#953 - Jimmy Carr - Decoding The Secrets Of A Meaningful Life | Modern Wisdom

This is a big deal for me because I listen to the show so much. I absolutely love it.

I slightly could fanboy about the whole thing.

I love what you do.

I love this show. I'm nervous about it because I go, normally it's an expert with something to say.

I'm like, I've got dick jokes if you need to know.

Well that do. Why are you such a fan of it?

I don't know. I think the breadth of the subject matter.

that. I think that thing of going, there's a lot of signal and noise.

There's a lot of noise out there.

I love the idea that I listen to the show and even stuff that I may not read that book, but I'm interested in listening to them for an hour and a half or two hours.

Then oftentimes, it's something where someone says something and you go, well, that's brilliant.

I've got to go and look at their channel or I'm going to go and find something.

so I'm using it almost kind of as your research, as a resource for me.

And I think a lot of people talk about diet and exercise, and they talk about how it makes them feel, and they're eating right, and they're staying away from processed foods, and they look fantastic.

And then you ask them what they're watching, and they go, yeah, I'm watching Love Island, the old series, and I'm smashing through it.

I don't know if you're aware of Love Island, but it's for it's for terrible people doing terrible things." I mean, the idea that you go, that information diet is such an important thing.

I think you said it here where if you tell someone the last five podcasts they listen to, it's a pretty good read on who they are and what they want to do.

The other thing I love about the show is I think it's got...

it's aiming up. Everything seems to be...

Like the way that you conduct interviews and the way that you engage with people, it seems to be, you're trying to bring the best out of them, which I like anyway, it's very positive to listen to, but it's also that everyone you have on is trying to make your life better.

It's very well intentioned as a show.

I think it's terrific and the transformation in you I think has been sort of extraordinary.

the journey to this is just kind of amazing when I see you.

I mean, I genuinely got quite emotional with the Naval Ravikant thing because I knew what that meant to you.

As someone who's a big fan of podcasts and a big fan of, I suppose, modern wisdom in the broader sense as well.

Someone like Naval, who's done maybe five or six podcasts ever and one incredible burst of wisdom on Twitter, you go, it's Slim Pickings, if you're a fan.

He's the JD Salinger of the podcast world.

And then you get him on the show and it's like, I felt like that was the, is that your Mount Rushmore completed?

One more, Rogan. So it was a Mount Rushmore, but then I realized there was five, so it's more like Thanos's glove with the different Infinity Stones.

So it was, before I started, Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, weeks, Alain de Botton and Naval Ravikant.

That was before I started the show, those were the five I wanted, and I've got four.

And after the last episode with Rogan, I woke up the next day, as you have today, with still the anxiety of, well, you know I didn't put my foot in my mouth too many times, and so on and so forth.

And he texted me and was like, love the show yesterday man, like always a pleasure to sit down.

By the way, we still need to get a bucket -date and bring them on the show.

Him, on, so he's self -invited.

I Like, Joe, give over, you know, I've got so many other people to speak to, but yeah, there's definitely a little bit of a sense of like gold medalist syndrome where I think, oh, fuck, like, what do you do when you've completed the things that you said that you were here to do?

And I imagine that that must be the same in your industry as well.

You know, when I can start selling out theaters, when I can start selling out arenas, when I can start selling out stadium, when I get the Amazon Prime deal, one egg, well we've got to run it back to season 2, I've got to ensure that it wasn't a fluke I've got to do it twice that's the problem." Is it not Morgan Housel?

The genius that is Morgan Housel that said success is not moving the goal posts.

It's that thing if you constantly like that hedonic treadmill of as soon as something good happens you go, yeah, but what about the next thing?

Yeah, I said it was amount of money, but now it's this amount of money.

And I think the most ambitions should be internal.

You should be heading for a feeling if it's process driven because kind of success is a moment.

Even if you get the big thing, whatever it is, there's lots of those markers along the way.

I'm trying to think about celebration in a different way.

I'm trying Naval Ravikant comes on your podcast. You do a co -headliner with Dave Chappelle.

Whatever the thing is that you go, Oh, that's cool.

Celebrating that, like celebration is gratitude in action.

And that thing of like gratitude, being the mother of all virtues.

If you track it back to that, my fundamental belief is that disposition is more important than position.

So where you are in the world, you could be miserable, or you could be entirely at ease, and it's kind of dependent on your disposition.

Are you looking at the donut or the hole?

Because you could always look at what you don't have. You could always look at what's missing, or who's doing better, or the other thing.

But, you know, kind of being grateful in the moment.

And the thing that seems to shift that is gratitude and celebration as a form of gratitude.

I'm trying to reframe a lot of stuff in my life in a positive light.

That thing of I travel constantly, which is an incredible privilege, but also incredibly boring a lot of the time.

It is, right? Travel is boring, but going places is fun and you're seeing new things.

It's this idea of boredom as unappreciated serenity.

There's guys up mountains in Tibet for 30 years trying to get to where I get to in Denver airport of like urgh.

And slightly like not being overstimulated and allowing yourself to be bored, that's kind of where creativity bubbles up.

You kind of allow yourself to be bored and you allow yourself to just have that kind of space.

I think it's very difficult to white knuckle creativity.

I'm aware that you, as someone who has quite a structured creative process, but I would imagine that if you look at the absolute big winners that you've come up with, they've probably kind of been bestowed from above in a, oh, motherfuck, that's it, it's that thing.

It's sort of almost divine inspiration that then gets refined in the process.

Yeah, I think there's something about, I don't know about the refining really.

I mean, often it's that thing of like, you're writing on stage because you're in a flow state.

So I started doing a thing a couple of years ago where actually it was, I mean, jealousy, really.

I was looking at Andrew Schulz and I was looking at Matt Rife selling out arenas across America and I was, how are they background?

What's going on here?

And then, I know those guys a little bit and I like them a lot and it's quite happening.

and they were putting out crowd work.

They were saying, well I do a lot of crowd work, but what, oh, I should do that?

Oh dummy, every day is a school day.

So I kind of watched it and started putting out these crowd work videos and it has grown and it's also that weird thing of like going, I hadn't realized how much improv I was doing in a show, it's like 20 minutes a show of stuff that we can put out that's unique to that show.

And it doesn't kill the set, doesn't take the...

No, it doesn't touch the written material And it's a lovely thing where, as a comedian, you wanna kind of...

I think I'm in the service industry, right?

And I'm gonna be fine because I make something people want.

I make them happy. No one remembers what I say, but they remember how I made them feel.

And I tell jokes. And I wanna turn up suited and booted because it's a proxy for respect, right?

I respect you. You've paid money, you've come out, you've given me your time and attention.

There's nothing else.

All that we have in life is time and attention, and they give me that.

So I want to prepare a show and make sure there's like 150 incredible banging lines that are like, and they've been filtered from 1000 lines that were okay, but not, didn't quite make the cut.

And then it's that thing where you go, and also I need to hold that space where okay, perform those jokes and then.

Okay. What do we got?

Shout out, anyone got anything, join in.

I suppose the analogy would be it's like doing that kind of improv.

It's like watching a magician do real magic because you're doing the thing in real time.

It's freestyle rapping.

Yeah, and it's the...

I wonder how much of...

Chappelle said this thing a while ago and it really struck with me.

He was talking about a bad gig that he had, and Dave does not have many bad gigs, but he was talking about Evel Knievel.

He said Evel Knievel wasn't paid for the jump, he was paid for the attempt.

And I was thinking, that's a brilliant way of looking at it because actually, how much of what we do as comedians is bravery, how much of it is being paid to… yeah, there's freedom of speech. But it isn't freedom of consequence and this fucking lunatic is saying anything.

This guy's… I'm taking all the filters away.

And if you think about what friendship is, for me, it's the person you have the least filter with.

Again, another thing I got from Modern Wisdom, but it's the least filter.

I was gonna ask you this.

I was like - This is like a Best Of episode of Modern Wisdom.

I know. It's really lovely to hear you on other shows.

And I wonder how many other people pick up on it.

I'm not to say that I'm your intellectual daddy or that the people on this show are.

But it's so nice to hear your interpretation of ideas that really mean a lot to me, that maybe the inspiration consciously or subconsciously has percolated through.

So I'm like, fuck, that sounds familiar.

Fuck, that's like, that's a work on a hormones quote from 2023.

I try and give you prompts.

Or you do all the time.

Because it is that thing where you go, it's your friendship group and the things that you're taking in.

I think also like for a lot of people, right.

I'm in a very privileged position, I'm fully aware of that.

I get to know you. We get to be friends as well.

If there is a question you wanna bring up we can WhatsApp each other.

And we get to be friends with George Malcolm.

There's, there's a coterie of people that, you know, we know each other and there's a lot of mutual respect there and I feel that and it's, it's lovely.

But I think really the sweet source of this show is, I think most people that listen to this show have that relationship with you as well.

It's just they, they didn't get to go for a steak last night, but they kind of go, you know, they're, I think it's the same thing of going.

I think probably most people listening to the show are like low level, a bit concerned about your health at the moment, because you don't really talk about yourself that much. I think the other thing about the show is it's very dense compared to other podcasts.

I wanted to – that was the point I was about to make with regards to your set and I saw you in Wembley at the second of a matinee, I think, on that evening?

I think you'd done two in Wembley.

Oh yeah, one at seven, one at 9 .30.

One for me, one for the tax man.

That's how I operate in my touring system, two shows a night.

Very good. And your set is incredibly lean.

There is very little wasted time, including in the warmup, which doesn't exist. And I realized that if you were to have, when I first started the show, and still now, just because of my disposition, if you were to have a Rogan at one end, which is information dense but can meander because he likes to vamp and chat shit.

And then if you were to have Tim Ferriss at the other end, which is very sort of structured, it's almost like a Blinkist sort of cut down while something.

Well, I need to go further.

I'd say to the other absolute stream.

Morgan Housel has a 15 -minute podcast that you listen to and go, all right, I need half an hour to process that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause it's so dense.

Yeah, it's the almanac of Navalravakant of podcasts.

Yes, he did, he did one the other day which was like, Oh, just like 15 things I've been thinking about.

And after each one, you had to kind of pause it and go, I need a day.

right, okay. Wow. Yeah, I mean, he's fucking brilliant.

So, I think that I sit, you know, I'm a bit more Ferris -pilled than Rogan -pilled.

But, I like people feeling like, I really got a lot out of that.

I feel like it's, and I think it's really true of comedians, and I think it's increasingly true in the, in this world, the podcast world, of like you leak.

You don't say a lot about yourself on the podcast, but you leak.

Like who you are sort of, oh, there's like, Clues.

Yeah, there's little clues and it's you can't hide who you are in this kind of long form for long You know, there's no pretense.

