I'm my Boris, and this is straight talk. I have the career I have because of the brain that I've got, But this brain that I've got nearly killed me. I was a very anxious kid. I remember hiding under the bed trying to get away from something, but I couldn't get away from it because it was in my body. And then sometime around the age of fourteen, I found this magical elixir that made everything kind of just kind
of turned down. You know, at first it was fun, then it was fun with problems, and it's just problems, all right, And I couldn't stop the problems. There's this loud zoo line, be careful of the direction that you were headed. You may just stand up there. And it was very clear to me that I know when it ends. I was drinking to blackout since yeah, since I was fourteen to win thirty six. Wow. Yeah.
When I see you in television, you look like a healthy, well put together, you know, like a competent, great performer.
Well. I work was always the respite, though. When I'm on camera, God, bliss man, all the anxiety. Everything's quiet. I'm in it, man. Everything else is hard. That's the easy part. Well into straight to a mate, Mark, I'm thrilled to be here.
First question for you, apart from a mean question for you, mate, but first question for you is, when I was doing my research your name's Andrew, was was where does Asha come from?
That's pretty out there, like it is. It's the Hebrew word for happiness. Really, yes, and it's quite a long story. I'm not I'm not the only person to have changed my name as an adult. You're the son of immigrants. I'm pretty sure that they were known to their colleagues by a name that their mother didn't give them. Yeah, totally.
Well, like all my uncle's names, for nothing to do with their Australian name.
Precisely. Both my parents changed their names better with the mag The Lennar became Rufe. Yeah. And Michel my dad, who's eighty today. He was born on d Day. Wow, that's a heck of a story that one. He Ye he was he became Michael. Yet. I'm pretty sure you've got kids, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So you've changed your name. There's I've changed my name. Everyone, every man who's got a child has changed their name. There's a name that only one person or two people in the world call them,
and it changes who they are Dad. Yeah, when you get called dad, it's a name that only this I'm not called pop. Well even better, when you're called this name, it changes who you are as a person, and it changes what you're about to, changes how you relate to this person, and it changes the values that you have and that your actions and values away from that person. As I'm sure the same thing happened with happened with my stepdaughter, right, didn't I did not even my biological
it happened with my stepdaughter. My actions and my value is changed completely once this person came into my life, all right, So names are really really important. There was a I'm not necessarily believing in any kind of interventionist god or anything, but there was an experience that I had with a shaman who said, oh, like, if you change a name of change your life. I'm like, I can't help, can't hurt. I'll give it a shot. And so privately I kind of did it. And there's a
lot to be said. I think it's more of a kind of nominated determinism kind of thing. The way I saw myself changed publicly, it was definitely a delineation between
drinking and using and sobriety and it happened during that period. Yes, absolutely, and it was an opportunity as the man that mentors me through my journey of In our Super Secret Sober Club when we talk about, you know, things that happened when I was still drinking and using and using alcohol and things like this, said, well, the good news for years you don't have. You get to live the rest of your life not being that guy anymore. So putting a name on that guy really helped me. Is it
actually a technique or is it a belief? In other words, is it.
A technique to do identify yourself from this hell then brought us?
When he steps out on stage, people don't so cee A L V I N B No, they say s N double opd O double jer zy. You know who you are the way you talk about yourself, the name you put upon yourself changes who you are outwardly. I think it's an internal thing. Absolutely. Missus Carrington, Miss sorry, Miss Carrington left at the end of grade too. See him as Carrington, have a good summer, kids, no worries. Three months later, Missus Smith, same lady, different clothes, different aircut,
completely different way of being with us. She got married over the summer, so she changed the name and it changed who she was.
It's a very interesting as an what you've just talked with and is a great example of plasticity neuroplasticity.
In other words, we are.
Who we believe we are, and then we can continually affirm in our own mind, throw actions and throw other people's actions to us that we are that individual. So that becomes our story that if you want to change who you are, you can.
Yeah, that's what the brain can do. The brain has how that every single one of us have, but not many of us tap into it. I've been very sick in my life, so sick that I needed to be on two kinds of antipsychotics and NSRI and an SSRI. So I knew that my brain could change the way it felt about things, but at that point my brain could not do it all right. I needed those meds
to loosen those switches up again. But there's the superpower that all humans face, so that when we have a healthy, is healthy, healthier brain, we can choose how we feel about something. We decide. No one, no one makes you feel happy or sad. You're the one that chooses that. You may not realize you're choosing it. It may be based upon something that happened to you fifty years ago, but ultimately you decide it and you can decide to do something else about it if you take the time to
investigate it. And it starts with two super powerful words. I'm noticing. I'm noticing my breath quicknick, I'm noticing my tummy feels a bit strange, and noticing my hands are Oh, I'm getting angry. Ah, I'll take a moment here. Don't want to do or say something that I don't because last time this happened, I said something or did something that I made a lot of problems. So it just starts with noticing, just takes It's like doing burpies for
your brain, all right, just noticing. Like everyone fucking hates burpies, man, you know what, because they're fucking good. It's the reason you see nobody on the rowing machine at the gym because it's the fucking hardest thing in there and it'll do everything in twenty minutes. You're fucked. Yeah, same with this, Like I'm noticing. That's literally like doing burpies for your brain.
It's been a minute, Just a minute, put a time on your phone and just notice everything you can hear, and then start to notice everything you can feel in your body, your socks and your feet, your shirt on your back, each behind your ear, the weird little thing you got on your knee from playing touch on the weekend, whatever it is. Just what you're doing is you're getting your brain to get used to having the observing mind come into the playing game rather than just the thinking mind.
That's just reactionary the thinking mind. The thinking mind is like I used to have a yellow lab. Shees white lab. She's the best thing ever. When she and a frisbee got together, was brilliant, all right. The thinking mind is my old lab chasing that frisbee. The observing mind is sitting on a park bench watching that lab chase the frisbe on to a freeway. All right. But the thinking mind cannot see that chasing the frisbee right now is not a good idea. But the observing mind can. The
observing mind go oh wait and bring it back. And getting our observing mind into the game. That takes practice, takes work, But once you start getting used to it, once becoming more automatic, that can really really change things for you. That's mad.
I'm an often too about the O being an observer or being a participant, and you know we're going to do both, but too often when we're overly participating, we
forget to observe. And you know, that's when issues arise with things drop down between the cracks because we forget about we forget to do the broader strategic things because we're just doing tactical things like we're going to work every day, getting up every day, going to work every day, kissing someone weo'red by patting the dog, giving the key is a hard go to work, work, work, work, get home, have you dinner, go to bed, blah blah, and we
forget about making an observation. Wait a minute, what the hell am I doing here? What's what's what's actually my strategy around all this? And I wouldn't mind parking that for a bit, and just I'll come back to because I want to ask you a question.
You were born in England? Was yep? How long were you did you live in England?
Baby?
Yeah? So like three months? Four months? So he came to a straight straight after that. Yeah, yeah, okay, So in Australia were brought up, which brought up in which part of us a straight? I did the well, the sand pit kind of stuff in Adelaide and then everything else in Brisbane. Right, So, at what point did you realize.
That you would have a well that you wanted in fact a career in media or was that not something you did earlier on?
