The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 233. Carr On Comedy

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00:00:51.040 Welcome to episode 232 of the JBP podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson.

00:01:00.200 In this episode, Dad hosted Jimmy Carr, a world-renowned British comedian.

00:01:04.740 For those of you who don't know, Jimmy's been the focus of the newest cancellation craze over his latest Netflix special, His Dark Materials.

00:01:12.880 Specifically, people were offended by jokes about the Holocaust in the last part of the special.

00:01:17.080 He referred to the jokes as career-enders, and they almost were.

00:01:22.380 Dad took the opportunity to ask Mr. Carr about the controversy, seeing protesters outside his gigs, PC and cancel culture, the role of comedians in society, laughter, religion, love languages, and more.

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00:01:46.140 It works on all major platforms, and it's just $10 a month.

00:01:49.580 You also get exclusive access to pre-sale tickets monthly, Ask Me Anything episodes you can submit questions for.

00:01:56.640 Again, that's jordanbpeterson.supercast.com.

00:02:00.180 And now, without further ado, Jimmy Carr.

00:02:02.720 Hey everybody, I'm thrilled today to have with me Mr. Jimmy Carr, one of the world's funniest men.

00:02:27.400 One of the world's purposefully funniest men, which is an important distinction.

00:02:33.680 An award-winning comedian, writer, and television host, Mr. Jimmy Carr is one of the biggest-selling comedy acts in the world.

00:02:41.380 He's performed in venues in 40 countries.

00:02:43.540 His last tour, Best of Ultimate Gold Greatest Hits, which is a somewhat narcissistic title we might add,

00:02:49.560 sold almost half a million tickets globally, with his current show, Terribly Funny, set to exceed that figure by the end of 2022.

00:02:56.460 He's a household name in UK television, hosting Channel 4's 8 Out of 10 Cats, and some variants of that,

00:03:03.380 and presenting Comedy Central's Roast Battle UK and Your Face or Mine.

00:03:07.740 He's also performed as part of the Royal Variety Performance three times,

00:03:11.440 which is something particularly impressive to us Canucks, enamored archaically with the Queen.

00:03:16.820 He was the first UK comedian to sign a stand-up deal.

00:03:20.700 I think that means a comedy deal rather than a straight deal, with Netflix in 2015, releasing Business 2016,

00:03:28.200 and Best of Ultimate Gold Greatest Hits 2017.

00:03:31.580 He's also performed in My Favourite City, Montreal, at the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival,

00:03:36.200 which I'd highly recommend since 2003, with more appearances than any other UK act in that time.

00:03:41.540 His YouTube channel, where he's accrued over 500,000 subscribers and 130 million views, was launched in 2018.

00:03:50.540 And because all that is not enough, he's also a published author.

00:03:53.580 He co-wrote The Naked Jape, uncovering the hidden world of jokes in 2007,

00:03:59.000 and his highly anticipated memoir, Before and Laughter, launched in September 2021,

00:04:06.120 and made the Sunday Times bestseller list.

00:04:08.020 So, I have a question for you. To start, I have to know the answer to this.

00:04:13.420 This is serious business.

00:04:15.280 A 15-foot-tall replica of Carr's head was used in an advertising campaign for Walker's Crisp,

00:04:23.680 and has subsequently appeared in various publications,

00:04:26.560 and then it was transported from Preston to the Wickerman Festival.

00:04:30.420 I have to know about that.

00:04:32.640 How in the world did that come about, and why?

00:04:35.280 There was a charitable campaign for this brand of crisps called Walker's, very beloved British crisps,

00:04:41.500 and they built an enormous model of my head.

00:04:44.340 I mean, who knows why? My head's quite big enough as it is.

00:04:47.480 And then it's been turned into a bar.

00:04:49.620 And so, I occasionally, my Twitter will blow up once every couple of years,

00:04:53.300 when they transport it, because it goes on the back of a flatbed truck,

00:04:57.480 and they take it up and down the motorway, and people just go,

00:04:59.980 was that an enormous effigy of Jimmy Carr?

00:05:02.720 As he finally lost his mind.

00:05:05.620 Did you say it was a bar?

00:05:07.420 It was a bar, yeah. They turned it into a bar.

00:05:09.020 I mean, it was a huge thing.

00:05:10.060 You could sort of climb up inside it, so they turned it into a bar.

00:05:13.220 I don't know.

00:05:14.080 I mean, it's a weird world we live in, isn't it?

00:05:17.720 Yeah, it's weird, to say the absolute least.

00:05:21.000 So, your head is a bar.

00:05:23.240 Okay.

00:05:23.520 Well, that's an answer, and thank you very much for that.

00:05:26.760 So, what's the biggest venue you performed at?

00:05:30.140 I mean, I've played a couple of stadiums.

00:05:32.040 I've done, like, shows in stadiums.

00:05:33.700 But I think, like, often when you've been at a stadium, like an arena,

00:05:37.100 like a 10,000 or 12,000, but it's very much whispering into the abyss.

00:05:42.340 You're telling your jokes, and you're just on send.

00:05:46.820 And I like comedy to be a conversation.

00:05:49.260 And even if there's, like, 2,500, 3,000 people in an amphitheater, in a room,

00:05:54.680 you feel like there's a discursive element.

00:05:57.340 So, if something happens in the room, I want to be aware of it.

00:06:00.380 Let me ask you about that immediately.

00:06:02.560 Because I always think of my lectures in venues like that as a conversation as well.

00:06:07.660 And I also found that if they get too large, and maybe that's more than 4,000,

00:06:12.200 something like that, then it is, in a sense, whispering into the abyss.

00:06:16.980 It's as if the individual people start to disappear,

00:06:20.960 and then you can't make contact with your audience the same way.

00:06:24.280 Yeah.

00:06:24.920 It's that thing of, like, what's the right side?

00:06:29.500 You know, the medium is the message, I suppose.

00:06:31.560 You're Canadian, of course.

00:06:32.700 You'll be quoting McLuhan.

00:06:34.300 So, the idea that you go rock and roll feels like it can sustain a bigger audience than comedy.

00:06:39.740 And maybe a lecture, even a little bit smaller than that.

00:06:42.820 Like, what's the, you know, you need a critical mass for the audience,

00:06:46.340 but you also need it to be the right level, that you feel like you're part of this thing,

00:06:49.560 and you're an important part of it.

00:06:51.080 So, it feels like in a comedy show, if someone at the back of the room shouts something out,

00:06:55.300 I have to be able to hear it, and I have to be able to respond to it.

00:06:57.960 Otherwise, they're not really in the room, in the conversation.

00:07:01.180 So, and I like that.

00:07:02.140 I encourage people to join in.

00:07:03.540 I always think there's a very special thing when you become a comedian,

00:07:06.520 and you find your own audience.

00:07:08.480 And there's lots of different audiences, but my audience come and see me,

00:07:11.840 and they have, we share a sense of humor.

00:07:14.360 And there's a sense, one of my favorite quotes about comedy is, you know,

00:07:17.480 laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

00:07:21.340 The idea that it connects us, and that we have the same sense of humor.

00:07:24.480 And in that room, we can joke, and we can mess around, and they can be as funny as me.

00:07:30.200 That, like, I don't have, sometimes when you go and see a musician, you're just blown away by their talent.

00:07:35.300 You're thinking, this guy is just phenomenal.

00:07:37.580 I can't get over how great they are.

00:07:39.340 I could never do that.

00:07:41.480 With a comedian, it's not quite the same thing, because you're thinking,

00:07:45.260 this guy's got the same sense of humor as me.

00:07:47.760 You can be as funny as anyone.

00:07:49.800 And, you know, my book is about this, really.

00:07:52.420 It's a case for living through humor.

00:07:55.900 And I think the best jokes, the funniest things that have ever been said,

00:07:58.880 are not said by famous comedians.

00:08:00.780 They're said by you and your friendship group and your family.

00:08:04.000 They're in jokes.

00:08:05.480 And comedy, at its best, recreates the in-joke of the tribe within that space.

00:08:13.180 Yeah, so the rock and roll types, you know, when you go to a great concert,

00:08:17.160 in a large venue, if the audio is good, it's as if the musicians are playing,

00:08:23.160 in some sense, to the crowd.

00:08:25.540 But I've noticed in a lecture, and it seems to be the same in stand-up,

00:08:29.900 which I think has very many similarities with a good lecture in front of a live audience,

00:08:33.620 that you have to be talking to individuals.

00:08:36.460 And I always talk to one person at a time in the crowd.

00:08:39.320 You know, I actually look at someone, and I have a little conversation with them,

00:08:42.660 and switch to someone else.

00:08:44.480 And so there is something that seems to be intimately, and that's partly why it's a dialogue.

00:08:48.600 And there seems to be something that's intimately personal about that,

00:08:51.560 that's not the same with something that's more purely artistic.

00:08:58.540 Yeah, I think so.

00:08:59.240 I think you could perform a song in an empty room, and it's still a song.

00:09:05.200 And I think a comedy act, a joke, without, you know, it's feed line, punch line, laugh.

00:09:11.180 It's binary.

00:09:11.820 You either get a laugh or you don't.

00:09:13.640 Without the crowd, it isn't anything.

00:09:15.960 The crowd performs such an important function in comedy, above and beyond all other art forms,

00:09:21.140 because no one can tell you whether that's a good or a bad song.

00:09:25.560 It's like, well, it's interpretation.

00:09:27.360 But with comedy, it either makes people laugh or it doesn't.

00:09:29.620 There's a binary response you're looking for.

00:09:31.100 I think the critics aren't big fans of comedy, because we don't need comedy to be mediated by critics.

00:09:37.100 It either works for you or it doesn't.

00:09:40.560 Yeah, yeah.

00:09:41.120 So the crowd is such an important part of comedy.

00:09:43.620 And I think one of the things that I advocate in the book is comedians become one of the comedians' kind of superpowers is failure.

00:09:52.580 We're very good with failure because our feedback loop is so short.

00:09:56.560 We're allowed to take a million different chances.

00:10:00.080 So when you go and see one of the greats, when you go and see Chris Rock or you watch a Chris Rock Netflix special,

00:10:06.740 you're seeing an hour of material and everything works and you're just seeing the results.

00:10:11.680 You're not seeing the tireless campaign to get to that hour, the thousands of jokes he tried that didn't work,

00:10:20.080 the wordings that weren't quite right on the jokes that did work.

00:10:23.440 You don't see any of the, you just see the results.

00:10:27.300 So it's often that thing about the audience has told him every step of the way.

00:10:31.160 The audience is a genius.

00:10:33.100 Lenny Bruce said it first.

00:10:34.500 The audience decide what is and what isn't funny and what isn't acceptable.

00:10:39.320 The audience will tell you what's acceptable.

00:10:41.160 If you just get a response from an audience, that's neither here nor there.

00:10:45.180 It has to be a laugh.

00:10:46.780 Even if one of my favourite noises in comedy is cognitive dissonance.

00:10:51.480 And I get it a lot.

00:10:52.280 You get an enormous laugh and then you get a sharp intake of breath because the audience have laughed at something

00:10:59.600 and then their conscience has arrived late to the party because the conscious part of the brain

00:11:04.580 or where the consciousness lives is a bit slow.

00:11:08.540 A laugh is a reflex.

00:11:10.500 What you find funny is very much like your taste in food or your sexual preferences.

00:11:18.440 How spicy you like it really depends.

00:11:21.020 And you don't get to choose that.

00:11:23.660 It chooses you.

00:11:25.180 Some people like spicy food.

00:11:26.480 Some people like kinky sex.

00:11:27.640 Some people like edgy comedy.

00:11:29.120 And it really chooses you.

00:11:30.660 So I love the idea that sometimes a laugh will betray you.

00:11:35.580 Your sense of humour is a more...

00:11:37.020 It tells you something about yourself.

00:11:38.780 You laugh at something that's incredibly transgressive and edgy.

00:11:41.520 And then you kind of feel bad about it immediately.

00:11:44.260 And you have to...

00:11:45.300 You know, I like that cognitive dissonance.

00:11:46.980 Well, then you have to decide whether it's your sense of humour that's at fault

00:11:51.400 or the judgment of shame that immediately follows your recognition of the fact that you laughed

00:11:57.400 at something dark and, you know, and horrible.

00:12:00.020 And it isn't obvious to me that your sense of humour is likely to air the same way your judgments air.

00:12:06.540 It seems to me to be a purer spirit in some sense.

00:12:09.120 And it's fascinating to me as well that you're watching the audience while you're performing comedy.

00:12:14.080 But you're also saying that as you construct your routines, if you're a really, really good watcher and listener,

00:12:22.080 then you try to see what sticks, so to speak.

00:12:24.860 You throw things at the wall to see what sticks.

00:12:26.660 And if you really pay attention to the audience, then they'll tell you how to be successful, right?

00:12:31.180 Yes.

00:12:31.640 All you have to do is collect that.

00:12:33.320 Yeah.

00:12:33.740 You're really...

00:12:34.520 You're collecting data over 20 years.

00:12:36.440 So you've obviously got...

00:12:37.500 The thing about comics as well, when they do good audience work, is it's like airline pilots.

00:12:42.940 Like, if you ask an airline pilot how long they've been a pilot, they won't give you it in years.

00:12:48.440 They'll give you it in hours in the sky.

00:12:51.460 And I think there's something about that that's very...

00:12:54.200 I love the analogy.

00:12:55.740 Because the amount of time spent on stage is where you learn that skill.

00:12:59.920 You become kind of battle-hardened to that.

00:13:02.000 Or I suppose the analogy in your world would be the amount of time you spent researching

00:13:07.080 or the amount of time you spent in debate.

00:13:09.420 So you're ready for that.

00:13:11.240 It's not your first rodeo.

00:13:13.080 You've not had that exact thing happen before, but something similar to it.

00:13:16.420 So you kind of know how to respond to that.

00:13:19.180 And it's...

00:13:20.580 The feedback loop is constantly...

00:13:22.840 You're kind of getting better and improving.

00:13:25.420 Yeah.

00:13:25.660 Well, you know, about...

00:13:27.500 When I generally tended, right from the beginning of my career,

00:13:31.840 not to lecture from notes very much.

00:13:34.480 And once I got more conversant with what I was lecturing about,

00:13:39.660 I just abandoned notes altogether.

00:13:41.380 And the huge advantage to that was that I could continually watch my students

00:13:46.480 and I could see what it was that I was saying that mattered and what didn't.