It's really it's great just on your idea around Boredom being an insights Creator this beautiful work on the magic you were looking for is in the worker avoiding It's a twist on that the answers you are looking for is in the silence you're avoiding Yeah, I fucking love that the answers you're looking for is in the silence you're avoiding you need fewer inputs, not more.

I'd agree with that, yeah, that's really, it's very, it's interesting that thing of like, cause it's two British guys, so we feel like we should apologize for saying anything deep.

There's a natural...

Don't get ahead of yourself.

George Mac had a great line yesterday, I went for a walk with George, and he was talking about, you know Britain's very cynical, America's full of bullshit.

I just thought, such a great kind of...

It is, yeah. Yeah, okay.

In England, you need to be aware of the cynics and avoid them.

And in America, you need to be aware of the bullshit artists and avoid them.

And both of them are applauded.

The cynics are praised by most of British culture.

And the bullshit artists are praised by most of American culture.

But, yeah, I think I've realized the sort of people that I like.

And I think it's why me and you have become friends.

I think it's why George is friends.

Mosey, Brian Callan.

You know like this little whatever we want to call it, squad of degenerate people trying to work out how the world works.

I like earnest people, like people that are earnest. And my working definition of earnest is the bravery to take your emotions seriously.

Yeah, I think you can be.

I think there's a sweet spot between being very sincere but you don't need to be serious.

You kind of you're real but it's not, you know.

And it's very, I always think that thing of like, it's very easy live as well to switch, because there's slightly a code switch thing going on where you go, well, on stage, I'm there to do a job.

We're in a theater.

This is the space. You're there to be funny.

But occasionally now, and I'll allow myself to put it out on social media as well if something comes up that's heartfelt or beautiful, sometimes you answer a question seriously.

Sometimes you just go, someone needs it.

And so there's a couple of those moments like in a show where I feel like I need to earn it.

I feel like, if I do 20 minutes of fastballs, then there could be one nice moment where you make a point, but no one wants that.

No one wants to come to a comedy show and have someone wag a finger at them and talk about being progressive.

It's that thing where you go, okay, I'll be super funny, and then I feel like my audience will go, okay, he's made a good point there, and nothing overly controversial.

You know, it's not like that thing, it's really interesting that thing of I don't know whether it's an age thing, but feeling like I can do that a little bit more now.

There's certainly an extra kind of credibility that comes with age that I'm feeling too.

You look at Peterson and he's got this sort of patriarch persona, right?

He's got sort of the grey hair, he's got the wizard fingers that look like a fucking druid, and you think, yeah, he's able to, you know, talk to you about the deeper meaning of life and stuff like that, but if you are your cat backwards and walking in crocs, really, you've capped your upper bound on how much of this you can be taken seriously when you talk about it.

You know what I mean?

I don't know because I think it's much more relatable.

What will people listen to?

It's always that thing of like I wrote a book a couple years ago, which is kind of a biography -slash -self -help, and it was like, it's that thing of going, it's ekartole for dummies, because there's a lot of people that love that kind of stuff, or would love that kind of stuff, but they're not going to read that kind of stuff.

It's like there's no gonna find time in their day.

They're sufficiently accessible.

Yeah, and it's tough, it's tough to kind of get through because that stuff is actually sincere and it's very serious.

And I think actually you sometimes do need to sugar that pill.

I think comedy does that.

I mean, Peter McGraw, I think you've had that, have you on the show, Peter McGraw?

So he's got the theory of benign violation.

I was chatting to Joe about this yesterday.

The idea of violations being anything that messes with the norm, what your expectations of life.

Pattern interruption.

So something terrible happens in the world and you make it benign by making a joke about it.

And so this idea that jokes cannot be offensive because there's a, by making it a joke you're putting it in this kind of sacred space.

It's kind of like alchemy.

Yeah, well I often think like if someone's offended by a joke, I fucked up.

I didn't use strong enough juju.

Not enough magic on that, that wasn't funny enough to make it worthwhile for them to go to that place.

I asked Schultz this same question.

I said, are there any jokes that shouldn't be told?

Can you think of a joke that shouldn't be told?

Saying something is too serious to joke about is like saying, that disease is actually too serious to treat.

Or saying to a journalist, oh, we can't report on this story, it's horrible.

Like you'd never dream of saying that and you'd go, well, I feel sort of the same way about comedy.

It's all sort of fair game.

It's a question of how funny could you be?

How skilled could you be in doing that?

Andrew's response was, when I said, is there a joke so apparent that you shouldn't make it?

And his immediate response was, is it funny?

Yeah. He was like, if it's funny, you can get away with whatever you want.

Yeah, I think so. It's not even getting away with it though, the idea of like, I don't buy into the.

Get away with. Yeah, and the punching up, punching down, I don't buy into that, because in order to buy into that, you have to buy into the Frankfurt School and FUCCO and Derrida and Lyotard and all of that, and the idea that power dynamics, and that any cultural work, is a demonstration of power.

Frankly, I mean, I was kind of brought up in that.

That's when I was at university.

Postmodernism was was thriving.

Sexy the first time around.

Yeah, and well, it was very, very interesting and valuable in the lab.

And very much like COVID, it escaped the lab.

Great in theory, horrible in practice.

And it's had horrific effects, it's, ah, it's out the lab.

The R number keeps on rising.

It's 28 days later, but with a meme, but with an idea.

And I don't buy into that punching up, because it's a, in order to be punching down, you'll be looking down on someone.

I'm not looking down on anyone.

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I had heard a quote of yours.

If you're going to have an interesting life, you can't have all of the other interesting lives you would have had.

What to you? Well, I suppose it's that thing of like, it's incredible, the things you won't do.

Then when you think about like the potential that we all have, like we're all privileged in a sense, right, because we all get one life, and then we get given, you know, different gifts, right.

So there can be no equality because we're all born different, right?

So it's that thing of going, and it's not better, worse or the same.

It's just different.

Everyone's kind of different.

And I think that for me, the idea of going you can't have an easy life and a great character.

You've got to kind of go out there and decide what you want.

That's the first Great Adventure adventure, and then getting it is the second great adventure.

So it sort of speaks to that thing of wishing wells work.

But they don't work when it's not the magic.

The magic is you going, Oh, what I wish for.

What do I want? If you know what you want, that's incredibly powerful.

Most desires are mimetic desires.

You get into Rene Girard and the idea of going, while I want that watch cause he's got that watch. And I want that car cause he's got that car.

And I'd love that girlfriend." It's like, how many guys are dating girls.

Incredibly hot and look amazing, very impressive.

They don't even like the guy.

It's like, it's a weird flex. Yeah, they're in love with what other people think about them for having that.

It's that Will Stahl thing, that Status Game book, which is again, I mean, it's just, he's such a genius writer, I love him.

He's got a new sub stack by the way, all about storytelling.

His new book he comes out this week on the show that a story is a deal.

He's an outstanding, outstanding him.

But that idea of like you choose what status game you play, you know?

So what status game?

And again, another thing from modern wisdom, that idea of going well there's f*** you money and there's f*** you freedom and there's f*** you family.

I mean that really I took to heart as going, oh that's very interesting.

And the idea of going what are the things that you're not going to do because we live a world that rewards specialization.

And it strikes me that our whole school system is like geared wrong to get you to do all the different things.

And really young kids are like, what are you going to get from being ok, you're terrible at maths, but we're going to get you up to a secret?

Because what the world needs is someone who's alright at maths.

No, no. Semi -competent of maths.

No, but you're brilliant at English.

Well, fucking lean into that.

Spend all your time doing that.

You know, specialised, especially as the world changes, I think leaning into, you know, you often get, I don't know what it is about age or my position in life, but I often get asked, like, oh, what do you think I should do?

And it's that thing of like, what do you think about all the time?

That's the best indicator.

There's a Georgie's birthday this year in Assen.

Dicky, one of the guys came up with a fucking wonderful, I haven't written about it yet, but it'll be a newsletter soon.

It's a great idea. He calls them shower thoughts.

And the shower being one of the very few places reliably that people don't have some sort of external input going on.

And he said, you can tell what you care about by what you think about in the shower.

Tell what you care about by what you think about in the shower.

When there's no other input going on and you're in this liminal space between being unclean and then drying yourself off with a towel.

What do you think about, where does your mind go?

That's what you care about.

Yeah, I think expanding that space to 20 minutes, an hour.

The answers you're looking for in the silence you're avoiding.

That kind of being alone with your thoughts is a lovely thing.

How do you think about that?

Because you are spending all of this time on the road, airports.

could watch a video, can listen to a podcast, can do the whatever thing.

How do you try and purposefully create that space when you are busy all the time?

I suppose that thing of like going, if I do eight shows a week, or it'd be more than that on the American tour, but it's normally eight shows a week, so it's that thing of like going, well I want to try new jokes at every show.

It's quite sort of stoic really, I mean it's just like that thing of like going, I always think how hard you work is important, but what you work on is essential.

That's the key thing.

You can work so hard on bullshit and distract yourself with it.

My job's quite easy because it's easy to analyze and to pinpoint what's the thing that makes a difference.

And for me, it's jokes.

It's the love language.

It's the model, and the more that I spend time with them.

You sort of go, it's sort of like time in the gym, I suppose.

so when you're thinking about nothing and letting your mind wander, that's when it comes up, or you're listening to something and it's outside of your purview.

You're not listening to comedy.

You're listening to someone talk about economics or politics or philosophy and you're then thinking, why could I make a joke of that?

So everything's within, you're seeing it through that, the lens of.

You gotta be very careful.

If you are the average of the five podcasts do you listen to the most, you gotta be careful because it's gonna shape your, if you listen to too much Gary Stevenson, you're gonna be talking about Marxist economics and stuff like that, be very careful what sort of algorithm holes you fall down in particular.

Yeah, good, right? Good, good, be careful.

How do people know what they should be doing with their lives?

People coming up to you and asking you for earnest, you know, sincere life advice, how do you work out what someone should be doing with their life?

I don't know, I mean it's very odd to be, I'm quite taken with simulation theory because I don't think it's true.

I don't think we are in a matrix and this is a video game but if we are, I've definitely got a cheat code where I get to be a touring international comedian with lovely kids and a great life and great friends.

That's an incredibly privileged position.

and I think thinking about the world as if simulation theory is real and this is all a simulation, is very interesting.

Cause if you imagine life as a game, what are you solving for?

What are your metrics?

And I think when you really kind of analyze it and went, well if this was gonna be a scoreboard at the end and you're only really competing with yourself, there's nothing in being better than anyone else.

There's only honor in being better than yourself last year.

So the idea of going, well what would be the important things?

is, what would be the...

and it's that thing of you go, it's not the achievement so much as the process.

