47:31hear my hot take on marijuana i think it should be illegal for the under 30s right because it's
01:47:36it's kind of the opposite of a performance enhancing drug it's a performance inhibiting drug it takes
01:47:41away people's drive and ambition and in those kind of you know early mid-20s years when people really
01:47:47need to have that drive because you're out of the kind of school system and on your own and you've got
01:47:51to be a self-starter and you it's it's you know self-assignment right so bad 30 to 50 it should be
01:47:57legal okay you're a grown-up you make a decision as to what you want to do what you want to put in your
01:48:01body 50 and above mandatory and not because i think it's a good drug i don't think it's a good drug but
01:48:08i think it would it would redistribute the wealth to the young because old people would be slightly
01:48:13high and out of it right okay so you're going to pharmacologically retard the people that are old
01:48:20yes and make the playing field more even for the people that are coming up yeah okay yeah i'm down i'm
01:48:26down i hate weed it does not it does not agree with me at all but uh yeah i think it's a an interesting
01:48:33theory i i on the portugal thing i really get the sense that the more we try to legislate our way
01:48:45through things those are kind of like the one good article per hour long doom scroll on x insights that
01:48:55encourage people to keep chasing red tape and it's like ah but what about that one thing that went well
01:49:00and therefore we just add bureaucracy and add bureaucracy and add bureaucracy i would be fascinated
01:49:05to know what the relationship between organized crime and the government is because it's one of those
01:49:13nationwide slap downs that completely cut off at the knees an entire universe of like pretty dangerous
01:49:22pretty nasty guys who are all trying to like cartel their way to to wealth but it is a single move that
01:49:29would be able to basically put a huge industry of people out of business they're all just in an underworld as
01:49:34opposed to listed on the ftse 500 there must be so much pressure between a government and then you
01:49:40imagine if you're part of some organized crime group how many different favors you're going to call in to
01:49:44try and not get this thing passed because it's going to stop your entire business i don't know i feel
01:49:49like i'm writing a new tom hardy series i like the idea though of the the cartels getting getting a
01:49:54lobby group together to go we can't have drugs you're putting us out of business this would be terrible
01:49:59for our business plan exactly think about the gangs what do you think what are you thinking about
01:50:03the gang the year on year is going to fall behind yeah yeah i i i like what you're saying though
01:50:09about young people really need to use that drive and it's kind of like the obsession thing that
01:50:15a lot of the time people talk about nobody is coming to save you as a line but nobody is coming to
01:50:20save you also implies that nobody's coming to stop you well yeah and nobody cares more than you
01:50:26i think that thing about you know empathetically you you want to have there be a great safety net for
01:50:31everyone right you you want there to be universal basic income which essentially we sort of have in
01:50:36the uk under the benefit system yeah there's there's a version of that where you know you'll get
01:50:41something from the state and you'll be you'll be okay you won't go hungry uh we hope um but the idea
01:50:47of going the universal basic income is a bit too close to we don't need you yeah you know and i worry
01:50:52about that i worry about purpose being one of the key things of like if you take uh morgan hausel has a
01:50:57great um he's got great equations morgan hausel he's got this great equation on happiness being
01:51:02it's um freedom and purpose if you have those two you're pretty much on you're on a good road because
01:51:08everyone wants there to be benefits available for everyone right everyone wants there to be a um a
01:51:14safety net but no one when you think about it no one wants that for their kids no one looks at
01:51:18their newborn and goes oh wow i hope he hope he gets really great benefits you want him to have uh or her to
01:51:24have a fulfilling life where they they go out and they they do something and they add value to society
01:51:30that's what we want it is an interesting
01:51:35challenge i suppose where we want to be able to support people we've got this future of automation
01:51:40coming through we know that purpose is important but if you clear off all of the bottom levels of
01:51:46maslow's hierarchy of needs which was all that anybody was obsessed by for almost all of human history
01:51:50yeah but self-actualization you you asking the question am i self-actualizing is actually an
01:51:55indication that you're in a really wonderful position yeah across the expanse of human history yeah but
01:52:01that is much tougher to answer i think where do i get my next meal from i think it's a false read
01:52:06though on the i think we're in liberal democracy we've oversold for the individual um the liberal bit and the
01:52:14demos is underutilized so there's not enough connection between people so the idea of like going
01:52:20it's the um the the family and the friends and the community beyond that so it's it's that smaller
01:52:28level stuff those connections is what people are i think missing um so i i do think that kind of
01:52:34it's the safety security you know calorific you want to take care of the basics for everyone you know education
01:52:40and healthcare and uh you know making sure everyone's okay to a level and then you want to give them the
01:52:48you want it to be abundance you want it to be that everyone can have an exciting fun time you want that
01:52:54for your kids and if you want that for your kids you want it for everyone yeah yeah the intergenerational
01:53:00competition theories i've never even thought about it before but what you said earlier on you want your
01:53:05kids to do better than you did and also your kids want to do better than you did yeah but that means
01:53:12that there is this like embedded growth obligation that everything always needs to be getting better