I was a very anxious kid, which means what like crowds, like aren't out socializing everything, like real like big anxiety and like big feelings in my body, feelings I couldn't escape from. I remember hiding under the bed trying to get away from something, but I couldn't get away from it because it was in my body. You know, this feeling, this horrible feeling was in my body my time. I got to Bruis where my parents went to see like
what's going on in the fire. My parents are both doctors, so they understand someone's up here beyond their expertise, so they sent me to as what's going on with a five year old that you sent them to a psychiatrist like that, Well, that's what was happening. It was like probably the one there. It was nineteen seventy nine, and there was this fear and this kind of anxiety that was just with me everywhere, And I guess, like, I'm
not alone in doing this. It's semmed from a lack of I think, looking back at as an adult, a lack of patrol over a situation, and later on as I got when I got diagnosed with social anxiety, one of the symptoms was being big, being really big, because if I'm terrified of your thought about me, at least I want to try and be in control of your thoughts about me, so I'll give you at least something
quite large to react to. Therefore I know what you're reacting to, rather than just having to deal with what you might be as in a performance, I would talk loudly and elevators and I would make it. I was, yeah, that was like German stuff. I was a child. It's just like big. I was about the age of eight when I went to a like a like I said,
I don't believe it. An individual is gone. Probably a lot of it has to do with the amount of it that was rammed down my throat at the schooling that I had, and it certainly didn't make sense to me then makes less now, But every Friday, we would have a play that each class would take a turn to make a play or a sketch or something about I don't know, picking up rubbish at the schoolyard or you know, whatever you do, don't masturbate A cheese is
always watching like that kind of school, right, And so I walk out on stage. It was our turn. I walk out on stage and there's just like three hundred promocycool kids, just like cooy car black like that. And the line was something along the lines of don't commute usin poured it in the bin something like that. It was about picking up r wish it was a break. And then I laugh And that was like the first high that I was like, ah, because all this feeling
only happened when I was on stage. The reaction of that response only just unleashed the thing in me, all the anxiety. Everything just looked quiet. It was like, oh, this is amazing, because what am I. I'm in control here, I'm talking. You're all quite amazing. I know what happens next. This is brilliant. And so I kind of chased that. So my coping mechanism kind of became my career. But to be able to be on stage. Music was the thing for me, so singing and playing you had to
have some level of proficiency. So I did quite dedicate myself to at least the illusion of proficiency, but I did. I always got something out of connecting with people, connecting with an audience. There was just really something about that, whether it be the non verbal communication of music or through a song, or just any time that I was able to have this collective experience with people on the controller. At the time, yes, it was, and I had a
very strange relationship to my self worth around that. In sobriety, it's very different now. I'm going to go back before sobriety though, So I'd imagine then if you're a young.
Man and you're particularly if you're a teenage or late teens or early twenties or something, and you all of a sudden have a realization that's what you've been doing the whole time, you know, Like.
If I didn't realize that until I got better to do, then why did you get sick? What was what was the cause of seeing this was not a realization, it kind of it was just a clearly we come out fifty percent, you know, we don't just look like both my parents were refugees at one point. You know, into
generational trauma is a real thing. We come out fifty percent all of it, generally, the sciences that we're fifty percent what our parents give us as far as our jumpiness or whatever, and we're fifty percent what we then experience or happened in our lives. So, you know, I've got two people who it was twenty four years apart, the very same Russians you know, kicked in their doors
and they had to get out of there. And so there are two people who went through life going on under the authorities in a state can come and take everything away, and that's kind of how they went through life. And they're not alone in our country of people who've had that experience where in the state turns against them. So they were, you know, mindful and weary, and they had a way of being and that kind of rubs
off on you know. My father lost family in the Holocaust, and you know, so there was this thing that was very fucking real for both of my folks, and it's hard to not pass that on to your kids. You know, my mum was on the road for just walked from Lithuanialy down to Germany at one point, and it's hard to not have those things pass on vicariously to you to your children, So I can only speak to myself. It was that was a part of it. There was
always this anxiety, always a thing. And then sometime around the age of fourteen, I found this magical elixir that made everything kind of just kind of turned down a little bit, and it was I think it was power, was bitter power, sorrybody, Wally Lewis, there was a time where it was Alan Bond's beer.
Alan Bonder had power, he sure fucking did, totally, and then Wally was one of the big promoters of it.
Yeah, well truly they edited the sorry Bondie out at some point. I think you must have done softly. How's that fucking great line? You only get white Alan Bond in your life, and I've had him twice. Fucking carry pack a Line's amazing. It's not so similar to your scenario with the exactly great man. It's like, I'm so stoked for you. That happened anyway, So yeah, it was that, and then I had this beer, and then ah, everything kind of got a little bit quieter, quite a lot quieter.
And I you know, if I'm holding up a glass for people who are listening, the glass is half literally, this is great, the glass is half full. I'm like, ah, it's been quiet because I've drunk this much. I reckon by the time I get down to that on the next one, it'll be a whole lot better. But I never got there. Never You never drank much more? Oh no, no, no, I kept going yeah when that was always the lie, Yeah, that it'll be better, yeah, when you're on the next one.
But did it get better when you had some more? I mean initially, like like, so, what's your reaction if you drank too much? But what who would I should become?
I have a I have an allergy to alcohol. If I drink, I break out and fun with side effects include divorce, financial ruin, Chris was really other things? Yeah, oh yeah, and you like how bad does it get there? Like, look, I have so essentially like my stepdaughter she's got a peanut allergy. Thankfully it's not anaphylactics anaphylactic. But there's a kid at my younger stay care that does right EpiPens
at arms reach like defibrillators at a gym, right, just everywhere. Right, And if your grandkids, we'll go into a party and that had peanut butter on their fingers or hands, and you know, it's like, we've got to wash your hands, mate, because you know little Jimy's got. You would never dream anything a molecule that shit anywhere near a toddle because it could kill them. Similarly, if a molecule of alcohol
gets into my body, I have an allergic reaction. I can no longer decide how much good amount to drink, and my sense of right and wrong changes, A sense of judgments goes, my sense of right and wrong, my moral senses change, and only once that and I cannot stop that reaction once it start. It's like literally speaking to someone who's I don't know, breaking out in hives. Can you please stop breaking out and welts your skin from contact with a cat or something like. They can't
stop their body doing that. Similarly, I can't stop it once it starts, so not going near it is really really important. And only once the reaction wears off, sometimes twelve hours later, sometimes you know, the next afternoon, two and afternoons later. I turned around like, who the fuck said that? Who did that? Oh? Fuck? It was me? And I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't stop it. And it became very very clear that every day started to become the same. I was no longer in I was
no longer able to make the choice. The choices were now being made for me. The days were just becoming very very repetitive. That the drinking was getting earlier, and you do it every day? Oh yeah, yeah by the end, Yeah, it had been years since I could remember the last age and drink, And the days just kept getting the same, and the drinking was getting earlier, and it was getting worse. And no matter which way I tried, like, oh, I started with beer and ended with tequila. This time I'll
start at to quiller. It ended with be it no, no, no, the same thing happened no matter what, no matter which way I tried to play it. Oh, I don't drink beer anymore. I buy sixty dollar bottles of Read, up by one hundred dollar bottles Read because I'm a fucking connoisseur. No, I'm just a fucking drunk, drunk man. And I couldn't stop it. And I was lucky really lucky. I tried to stop a bunch of times, like why did you try to stop? Did you know? Because I could see
it was like I was unable to control it. And I could tell that, you know, at first it was fun, then it was fun with problems, and then it's just problems, all right. And I couldn't stop the problems. It couldn't once the drinking started, I couldn't it just the next day was worse, and then everything's good, idea after half
a six packs. So all kinds of other things went in concert with that, and the people I was hanging with and the things I was doing, and the choice I was making was just like, this is what the fuck am I doing here? And I was living in America at the time, and I could see that, you know, it was prescription painkillers got involved, and Benzo's all you got there was a bad sleep. Yeah, it was a bad time. And I'd had friends who had died because
that's I hammered. They forget that they've already taken their you know, Benzo, and then they go and take another d and then that's it. See you and never wake up. And I tried it, Like I said, I tried a bunch of times to stop. I'd maybe get four weeks, six weeks up. They couldn't do it. And then there's this loutsu line. Be careful of the direction that you were headed. You may just stand up there. And it was very clear to me that I know where this ends.