00:13:51.700 And I could drop everything that wasn't gripping and intriguing to them.

00:13:56.160 And, you know, to the degree that I was attached to my notes and a pre-prepared lecture,

00:14:01.660 then I would lose the contact with the audience.

00:14:03.860 And that's why it's boring in some sense when you go here and lecture.

00:14:07.060 You know what that reminds me of?

00:14:08.200 It reminds me of the great Mike Tyson quote.

00:14:11.120 Mike Tyson said,

00:14:12.120 Everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face.

00:14:15.820 And I think when you're giving a speech, when you're doing a performance,

00:14:19.420 the audience is the punch in the face.

00:14:22.060 You didn't think they'd laugh at that bit.

00:14:23.660 Or you didn't think...

00:14:24.180 They look bored and they're not engaged yet.

00:14:26.400 And I haven't got them.

00:14:27.360 And I often use the analogy of on my toes and on my heels at a show.

00:14:32.400 So sometimes you'll go on a show,

00:14:34.000 you'll be on your toes for the first five minutes.

00:14:36.040 And then at some point in the show, you'll feel like,

00:14:38.300 I got them.

00:14:39.840 I got them.

00:14:40.300 Yeah, we're there together.

00:14:41.620 That's right.

00:14:42.020 Your body language changes a little bit.

00:14:44.420 And then something happens and you're on your toes again.

00:14:46.620 And there's a sense of a kind of an ebb and a flow to it, which is...

00:14:51.340 Yeah, it's interesting because it's an art form, I guess,

00:14:56.420 that involves the audience more than any other.

00:14:59.140 And the audience with no training, no prior qualification required,

00:15:04.080 know instinctively.

00:15:05.160 Like anything above maybe 50, 60 people is like...

00:15:07.960 If a joke works in front of 60 people,

00:15:09.800 it'll work in front of 3,000.

00:15:11.160 There's a real consistency.

00:15:13.480 And across the globe as well.

00:15:15.480 I don't notice...

00:15:16.600 I mean, if you speak English, I'm doing my performance in English.

00:15:19.480 It's really...

00:15:20.480 It's incredible how uniform audiences are and what they will laugh at and how loud they will laugh.

00:15:25.020 What gets an applause break?

00:15:26.120 What doesn't?

00:15:26.600 So do you find a marked difference?

00:15:30.920 Now, maybe you haven't had much of this experience because you're so successful,

00:15:33.640 but I don't like going to movies, especially comedies, if the theater is empty.

00:15:39.440 And I don't like lecturing to a hall that's half full because I find it much more difficult to get that response that you were describing of everyone being there together and something flowing if the place is sporadically populated.

00:15:52.480 Yeah, no, I would agree.

00:15:54.040 I mean, I think comedy is a social...

00:15:57.760 I think so.

00:15:58.260 Let's unpack that because the first bit is about seeing a comedy movie in a crowded cinema is...

00:16:03.660 That's just smart because laughter is tribal.

00:16:06.500 Laughter is a signal to other people.

00:16:08.440 It's remote tickling.

00:16:10.340 Laughter is about a million years older than language.

00:16:12.740 It's a different part of your throat that you're using.

00:16:15.160 It's basically remote grooming.

00:16:17.360 And I think it's...

00:16:17.800 I mean, obviously...

00:16:18.940 Hey, do you know rats laugh?

00:16:20.720 Yes, of course.

00:16:21.400 If you tickle them with a pencil eraser, then they laugh, but it's so ultrasonic that you can't hear it unless you slow it down.

00:16:30.300 I did a documentary to the BBC about...

00:16:32.360 Go ahead.

00:16:33.000 Oh, you did?

00:16:33.500 I did a documentary to the BBC about a Horizon special about laughter, which I think is on YouTube.

00:16:37.880 You'd be able to see.

00:16:38.880 But we got Dunbar in.

00:16:40.600 So Dunbar, obviously, the Dunbar number is the number of friends you can have.

00:16:44.760 They often quote it when they're talking about social media.

00:16:46.460 And the interesting thing about humans is we have a much higher Dunbar number than silverback gorillas.

00:16:52.380 So silverback gorillas can only groom themselves literally.

00:16:56.160 So if you've got 50, 55 silverback gorillas in a group, they all groom each other a little bit every day.

00:17:02.940 And that's how it goes.

00:17:04.160 That's the size of that.

00:17:05.200 And that allows a certain amount of specialization.

00:17:07.780 But humans can get to 150 in a tribe because we can remote groom.

00:17:13.780 And remote grooming is about laughter.

00:17:16.460 And why do you specifically make that argument, that it's specifically about laughter?

00:17:21.620 And why is it that you associate it specifically with grooming?

00:17:25.080 Well, because the purpose of laughter, sort of pre-language, certainly would have been to sort of go, I am not a threat.

00:17:32.740 We are friends.

00:17:34.960 There is a connection.

00:17:36.120 So if you think of the most basic example, tickling, if you tickle a child, it's an aggressive act that is made benign by the laughter.

00:17:44.920 So I was thinking a while ago with some of my friends about the use of self-deprecation and humor among tough working class men.

00:17:55.420 Because one of the things, and I really like that, one of the things that working class men do, and I really see this as a class-based thing, at least to some degree, is that they hurl insults at one another, but they have to be funny.

00:18:07.440 And then, you know, your prowess, your status, in some sense, within the group, especially if it's a friendship group, but even sometimes if it's a work group, is how barbed your darts can be and still be funny.

00:18:19.840 That would be the first thing.

00:18:20.860 So how close can you get to that line where it's actually an insult?

00:18:23.760 And then the second thing would be, well, can you take a damn joke?

00:18:26.960 And let me tell you a story.

00:18:28.100 Maybe you'd like this.

00:18:29.280 So I worked on this.

00:18:30.960 Yeah, go ahead.

00:18:31.900 Okay.

00:18:32.200 I worked on this rail crew in northern Saskatchewan with a bunch of guys, a bunch of native Canadians.

00:18:36.940 A lot of them had been in jail.

00:18:38.120 Like, it was a rough bunch of guys.

00:18:39.400 And when I first started working, you know, they were all skeptical of me.

00:18:43.580 This is back when I was a kid.

00:18:44.880 But I persevered, and, you know, I made jokes, and I wasn't a twit or a twat or an asshole or any of those things, hopefully.

00:18:51.360 And then, you know, I got into the group, and that just went fine.

00:18:54.520 But while I was there, this guy came along who was pretty touchy and pretty arrogant.

00:18:59.680 And he brought this lunchbox along with him that it looked like his mum packed, which was a big mistake socially.

00:19:06.020 You're supposed to bring a paper bag that's not too showy.

00:19:08.400 And so he got this Appellation lunchbox, and that really made him mad.

00:19:13.140 They called me Howdy Doody, which I didn't really like.

00:19:15.380 And I asked the guy why, and he said, because you look nothing like him, which I thought was a really good joke.

00:19:19.780 And anyways, lunchbox, that's a good joke.

00:19:23.720 Lunchbox didn't like being called lunchbox, and he'd get irritated all the time.

00:19:27.240 And so the guys on the crew, and it was stretched about half a mile down the railway, would throw pebbles at his hardhat while he was working.

00:19:34.900 And that would piss him off more.

00:19:36.360 And so the rocks got bigger and bigger.

00:19:38.100 And, you know, the whole crew was watching this.

00:19:40.220 And now and then a pretty decent-sized rock would hit lunchbox on the head in the helmet.

00:19:44.680 And everybody would sort of laugh under their breath.

00:19:46.720 And, you know, he was chased off in a week.

00:19:48.740 And all that was testing to see if he could tolerate, you know, being pushed a bit.

00:19:53.140 And they didn't want him in the group if he couldn't do it.

00:19:56.620 I'm very interested in that.

00:19:58.280 There's a lovely Australian turn of phrase, which is typically crude and Australian.

00:20:03.140 You might have to believe this.

00:20:04.580 But in Australia, they have a phrase that kind of sums it up.

00:20:08.580 You'll call a mate cunt, and you'll call a cunt mate.

00:20:13.280 And there's an intimacy to insults and language and taking the piss out of each other.

00:20:19.860 There's an intimacy to that because it's family.

00:20:23.480 It's friendship.

00:20:24.980 It's a connection.

00:20:27.280 And I think language is so nuanced.

00:20:30.260 Like, if you just take the humor out of it, you're just being brutal.

00:20:36.160 But the humor is sort of like we love each other so much that we can trade blows and that doesn't even matter.

00:20:43.660 It's something like that.

00:20:44.900 It's the – I suppose it gets to that thing of, you know, love is unconditional, friendship isn't.

00:20:54.700 So it kind of gets to a thing of going, listen, if you love each other, you can sort of take this, and it's fine.

00:21:01.100 And the badge of honor of being able to take a joke, sort of almost the worst thing you could say about someone British is, oh, you can't take a joke.

00:21:07.260 Yeah.

00:21:07.900 Yeah.

00:21:08.160 Well, it's fun being a Canadian in relationship to comedy because we – I watched a fair bit of British comedy when I grew up.

00:21:15.780 I loved Monty Python, which I discovered when I was 12.

00:21:18.200 And I just – I thought it was actually a circus show when I first watched it.

00:21:21.320 And I thought, what the hell is this?

00:21:23.480 And then my dad turned out to like it too, which I thought was extremely bizarre.

00:21:26.900 And so what I loved about the British – Brit comedy in particular, and I think this is characteristic of your culture, is that British comedians tend to be extremely self-deprecating.

00:21:37.420 And British satire is like that too.

00:21:39.280 It's – they're after themselves a lot.

00:21:41.320 And Americans really didn't have a great hand for satire, I didn't think, until The Simpsons came along.

00:21:46.340 That was the first truly self-satirical comedy that I had seen coming out of the U.S.

00:21:52.220 Well, I guess, you know, well, Mort Stahl or Lenny Bruce or any of those kind of greats would have been a huge influence of that.

00:22:00.080 I mean, you know, The Simpsons didn't come out of nowhere.

00:22:03.060 They were standing on the shoulder of giants, as is always the way with comedy.

00:22:06.860 You know, we're kind of part of a very proud tradition that goes back through variety and court jesters and trickster gods.

00:22:15.300 We're part of that tradition.

00:22:16.900 We're outside looking in.

00:22:19.920 We're slightly other.

00:22:21.560 I mean, it's that thing of, you know, comedians in a room of 3,000 people, are we the one person facing the wrong way?

00:22:27.100 That kind of sums us up as a group.

00:22:29.780 Yeah, well, that's kind of the position of artists in general, you know, because artists tend to be outside the – what you say, the traditional competence hierarchies.

00:22:39.240 They're viewers from the outside and observers.

00:22:42.060 And so they're not in the hierarchy in some sense.

00:22:44.820 And I do think that that's true of comedians.

00:22:46.720 And the fact that the jester is the only person that can tell the king the truth is extremely interesting.

00:22:52.660 And also it's interesting that the king who can't tolerate his jester has become a tyrant.

00:22:58.020 That's a way of telling.

00:22:59.580 Yeah.

00:23:00.040 It's a great story about the Great Wall of China.

00:23:02.040 Do you know that story?

00:23:03.200 When the emperor was building the Great Wall.

00:23:04.800 I mean, it nearly bankrupt the kingdom, the Great Wall of China.

00:23:07.620 And the plan was to paint it red.

00:23:09.980 That was always the plan.

00:23:11.500 We're going to paint it.

00:23:12.760 We're painting it red.

00:23:13.880 And the jester made so many jokes about painting it and how it would bankrupt them and how it would destroy the kingdom and made all the jokes.

00:23:22.360 The emperor changed his mind.

00:23:24.420 Said, oh, we don't need to paint it.

00:23:25.620 It's crazy.

00:23:26.860 But it's an interesting kind of thing of, like, the effect that sort of speaking truth to power is not an easy thing to do.

00:23:33.080 It's much easier to get your point across if everyone's laughing.

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00:26:24.940 Yeah, that's for sure.

00:26:26.100 Well, I also thought when I was lecturing, when I was at Harvard, I was lecturing about the most serious things I could think of, and it was usually about totalitarianism and atrocity, like really dark things.

00:26:36.420 And this thought always came in my mind.

00:26:38.520 It was like, look, if you really mastered this, you wouldn't be so dead serious about it.

00:26:43.540 You'd be able to do it with a light touch, like with a bit of comedy.

00:26:46.980 And I thought, Jesus, how can that possibly be true, given the topics that I'm addressing?

00:26:51.060 But I've certainly come to realize that I'm at my best as a lecturer when I can, when I'm not so dead serious and maybe possessed by a certain amount of anger, when I can leave in what I'm saying with jokes.

00:27:02.620 I'm in the right place then, and the audience loves that.

00:27:05.700 I mean, but in the macro and the micro, because, I mean, if you look at totalitarian states, not famed for their sense of humor.

00:27:12.160 I mean, cabarets-

00:27:13.280 Yeah, they're not funny.

00:27:14.500 Well, but cabaret is really interesting as a piece, because the idea that cabaret clubs in Germany were shut down because they realized you can't hate someone you're laughing with.

00:27:25.240 And laughter builds a bridge.

00:27:26.560 It's tough to be a racist when you're laughing with a comedian from a different ethnicity.

00:27:34.260 It really does kind of, it makes bonds in society, and it joins things up.

00:27:40.820 Russell Peters really has done that well, I think.

00:27:44.320 Yeah, the idea that you bring lots of different people together and share that common experience.

00:27:49.100 So, yeah, I think there's something in, you know, and actually when you're doing a lecture about something incredibly serious, to be able to make a point about something and to be funny about it is kind of magnificent.

00:28:02.220 Because it shows confidence and competency and being able to be a little bit self-deprecating and not taking oneself too seriously.

00:28:10.960 It's kind of, it's all to the good.

00:28:12.840 Yeah, well, it's a mark of transcendence, I think, in some part, right?

00:28:16.260 Because, you know, if you do something stupid and then you laugh at yourself, it's like simultaneously you're the fool, but you're also the thing that can look at the fool and say, well, I'm a fool, but I can do better and I don't have to take that too seriously.

00:28:29.800 Yeah, isn't there something with life with, you know, if we look at the mental health crisis that's going on globally at the moment, it's about perspective.

00:28:37.240 You know, comedy offers perspective in a way that I think is incredibly profound and meaningful to me because you look at, you know, what, suicide's like the extreme example, right?