Enjoying the process seems to be it.

So that thing of like, what should people be doing?

It's not for me to say.

Life is self -assignment.

It's that thing of like, what are you happy doing?

Where's the flow state for you?

What's the thing that brings you joy?

It's not even like the 10 ,000 hours, I slightly think misses a trick.

Because although I buy, yeah, you've got to work really hard and really long to get good at anything.

To get competent at anything is hard, but what could you stand to do for that long?

Because if it's Nival, if it's play to you and work to them, you're going to win 100 % of the time.

Yeah, a much better question.

To build on that, what looks like play to you, but it looks like work to everybody else is, what pain do you want in your life?

This is Mark Manson's twist on it.

He says any pursuit, no matter how existentially aligned will regularly come with a huge side order of pain.

It doesn't matter how much you love doing comedy.

If you want to be a comedian, that means that you need to spend an awfully long time writing jokes that never see the light of day, apart from one set where no one laughs.

You go, fuck, I spent ages on that.

I was like, forget that, you got to enjoy taxi rides to the airport.

Correct, yeah. You have to enjoy the whole thing.

Correct. And as soon as you go, oh no, I just like the bit where I'm on stage, no, that's not how life is.

You have to take the whole package.

Yeah, James Clear has a fucking unbelievable take where he talks about if you want the life but not the lifestyle, you guarantee disappointment.

Like if you're going to pursue this outcome but you're not prepared to do what it takes to get it.

Okay, you wanna be a touring musician, sounds fantastic.

You need to spend probably between five and 10 years just learning the instrument.

This is before you get to perform.

You don't really get to perform on stage for that long.

And then when you start doing that, the first 10 tours that you do are maybe gonna be in someone's borrowed van in the back of a van, you're not gonna have enough money for hotels, you're gonna be playing to 100 people, no one's gonna care about you, you're not gonna have any money, you're not gonna know if it's gonna work.

You have no promise of glory on the other side, You're gonna be wracked with self doubt, constantly uncertain.

The whole experience is gonna be tarnished in this like weird liminal discontent about whether this is actually the right path to be on.

And then maybe you reach a tiny bit of escape velocity and perhaps get toward micro notoriety.

Okay, and then we maybe get to a manager and then we start to get looked after.

And that is the process of becoming remotely great at anything?

Yeah, I would think that thing of like, with young comics it's quite easy because you go if you're going out 300 nights a year to do open mics, it's kind of the same life as playing arenas.

It's not vastly different, you start going out and telling jokes, you go and do a show.

Like where you go to and how… whether it's an audience of 50 people or 15 ,000, it really is a very similar process.

So if you enjoy that, if you love it, then great.

Good question on what should I be doing with my life, you said before?

If people were making a movie about your life, what would the key scenes be?

What's the weird thing actually where like the cancellation episode, I always think like whenever you get cancelled or not cancelled, dragged, whenever you get like a tough time, it's like if my life was a movie, this would be the best episode.

if my life was like a ten -part on HBO, they'd...

Dedicate an entire episode to that.

Yeah, you saw the episode where he said the terrible thing and people got very upset.

I mean, I always think you've got to right -size it with, you know, different types of cancellation.

Like, oftentimes it's, I told a joke and some people didn't like it.

Okay. Yeah, who cares?

There's a, um... the patron saint of comedy is Saint Lawrence.

And Saint Lawrence was - Your industry has a patron saint.

Yeah and he's a third century martyr and he was an early Christian obviously and Saint Lawrence was condemned to death and they burnt him alive so they put him on like a metal kind of I don't know like i don't know what you would call it?

Like a fucking skillet.

Yeah like a big skillet.

And they cooked him okay and he said after 10 minutes of being burnt alive turn me over, this side's done.

And that level of bravery, and fuck you, is very inspirational.

It's like that thing of like going, it's almost like stoicism to the extreme, like the what we have, we can't control the world, you can have a strong influence, but we can't control anything, and shit is gonna happen to you.

And how you react to that is life.

Was Plato the guy that was forced to be killed by the government?

Was that him? What drank, poison?

I think that was Socrates, wasn't it?

Socrates, thank you.

There's a great story about him.

Apparently, very, like, big fuck you energy.

I think I need to channel my inner Socrates a little bit more.

And, the way that it worked when they condemned him during the trial, He was saying, you think that you're punishing me.

Like it was a jury of like 150 people.

This is how much. And typically what you're supposed to do is be groveling.

Socrates is supposed to come up and bring the crying wife, bring the crying children, he didn't do any of that.

And he started chastising the jury.

And he said, you all think that you're punishing me.

But you know that I'm an innocent man.

So really, you're punishing yourself?

There's nothing that you can do to me because I know that I haven't done the things.

You clearly, whatever it was, disturbing the youth, you know, the sort of frivolous claim that would accusation.

And he gets sentenced to death and he's supposed to drink hemlock, hemlock.

And he's back at the cell and all of his families around him and his friends are around him.

And the way that it worked, there was not really a time limit on when you had to drink Hemlock, his friends said to him, you know, you don't need to, you don't need to drink this.

You can spend some more time around your friends and your family.

You can, you know, like play the system and drag this out.

And he just drank it in front of them immediately.

I just love how much of a fuck you it was.

Like, you all think that you're condemning me, but really you're condemning yourselves.

You think you're punishing me, but you're actually punishing yourself.

There's nothing that you can do to me.

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Do people want more time or do people want more unique experiences?

I would argue that like the great gift of being a comedian is you see stuff and you see it when you've got kids, right?

Kids seeing stuff for the first time and they're excited.

And what I think a lot of people are doing past a certain age, I know what the age is, and I say 40, you're remembering stuff.

You've made that drive before, you've seen sunsets before, you're kind of remembering stuff so your mind is kind of filling it in and you're not in wonder.

And I think a lot of what comedy is, certainly that kind of the observational element of it is, whether it's linguistic or observation more generally, is you're really recognizing stuff.

You're really seeing things in a way that an artist would you you're trying to see it for what it is if i'd never observed this before what would i notice yeah and also that unique experience of like touring around seeing different places it's actually literally you know what do you i've done 20 shows in my life 20 30 30 shows in my life i remember a bunch of different scenarios there was a nine -year -old girl sat in the fourth row of the show that we did in sydney and she asked this amazing question And James had been dropping the C -bomb throughout all of his warmup act, and mine was a little

bit, you know, this fingering jokes and stuff like that.

And I was like, parents, I'm so sorry for like what's happened to your nine -year -old daughter.

She was like, it's all right.

She's Australian and everyone broke out laughing.

I'm like, I can't until Parkinson's comes and rips my fucking like consciousness out of my head, I'm not gonna forget that.

So you have, you're right.

The two ways that human memory works is novelty and intensity.

if it's something that's new or if it's something that's really emotionally salient, which you could just look at as another form of novelty, the intensity thing.

So someone will make a drive to work, they've been at this job for four years, and you're like, you've made that drive there a thousand times and back a thousand times.

No memory. But it's been condensed down into one journey.

So apart from that time when it was icy, and the guy next to you skidded, and oh, nearly, that's novelty and intensity, and you go, fuck I remember that one and I remember the first day I went to work.

And I remember when the road was closed, and I got in late, and I did whatever, but unless you purposefully inject novelty, and this is one of the sort of ruthless double -edged swords to routine, which is a lot of the gains in life are to be made through being structured and routinised.

Well, what's interesting is finding that balance of going on like...

because it is that thing of like you could go somewhere different on vacation every year, or you go back to the same place, because what are you solving for?

Are you making new memories, or do you want relaxation?

– what are you trying to get out of this?

What do you want? You are back to that fundamental question.

I think this is one of the reasons why as people get older their openness to experience goes down because the assumption is, I've been on loads of holidays, I know where's good and I know where's bad.

And the likelihood as somebody that's been on lots of holidays of beating the best one or even getting into the top 10 % is way tougher in my sixth decade than it is in my second.

How am I reversing, like that thing of like trying to go against the grain of what normally happened?

So serotonin and dopamine, right?

Both very important.

And we normally get serotonin from old music, people listen to old music, they listen to the stuff they like when they're in their teens and twenties, and they watch new movies, dopamine, new stories.

Where's this going?

What's going to happen?

I kind of change it around.

I listened to that Quentin Tarantino book, The Cinemaster, about your speculation, and when I've seen any of these 70s movies, or maybe I saw them when I was a kid, but I haven't seen it for years, I'm going to watch 70s movies and listen to new music, and it's really fun.

There's a really fun way to change things.

Well, I think that thing of being slightly out of your...

like music's really interesting because it's such a pleasurable thing to listen to new stuff and old movies...

I think The 70s was the high point for movies.

I don't think movies, because it was like there was an industry there, but it wasn't fully, I don't know, like it wasn't blockbusters yet.

Like - It's still experimental.

Yeah, there was there was Orters and the suits were giving the best directors the money to go and do the thing, go and do the thing.

Cause we don't have an established process of how this should be done so we can allow you to have a few more degrees of freedom.

Yeah, it was, I don't know.

It's just a wonderful time.

I feel like it's very analogous to how comedy is now.

Comedy is really having a moment culturally that's very, very special and I don't know what that is.

Maybe it's authenticity or there's something about people wanting to be part of a tribe.

In our culture there was a fire, and we gathered around the fire, and we did this.

Spoke, Right? And then there was the radio and we gathered around the radio and we listened to it and chatted.

And then there was the TV gathered around.

We watched the shows and talked about the next day.

And then suddenly it was the phone and I'm over there and you're in your room and it's, we're kind of isolated.

And I think that thing about coming out to comedy or going out to festivals or going in, seeing stuff is it's my, I suppose, play.

We are playing creatures.

Someone wrote a book about this in the, I think it was the late thirties, about human beings as the playing animal.

Like play being upstream of cooperation and cooperation being the secret source of humanity.

And the idea of like, I think about what people are interested in, anyone you know, anyone you speak to, like what you're excited about.

Oh, well, I'm watching the game on Saturday.

You're watching people play.

I'm going to go and see the concert.

The I'm going to go see that comedian.

Okay, it's just the guy playing on stage.

I'm going to go and see a musical.

Whatever you're into, you want to see people playing, and what is this conversation?

It's kind of playing, right?

It's curiosity and it's sort of sorting out ideas and picking little things and strands, and it's playful.

And it's incredibly important.

I love that George Bernard Sure line that we don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stopped playing, and there's a wonderful thing in my privileged life as a comedian where I'm a grown man but I also get to be in that mindspace where I'm playing all the time.

And the audience come out, and they bought a ticket.

And just I mean it's very self -selecting the audience that you'd have a tough time having a tough kick because a thousand people bought a ticket to see you.