This ends with me in prison, This ends with me losing everything, This ends with me dead. You know, I got one out of three. I managed. I got out losing everything, And it's probably the best option out of all of them. Bro. I was so fucking lucky. Man, I got so lucky. What was what would be the.
Can you have a memory of what was the lowest point? I mean, can you remember the streets of King's Cross on your own?
Oh? Man? It was just it was the same, just, you know, just being a blorous, belligerent person and vomiting on myself, humiliating the people I'm with, not knowing why people were upset at me. The next day, you know, blacking out. I was drinking to blackout since yeah, since I was fourteen, Like, well this is amazing, and I just kept to win. Oh thirty six, wow, yeah, yeah, twenty years, twenty two, Yeah, my god, twenty two and
I've ben't really lucky man. You just like when I see you in television, like you look like a healthy, well put together you know, like a competent, great performer. Parade of two thousand and nine look great. Tailoring and good hair and makeup can do a lot for you. Mark, No, but you had it all. You put it together quite well. Well.
My work was always the respite though. This is the thing, like I was saying before, when I'm on camera, oh thank god, bliss man, Like for other people speaking on a live TV camera and at the time, Monday nights, Australian Night all season, the first version of it, we're doing two point two two point four on a Monday.
The Good Old Day's on a fucking Monday, man, the pre GFC TV money and everything like like for some people that's terror terrifying six hundred people in the studio right for me, those thirty seconds, minute and a half are just listen, Like if you talk to Kelly Slater about his perfect tenant chokes, he'll be like his face will just go to this complete moment of relaxation, even though that wave could kill him like that, right, He's like I don't know. That's I'm in it, man. Everything
else is hard. That's the easy part. So being on the camera, you saw me. Your sample of my state of being was me and my most calm, safest place,
and so I guess that's it was. Once I got off air, that's where you know, I would basically I'd go to the green room, have one and a half drink so I could drive home, and then steal bottles from the bar and then because you know, the best kind of drinking is the drinking that you do by yourself in your apartment, because ultimately, the amount that I was drinking to feel okay to leave the house started
to be really really dangerous. And then when I was home, the amount that I was drinking just to make the noise in my head go quiet was just bonkers, and I just I knew I was. I had to stow up. Do you know this?
Do you think this is sort of prevalent in the entertainment industry, because it's funny. I was just thinking to myself about stuff like when I get up on stage, Like if I'm doing a speech, and prior to getting up on the stage, I'm not nervous. I just don't want to do it, and I sort of semi resent it for some reason.
It's silly. But once I'm up in stage, I love it right, And then when I got.
Off stage, I'm exhilarated because obviously must be a whole lot of chemicals fine around my.
Head because you're connecting with people, Yeah, or am I controlling it off? Wonder about it? It's interesting me. But do you see lots of people in the media game who are like that? Is it a thing? I haven't wondered about it because a few media people and they're similar me. Okay, So firstly, I can help you with the pre stage thing because I still do this regularly,
and I have learned so many fantastic coping mechanisms. If you've watched me on Telly from twenty ten on, you have seen me do relaxation techniques on live national television. Now do I breathe? I do muscle stuff that no I've taught. I've learned these really interesting things that no one cannot be detected on camera. And unless I tell you what I'm looking what you're looking for, you won't even see it. There's a last time I was on Q and A, you can see me doing it. I
talked about it on my podcast. I'm like, this is what I'm doing, and you can see me do it five times during the CONTs. Yeah, during the set during there on Q and A with Chris Bowen and what's his face? The ex energy? But yes, so the look. I don't know, have you ever because everybody looks at people in TV and media and they, oh my god,
you know, they do it so easy, lah blah blahlah. Yeah, but people with different people everyone's got different brains, and different brains kind of all have a surface tension that brings them together around different careers. Okay, if you go and find I mean, if you go and say, for example, find the people who are the best ever with Excel spreadsheet formulas, probably a few of them are going to have a bit of trouble with eye contact, and that's
fine because that's where they go. People. Neurodivergence has always existed in society the whole time we've been here. Yet we have these schooling systems that with a limited budget, are trying to, you know, get the biggest amount of the bell curve. And there's people over here who can't stop jumping their knee like me. And there's people over here who are very different and they are the ones that get in trouble with that schooling, and there's all
of other ones in the middles to you. You're on a limited budget. You're trying to get the most cohorts possible. So I would say that you know similarly if you if you ever been in a room with more than one Moto GP writer, all right, there's small, kind of flighty like race horses, all right, because they have to be and that's their that's their brain. Their brain can
do that. That's and it has to be. There's a specificity around who they are, and so different people with different brains get they're fit for purpose precisely so.
And that's sort of my point, I think, maybe to somebody sending to media, we're all fit for purpose in that we are very good once we get in front of the audience.
I spent my whole career working with people who could not sit in a cubicle. Every cameo, every sorry, every camera operator, every audio guy, every you know, every field producer, every art department person. You have a chat to them, and that certainly after I've got my ADHD diagnosis, So I kind of learned a lot more about things. Every one of those people are like, oh good, I try to destop once goldn't do it and that. But that's
the bubble that I live in. You know, this is fine, But there are other people who they have a public service job. They get there at eight twenty nine, they're on at eight thirty, at four point fifty nine, they zip up their pencil case and they get on the freeway and they never think about it and they fucking love it and good for them, and well it's funny, as I said, And there's nothing wrong with being like this because as I said, fit not at all. You do love to do that.
Yeah, but olsouly you just means the word and you're a divergent. So do you think it's important, Well, there's any value whatsoever? And actually putting a tag on it at all?
I mean, I mean less and less. I think what I mean. Sure, we say adhd or on the spectrum of this s something now which caught and everything the spectrum though, but totally there's everything. I don't even know what the spectrum is.
I don't know who worked a spectrum out if they assessed every single person on the planet and any other place that might exist in the world. In the university today, no, But do you think can we just accept that everybody is different?
Absolutely different brains do different things. And that's if you're trying to get a cohort of people to the same goal, you're going to have to understand that a vast ninety percent of them are going to respond really well to the structure of whatever is you're trying to get them to,
whether it be doing a motorbile license or whatever. But there's been a couple of people on the edges might need a little bit here, might need a little bit there, and that's what they're going to need to get them there. But then you've got everyone's got the same outcome. It's when we start to leave those people on the ages behind, that's when we start to have issues that can compound later in life. When there's nothing more dangerous than a
man who's been left behind. Really, you know, someone who watches all their friends go forth and be able to complete things that he can't, and have relationships and make emotional connections that he somehow can't seem to be I understand why people get resentful about such things. That's a dangerous man, do you think then, users is interesting that when there's people on the edges, But what about people
in the middle, because they need an edge. So for me, people in the middle don't have any edge to them, and as a result of that, they may also be missing it. Because one of my experiences is that is that people that I know who have done very well generally speaking, speak like you. Now I'm serious.