00:28:48.940 So suicide is the, is the, is a symptom of depression and depression is, it's, it's basically, suicide is the, the permanent solution to a temporary problem.

00:28:59.460 And comedy is very good at lending perspective at going, look, this is, look, step back from this.

00:29:05.420 We all fuck up.

00:29:06.040 Yeah, and the question is, where are you stepping back to, do you think?

00:29:09.320 Like, if you make a joke about an extremely serious subject, you know, and you're stepping back somewhere, right?

00:29:15.380 And you're sharing that with the audience and they go there too.

00:29:17.740 Where is it, do you think, that it's going when you step back?

00:29:20.880 I think it's processing.

00:29:22.100 I think there's a sense in which when we joke about something, we're taking something that's too horrific to talk about, to, to acknowledge, and we're, we're making it okay.

00:29:33.620 So that theory of benign violation on comedy comes up.

00:29:37.700 The idea that you go, we're taking things that are violations in our culture, in our world, and we're making them benign by laughing about them.

00:29:45.620 We're taking away their power.

00:29:46.720 So if you imagine that the Venn diagram of violations, and we're making them benign and joking about them and processing that thought, it's a very important part of our, because so much of life is, is, is, is, is terrible.

00:30:02.160 And so much of our culture is, you know, issuing, you know, it is the obfuscation of decay.

00:30:11.760 That's the phrase, isn't it?

00:30:12.680 It's the, we're trying to hide death.

00:30:16.720 We're trying to not think about mortality.

00:30:19.220 That idea, or to transcend it, or to transcend it.

00:30:22.700 You know, it's, I don't think comedy is denial.

00:30:24.820 I think it's genuine transcendence.

00:30:26.920 And, you know, that idea that you take away someone's power with laughter.

00:30:30.500 It's like, that's actually literally true.

00:30:32.220 When I used to work out, I had a couple of friends I worked out with a lot, and they were pretty damn funny.

00:30:36.140 And one of the things we would do when we were bench pressing, and sometimes heavy weights, is make the guy laugh.

00:30:40.860 And you cannot exert muscular force when you're laughing.

00:30:44.840 And that's where the phrase sort of collapse into laughter comes.

00:30:47.760 So that's really interesting physiologically.

00:30:49.780 I've got all the difference in the book about what happens in the vagus nerve stays in the vagus nerve.

00:30:54.120 What happens to you from a physiological point of view when you laugh is, I think, fascinating.

00:30:58.480 I mean, it's really, I like to think of myself as a drug dealer.

00:31:04.000 I'm a drug dealer, but the drugs are already on the audience.

00:31:07.580 This is, I'm never going to get taken by the police because I'm releasing endorphins, but you've got the endorphins on you.

00:31:15.400 You're getting a dopamine.

00:31:16.620 Why?

00:31:17.040 Because dopamine mediates positive emotion.

00:31:19.700 And so, and cocaine and the drugs, the psychomotor stimulants are very potent dopamine releasers.

00:31:24.480 And so it's literally the case that when you laugh and facilitate positive emotion, you are activating that circuit without harm, right?

00:31:31.540 And it's the, without harm, yeah.

00:31:32.860 And I sort of view, you know, watching things on screens as fentanyl.

00:31:37.500 It's a, it's a substitute.

00:31:38.980 It's not the real thing.

00:31:40.100 You need the real thing.

00:31:42.580 When you watch it on a screen, it's like that those drugs are being cut up.

00:31:46.860 Someone stepped on that cocaine.

00:31:48.480 You need the pure thing of like being in a room with other people.

00:31:51.760 That's where you release it.

00:31:52.880 You don't laugh in the same way when you're watching your favorite, you know, if you see Monty Python on a screen, you laugh.

00:31:59.100 But if you go and see them live, if you go, you know, they did that tour show.

00:32:02.680 It's a different order of laughter.

00:32:04.280 You're falling about.

00:32:05.920 It's a, it's, you know, as you say, you collapse into laughter.

00:32:09.900 You have fits of laughter.

00:32:11.500 You, you know, what it does for the vagus nerve.

00:32:14.280 It tells your body you can digest your food.

00:32:16.140 It calms you.

00:32:17.160 It's, it's, it's perfect.

00:32:19.360 And it's a, I think it's a necessary part of it.

00:32:22.360 Do you have any idea what the movement of the abdomen that's associated with laughter does physiologically?

00:32:28.880 Yeah.

00:32:29.340 I mean, I've, I've, I mean, I've kind of looked into, I wouldn't be the expert on that, but the idea that it does allow you to digest and to process in a way that's, you know, very, very beneficial.

00:32:42.280 It doesn't have any negative effects.

00:32:43.940 If you could buy a drug that did what laughter did with the amount of side effects that laughter has, which is literally none, it's, it would be the perfect drug.

00:32:52.820 And so that, that idea about, about having to be there with the people, that's interesting too, because I'm going back on tour.

00:33:00.460 I did a tour in 2018.

00:33:02.320 I think it sold just about as many tickets as yours, by the way.

00:33:05.440 Ha ha.

00:33:05.820 And so, um, anyhow, I'm going back next year and I'm wondering why I'm doing it because I could just do YouTube videos and you know, they're pretty effective and I could just sit here and do them and they're pretty fun, but I really want to do it.

00:33:19.200 I really find it ridiculously exciting.

00:33:20.980 And part of it is the feedback from the audience, right?

00:33:23.780 That there's an, I get informed by that in a way.

00:33:26.420 It's more than that.

00:33:27.420 You're giving people an experience because I, I, you never forget who you saw live.

00:33:33.980 You never forget who you saw live.

00:33:36.440 You, you know, no, no one goes to Rolling Stones.

00:33:38.400 Did I see them live or not?

00:33:41.260 But a YouTube video, did I see that YouTube video or not?

00:33:44.580 I don't, I don't know.

00:33:45.700 Yeah, maybe, maybe I watched it.

00:33:47.080 Maybe I didn't.

00:33:47.680 But going to something live, going, it's also the thing that you're doing, the high before the high, the people that will buy tickets to the show.

00:33:55.740 They buy tickets to a comedy show, they buy tickets to a lecture and they go, right, I'm going to go out.

00:33:59.820 I'm going to, I'm going to laugh a lot or I'm going to be stimulated.

00:34:02.520 I'm buying into this.

00:34:04.660 This is, this defines me.

00:34:06.740 This is my sense of humor.

00:34:08.040 This is my kind of speaker.

00:34:10.200 I'm going to buy into it.

00:34:11.340 I'm going to go there.

00:34:12.120 I'm going to be with my tribe for the evening.

00:34:14.080 And other people that, you know, everyone has something in common in that room when they come and see you.

00:34:19.020 Everything has someone in common when they come and see me.

00:34:21.460 It's that sense of humor.

00:34:23.200 Like, we don't have anything else in common.

00:34:24.900 There's people from all different walks of life in my audience.

00:34:27.080 There's people from 16 to 90 in the crowd.

00:34:30.340 And they all have something in common.

00:34:32.640 For that, for that one evening, we've created a village.

00:34:35.060 And that's a very, very special, very powerful thing to let people be part of that.

00:34:41.160 And sure, you could just stick it on YouTube and put it on send.

00:34:44.080 And that's, that's a facsimile.

00:34:46.120 And it's a pretty good facsimile in the world that we live in.

00:34:48.500 And it's been a lifeline the last 18 months for people.

00:34:51.680 But, but really giving them that experience is very special.

00:34:54.900 And also, you have to kind of limit that a little bit because actually you can't really play the arenas.

00:34:59.440 I mean, you could, but it becomes a different thing in the arenas.

00:35:02.700 What, what the sort of thing you do in arenas becomes kind of a Tony Robbins event.

00:35:09.000 And then it's all, it's, it's, it's at a different frequency.

00:35:11.960 It becomes about G-ing people up rather than connecting.

00:35:17.500 You know, there's, yeah, we did.

00:35:18.620 I didn't make a distinction between the, the, the, sorry, there's a distinction.

00:35:22.680 There's comics you go to laugh with and there's comics you go to see.

00:35:27.360 Sometimes you get comedian where people love them so much.

00:35:32.540 They don't really care about the jokes.

00:35:34.440 They just want to be in a room.

00:35:36.360 You know, it's that thing.

00:35:37.840 Dave Chappelle.

00:35:38.500 Is that Dave Chappelle?

00:35:39.700 I mean, I played.

00:35:41.420 He's a good storyteller, right?

00:35:42.980 Yeah.

00:35:43.220 I played with Dave last week in, in London.

00:35:45.720 He was over in London doing shows.

00:35:47.000 And I, myself and Jeff Ross opened for him.

00:35:50.780 It was pretty fun.

00:35:51.680 It was a good scene.

00:35:52.660 Yeah.

00:35:52.800 I think there was a sense of kind of hero worship and wanting to be in the room and, and there

00:35:59.600 being something I think, you know, George Carlin probably had as well.

00:36:03.580 That kind of almost preacher feel is really interesting that people are drawn to that in a

00:36:09.260 secular world.

00:36:10.260 Because we're looking for people to, uh, get Rogan.

00:36:14.040 Rogan has some of that, I would say.

00:36:16.080 Yeah.

00:36:16.280 I think he's got a lot of that.

00:36:17.360 Yeah.

00:36:17.600 He's got more.

00:36:18.360 Yeah.

00:36:18.900 John Mulaney.

00:36:19.660 He's got more of that kind of one line thing, but he's got an interesting persona.

00:36:23.940 I don't know how much that's his true character.

00:36:25.600 You know, he's kind of like this 1950s advertising executive, middle, middle America suburbs nerd.

00:36:30.980 And he plays on that real well.

00:36:32.620 It's interesting.

00:36:33.700 It's, you can't really convince people you're not what they assume you are.

00:36:38.000 But, uh, you know, John Mulaney, I know he's had some, uh, some issues recently, much more

00:36:42.140 complex and interesting character than people would maybe give him credit off the bat.

00:36:46.900 Yeah.

00:36:46.920 I'd say the same about Theo Vaughn.

00:36:49.220 Theo plays this bumbling Southern hick.

00:36:51.640 He's very, very smart, man.

00:36:53.280 He's a smart guy.

00:36:54.540 Yeah.

00:36:54.820 It's, it's, it's often the way that you go.

00:36:56.940 It's, there's two things in life, isn't it?

00:36:58.860 There's, and I write about this a lot in the book.

00:37:00.640 There's, you have to know who you are, right?

00:37:02.380 That's the first big journey in life is finding out who you are, what you're about, what your

00:37:07.280 skills are, what your edge is in life.

00:37:09.100 What do you do best?

00:37:10.520 Not better than anyone in the world, but what do you do?

00:37:12.480 And that's not marketing work at Shell?

00:37:15.420 Definitely not.

00:37:16.780 Definitely not.

00:37:17.600 So it's that thing of like, you have to find out who you are, but it's also important as

00:37:22.020 a duality because you have to find out how you're perceived in the world as well.

00:37:26.440 What do people think you are?

00:37:28.200 People look at me and they don't see, uh, they don't see an immigrant.

00:37:31.540 They don't see someone that's dyslexic.

00:37:34.100 They see, they see a very confident British man somewhere between Hugh Grant and Mr. Bean,

00:37:39.880 right?

00:37:40.060 So they see that.

00:37:41.220 So, so you better know how you're perceived in the world and you also better know who you

00:37:45.480 are authentically.

00:37:47.700 And I think having both of those things is, it's very important kind of armor for going

00:37:51.560 out to the world.

00:37:52.800 I mean, I did your, um, before coming on this today, I did the, your understanding yourself.

00:37:58.440 Oh, you did understand myself.

00:38:01.180 Well, yeah.

00:38:01.600 So tell me what your personality is.

00:38:03.400 Like, well, let me guess you're extroverted as hell.

00:38:05.700 You're probably pretty disagreeable.

00:38:07.480 I don't imagine you're that conscientious because it's hard to be conscientious in a

00:38:11.460 comedian.

00:38:12.080 You're high in openness.

00:38:13.280 No, 97th percentile in, uh, in conscientious.

00:38:16.920 Uh, yeah, incredibly conscientious.

00:38:19.160 But the thing that I, I mean, without getting into the horoscope of the, everyone's fascinated

00:38:24.400 by themselves, I just find it like it's an incredibly useful tool because you go, well,

00:38:30.020 most people are looking, that's the, there's two great adventures in life.

00:38:33.380 There's finding your purpose and then there's pursuing it.

00:38:36.700 And most people don't get to do either.

00:38:39.340 My book really is about, uh, trying to share that.

00:38:42.780 So I did the autobiography, but I wanted it to be, I want it to be half about me and half

00:38:47.580 about you and half about like, what are the beliefs that you have to have in order to

00:38:52.760 pursue that journey?

00:38:54.080 What are the good questions to ask yourself?

00:38:56.060 What are the, what's the right way?

00:38:57.260 And I found that and I knew I was talking to you today.

00:38:59.300 So I thought, well, I'll, I'll, I'll be a good student.

00:39:01.680 I'll do a little bit of research and did that.

00:39:04.140 And I just thought, yeah.

00:39:05.340 Are you married?

00:39:06.360 Are you married?

00:39:06.820 No, I, I'm, I've just, just had our first kid.

00:39:09.560 We've been together 21 years.

00:39:11.100 And I saw Toronto, you know, if you do that, understand myself and she does it, it will generate

00:39:16.300 a way to report about your differences and similarities and where you're likely to misunderstand

00:39:20.480 each other and why.

00:39:22.500 So all she has to do is sign up and do it.

00:39:24.420 And then you can link your accounts and it'll generate this third report.

00:39:27.920 We're doing it.

00:39:28.560 Well, yeah, it's really, I did it with my wife recently and it was really useful.

00:39:33.820 Does it put you in touch with a lawyer or do you have to find your own lawyer?

00:39:37.660 Yeah, well, that's a feature we should add, like a value added feature.

00:39:40.600 We can get the lawyers to pay for that.

00:39:42.200 If it comes up, then it's really, you're not a great man.

00:39:44.580 It should just come up with, like, I love that thing in, do you ever read that researcher

00:39:48.540 at the Love Lab?

00:39:49.660 Do you ever read his stuff?

00:39:51.600 Are you talking about the research and what predicts divorce?

00:39:54.680 Yeah.

00:39:55.680 You mean eye rolling, for example, which predicts divorce with 95% accuracy?

00:40:01.160 Yeah.

00:40:01.480 And then you can do it within five minutes.