They want to see you win.

And they came to play.

No, but there's an that your ego could get taken away.

Like, oh, I'm on stage, it's me, I'm performing.

You don't see the audience.

The audience are performing.

I saw it last year, I went to see Taylor Swift live in Wembley last year and it was transcendent.

She was amazing. A great songwriter, incredible musician, wonderful performer.

She was great. The audience were next level.

It was girls and their moms and their best friends, like quite a lot for this action.

They knew every word to every song.

Because I was watching it and I was also watching the crowd and watching that.

It's performative. Then I was watching it and going, ''Oh yeah, well in my audience, they wouldn't laugh if they saw the clip on their phone on the bus.

Sometimes people will post under an Instagram.'' You put out some heck of a video and think I'm not funny.

Yeah but you watched it with a sound off and the subtitles.

It's like I saw a clip of Taylor Swift live and I didn't sing along.

Yeah well you're not singing along when you see the clip but when you're there it's permission it's the I suppose that thing with like you see Bruce Springsteen live, how you doing?

Someone in Starbucks says it.

It sounds psychotic, it's great.

You allow yourself permission to be in that space where you can perform it's wonderful.

Collective effervescence is a wonderful way to get out of your own head.

And yeah, I think to fly the flag for my old industry, the demise of night clubs that don't require quite as much effort, that aren't as rare, that allow you to sort of be in that space and see a DJ, there's just some local DJ that plays great songs and every songs everybody knows and you get to dance together, think like fuck, like, how increasingly rare is it that you're in a room with a bunch of people who you both do and don't know all feeling a kind of vibe that's together, and yeah, maybe the resurgence that you're seeing with comedy, with live stuff, even the sort of things that I do, or you

know, more like a Petersonian -y style lecture come whatever, with a few fingering jokes, there's something going on there.

Well, I wonder what people are looking for when they, our mutual friend, Alain De Botton, you know, he's got the school of life, which is, ultimately, they were running services on, I think they still do, run services on a Sunday, which is sort of church, for people that can't, they can't sort of believe in a deity.

But they still want to go on, cause church works.

But church works not because God is happy, but because people are coming together.

And they kinda, they're.

You'll have heard me talk about this Latin Mass thing, which is kicking off at the moment.

What, people going to Latin Mass?

Well I've often said Vatican II was the biggest mistake in the church's history, way, because what they did was they translated.

It goes back to Ian McGilchrist. Have you read that, The Mastering His Ambistry, the left brain, right brain thing?

The incredible thing about the left brain is it orders things, makes lists.

We live in a left brain world.

And the only thing more impressive than that is the right brain, the idea that it can see the gestalt, can see the whole thing.

The problem with Vatican II is they took religion And they made it, they translated it into your local language.

And you could just go, it doesn't make sense, that can't happen, can't come back from the dead, it's crazy.

But before that, when it was all in Latin and there was a lot of incense, it was, you were just in awe.

So I had the same effect of standing in nature.

It just, do you know what it is?

I fucking wish it wasn't this, but the more that I think about what it is people want to take away from life, it's all just vibes.

It all just comes back to vibes.

So what's the vibe?

What was the vibe of his show?

Can you remember any of the one line, I think he did a joke about roadkill.

Yeah. No, I can't remember anything.

And he gave this really nice answer.

He gave this earnest answer to this guy about this something, something, something, something.

But I remember the vibe.

Vibe was so relaxed.

It was like intense, actually, it's kind of quick.

Is it Maya Angelou?

People don't remember what you say, but they remember how you feel.

How you make them feel.

Yeah, I got to round out that movie thing.

You mentioned movies before and two questions about, people ask, what should I be doing with my life?

If your life was a movie, what would the key scenes be?

I think that's important when you're looking backward, but a much better one, if your life was a movie and people were watching up to this point, what would the audience be screaming at the screen telling you to do with your life?

What would they be just, it's fucking obvious, Leave the job, you mean it's your brother.

It's the fucking killers hiding in the cupboard, whatever it might be.

What would the audience watching the movie of your life be screaming at the screen telling you to do?

And I think it's a very orthogonal way to look at huh.

I already know the answer of what I should be doing.

I'm just scared of making the commitment and having the conversation.

Yeah, I waited a long time.

I had kids very late in life.

And it was because I was waiting to feel like a man.

And obviously I had it just backwards.

It's not a noun, it's a verb.

So you have kids and then suddenly you feel like a kid and you feel fucking manly.

And then you don't know who you're going to be as a dad.

How's fatherhood changed you?

I don't know. I think it's about change.

You know that thing of power corrupts?

I think it does. I think power reveals.

And I would say sort of the same about parenthood.

You don't change. It just reveals who you are at kind of a deeper level.

It's just like there's a side of you that was always kind of waiting, and you come out and you don't get—it's almost like the kids come out with their factory settings, like how much of what they have is heritable.

And they just come out and they are who they are, and you watch these little creatures and they kind of become that sort of personality.

I don't know where that happened, and then And the other one's got a totally different personality.

Oh, because I think everyone with one kid is nurture.

Oh, well, we gave them this, so they've done that.

And we were always, we read books like that, so they did this.

And did that. Because you haven't got to run the experiment a second time.

Yeah, and then as soon as you get the second one you go, oh no, I don't know, I don't know.

Yeah, they just she likes that.

So what are you gonna do?

It's lovely. And I think it's the same with parenting.

I think you don't know who you're gonna be as a parent and it's a revealing thing.

You kind of go, oh, I'm that kind of, okay, that's fun, great.

Did it teach you much about yourself?

I don't know, I don't know what the, I suppose it's that thing of, it's a feeling that's very difficult to put into words without, it's a sort of cliched thing, thing, but I suppose it's closed off an existential angst that I always had since losing my religion in my mid -twenties.

I was quite sort of late.

I was a Catholic, and I lost my faith and was an atheist and not having an afterlife it's a rush of blood to the head.

So I've got to do something with this life.

I've got to take opportunities and risks and have fun now because a random collection of atoms coalesced into a form that can contemplate its own consciousness for 4000 weeks and then disappears again.

That's it. We're in this brief shaft of light between two oceans of darkness.

And then suddenly you have kids and you go, oh, there is the next life, it's them.

It's the DNA, Dawkins was right, it's the gene.

I'm just the, I'm the vessel.

And that's, I found that very, I found it incredibly comforting.

So you're saying that the denial of death and the death anxiety can be assuaged at least in part by making more of you yeah I think the the the death anxiety the death is the it's the certainty but you know it's coming coming for all of us I think the more that we talk about it and acknowledge it and the better that idea around I will become a dad when I become a man I will That's clear, like the movie of your life, the guys listening to the podcast, the girls listening to the podcast, the whole, I mean, we're all screaming at the podcast. Go and, like.

Use the genes. Use them!

We sort of want you to be happy.

Yeah. Yeah. I can't, you know, I keep on saying it.

I really, really do look forward to becoming a dad.

Like, I think it's gonna be, I hope that becoming a father makes all of the things that I've done up to now feel like shallow, vapid attempts to get recognition from the world.

You're club promoter, Love Island, shallow and vapid?

Shallow, vapid, how dare you!

What can I say? It's a wonderful industry to be part of.

Very insightful, incisive, you know.

My prediction is you should - not my prediction, my dream for you is that you have a big family.

Because I think there's a - There's an only child that sounds terrifying.

But there's a theme, the only child thing comes up a lot for you.

Like it's a recurring theme.

And I think what you need is a really loud messy house.

Let's go back to Plato, right?

So, my issue with Plato, obviously, you know, the birth of the, you know, Plato to NATO.

That's Western civilization, right?

Incredibly important figure, but I got issues with Plato if he was here and I'll tell him.

It's Plato and the Zarathustrans and they both independently came up with the idea of perfection.

So the Zarathustrans were the first religion I believe to come up with the idea of heaven, perfection, and the platonic ideals of Plato.

And I think in our heads, we think of perfection as an ideal, obviously a lot, and I think it gets in our heads.

Like well, if it can't be perfect, I want to get to the bottom of my list. I want to cross everything off.

I want to deal with all these problems and then move on.

Well, problems are… Well, the problem is, it's something that needs your attention.

is great. And there's no such thing as no problems. There's just different problems, higher -order problems. If it helps, call it a puzzle, not a problem.

There's going to be problems. It's going to be messy.

Like Nietzsche had this great line which embraced the chaos, it's quite chaotic life.

It's not terribly orderly and it's never going to be orderly.

And I think there's something about having kids let you just kind of lean into a little bit it's the illusion of control really disappears you've got influence but very little control before we continue if you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like getting your blood work done is the best place to start which is why i partnered with function because they run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers they've got a team of expert physicians that take the data put it in a simple dashboard and give you actionable insights, and recommendations to improve your health

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That's interesting.

I learned this idea called Deferred Happiness Syndrome from Guenter Bogle.

The common feeling that your life has not begun, that your present reality is a mere prelude to some idyllic future.

This idyll is a mirage that will fade as you approach, revealing that the prelude you rush through is in fact the one to your death.

It's just strange. Is that not John Lennon?

Life is what happens while we're making other plans.

Yeah, it's a brilliant piece of… it's a brilliant observation.

Oh, once I've got this done, once I get my degree, then life will begin.

Once I've just got to pass these exams and get to that thing and buy that house, and then I've just got to pay this off, and then I've got to do… and then we can start… a very instrumental view of life that everything is done in order to achieve the next thing.

So, at no point do you actually arrive?

It's a great question.

Okay. When are you going to arrive?

Tell me. Tell me when you're going to arrive at life.

When are you going to feel like you've actually got that?

Well, we're going to end up being Buddhists, aren't we?

Because it's like, I do slightly disagree with the over -pathologising life, but depression and anxiety, which I would rather call sadness and worry, but you know, it's very serious for some people.

And depression is always about the past and anxieties about the future.

And in the, the more you can just be in the moment, you're kind of, you're sort of, all right, you're sort of okay, you know, today, enjoying that thing of like, enjoying this bit of the process, but it is that thing of like, it's very, it's kinda easy.

It's easy to say. I mean, I love that thing as well.

I'm such a fanboy of the show, but the 2D and 3D lessons.

But it's so true in terms of like, you can't say to a young person like the material possessions they're not going to bring you happiness.

Because actually they kind of will, but not having the watch won't make you happy.

Getting it is fun. Getting stuff is fun.

The journey is so far, like that thing of like, and it's partly the dopamine of like, it's the thrill of the acquisition, but the stuff that gives you pleasure long -term, it's like, it's feelings.

Having things isn't fun, getting things is fun.

That's Andrew Tate, by the way.

But you have this - Is it?