My experience in business at least is the people who have been the most successful prolific. They prosecute, prosecute, prosecute.
In a good way. They speak quickly, they have a mastery of the language.
They look like they're really confident, but they're probably not that confident, but they come across as really confident and in control, and they control the conversation by speaking quickly and elegantly at the same time. Which is that's you, I mean, and in some people myself, well he's got ADHD, but he gives a shit. We don't have to have a put a label on it. I just think that we are all completely different, every one of us.
There is no middle. You know, you talked about the bell curve. I mean, it's I think there's no point actually having a bell curve. I think just there's just an excellent y graph and there's just dots everywhere, and they're all over the joint. I can't actually draw a bell curve. We're all different completely everywhere.
And let's not put labels on anyone else, in particularly ourselves, because what happens is we get forced to put a label on ourself and all of a sudden, you're sort of you're defending a lot. I mean, especially for you, a younger person, when when we get older, we can deal with anything pretty much, but when you're young, you think, fuck, I'm so different, How am I going to deal with this shit?
You know, I've had a few people on with you know.
The similar diagnosis is that you have and we and they're all successful. You're successful once you work your shit out and become well, well, this is the thing.
Like I have the career I have because of the brain that I've got, grand fit for purpose. But this brain that I've got nearly killed me. And the only reason that I'm able to keep going and have a relationship with my wife and my kids, and you know, try to, you know, put a something of good and value into the world is because I work hard to make sure the bits of my brain that don't serve me don't take over, because that's happened to me, and I was very It was really dangerous and I got very,
very very sick. So having been there was a magazine back in the day. There were shiny things. They held them in your hands. You open them like this. You looked at stuff. You couldn't zoom on it. But I was on the cover of Men's Health magazine. I had a six pack. I had a six pack for about eighteen hours. Mark it was fucking hard, all right. You don't accidentally get it. You don't accidentally wander around and then find yourself on the summat of Mount Kilingajarro. You very,
very deliberately do this thing, all right. Similarly, we don't accidentally have good mental health. We have to deliberately cultivated. Similarly, we have to deliberately cultivate resilience. Now I'm not talking about I think about this quite a bit like resilience and vulnerability. People go, well, men need to be more vulnerable. But vulnerability is the opposite side of the coin to resilience. The extreme of that is fragility, and I guess in
being indestructible. All right, now, I have been both fragility, The smallest thing can destroy you. Indestructible, nothing can harm me. I haven't lost my I'll I haven't lost my house in three days, all right. I'm sitting at home just like gambling on internet poker and watching porn and drinking. But I don't have to deal with anybody, so I'm safe.
I can't have any good relationships, so I'm not very good for my career, and I'm starting to really erode everything any I can't make eye contact when I get to my groceries if I do, so, yeah, I'm safe, but it's not a fucking way to live. So but closer here, this is resilience. And you know, if we can build up resilience. So but if you're here, you're also super fragile, right because anything can fucking destroy you. But if we build up a resilience, then we are
open to being vulnerable. And this includes emotional resilience. Okay, I would love it if in high school we taught young men and young women how to get broken up with? All right, how do you be broke? How to break a relationship, how to be on the receiving end of
someone not wanting to be in a relationship with you. Yeah, I love it if that was a course that we did in grade nine, right, because that you know, if you have emotional resilience right, and you know, I'm really into this person, but there might not be into me. If you know, and we've all had breakups, it's taken me a long time to you know, get this part, get to this part, and if you know, it really sucks.
I really liked them, I really had. I had all these ideas about what we might do that really hurts. And now I'm seeing about a party with someone that I also know. Ah, that's really bad. But I know I'm going to be okay, and I know there'll be someone else out there for me if we have that, knowing that the next relationship we get into, we won't fear this loneliness, we won't fear this thing, we won't grasp and grab and smother. We'll be able to go
and be emotionally open and be vulnerable. Because the only way we can actually fall in love and have an open relationship, open communication and open loving relationship another person is if we hold in a hand. At any moment, this person could want to go. But that's what makes it amazing. This is why having kids is incredible, because it's unbelievable. You hold this tiny little human in your hand knowing you could die, so you hold this incredible love and fear in your hand at the same time.
And it's really important that we learn to do that more and more and cultivate this emotional resilience so that when things do show up that I destroy it.
When you went through the crappy period, what was it turn your life around? I meanly, was it a vent or was it an offer to come and do something?
They work which, but you're talking about when I got mentally ill. Yeah, well I drink and then that. But the drink and then the illness that I look, I got so lucky that I got sober first. How did you get sober? Why did you get surber? Well, because I was going to die. I knew I was going to die. I was like, I'm going to end up dead or something. This is I've got to stop this.
But I had Rick Rossman here the other day. Rick was telling me that he actually went and booked himself into a place.
All right, what did you do? I didn't. I had no idea. I grew up in Queensland. I had no idea what. Sobriety looked like, oh, we're drinking, I'll bring my gun boots, Like, we don't stop until some of
the vomiting through their nose. That's just kind of what there's country drinking, right, And so I didn't know any other way to be around other people, or to socialize or to what And slowly, over time, as my mates went to UNI and stuff like that, I could see them, you know, I could drink less and leave parties earlier and I'm like, what are you leaving for? It's just about to start. Everything's about to get amazing. They never did, And so like I didn't know how it could be.
And I was at this it was like I said, it was PREGFC. So I was making pre GFC money. All that's gone by the way. And I was at this party. I'm in the Caribbean, at this party on an island, as you do. And I was like, I can't even name the people that were there because it sounded like a fucking wank, but it was. I couldn't believe it. I was so myself, for it was just ridiculous.
And I was fucking blitzing myself because I didn't believe I belonged there, right, And I see this guy just moving through this crowd of people, like we're in Darlinghurst. If you go up the road to the bookshop, you'll find a book called Tom of Finland. It was like, if you're a kid and you're sketching pictures of the
perfect wave, you'll draw chopu or something this perfect barrel. Right, So Tom of Finland is like a cartoon version of the perfect leather man, huge big forearms and big hand, obamaustache and you know, just chin that could cut cake, and fucking there he is. Who's that? And he's this photographer, he's got his shot covers and this cover and that cover that I know, oh my god, and he's life for the party and sober, like, oh my goodness, I've
never seen it like that. How can you be so successful, be so delightful, be around all this and be okay. A couple of weeks go by, we're all back in Los Angeles. I got his number and I called him up and say, hey, man, you don't drink to you because no not anymore. Can you save me some of those meetings you go to? Yes, yeah, sure, we'll take it. And so the first meetings I went to were all
gay meetings. But I'm sitting there in West Hollywood in a room full of men, beautiful man, and I'm hearing some kid from Kansas with his mid Western accent tell my story. You know, he's twenty two. And I was like, oh, I'm not a special snowflake. All right, how deference to some people? Okay, all right, what do I do now? So I got really, really lucky that I saw this guy, because it's very much like I didn't know what it
could be. So say, I blindfolded you and brought you in here where, you know, opposite the Trup cafe and a darling host. But I said to you, okay, so what color are the cars on the street? You know they're out there. You can't there's a blank space in your head. I didn't know what to do to get from here to there, So I just had to trust these people. I was told, just find someone who's got what you want and do what they tell you, and that's it. So I found it pretty simple. Yeah, it's good.