00:40:02.800 We often do it with couples over dinner where we've got, myself and Caroline have got it

00:40:06.420 right 100% of the time where it's like, if someone displays contempt for their partner,

00:40:10.820 it is fucking over.

00:40:12.220 It's gone.

00:40:12.860 Hey, so let's talk about that for a sec.

00:40:15.500 How about if we all display contempt for our political opponents?

00:40:19.400 Does that make it over too?

00:40:21.600 I think maybe it does.

00:40:23.300 I think there's a sense in which political parties now have become like sports teams.

00:40:30.300 You blindly follow left or right, blue or red, whatever your team is, and you become entrenched.

00:40:37.700 In our culture, people talk about echo chambers.

00:40:39.920 It's amplifiers.

00:40:41.400 The left have moved to the left.

00:40:42.660 The right have moved to the right.

00:40:44.360 And there's a couple of liberals left in the middle going, well, we need something.

00:40:48.420 The problem with the middle, the center ground, is it's not exciting.

00:40:51.680 I want there to be kind of, you know, I want to be a radical moderate, but it's such a...

00:40:56.260 That's what I've been trying to do with responsibility, you know, and to allow people to imagine.

00:41:02.640 Responsibility needs crisis management because responsibility sounds boring, but it's incredibly empowering.

00:41:09.840 Like, if you take responsibility, like, no one ever, like, when you win something, you never go, I'm responsible for this.

00:41:19.820 But you go, actually, responsibility is about the nexus of control is within you.

00:41:24.400 It's the idea that you go, well, I'm in charge of this now.

00:41:28.540 So that's really the story of the early part of my life was about going, taking my life and actually leading my life as opposed to just letting things happen.

00:41:38.600 Okay, yeah, so let's talk about that.

00:41:40.820 So you graduated and then you went and worked as a marketer for Shell, but you didn't like that.

00:41:45.940 And then you took a sideways...

00:41:47.180 Okay, please tell that story.

00:41:48.420 I didn't make any decisions in my life until I was about 25.

00:41:53.800 So why did you do the things you did if you weren't making decisions?

00:41:57.340 I did the best next thing.

00:42:00.220 So when you're 16, you decide to say you can get a job or you can stay on school.

00:42:04.660 The best thing to do is to stay at school.

00:42:06.740 The best thing to do is to try and pass those exams.

00:42:09.360 Try and go to the best university you can.

00:42:11.600 So I went to Cambridge because that was the best one I could think of.

00:42:15.140 And so I went there and I got the best degree I could.

00:42:18.320 And then at the end of that, you got the best job that you could.

00:42:20.820 So far, I've not made any decisions.

00:42:22.360 It's been what's presented to you and the next step, a very well-worn path.

00:42:28.360 Yeah, a typical kind of conservative path.

00:42:30.400 Yeah.

00:42:30.800 And then the idea of being kind of in your mid-20s and going, well, hang on.

00:42:36.180 Whose life am I leading?

00:42:38.380 Where's this going?

00:42:39.660 And you can see, because it's such a well-worn path, you can see into the future and go,

00:42:43.580 well, actually, I know exactly who I'm going to be in 10 years' time, in five years' time,

00:42:47.480 in 15 years' time.

00:42:48.760 But whatever the time period is, by looking at someone ahead of you on that road and then

00:42:52.680 go, no, I don't want that.

00:42:53.960 I want life to be an adventure.

00:42:56.740 I want to find a purpose.

00:42:58.400 I want to find something special for me.

00:42:59.800 And I don't think there's anything special about me.

00:43:01.800 I don't think anything magical happened.

00:43:04.080 I think I was exposed to, for want of a better phrase, self-help, NLP and cognitive behavioral

00:43:11.840 therapy at the right age when I was ready to go, right, that's for me.

00:43:17.160 I'm going to be like that person.

00:43:18.540 So something as simple as a personality test, something as diverting as, it's like kind

00:43:24.560 of, I suppose, a rationalist horoscope, is such a powerful thing, because the more you

00:43:31.340 get to know yourself through doing that stuff, the better able you are to go, right, what's

00:43:35.440 my edge?

00:43:36.260 What am I bringing to the party in life?

00:43:38.240 What do I do better than anyone else?

00:43:40.100 What am I going to devote my life to?

00:43:41.660 Because you make your own luck.

00:43:44.000 It's your edge, what you do best, your hard work plus time.

00:43:47.440 That's your luck.

00:43:48.860 We're all of us just buying lottery tickets.

00:43:50.800 Nothing's guaranteed.

00:43:52.200 But if you want it to kind of pay off, you're going, right, if I put everything into this,

00:43:56.100 it's going to pay out eventually.

00:43:58.160 What do you mean by everything when you say that?

00:44:00.420 And because you made this shift into comedy, it looked like it was pretty sudden and pretty

00:44:04.340 successful pretty soon.

00:44:05.760 So that's a very weird thing to do and a very weird thing to do successfully.

00:44:10.200 So what do you mean you do everything?

00:44:12.080 Success came later.

00:44:13.760 But I think being all in, when you find it, being all in is quite important.

00:44:18.580 So finding comedy for me, it felt like suddenly I arrived in a space where work is more fun

00:44:25.380 than fun.

00:44:26.220 So I was working 300 nights a year and it didn't feel like anything.

00:44:30.620 I, we both had a similar experience.

00:44:33.480 Actually, I know a little bit about you in our mid-20s of giving up alcohol because work

00:44:39.440 was more important.

00:44:41.840 And it reminds me that I'm of the opinion that the opposite of addiction isn't sobriety,

00:44:50.340 it's purpose.

00:44:51.820 If you have...

00:44:52.620 Hey, the clinical literature on that is crystal clear.

00:44:55.320 The only reliable treatment for alcoholism that's ever been discovered is spiritual

00:44:59.240 transformation.

00:45:00.720 That's it.

00:45:01.580 And every, even the hard-nosed researchers know that.

00:45:04.040 And that's very tightly akin to this notion of pursuing something meaningful and significant.

00:45:08.080 Yeah.

00:45:08.580 But I think that could be expanded in a very meaningful way because you go, well, purpose

00:45:13.320 doesn't need to have a spiritual element to it.

00:45:17.080 I mean, I think it does because it's about your life's meaning in your journey.

00:45:20.300 Well, it might be the spirit of laughter, you know.

00:45:22.360 Yeah, I think so.

00:45:24.060 And that, you know, certainly I feel that the, you know, the more I read about trickster

00:45:28.480 gods, the more you think, oh, that's a very interesting position in society.

00:45:32.020 Yeah.

00:45:32.540 He's the precursor to the savior.

00:45:34.420 The trickster is always the precursor to the savior.

00:45:36.900 Yeah.

00:45:37.120 John the Baptist was the trickster, right?

00:45:40.140 Yeah.

00:45:40.820 Yeah.

00:45:41.420 Christ's fool.

00:45:42.180 I don't know if he told jokes though.

00:45:43.680 And of course my head will end up on a plate.

00:45:46.680 Yeah.

00:45:47.120 It's, it's, it's an interesting thing.

00:45:48.520 I mean, I wanted the book to be quite, I'm quite sort of passionate about it.

00:45:51.460 The idea that I wanted the book to be funny and engaging and my story, but I also wanted

00:45:57.240 it to be, look, there's the hero's journey.

00:45:59.740 I wanted it to be, to have the tools in there for someone else to go, I'm not interested

00:46:03.460 in comedy at all, but I can see how I could do my thing.

00:46:07.020 And if I believed the same things, what would happen for me?

00:46:10.400 Because your beliefs become everything.

00:46:13.180 And not, not your beliefs in terms of your spiritual beliefs per se, but the, the assumptions

00:46:17.220 we make about what we can, what we can't do.

00:46:19.360 They're almost, I don't know what you call them, the unseen beliefs about, well, I'm not

00:46:23.740 the kind of person that does that, or I'm not the sort of person that would do this,

00:46:27.340 or I'm not the kind of person.

00:46:28.800 See, I told my, my, my niece phoned me the other day.

00:46:31.700 She wanted to talk to me.

00:46:32.940 She's 17, I believe.

00:46:34.960 And she just applied to university and she was happy to share the news of her acceptance

00:46:40.880 to a couple of institutions.

00:46:42.100 And we had a good conversation about the fact that, you know, when you leave to university,

00:46:47.220 if you leave home, one thing that can happen to you is that you can be a new person.

00:46:52.080 You can decide what garbage and wreckage you're going to leave behind and not drag with you.

00:46:57.460 And you can decide who you're going to be and what kind of friends you want.

00:47:00.620 And if you're lucky in life, you get a few chances to do that.

00:47:03.880 And you can just drop a lot of catastrophe.

00:47:06.660 You're preaching to the choir here.

00:47:08.200 I was 16 and I changed schools through happenstance.

00:47:12.860 We moved house and I changed schools for what we would call sixth form.

00:47:16.660 So for the last two years, and you become acutely aware that you are a story you tell yourself,

00:47:22.340 that you can, you can choose to kind of be, I was quite a tear away in my first school.

00:47:26.500 I got in a lot of trouble and then I changed.

00:47:28.540 I can't believe that.

00:47:29.940 And then when, but in my second school, I kind of went, no, I'll just, I'll be academic

00:47:33.300 and I'll do well and I'll go to a good university.

00:47:36.080 And then at university, you, you can kind of, you reinvent yourself.

00:47:39.660 I mean, the cliche really of finding yourself is travel and you go, especially if you go

00:47:46.160 on your own, which is probably easier for young men in this day and age than young women,

00:47:51.040 but you try to travel on your own in Southeast Asia or something.

00:47:54.080 And you, you kind of, you meet new people and you try on different paths and.

00:47:59.060 Hey, I got something cool to tell you about that.

00:48:01.880 Go on.

00:48:02.300 If you'd be interested.

00:48:03.120 Well, I read at one point Jung's description of the maze in the Chartres Cathedral.

00:48:09.920 And in the maze, you, you enter on one side and then you traverse the entire circle and

00:48:16.560 that's equivalent to traversing the globe.

00:48:18.660 And the maze is set out so that you walk all four quadrants and then you come to the

00:48:23.240 center.

00:48:24.040 So then you're at the center if you walk all four quadrants.

00:48:26.920 Now, what happens when you go somewhere new is two things is one is you learn new things.

00:48:31.800 So you pull in new information and that enriches you.

00:48:34.060 But here's something that's even cooler and it's related at a deep level to the psychobiology

00:48:38.180 of play and pretend.

00:48:40.120 So if you go somewhere new that requires you to be someone other than you were new genes

00:48:46.480 turn on in your nervous system and code for new proteins, it turns on biological potential

00:48:52.060 that isn't in fact implicit inside you and builds you into a new creature.

00:48:56.500 And so the idea behind that traversing the circle, which is an equivalent to a pilgrimage,

00:49:02.140 is that if you go all places, you get to the center of things because you turn everything

00:49:07.400 in yourself on by doing that.

00:49:09.560 And that's the same thing you're doing in some sense when you're listening to your audience

00:49:12.580 so intensely and finding out what they appreciate and what's funny, right?

00:49:16.480 You're, you're, you're visiting these new domains and, and that transforms you into something,

00:49:22.020 well, something they want and something you want if you're lucky, if you're careful and

00:49:25.920 you're lucky.

00:49:26.920 I find it a fascinating kind of, you know, I mean, travel is obviously, I sort of think

00:49:31.640 the nature nurture thing comes into it because you, I think a lot of people assume like nature

00:49:36.960 nurture, it's the debate is pointless because you go, yeah, nature is very important, but

00:49:41.640 there's nothing I can do about nature.

00:49:43.980 That's the cards I've been dealt, right?

00:49:46.340 So other than a little bit of plastic surgery, nose job.

00:49:49.620 Yeah.

00:49:49.780 Nose job, man.

00:49:50.640 Hair transplant.

00:49:51.740 Yeah.

00:49:52.020 Yeah.

00:49:52.340 Yeah.

00:49:52.640 Yeah.

00:49:52.760 Yeah.

00:49:53.080 Yeah.

00:49:53.140 Yeah.

00:49:53.200 Those are pretty nice teeth for an Englishman.

00:49:55.460 Thank you.

00:49:57.980 Thank you.

00:49:58.600 Thank you to my audience.

00:49:59.860 You've paid for it.

00:50:01.540 But the idea that you go, look, you've got your nature.

00:50:04.360 That's the cards you're dealt.

00:50:05.680 You make the best of that.

00:50:06.920 That's nurture is making the best of that.

00:50:08.420 And the idea that I think a lot of people have the idea that nurture finishes very early.

00:50:12.060 It's about parental nurturing.

00:50:13.500 And, you know, when you're 18, you're finished.

00:50:16.760 But the idea of nurture as a lifelong pursuit, and you can't really beat your environment.

00:50:22.180 So it's important you're in an environment.

00:50:23.960 And I mean the environment in the kind of literal sense of going, not just where you are,

00:50:27.500 but who you're with is your environment.

00:50:29.620 So if you surround yourself with people where, and I think we're all quite narcissistic.

00:50:34.480 I think I like who I am when I'm with certain people.

00:50:38.520 I like being a father.

00:50:39.580 I like who I am.

00:50:40.300 Yeah, but that might not be narcissistic.

00:50:42.240 That might be the, like if you love being a father, you have a great relationship with your children.

00:50:47.080 How do you, it's perfectly reasonable for you to assume that that's when you are your best self.

00:50:51.140 I thought that when I was a father, I loved being with my kids and we had a great relationship.

00:50:55.700 But even that thing about the conversations that you have, the friends you choose to go to dinner for,

00:50:59.820 the work environment.

00:51:00.680 I remember arriving in the world of comedy, age 25, and just thinking, well, this is, I like who I am here.

00:51:08.820 This is fun.

00:51:09.640 Right, right.

00:51:11.360 There's a spirit of possibility here that I hadn't experienced before.

00:51:16.200 So success happened very early on within that world, not in terms of financial gains or status,

00:51:23.920 because sort of who cares?

00:51:25.180 That's for someone else.

00:51:26.000 That's very external, that measure of success.

00:51:28.580 But the idea of happiness came out of that that was transformational, just in terms of my whole way of being changed.

00:51:38.540 And I think happiness is, it's one of those words that's become conflated.

00:51:44.380 In the book, I'm sort of obsessed by the accuracy of language and how we...

00:51:50.760 That's a good thing if you're writing a book.

00:51:52.800 Yeah.

00:51:53.200 But that idea that I talk about in my mid-20s or my early 20s being sad.

