I got a grouvers Craig, Anthony Hearper, Tiffany and Cook, Josh, Brian, Kevin, Patrick Pittman.
Tif Cookie. This is I'm feeling a bit of deja vous right now.
Feels what we've been here before, doesn't.
I feel, I don't know, there's a familiarity about this moment in time really similar.
Did I dream this last night? Guys? Yeah?
You did? You did? Josh?
Why do we all? Have we been in the matrix? Are we coming out? What the fuck is going on?
Hey, I'm sorry for sending you guys that macro doos of mushrooms in the mail. They really trip things out a bit.
Well, if a little bit of psilocybin and LSD is a great way.
To get the get the show started.
Now if you're wondering what the fuck we're talking about? Everybody, Josh and Tiff and I started about five minutes ago and we had.
A few tech issues.
So this is take two and hopefully it's the last take before we talk to Josh officially.
Tiff Good morning.
Good morning, Harps.
Again, you've been up since the crack of Sparrow's fart. You told us first time around, what were you doing up so early.
I'm all ways up early, up really yelling at people and making them live their best lives.
Mm and punching them in the face with love.
Yes, yes, precisely.
Hey, speaking of nothing to our well, hunters and collectors, Mark Seymour's hunters, collectors, who's hunters and collectors? Who's just Mark Seymour?
Now?
For those who've been living under rock. His new album is called The Boxer. The Boxer on the front of the album is our very own Tiffany and Cook Who's who's been very shy and quiet about that?
Is the album selling? And how is your star pupil mate?
It is selling like hotcakes. I'm trying to find They put up a post the other day and I'm trying to find what it says. There was a quote on it. Let me see, Well, here we go, ready. The Boxer is a fight for love and the finest music of Seymour's career. And that was written in Stack magazine, just saying the finest record of his career.
Wow.
Do you think that that's because the title song was about you?
Most definitely? Could there be any other reason?
Well, Josh, I think you need to write a song about tip. I think that's the take home message here.
Oh mate, I could rifferbout it. I could just get it.
There's our promo, there's our promo, You're.
Welcome promo classic.
Sorry, where's is all mine?
Josh?
Don't worry, that's gone.
It's a boxing thing I should have gone with. Have a Bissosh, Why why the dick?
Joe's terrible, straight up, straight up.
Awful.
People would be like, remember that the moment that Josh kind of tumbled into obscurity, Remember that when his career came crashing down. I think it was on the You project or some yeah. Yeah, when he said that that horrible thing to that woman who fucking loved it and then used it on her socials as a primer.
That definitely is going to be on her Instagram and on her Facebook.
Oh god, it's going to go viral. I'm going to go viraly downhill. Yeah. Anyway, if that was terrible, that was my worst songwriting. That's that's what happens when you get a singer who's not a songwriter onto the chap.
Do you know what, mate, if we're not allowed to have fun, then I'm fucking hanging it up.
And that was having fun.
That was pretty fun. Yeah. Also at eleven eleven for our time and you know that's it's a time you make a wish. So maybe that was Tip's squish to get a filthy rendition of a personal song.
Yeah, there it is. You could.
I mean, he might write a stage show about you ors even though he's not a right, he's a singer.
Welcome to the show, mate, How are you?
I'm extremely well. How are you mate?
I'm good.
I'm not going to ask the question I asked you first time around. Fuck it, let's just move on. Where are you today? What state slash suburb city area do we find you in?
We find me in Hawthorne of Melbourne, Victoria.
Oh cool? Is this where you're based? Down here?
This is your permanent when you're not traveling the world singing to audiences.
This is yeah, where I live with my partner, Georgia and her dog that is now my dog. I'm a step father. Although found dad Argo, who's a beautiful GSP German shorthead pointer and jeez, have you ever come across one of them?
I have not, Yes, I think I have. Are they They kind of quite smart dogs?
Extremely smart but very vocal so he joins me for more months. He's doing all that sort of sounds constantly. Yeah, and it's really that he just wants food, he wants to go outside, he wants to have a bone, he wants to take a ship, and he communicates that with words. When you want to when.
You want to take a ship, do you do similar to your partnerge.
The titlet doors open? You don't have to task permission.
Oh god, you missed your calling. Fuck musical theater, do comedy.
Dude, Ah, sure, sure, I'll throw that in.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, I do want to go back a little bit because you said some beautiful stuff before we had our tech issues. So just I mean, obviously, you're a singer, you're part of the ten Tenors, you're in West Side Story, Hairspray, Phantom of the Opera, Lame Is, And as I said to you before we went we went.
Live, you're a big deal.
I know you don't think you're a big deal, but tell us my audience a little bit about you personally and professionally to give us a bit of an insight into Josh Pitterman.