I found a guy who he had been divorced, he had married again, he had kids, Yeah, his career again. I was like, what do I do? And I just did what he told me, because I had to come to you understanding that the best I could do, the smartest I could be, the cleverest I thought I was being had entered me up here. That was my ideas, my best thinking. It might be time for someone else's thinking.
And so once I started following what he told me to do, it was such a relief because it was no longer on me, and he took that weight for me for a while, and it was incredible. And so similarly, when I got really sick mentally, so I've been diagnosed with social phobia and generalized anxiety and well sort of PTSD. I got PTSD. I was in New York on September eleven. I've got PTSD. After that's a really weird one. She's not physically hurt, but you can't do anything that's super strange.
And so that all kind of compounded. And then somewhere around twenty fourteen, as is often the case, I was quite fragile all right. At the time, Bachelor hadn't been renewed, for a second season, and I wasn't hearing if it was or not. So I'm effectively I'm overseas paying rent out of my savings. I have no job. I'm in a relationship with a person that is really inappropriate for me. My father sick quite ill, and I had to pack a bag and get ready to get back on QF
twelve at any moment to get back to Australia. And then one day, just my brain just fucking popped man, and I started experiencing paranoid delusions. I started experiencing psychosis, episodes of paranoid paranoid delusion. Is there, Everyone's coming to get me? Right? For me, it was climate anxiety, which is a very fucking real thing. But what does that mean? Climbate anxiety? As far as I was concerned, the absolute worst possible case scenarios of climate change were happening today
and I'm the only one that knows about it. And I would start to see visions of the mountains around Los Angeles on fire, and I was like running usually made it better, so I run. I would leave my apartment in venice, run down, touchdown, I want to cap here, run back. That was ten case and as I'm running those little bay watch towers while they've got a concrete block underneath them at a chain connected to the bottom
of them. And as I'm running, I look over to my left and I see them kind of floating holding against this chain like this, and then gleitching back again, and then gleitching there it is, and back again, and I look up at the palm trees above me, and they're no longer above me. They're now kind of weird lily pads sitting on the surface of the ocean because the ocean is now five or ten meters above. Becomingly delusional, yeah, but it was. It was like glitching in and out,
and I was like, something's really fucking wrong. And every sign one of these things happened, it would be horrible pain, like awful, awful, awful pain running through my body. And it was happening like every five ten seconds. And I started to swat at the at them and kind of go oh every time it happened, and I knew I was in a lot of trouble. So I didn't even make it to the pier. I turn around and ran back,
and there's quite a sizable homeless population in Venice. It's even bigger now, but a lot of it's quite untreated mental illness. That's quite sad. The health system over there. It's such an incredible country, and I do hung look after their people. It's really sad. I was over there recently. People living in we're so fucking sad. And I'm running up behind this bloke. I'm trying to get home as fast as the can because I've got to call my guy.
And I'm running up behind this bloke and I can see from behind there's this plume of urine on the back of his pants. He's got no shirt and he's got no shoes on. His pants are way too big for him. He probably hasn't eaten for a week. And he's shuffling and he's spoatting, he's grunting, he's flinching. And I run up next to him and he's about ten years younger than me, and I was like, oh fuck, we're doing the same thing. But I know something's wrong.
And I ran home and I called my man David, and I said, bab you got to get out of yourusef. You cant get it. How you got to go to the mountain because the fucking was going to end. Dada da da, Have you got to go and get a gun? You're gonna go to go hide the moutain d d d da. He's like, mate, you need to get to a doctor now, like right now. He said, you're lucky because crazy people don't know they're crazy. You know something's wrong and you need to get to a doctor. But
I couldn't see my doctor for about three days. So that was a really hard, really hard.
You do lock yourself down A bigger pardon what you do if you had to wait three days, you lock yourself down.
Fu man. I went to I went to Veil on a ski trip with the mate. That was fucking horrible. It was horrible. Did you do that to distract yourself? No? I was booked in to go and it was already booked you know, as you know, as is often the case, you lie. No, I'm fine, I'm fine. You know, you lie to the people around yourself. It was horrible, horrible, horrible, And I finally got to see in my shrink and I had this beautiful EAMs reclinents like original season one
Eames reclined. It's beautiful. I find it' uncomfortable, but yes, I sit on the edge of his desk and I'm like, you just a big band. You get an esque feel full of all the FOD and can't fig go. And he's like, h you're experiencing paranoid delusions. And I was like my brain at first, I was like, oh, he fuck, he doesn't know, and I knew in that moment, I
don't know what it was. I got really lucky. Mark part of my brain went hang, hang on, and I able because I had learned to meditate as a younger man, and I had been meditating quite a bit to try to help myself, and I was able to just peel my brain away for a second look and go wait, wait a second, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait what happens if you don't believe him? And I was so lucky that but my first thought was he's in on it.
He doesn't know, And I can understand why people, you know, don't take their meads and then just leave because it's real, as real as you're sitting in front of me. And I ended up, you know, it took a while, but I ended up on two kinds of antipsychotics, and I was her eyes and her eyes and any presidents. Yeah, yeah, but like I was on a lands a pen and
uh that's the other ones. I can't remember the other one, Like anti psychotics are amazing because have you ever seen a like a plane that I have had to evacuate because it kind of caught fire on landing or whatever, and it's just this ball of foam with a finstick
in out, this giant ball of fire retarded fime. I was in so much trouble because after a while, and when you do the intro to this, you're going to need to do a bit of a you know, a bit of a just because I've learned through sharing my story people have blocked shit out and when you suddenly something will click for them, they might not realize, oh shit. So it's important that you preface your episode with you know, a bit of a you know, at least a lifeline
number and talking about the risk of suicide. So this feeling wouldn't stop, all right, This feeling was just on and on and on and on weeks months. They tried so hard, they helped me with different kind of concoctions and things, and about every ten to twenty seconds, this fucking flinch man like I was sit there in front of my psychiatrists doing this, like just flinching, and it hurts every time pain. After a while, your brain goes, hey, man, I've got this great idea. I've got this idea of
how I can make all this. You know, you want to make this stop. You want some peace and quiet, come here with me. And I had lost friends to suicide, like everyone, and I had never understood why. And in that moment, it wasn't a scary thing. It wasn't like I'm not into this person. I'm going to have to go and meet them and tell them we're going to break up, or I've got to fire someone, you know,
not TV fired, but actual fired. You know, you hide them because you love them, right, and you're like, you're going to be great for us, And it really hurts when you actually have specially if you come to know them, like you feel a thing inside you. Before it wasn't that at all. It was no fear about It was this, do you serf? Did you have a serf? Ye? All right?