00:51:57.960 I wasn't depressed.

00:52:00.340 I was sad.

00:52:01.560 And there's a huge difference because depression is about serotonin levels and chemical imbalance that bounce in your mind.

00:52:08.380 It's a very serious disease with very serious repercussions, suicide being the most serious symptom.

00:52:14.800 Sadness is about circumstance.

00:52:18.300 Sadness is fantastic.

00:52:20.160 Sadness just means you don't like things as they are.

00:52:22.560 Well, things are going to change.

00:52:24.320 You can, you know, you're not a noun, you're a verb.

00:52:26.520 Yeah, well, one of the things I did constantly as a therapist, so this is part of the cognitive behavioral process, let's say.

00:52:33.100 It's collaborative empiricism.

00:52:34.460 It's like, okay, your mood isn't good, but there's some variation in it.

00:52:38.180 So what you're going to do for the next week is you're going to watch yourself like you don't know who you are,

00:52:42.920 and you're going to see if you can identify times when you're not so sad.

00:52:47.820 And then see if you can figure out, like, where are those, where you are, what you're doing, what you're thinking.

00:52:52.240 Why are you not sad then?

00:52:54.700 Yeah.

00:52:55.620 And then can you do more of that?

00:52:57.300 Could you do more of that?

00:52:58.420 Well, it's interesting.

00:52:59.160 I mean, again, I talk about this in the book.

00:53:01.160 I wouldn't have the same qualification as you, but my cure for that is flow state.

00:53:06.460 Get into a flow state.

00:53:08.060 Get into a state where you're not aware of the passage of time.

00:53:11.300 Yeah, yeah, that's a marker.

00:53:12.420 That's a weird marker, that one, that you're out.

00:53:14.660 Then, you know, that's where you're outside the domain of mortality concerns at that point, too, right?

00:53:19.840 Because that weight of mortality that weighs upon us is integrally linked with consciousness of time.

00:53:26.320 And in that flow state, that disappears.

00:53:28.760 And that means, in some sense, you're united with eternity in those flow states.

00:53:32.620 This is not a trivial thing.

00:53:34.300 No, it's hugely important.

00:53:36.120 I read a fabulous thing on it.

00:53:37.840 I mean, I think sport is often where people, you know, if you're playing tennis or whatever, that happens to be my sport.

00:53:43.020 But you go, I'm not aware of how long I've been doing this.

00:53:46.220 This has been just a pleasure.

00:53:48.040 And I've been so focused.

00:53:49.680 Taking your conscious mind and giving it something to do so that your subconscious can relax is, I think, I'm not great with meditation.

00:53:58.200 But I quite like doing Lego puzzles with my other half because you go, yeah, I'm just going to get busy.

00:54:06.460 Get all that busy so that you can then relax.

00:54:10.720 You know, I suffer.

00:54:11.940 Yeah, I talked to Sam Harris about that a fair bit a couple of weeks ago because he has this meditation app that he's been using.

00:54:17.480 I've got his waking up, I think, is fantastic.

00:54:20.320 But I tend to listen to the talks on waking up rather than doing the meditations because it always seems, I don't know what that is about me, but it always feels like doing the meditations.

00:54:29.820 I'm not, am I doing this right?

00:54:31.880 Am I quite getting it?

00:54:32.900 I should go back and investigate more.

00:54:34.780 But it's.

00:54:35.420 Well, you know, you have that out that you already described too, though, that because you're doing what you love and you're successful.

00:54:41.580 Yeah, absolutely.

00:54:42.240 But, you know, we discussed the possibility you get in that worried state where you're possessed by your by your propositional thoughts about gloom and doom and all that's running around in your head.

00:54:52.660 And to get out of that into a different state is actually psychophysiologically rejuvenating.

00:54:58.220 I think I've got a I've got quite a positive in the book as well attitude towards I suffer anxiety more than depression.

00:55:04.620 I think a lot of people do.

00:55:06.720 And for me, I try and see it as the as the negative side of creativity.

00:55:12.240 The idea that all of the good things that have happened to me happened through creativity and being open to the muse.

00:55:20.180 But also, once you open those gates, there's an anxiety that can come in as well.

00:55:24.940 Your racing mind might get you a joke very quickly on the spot, but it also might result in you waking up at five in the morning with a panic attack.

00:55:33.560 And I think sometimes seeing the negative things in life for what they are, a part of the whole is very valuable.

00:55:41.220 Kind of make your peace with what, you know, what life is.

00:55:46.540 It's like if you're if you're a standout comedian, there's a lot of travel.

00:55:50.360 There's going to be a lot of planes and trains and automobiles and travel.

00:55:53.780 You're going on a concert tour.

00:55:54.940 Or making your peace with that and go, yeah, that's part of the thing that I'm loving doing.

00:55:58.820 This is part of the whole.

00:56:00.440 You can't just have that bit.

00:56:02.540 You have to take it all.

00:56:03.880 Well, that's also part of the problem with envy.

00:56:06.280 You know, when people compare themselves to other people, they say, well, I really wish what that son of a bitch had.

00:56:11.620 And that kind of malevolence often comes along with it.

00:56:14.080 Well, here's a point about envy that I make in my book.

00:56:18.220 I make a very clear distinction.

00:56:19.700 I suppose you could have it either way on the on the on the etymology of the word.

00:56:25.560 But for me, it's envy and jealousy are very different.

00:56:30.420 For me, jealousy is about I don't want him to have that.

00:56:34.180 I'm jealous of what they have, but I don't necessarily want that myself.

00:56:38.860 Envy, I think, could be a very positive thing in one's life because envy for me,

00:56:43.280 it strikes me that the only question that really matters in life in any given situation is what do you want?

00:56:49.320 It's the most profound, meaningful question at every level, whether you're looking at a menu in a restaurant or trying to decide what to do with your life.

00:56:56.860 What do you want?

00:56:58.000 And envy often gives you very accurate pointers.

00:57:01.940 You know, because you look at someone else, you read someone else's book, let's say, from your perspective,

00:57:05.920 you might read someone else's book on psychology and you might go, that guy absolutely nailed it.

00:57:12.280 I can't believe how good that is.

00:57:13.940 And it spurs you on to work harder and to say, well, I need to be more succinct in my language and I need to clarify better.

00:57:21.940 Or for me, I might watch someone's comedy special and just go, oh, that blew my mind, what they did.

00:57:27.780 I got to get better at this.

00:57:29.300 I'm going to break down what they did and I'm going to get better at it.

00:57:31.440 So envy, I think, can be powerful.

00:57:32.960 The idea of not wanting someone else, you know, comparison is the thief of joy, is one of my favorite quotes.

00:57:40.040 And it just, 100% of the time, it kills it.

00:57:43.140 As soon as you look at someone's having more fun than you somewhere.

00:57:48.360 That envy, you know, that's interesting to use that dark emotion in some sense as a guide to what you actually value.

00:57:55.860 So if you notice what you're envious of, then you can tell what you actually value, even if you're not willing to admit to yourself.

00:58:04.220 I've got that lovely first people story in the book about the white wolf and the black wolf.

00:58:11.640 You know that story, right?

00:58:13.560 I don't think so.

00:58:14.440 So there's a black wolf and a white wolf and they represent good and bad.

00:58:19.280 I mean, you know, the first peoples.

00:58:23.100 And they say, so which wolf are you going to feed?

00:58:26.900 And the kind of the colonial white man's retelling of the story was, well, you feed the white wolf, you feed the good wolf.

00:58:35.880 But if you only feed the good wolf, there's actually a downside because the dark wolf, the black wolf, doesn't just disappear.

00:58:46.100 He's waiting around every corner to attack.

00:58:49.660 So waiting for-

00:58:50.580 Yeah, you also might need him to scare off other wolves.

00:58:53.280 Yeah.

00:58:53.700 So that idea of going, well, look, actually you feed them both and you kind of, you use that, the darker things you turn to good.

00:59:01.060 If you say something as negative potentially as envy could be an incredibly powerful force in your life, it tells you what you want.

00:59:08.660 And when I say what you want, it's like, I'm going to sound like an old hippie here, but I genuinely on that question of what do you want?

00:59:15.900 I think wishing wells work, but they work way before people think they work.

00:59:21.400 The magic wish, not so much, but knowing what to wish for is everything.

00:59:26.500 You'd be amazed how many people that go to a wishing well and they wish for a million pounds, which is like, it's like they're wishing for a token.

00:59:35.560 They don't know what they want.

00:59:36.880 They're putting off answering the question.

00:59:39.280 What's the thing you really want?

00:59:42.300 And it's like, that's so fundamental to happiness in life and to finding your purpose.

00:59:47.740 Finding what is that thing at the base level that you want.

00:59:52.060 Knock and the door will open.

00:59:53.740 Ask and you will receive.

00:59:55.160 And that has very much to do with specifying and admitting to yourself and then actually working towards what it is you actually want.

01:00:03.220 I remember telling people that I wanted to be a comedian.

01:00:06.580 I remember telling people that I want to be a stand-up comedian.

01:00:09.120 I remember calling my first Edinburgh show when I first did a show Barefaced Ambition because I was very, I want this to be my life.

01:00:16.940 I want to do this.

01:00:17.820 I want to pursue it.

01:00:18.600 I want to be successful at it.

01:00:19.900 I want this to be who I am.

01:00:21.760 This is an identity level pursuit for me.

01:00:25.160 And the universe conspired to help me.

01:00:28.540 It felt like.

01:00:29.720 It felt like everything was, once you tell people, right, I'm going to do this, it was like, okay, everything's pointing in the right direction.

01:00:35.560 There was a real congruency to who I was.

01:00:39.580 Yeah, you definitely sound like a hippie now.

01:00:41.800 There's no doubt about that.

01:00:43.160 Thank you.

01:00:43.620 So, yeah.

01:00:44.560 So, well, you had this job that you took after you graduated from university and it was a good, you know, solid, stable job.

01:00:52.160 And so, why didn't that work for you?

01:00:54.440 And when did you know that you might be funny?

01:00:57.060 You know, not in the peculiar way, obviously, but the comedian way.

01:01:01.160 I hadn't written a joke until I was 25.

01:01:03.580 I was like a fan of comedy, but I hadn't written a joke.

01:01:06.860 I had not been in school plays particularly.

01:01:09.500 I had not taken an interest in comedy above and beyond being a consumer.

01:01:13.680 I was about 25 and I suddenly kind of went, well, this is my age.

01:01:18.760 The thing that I'm good at is talking to people.

01:01:21.580 The thing that I'm good at is getting ideas across and making people laugh was such an important part of my life.

01:01:29.140 I trace it back to my mother.

01:01:31.740 I trace it back to she had an extraordinary laugh.

01:01:35.020 She was a very funny Irish woman, had a lovely tone of phrase, and there was a high value put on making people laugh in our house.

01:01:45.000 Could you make her laugh?

01:01:46.700 Yeah.

01:01:46.980 It wasn't a particularly happy home, but I think if you're talking to comedians, I think the question to ask is people often people ask about, you know, depression in comedians because the tears, the clown thing is so it's such a delicious irony.

01:02:00.360 Why wouldn't you ask about that?

01:02:01.540 But actually, I think the question to ask that's more interesting is which of your parents was sick?

01:02:07.200 I think comedians often have to make things OK within their family.

01:02:12.620 And I certainly had that experience.

01:02:14.140 And then it was about kind of when you obviously your life is understood backwards, lived forwards, and it's understood in the rear view.

01:02:23.800 But looking back, it was obvious, of course, that's what you're going to be good at.

01:02:28.640 You're good at, you know, within friendship groups, within family and making people laugh and making things OK.

01:02:33.780 OK, so you knew that you knew that about yourself, that you could make your friends laugh, your family laugh.

01:02:39.600 And you said also make things OK.

01:02:41.880 Is that peacemaking or was that humor?

01:02:44.800 I think peacemaking was part of what I view humor as.

01:02:48.700 I think it's a methodology for making things OK, for lightening the mood, for, you know, for me, it's kind of a panacea.

01:02:58.420 I mean, I'm ultimately I'm self-medicating with humor.

01:03:03.780 So how in the world did you come about the decision to leave your job?

01:03:08.500 And you also mentioned cognitive behavior therapy in there that you did something that brought this up.

01:03:14.360 I went and did actually when you work for a large company like Shell, there's a there's a training budget every year that they're assigned to their staff members.

01:03:24.460 So if you work on the oil rigs, it's all health and safety training.

01:03:28.380 I was working in a fancy office in central London, so there's no need for any health and safety stuff.

01:03:32.500 It's all fine.

01:03:32.980 The most dangerous thing is the coffee and the coffee machine.

01:03:35.720 So for me, I could go and do with that kind of those courses in those days.

01:03:40.580 I went and did some NLP training with a guy, you know, one of these kind of corporate away day things.

01:03:45.740 And I got exposed to NLP and just went, oh, this is phenomenal.

01:03:50.660 I'd lost my religious faith on a trip to Israel, somewhat ironically.

01:03:58.160 The scales had fallen from my eyes and I kind of went, well, if I'm right about Christianity, everyone else is wrong.

01:04:05.020 That fundamental kind of it's kind of a tiny pebble in my shoe had become a boulder and I just couldn't live with it anymore.

01:04:14.060 And I slowly over about a year long period lost my faith and then I found NLP and I kind of thought I basically latched onto another belief structure.

01:04:23.580 And the idea that the map is not the territory, the idea that how you perceive the world is how the world is.

01:04:32.540 We see the world not as it is, but how we are.

01:04:35.160 The idea that, you know, I suppose disposition is more important than position.

01:04:40.360 And it's very difficult to change your disposition, but it's so much easier than changing the world.

01:04:48.220 And I kind of suddenly everything through being exposed to that became possible.

01:04:54.260 But the possibilities became like, well, fundamentally, my belief became anything anyone else can do, I can do.

01:05:00.920 And that's incredibly empowering and it's scary and you're suddenly not leading your life for the next, for the afterlife.

01:05:11.280 You, I mean, I've still got a huge belief in the next life, but not the afterlife, the precision of that phrase.

01:05:17.660 I think the allegories of religion I still enjoy, but I just don't, I don't believe them literally.

01:05:25.160 So the idea of going, there is a next life, of course, there's a next life.

01:05:29.300 You move through phases.

01:05:31.920 I'm a father now and I'm, you know, in my late forties, I'm a very different person than the person that started on this road 25 years ago to being a comedian.