01:53:17all of the time well there's another way of again morgan housel is such a genius writer he's wonderful
01:53:22but he has this idea of going there's uh the biggest inflation in the world is not currency inflation
01:53:28it's expectation inflation but there's another word for expectation inflation we expect so much more
01:53:32than we did in the 1970s right i remember the 70s and it's so much better now but the expectation is
01:53:38so much higher than it's ever been but the other name for expectation inflation is progress that's
01:53:44what progress looks like you just factor in all the stuff that's there and you go yeah and we want
01:53:49more and that's a good thing ultimately i mean if you look at it on a global scale as well you go
01:53:54if you care about humanity as a whole like getting everyone up to our level would be an incredible
01:54:00achievement you know that's the the biggest things in the world are not talked about like the worst things
01:54:06in the world the easy fixes that we just ignore because they're not sexy like burning biomass kills
01:54:12three million people a year there's burning like uh wooden peat and stuff inside inside homes it kills
01:54:20three million people a year from asphyxiation yeah uh well it's it's cancer right it's it's horribly bad for
01:54:27people smoking is a much bigger problem than we think it is because we've solved it here
01:54:32solved in america and kind of the english-speaking world really but in south america and africa and
01:54:38asia it's smoking is a huge problem and it's so easy to fix we could just the playbook is there
01:54:43we know exactly what to do but we don't so that's the future being distributed to a different area from
01:54:48our future to theirs like i think it's peter singer is is very good on this stuff the uh oh no um is it
01:54:56derek parfit's got really good things on like the the debt that we owe to future people and to
01:55:01geographically you know disperse people the idea that we should care about that stuff at least
01:55:07i had william mccaskill on the show he's the long-termism guy what we owe the future and um i think he was the
01:55:14youngest philosophy professor the youngest tenured philosophy professor in the world william and uh
01:55:23anyway he's he's talking about yeah what we owe future generations but people don't really think
01:55:28about that in quite the same way they think about it's all that thing of like because you go like net
01:55:32zero is a really good example of that of like going well we have to uh decrease our reliance on fossil
01:55:37fuels but in the short term like that's very very difficult to do yeah and it affects the poor um
01:55:44disproportionately yeah so the idea of going well that should be an aim in like 25 years but you go
01:55:49but you have to start building the nuclear plants now in order to make that happen and then you could
01:55:54have that eventuality that that'd be great but it takes statesmen to look on those timescales
01:55:59and everybody just wants to get elected for their next four-year term or whatever it is yeah and it's
01:56:04that thing of like going you know what you know britain i think uh could could put its feet up now
01:56:09in terms of going it's had a big effect on the world but the idea of being a an example to other
01:56:15nations of how to do that that would be the flex that would be the thing to do to go to get there
01:56:20before anyone else because you go well we built the plants so in 25 years we look like geniuses and
01:56:25also if you get energy down to essentially zero cost how many businesses would that attract to to the uk
01:56:33when it comes to culture british culture what do you wish more british people understood or knew
01:56:39what culturally yeah like i i for me the british culture has an awful lot of charm to it but there's
01:56:47some kind of like lethal poisons thrown in with it like the tall poppy syndrome is one of them the
01:56:54sensible maybe a lack of mobility the quite ossified class system that in the us what somebody earns
01:57:01kind of determines their yeah current level of class but in the uk it's where you went to school
01:57:06or it's your accent is there something that you wish more british people sort of if you could uh inject
01:57:11something into british culture what would it be i think it'd be uh i think there's a i think it's
01:57:15oinkophobia is the fancy term it's the hatred of one's own culture i think that people need to take
01:57:20a bit more pride in that you know it's not immediately apparent that a place without a past has a future
01:57:26and i think having that shared um belief in what what we've done in the past i mean it's you know
01:57:32we beat the nazis and we ended slavery it's not nothing it's it's it's big and going and the english
01:57:39language is a beautiful thing i mean it's really uh george mack's got a good line on this on like
01:57:43if you had top trump cards for great britain and you go well name a thing okay music the beatles
01:57:48okay physics all right stephen hawkin or you know a biology okay well tim burners lee for the
01:57:53internet whatever we've got lots and lots of kind of we've done great things and we continue to
01:57:57punch above our weight and people should take some pride in that i think taking some pride in
01:58:01where you're from is is quite an important thing and the local communities are kind of there's
01:58:06there's that kind of at a lower level i think people like where they're from have a sense of
01:58:11that heck yeah jimmy carr ladies and gentlemen jimmy love you appreciate you coming for coming through
01:58:17no i i really enjoy i think you know you're right i think coming on this show and doing this kind of
01:58:21thing has really changed me as a as a performer it's been really incredibly valuable to me hopefully in
01:58:27the right direction yeah they'll decide look at the comments section until next time thanks bye
01:58:33bye everybody dude yes is that right yes thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode
01:58:42youtube knows who you are deeply it thinks you're gonna like this one even more go on press it
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