Real cold day, you're not you're in your two three, not your five four right four five right, and you can't feel your hands and you're out there and you're like, oh, man, when I get home, that shower, that's gonna be the best. I'll get the CHACOOSEI on. But yeah, it's that that. Oh my god, that's going to be most amazing thing when I do that. And now, once again, I was so lucky that I was able to notice and go,
hang on a sec. My brain's trying to tell me that the world's on fire and I'm underwater right now and I'm glitching it out. Maybe this thought's also a distortion. Ah, And that's all it took for me to go, oh Jesus, fuck, that's it. And I just started calling people. And I was in the Middle East at the time, and I'm I just looked at the world mapp and saw who
was awake. And I started skyping my brothers, who were in Australia are a week at the time, and I just kind of waited till Los Angeles woke up, and I spoke to people. I don't know how many people I spoke to that night about what what did you say to them? Just just to connect. I needed someone else. I I just needed someone who was thinking about the world without my brain, someone who I needed to hear
what the world looked like through their eyes. I couldn't trust every piece of visual, auditory sensory input was being distorted, all right. And my body, my brain was telling me that these things were happening, and they I knew they weren't, but I couldn't resist that. It was so connecting and being in connection with another person and having that phone call. I made a documentary about suicide prevention and what was that called? It was called life and Death Life. Yeah,
it was great. We want to and where where? Where was that? Publish? Was on SBS? SBS? Yeah, we won. Essentially. The Oscar of Asia makes it easy to make a second And what was that about? The second film is about chronic paint, but that's not the story chronic pain in that in physical pain Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that was the first one there. It's about suicide professor prevention and we my brother who works in comms at the Ford Motor Company. He's an amazing guy. He interviewed about
that phone call and it was it's really interesting. He goes, I remember that, I remember you calling me. I remember that, And you know, the way he talked about it was kind of yeah, I just know I kind of had to stay with you for a bit, and because I knew that from getting sober. Process goals are always way easier to hold on to than intention goals. I should really go to the gym, and they never go, all right, but if you go. When I get up, I put
my shoes on, I walk out the routine. Yeah, as a process goal, if you have a process goal, you will you will act through your intention, all right. So I knew before you pick up a drink, pick up the phone, that's it. Yeah, So similarly, and I had done that, and I had known that my brain's not making good decisions right now. I need to see somebody else and ask them what should I do, and trust that they have my best interests at heart and just follow what they do. And so that's what I did.
So it's a point of a support group. But is that something you recognize? It was?
That is something that you just happened to fall into because you had close family and close floes.
I think because my folks would doctors, they kind of did model. This is bigger than my skill set. Let's go call well, it's call call the specialist. I don't know anything about tropical diseases. Let's call you know, Paul knows it. And that was kind of what they did, Like, this is beyond my area of expertise. I'll call someone
who I trust and I'll trust them. And that's you know, science is the what's the word science is a specific application of doubt, all right, essentially to try to find a agreed upon truth or reality that we can both make a choice from. And so my parents always did that, so we kind of knew as kids, like, oh, it's
bigger than me, I'll call someone that knows. But that was kind of you know, I'm a wide Australian boy, so I didn't want to to you know, I denied it for a long time, to the point even where my doctor said, here's the antisychotics, take them when you need them. Ah. If I don't take them, I don't need them. Ah. No, I got way worse.
Did you struggle with the fact that did you get through a pere where you struggle the fact that you thought you might have been you know, unwell, did you ever sort of fight that?
So yeah, I'm not I'm fine. I'm sweet. I got offered andy, so I've got alphidated to presence in nineteen ninety nine when I first to ride in Sydney. But I'm like, aoh, I just have a v I'll be fine. That's ridiculous, man, it's such if we were if we if alcohol is invented today, I doubt we would ever make it legal. It is such a fucking damaging drug. It is a socially acceptable, readily available, self administered depressant that is proven to be addictive and is a class
It's in the same class of cartinogens as asbestos. Right now in Sydney and Melbourne, we are digging up playgrounds everywhere because they're asbestos. Yet I don't think the bottle has got a digger anywhere near it. So how long you've been so before? What do you find somewhere? Fourteen years, two months and something, So you must be getting close to fifty or maybe already fifty. I just turned fifty.
Fifty years so you know, like you've really been sort of you said you start at fourteen, it's like thirty six years of like sort of been a fairly amazing at a personal level, not to a media career, but a fairly amazing journey.
And then you've done. But you say fourteen years? How many years? Fourteen?
And you started when you're fourteen, which is quite interesting, see forteen, And I'm just looking at you.
You look very fit. I trained really well, like I mean, because there's that part of the strategy around that out. I mean, you're you know, I think you're You're a bit older than me, A lot of them, not too much, No, a lot older. Sixty eight, so you're nearly twenty years old, and you when are you sixty eight? Fuck off? You look amazing. If I look like you when I'm sixty eight, I'll be thrilled. The thing is that I will be And I did these sums when Wolfgang was born. I'll
be your age when he graduates high school. And I know because I've been through it with g she's twenty now. I know how much it takes to keep up with a sixteen seventeen year old. I need to have ability, resilience, physicality, vitality. I have to. I have to because the the father. Yes, you can have it. Audrey raised Georgia by herself. All right, you can your partner, yeah, or my wife your wife, yeah you can, Yes, you can be a single parent.
George is her daughter. George is her daughter. Yes, and yes she is. How old is she? She's twenty twenty. She's an incredible kid, She's an amazing horn. Having a strong having a the absence of a father in a child's life is so fundamentally linked to poor outcomes for that kid. You know, you just you've got to fucking be there. You just have to. And here's my plan. Fit fit, fit, fit dead. Yeah, that's it, that's it. I saw Tracy Gram she're talking about wants to live forever. No, No,
I'm fine. I'm fine. Like there's going to be a point where I stop getting scans. I'd be like, yeah, and maybe at a point where you're not a fit or no longer. Well and again, but it's a bad fit for purpose. So fit means to you when.
You're let's say we're you're seventy or and or your and your step daughters having kids and you're let's call them, you've got grandkids, look after.
I want to be if I want to take my grandkids to jiu jitsu and myself. Okay, what's fit for purpose mean to you? At that point? I can walk stairs, toilet, ride on a bicycle, ride the motorbike, you know, be able to pick up a toddler when they're being a pork chop. Be able to do the school run, no problem, you know. And if you're if you ever tried to get a four year old that doesn't want to get into a car in a car, you can't do it. If you've I mean, I've got a fake hip and everything,
like you need to have meat on your bones. But plus our body. Only I trained to give my body the the neurotransmitters that I need to shift mood states throughout the day. All right. There's certain things that are released into our bloods dream but only happens when we're doing resistance training or kind of zone to as is known training. And if we don't do those, we're doing ourselves at a service. We're designed to move, we're designed
to lift. If we live a sedentary life, we actually have to deliberately move our bodies because our brains don't work properly. We don't digest food properly, we don't sleep properly. The endogenous things that can get released into my system, you must come around. I don't know if it's your thing, but the first thing that I did when I figured out that I was no longer having these two big
TV jobs. Was install a sorta in my backyard because I now have this little space where I just sit and think, expose myself, to deliberately expose myself to discomfort. And then I jump into the little pond, the little cold water thing, and I can feel the endogenous opioids just get released into my body does internally, which could be a drug. And I'll sit there and I'll look at the stars and I'll think about the photons that are hitting my eyeballs left that object before humanity even existed.
I'm like, I am so high right now, but naturally, naturally, and I haven't had to call anyone to buy any anything from anywhere, and I'm able to induce this state if but you can't sell that all right, and you can't market that, and you can't get the Queensland cricket team on a fishing trip in the word Sundays telling you that everything's going to be awesome if you crack a can of it all right, which is what I believed.