01:05:43.000 You know, there's every molecule in my body has changed.

01:05:46.140 Of course, I'm a different person.

01:05:47.140 There's a next life literally, but, but the afterlife, it struck me that the afterlife was a way of the ultimate in procrastination.

01:05:55.500 And it struck me that religious belief was very good for the tribe, not great for the individual.

01:06:02.320 And in our society at the moment, maybe there's a, it's, it's an interesting thing going on at the moment where we've, the pendulum has swung too far to the individual and there's not enough tribal thinking going on.

01:06:18.060 That's an awful lot to unpack there.

01:06:19.680 What specifically, so you said you moved from Christianity and you moved into a psychotherapeutic realm in some sense, and that opened up all sorts of possibilities for you started to realize that you had been hindered by your own presumptions.

01:06:34.360 Some of them unexamined about who you were and what you should be doing.

01:06:38.100 How did your family, did you have family around at that time?

01:06:41.080 Like, were you constrained in your choices in some sense or not?

01:06:45.360 I think I was a little bit constrained by a sense of duty that was, I'm not sure whether that was real or imagined.

01:06:51.360 I think very often it's, that's one of the assumptions you make about what I should do to be a dutiful son.

01:06:58.360 My mother died around the same time.

01:07:00.840 And that was weirdly quite sort of, I was quite, I believe what psychotherapists would call enmeshed.

01:07:06.160 I had a very close sort of a substitute partner for my mother, you know, very close.

01:07:12.620 You could argue too close.

01:07:13.920 So when she died, that was crippling for me, you know, the grief was, was, was very overpowering, but also freed me up to go.

01:07:23.880 The thing that I had feared as a child, the loss of the key parent had happened, the worst thing had happened.

01:07:32.140 And you kind of look around, you're still standing and you go, you know, what are the lessons from that?

01:07:38.060 Well, go and live your life the best you can make it.

01:07:41.720 You know, suddenly there was a sense of urgency to my life that this is, you know, you get one life.

01:07:47.100 Mortality became a very real thing through grief.

01:07:50.040 The idea that this is the only chance you get, you have to make good on that.

01:07:54.540 This is a.

01:07:54.940 Right.

01:07:55.200 So that's kind of the black wolf and the white wolf there is, you know, the white wolf, you might think, well, that's the meaning that you found in this pursuit.

01:08:01.620 But you're also chased by the fact that you realized the fragility and shortness of life.

01:08:06.480 And it's definitely better to be if you're going somewhere, it's better to be running from something and running towards something.

01:08:12.200 You're a lot more motivated then.

01:08:14.860 Yeah.

01:08:15.720 Yeah.

01:08:15.960 I felt like there was a, I felt incredibly old when I was 25 and working in an oil company.

01:08:21.320 I felt as old as I've ever felt.

01:08:24.040 And then the next year I was suddenly in this other world where I felt like a teenager again and I kind of have done since.

01:08:31.180 It felt very, it's, it's, it's, you know, I don't view atheism as, as a, a cold, dry academic pursuit.

01:08:41.120 I view it as a, as kind of an empowering Russian blood to the head, an incredible sense of responsibility was, was overwhelming.

01:08:51.160 The idea that you, you were responsible for your life.

01:08:54.280 And at some point you, you have to.

01:08:57.240 How is that associated with the atheism, that realization?

01:09:00.080 I think it was the, the idea that you, you, you weren't living for the afterlife.

01:09:04.560 You were living for this life as you were, you were focused on, uh, making this life.

01:09:10.180 You were responsible for making this life as, as good as it could be.

01:09:13.740 You, you weren't waiting to, the analogy, the hippie, you weren't waiting to be brought flowers.

01:09:18.380 You were planting your own gum.

01:09:19.920 You're responsible for this.

01:09:21.300 You better make this work for you.

01:09:23.880 So that, that felt to me like a lot of responsibility, but also great.

01:09:28.640 This is going to be.

01:09:29.220 So, so in that transformation of belief heightened the sense of the significance of your life for you by, by forcing you in some sense to realize, well, how, how irreplaceable it was and how time limited it was.

01:09:43.740 That also didn't undermine you by the sound of it.

01:09:46.840 I genuinely, I genuinely felt like I was waking up.

01:09:48.860 I genuinely felt like I was in a bit of a daze.

01:09:51.500 Uh, like the, the, the scales have been lifted.

01:09:53.900 I'd been, I'd be kind of wading through treacle in my early twenties, like post-college, that kind of trying to hold on to that previous life.

01:10:03.720 Like, you know, talk about, I talk about next lives.

01:10:06.120 There was, you know, university was, you know, a blast, you know, had a lot of fun, a lot of drinking, great.

01:10:10.420 And then you leave and suddenly you're in the real world and it's just, I didn't like it.

01:10:14.920 I didn't like where I was in it.

01:10:16.580 I didn't find it.

01:10:17.980 I hadn't found a purpose.

01:10:19.380 So it's kind of, you know, there's a lot of trudgery and I hadn't found that thing.

01:10:23.560 And then suddenly I found this incredibly privileged position where work was more fun than fun.

01:10:29.700 So I could put everything into it.

01:10:31.660 So on that personality test, were you high in openness to experience?

01:10:36.080 Yeah.

01:10:36.660 Very.

01:10:36.980 How high?

01:10:38.060 I think 98.

01:10:38.980 Remember?

01:10:39.760 And you're 98 in conscientiousness as well, you said.

01:10:42.500 Something like that.

01:10:43.260 Yeah, I think so.

01:10:43.740 Okay.

01:10:43.960 So that's, that makes you a kind of a strange person politically because you've got the conscientiousness of someone who's conservative and that would maybe account for your dutifulness.

01:10:52.780 You know, that initial presumption about duty, but openness runs in some ways contrary to that.

01:10:58.580 That's the wellspring of creativity.

01:11:01.100 And so maybe that job at Shell was good for duty, but not for, you know, that gesture and artist.

01:11:07.380 I'm a radical moderate is what I am.

01:11:10.220 I'm like a classic kind of liberal thinker.

01:11:13.220 You know, I guess that's where I am.

01:11:17.240 So right in the middle of things.

01:11:18.380 So political parties for me sort of aren't really the thing.

01:11:21.880 It's, it's, I don't find them particularly, I don't think it's a, it's a, they're not useful.

01:11:25.980 I think it's, it's trying to be that being a member of a political party now is like ordering from a set menu in a Chinese restaurant.

01:11:33.200 You know, you order, you order from the set menu maybe the first time you go, but as soon as you know what you're talking about, you kind of, when you think different things on different issues, I don't agree with anyone about everything.

01:11:42.680 How did you score on agreeableness?

01:11:49.060 Do you remember?

01:11:51.120 I think I was pretty high.

01:11:52.580 I'm going to look.

01:11:53.200 I've got it here.

01:11:53.860 I've got it on my phone.

01:11:55.100 I'm going to tell you how agreeable I am.

01:11:57.040 I think it was.

01:11:57.460 All right.

01:11:57.600 All right.

01:11:58.000 I think it was, I was quite extreme.

01:11:59.660 I was, I was angry.

01:12:02.220 I'm curious about that relationship to humor because, you know, comedians are often blunt and you have a real edge to your humor.

01:12:08.580 I mean, it, it can get pretty dark and, and it, and there is a real element in your, in your comedy of, of, well, there's provocation.

01:12:18.420 I mean, that's not that unique.

01:12:19.480 I suppose comedians do a fair bit of that, but.

01:12:23.180 Maybe, maybe everyone should do this test before they get agreeableness.

01:12:27.520 No, I was typical, typical agreeableness.

01:12:30.100 And did, did it split into politeness?

01:12:32.520 Do you have the split there for politeness and compassion?

01:12:35.200 I think it had, yes.

01:12:38.580 Uh, I think I had, uh, more, more compassion than politeness.

01:12:44.240 Yeah.

01:12:44.820 Yeah.

01:12:45.600 Yeah.

01:12:45.780 I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not the most polite of guys.

01:12:48.760 Well, it's not that easy to be a polite comedian.

01:12:51.460 Yeah.

01:12:52.080 Compassion.

01:12:52.660 Very high.

01:12:53.920 Politeness.

01:12:54.640 Very low.

01:12:55.680 Yeah.

01:12:55.980 Okay.

01:12:56.400 Okay.

01:12:56.740 Yeah.

01:12:56.880 Yeah.

01:12:57.480 Very high.

01:12:59.360 Um, industriousness.

01:13:01.500 Very high.

01:13:02.100 I mean, it's a pleasure to take this test.

01:13:04.260 Orderliness.

01:13:05.060 High.

01:13:06.220 Um, uh,

01:13:09.120 Extroversion.

01:13:10.920 Exceptionally high.

01:13:11.860 Yeah.

01:13:12.140 Is that particular, both enthusiasm and assertiveness?

01:13:15.020 I would presume.

01:13:15.940 Enthusiasm.

01:13:16.580 Very high.

01:13:17.560 Assertiveness.

01:13:18.240 Exceptionally high.

01:13:19.540 Uh, neuroticism.

01:13:21.260 Exceptionally low.

01:13:23.060 Oh, that's how nice for you.

01:13:24.740 That's.

01:13:25.200 Yeah.

01:13:25.340 If you have to have one temperamental gift, that might be the one to wish for.

01:13:29.260 Yeah.

01:13:29.960 Withdrawal.

01:13:30.420 Very low.

01:13:31.420 Uh, volatility.

01:13:32.480 Exceptionally low.

01:13:33.160 Actually, the listeners of this, can I recommend you, I think it's like 10 bucks or something,

01:13:38.280 but going and doing this, it's understandingmyself.com.

01:13:41.700 I must say, it's a very pleasant half hour going and doing it and answering the questions.

01:13:46.760 And then.

01:13:47.800 Understandmyself.com.

01:13:48.980 Just to clarify.

01:13:49.960 Just.

01:13:50.440 It's a, it's, it's a really interesting kind of process because you go, well, no matter

01:13:54.680 kind of what comes out, you can kind of agree with it or disagree with it or whatever, but

01:13:57.980 it's, it's a very nice thing to kind of go and, and kind of assess, okay, that seems,

01:14:03.060 that seems about right.

01:14:04.080 That seems.

01:14:05.480 Yeah.

01:14:05.920 Well, it's also interesting to know that, you know, that is how you are in some sense.

01:14:10.160 And other people are actually different than that.

01:14:14.160 They're actually different.

01:14:15.540 And so they're like an extrovert and an introvert have a certain amount of trouble in a relationship

01:14:19.940 because the extrovert is actually, um, filled with enthusiasm as a consequence of social

01:14:25.720 interactions and really wants them.

01:14:27.840 Whereas the introvert feels drained by that and needs much more time by themselves and

01:14:32.940 perhaps in nature, those are real differences.

01:14:35.760 And, you know, you can, you can mediate between those to some degree if you're a good negotiator,

01:14:41.140 but you're starting from basic, from different principles, from different a priori principles.

01:14:46.420 Yeah.

01:14:46.600 I must say those things are very, you know, they're very useful.

01:14:49.480 I mean, that, that whole thing about love languages, I find fascinating.

01:14:53.180 The idea that, I mean, that's kind of the most simplistic, I think, of all the, the relationship

01:14:58.400 tools, the idea that different people have love languages, different people.

01:15:01.500 Well, look, a conscientious person would like to have, a conscientious person would offer

01:15:06.940 dutiful work to their partner and an agreeable person would offer empathic love, you know,

01:15:13.040 and an extrovert would offer enthusiasm and, and joy.

01:15:16.180 And so, because those temperamental differences do in some sense set what we value and in some

01:15:23.660 sense reflexively, like you can differentiate your personality with work and you can develop

01:15:28.280 the traits on the other side of, of you, but that takes work.

01:15:31.680 You know, you're sort of granted those a priori values and commitments to begin with in your

01:15:36.640 temperament.

01:15:37.140 And it's really useful to see where you might be different from your partner.

01:15:40.940 You know, my, my, my wife is less polite than me.

01:15:44.100 She's more blunt than me.

01:15:45.660 Sorry, less, less, less polite and more blunt than you.

01:15:49.060 What?

01:15:50.340 What?

01:15:51.040 What?

01:15:51.540 I'm actually very high in agreeableness as it turns out.

01:15:54.280 I actually don't like conflict at all, but.

01:15:56.520 I mean, I mean, I've watched a couple of your debates and I would beg to differ on agreeableness,

01:16:01.980 but yeah, I know.

01:16:03.840 I know you'd think that, but see what's happened to me is that what I learned partly being a

01:16:09.540 psychotherapist is that conflict delayed is conflict multiplied.

01:16:13.900 And so I'll wait in when I think there's something wrong and it tears me into pieces.

01:16:18.320 I really hate it, but I know it's better than putting it off and waiting for the alternative.

01:16:22.800 I mean, that's the other sort of premise of my book.

01:16:26.040 Like is, is the, it's not kind of, it's not 12 rules for life, but it's got a lot of kind

01:16:31.740 of, there's a lot of life advice in there.

01:16:34.120 And the, the hard choices now, easy life later strikes me as the, I mean, all self-help basically

01:16:40.440 says the same thing.

01:16:42.120 Prioritize later.

01:16:43.080 If you can pass the marshmallow test when you're five, you just, you're, I mean, life

01:16:48.680 just becomes easier.

01:16:50.220 Spoken like a conscientious person, but yes, it's a very good predictor of long-term success,

01:16:54.980 that ability.

01:16:55.600 And the marshmallow test is a predictor of long-term success as it turns out.

01:16:59.920 Yeah.

01:17:00.080 I mean, there is such a thing as the, as a time machine.

01:17:02.620 And I mean, it's just time only moves in this direction at this speed, but you get to meet

01:17:07.500 yourself in the future and you get to decide how fit and healthy you are and how wealthy

01:17:11.820 you are and everything else besides how happy you're going to be.

01:17:17.220 It's all kind of, it's all a trade-off and everyone obviously, everyone has a natural

01:17:21.940 bent towards right now because we live right now.

01:17:26.700 The cutting edge of now is, is always happening.

01:17:28.960 So it's always easier to sit on the couch and do nothing rather than go to the gym or

01:17:33.680 read a book or whatever, whatever the thing is that's a little bit challenging.

01:17:36.420 Well, if you get, if you get really lucky, you can live on the edge and benefit your future

01:17:40.500 self at the same time, right?

01:17:42.140 So that you could fall into that flow state in a disciplined manner so that you're present

01:17:46.700 in the present.