Yeah, when people ask, oh, yes, so who's Josh Pittman? I just hate reeling off my bio because it really doesn't sum me up. So yeah, I just sort of my values are that I'm intensely passionate. I'm a very affectionate person. I have a very big open heart. I'm a sensitive person, so lots of love and that's maybe why I chose to be on stage to share it
and receive it. I am very very curious. I'm kind as much as I can possibly be kind, and truth teller, a storyteller, and I think that sort of that sort of sums me up. I'm very disciplined, very dedicated to what I want to create in the world. And yeah, so so storytelling is where I found myself. And whether that's on stage, you know, as the Phantom or John Valjohn and Lamers are, or whether that's writing, or whether that's singing concerts, or whether that's doing a podcast or
whether whatever that is. I My purpose is to share stories and to give people an opportunity to really feel, you know, that the depths of humanity and that that comes that might be really hardship and uncomfortable feelings. So that might just be to have a laugh, but I want people to feel fully and I want to be a vehicle for that.
Wow, that's beautiful, man, seriously, and thanks for being so real, real, honest and vol straight up.
It's fantastic.
Hey, I'm interested in So my background, which we haven't even spoken, but is in high performance in sport, in exercise, physiology and blah blah blah and working with teams and athletes and Victoria police and the military a bit. And so I'm really interested in high performance. But also part of that is discipline. And you spoke about you are very disciplined. What is the discipline that is required for
you to be at the top of your game? What are some of the things that we might not think about that are required for you know, we all know it's more than get on stage and sing because you can sing. What's the ship We might not think about that, the jigsaw puzzle pieces that go into the excellence.
Yeah, so great question. And I think if you're operating in high performance on any level, there are so many things that people don't see that a tribute to your success, no matter what the field. So for a musical theater performer who's doing eight shows a week, and I don't know any sport that does game day, eight times a week, Like it's ludicrous to go out there like that eight
times a week. Sure you know what you're doing, And in sport, let's say you don't know what's necessarily coming at you, and you have to be a bit more spontaneous and reactive. But still to be able to perform at that high level in front of thousands of people that time, many times a week, requires a mental fortitude and resilience that's unlike many things. So you need to have your wits about you. In terms of dedicating to routine and routine for me, I'm going to go with
what happens when I finish a show. So go out, finish a show, and I will have a cold shower and wash off that character. Especially when I was playing Phantom. Here's such a sort of dark, you know, miserable individual. By the end of it, he's so broken, he's so raw, and I don't want to carry that between the stage, my dressing room and the public who are greeting me at stage door. So a shower to wash that off, and that took me a while to work out that's what I needed, and a bit of a warm down
in my dressing room vocally. So a warm down for me is, you know, you've gone up singing really high. You want to bring the voice back down to a human level speaking voice, So just humming back down to a normal sort of register. And then go and say today and thank all the people who supported me that night and give them the love that they deserve. Then I go home, and I first thing I do is I normally get a little wheat pack and I heat that up in the microwave, put it around my neck
and I start. Then I boil the kettle, and I have a steamer that has a little straw in it that I then steam my voice for a good twenty minutes. Now normally watch some idiot TV like some Seinfeld or something, just something that's got nothing to do with dark, depressing, hard or shit. Then when I wake up, meditate probably the first thing I do when I wake up, and I don't always get that right. Sometimes I'm you know,
hop onto an email or social media or whatever. But meditate with in the first half an hour of getting up, do some riding, you know, And then it's about what food goes in and how the body moves. So food plays a huge part in affecting what comes back up. We don't realize it, but everyone has little bits of acid reflux and this and that, and you want to protect that. As a singer, you don't want dairy or acidic foods and stuff that are going to get up and get in the way of you being able to
sing properly. So I have a pretty clean diet when I'm performing that many times a week, do some exercise, whether that's yoga or a bit of gym, or just going for a walk and getting some sun or whatever. If it's a mattin a day, I'm in the theater by eleven thirty. If it's an evening performance, I'm in the theater by five o'clock and stretch, warm up again, sing again. I probably would have sung during the day
once if it was a late show. Don't need to do that if there's two shows on the one day, and then get out there and do the whole thing again and then rewind. So it's what goes into my mouth vocally, warming out, physical warm up, mental preparation, writing with journaling, getting rid of any toxic thoughts that are in my head. And that's how you roll, and you do it over and over again, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times.
That is I find that fascinating, Like what I I love the idea that and the awareness that you realize that playing a dark character like that psychological and emotional immersion that you need to go through has a physical consequence, right. Absolutely, your body doesn't know the difference between role playing or
belief and what is. You know if you are truly committed to that character and you're opening some dark doors and you're going down some dark corridors, that that's going to show up on a cellular level.