Yeah, that's Andrew Tate.

You weren't expecting that.

Well, a stopped clock is right twice a day.

That's true, but you had the inverse of this when it comes to work rate?

Which I think probably classes as one of the best insights over the last few years.

Everyone is jealous of what you've got.

No one is jealous of how you got it.

Yeah, I think that thing of like, be is that thing where you go when people say, I wanna be famous.

But they don't have a thing.

It's like, I don't know what for, but it's the, but fame and fortune is the, a secular heaven.

For fame read heaven.

It's the land of milk and honey.

Everything's going to be okay.

And then when you, it's kind of annoying when famous people complain about stuff cause you've got everything.

You've got different problems. It's again, it's problems as feature, not a bug.

The issue you have, the issue that I think a lot of famous people have is I am certain that my inner void will be filled when I, and the benefit that people who are not yet as rich or as famous as they want to be is that they still have the potential panacea for them to get to.

What's that great Will Smith line?

That I'm not the biggest Will Smith fan in the world, but the idea that he went, I was poor and miserable and it was okay because I thought, well, I'll just get some money and then I'll be all right and then it was rich and miserable, it was like, oh, oh fuck, oh no. Yeah, that's Mark Manson's memoir.

There's nothing else to do.

originally that was going to be a two -part series, Mark was going to write the first book is called Will, he wrote that with Will Smith and the second book was going to be called Power.

Should have been called I Am, that would have been a copyright issue.

Which way around does it work?

Interesting when it comes to trademark, I'm going to get this the wrong way around but Europe and the US have different laws when it comes to how words can be trademarked.

and my mind is stuck on a joke.

Okay, so when the Will Smith and Chris Rock thing happened, okay, obviously it's Chris Rock is like, for me, a god -like figure.

I've met him a couple times and I just, I'm so in awe of his skill and, work.

Do not touch our profit, okay.

Work ethic and like, I was so annoyed, so I was chatting about it a couple of weeks ago with a friend and said, oh, somehow it came up and I said, oh Chris Roque, he was at the Oscars.

Yeah, he was really starstruck, like three years too late.

If I thought of that on the day.

I was genuinely annoyed with myself, like, oh, come on, come on Brain, think about it on the day.

No use now. But there is this sense of what happens if you achieve the things that you say that you want?

What happens if you get there?

Just imagine for a second the perennial, insecure, overachiever, optimizer people.

what happens if you get there and you still have the same problems?

Then what do you do?

That's a difficult question.

Yeah, but I think it's answered by, you know, there's other people on the same road.

And it can feel sometimes quite sort of, I don't know, you're out there battling, trying to achieve whatever you're trying to achieve and you kind of do it and look around.

And you go, well, there's other people I think having friends in other fields is really helpful and you.

Because that thing of like, if it's too close to your industry, it can sometimes be a little bit kind of frenemies.

But I think that thing of like, well, comedy is really good for that because it's kind of, we're out for ourselves, but in it together.

There's a lovely thing about - Sounds of camaraderie.

Yeah, and it's not like we're actors.

It's not like we're, you know...

There's only one role for the next Marvel movie?

There's only one James Bond, and I'm afraid you didn't get the part, but he did, ah, his life's amazing yours is shit.

Whatever that thing is.

With comedy it seems to be that there's a, there's a camaraderie and a, it's also comes back to that thing of like, don't be the best, be the only.

Like if you're a non fungible human and someone goes, well, no one else is doing what he does.

Well, other people are in the same industry.

It's like Iron Maiden had a great line about this.

The Iron Maiden was like, I think they did an interview with the, their manager and he went, we're not in the music industry, we're in the Iron Maiden industry.

That's a fucking slammer.

And he went, I don't care what's happening in that field, we can only plow this field.

It's just you go. Yeah, I mean, they had so many great lines actually, I think Bruce Dickinson was saying fame is a byproduct of what we do.

It's the excrement, fame is the excrement of creativity.

Like something that you need to deal with, but sometimes can be enjoyable.

Well it's interesting when people pursue fame for fame's sake, I want to be famous.

Sorry, you were on Love, Oil and Wind?

Yeah, look I'm allowed to talk about this because I went up the mountain and came back down.

Well I think it is that thing like, I don't think that story's been told properly.

We chatted about this last night at dinner bar.

I think to tell that story fully I think is very inspirational.

Because you go, you've worked on something that is like any other muscle.

You know we were going into love Island and okay, you've got great forearms Wonderful.

Good luck. God bless and then you've worked on that for how many years now six seven?

This is your right?

Yeah, seven and a half.

Yeah, okay Wow The results like this crazy.

You're an advert for it's not even work ethic It's just it's it's it's not like ambition.

It's systems like 3 shows a week week, every week, I know what a tough year you've had.

And the idea that you just keep on showing up… Yeah, come on come on.

To mutually filet each other, you are by a margin, the hardest working comedian on the planet.

I don't think that… If only I had a bit more talent, I'd take a weekend off.

I'm blown away by the schedule that you have. I did actually want to read you an essay of based on people that work very hard. The gastric band surgery of being busy.

After undergoing gastric band surgery, people's risk of suicide goes up.

That's perhaps unsurprising.

Gastric band surgery is a big deal and can sometimes have complications, infections and painful outcomes.

But one of the unseen reasons for the increased suicide risk is actually due to the surgery going right, not it going wrong.

Many patients used food as a way to deal with issues in their lives, emotional challenges, loneliness, anxiety.

After having their stomach shrunk, the ability to use food as a comforting crutch has been removed, but the emotional challenges still remain.

So, the coping mechanism has been taken away, forcing patients to face their issues without a release valve.

I think there is an equivalent dynamic happening when you try to elevate your life to take your sense of self -worth from things other than your work and your level of busyness.

Let's say that In the past you used busyness as a chaos, and as a way to distract yourself from feeling unwanted emotions.

It meant that you didn't need to reflect on your decisions or sit in discomfort, that you're moving so quickly that you never fully connect with the things that are happening in your life.

Lost relationships, disconnected friends, poor decisions and accumulated negative character traits are all swept away so quickly that you didn't even have time to consider them by manic work rate.

Eventually, you realise that chaotic busyness is not your highest calling in life.

Maybe you value different things now, maybe you've outgrown that phase of your life, maybe you realise that busyness for busyness's sake is detaching you from connecting to your existence.

So, what happens when this coping mechanism gets taken away?

You are forced to face your issues without the highly distracting release valve that you're used to.

The busyness anesthetic that you've used to previously rely on has now been removed leaving you with two choices.

Number one, ignore the lesson that chaos is not fulfilment and go back down this road that you just escaped from by force feeding your way through this figurative gastric band.

Number two, actually learn to handle emotional discomfort without distracting yourself with work.

Yeah, that's beautiful.

It really reminds me of that.

Milan Kundra wrote this short book called Slowness and kind of the, the number of the book, the message is that memory and speed are inversely proportionate.

So the idea, like the best example I can think of is when COVID hit and the world slowed. You kind of took stock and remembered stuff and sort of had time to contemplate like in that boredom, I guess, of not being busy, not being chaotic, there was a real, oh I'll kind of look around.

I don't know, I um… Didn't you have a Chairman Mao quote that was similar to this?

What was the Chairman Mao quote?

I don't know. You can't smell the roses from a galloping horse.

Yeah, yeah, yeah that's a good, that's Mao.

What? Who knew? We can take good shit.

We can take good shit from Andrew Tate and Chairman Mel.

As long as it's good shit.

Because that's really who you need to be associated with right now to help rehabilitate you.

Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, but it's that the… it's it's true, like slowing down once in a while is, is, is very good for you and finding that balance in life, but I think working hard's not.

I know people that really work hard. I work it hard in showbiz.

I'm the hardest working man in comedy.

It's like being the best -looking guy in the Burns Unit.

It's not really a flex. Even if I do two shows a night Oh my god, sometimes I have to work for four hours, I'm not sure I'm gonna be okay.

It's nothing. There's people with real jobs that work really hard, and there's people actually that don't love their job.

They work in order to facilitate a life that they love.

Well, great, good on them.

There's an honor, and there's a worth in that.

I think we've slightly lost that in our society, if I'm honest with you.

Like the hero of the working man that provides for his family, puts food on the table on roof over their head.

Well, that's a good point, we've sort of pedestalised passion so much that we assume the only reason that anybody does a job is because they want to do it and there is an additional type of nobility that comes along with drudgery.

You think well, not only do you do this thing, which is maybe hard, but you don't want to do it, but you do it anyway.

yeah I know being being a provider you taking care of I mean yourself and the people that you love just doing that I'm working hard it's not like something shifted in our culture where that isn't those those people are seen as being chumps you know a mark oh they've they haven't got you're right by the man yeah I've got a side hustle and a grift you can notice that some people work like that and they work really hard and they provide for their families and they are doing great.

And they're taking pleasure from their hobbies and their interests.

A friend of mine was talking about this because his father had a quite a boring job, but he was so passionate about his hobbies.

It was really interesting that he didn't like the term hobbies even because he was going, that's what brought him joy in life.

That was the thing for him.

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There's a line from Visakhan Verasamy who says, I have not yet grown wise enough to deeply enjoy simple things.

And this is an idea I've been thinking about recently.

There There is a kind of embarrassment in the modern world at taking pleasure from ordinary pursuits, this sort of sense that my – the things that I feel particularly proud about and that I take a sense of self worth from and fulfilment, they should be grand.

Because how feeble, how shallow, how unimpressive a life it is that lying in a hammock for a couple of hours can be one of the greatest sources of joy.

Like, no, no, no, no. You're supposed to be base -jumping from the edge of a skyscraper, we're, you know, just off the back end of some VIP trip to Ibiza to go and watch, you know.

It's supposed to be this grand thing.

And that line, I have not yet grown wise enough to deeply enjoy simple things, I think is a pathology of the modern world.

Should we quote Naval?

I mean, he's the best of us.

If you're not happy having a coffee with a friend, you won't be happy on a yacht.

I did have coffee with a friend on a yacht recently and went, this is good, I'm enjoying all of it.

It's a great, it's a big boat.

There's an interesting challenge there I think for people that are perennial overthinkers because a lot of them will feel things more deeply than they should do, including the shame of feeling things more deeply than they should do.

It's this odd sort of recursive loop.

Are you allowing yourself to enjoy anything at the moment?

I'm trying to as much as I can.

Look, some of the things that I've learned, the celebration thing is gratitude and action, I think is a beautiful way to summarize something that I've kind of been floating around.

I'm trying to build a studio in an office here in Austin, because I've basically took the working from home pill during COVID and then never realized that COVID had finished.

I just thought I'm just gonna, you know, solopreneur, degenerate lone ranger my way through this thing.