Marketing did a lot of jobs, you know, and having that knowledge is amazing, and certainly like when I'm in that and saut and I'm an idiot, you know, so I push it. I know, you know, I do a Paris like Paris was it called polyvagel breathing, which is five in ten out ye simulates your vagus nerve, which is how you can induce a calming sometimes breathing. So it hurts like fuck right, I mean there, it's like really uncomfortable, but I know by count two of the
X I'll be fine. And I'm good till about count seven of the xhale and then it starts to be really uncomfortable again. But then I know it's cool. Man, I only got like eight more counts and I'll be okay again. And just training myself to be with that is comfort. It never gets easy. But what it does is that things that used to shit me just don't
shit me the most anymore. And it's extraordinary. And it's all I'm talking about, is like I'm building my resilience and keeping my resilience, and I think it's so important as we get older, we have to very deliberately do it. My mum was a doctor until the day she saw her own X ray and went, yeah, I got about six months with the cancer diagnosed, so she diagnosed herself looking at her own X ray. She would always say, over the age of forty, make your body your hobby,
whatever it is. No model train sets, you know, golf, tennis, fucking gardening, whatever, you make your body your hobby. You've got to make the physical movement at part of your day. Commute under your own power when you can. We are designed to move, we're designed to lift. And as a certain point in life, as you know, if you don't look after it like you're probably the fittest of in a good way. I dare say you've got the genes. Bear in mind my grandfather, who was a doctor as
well in Adelaide, got off the boat from Lithuania. He was like, I only see old Greek guys. I don't see any old Irish guys or Poms or anyone. I only see old Greek guys. What is it this? And he so there's my Lithuanian grandfather eating feta jeese, and like, you don't discovery like this is in the fifties. Man, he kind of knew something was up because that was the only old men that he saw. So there's something in it.
Now I agree with that, but unfortunately, not unfortunate. But my mum's Irish, so my dad's greet my mother's Irish. But I but I guess hopefully I get other things from from my mother's.
But by this it's most it's diet, man, It's like anything.
And it's funny you should say, because it's mental health is a part of our overall health regime, so we tend to forget about it. But but for me, if I do physical health, my mental health will follow or can follow, as long as I'm not doing anything. You use word endogenous before. I think the exogenouscy is really important for me. It's about what I put in my body. Absolutely yeah, And because I can do the rest myself. If I put just the basics in, the good stuff in,
I don't need to have anything exotic coming in. I don't really need to have booze. I don't drink much anymore. I definitely don't have any drugs. I try to resist medications as much as I can, but obviously that you have to take some medications from time time because if you get ill, but just relying on your own body to produce what it is you need, we're so fucking efficient.
It's ridiculous. As long as we fuel ourselves properly, you've got to. You've got to, and on medications. I'm on meds now. I have the life I have because very very clever psychiatrists have come to help me. And that's the only like the life I have of the career I have. The relationships I have are because of the meds my mind. But the meds don't do the job all right. As a cyclist, anyone would be familiar with the great Lance Armstrong battles up the alp Do Wars.
You see any photos of him, and they learn their documentaries later on. You know that everyone is on the gear, But you see photo of Lance paddling up the alp Do wears. He's working his fucking balls off, right, Yeah, sure he's got everything running through his veins, but you still got to work hard to get the gold jersey. Right. Similarly, you can take the meds, but the meds don't make it better. The meds just to make it easier to do the actual work. So last night I'm there with
my big ring bound book. I'm doing all my writing. I'm doing. There's certain processes that I do that involve writing down. I do it in the morning when I have a couple of coffee before everyone wakes up. The stuff that happens every single day. So what are you doing now? You got your podcast? What's your podcast called? Oh? My podcast is called better than Yesterday? Because how many times a week, three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and
Fridays three times a week, three times a week. I can't make this podcast in twenty thirteen.
Wow, you're one of the early starters. I was late, but in terms of Australia, there's not too many podcasts thirteen.
And it's interesting because independent digital broadcasting is is now one of my main revenue streams, and so I'm in this. I've chosen. You know, people like movie quotes because it sums things up. I think my favorite one it used to be You're going to need a bigger boat, which I do love. But it's Heiman Roth to Michael Corleoni Godfather Part two, where Roth is complaining to Corleoni about a friend of his who got whacked and Collieroni ordered
the whacking and he goes. But I never complained because it was business, and this is the business we have chosen. I chose this. I chose to have spent the last thirty two years of my life getting really fucking good at doing this and to this business which is now currently experiencing extraordinary contraction and correction and transformation restructure huge. I have this very particular set of skills to quite
another film. Where do I deploy them? How do I make sure that I can put myself in the value chain? And how can I make sure that I make something that is in accordance with my values? Which I did want to ask you. I believe it was the notorious Big who said, the more money you've got, the more problems you see. You don't need to work, You don't need to do what we're doing right now. Why are you sitting here selfishly?
You're right, But I do need to because I'm not a very social person, and this is my social interaction. So ordinarily I would never get to meet you, perhaps, or if I did, it would have to go somewhere to meet you, which I don't like doing because I've never been good at it. So I get to sit down with Issha Ginsburg, so I can sit here with you for an hour and a bit and find out about your life.
I'm socializing with you at the same time. But I'm also learning. I did notice you struggled making eye contact with me for the first five minutes.
I'm not very good at I'm in fact, I'm hopeless at it, hopeless, But I do get up in stage all the time once a week and I'll perform and people can't believe it.
But when I get off the stage, I can't wait to get Out've got to get out of get the fuck out of there. I've got to get out of there because I'm just no good at the other stuff. So for me, maybe I have some of these neurodivergent things.
I'm not here to disclose my particular problems, but or issues are not problems issues, but who I am.
But I selfishly do this because I get a great deal out of it. I had to come to this to Jim Fannon wrote a book call He's the guy that took Alex Rodrid Alex Rodriguez from the Texas Rangers to the New York Yankees. He's the guy that took a gassie to you know where you got to He said, you got to ask what is the thing that you do best? What is the thing you do better than anybody. And that's the thing you think about when you're at the stadium screaming and whatever. Whatever. He's got to be
one sentence. And it took me a long time to think about that. But I have one job. My job is to make people feel less alone. That's it. Whether I do that in a podcast, on stage, screaming, take it off at a giant popcorn machine. The writing I do, writing a book, being on stage myself, doing a keynote, speaking with somebody, whatever it is, that's my job. That's the thing that I do and the thing that I would get out of bed to do if I got paid to or not. All right, So I would ask
you the same question. My job is to ask people questions. That's the truth. Yeah, what's the thing that you What's the value you get out of that? It's not the value I get it. It's the value they get from answering. They've got to get something out of it.
No, I like to hear people answer the questions, Yeah, what do I give you? I learned about myself or remind myself about things about myself. So this is this is therapy for me.
I know a guy I don't know. I have sent that many therapists kids through primers girls, I'm sure people, and I think that's also therapy for me.
When you're speaking, I'm thinking about similar events in my own life, not just you, but other people coming ony chair. And that's why I have such a diverse set of people in for straight Talk. Straight Talk started off as a thing I did because I was originally a bit bored. We're doing my other podcast, the Mentalk, and I thought I would mind talking to people, just anybody. And then I started talking to you know, adult porn stars and murderers and all sorts of things, and I thought.