Up and for you to and it has and it right, and I've had to you know, when I first started playing Phantom, after about three months start to lose my voice. I was feeling really dark and depressed at times, and you know, my libido had totally gone, and I'm going, what the fuck is going on? And so I went to the MT and he's like, I don't think this is a vocal issue, mate, I think this is a psychological issue. Would you like to see someone? And I said, sure,
I'm such an open book. I think you've got to go into as many conversations as you can with the feeling that your mind could be blown, or your mind or something could inform you in a way that you're not aware of. So I went and saw this psych life coach woman. Her name was Jake, And one of the first things we did was a bit of hypno, and she asked me what the nucleus of the character was of the phantom for me, and I said, oh,
that's easy. It stems from an abandoned boy and that's my And she said, okay, like just gave me that laugh, like there's going to be something here. And we did a bit of hypno and she took me back to a time where I didn't even realize. It was after school care, and after schoolcare finishes at about five thirty
or something or six o'clock, whatever it was. My parents were like forty five minutes late to pick me up, and it was just me there with the guy who runs out aftercare, sitting on a table looking out the window on the road, waiting for my mom and dad to picking up. And I couldn't have felt more abandoned or unlike in that in that moment, and that's what
I was bringing up. And I cried and cried and cried the fuck out of that moment and released that finally after clearly decades, and I never had that same fatigue, libido problem, vocal issues like I was getting everything felt easy. I was struggling to do eight performances a week, and for the maintaining great rest of the season that I performed, I think I missed about three shows and it was because of the mental shit that was going on.
Yeah, like we talk about this a lot on this show. You know that nothing operates in isolation. It's not like, oh, there's your body over there, and there's your emotions over there, and there's your mind over there, and you know, but in research and in medicine and health stuff, usually we look at things in isolation. Oh, Western medicine, it's an Yeah, it's an into a good point. It's an integrated system
that's fucking great. And so in terms of figuring out, you know, your own protocol, like I finish and then I do I have my shower and it's a cold share And did you have any direction or help or mentoring on that or is that something that you figured out yourself.
Some of it was myself and some of it was seeking out you know, the right gurus and I think we all need, you know, on the hero's journeys of our lives, we all meet a Yoda, or we all meet some multiple people who mentor you in a way. So when COVID hit, like i'd seen that woman Jake. But when COVID hit and I was sort of left, you know, searching a little bit because I was out of a job and I was playing the Phantom then in London and sort of going, you know, the rug
was pulled under, so to speak. And you know, I wasn't alone. Every the artist was in the same position, but I felt like I hit a pinnacle and it was really shit after those six or seven months going to hell. So I wouldn't say go into the darkest hole, but I was certainly questioning a lot, and I knew there was a descent that needed to happen in some description. And so the two people I sought out was guy called Asher Pacman, who's a close man. He runs something
called the Fifth Direction. If we've got north, south, east west, the fifth one is inwards and it's a men's program and it's fantastic and we did some really deep men's work. And the other person I saw it out well I got linked in with through a mutual friend was Ben Crow, who's a really well known mindset coach, And so I would say that Asher does the sole work and Ben does the mind work, and between the two of them, I mean, I'm probably somewhere in the middle doing the
heart work. And they were instrumental in just guiding me and giving me tools and wisdoms that I then would run down the path of what they the path of that we was showing me, you know, or walk down it. But specific things like get into the cold shower. No, I've done plenty of cold therapy and whim Hoff stuff for many years. I went, well, I know what that shifts for me, Well, maybe you'll shift it after a show. But other specific things, they were instrumental those men.
So I have a really big background working with athletes and teams, and a lot of them are very superstitious.
Not a lot, but a percentage.
I would say ten to twenty percent of athletes that I've worked with somewhere between a little bit superstitious and a lot like they have these non negotiable rituals and if you get in the way of those rituals, you're in trouble. What sort of things are Like, Well, okay, so I worked at for years. I'll tell you who
off air. So I worked at an AFL club for four years, and a bunch of other places, but the one very well known, famous, famous, famous player, one of the most top ten, most famous players in the history of the AFL. He had this bag that was so fucked it was falling apart. It's stunk. It was disgusting, and the club, obviously the club has got an endless supply of new sports bags. He wouldn't he wouldn't use
any other bag. He would wear similar he'd wear the same socks till they were basically just four threads, like especially if he played a great game, then he would want to replicate whatever he did that week the next week. So a lot of them, a lot of them. And yeah, guys, girls,
individual athletes, team athletes. But anyway, I was wondering if you have any either superstitions or kind of hard and fast protocols other than the you know, the obvious, the warming up and all of that, But is there anything else that you do that gets you in the right place space?
No superstitions. I used to be a bit like that, and I worked out that you can confine things and confine and confine them, can fine them so hard that it actually gives you no scope for freedom.
And I.
I'm sort of so what's the word academic in a way or analytical? Within my mind and have been for so many years that what I wanted to do was work out how to get out of my mind, not staying in it, and superstitions only add to the mind fuckery for me. So yes, I'm going how do I lead with from a soul point of view? How do I leave from a heart point of view? How do I do the technical work? And that's what I'm doing in preparation for the show, and that's all the technical work.