01:17:47.480 And you love that because it's so engrossing and simultaneously serve your multiple future

01:17:53.360 selves.

01:17:54.020 That's kind of a, like an optimal uniting principle, you might say.

01:17:59.300 And, and I think that's signaled to us when we fall into that flow state is that we're

01:18:04.180 simultaneously serving, well, maybe not only ourselves, but other people, but also ourselves

01:18:09.440 across multiple timeframes and that's an instinctual signal that that's happening.

01:18:13.860 Yeah.

01:18:14.180 Serving ourselves over multiple timeframes, I think it's a very, it's one of those analogies

01:18:18.640 that's so useful.

01:18:20.020 It's underutilized and so useful to think about yourself, not just as being yourself solid

01:18:25.600 state now in this moment, but being a verb over time.

01:18:30.260 So the idea of mortality and deterioration, and also how much health can you give yourself

01:18:35.780 later on, you know, who you're working for, you know, ultimately you're in a bargain with

01:18:40.380 yourself and the rest of society for how you're kind of, how you're acting right now.

01:18:45.780 It's a very, very interesting sort of thing to, to, to think about.

01:18:50.460 So let me turn back to comedy for a minute.

01:18:52.720 Who do you, who do you really like for comedians?

01:18:55.220 Who, who, who do you really find funny that's operating right now?

01:18:58.920 I mean, I suppose it's that thing of like, you often find your friends very funny.

01:19:02.760 I'll, I mean, I find there's a guy called Neil Brennan, who co-created The Chappelle

01:19:08.080 Show, who has one of the best, I think you would love his special.

01:19:12.280 It's called Three Mics.

01:19:14.080 It's on Netflix.

01:19:15.060 I think it might be the best comedy special that anyone's done.

01:19:17.820 So the first mic is jokes, one-liner jokes, not dissimilar to the kind of thing that I

01:19:22.800 would do.

01:19:23.660 Great.

01:19:24.660 The second mic is stand-up, longer form material, you know, kind of routines.

01:19:30.440 And the third mic is the truth.

01:19:33.760 And obviously you start watching Neil's show and the first five minutes you just do, yeah,

01:19:37.380 tell us more jokes.

01:19:38.120 Jokes are fun.

01:19:38.780 Give me more jokes.

01:19:39.840 Then about 30 minutes in, you're like, stand-up is really good.

01:19:43.160 The stand-up bits are more fun.

01:19:45.100 Less jokes, please.

01:19:46.620 And then by the end of it, you're just, just tell me what happened with your dad.

01:19:50.020 Just tell me what happened.

01:19:51.580 It's fantastic.

01:19:52.440 It's just, it's a really interesting, and the idea that he's made these very clear distinctions

01:19:56.180 for us, I think a lot of people organically do that in a show, but he literally had three

01:20:00.820 mics and three different settings, and I thought it was a trial.

01:20:04.540 I watched Chappelle's recent, so controversial show, and he did a tremendous amount of storytelling.

01:20:12.360 And one of the things that was masterful about what he did was that he tied everything

01:20:17.100 together at the end so nicely.

01:20:18.720 So it was like the whole joke sequence had a punchline, right?

01:20:22.280 The whole story had a point, and it was coherent across all the story and the jokes.

01:20:27.600 And that, so it elevated it to some degree, I think, to a place that just sequences of

01:20:33.140 jokes can't attain.

01:20:34.540 I mean, not that they're not worthwhile.

01:20:36.960 No, I think there's a, but there is a sense in which, you know, you watch better comedians,

01:20:42.900 and you go, look, I've got a ticket to the lottery, right?

01:20:48.300 Let's imagine there's a Mount Rushmore of comedy, and the four greatest comedians are

01:20:52.820 up there.

01:20:53.460 I'm not on that Mount Rushmore, but I could be.

01:20:56.980 I love the fact that being a comedian is a task without end, that I can, I'm not done

01:21:01.080 yet.

01:21:01.720 I'm in my late 40s, and I still feel like I'm kind of, okay, I'm in the gym now.

01:21:06.660 I know my way around one-liners.

01:21:08.140 I'm pretty great with jokes.

01:21:09.820 Storytelling, I've done a little bit of it.

01:21:11.240 I've put my tongue in the water, but I'm not there yet.

01:21:13.760 But with the books, certainly, I'm becoming better.

01:21:16.380 I'm better at, you know, opening up and sharing.

01:21:18.900 And it's an ongoing, I mean, the great thing about most comics that are considered to be

01:21:24.080 the greats, did their best work in their 50s and beyond.

01:21:27.900 Well, that is interesting, because that's at variance with most artistic endeavor.

01:21:33.320 Yeah.

01:21:33.940 A lot of that happens in youth.

01:21:35.660 It doesn't happen so much with, well, it does with musicians even.

01:21:38.520 It tends to be a younger person's occupation.

01:21:40.520 So that's, and that's not so much true for fiction writers, if I remember correctly.

01:21:44.320 But it's interesting that it's not true for comedians.

01:21:47.200 Yeah.

01:21:47.400 I've got a whole, I've got a whole sequence in the book about, because I used to find it

01:21:50.760 very oppressive when I was young, reading about people that had made it very early on

01:21:57.740 in life.

01:21:58.940 You know, child geniuses.

01:22:00.140 Really?

01:22:00.360 I know when you're a kid, it's like, ah, this guy's done everything.

01:22:03.440 And you feel like you haven't even started yet.

01:22:05.340 So I like the idea of, like, I used to often read kind of biographies of people that made

01:22:09.000 it later in life.

01:22:10.420 I like that kind of, that thing of, like, society worships youth so much.

01:22:15.260 You kind of, I like the idea of going, like, making it a little bit later is okay.

01:22:18.740 It doesn't have to happen early.

01:22:20.680 It can happen at any stage.

01:22:22.420 I mean, my story was of someone in their mid-20s finding their way in the world.

01:22:28.000 So that kind of, the analogy of the quarter-life crisis finding purpose, and purpose being sort

01:22:33.180 of the key, that kind of, that hero's journey.

01:22:39.040 That can happen at any stage.

01:22:40.400 That can happen in your 50s.

01:22:41.360 That can happen in your 60s.

01:22:42.480 It really doesn't matter.

01:22:44.180 I think it's quite an empowering thing.

01:22:46.060 So you like Neil Brennan, three mics.

01:22:48.660 Who else do you think's great at the moment?

01:22:51.480 There's a lady called Beth Stelling, you might not be aware of.

01:22:54.920 I think she's a brilliant joke writer and storyteller.

01:22:57.180 But I like Michelle Wolf.

01:22:59.780 I like, in the UK, there's, I mean, so many great comedians.

01:23:05.720 I've been watching a lot of my, I had a friend that died recently, Sean Locke, who was a huge

01:23:12.040 figure in my life.

01:23:13.600 And obviously, when he died, the first thing you do is you sort of go back and you look

01:23:18.060 at his work, and you look at all the stand-up that he did.

01:23:20.760 And I found him just so incredibly funny, this guy, Sean Locke.

01:23:24.300 Just everything about him was, because he looked a certain way, there was, every joke

01:23:29.740 was kind of heightened, because he looked like a guy that had come, he looked like a

01:23:32.680 worker man.

01:23:33.540 He looked like he'd come to fix your boiler.

01:23:35.640 And then he was doing this kind of incredibly surreal, light-touch jokes.

01:23:39.320 And that, for me, is like, everything was kind of a heightened surprise because of that.

01:23:44.000 And who do you think were the comedy greats?

01:23:48.840 I mean, I think, you know, you'd be hard-pressed not to, I mean, Richard Pryor is one of, you

01:23:54.540 know, there's a sense in which everyone's doing an impression to a lesser or greater degree

01:23:59.160 of Richard Pryor.

01:24:01.420 Everyone's a tribute act for Richard Pryor because...

01:24:03.860 It's good that he was named Pryor then, isn't it?

01:24:05.880 It seems quite fitting.

01:24:07.540 Perfect.

01:24:08.340 Perfect bit of language there.

01:24:10.380 He was an extraordinary talent.

01:24:12.860 And really, there's a great fable in his life.

01:24:16.000 I put this in the book, actually.

01:24:17.160 I've done a chapter on Richard Pryor in the book, on the fact that he was basically, he

01:24:21.560 was a pretty successful comedian.

01:24:22.940 He was good.

01:24:23.980 He was on TV.

01:24:26.000 Bill Cosby was the biggest comic in the world at the time.

01:24:29.420 And Richard Pryor was a poor man's Bill Cosby.

01:24:32.220 He was doing pretty mild, but very accessible comedy.

01:24:38.580 He was on things like The Tonight Show.

01:24:40.860 And he was very funny in a suit and tie.

01:24:43.580 And he looked the part, the short hair, and great.

01:24:47.140 And around 1968, 69, his mother died.

01:24:51.800 His father was dying.

01:24:53.320 There was the rise in the civil rights movement.

01:24:55.400 This incredible thing was happening in America.

01:24:57.060 And he was on stage in Las Vegas in front of a predominantly white crowd.

01:25:03.540 And he looked around and he said, fuck it, I'm out.

01:25:11.060 And he walked off stage and he walked away.

01:25:13.880 And he really didn't come back for four years.

01:25:17.000 He went, he worked it out in black clubs, in predominantly black cities.

01:25:22.040 And he didn't even come back straight away with, like, people think, oh, he came back and he was Richard Pryor.

01:25:28.860 It took him, I think it was his third album back.

01:25:32.740 This N-word crazy hit, and it hit big.

01:25:37.140 But the two previous albums were underground.

01:25:39.620 And he became this, he started using his language.

01:25:42.840 He started being authentically himself.

01:25:45.080 He started, it was, the good was the enemy of the best.

01:25:48.120 He had this skill set, and he turned it into this, he just, it was transcendent.

01:25:54.900 He became this thing that was kind of bigger than, kind of reinvented the form.

01:25:59.960 It's an extraordinary, inspirational story about, and because of, you know, the other things that have happened to him,

01:26:06.400 it's literally like a Christ-like story of life, because he burnt himself very badly.

01:26:11.260 So, everything that wasn't burnt away, what remains, is the kind of, the thing that I take from that story.

01:26:18.700 It's like everything that's not burnt, the essence of who he was.

01:26:24.020 So, yeah.

01:26:24.700 Things burn away if you listen to your audience.

01:26:28.480 Yeah.

01:26:29.240 Well, it's that thing about what remains.

01:26:31.180 I love quotes, because the quote is what remains when everything that's not essential disappears.

01:26:37.440 You know, the, the, the, you know, not many people have read a Balsack book.

01:26:42.000 That's what mythological, mythological memory is like.

01:26:44.720 But, you know, Balsack or Voltaire or any of that, like, it's all, no one's read the books.

01:26:49.760 But those quotes keep on coming up, because they're just the truth.

01:26:54.960 It just keeps on, like, it keeps, they keep on reappearing.

01:26:58.720 And, you know, some of Richard Pryor's lines just keep on reappearing, because you go, it's just, oh, you kind of nailed that thing.

01:27:04.360 I, I saw Cosby in Edmonton, and he did a two-hour show.

01:27:09.160 And he used to come out on stage with a cigar, because you could do that in those days.

01:27:12.860 He just sat on a stool.

01:27:14.580 That was it.

01:27:15.360 The stage was completely bare.

01:27:16.900 And he told stories and jokes for two hours.

01:27:20.060 And the audience, the guy in front of him, he was laughing so hard that he was almost in convulsions.

01:27:26.040 His wife had to keep elbowing him in the side, trying to get him to straighten up, because he was embarrassing her.

01:27:31.120 But he had that audience in the palm of his hand for two and a half, two hours, I believe it was.

01:27:36.200 And they were roaring with laughter nonstop.

01:27:39.360 It was absolutely masterful.

01:27:41.580 Tremendously funny, dark, but also warm.

01:27:45.760 He was a great storyteller.

01:27:47.360 It was really something to see.

01:27:48.920 It is.

01:27:49.680 I saw him live in Montreal as well.

01:27:51.620 It's a weird one, isn't it?

01:27:52.660 I think, you know, the separation of someone's work from their reputation, I think, is becoming, it's a, I mean, listen, if we can't do that as a society, we need to, we need to do that in a gallery.

01:28:04.720 Wouldn't it be lovely if we could always live up to our best?

01:28:08.360 But we don't.

01:28:08.740 Well, it's also because, you know, human beings are nuanced and difficult.

01:28:14.620 It's, it's frankly, it's like, I don't think anyone is the worst thing they've ever done.

01:28:19.580 But also with that, they're not the best thing they've ever done.

01:28:21.880 People are, people are people.

01:28:23.200 And sometimes their work can transcend that.

01:28:26.020 But it's, you know, my problem with cancel culture at the moment is I'm slightly suspicious it might be the new burning books.

01:28:31.600 And whereas we're very arrogant in our secular culture of our achievements, religion does certain things better.

01:28:40.520 Religion has a road for redemption and forgiveness.

01:28:46.660 Yeah, yeah.

01:28:47.220 Redemption are very underrated in the world of cancel culture.

01:28:51.480 Confession as well, right?

01:28:53.620 What, sir?

01:28:54.120 I mean, that's a, well, confession is a key element in psychotherapy.

01:28:58.220 Yeah.

01:28:58.740 That's what you basically do in psychotherapy.

01:29:00.820 You say, here's all the things I'm doing that might be stupid and hurtful, or the things that have happened to me.

01:29:07.200 That's also a possibility.

01:29:08.360 But it's often the former that are more useful.

01:29:12.200 So, yeah.

01:29:12.960 How come you haven't been canceled?

01:29:15.580 I have several, several times.

01:29:18.040 I was, I was, I had a tax scandal that nearly ended my career.

01:29:23.780 I've had maybe four or five jokes over the years that have become a problems, you know, the papers.

01:29:30.360 It's, it's, it's an interesting thing when it happens.

01:29:32.260 When the first time it happens to you, it's very shocking because you think, oh my God, I could, I found this incredible road.

01:29:39.380 I found this life of being a comedian and I could lose it all in an instant.

01:29:43.300 And that is terrifying.

01:29:45.260 And then you realize it's, it's kind of okay.

01:29:48.560 It's like you, you go, well, everything doesn't fall away.

01:29:51.600 The people that like you, like you.

01:29:53.440 The people that don't like you have a stick to beat you with.

01:29:56.220 And it's, it's often when things are taken out of context, when jokes are taken out of context.