This is pretty good. I really enjoy it.
And then it is very selfish because we all have a little bit of a character and everybody I see a little bit of my character, and every just about everyone who sits there.
Not that I've ever been a porn star, but I have a little you know, well, but maybe I could have been, you know what I mean. Shit, you haven't seen a video, have you any joke?
But I'm just saying I see a little bit of myself and everybody who sits in front of you, and I think it's important for you to have a look in the mirror, yeah, and find out of base.
But this is the thing that I really we really believe that we talked about looking after our bodies, what we put into our bodies. If you pulled someone out of a glacier in Norway, we would be fundamentally the same physiologically as the dawn of humanity three hundred thousand years ago. We're exactly the fucking same. There's nothing different physically. We probably have access to more calories, and you know, we have antibiotics things like this, but we are the same.
We are creatures that everything was evolutionary, Everything in our bodies evolutionary. We're predisposed to things that are negative because that kept us alive, which is why the new cycle was like, fucking everything's on fire. Because their business is not to tell you the news. Their businesses to keep you on their platform, to sell you ads. That's their business.
Be careful. So similarly, there's a whole community aspect things that get released in our brains only when we are helping another person, moving in concert with another person moving at the same time, singing together, being with each other, helping each other do a collective thing. There are things that happen in our brains only when that happens. And more more, as we sit in the room alone looking
at a screen, we are denying ourselves these things. And ultimately that leaves us as a community, as a society, far more fragile, and that's a dangerous place for us and as individuals and as individuals. But wholly, we've become very suspicious and jumpy and worried about oh, fucking brown people or whatever the fuck is lately, and we're really easy to push around and manipulate. Yeah, totally no, And they were not thinking for ourselves.
And institutions or organizations or businesses or people will manipulate us, absolutely, because that's the nature of humans. If there's an opportunity to manipulate to get advantage, that's sort of nearly an evolutionary thing.
The antidote to that is to deliberately try to You can do it. You can replicate the kind of conditions that we evolved in, which was a small cohort of people. If you like, think five people that you would trust to call if you couldn't make the pickup from school. All right, you need to find start with one, all right. If you've got one, you're lucky. Try to find five. All right, You've got five people in your life and relationships that take nurturing. They like pot plants, you got
to you gotta keep them alive. You got those five people. Because of that, you'll create this thing around you, and your problems when you face them will not be yours alone to face that will be people get around you. And that makes that's what we're designed for. We're never designed to hold things by ourselves. So it's important that we actually actively cultivate this.
And so I'm glad that you're doing this, and I am doing and I just and I try to take one or two things out out of everything I do, every show I do. And one thing I'm just going to take out of it is what you just said. It's a very it's a really good analogy. People like are like pot plants. For anyone who's used to being a gardener, which I am, and you do have to. You have to look after things otherwise they just want to grow on their own and won survive on their own.
They need water, they need nutrition, they need light, they need fresh air, they need maybe to take some dust off.
They need to be looked at. You need look at them and be part of it. And you're right.
You can't look after fifty things in a garden. You can look after maybe three, four, five perhaps, And that's a good point. So don't beat yourself up. A lot of people beat themselves up. I don't have a big enough group. It's not possible to have a big enough proper group. You can might have hundreds of people that you know, you just talk to them, so ohahah blah blah, but they're not your pop plans.
Facebook friends won't can't help you move a couch. No, no, totally.
So and that's really that's a really good point that I'm going to glad you sort of you articulate that to me, and it's a very.
It's my job and you're very good at it, and it's.
And it goes right back to a very question to me, what do this sort of stuff? I take something out of everything, and it is therapy for me. And I don't mean it in a sense that that I have some major issue, but it is therapy for me. And I think everybody needs therapy too, And I don't think anybody needs to be you know, and we don't need to. And I also don't believe we need to be Anyone needs to tell us that we are. We fit into a certain category. We're all a bit unusual, every one of us.
Therapy just another way of reflecting, as we take us back to the first part of our conversation is therapy just reflecting our choices. We may not realize that we've been making, or choices we haven't been making. Yeah, and they're going, maybe I could choose something else correct, And if we do it enough times and that becomes the automatic that then we think about it as much as
we we won't out of stick shifts anymore. But there was a time, the very first time you reverse down a driveway and a stick shift, you're like, everyone fucking shut up. You know, you couldn't do anything. But then you know, cut to you a year later. You don't eat a sandwich, putting the radio on toile or someone, you know, whatever, those automatic behaviors we may not realize
if they're serving us or not. Especially we do it enough and enough and enough, and when we reflect through a conversation, we go hang on a second or about that maybe I might try something else.
And I think that's why podcasts. What you do, what I do, and a lot of other people do too. Podcasts is so important because what we see on unfortunately here on radio, and I love radio, I still listen, but we're here on radio, it's like.
Four minute sections, three minute sections, and there's an ad.
Televisions are the same, it's forty two minutes of TV, but it's all sort of overproduced.
In my view.
Podcasts are great because people are an opportunit to listen to a whole conversation, our whole conversation we've had today, and get a full context and take out of it what they think is important for themselves.
That's what podcasting is.
I think will emerge as the number one media such an intimate form of broadcast, and particularly particularly for men, because men don't talk face to face.
This is uncommon. Yeah, don't talk face to face. Men talk shoulder to shoulder. Yeah all right, and men's speech centers only really work properly when they're moving, so men tend to listen Like I, I don't listen to podcasts. I don't sit there in the room by myself listen to a podcast. Oh listen to podcast while I'm doing something? Yeah, me too. All right, you've got emotion is involved, particularly with men, particularly with the kind of stuff that I
talk about on my show. It's people are doing stuff. I listen to the nerdiest chit when I'm at the gym, be soodical. I mean, I love it. I love all the sciencey stuff you know, like about the brain. I just love it.
And it's like it's like feeding myself, like nutrition for me, Like I have a massive thirst for it. And I wanted to myself, what the fuck was I doing before podcasts came up? I mean, like seriously, what was I doing?
And I don't know? And life is a lot more simple then because there wasn't many marble phones around. Everything was much different.
But today I don't know what I would do if I didn't have the opportunity to listen to podcasts, given all the other shit that's going on.
Yeah, coming at us, left, right and center. I really enjoyed meeting. I really enjoyed this conversation.
And I want to say, probably the most important thing from my point of view is your fucking dead set honesty. You don't care, you just say what you're real.
Well, we have no time to be anything but an authentic Yeah, but I if you're going to die. I'm going to die. The producer in the corner is going to die. My kids are going to die. Everyone's going to die, all right. There is a there is a clock somewhere, Ticken that has the exact amount of hours I've rode a motorbike here. I might not even make it out of here, all right, I'm going to make it home. I try as much as I can to
reflect upon my own death, all right. And I never want to leave a room with people wondering how I felt about But not in a morose way. No, No. Reflecting around death is so important because it helps us from making fear based decisions. It's like if this was a you know it, but there'll be a and you've done it with your big kids, but you don't know what happens. There's a last time you put them down. Yeah, you're never going to hold them again. There's the last
time when they're in bed with you. He's asleep, striking my spiky beard like this it's days and he'd be like, you know, you got to cherish every moment like it's the last time you do it. Otherwise, you know, what are we what are we living for? Fucking brilliant. Thanks Josh, it's true man. Thank you m