And then you go, all right, accept as much as I've done except where I'm at, and go out and celebrate what I'm doing. And let's go out and share with the audience. And you know, I'm the tour guy. Go out and take them on a sick as fuck tour through the life of Jean Valjean or the Pantom's That's that's what I'm doing. It's got to be free within the confines of the direction of the show. So I don't make the super decision.
Yeah, well that makes sense because in some ways, if there are really hard, fast, non negotiable, emotion based rituals, and it's almost like you're building yourself in a prison, you know, or an addiction, because if the.
Conditions aren't perfect, you're fucked.
But in reality, you need to be adaptable and flexible, right, otherwise we all do.
Yeah, so there's physical things that are sort of non negotial For me, I do that that's serious of stretches. I do that series of warm ups and whatever, and also acknowledge that, you know, show six or seven of the week, my voice isn't going to feel the same as show one. Yeah, it's just not. It hasn't had a day off, and it's fucking tired, and it's just trying to get through. So yeah, there's got to be a lot of self compassion in this game too, of going you know what I'm and it's taken me a
long time to learn it. Jean Valjean was a great role for learning it because it's so impossible to get it perfect that the idea of perfectionism took me a long time to leave my system as much as possible. Obviously, there's that inner critic that's always saying it be perfect, be perfect, your little bitch. But that's how he speaks. He's always got a very style American accent, and so just you know, allowing the compassionate side of myself to let them go. You know what, they don't know what
you're perfec fifties out there. They they're going to accept your eighty percent or your seventy five percent if you can give one hundred percent of that seventy five or eighty percent, And that's what you've got to give. But that's what you've got to give. Like, that's it.
Like either way, you're in a critic sounds like a gangster from a nineteen thirties movie.
But it's fun. He'p be shit, do better, do better, better, get up? Fuck, you'll do it better.
So you are also were in Cats, for which you won a Green Room Award. Congratulations made.
I'm never doing that show again, never ever going to be in a onesie like or unitard ever again. We're just oh as much as fun as some things were. That's that show. Lee's is sweaty and stinky.
Yeah, what about what did you do when you're wearing the licra the one piece and I'm disappointed you're not wearing it today.
But so how did you do it?
What did you do with the package?
Uh? What package? Mate? Let's be honest, you know, like really did you just pack it all? So you wear dance you wear dance support, which is the nice way of saying you're wearing a g string that holds everything together? Does it?
Though?
It does? It does enough? I mean, these things are worn in the ballet, and if they're worn in the ballet, you know the best, the best of keeping everything attack. So if they are when I'm running around being a cat then And honestly, as fun as it was, there were really fun times. There were times that you're literally
on stage. There's one song where it's actually about dogs, and so you put like a big top giant shoe on your head and you're sort of doing things to make your cat like a dog because it's all based in a junkyard and you're just going, I'm a human getting paid to be dressed up as a cat. Who's been dressed up as a dog? What are you finding a dog? What is my Wednesday afternoon? Like? How did this become my Wednesday afternoon?
Or even better, people pay me for this. This is fucking great.
Maybe, and then you do get hit with that you're like, what am I doing? Oh tomorrow is Thursday? That's pay day? But there were times was awesome and I did win an award for it, and it was because you know, really, Cats for me is like, yes, it's got some sort of storyline, but it's I sort of treat it as like cats doing idol, like pop idol or Australian idol, and they're all just going out there with their best song,
right or what they've gotten. So my character sort of had twenty minutes at the top of act two is actually the oldest cat there. So for the rest of it I was in the ensemble, and then at the interval I turned into this sort of old cat and they remake up me, and so do all my old acting, and I love doing that. I love transforming into interesting characters. And he was a cat who wanted to be I mean, it's a human who wanted to be a star in the theater and sort of regales about all his wonderful
things he's done, but he's really never made it. And it's those people who who tell you about you know, Regale for half an hour about you know, the Frankston art Player's version of My Fair Lady where they played Henry Higgins and you know, so it's that sort of thing and he could have been the greatest of all time and that that sort of thing. But it's it's Ian McKellen, who's a famous British actor. Played it as in No Show, not Bush as in Gandolf. Yes play
he played in the movie. And it's a beautiful role to play, a really beautiful role to play. So I enjoyed. I really enjoyed that part of it, Yeah, because it was so transformative, Like I was twenty nine when I did it, so to player that sort of eyeing old man effectively was beautiful.
If have you ever seen it?
No, I haven't. I'm homework now.
I reckon You and I might be the only two people in Australia. Everyone I know has seen it, so you and I are shit.
It is amazing, Like to watch the physical form of a human being transform into a cat and then dance like that. It's sort of amazing, But then you're going, what the hell is going on up there? As well? Because it sort of the sense of plot is sort of mysterious, and really it comes down to like pop idol song choice and the one who's and sob story. So the one who's got the darkest, hardest past also has the best song and she wins.
Yeah, of course, and winning.