But we hit a million subs, and I got to Ring Dean, we hit two million subs, and I think I broke off from work for a little while.

I hit three million subs on a plane, and I just didn't, you know, it's just another thing that happens despite it being something that we worked toward for a long time.

And you might go, well, you're not doing it for the subscriber count.

You go, okay, so at what point are you going to allow yourself to arrive?

When are you actually going to celebrate the sort of thing?

Well it's interesting you know that thing of like when it gets to a certain number of subscribers you do a Q &A I think the Q &A should just be a regular thing because I think it's like it's a bit like the newsletter it's like just it's sort of almost allowing people check in with you on a regular basis and I think you don't allow yourself do that because like if your whole interviewing style is about the guest yeah you're very much in service of the of the guest My goal is to make you, or whoever is sat in front of me, look as good as possible, not to make it about me.

Ok, well when's that going to shift?

When's it going to shift?

Because how many books do you need to read?

How many people do you need to sit with and talk to, and add value to?

How many quotes do you need before you go, I'm enough?

I've arrived. I can just talk.

I can just talk about life and what I think.

And I'm enough. It's a good question.

There is definitely still a kind of imposter syndrome not around what I do, but around stepping into the more sort of guru side of this stuff.

And I think that in some ways that's healthy because there's certainly a lot of people who completely bypass the learning thing and go straight into the proselytizing thing without having done any of the work to get up there.

I mean, I'm a big fan of imposter syndrome.

I sort of think if you're not feeling it every 18 months, you're not pushing yourself.

So, that thing of like doing things that you're not quite comfortable with on a regular basis, it's a pretty good sign you're moving, you're making some progress.

Is that difficult for you, given that kind of all of the things that you sort of can do now?

Yeah, no, I like put arenas in the UK.

So, I'm playing arenas at the end of the year.

No way. And it's like...

I'm used to playing theatres and I do arenas in different markets in the world like in Australia and New Zealand, I'm playing arenas next year.

But in the UK, I kind of haven't done it.

Where are you playing?

Like 10 cities around the UK.

And then, you know, in Australia and New Zealand.

Everywhere, yeah. Do you know what dates you're doing in the UK?

I'm doing, like, it's November and December.

But I'm playing in the round because it's that thing where, I did a gig.

I was in Melbourne, one night off in the tour, And Chappelle was in town, and he called and said, you know, what's poppin'.

I said, oh, you're doing a show.

Oh, come down and play.

And he played it in the round, and it was like being a boxer.

And you sort of realized there was like 14 ,000 people in there, but no one had a bad seat.

Cause there's screens above.

And you're just kind of gently rotating and delivering to different.

Like the lazy Susan of the Commonwealth.

Yeah. But it was literally, it was so exciting, now walking on.

And it was that thing, and it was outside and I loved how nervous I was.

Well, so you did a little warm up -y bit boyfriend?

Oh yeah, like a half hour or whatever.

Only a half hour? But it was so fun and then I kinda thought.

Did you crush me? This is the way to do...

You're so sick, I love being friends with you.

I think it's so cool to watch you do this stuff.

But pushing yourself and getting to that space is really exciting and then playing America, like playing, I'm sort of traveling across America and really trying to, I suppose it's that thing of the, it's the same as the Beatles.

You're taking something that is, stand -up is an American medium really.

If you think about what America's given the world culturally, it's the Western jazz music and stand -up comedy.

But this is a George take where he says, Britain has some of the funniest people, some of the funniest comedians, but so few of the world's biggest comedians.

What do you think's going on there?

Why is it that the UK is able to reliably produce to Jimmy Carr or Ricky Gervais.

But most of the big names come out of the States.

I think that might change over time.

I think the club culture here is very, very healthy.

If you think about the Comedy Cellar, and the Comedy Store in LA, and the communities that they've engendered, and then latterly, the Mothership in Austin that Joe setup.

And you know, Yellow Springs is Dave Chappelle's new thing as well, which is an amazing space.

I think that thing of like, you can't be your environment and the being around other people and coming on, like it's scenes, it's groups of comedians that come up sort of together.

So if you think about Jerry Seinfeld, and then, you know, bagat, Chris Rock, bagat, Louis CK, all out of the same kind of comedy cellar crew, and they're all around each other all the time.

I think that really helps to be part of that group.

I wonder whether the classic British aversion to aiming too high, or doing something too different, is causing that scene to just stutter a little bit as it grows?

Because when I look at the best for me, when I look at the best scene in the UK for comedy right now, I'm about guys like Adam Rowe, Finn Taylor, Vittorio, The Screenrock guys, Jacob and Jake.

This is kind of the equivalent of the dGen, podcast bro circuit from the US over in the UK.

I wonder with the UK as well, it is a great comedy market.

You could busy yourself very happily for two years touring the UK and not have to drive far.

and be home in your own bed every night, and then write a new show and go again.

So the the the wanderlust that I have to go out to 47 countries on tour is maybe slightly unusual.

But I think as the comedy has gone global relatively recently, it was Netflix decided to...

and obviously Netflix is based in America, so it's going to lead with the American comics.

And then I think it will gradually go out around the world.

And what I'm hoping it becomes a bigger and bigger thing because it can be such a broad church, it's kind of wonderful.

I get annoyed when, if ever I see a comic slag off another comic, I'm always like, that narcissism of small differences!

We sort of go, really, we're doing exactly the same job, doing the same thing, this is different stylistically!

Yeah I love that Iron Maiden line, don't try to be the best, try to be the only.

I suppose that really only works if you're actually good at what you do, because if you're not good at what you do you're like, yeah, I mean, it's awesome that you've created your own unique band of World of Warcraft stand up comedy.

It's a shame that nobody except for you is into it.

But you know, I do think that thing of like there's a, with comedy you find your audience, you can joke about anything but not with anyone.

And that kind of goes both ways.

It's like you go, your audience is cool with this stuff.

and maybe other people wouldn't be, but you attract your crowd and you get the audience you deserve, ultimately.

I mean, if you look out and you don't like your audience, you fucked up.

Yeah, that is one of the most fortunate things, I think, about doing work that is interesting to you is that you'll accumulate an audience of people that you would happily hang out with.

I look out at the audience, any of the live shows, the one we did in London last year, I sold out the Eventim Apollo, which was fucking mind -blowing.

There's 7 ,000 eyes looking at me.

And I would happily go for a coffee with like any person in the...

That is such a weird way to think of 3 ,500 people.

7 ,000 eyes? Yes. Well, you see them in your...

No one is... No one thinks like that.

That's a bizarre way to think about...

It's a good way to artificially inflate numbers though.

Jimmy, you're talking to a club promoter who used to inflate numbers for a very, very long time, turning three thousand five hundred people into seven thousand eyes it's packed in there mate yeah it's packed in four hundred eyes yeah uh but um yeah and i would happily go for a coffee with any one of them and i know for a fact that there are fucking tons of people in my industry that couldn't say the same yes i think that definition of a grifter is is really powerful somebody who is selling a product they wouldn't use themselves that's it so and we've had such a great thing we've had a fucking

conversation about this I have an issue because I think it's kind of like the racism concept creep of the online course bro and influencer world, that if grifter and shill means everything, it means nothing.

And it's just a insult that gets thrown around to anybody that seems to be kind of commercializing.

So like if you're selling anything at all that isn't just yourself or Patreon access, this is some sort of a grift. And what they basically mean is you are monetizing in a manner that I'm uncomfortable with.

I think it's very different for different people.

Like I did Kill Tony the other night.

Tony Hichlip. And they got a ton of merch. It's like a merch table out the front.

And I saw lots of people buying it and they're big fans of the show and they love it.

And I sell books at the tour shows and that's it.

And I don't sell t -shirts.

I don't sell pens. I don't sell mugs because I wouldn't buy it.

That's not to say that other comics can't do that because for them, they'd go, yeah, no a hundred percent.

I would wear that mug.

I would wear that hoodie, I would wear that T -shirt.

What am I gonna do?

That's why you've got shares in menswear company in Savile Row.

Sure. So yeah, I'm gonna sell Tom Sweeney suits.

I'm gonna have Taylors on standby in the lobby.

But I asked on Twitter, I was like, for the people who use the word grifter or shill, give me your best working definition of what that actually means.

Like, What is a grifter or a shill?

And I was kind of, it was a little bit of a red herring question.

Cause I just assumed that nobody would be able to come up with a good definition.

That's a great definition, isn't it?

You would sell something you wouldn't buy yourself.

Is so kind of QVC from the eighties.

It slices, it dices.

You're going to have one of these in your life.

Well, I just think, okay, that's cool.

But in that case, if you have this functional definition, it's pretty easy to work out whether somebody...

Thank you. I have a neutronic...

Neutronic Jimmy, there's no R in it.

I came here with a fucking, what's the maker of the bag, put me on to it.

Nomadic. The nomadic like.

You were fully wisdom pilled, yeah.

Oh man, but I did think sometimes you have a element in the morning in the cold plunge.

I got the new brass monkey cold plunge.

Jesus wept. so it's the lie -down one.

And it has ice that you break through at the top, so you feel like it will throw up ice in the morning.

So no, it just feels better.

I mean, I can't do as long in there, obviously, because it's really cold, but it's so good.

I love how we've slowly sort of rebroed you.

There's somebody that sort of turns up in the three -piece suit and all the rest of it, but behind the scenes, it's Crocs and socks and coal plunges and element and nomadic and fucking new tonic.

I'd tell you my... I said, let me tell you the story.

So, I was in... I now stay in hotels based on sauna cold plunge, right?

If they've got a sauna and cold plunge, I'll stay in that one.

Because I like to do it every day.

I find it very energising.

I'm not great with meditation.

But I think there's a lot of people like me that aren't great with meditation.

But I mean, I love Sam Harris's out waking up.

I do my best... I'm better at listening to talks about it than I am at doing it.

Okay. That's fine. But then I find I can sauna and cold plunge and that's it's sort of the same thing, right.

It's the same vibe of like, just take some time.

So staying in these places and I'm staying in this place in Austria, they've got an amazing sauna cold punch. So we go into the sauna, it's like beautiful facility, huge, like 95 degrees in there, properly hot.

So I'm in there and the guy goes, I don't speak German, but shorts, shorts.

And it's like. We weren't supposed to be dressed.

Oh, you can't, okay, I'm gonna take my shorts off, and it's fine.

There's like three guys in the sauna, everyone's naked, fine, we've got towels, great.

Then I do the cold plunge, and I come out of the cold plunge.

I don't know if you've done five minutes in six degree water, and there's some baby dick going on.

And then another guy comes into the sauna as I get out the cold plunge.

He has no evidence I've been the cold plunge.