01:30:00.580 Like I'm telling jokes in theaters to a paying audience of an evening.

01:30:05.400 People have come to see me.

01:30:06.720 They've bought into it.

01:30:07.880 I'm not shouting them through someone's letterbox at 8am in the morning as they're eating their cornflakes.

01:30:13.620 But that's what happens when it turns up in the newspaper.

01:30:16.140 And if you've seen a joke written down, you haven't heard the joke.

01:30:22.320 There's a dialogue.

01:30:23.460 There's an interaction with the audience.

01:30:24.900 There's, there's a difference between seeing the words that were in that joke and hearing that joke and experiencing that joke in the same way.

01:30:31.520 Well, that's probably true for the most daring jokes, you know, because when you're in a live theater and you say something that's right on the edge, right?

01:30:40.400 Yeah.

01:30:40.680 Hilariously funny.

01:30:41.540 It's because you're carried away with the moment.

01:30:43.480 You get this witty idea and bang, you nail it.

01:30:45.880 But that's sort of, and that's right at the edge of what's permissible.

01:30:49.340 You take that out of context.

01:30:50.780 It's a catastrophe.

01:30:52.020 Here's the thing again, you know, you can, you can joke about anything, but not with anyone.

01:30:57.180 You know, that's for sure.

01:30:58.600 My audience is not the same as your audience.

01:31:01.580 So if you go on, if we, if we both decided, right, we're going to do a show together and your audience came to the show and I opened for you, I did 10 minutes at the top.

01:31:11.180 I don't think they would love it.

01:31:12.460 It's like, it's a different, there'd be overlap.

01:31:15.080 There'd be some people that would, but some people wouldn't.

01:31:16.780 You know, it's, we all, we attract our own audiences that come to the show.

01:31:20.540 And the idea that you go suddenly, then your jokes are held up to the scrutiny of everyone on social media.

01:31:28.780 And the loudest voices are the ones that ring out are the negative voices.

01:31:35.240 And there's something, there's something a bit disingenuous about the press as well, where they'll report a joke.

01:31:40.580 Yeah, a bit.

01:31:41.540 As if, well, but they report a joke as if you're making a statement.

01:31:45.920 And I don't really make statements on stage.

01:31:48.660 I make jokes.

01:31:49.620 So you go, well, the defense is always, it was a joke.

01:31:53.260 Well, what do you, what do you think the relationship is between jokes and the truth?

01:31:57.180 I think, and it's very interesting.

01:31:59.940 I think it was Bertram Russell that said, when something is funny, search it very carefully for a hidden truth.

01:32:07.280 Yeah, yeah.

01:32:08.180 Well, do comedians often say things that everybody thinks are true, but no one will dare to say?

01:32:13.040 I think comedy lives at its best somewhere between, well, it lives between public and private discourse.

01:32:22.760 And there's a huge difference between public and private discourse.

01:32:26.320 Certainly at the moment, it feels like it's never been wider.

01:32:29.700 But if you watch BBC.

01:32:31.520 So comedians are even more necessary.

01:32:34.020 Yes, but yes, I'm building my role.

01:32:36.000 But, you know, the idea, if you watch BBC News, you would swear that everyone thinks in the same way and thinks the same thing about everything.

01:32:45.480 And actually, there's a huge variety of opinion out there.

01:32:49.040 And so different people go down different rabbit holes into their own media.

01:32:51.920 But you go, there's a lot of, and comedians are kind of in the middle trying to make sense of it all and talking to an audience.

01:32:57.200 And everything a comedian says has to be based in the level of honesty.

01:33:01.260 Because it just isn't funny.

01:33:04.440 So if you're joking.

01:33:05.680 Yeah, it's so strange, though, because there are truths that aren't funny.

01:33:10.260 So what is it about truth?

01:33:12.120 What is it about some truths that make them funny?

01:33:14.800 What is exactly the relationship?

01:33:16.800 Because funny is a subset of true in some sense.

01:33:20.500 Yeah, well, I don't think a joke needs to be true, per se.

01:33:24.620 It just needs to, often the funniest thing is when you're pointing something out that's akin to the emperor's new clothes.

01:33:31.900 Yeah, yeah.

01:33:32.640 You're pointing out something that kind of, it seems obvious when you say it, but everyone kind of goes, oh, yeah, I guess.

01:33:38.380 That's.

01:33:38.820 Oh, yeah.

01:33:39.180 Or they go, oh, well.

01:33:40.160 Oh, yeah.

01:33:40.540 We're all like that.

01:33:41.540 Ha, ha, ha.

01:33:42.160 We know that.

01:33:42.600 Yeah.

01:33:42.860 So we'd say it.

01:33:43.720 Yeah, observational comedy does that job of kind of going, you know, we've all had this human experience.

01:33:49.220 And if you're talking about something that's slightly more transgressive in society, it's like it's talking openly about it.

01:33:56.220 So there's a, there's a sense in which it mimics friendship because it's having a conversation that you're not walking on eggshells.

01:34:04.040 So political correctness at a comedy show is like health and safety at the rodeo.

01:34:08.940 It just doesn't, it doesn't sort of belong there.

01:34:11.560 It's not to say that political correctness is a bad thing.

01:34:16.080 It's just saying it's about the application.

01:34:18.320 Where does that work?

01:34:18.820 I mean, I'm not, I think the obsession with words, with linguistics in PC is, I don't give a fuck what you call me.

01:34:27.660 I care how you treat me.

01:34:29.140 So I'm very interested in social justice, but I'm not interested at all in political correctness.

01:34:35.740 And I think the two are being complicated because it's an easier fight to win.

01:34:40.860 You know, the straw man is the language.

01:34:44.180 It avoids having to talk about the real topic a lot of the time.

01:34:47.200 Yeah, it might also avoid having to confront those particular demons in your own soul as well.

01:34:54.300 So that's a powerful form of avoidance.

01:34:58.300 Yeah, it's, yeah, it's interesting.

01:35:02.300 One more question.

01:35:04.180 We've gone about 90 minutes.

01:35:06.140 And so why did you want to talk to me today?

01:35:08.720 Why did you think that was a good idea?

01:35:10.820 And what sparked your interest?

01:35:12.580 I'm curious about that.

01:35:13.900 I was, I think you're an incredibly interesting guy, because I think there's a, there's a sense in which what you're trying to do, certainly in 12 rules, but I think, you know, maps of meaning as well, I think is such a valuable, you know, you're reaching out.

01:35:30.220 You are a father figure for a lot of men without fathers.

01:35:36.020 That's the, it strikes me that that's a incredibly difficult station to take.

01:35:42.440 And you, you've been given, I think, you know, a very hard time, I think for, for trying to do something that's incredibly valuable and necessary.

01:35:52.880 And I think in trying to write my book, I, I discovered that I wanted to try and give something back a little bit.

01:36:00.180 I wanted to try and help in some small way.

01:36:02.400 Partly it was about being a father.

01:36:03.500 And it was about having that energy as a father of going, look, if something happened to me tomorrow, what am I leaving my son?

01:36:09.760 What do I, you know, so from my kind of ego point of view, saying, well, what do I want to, what do I think about how the world works?

01:36:15.360 And I felt that my book was something that you would respond to because it, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a much more, I mean, I kind of went down the self-help route because I thought it was low hanging fruit in some sense.

01:36:30.400 You know, yourself and Sam Harris are great, but you, neither of you know your way around a dick joke.

01:36:35.580 And I felt like there's a, there's a, there's a way in which, you know, delivering that material with a lightness, uh, that, that's, that it feels like your audience might, might get a kick out of my book.

01:36:49.700 Uh, so I suppose it was, you know, self-interest, but also I like what you've done.

01:36:55.300 Well, thank you.

01:36:56.200 That's, I thought, you know, especially.

01:36:57.440 I like what you've done too.

01:36:59.040 I think you're extremely funny.

01:37:00.520 And is that actually your laugh?

01:37:02.860 Yeah.

01:37:03.660 Oh my God.

01:37:04.540 That's so horrible.

01:37:06.380 Well, yeah, I mean, it's wonderful because it's, it's that thing where it's a very, very distinctive laugh.

01:37:12.440 But I think, I think a laugh got me into comedy because my mother's laugh, she had a, she had narcolepsy and she had a thing called cataplexy, which is a bit of narcolepsy where you lose muscular control.

01:37:24.300 So when she laughed, you often meet someone that makes no noise when they laugh.

01:37:27.840 So she had a very extreme version of that where she would properly kind of just melt when she laughed.

01:37:34.920 So obviously I was massively motivated to make her laugh.

01:37:38.220 Like if she was driving when I was a kid, if you could make her laugh in the car, you'd have to grab the wheel and kind of steer because she'd kind of collapse in giggles, properly collapse.

01:37:48.280 And it's, I don't know, I've always been very, I like sprained flops.

01:37:51.920 I think they're, they're quite magnificent.

01:37:54.960 Infectious.

01:37:55.360 There's no doubt about that.

01:37:58.220 Yeah.

01:37:58.500 Well, look, I really enjoyed talking to you.

01:38:00.980 I'm coming to the UK.

01:38:02.120 I'm going to Cambridge and Oxford.

01:38:04.800 I'm there for the last two weeks in, in November.

01:38:07.600 And I have a couple of talks.

01:38:09.480 Maybe I could shoot you over an invitation.

01:38:12.020 I would, I would love to come.

01:38:13.160 I mean, you know, I work every night, but if they're, I'd love to come and see you speak.

01:38:17.340 And I'd love to see, you know, what, what the reaction is, but I think it's, I think now as well, the looking at something like 12 rules now, look, I really think there's a hunger now post pandemic.

01:38:29.540 People have been locked away for 18 months and they've had sort of, we've come out of this collective hibernation and it's right.

01:38:37.000 What am I going to do next?

01:38:38.200 What's my plan?

01:38:39.080 Like everyone's had that chance to kind of go, right.

01:38:41.740 What's the next step?

01:38:42.840 What's the, people are searching for, for a little bit of guidance.

01:38:46.500 And I think when you look at, you know, some of the things that you talk about, certainly in, in, in maps of meaning, the, the idea that myth and story and, you know, the, the kind of young and archetypes of the term I would use, you know, they're so important and they're so sort of interesting in our, in our culture because we've kind of slightly thrown the baby out of the bathwater.

01:39:09.160 Yeah.

01:39:09.620 Well, that's the sort of thing I'm going to talk about at Cambridge and at Oxford.

01:39:12.760 So I'll get, I'll, I'll be in touch in relationship to that then.

01:39:16.800 Well, that'd be, we can meet in the UK.

01:39:18.860 That would be really good.

01:39:20.140 I'd love to.

01:39:20.780 I mean, I've very much enjoyed this.

01:39:22.140 I thought it was, it was just, you know, a very interesting freewheeling conversation.

01:39:26.420 I hope people will enjoy and get a kick out of it.

01:39:29.100 And yeah, more power to you.

01:39:31.060 Good luck.

01:39:31.400 Same to you.

01:39:33.300 And I'm looking forward to your next Netflix special to watch with my wife and crack up at your laugh.

01:39:38.760 I think, I think Christmas day.

01:39:40.780 Yeah.

01:39:40.960 But if, if you're like, if you're, if your wife is even more brutal than you, wow, she's going to love it.

01:39:46.540 Oh yeah, man.

01:39:47.060 It's something to argue with her because she'll, she's really provocative.

01:39:50.060 She'll just nail me with like these most, she can string together more vicious one-liners than anyone I've ever heard.

01:39:56.520 And sometimes I'll just be in a frenzy because I'm so angry and she makes me laugh.

01:40:00.820 Who are you talking to here?

01:40:01.820 More vicious one-liners than anyone.

01:40:04.240 I'll, I'll take that, Gorton.

01:40:06.880 Well, maybe you'll get the pleasure of meeting her, but you won't see her at her best, I'm afraid.

01:40:12.020 Yeah.

01:40:12.560 I mean, lots of times in the middle of fights we've been having, we're both like irate, you know, at each other.

01:40:17.420 And she'll say something so unbelievably vicious and horrible and then follow it up with something even worse.

01:40:24.180 It's, it's, it cracks me up.

01:40:26.820 It's, I just can't believe she can do it.

01:40:29.100 It's really quite something.

01:40:30.440 It's great though, but that's kind of what there isn't enough of in the world, like proper debate.

01:40:35.520 Everyone, it strikes me that we're like in, in the culture wars, it's like World War I.

01:40:40.040 Everyone's in their trenches and no one's getting out to have a little look around and a chat and a, you know, discourse.

01:40:46.220 It's, it's, that's where the game is played.

01:40:48.480 The discourse is everything.

01:40:49.520 And, and it strikes me that that's happening now on YouTube because academia is, there's, there's only, there's only one team have turned up to play.

01:40:58.180 And so you go, well, that, that idea of going, there has to be a discourse and there's going to be, there'll be a breakthrough.

01:41:03.460 There'll be, there'll, but I think it's going to come from, you know, popular science books and YouTube videos is going to be where people find their way.

01:41:12.960 Yeah.

01:41:13.360 And from comedy.

01:41:15.120 Yeah.

01:41:15.360 I mean, obviously, yeah, a little bit of light relief along the way.

01:41:18.960 Well, a pleasure talking to you.

01:41:19.880 Thank you so much.

01:41:20.580 I really appreciate it.

01:41:21.100 My pleasure, man.

01:41:21.940 Thanks very much for talking to me today and hope to see you in the UK and good luck on your tour.

01:41:26.680 See you in the UK.

01:41:27.360 And with your book.

01:41:28.680 And in Montreal next summer, the greatest city in the world.

01:41:31.420 Yeah, it's a great place, man.

01:41:32.840 I love Montreal.

01:41:33.800 You know how it's up in Montreal?

01:41:35.240 It's, it's French food, American portions.

01:41:39.160 And it's also North American plumbing and European charm.

01:41:47.520 Yeah, that does it.

01:41:48.560 That sums it up.

01:41:49.880 All right.

01:41:50.200 Look, well, let's leave it there.

01:41:51.700 I'll speak to you again.

01:41:52.720 Take care.

01:41:53.580 Ciao, man.

01:41:54.100 Take care.

01:42:13.800 Bye.

01:42:13.820 Bye.

01:42:14.100 Bye.

01:42:14.640 Bye.

01:42:17.240 Bye.

01:42:18.500 Bye.

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - March 07, 2022

233. Carr On Comedy ｜ Jimmy Carr

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