Means you go up to what's called the heavy side layer, which is where a cat gets another life, you know, the whole nine life thing. Somewhere. There's a plot, but it's pretty it's pretty loose. I don't know. Andreloid Webber, they were all on one. I'm reckon when they were doing that.
Can you dance?
Bro? I've trained that out of myself. No, I was never a great dancer, let's be honest. I've had to in different things. Cats a little bit. I've had to tap a little bit. But singing and acting were my things at college and and dancing was always a third. And you know, you work it up physically, you work up your flexibility. Some of it has learnt skill with a bit of innate movement. I don't know, but I wasn't never a dancer. Can you dance?
Oh yeah, it's probably my best thing. Yeah yeah, okay, Hips don't yeah, hips don't lie?
I mean me and Curry. You know, just so we've got you've got.
The terms, Tiff, what about you?
No, no, only in the boxing ring, mate, I dance in the boxing ring that is.
Eat yeah, yeah, like a butterfly. Well that's it. Yeah, but you've got to be sort of like I think so.
I thought so. And once I went and did hip hop Class's absolute beginner, and within four steps of instruction, I was seeding at the back, not moving and just so angry that even the instructor want to make eye contact with me. So it didn't translate, okay, like doing the like create the box and then duck under it side of thing.
I have a theory.
And I was talking to somebody about this recently because the new Dancing with the Stars in Melbourne, I guess around Australia is coming on and Ben Cousins and another Ben Cousins ex West Coast Eagle footballer and Richmond Football Club fuller footballer, Brownlie medalist, fucking superstar and another football
whose name escares me. But I was talking to someone and they went out that'll probably be great, you know, because I go, No, it's funny, how like Tiff is very coordinated as a boxer, very coordinated, skilled, power, speed of jill, the coordination balance, but how much that doesn't translate to our dance, Like there are so many athletes who are fucking horrible dancers because they can't feel the music.
And it's a different kind of movement.
Right, yeah, because there's art in it, and that's the missing that you can have all the athletic profile, but it's actually the artistry and feeling music and that there's a lot of isolation that's technical to dancing like you are. You know, you look at popping and moping guys and they're all isolating stuff, but when you're dancing jazz and like,
it's just another craft altogether, so it doesn't translate. And so like you look at a male ballet dancer or a ballerina and they are so flexible and they can jump so high, but that doesn't mean they're going to take mark of the year. You know, Like there's a whole other craft there, so you know, yeah, yeah.
It's very sports slash art slash skills specifics. I get, Hey, speaking of cats, did you ever see that this is going to seem like a stretch at first? But I'll bring it back.
Did you ever see that Ted talk by Sir Ken Robertson Robinson called our schools killing creativity?
Did you ever see that talk?
No? But they are at times.
So I'm not trying to throw schools or teachers under the bus. But anyway, there was this brilliant talk. It's one of the most watched fewed Sir Ken Robinson, who was a British academic, brilliant but also funny as fuck, which is rare for an academic. Anyway, he did that talk and in that talk he told this story about Gillian Lynn, who you know.
Who that is?
Yea, she was our choreographer, that's right, So the genius like that coat.
So they spoke.
He told this story about how when she was a young girl, the parents were called in. The teachers called the parents in, and this like specialist because they thought that their daughter. They thought that this student. So the parents' daughter was kind of special needs for one of a better term intellectually handicapped. And they sat down they're all talking, and the guy who was like the specialist, ed specialist or whatever, he said, do you mind if we all
get out of this room. So they got out of the room and he put on what was then the radio, and he just put on some music which was in this office, and they all got out into the hallway or that, yeah, and they could see through the window.
And as soon as they got.
Out and they were talking in the hallway, Jillian Lynn got out of the chest. She's like five or six years old, and she started dancing, and the special ads guy said, she's not handicapped. She's a dancer, right, And that was like, so even though she was academically challenged in some ways, or she didn't have that kind of not that she was clearly not that she was lacking intelligence,
but she wasn't. She didn't excel at that, but obviously she ended up being not only was she not handicapped, she was literally a genius who did some incredible shit. How amazing is that story.
That's a beautiful story. And I know that story very very well, so smiling all the way through it because having you tell it is really special, because I know that's not a story that's mainstream. It's also not a story that sits in the world of sports and high
performance sport a lot. But the fact that you've done some research and found that story, I love that and It makes me think of that great Einstein couoe that I'll paraphrase, which is that everyone's a genius, but if you're trying to a pitch of goldfish how to climb trees, it'll spend its whole life thinking it's a full And we don't have a system that is about exploring the unique gift or the unique get genius withinside a young person and then helping them expand that unique gift or
that genius. That's not the system. The system, although it's getting better, and I've spoken to different principles of different colleges or whatever in the recent recent past, you know, we still have a system that says that there's four digits at the end of year twelve that you need to try and get the highest ones, and that's that's it. And subjects like theater or drama or dance are actually marked down. They're saying, hey, you know they're easy, so
we're going to mark them down. But you try and get that physics specialist, maths major person you know reciting in Shakespeare in monol or doing a jazz ballet routine. They don't know how to do it, so yes, like and similarly that ballet dancer. That beautiful actor may not, you know, be able to land that physics equation, but that's it doesn't make them smarter or dumb. It just
makes them unique and different. We should be exploring that uniqueness within every individual and trying to expand that as much as possible. But you know, yeah, or whatever, the system doesn't like it, Does it create lemmings? Does it? No?