I'm just walking around.

And I'm like, could you come into the sauna with me for a couple of minutes until this?

And then what? Ah, so Sky that you've just met.

We went to his bachelor party in Houston and he likes Asian things, which is why the office looks like that next door.

This is not, not great for him at the moment if he's listening out there.

And I've just said baby dick and you've gone, oh, I've got a story.

I've got a story about sky.

Yeah, he made us go to, I think it's called the golden temple or something.

It's the biggest Asian spa in Texas.

And this thing has five, nine different sauna rooms and a fucking snow room and this weird hut thing that you've got a clamber into and the floor's heated and it's insanely hot.

And through the back of the gents, kind of classic Asian spa approach is load of unisex, cold plunges and saunas, but you've gotta, everyone's dick out.

So first off I was the only person in there with a foreskin, that was interesting.

But I walked in to see Sky laid down on a bed with this small Asian man, an aloofa, and he just had a towel covering his junk, and this guy, you know like how people plane the top of varnished tables?

We're gonna get the varnish off the top of this table, I'm going to retreat it, and then we're going to re -varnish it again.

And this guy had a loofah and I was watching him scrub, very aggressively, I get that this might be a cultural thing.

Everyone in here is naked.

The guy's getting out of the sauna, per you, sort of hands are open, I've got no problem with my manhood, everybody getting out of the coal plunge was a little bit more sheepish about the way they walk around.

I tell you, you've come a long way from, is it Middlesbrough you're from?

Stockton, yeah, the shit bed of Middlesbrough.

Stockton on teas. And that's your idea of a stag -do now?

That was Sky Side. Shame on you.

I know. Shame on you.

You should have been in Benidorm, you should now have some kind of antibiotic resistant STI.

You went to a sauna.

Not even that kind of sauna.

You had a Jeffersonian dinner that weekend, as well, and followed Shabbat at the same time yeah no I did my friends are unbelievably weird I have the I have some of the strangest friends in the world I mean you've been you were a dinner with us last night you rocked up to dinner and we've got Craig Jones second best grappler in the world maybe the best troll on the planet Seth Belisle who is his handler I suppose, George Mack, soon to be one of the best writers on the planet Zack Talanda signed to Conor McGregor's record label but an ex weightlifter, your videographer me, ex fucking reality TV

turn podcast person, Brian Callan and you and I'm like, this is the shittest version of the Avengers that I've ever seen but what an eclectic mix.

Yeah, I don't know what crime we were planning but it wasn't gonna go well.

Yeah, fuck, I don't know man, I really like, I've liked breaking out of whatever, the UK, or whatever life it was that I was supposed to lead.

I don't think I was supposed to lead this one.

I feel like this was kind of, you talk about self -authoring an agency, I think this was something that kind of wasn't written in the stars all that much. I don't know whether you feel that way.

You started your thing late.

No, I think you made a very big move, like a physical move.

But I think you could have this in the UK I think it's not so much the physical location, it's where you chose to go.

I think you made the move seven years ago.

You made the move seven years ago to sit in your bedroom and to go, well I'm going to talk to interesting people about interesting stuff.

That's what happened.

The fact now that it's on a grander scale, neither here nor there.

Process -wise, it's the same thing.

You're as inquisitive as you were early on.

Unfortunately even more, actually, I think.

Yeah I don't know, look, it's one of the things, I have two tensions right, I have a tension between two different poles.

One is, I don't like to get too big for my boots.

I know that it is a bit of a turn off to people to see someone who seems to be too full of himself especially someone that presents in the way that I do.

Especially someone that's doing it through an art form that on the surface, anybody can do and lots of people do do.

It's slightly different if you see somebody that plays an instrument because you think, well, as much as I might not like the fact that they're successful at the saxophone, I can't fucking play the saxophone, right?

So there is a kind of hurdle that you need to get over.

So the narcissism of small differences, I think that the differences are much smaller when it comes to the art form of podcasting, because it's having a chat, it's just having a chat well, hopefully when you do it effectively.

I don't think anyone thinks that.

I mean, I think you'd have to be insane to think that.

It's, you know, if I look at the work that goes into it, if I give it just the briefest thought, a cursory glance at the questions you asked, the reading that you've done, the research, the amount of books you have to get through, the way that you need to kind of go, okay so they've written a book, whether it's really good or really bad, you kind of have to get them to present their whole thing, it's like the presentation.

It's a phenomenal skillset.

I appreciate that, that's on...

Sorry, your perception is that you shouldn't appear too successful, because...

Not only appear too successful, just appear too full of yourself, it's like, oh, you're not that special.

Again, it's that British working -class mindset that I'm trying to rid myself of.

It's why being around people like George, like Zac, like Brian, like yourself, people who've got big dreams and sort of blue sky vision, I refer to myself as a criticism some hyper responder.

They over index on the criticism of others.

So that's one end right that is one end.

But the other end is if somebody that comes from the most backwater working class bullshit town, three people living on one person's wage in the northeast of the UK goes to a school where your entire 200 person your group has maybe one other person that goes to university out of it, everybody is born, lives and dies within a 20 -mile radius for the most part, is able to kind of rip some fucking project off the launch pad and get themselves out to escape velocity in orbit.

That should be a really relatable story for most people because it's this pretty accessible combination of effort, curiosity, and stubbornness to not stop.

I think it's... I think you're very working -class in the best possible way, and you don't waste anyone's time.

I remember seeing the...

You know that kind of inside -the -actor -studio thing, the master class?

There's a master class thing.

Michael Caine did it.

of actors have done it.

Most actors do it, and they tell their life story.

Michael Kane did it, and Michael Kane's working class.

Michael Kane goes, when you look in the camera, have one eye.

Look at someone in the eye, but look at their left eye, and cheat it.

Then look the other side.

You just look at one of their eyes, and in the camera, it'll look as if you're looking directly down the lens but also looking at them.

And it's like a practical tip.

You're not wasting anyone's time.

Yeah, it's very spit and sawdust. He's a working -class guy, he's telling you how to do the functional thing.

Weirdly, I'm more working -class than you think because I'm from Slough and from the farm road in Slough next to the Mars factory.

I grew up on the biggest industrial estate.

If you forget the education and the current tax bill.

But that thing of I'm very aware of like, there's reputation in this character, There's how you are perceived.

It's very important to know how you're perceived.

You're very aware of how you're perceived.

There's also this character.

There's who you know you are, that thing within you and like where you've come from.

And the idea of like, I think people assume I went to a private school.

People just go, well, yeah, probably.

No, of course not. But I kind of know that, but you go, you can't change how people just have that.

Yeah, but it's okay to lean into that.

I think as long as you know.

Yeah. Reputation management's an interesting one that people have. I think so many people are concerned about what other people think of them, not who they are.

I had Dry Creek Dwayne, did you watch that one, the guy with the wrangler horse dude with the big beard?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, and he just had this fucking lovely line where he said, I like me, I'd buy me a beer.

I thought, what a fucking beautiful self -assessment.

I like me, I'd buy me a beer.

But he hadn't arrived there overnight.

It took him a long time to become the sort of person that he liked.

And I guess some people start further off, maybe some people are more scrutinizing around who it is that they feel they need to become before they would buy them a beer.

But I thought that was a lovely internal metric of a place that we should all want to get to.

I want to like me. I want to be the sort of person that I'd buy a beer.

Yeah. I'd buy you a beer.

It's been great. I want to know what relationship people should have with their inner critic.

I think it's, I don't know, I think it's very healthy, isn't it?

It's very healthy to have an inner critic, but it's also it's the there's the golden rule and then there's the platinum rule.

Right. There's the treat others as you want to be treated.

And then there's the treat yourself as you treat others.

Most people are very kind.

Like, you're nicer to me than you are to yourself.

Like, if you said the shit you say to yourself, to me, we wouldn't be friends.

And I think that thing of like the inner critic has to be...

But as long as it's process -driven, I think it's very, very healthy.

It's like imposter syndrome.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

I feel like an imposter for a while.

As long as it gives you...As long as you can get that to a granular level where it gives you something to work on.

Like the inner critic can't just be, it can't just be like, that's bad.

It's got to be, oh, that that didn't work, so we need to change it.

Or that one's, that one's not going to work, so we're going to write something new.

so it has got to be something that is like you're working towards something.

You're aiming up, and I think criticism is very important.

Walt Disney used to do this thing where he had three rooms, you know this thing of one for creativity and one for management – like how would you do the idea?

And then it was only in the third room that you were allowed to be critical.

It's a kind of fun idea of like going to sort of compartmentalize.

Well, I do think that thing of like never refuse the muse.

If you're working in anything creative, just write it down.

Something comes to you, you just yeah.

Inspiration is perishable, act on it immediately.

Yeah, Tim Ferriss says the world rewards the specific ask and punishes the vague wish.

And I think that sort of inner critic voice can expand out into I don't feel good about the thing I did?

Okay. Well that's probably the first place that everybody gets, I'm not really too sure about why but there's some sense of discontent about something that just happened or something I'm about to do.

Probably very normal.

You don't know where it's coming from and you don't know what it's about and you don't know what to do to fix it.

Okay. So how about we get away from the vague critic and we move toward the specific coach with regards to this.

Okay, so what precisely is it that you're concerned about?

Well, I don't feel fully prepared for the presentation I've got to give tomorrow.

Okay. Is that fair?

Do you know that it's true?

Do you think that you haven't prepared enough?

Well, I actually have prepared quite a lot, to be honest. I think this is probably just my fear, trying to be sneaky, and sort of turn itself into a way that I'm gonna believe it.

All right. Well, what are you gonna do about it?

Well, I'll just check my notes a few more times and actually, huh, it seems like I do know this pretty well.

The inner critic, it's not often wrong.

Just, you could say it in a nice way.

You know, sometimes it's right, sometimes you fuck up, sometimes it wasn't good enough.

And that's okay, it's like, it's the, it's that idea of like going, it's not repetition, it's iteration.

Lots of different, you know, doing the same thing again and again, doesn't make you better, but tweaking it.

And knowing what to tweak, you have to listen to an inner critic.

I think the... is it homosie?

Homosie is so good for quotes.

But I think it was self -confidence without evidence is delusion, some version of that.

Confidence without competence is delusion.

Yeah. That's so true.

And you do meet people along the way that have that incredible confidence or they sort of exude that and then they don't have the confidence.

And you go, well, no you need to be able to.

So finding that I think it's very...

I think without that inner critic, I think we would all be kind of delusional wandering around going.

Yeah, you know... Yeah.

George says, there's someone with half your talent, but five times your self -belief making ten times the money.

Yes. and that's true for every British person, there's an American.

Exactly. For the perennial overthinkers, reframing this very well -trodden landscape of inner criticism.