Definitely not, definitely not.
I put up a post recently you like this on on Instagram and there's a couple of slides. First slide is what are the following people have in common?
So?
Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Richard Brandtson, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Orlando Bloom, Jamie Oliver, Pablo Picasso, Sr. Salmahayak, John Lennon. What do you reckon they all have in common?
I reckon that they all didn't finish fun of your school.
They're all dyslexic, all dyslexic.
Yeah, how wonderful, how amazing, how wonderful?
And listen to this, Josh.
In an attempt to learn more about the minds of millionaires, a team of psychologists and business experts spend a day testing a group of entrepreneurial millionaires. They were put through a series of tests, and forty percent of the three hundred millionaires who participated in the comprehensive study had been diagnosed with dyslexia.
That's like, in other words, if you.
Want to succeed hocking, be dyslexic, you're actually smarter, not dumber.
Yeah, And we confine those people into a certain philosophy about how we feel or think, and we treat them in a certain way as we do. You know, people of all sort of neurodiverse I don't call them issues standing and I mean, yeah, I just think we've got so far to go as a as a human species, so far to go.
I think we're getting better, We're getting better. But I'm with you, and it's like understanding that I think. Like I was doing a gig recently and someone asked me about, you know, essentially about intelligence, and I said, intelligence isn't a thing. It's many things, and it's context. You put me in some rooms, I'm pretty smart, you put me in other rooms. I'm a fucking idiot, right.
You know all of us?
Yes, yeah, you get me to try and do certain tasks or skills.
I'm a one out of ten.
Right, you get somebody with an IQ of three hundred, which doesn't he let's say an IQ of one p fifty to try and have an organic conversation on a podcast with a stranger, they might really struggle.
They might not, but a lot might. You know, when I.
First started my PhD, trying to read an academic paper, it was like reading fucking German, Russian and something like. I had no idea what was going on. But I'm not dumb, but I just couldn't do it. I'm like, who writes like this? This is fucking incomprehensible. But three, four, five years down the track, you're like, okay, you just learn another language.
But many times in my life I've felt like a fucking idiot.
And there's only times we felt like an absolute genius. How far into your PhDa or you've done?
Yeah?
No, no, I've got about six months to go so this doctor, Oh yeah, doctor Fatty Harps, So November one will be five years.
Wow, I'm about six, I think, Yeah.
It takes a while. It depends what you're doing.
I'm doing neuropsychology, so it's not like I'm doing a PhD in sampit or plasticcene.
So there's a bit of work in there.
Yeah. Wow, now that that is super super interesting. What is the part of neuropsychology and just neuroscience in a way that interests you the most? Like what is it about the human mind and how that plays out that interests you the most?
So many things, but you know, and I apologize to my listeners. I get a few listeners, go fact, stop talking about the same shit. But it's hard when you have a conversation with a new person who doesn't know you. But for me, understanding the potential, possibility and powers of our power of our mind and realizing that your mind is essentially your operational headquarters, like it's u HQ and your mind is the filter through which you view, understand
and process the world. Right, So you know, you, me and Tiff are in the same podcast at the same time, but we're not in the same experience. So I'm interested in where does that experience come from. Is it possible that Josh is having a good time, TIFFs having a bad time, and Craig somewhere in the middle, And the answer is yes, And then it's like, what is that about? So understanding the mind and understanding not just that mind,
but my mind in comparison to yours or TIFFs. And then so my PhD is on a thing called metaperception, which is really my ability to understand how you experience me in real time. So that's the question at the core of my research is what's the Craig experience like for Josh or Tiff or my audience. And if you wind that back one level, then you go, what's the Josh experience like me trying to understand your version of
right now? So that's called theory of mind. Now, if I can understand or at least have an insight into your in the moment, right now experience, that is a kind of social emotional awareness intelligence. If I can understand you, then I can connect with you. I can develop rapport and trust and respect with you because I get you.
But if I've got a high IQ but a low social and or emotional intelligence, I might be saying things that are technically true while creating more disconnection than connection with you and not even knowing it exactly.
And so how much do you feel of that connection is pure mind related and how much of it is for want of a better term beyond the space in which the mind lives. And I'll give you a sort of indigenous Australian expression is that we actually have three brains, and that's down here in the gut the brain of intuition. Yeah, And here in the heart the brain of passion and an emotional biplane of love and whatever, and here the
brain of analysis. And how much is that capacity being able to tap into those different parts because we don't, you know, we don't say things like I love them with all my heart or I had a gut feeling without that stemming from an actual Like those cliche phrases a cliche for a reason, they stem from a certain level of truth in a paradigm that people might understand if they're willing to understand.
Yeah, the end, well, I don't know. I can't give you a percentage, but I'm with you. I think that that intelligence lives not only in the heart and the gut bio microbiome and of course the mind slash brain, but our body is its own form of intelligent So, yeah, that is a really great question because sometimes that you know, sometimes our thinking is the gift and sometimes our thinking is the problem. Right, So you can think yourself into
better health. Literally, there's vast research on place ebos. You can also think yourself into immune systems suppression and illness. In fact, funny you bring this up because I'm doing a podcast on it soon. But you know, like, think about this the moment that you have a negative thought. Let's say you're thinking something bad, but the bad thing that you're thinking isn't actually going to happen, and so it's not true. It's just a construct of your mind,
but you're thinking about it. So your mind is there. Now, your emotions are there because you're feeling fear and anxiety, and now your body is there right, so now it's a full kind of Josh experience that self created. That also, by the way, is unnecessary because now there is no threat danger and your safe, but your body doesn't know that, so your body will produce qurtizole, adrenaline, bunch of other things. Quartzole is what we call a catabolic hormone, not an
anabolic hormone. It breaks things down, so it creates inflammation, It destroys muscle over time, it suppresses immune system function, it impacts cognition. Now all now this is just one little component. This is just one fucking factor. So for me, and I've still got mail plates on despite the fact that I'm five years into a PhD. Of all there is to know, You know, if the ocean is the knowledge, then I understand a drop of water, right, But fucking
fascinated with essentially what you just asked. And the truth is, nobody in the world really knows. Like we have insights and snicklets, but to go, it's this much this, and that's that much that. But and there's also that you know what what like think about? And I know we're digressing, and I'll shut up after this, but I think you'll be on board. How the fuck do dogs know how to do the shit they do? And cats? And like,
it's not like anyone taught them. You know, when a dog's sick it goes and finds certain stuff or a cat? Is that a cat or a dog?
I should know. I did the fucking musical.
But animals, animals do stuff that instinctively they just know to do right. So it's not like they thought critically. They made a decision, they did some research and they arrived at this conclusion.
Yeah, your dog will smell your cancer before you even know you had hun't upset.
And so I believe that humans are animals. Yes, we're slightly more evolved, maybe maybe not, maybe not. I think octopus and fucking dolphins have got us covered, and dogs. But anyway, we think we're the smartest species. I'll put an asterisk there. But I also think that over the last one hundred or two hundred years, we have really disconnected from that innate wisdom. Yes, and we're too intellectual and not instinctive and organic enough.
Yeah, And that has a lot to do with what I'm talking about earlier, about the education systems, about applauding or beatifying one variance of intelligence and diminishing another, and going to all sorts of reasons why. But I think that's a big part of it, because as an artist, I am, as I said earlier, I'm constantly trying to get out of here because I don't need the analysis.
The analysis and the technical work is done. Now let go of that and lead with the heart, or lead with the gut instinct, or lead from a soul place, or go into the depths of the feelings of the banker, feelings and emotions and experiences I've had and recreate a version of them to enable another to feel. That doesn't require me to analyze, that just requires me to be
open and free enough to let that out. On your conversation about the catastrophic nature of the mind and how that produces cortisol and whatever, this is certainly something I'd experienced a lot, and why I started meditating ten years ago was really to sort of help me with my
incessant anxiety. But what I realized was that, hold up, I've just got so much power here if I learn the art of sitting in my awareness or consciousness or whatever it is and being able to see those thoughts play out like a movie in front of me and go, you know what, I don't need to go down that path. I can stop that that thought might come out, because I've got fucking sixty thousand of them a day. But how where I choose to take that or what path I choose to go down, is actually up to me.
Like my awareness is my home, and any thoughts, feelings, emotions, or whatever are just visitors that come and then I get to kick them out when I want to kick him out. They don't have to stay overnight. So that's so that is something. That's why I am such a big advocate for people meditating and people going I'm doing breath work insteand I'm like, sure that breath work is might have a more immediate effect, but we have a
society obsessed with immediacy. Meditation is a discipline and a practice, and it's a practice to expanding your sense of self awareness and that once you've and that's unending, but once you have a capacity to sit in that space, that need for that breath work to shift that thing really quickly may not be there as much because you actually didn't get to a space where you were so unnecessarily anxious about shit that didn't you didn't need to be
anxious about because it was just a project of your future negative self.
Yeah.
Yeah, So for meditation. The other thing I want to discuss, because you know, I'm really into the topic you're talking about about this different experience that we had, is the idea of coalescence or symbiosis or the shared experience that we're all having, Like, could you talk a bit about that. I'm just going to pick your brain because I think it's interesting. Well, I mean, there's the there's a oneness too,
there must be a oneness in the separation. There must be a juxtaposition to the separation.
Well even right now we us three are not in the same place, but there's an energetic commonality.
There's an energetic.
Exchange, right, So there's separation, but there's there's inclusion. And separation is like a mirage really, you know, because we think things are all physical. So there's stuff happening, you know, and and stuff is, but it isn't, you know, So there's this It can be a deep level of psychological, sociological, emotional, and energetic connection even when people.
Are not in the same place.
You know, and people or people and.
I believe, I believe people in nature. I believe people and animals. I truly believe that, and.
The like we are, I mean, we are nature, but society has taught us that we're separate from but we are nature like because.
Yeah, you don't have to go to nature because you are nature, but you can, you can go back to where you're from.
And you know, it's like we all end.
Up in the ground, and we all end up becoming the fucking ground.
You know.
You put me in a box in the ground, and you come back in one hundred years, I will be the ground.
Right.
So yeah, it's it's a circle and a cycle.
But you know, you think about this, like somebody like Tiff, I love dogs. Tiff loves dogs. You love dogs. We know that if you are a dog lover and you lie on the floor with your dog, that is doing good things to your body. You don't even have to think about it. You don't even have to be strategic about it. You don't even have to know that it's going on or understand it. But it's actually producing biochemical changes in your body that are good for your brain,
good for your heart, good for your immune system. And it's also good for the dog because the dog loves you. Right, So there's all this awesome shit happening all the time. But so too we need to be and this is the self awareness piece. So somebody who hates dogs who does the same thing will have a negative physiological consequence. So like, for example, I've been riding motorbikes since I was five. I've never stopped. I have four motorbikes I ride.
Most of my communing is on a bike. I can be on the front of a motorbike having the best time, and my body is in a good state biochemically, and I'm producing dopamine and all these great fucking things. Somebody who is on the back for the first time, So same bike, same day, same trip, but having the worst experience literally of all time. But it's not about the bike or the trip, or it's about what that represents to you. It's about your thinking about that. It's about
your interaction. It's about that interaction between you and that stimulus. You know, an idea that the next level, you should do it this.
Way, or you should do it you know what, you know what would work for you doing it? Like doing it basically say doing what I do.
It's never right, that's that's right.
I mean if you took if you said to me and Tiff, because we're quite similar, Hey, I'm going to take you guys through a ten minutes meditation, she'd be punching you in the face at about two minutes.
Hey, and all that.
I'm under weekly meditations, bro, and tonight is the night.
That's right. I forgot. But until recently you couldn't cope.
Right, I do struggle. I need to be, but I need to be in that shared environment brings you back to what Josh said before, there's an energy inside that room when everybody's in that and I access that really deeply.
Will you come back, yeah, because we've got to wind up. But I don't want to wind up.
But I feel like I got two hours left with you.
Oh yeah, I know. Maybe we just need to hang out, or we can flip it and you can come on my potty.
Well I wanted to plug because you've got a potty, a new one, brand new everyone called behind the mask. Yep, So tune into that, subscribe to that, give him a little bit of love, give him some support. Will you have forgot guys? Exactly three listeners, give him that chop out.
Deep dive deep dive chats like this. But basically there's always a two on one experience. So two people from the sack to what we're talking about now, two people from the same field with that's sports, arts, politics, journalism, whatever it is, who have a very different experience or have very different experience of living in that field and what's behind the mask that they project out into the world of their careers and what's actually going on inside
of inside of them. So there's probably similarities between what we're on the past that we've gone down today and some of the stuff are behind the mask. Yeah, I love that?
All right? How can people find you? Follow you, connect with you my friend?
Yeah, at Josh Pittman on Instagram is the easiest place. One T and one N in Pittman and you can listen to all sorts of songs and some any links and stuff to behind the Mask are also in there. So I reckon that's the easiest place. Wowyan you so much for having me on. What a fucking great chat?
Hey make Can we be friends?
Yeah? You're in Melbourne, aren't you? Yeah, yeah, let's do it. I think we need to have a lunch mate. I feel like it's only a again, what's that Conway's?
Is that Chrissy Vines or I don't know who the fuck that is?
But yeah, all right, this is the start of something beautiful and Tiff you need to get him on your show as well.
Yeah, absolutely, and quickly.
Can we thank mister Tommy Jacket for bringing us all together and jackim Bug because great people bring people together and Tommy is such a great connector and a beautiful man and a great dad and so thanks.
Tommy, Thanks thanks Jack. A good point mate, that's an oversight on my part. He's my adopted son, Tommy as I've been negligent. So thank god you're here. We love you too, Jay Mate, Well say goodbye a fair but for moment, for the moment, you're a superstar. Thanks for being on the You project.
Thank you so much for having me. You're a superstar as our utif. Sorry once again about talking about just the stiff.
Part, straight up, straight up into the dick jokes.
Yeah, terrible,