A lot of the way that you can look at that is, I'm fragile, my self -belief exists on a knife edge, it feels like I'm tightrope walking confidence, perhaps.

I think a better way to look at it is you're not fragile you're just finely tuned.

And in the same way as a Ferrari can go really really fast, especially around a track.

But if you don't treat it very well it's probably going to break down quite a lot actually.

If you treat it really well, it's still going to have a couple of hiccups and days where it doesn't fully operate rightly.

But you're not fragile, you're finely tuned is a nice refrain.

It's so easy to be kind to other people, and sometimes so difficult to be kind to yourself.

I think you wouldn't let someone else speak to a friend like that.

You just wouldn't stand for it.

And yet you're in a cristia.

You're just like, yeah, yeah, say terrible things to me.

Just accept it as it comes.

Yeah, that idea on you had position and disposition, this has happened a couple of times.

I misremember things that guests tell me, and then I write about the thing that I misremembered, and what you realize is that you've actually built on something that they didn't mean.

And I think I told you about this before, but I'm gonna tell you about it again.

So this is after our first episode, 18 months ago, something like that?

My chat with Jimmy Carr a few weeks ago inspired an idea.

I've been reflecting on how your trajectory is way more important than your position.

If you're number two in the world, but last year you were number one, that is way worse than sitting at number 150 but being on a huge upward slope from 300 12 months ago.

There's a few reasons for this.

recent bias, if your value is increasing right now, that means you have to be popular at the moment.

By looking at recent trajectory you are selecting for only the few people who are trendy right now which is all we can remember.

We can also romanticise where someone will be in future if they're currently hot stuff, how high might they climb, who knows maybe to the top, maybe even beyond the top.

Humans struggle to realize that everything is temporary, including growth and decline.

Instead it's easier to label people as heroes and losers based on what we know of them right now so we don't have to predict a messy future?

There's an old saying saying that there's three types of people on the ladder, one at the bottom, one in the middle, one at the top.

Which one is the best to be?

The one that's still climbing.

Yeah, no, I think, I think it's fantastic.

It's very well put.

Yeah, I think that especially in show business.

Trajectory really seems to be such an important metric.

And it's like you could be half the size of some other comic, but they've been around 20 years and they always sell out at the arena, so who cares, it's like.

Novelty, dopamine, this is new, recency bias.

Yeah, I think there's a thing this year where Oasis are playing, and it's a big deal.

People are very excited about it.

And I think Coldplay are doing, I think it's 10 or 11 nights at Wembley Stadium.

Everyone's like Chris Martin.

Bored of you. You've been around for ages.

Yeah, well of course you are.

A big band. But it's not like an event culturally in the same way that OASIS coming together is.

There's a narrative to that and a trajectory of kind of where they are.

And Coldplay have just been steadily...

Listen, and if Taylor Swift does 15 nights next year it'll be a… Of course.

Of course. Accepted.

So that thing of other people getting excited about it.

And I think, I don't know what it feels like to be, you know, in Coldplay at the moment.

And maybe people aren't making as much fuss.

I hope they're celebrating.

I hope they're taking time to go, this is fantastic.

It's the question again of what happens when you arrive.

Let's say that the things that you want to have happen, happen.

What then? Okay, I will be happy when I get to do Wembley.

Ah, but no, I need to run it back because I need to prove that it wasn't a fluke.

It's gotta be two nights at Wembley because that's the reason the gold medal didn't feel right because it could have been a fluke.

So I need to do it twice to prove that the first one wasn't a fluke.

And well, cause the three.

Or is it a process thing where they just go, yeah, keep doing what you're doing, keep doing what you're doing, keep, you know, if it's, you know, however you want to frame it, you know, if you're hard charging, you're like, if you're working hard because you go, well, this is, this is an opportunity.

it's what I like to do.

I you know, as I've reached whatever level of micro -niche degenerate fame, success thing that I have done.

I think it's okay not to do the throat clearing on that.

The British, the British person in me is.

As I've reached this level of success, it's okay to say that.

Thank you. As I've reached this level of success.

Yeah. The thing that I've realized is If you create all of the external accolades that are associated with success but the thing that you have done to get there is not fully aligned, the success feels unbelievably hollow.

And this is not something that I've done with the show.

But you see it in micro wobbles when episodes that I'm really passionate about, it's someone that I wake up on the morning and I'm like, I cannot wait to speak to this person, this is gonna be so fucking cool, today was one of those days.

And then there's other ones where I go, yeah, this time I'm gonna be interested in talking to this person.

I'm not super fired up.

Even if the other episode that I wasn't super fired up about does 10 times the place or 100 times the place, it's the base of number one on Spotify and it does all of this stuff, like, ooh, it was okay, I guess?

Like it was fine -ish, but it doesn't feel the same as something that's 1 % as successful but much more existentially aligned.

And again this is another unteachable lesson that success derived from something that isn't authentic doesn't feel like success.

Well it's it's slightly that thing of like what's the you know money, money it won't give you happiness unless you earn it.

Like a lottery win doesn't mean anything.

It tends not to bring people happiness because they didn't earn it.

But if you earn it, then it's it's got a meaning.

It's like there's no benefit.

I'm sure I could get some kind of helicopter to fly me to the top of Everest and have a look around.

No one does that because there's nothing in it.

The view isn't... I'm sure the view is great, but it's the climb is the thing.

And the idea of going – the episodes that really resonate with you and are important to you and you go well that's giving you direction.

That's the gift of going oh more guests like that, less guests like that.

And then you're not looking and the metric that you're using is the feeling.

So it's the vibe and you're not looking at the figures and going well that went through the roof but it's not.

I didn't want to talk to that person.

To resonate in the same sort of way.

For your listeners as well, I think it's actually very important to have the balance.

What you don't want to do is...

it's not audience capture, but it's...

you're feeling a certain way at the moment and you go, right well I want to talk to these people.

And you could be siloed into just, okay well I'll just talk to these guys and it could just be health and fitness.

and then someone comes on the talk about economics you go this is boring I'm not really interested in in money in that way so whatever but the audience might be and then it might awaken something in you and you'll ask more interesting questions of that person then they would have got somewhere else so it is that thing of like going actually the for me certainly the idea of this show is that is quite a broad church and if you don't keep on split testing guests that are yeah, no maybe I'll chat to them I might be that might be something.

You're not necessarily the best judge of what you're going to enjoy right it's I kind of think and maybe this is the same when it comes to the comedy stuff too to avoid being too stagnant.

I think there's been a bunch of specials that I've seen recently some of which have been wow that's like that's really really good others where you go I kind feel like this guy did this thing before and maybe this is a bit repetitive?

Well, there's a balance, isn't it, of like, it's growth, but also in service.

So you go, I always think, you know, comedy specials, you go, yeah.

But it's, all my comedy specials are exactly the same and totally different.

It's me and it's 200 jokes in a row.

And that's the thing, how much crowd work you put in there and what kind of jokes.

It's as funny as I can be.

And I think if I released one, and it was a heartfelt story about love, people go, well, that's not...

No, I didn't... Too much of a departure.

You can do a little bit of talking about stuff that is meaningful to you within that, but you've got to serve as well.

So it's not all for you, it's for the audience.

Yeah, it's an interesting one.

I certainly think that if you feel like substantially aligned with stuff, the more that you do that, the less you're going to feel like, the more you're going to feel connected to the successes that come along with it.

I just think that there is that thing of like, the success in whatever term that is, whether it's a financial, lifestyle, feeling, whatever, it's a lagging indicator of good decisions you made A long time ago.

Seven years ago. I'll do three shows a week.

I don't know when you made that decision.

Yeah, it's insane. It's an insane work ethic.

And that's me saying this.

It's like it's a lot of prep to have to do.

It's a lot of work to put in.

It's a lot of reps, but my God it's paying off.

Yeah. Stubbornness is a, and consistency, stubbornness or consistency is a hell of a performance enhancer.

Just. It's the one.

In the one way, and you've spoken about this too, how are you presuming that you're going to be able to beat somebody who does one thing if you're doing two things.

At the very least you need to be twice as good in order to be able to keep up just with where they're at.

In order to be able to beat them, you need to be like two and a half times as good.

Yeah, and you see people that are spreading themselves incredibly thinly and they're taking, I suppose it's that thing of like, the things you won't do coming back to that.

The opportunities that are presented to you in show business, the things that you could be distracted by, the invites you get, the stuff you could go to.

And you go, yeah but I've got to go to work.

This is another one of those insights that I think people early in the journey need to be aware of.

Essentiaism by Greg McKeown was a huge influence on me.

Doing less but better, the highest point of contribution.

what is that?" and very, very offensively get rid of all of the rest of the things.

But if a person watching this who is trying to get more clients than they have now as a personal trainer or a person that's writing on the Internet and wants to get more opportunities to go and do live speaking or whatever it is that your goal is, as you continue to get better and better and better at the thing that you do, more opportunities are going to come along which means that your no's need to be more discerning not less.

So you have this weird inversion where as more opportunities come along that are better, that only 18 months ago you would have begged to have had the opportunity to be in the room to have pitched to have been able to say yes Sue, you now need to be able to say no. Dave Chappelle had a great line on this like I think someone told him very early on your only power in show business is no. He did a thing on uh series two of the Chappelle Show.

I'm not sure if this is a known thing, I'm sure I can talk about this.

Um on the second series of the Chappelle Show, they were in negotiations and he said um make me an offer and if I don't like your opening offer I'm walking.

It's great. Someone gave me that advice years ago like when I had a proper job, They said, if you get offered an amount of money for a job, whatever it is, don't even look at it, just write back and go, I'm a little bit disappointed.

Don't even look at what the offer is.

Just go, I'm a little bit disappointed.

Doesn't matter what the number.

It helps if you don't look, because you think, I can't say I'm a little bit disappointed.

But it kind of works.

Jimmy Carr. Ladies and gentlemen, Jimmy, you're awesome, man.

I love you. And thank you for coming to see me.

thank you for staying for an extra day.

So I know you've got some other goal to, right?

I think, I think, I think, you know, I like the show.

Proud to be a small part of it.

I appreciate you, man.

Until next time. Lovely.

Take care.

[The Art of Mastery, Boredom, and Finding Meaning: A Conversation with Jimmy Carr]-[#953 - Jimmy Carr - Decoding The Secrets Of A Meaningful Life]

📋 Summary

The Power of Signal vs. Noise

Embracing Boredom as a Creative Catalyst

The Philosophy of Comedy and Performance

Success, Status, and the Hedonic Treadmill

The Responsibility of Parenthood and Legacy

The Importance of Earnestness and Authenticity

Conclusion: The Value of the Climb

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript