Jimmy Carr: "I've Found The Cure For My Anxiety!"

I remember the day I remember being home and getting the news and laughing and crying and then you realize I was really, really upset about it and he was so funny, you fantastic crowd, thank you so much, would you please? Please welcome Jimmy, one of the most respected and loving comedians in the world, the king of lines, he's okay, join everyone, you're ready. I'm going to start teaching comedy because it teaches you how to have original thoughts to find your voice. I'll be chasing impostor syndrome and it's great, you should feel it every 18 months. You learned that failure is one of the great gifts of stand-up comedy and learning to lose gracefully is a good test of how much you want something.

How do we know? what we really want I love what I do now, but I often wonder if I should be like a DJ D. What can I answer to that question? No you should not. I know everything. Do you think that? Oh, maybe we can make a few quid. Not about this, as a guy who tours the world 300 days a year, what advice would you give me on how to be a better communicator? He speaks at 92 beats per minute. When you look at great public speakers, they all seem to be hitting that stride. 92 is better than a minute of

anxiety

, it's the other side of creativity, so I think the

cure

to control my

anxiety

is to wait for Netflix special releases today, so I imagine they'll cancel me right now, how did you come to deal with that for next time?

They canceled me. I have a plan. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to congratulate diio gang, we've made some progress. 63% of you who listen to this podcast regularly don't subscribe, which is a decrease from 69% our goal is 50%, so if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me a quick favor and hit that subscribe button? Help this channel more than you think and much more. the channel gets like you've seen it, the bigger the guest gets, thank you and enjoy this episode Jimmy, it's great to be back, what have you been up to?

I've been, you know, I've been present, I've been working a lot. I enjoyed this last time and I was a little nervous to go back because it's a Big Show and I really enjoy it. I really enjoy listening to it, so I've thought about it a lot. I have done a lot of things. of notes and you know, this is what I'll start with. I've been thinking a lot about gratitude as the mother of all virtues and I think I'm right in saying this. I think you would give me everything you have in 25 years to be as old as you are now and as healthy as you are now and I think that's a really interesting meditation to think about if you had a time machine if you were 30 years in the future if you could be that healthy and feel that good and at this age you give everything material that you have in 30 years to come back here and just that, just take that ending for a minute, just take a moment to think about wow, this is amazing, right? what inspires that? terms of behavior change in the moment, well, I think that's kind of how I try and I think gratitude is a very important virtue and people talk about practicing gratitude and it takes some practice and it often takes like out a It's a way of reframing the way you see the world, so I think in the West we suffer from a bit of life dysmorphia.

Do you hear a lot about body dysmorphia? Gender dysmorphia. We have life dysmorphia. Many people think their lives are terrible. because there's a kind of honic treadmill, you get used to how great your life is, no one took a hot shower until 50 years ago, so Tred and I do this when you're standing in a hot shower, George Mack, my friend, He pointed this out to me. "Wow, look when you stand in a hot shower just for a moment, look good. No one you admire for 100 years had this simple pleasure in life and when you look at the world we live in, we're just like you." We're in the top percentile in terms of how lucky we've been, lives like caloric intake that we just take for granted the fact that our kids don't die.

You know, for the first year, modern medicine, our lives and the entertainment we receive, we live like kings and yet life has never been objectively better and subjectively worse because the nature of humanity is that our desires are memetic , so "We have this thing where we know how happy you are, well, it's your quality of life minus the envy, that's how happy you are and it's easy to look at others and how they're doing and not enjoy what they're doing." they do. you got it, it's funny because a hot shower has a cost and that's exactly what you're describing there because subjectively I think a lot of people don't feel very happy and I think objectively if you look at some of the statistics on suicidality, depression and mental health, it doesn't seem like people are happier, so although we have materially improved our lives, we have hot showers, now there is a cost for the hot shower in the sense that maybe it made life too easy maybe it made life too easy. too comfortable life maybe we are in a crisis of comfort yes, I mean, there is a lot to say about it, I mean, it is a very, I guess it is very hard love, but you can't have an easy love.

Life in a big character show, show me a trust fund kid who inherited a lot of money and I'll show you someone mentally tortured, it's true, everyone says you're your struggle, where you come from in Plymouth, you know , in the life. in poverty so far having things is not fun getting things is fun right, it's not the pursuit of happiness, it's the happiness of the pursuit, right, it's just that and it's not like you know that self help is not the journey, is the destiny is neither the journey nor the destination, it is who you become in the journey and this is the terrible thing about life: it is a self-assignment, as if you knew that there is school and university and then, at some point, you They drop into the real world and you look and you do well, you have to decide what you're going to do and you can take an easy path and in the end it's less fun, you lack money or you take a difficult path and you give yourself a challenge and it's great and I think that I know that many times it is that it is difficult to do, it is life, it is life, it is really very hard, those are difficult things to hear and it is easy for us because we are on that path, but then I know that What I love about this podcast is that you're trying to, there's so much wisdom in it, so many stories that you're giving people this kind of road map to, well, make your life a little bit more difficult in the short term and get somewhere, I mean, I didn't really understand what religion was until relatively late in life, like the idea that God is a representative for the future, right, so, so God represents the future, so work hard. now for a better life in heaven, so it's the same as all self-help, okay, so sacrificing the present for the future, work is more or less the same, it's a sacrifice of the present for something better in the future .

It's an interesting thing to think about, isn't it? What are you going to do now? So I have this um Chris Williamson, you know Chris, he's a very good friend of mine, he's a lovely guy and we came up with this idea, so he and George Mack were chatting about what you should do today so that tomorrow you'd be happy you did it. 24 hours in the future, what's the best way to live, because people are like, oh well, me. I'm going to do something for 5 years, you know, so it's a great goal, but you won't reach your goal, you'll fall into your systems, so that thing of what could you do tomorrow, what could you do today instead.

I would be happy with what you did tomorrow, whether it's the food you eat, the exercise you do, the work, what you do, oh right, I went to the gym yesterday. I feel great, like a little Doms or, oh, I wrote 10 jokes and tonight. I'm on stage trying those jokes oh well, I thanked you yesterday. You know I did something that was cool so you can spend time whatever you do and you can give yourself gifts in the future, you can be rich and you can have a six-pack and you can be successful and you can have a happy long-term relationship with a beautiful family, you can give yourself those gifts, but there are difficult times in the present to give yourself that gift in the future. future, something I really wanted to ask you is you've risen to the top of your profession like you're really generational talent, this guy, that's what's true, that's true, you really, really have, think about where you started.

You were 25 and in your twenties when you decided to leave that, I think, advertising business and go into comedy like where you are now must really be Dre, a dream that you never imagined could come true, you're at the top of your profession and I think at the top of your profession, sometimes I wonder if you wonder more than other people who are still on their journey up that mountain what the point of all this is, well, I think it's incredibly interesting, okay, so there's a couple of things to undo there so you never feel like you're at the top of your profession because you're standing on the shoulders of giants in whatever industry you're in, so you might think, oh, he's doing it, he's doing it very good.

Uh, you know he has a Netflix special and a new tour and you know all that, but inside you're doing fine. I'm only as good as the next joke I write, so that's what I try to do. it's being pretty stoic I'm trying to be I'm trying to do less better I'm trying to just be a comedian the world ordered a comedian and I'm trying to honor that right that's what people want now make jokes tell jokes push boundaries cool that It's your small role in the world do that so the more I focus on that the better it will be the more people come to the show it's that thing I guess the whole world is built on incentives so you put sugar in it, you get ants, you tell jokes, You deliver a show and people come and enjoy it and then they come back next time, what would you get out of that?

I mean self-realization. I guess the idea of ​​going well. I do this because I really enjoy comedy because it's an immediate feedback loop. It's a very lucky business because I don't have to wait like I don't have to argue with someone. ah, do you think this prank is going to work or not? What do you think? Do you think it's too offensive or do you think I'm telling him to try it? It's kind of like Silicon Valley, um, you know, uh, dual testing is this. better than this this or this I'm like an anion like it's just this or this or this or this this writing or this writing and the audience is a genius the audience tells me what works so it's it's like it's it's it's it's it's something joyous to write a new show and then put something on the shelf like the new Netflix special Natural Born Killer now streaming on Netflix.

It's like it feels like I've given people irrefutable proof that I'm who I am. I say I am and that feels really good, that's what I do, it's better than the last one and the last time I was on the show I talked about wanting to write longer pieces, in a longer form, like I have a big ball quick, but I don't have a knuckleball and I wanted to try to write some different parts that maybe made some points and I went and did it and for better or worse it's there and I tried it and I think it's better.

More complete comedy special than the previous one and we don't hate the previous one, it has very good jokes, it's very funny, I like it and then I think the new tour will be better again. I think you can see, see the progress. and what are you chasing you're not chasing the thing is you're enjoying the process it's so I don't think you get self-esteem from the six-pack that you get at the gym I think you get self-esteem -esteem from being the kind of person who goes to the gym every day. days and I don't think you get anything out of the show for doing the Netflix special, but being the person who organized all of that is the most enjoyable part. and you get better at it, you know the weight doesn't get lighter, your back gets stronger.

I think about this a lot with myself. I look at what I'm doing in business and stuff and with the podcast. and other things and I go, there are times when my brain wonders what the end goal is here because I have the things that I need materially to be happy. I could retire and just relax on a boat, but for some reason I'm torturing myself in many ways, but torturing yourself very hard, you know what you're doing, you're giving yourself a character because you're giving yourself a challenge, right, we all need the challenge, so it's like you know. any type of mythological story is the hero's journey and you are on a journey to do something to become something right and what is your what are you doing here what is your role in the world but going and sitting on a beach is not Anyone like You there's a reason holidays are two weeks long, it's so you have three days to go, ah, we should go back as a vacation should be 10 days, but somehow we get to two weeks and that's great because it allows you people go three days, you know what I have to go back to work.

I have to do something. like that top of your profession thing, well you're always going to be looking forward to someone you know, if it's for you, probably Joe Rogan, see, well, Joe has the biggest podcast in the world and which one are you? and then you have something to aim for andeven if you are number one, then you will go, yes, but the radio is still bigger, so, huh, like that thing, if you are going to chase something, maybe it will give you an artificial feeling. um goal in the future but it's a um something that points you in the right direction is there a little bit of unhappiness, a kind of voluntary unhappiness involved in wanting to eliminate that thing in the future? you think you know because if there is The other day I sat down with a psychologist and psychiatrist who was on the podcast and he told me that if you live your life continually wanting, you're basically postponing your happiness and replacing it with a kind of discontent in the moment, well , this is, I mean, listen to even the The worst people say wonderful things, President Mom said, "You can't smell the roses from a galloping horse, so when you move at that speed you don't take the time to enjoy the life so you just have to enjoy the moment but you enjoy these conversations you enjoy what you do now the hard work is a lot of the things that surround it you know the travel and the manager or whatever but you have to love all the work you can't just go well I want that part because the same way that people are jealous of you, there will be other podcasters that will be very jealous of what you have, but they are jealous of what you have, they are not jealous of how I got it, no comedian is jealous How I got it, no one sits there and says, Oh, I wish I could sit down for 10 hours a day and write jokes.

Oh, they think I'd like to play that place or I'd love to have it. Netflix special, but they don't feel good, what pathology would you need in your head to write so many lines and worry so much about it? Who would you have to be to do that? And we're all chasing something, right? I think we are chasing imposter syndrome. I think imposter syndrome gets a bad rap and it's great. You should feel it every 18 months as you level up. You should feel like I belong here. This show is much bigger than last time. Congratulations, why is it bigger?

Well, because you tried harder and worked harder, and now sometimes you feel like, Oh my God, I'm interviewing this person. Great, don't get comfortable, honey, as soon as you start to get comfortable, you should do it. push yourself a little further there's a great story my friend told me this is a very Nam droppy story mind you okay Brandon Flowers told me this story so he's filming a video with Lou Reed like 10 years ago they did a song with Lou Reed. which is preliminary for the killers and they are filming this video and they are backstage, they are in the, they are in The Green Room and Lou Reed is there, he has leather pants, he has a leather jacket and a vest. he has mirrored sunglasses, he's Lou Reed and he looks in the mirror and Brandon sees it like he's looking at himself and Lou just says, I wish I was that guy.

Lou Reed has imposter syndrome and he is Lou Reed, nothing matters with that. You know, a guy who's been a rock star and a legend for 40 years still feels that thing about leaving. I don't feel like I'm that cool guy, that's how you should feel, so if you haven't felt imposter syndrome in the last 12 18 months you think there's something that's probably forcing you to try a little bit, I mean, it depends, It depends on what you want to do, you can have an easy life, some people you know work to live, some people live to work, it's different. ways of doing things is not necessarily that you don't necessarily have to put in effort in that way like you're listening to us and you know there might be a psychiatrist listening.

Well, these guys are pathologically ambitious, this is not healthy, they should do it. just know you're chilling and maybe they have a good point. I look at your work ethic and I feel like I've never seen anything like it for someone who is incredibly successful. I look at your tour dates and I'm like that. The guy spends how many dates a year on stage, maybe 300 shows a year, something like that, 300 shows a year, well, most people go to work every day, right? I mean, you know, most people also like to get the average listener to listen to the show up and go, okay, you want to swap lives?

You have to work two hours a day, but you're telling jokes to people and it's happy, it's what seems like work to other people and seems like play to you, there you have it. They say it's a really happy life that people say, "Oh my God, he worked so hard" and I'm going to say, "You're kidding, right?", you're literally kidding and then you're like, "Oh, the tour dates." like this last week I was there." I know what it's like South Africa Paris Istanbul Budapest Vienna what a life what because really that's the other thing about life people don't want to live more they want more memories and really how do you get more memories?

Well, it's about doing new and interesting things. If you travel to work every day on the same trip for a year, you don't have 300 memories of that trip, you have one correct memory, but if you do different things every day, go to different places, talk to different people. experience how fantastic it is that variety in life gives you more memories, more life, you pointed to your head a second ago and said we must be pathological in some way, yes, do you think you are?, yes, yes, no I'm sure I'm the I don't know, I mean, I'm not sure, I'm not entirely sure if comedy isn't some kind of low-level mental health problem that you can turn into a career.

You know, it's like for most people. It seems quite strange to want to go on stage and tell jokes. I think it sounds scary to a lot of people, but I find it very, very funny. Have you ever figured out why you're wide that way? Not really. I guess that goes back to childhood, it goes back to um, my mother was an incredibly funny, larger than life Irish woman. I was very, very close to her. I think they call it meshing when you have a very close relationship with your mother um uh and she suffered from depression and I didn't know that when you were a kid you don't know your house is just your house you think it's normal so if your mom is in robe when you come home from school and she hasn't recovered, you think well, that's how moms are, so my whole childhood was geared towards making her laugh, especially when driving, something fun to do, make your mom laugh, grab the wheel , try it and you know, did you have to unpack that? to keep that from getting in the way, whatever that driving is from getting in the way of your adult life because I've thought about that a lot myself.

I think the things that have driven me here are not necessarily the same things that are going to help. succeeding in the next phase of life, whether it's being a parent like I know you, you know you had a child, I think in 2019, um or whether it's being in a romantic relationship, I've had to work really hard to unpack things. so you can be successful in a new season listen, I'm not a therapist, but this is what I would say. I think you're going to have to make a transition from looking at measurable metrics to incommensurable metrics.

I think you already have an incredible resume You have an incredible resume of things you've done and accomplishments and things you can point to and the number of website views and the money you've made and the businesses you started great and I think the immeasurable things they're going to become a lot more important, so George Mack has this kind of theory that in life we ​​trade the measurable for the incommensurable, so you trade work for I know time with parents can't really measure time with parents and it's kind of hard to have lunch with your parents instead of work and the thing and the work and I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy and you only notice it when it reaches zero, then mom dies and you see well, I'll never see her again , what wouldn't you give now for another meal, another time, another thing, so you're trying to find that balance in life?

And I think that's what parenting and fatherhood is all about, right? that it's about exchanging the measurable for the incommensurable. Warren Farrell tells a great story, you know? Warren Farrell is like the myth of male power. I think a lot of his writings have been used in nefarious ways by people who are kind of anyway he's a very interesting guy and he's very authentic um and he told me this story. I heard him tell this story, he said, he said, this guy came to see me and he was a very successful man, you know, boss of a business that makes millions, he's really doing very well.

He said that he was unhappy because he had worked throughout his son's childhood and had not bonded with his son because he had just been away at work and went to see Warren Farell and he is a you. I know a psychiatrist or whatever and he said, uh, okay, what are you going to do? He said: Well, I'm going to quit my job for 5 years and I'm going to be home with my son. In that, I'm not going to do any of that. I'm going to be with my son for 5 years, just being that moment and he did it and I was so happy he did it, it was John Lenon and no matter how important you think. your job is that you're not John Lenon, you know, I'm sure he could have done great things in those 5 years, but you think, "Oh my God, I'm so glad he did it, I'm so glad he's such an incredible artist." .

He had given us a lot and he had those years for him and that is for him. I mean, I imagine he's a boy. I imagine Shawn Lon is very glad he did that, but he had that time and I imagine he didn't regret it. and his life was tragically cut short and you think he's even more powerful if you consider that he didn't put it off it didn't go well I'll do that I'll do that I'll get to I'll get to a million subscribers and then I'll do that. I'll sell a few more records and then one more tour and then spend time with the family.

He did it. He's not that beautiful. There is a lot of emotion. in your face when you tell that story, it's a beautiful story, right? I mean, it might, when you think about it, you say, that's life, right?, and mortality, I think it's something we don't think about enough. right, I love that Muslim phrase uh uh for death, uh, the certainty that you know we're in this brief ray of light between two oceans of darkness, everyone always thinks about the end, right, and they think about what happens next die. Mark Twain had this. Great quote, you know, we, we, um, he said, uh, he said, I wasn't alive for billions of years before I was born and it didn't bother me in the slightest, but this brief ray of light is magnificent, isn't it? ? so I think it may be this idea of ​​um, you know, depression is essentially thinking too much about yourself, the last time we talked on the podcast that you talked about, I would say yeah, sorry, that seems like maybe a little bit to me. too harsh because I think people suffer from depression and that is a disease and it is incredibly serious and we think that suicide is something independent, it is not a symptom of a disease called depression, so it is the permanent solution to try a problem that does not have.

You don't want to feel that way anymore, but you don't really want to feel anything anymore. You like to feel better, so it's that thing that I don't think we talk about it enough, but I think that thing that you know, think about yourself. All the time I think it only leads to melancholy, sadness. I think depression is maybe a bit of a separate thing, but it feels like it's a disease, yes, and there's a lot of sadness in the world too. MH and you are lucky if you are sad because if you are sad it is circumstantial and you can do something about it.

Know? Are you depressed because you have a serotonin imbalance in your head and it is an inherited trait? sad because your life hasn't gone the way you want it to work out well if that's the case you're in luck because you can change that it feels like there's a bit of a crisis within young men at the moment and I think his new show on Netflix sheds shed light on many of the difficulties facing young men. I was very excited to talk to them about this particular topic because I've been trying to come to a position on why so many young men seem to be lost and suicidal tendencies have increased and, you know, these new male influences or male influencers. that they're really bringing together this cohort of young men that we're talking about and Tate Andrew Tes of the world, well, Andrew T, it's interesting.

Because, um, who did? I think John made the observation: Trump is a poor person's idea of ​​what a rich person looks like, yes, he has gold faucets, and I think Andrew Tate's is like a 14-year-old's idea of ​​what what is it. masculinity can seem like it really is and of course nature exists in a vacuum and there's a real vacuum for um. Old people like us, we don't learn how to shave from our parents now. It's a YouTube video and then you lose something in that connection, so there's a big part in the new show where I give a young man a pretty difficult time and an audience member, like we're having a talk and I give them advice on how to uh. being with a woman and I'm not wrong about anything, it's very funny and it's very rude, but I'm not wrong about things, it's like it's about consent and it's, I think it's really, it's really good because I've sweetened the message pill because people don't want to talk about it, people say, it's obvious what consent is, yeah, not for 17 year old boys or girls, it's really what that looks like and what it should be, so it is,a real benefit in it because if you think about music in schools, we would all say that learning music is great, right?

It's a great idea to teach a child the piano grade. three learn something about music and will appreciate it much more in life. I think comedy is much more relevant. What does comedy teach you? It teaches you? Would you learn to find yourself and find your voice? Learn to communicate your ideas and organize them and write them down and, uh, communicating is very valuable, since the great tragedy of life is that most people live and die and never hear their own voice. Everyone wants to be better speakers, better communicators. It's funny because I sat down with a guy named Julian Treasure who I think the Ted Talk on communication and speaking had, I don't know, 30 or 40 million views and he said I also did a Ted Talk on listening.

Nobody can listen. everyone hears the talk about being a better speaker, that's really funny, uh, uh, yeah, I know, I can imagine that you, as a guy who tours the world 300 days a year, you really must have been able to analyze science. of communication and being a good speaker that is transferable to business, public speaking, life sales, etc., what advice would you give me on how to be a better speaker? Communicator, okay, okay, 92 beats per minute, what does that mean? He talks at 92 beats per minute, that's what. There you have it, I mean there's kind of a science behind this and I've looked into it, but most great public speakers speak at a certain pace, but it doesn't matter how fast they speak, they're hitting 92 beats. per minute, so I tend to listen to a playlist of songs that are 92 beats per minute before I go on stage.

I know it sounds crazy, you know, and it may be, but I think there's something about that rhythm that just hearing that kind of proximal speed of cognition that idea everyone gets into that rhythm and when you look at the great public speakers, they all They seem to be hitting that 92 beats per minute pace. Do you think Trump is a good public speaker? yeah, he's an excellent public speaker, of course, I don't know why people would have trouble admitting that it's, I mean, it's kind of like freestyle, it's like there's nothing planned, this is crazy, um, yeah , it's because it really drives the guy. of exaggerated narratives and emotions much more than facts and figures than most politicians.

I mean, it's a, you know, there's a theory that this is all Gwen Stefani's fault. on America's Got Talent or on one of the singing shows, maybe it was a fact that someone on one of those big singing shows

found

out that she was paid more than him and that's why she wanted to develop her relevance properly, so she decided Well, I know I will. run for president I'll be incredibly relevant for about three months he's a contender it's whatever and then you drop out of the race without a problem so hire all those people in the Plaza and go down the golden escalator and give the speech and great , nothing, then he goes and there's footage of this, then he goes and does the first rally to make America great again and he gets a foot job going up the stairs and he sees like 10,000 people singing and he realizes, oh oh, this. could be real it's kind of yeah I think I think it's stani got her I was the reason I was talking about business is because this doesn't have a CEO it's a podcast about business is because you Last time it taught me indirectly about something that I have now developed and call myself no man's land, which is that moment when you make the decision to leave the comfort and security of your identity, your professional, um, you know, Endeavor, whatever.

You were working in marketing and then, as I always reference how objectively crazy it was for you to leave that and become a comedian, and I've called that no man's land, that was six to 12 months of looking around a little bit. It's stupid to lose your friends, to lose, you know, I mean these five buckets in life: you have your knowledge, your skills, your network, your resources and your reputation, and when you enter no man's land, you fill the first two buckets of your knowledge and skills, but you empty them. the last three you lose your network, you lose your resources, you often lose your reputation, whatever it was at the time, but you fill these two buckets, you made that decision, for some reason, to leave a normal life and go to tell jokes without money, some people. for some reason and I have constantly seen on this podcast Darren Brown, who had a great professional life ahead of him and decided to do card tricks at the tables in Bristol for 10 years.

What is it about these people that makes them? I think you have realized correctly, you have had the confusing moment: every man has two lives and the second begins when he realizes that he only has one and that the good is the enemy of the best because you know when people on a podcast like This, that moment seems brave, but I wonder if for you and when you leave your type of marketing job, no, 4:00 in the morning is enough, ah, what have I done? This seems crazy, especially when you really break down because when you leave you also don't have like an hour of cool stuff like you've written, you have like 20 minutes of stuff that you look back on and keep going, it's kind of a joke.

There's something there, but it's actually crazy, yeah, but I think it's cool. I think failure is one of the great gifts of stand-up comedy. You kind of make friends with failure as a stand-up because you write so many things that don't work. There are so many jokes that you think, oh, this is going to be great and then you tell it and the audience says, "No, that's nothing," guess again, and that idea of ​​saying yes, failure, failure, is frowned upon in Our society, we don't. letting kids fail we don't let kids lose in sports we don't let them know it's really stupid because you're teaching them if everyone wins then you don't learn how to lose and learning how to lose gracefully is a great skill right?

And you kind of know check your ego and not everything in life is going to turn out well for you and that's okay, so you try it and it's a good test of how much you want something, you go and have a terrible job and well, I'll never go back. to do that or you have a terrible job and you're doing well, you know you lose or you learn, you develop your relationship with no, someone said this to me the other day and it really stuck with me that you need, you know, I worked at Telly Celles for a couple of years and really helped me develop my relationship with the answer no, and so now in life.

I think I have a much healthier relationship with the word no because for me on the call it's the law of averages where in the call center all it meant was that I was one step closer to getting the yes, so I would get. I know you get a lot of no's in a row and you sit there and you know the next guy is going to buy these double glazings and I think at 16 I developed that relationship with the no, which in my head meant it was getting to me. Closer to a positive outcome, a lot of kids don't have that these days because we protect them from no, no, you know, it's seen as a blow to my self-esteem, I was developing some kind of muscle in me, I don't know, but I . -esteem alone like trust without competition it's crazy it's crazy you have to give the world irrefutable proof you are who you say you're right then you release a comedy special or whatever you go yeah that's me that's what I do the new spin that's me, that's what I do, it's irrefutable evidence, right, I am who I say I am and I think the idea of ​​going to remove the negative aspects, you can't, I mean, I mean, you can, but then I think it's me.

I think it's very cruel. I think we're being nice to people at the wrong time. If you are kind, you want to be kind to your children, right? I want to be nice to my children, what do my children want? Well, they want McDonald's and they want ice cream and they want to watch TV and play video games, well, okay, downstream there are some fat, stupid kids who want fat, stupid kids, no one, so you have to be nice to their potential, who they will have. reason and that means you know, broccoli and homework are boring, going for a walk and getting some exercise, that's fine, but then you're nice and I think it's very easy to see that when you're a parent, and it's hard to see that with a 18 year old person. a one year old who may be having trouble with you at your point of being nice to you in 24 hours.

I guess it's something similar, like seeing the potential in someone, seeing the potential in yourself in a child, in anyone but yourself, that's the kind of thing going well could be amazing in 20 years because really that is what the um is, I guess it's the opposite of gratitude, it's resentment and who had the Great Line, nature had the great line about resentment, she said if you believe. Someone ruined your life you're right it's you like that's a mic drop isn't it? It's such a great phrase and you know gratitude is the

cure

for that there's a great definition of right uh uh, which is where you are now and where you want to be if you want to do something about it that's ambition where you are now where you want to be if you believe that's someone else's problem that's a right and I think if we're honest there's always a little bit of that going on There are a lot of people in my industry who would know that their career isn't where they think it should be and ah I need to get a new agent.

You really think that might be the problem. Remember there's a big story of uh. I wasn't there, but David Tell is kind of a comedian, the comedian works in New York late at night, I mean, really one of the greats, one of the most influential voices in comedy and these guys backstage They were like complaining. management of him and he's listening to this conversation, it's going on too long and he's just, oh, be funnier, it's often very simple that stoic thing of saying what you meant to do, just do that. I'm not sure I approve. from the portfolio, working on the idea of ​​having a lot of different things to do because you're really going to do comedy part-time, which you're going to do half comedy and half novel writing, so you're going to compete.

I'm doing it 100% of the time and you think you can compete 50% of the time at your best, let's see how you do, you'll never make it to the top of the pyramid if you do it 50% of the time, right? There's probably going to be a lot of resentment when you say a right, you know, being a specialist, it's one of my favorite parts of my previous conversation I had with you where you talk about how the world doesn't need more people. They are in physics and it really helped me understand a lot of things. Also shortly after I met Richard Branson in New York and he is the incredible delegator, he is not trying to be good at things that he is not good at, he has built the entire business out of it. and life realizing what you're doing and just handing it over to other people, while so many people are struggling to polish something they're not that good at, yeah, I think knowing who you are is really important for that, right? is that so? being honest about it, well I'm not good at it, but I can do this, it's hard to know who you are, even though it's cloudy, you want to be, yeah, okay, yeah, it's also that thing of uh, it takes a little time .

I'm not sure if we're not rushing people a little with that. I often think about the listeners of this show, so certainly the younger ones are doing well. Do I need to know who I am now? I am and what I want to do exactly is no, would you know? Try some different things and see what you like because I think when you get into the stream that you're meant to be in, it feels very easy, it's like you. It is not like this? Swimming against the current just feels like it's

carr

ying you. I love what I do now, but I often wonder if I should DJ or do musical theater or something.

What I do? What I can do? Answer that question for you that's a little bit of luck no no no you shouldn't what what do you think maybe you should do musical theater who what Are you having a panic attack? What are you talking about? What would make you think? I bought some DJ equipment and spent about a year learning it and thought I loved doing this. You have a hobby. You have a hobby. No? everything is a business, I know it's the CEO and everything you do, you think, oh maybe we can make a few quid from this, don't stop, what are you talking about?

Do you know who it is? Do you know who is DJing right now? There is someone at this moment. their room they've already been there for 12 hours today and they love it and they're putting everything into it, they're putting the work that you put into the podcast into being a DJ, let them know that it's nice to have things where you're in a state of flow in life and for some people that's work and for others it's a hobby and some of us are very lucky and we can do it at a few different things, so I play a little tennis.

Don't think I'm going to get the wild card at Wimbledon this year. I've given up on it being just a hobby and listen, I mean you could be the next Calvin Harris. Maybe I'm leading you in the wrong direction. It may be amazing, but stop it, stop it, just do this, this is great, it's enough, it's charming, you're talking to the most interesting people, I mean, the current company is accepted, but you know, you talk to all these different people from different worlds andit's it's this is enough, how do you know if it's not enough? I want to talk to you about quitting smoking because there will be a group of people who will listen.

I met them. I met a lot of them last night on a show I was doing and they are working in finance and they tell me their job, then they show me their hobby on their phone and their faces light up when they show me their Pap and Mashe business or I don't know their business. whatever's on your phone what's the big line is uh you know if you want to know what you should do in life what do you think about all the time that's your god what to work in the city in a shirt and tie at JP Morgan or something Not like that, but nobody thinks about it all the time, you know, so what do you think about all the time, what are you, what are you involved in all the time, like if it's, if it's football, yeah?

You're absolutely obsessed with football, well something in that industry will be the job for you because you're obsessed with it and that's what you think about all the time, so the idea of ​​quitting is pretty interesting because oh , the things you won't like if you're going to have an interesting life, you can't have all the other interesting lives that you would have had, so there are all the counterfactuals of the different sliding doors that you could have made, as you well know. If you're going to be an Olympic athlete you're going to have to give up a lot of things, like you're not really going to have a childhood in the traditional sense, but you're going to be a great Olympic athlete and if you're going to be an academic then you probably won't. you'll have to go to so many parties, well that's what you know, there are no solutions, only trade-offs, you know, Thomas S, right?

You have to do it. Make a lot of concessions because not only do you know that you are on the road 300 days a year, but you have so many opportunities, they offer you so many things to do movies, why don't you try to be an actor or why? Don't you write five more books or why don't you? I don't know any comics, comedy musicals or whatever, why don't you become a DJ, DJ and musical theater? Those are my two main loves, um, yeah, I mean, there are some, there's not as many as you'd think, no one's knocking on my door saying you want to be in a movie, um, and I don't know if I would be, I don't know if it would be cool. on that, I don't know, I mean, listen, I like to get out of my comfort zone and you know opportunities arise and sometimes they take you out of a TV show, you go, try it, why not? um, but I think I'll continue. to what you do, that stoic thing has really paid dividends that have really paid off and I think you have to listen to that, you know, and I see other comics that you know, without mentioning names, there are some great stand-up comics that were absolutely amazing and I'm doing five other things now and they've lost a meter of pace and to me that feels crazy because I'm looking at it, you have the best job in the world, why do you allow yourself to be? distracted because ultimately it's going to be hard work, you know, ultimately, I mean, people can see it.

I guess you know that something costs more, like a Ferrari, it costs a lot of money because it takes a lot of work, right, there is a lot of work. On that thing, the beautiful handmade Louis Vuitton thing, it's going to be expensive because a lot of work went into it, people understand I feel the same way about shows, you go see a show, you go, wow, that's really ! it took some time every line is brilliant he's not wasting his time no there's no fat it's just a lot of work when people look at you and look at successful people they think they must just have innate motivation somehow. that I'm not okay, I think it's a little unfair that we think about luck in a very fixed way, so Barbie and Oppenheimer are great at talking about this, so people see Margo Robbie and they do well, she's just lucky , TRUE?

She was born this beautiful, right? She is so beautiful. People can't see how good an actress she is. People just can't because she's kind of awesome. And you look at Oppenheimer, right? Nobody thinks he's so lucky to be born with an IQ of 170 and he was born with a work ethic because a work ethic is hereditary, so he was born incredibly smart and with an incredible work ethic, and nobody thinks he's lucky, but they think she's lucky, it's kind of strange, right? that's weird in our perception of luck and how much of it is the factory setting, you know this, I've always talked to you about this before, but it's always like something, uh, if someone is very successful, or you say, "Incredible talent" OR oh he works so hard not always both together always both together or like you said before maybe a little pathological in some way I don't know if you would put Talent cube again you put the pathological the work ethic the effort a A lot of it is hereditary, You know?

Then, what are you going to do? I think when you look at luck that way, I think you become a lot more forgiving. Okay, it's pretty crazy, this idea of ​​luck, I think I've been thinking about it a lot. Lately I've been reading some stories about, um, even the asteroid that hit the Earth if it had been a minute later than the dinosaurs would still be here and the story of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima because some guy went to Kyoto 20 years earlier and he really liked it. So he told President Truma not to bomb it and if he hadn't been on vacation there with his wife then Kyoto would have been hit by the nuclear bomb and then they passed through Kakuru, I think a city in Japan and it had a cloud.

So we're going to bomb Hiroshima and 100,000 people there lost their lives and every generation that would have been lost you think that these little things that happen in the world all the time are kind of like this idea of ​​the butterfly effect is shaping our world. and it can make you feel a little helpless in a way because if it's me, you know if someone's vacation can be the difference between me being alive or dead, yeah, you know, it's very difficult for you. You know, you always know, think about the first-order effects of what we don't do, the second-order and third-order effects, yeah, yeah, I mean, that's a lot to take in with this idea of ​​luck in mind, personal responsibility. seems to be on the other side of the conversation about luck, which is how much I can control where I go in my life, how much control I have, how much I have to show up and strive for positive outcomes, yeah, well, that's the agency you should have. you must strive to have the locus of control within yourself, so there is character and reputation and reputation is what the world thinks of you and character is what you know about yourself and your self-esteem should be based on your character and a little based on reputation, because reputation could take a hit from time to time, you get canceled from time to time, well, once every 18 months, wait, the Netflix special comes out today, so I imagine they're canceling me right now somewhere.

How have you come to deal with that? Because as a comedian, you guys have it worse than anyone else. I don't know if we had it worse than anyone else. I think we're kind of a canary in the mind, it's, I don't know. In some ways I see it as if respectability is a prison and the doors are open and people are desperate to get in. I'm not a respectable guy. I tell very edgy jokes and jokes are like magnets that attract some people. I have many followers. I have a lot of people who watch my shows and they really enjoy it and, like magnets, the jokes attract people and repel people.

Some people are repulsed by my jokes and think they're terrible. I'm not for everyone, I think you have to accept that and you know that's when it comes out on Netflix, when it releases DRS, that's when the pathogen escapes from the lab because people who didn't pay to see this are suddenly exposed to If someone puts a clip on somewhere and says: this ban, this rubbish, it's okay. Banning things is like I see the culture of the Council as new and this does not mean that criticism is not valid, you can criticize ideas but you cancel people and I think that cancellation is a culture thing.

I think it is the new burning of books, It's no different than the people who burned Beatles records in the 60s, how do you feel now? You feel like a fool. I bet they feel like fools. It's like and obviously, the basket of things that are acceptable. and unacceptable change and EB and flow through time, but it's really, you know, I'm, I'm a creature of my time. I'm going to tell these jokes and if you laugh a lot, then great. did you always have this perspective or is it something that develops like a muscle over time no, I think there is um, I think adversity has canceled me several times and there is, I try to see the positive in life, so adversity is a filter and you find out who your friends are and who supports you and who knows who goes or dies great, turns out you have a lot of great friends and a couple of people fall by the wayside and great, I don't have to waste any. time with them because everyone loves you when you throw a party, but in difficult times you are a little harder to love and if people support you then they are friends, that's it, that's what it is, your friendship is such. something important is something that we don't really think about, we think a lot about our partners in life and our children and that side of family friendship for me is something so important, it's such a big part of my life and really when you think about it why is it comedy to have this moment well because comedian is a bit like a friendship right, there is a, there is no filter and really your best friend is the person with whom you have the least filter with your darker and deeper side that you share with you are open and a colleague you have quite a filter and someone you meet at the bus stop tons of filter true Type of comics there is no no filter you see Chappelle on stage he's cool you see Chris Rock on stage that's he's like you Feel connected, lovely, there really is something to that idea that, as you were saying, there is so little authenticity and vulnerability and openness in the world that when we find it we feel so connected to it because it meets the demand that we have and that it is not being.

I met with Supply, there are so many filter girls on vacation in Hawaii drinking cocktails, but in our kind of private and secret life there is very little reflection of what we think in our private and secret lives in the world, so when we hear someone talk about their depression or their mental health and we say, oh my gosh, you know it may or may not resonate that's why the podcast is so big, why comedy is so big right now, because the gap between the discourse public and private has never been so great. broader and we were both living in that space, come on, yeah, we have a real conversation with someone cool and you know cancellation is cool, but really what happens, I mean, you can recalibrate it and just call it free advertising like people are Speaking of you, well, great, okay, there's something called the Eraser test that one of my guests told me about before he died, where he said if you could come back and he asked, I think he asked or there was a study done where they asked If people could go back in time and delete their most difficult moment, would they press the button and delete it?

And because these are really traumatic events, about 95% of people said they wouldn't when they think about Your most traumatic moments, like cancellation or something, the best, the best advice I ever got. In fact, the last time I got cancelled, I

found

a friend of mine who had been cancelled, and he was like, "You just have to, you just have to." answer a question who is Jimmy car uh anyone was no who is Jimmy KH Well I'm a nervous comedian okay okay so you have no problem that's great and then another friend of mine just said "you need to adjust the size of this and Yo, what do you have to adjust to size," he said what happened here, you told a joke and some people.

I didn't like it, yeah, that's what happened. It didn't seem like a deal to me when you put it like that and yet in the moment it sometimes feels, you know, catastrophic, but those tough times you know you wouldn't erase them. difficult times because again I would say that you can't have an easy life with a great character and what they are saying by not erasing that moment is that I will maintain my character thanks to the anxiety that we talked about last time. Anxiety is a very interesting thing. I mean, my kind of original thought about anxiety was that it's the flip side of creativity, so you have a mind that's working and that's given me every gift I've ever received, the ability to write jokes. and to be funny or whatever, I can't turn my mind off and sometimes at 4 in the morning when you have nothing to do, that mind is still running so you engage in counterfactuals and start thinking about everything else. things that could have happened that haven't happened in life and you know people aren't worried about falling off a cliff, they're worried about jumping, it's the madness inside all of us of what could happen and the worst case scenario and these terrible things and you allow them to get ahead of you.

I think the cure for me right now, how I'm managing my anxiety, is to give myself more to do because I think with anxiety you're trying to solve a problem in the future now and you can't because there's no problem in the now, the problem. It's in the future, so you're a little aheadtrying to figure out something because there is a demand for problem solving in Right now and you don't have any problems, think that people don't get depressed when they go to the gym. If you're at the gym, you can't be anxious while you're working out because you have an immediate problem.

I have to get this damn thing off my chest. You have something immediate to deal with. You're in the moment so it's hard to be anxious because you have something to do right now. So give yourself something to do right now if you're suffering from anxiety and don't let your mind wander to the future. I guess it's quite Buddhist in a way, is your anxiety triggered by something or is it just some kind of background noise? I do not think it is. I think I often think there's an illusion that when you feel anxiety it's about this.

I think you actually have a level of anxiety and you will know if I have nothing to do. Worry about your career or the show or I'm not currently being canceled. You might worry about the environment or you might worry about your kids or you might worry about knowing you're going to worry about something else, so I think it's just what's attached. to whatever is in front of your mind and logically you say oh, it's anxiety about this, it's not just anxiety do you think people know who you really are? You know. I met with a CIA agent a couple of weeks ago and he told me we have three lives.

We have our secret life, we have our private life and then we have our public life, public life is, you know, the guy in the suit in front of the camera, your private life may be what your wife knows, but maybe your secret life is who are you when there is absolutely no one in your mind and in your own space. Do you think people know who you are? I think I actually think, in a weird way, this podcast is kind of important because you know, go on with this, Joe Rogan, go on with Modern Wisdom and speaking as myself is very insightful and writing the book before and after, which is a kind of autobiography, but also a little bit of self-help if we met if we were having lunch, you know, for the listeners it's like that, yeah.

It's kind of who I am and then I have the ability to be funny on stage, which is another side of me, so I think it's not authentic what I do on stage, it's like that's who I am. in front of 3,000 people who have paid £30 to be entertained here we go what's the side of the view that your wife might know but we don't know well this this this is yeah you know you're a little more um I think this is a big deal. As you eliminate the uh, it's not like making a television show to advertise something, so if you continue, you know, gr, you're very similar, well, I have three anecdotes and I'll publish them and I'll try to get four laughs and then I'll try to attack her with the other guests and being fun and it's very performative whereas this is performative but in a slightly different way that you do well. kind of like what I think about the world and this is what it is inside my head and it's pretty I don't know, I guess when you get away from it it's okay, well, a lot of self-help, a lot of uh a lot of uh, I guess therapy for you, that's how I am since we spoke last time, is there something you thought then that you no longer believe?

I'm interested. I'm asking that question because my favorite question was the last one. Something you changed your mind about um I think I've changed my opinion a little bit on environmentalism I think I absolutely recognize the problem and I think the solution is there I think it's splitting the atom I think Everything should be I think nuclear energy is a kind of future, that's what we should invest in. We have the problem that we have a system that is full of politicians and we do not have statesmen. We need longer deadlines. In other words, we need longer timeframes because we need people to make decisions as if it's all about rewards, right?

So what do we reward? It's on a 5 year cycle so no one is going to invest in nuclear power because it will take 20 years to pay off but they should be rewarded for that somehow we need to find a way to reward politicians for what they did 20 years ago because if we do that there will be a better future and I don't know if the fact that Britain does it makes any difference as people. I often say, "Well, if Britain does it, it doesn't make any difference because, well, China isn't going to do it or India isn't going to do it, but actually it's fine, if we did it, if we did something radical and we would go totally nuclear. incredible examples to give to the rest of the world this is what I do here is my do you want to hear my speech well here is my political speech right nuclear submarines have been testing this for 50 years they are perfectly safe right people are going to live in a nuclear submarine next to the reactor they're okay, so we build one of those there's no no in my backyard we put it in everyone's backyard there's a nuclear reactor like a submarine in every city bury it we have a small power unit in every city City and the city in Britain is fine, and then it's quite expensive, so you pay your fuel bill and in 20 years we won't worry about the police 23, we burn all the fossil fuels we want for 20 years and then in one day , we become totally ecological.

Well, no more fossil fuels, a little bit for fertilizer and stuff, but no more essentially and then fuel for the next 10 years. Energy becomes free, so we tell companies from around the world who want to set up a business in Britain. It's quite expensive. It employs people, but the energy is free. You think we live in a world where energy will be valuable in 20 years. Will that? Yeah, so you tell your Amazon and your Googles if you want to set the location here. Yes cool. If I ruled the world, that's what I would do, Trump will probably come back to power, right?

From the looks of it, Biden doesn't seem to be very convincing to people, according to some of the polls. I mean, within a week. a long time in politics, who knows, who knows what will happen. I think the United States will be fine regardless of whether the United States is geographically economically, it is a net exporter of fuel and food. It has amazing neighbors in Canada and Mexico. It's going to have the most incredible 20 years, regardless of who comes in, they're going to double their industrial base in the next 20 years because everything that was globalized is becoming more isolated, which is not necessarily good for the world, but it is very good for the United States.

The United States can afford it. have a terrible political system because it's very lucky that they own so much of the AI ​​race, plus all the big AI companies seem to be based in the United States and that feeling doesn't seem to really bother me. Ai No AI is a cover band, it's artificial intelligence, it's not Artificial Consciousness, so if you tell it to write a joke, it may spit out things you've already written and rearrange them slightly, but yeah, don't worry, but if you imagine that the Beatles are not worried about the bootleg Beatles, but if you imagine an improvement rate of at least 20% each year, that will only be necessary and you know that the compounds will only take us five or 10 years before.

There's an AI that can tell a joke really, really well and an original joke. I don't know if it will be original. I think there's something about, I mean, you know, I don't know, genius is an overused term. right, there are two types of genius, right, there's real innate genius, you know, bark or bethoven or whatever, genius, genius and then there's hyper-accelerated rationality and it's kind of like what you know, people talk about the comic genius and They say that's what they're talking about hyper-accelerated rationality and I think AI is a long way from any of them generating anything that's genuinely original, no, it's a cover band, it can, it can, it can go well , that's the genre. and I can make something that's a little bit similar, but there's something about human creativity that I don't think it's coming close to and maybe I'm being naïve, but I think it's going to be something incredible for the world because I think new work will come, This wasn't a job 10 years ago, being a podcaster, you tell someone I'm going to do, I'm going to do some kind of long radio show, but people, but it's an individual, you'd have to explain it.

You know, things change and it's only when you look back that you say oh wow, that's interesting, the biggest TV channel in the world is YouTube and no one realized that the BBC was fighting with ITV over who would get the highest ratings. a Saturday. night and YouTube stole their lunch because they weren't paying attention is that it's not AI, well, it's the world, it's the world progresses and things move forward and it's always been good. I think people care about AI, it really catches my attention, it's the people who are doing well. We have to destroy these cotton making machines because this cannot happen there will be no new jobs, they will just be different jobs.

I read a book called The Innovators' Dilemma and it really changed my mind. In some things, they go back in history and look at all the big steps forward in innovation and basically classify two types of innovation. I'll call it up opportunity and down opportunity, so if you're selling horses in the 1880s the up opportunity is what all your customers ask for it's what you know how to do it's what you have your supply chain set up to deliver which They are the best and fastest horses you know you can imagine the meeting where you are the CEO of a horse company I walk in, I go listen, the boss had an idea, they say, what is it, I go faster, the horses, you go, people ask me, I go, yes, we know how to do it, yes, do we know?

I have a client B, yeah, let's do that and then another guy comes in and says Jimmy, I have an idea, cars are better? No, you have to walk in front of him with a red flag and he's going 10 miles an hour. We know how to do it. No, is someone asking for it? None of our clients have asked for a horse. Yes, that is the downstream opportunity and throughout history the incumbents always ignore the downstream opportunity because their incentives, as you said, are set. to pursue what we call sustainable innovation, the obvious in front of them, becoming a better comedian or becoming a better podcaster, getting another camera, the downstream opportunity.

I wondered what the downstream opportunity is in podcasting. You should ask, you should ask comedians, comedians. I have an interesting way of thinking. I think we are very similar to detectives because we think backwards. Most people think about what's next. What is it you're talking about? Whats Next? What's next? What's next? This is the state of things, how did this happen? it's the same as it's like being Sherlock Holmes, you go, how the hell did you do that?, you're doing reverse engineering most of the time, it's very interesting that this is like that, it may still be a business podcast, I think, honestly, I think with the right amount of work if you really put in the work, I really think you can talk about business from time to time.

I tried. I've tried to weave it in where I can, yeah, but it's interesting that the podcast thing about going no one saw the podcast coming no one like that and yet what's missing in our lives, right, what's missing, what's the nature of nonsense. of the void, well, people are not having conversations, people are when you look around the world, all those people who live to be 100 years old, all those areas and people say, oh yes, they eat a lot of olive oil and fish, maybe that's the answer, no it's not, they eat with other people, they have a conversation that they are a part of. a community that's the difference they have something to live for olive oil doesn't make any difference the connection with other human beings is what are you doing here? you're connecting with people you're having a conversation so people are eavesdropping on a conversation but in their heads they're having a conversation and it's the things we're talking about, they're relating to their lives great, no one was asking.

This even though no one was saying, do you know what I want? three hours of Jimmy Carr, talking about life, no one was like demanding that, as someone you know, someone roll their eyes while listening to this, yeah, and I'm fading now, but in that industry they probably thought people wanted bigger and thinner TVs. what they want, they want to watch the BBC on a bigger, thinner TV, so we're going to deliver it to them, whereas the negative opportunity was that they actually wanted connection, they wanted it to be longer, they didn't want a lot of adverts. every six seconds into this, this is not very good, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, what am I going to do?, it's like it's not like anyone has spotted the gap in the market, you could be the person. you know, and it's that thing of doing what you do authentically um.

I always think Joe Rogan is a really interesting example of someone who is completely authentic when it comes to comedy and MMA and life and you know a little bit about philosophy. he's interested, he's exactly the same guy he was 20 years ago at The Comedy Store 20 years ago at The Comedy Store backstage chatting, he's exactly that guy,totally authentic and people just, yeah, great, I hear that all day, you are exactly who you are. I mean, I love the idea that you think there's still a part of you that thinks it's a business podcast, it's not, it's not that you have something where you love stories and you love chatting with people and you love to learn and that's what it is.

It's just that this should be called the education of Steven Bartler. Well, the reason I think this is a business podcast is because of what I said. I think business is mental. This is called The Diary of a CEO. What would you find in In a CEO's diary you would not find forecasts or forecasts. You would find problems with his wife and you would find out that he is having anxiety attacks and you would find out that he doesn't know what he is doing. The point of this was to get into the Diary of a CEO the things that are not business, that are the rest of your life, this is about life, I mean, I love it, I love it, I'm not breaking your balls, but it's like it's uh, it's cool the way it's developed, I think so, it's been guided by, as you say, curiosity.

I understand that people all the time will say Steve, we want CEOs to come back, we want to listen to entrepreneurs or whatever and I just You know, I can't do that for a decade. What I can do for a decade is follow my curiosity like I can do it for the next 30 or 40 years and at some point I'll give a damn and I'll worry. about psychedelics and that's what I'm going to talk about and if you don't like it then there are three million other options, yes, I think that going with your instincts will be the way to go because if you like the program and if you are interested in the conversations , I think the listener will go with that and if you try to give them what they wanted, I think again it's exactly that, we need Better Faster Horses, not a car and you're fine, you need a car because whatever this is 10 years from now it will be different, right, it'll be something that I'll be a dad and I'll be thinking about a different set of problems and I'll talk to parenting psychologists about what Fu does with my kids and stuff, yeah, um, but Rogan was the blue one.

I have to say it and I think I sent it to him. I don't think he responded, but I just told him one day that the plan he said about authenticity and following whatever interests you has helped me a lot because there's more pressure to change when there are more people watching and they can. I've seen petitions and I've seen little movements on LinkedIn trying to get it to have more of these types of people. The biggest request I have on this podcast is to quote normal people who are at the beginning of their journey, that's the quote, that's what they tell you.

I, um, and I would do well if you had interviewed Stephen at 18, yeah, there's not much to talk about, um, you know, so really they would be the ones interviewing me, maybe that tends to what happens, who would be the student in that situation, um, but that's the most popular request I get is to go interview, quote, normal people, so yeah, ignore that, I mean, you must have been able to ignore the external pressure to change. or tell a certain kind of joke or be a certain kind of no, I think. I think I think the audience thinks about me because in that immediate feedback loop they tell me what they think is funny and that leads you down the path to go.

That is interesting. People want to hear this. I think the reason people are attracted to it. My comedy is partly because there isn't much censorship in our society, there is quite a bit of self-censorship, so people don't speak freely in the office or even at home, they don't say what they really think if you notice this opinion. the polls don't seem as accurate as before and that's because people don't feel like they don't vote the same way they express themselves in the world so they come to see me live and there's no filter and this guy says what he wants, this type doesn't seem to give a very cathartic effect if you're spending your days well.

I know what the right thing is, so I'll say the right thing, you know if you want. Seeing who has power in a society who can't be criticized and joked about and made light of all those things is powerful because it's about freedom of speech and it's about the Overton window, you know, that Overton window of what is and what is not acceptable to talk about, you know, so in politics there is a window of what is and what is not acceptable politics and then there is a window of change of what is and what is It is not acceptable to speak politely. society and I think comedy has a really valuable role in moving that window of change in what people can discuss, what people can talk about, I'm always very interested, as happens occasionally when you hear the audience leaving a show comedy and you have such great conversations, it's really interesting how they just feel a little freer and more relaxed because they've heard someone on stage very relaxed and they're not pressured, they're not trying to self-censor or say the right thing, self-expression and the expression in general, they've been on a journey like you know this whole idea of ​​awakening and what they can and can't say, I mean, it's really accelerated in the last 10 years to the point that it's You know, it's pretty much if I look back at comedy videos from 20 years ago, they really seemed to be able to say what they wanted to say and then we went through this era of censorship and cancellation and there is no time in the history of humanity. where the good guys have censored things, it's never happened, so wherever it comes from, whether it's the right, you know, the ban on marrying into the White House, this filth, which used to be the case, or the left, the idea that there's, you know, hate speech or or the idea that something could be words could be violence, um, which is what people say when they've never experienced real violence.

I guess there is such a demand for violence that we had to incorporate the words, but the idea of ​​saying this, you are trying to censor things, it is a bad idea, freedom of speech is a very good idea because those thoughts don't go away if people don't they express themselves, they're just repressed and, in fact, they just talk freely about things and talking about them is very, very valuable when you're trying to build something. The problem we all face is that we need talents and skills that we ourselves do not have and we can waste a lot of time trying to learn something new. skill when really what we should be doing is using a platform like fiverr.com where you have global access to vetted and tested world class talent at your fingertips that you can access in a flexible and affordable way.

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If you were a podcaster, would you have someone on the podcast? Is there a limit you would set? That's something I think about a lot, where are my limits? because I get a lot of messages saying would you have this person? Would you talk to Trump? Would you talk to Vladimir Putin? Would you talk to? Know? Yeah, I mean, I think I think you have to talk to everyone. I think the idea of ​​saying that there are there are people who are beyond the limits have the idea that there are people with bad ideas, right? I don't know if there are that many bad people, but there are bad incentives and people who follow them and talk to everyone seems incredibly valuable to me and the idea that you see, yeah, that's how life goes, you know, even if you want to be a Marxist, it's a dialectic of going well, this person I disagree with and you have the conversation and with an open mind and heart and maybe you change your mind and how to move the conversation forward.

I mean, the big mystery to me in politics is the idea that people talk about um hypocrites in politics changing their minds about things, of course, they changed their minds, the facts have changed, the world has changed. you move on Obama ran on an anti-gay marriage proposal but the world moves on and things progress and you know I'm progressive but I think the idea of ​​not listening to people is poison, you think about why Hillary lost the election, right , it was that thing about the deplorables, remember when he talked about the deplorables and you can't talk to those people and it was like no, those are just working class people and they have concerns and you need to talk to them about those concerns, you can't just dismiss them. and leave, they're despicable people, you know that kind of Urban Elite stuff, you gotta bring them in, have the conversation, you'll get someone. with that, you know you have to listen, you have to listen to all the different sides of the argument, otherwise we're entrenched, we're just in these little, you know, and it's that thing that becomes identity, you know.

What party do you follow? Crazy people don't particularly like to follow people they disagree with online because that creates cognitive dissonance, right? It's a constant confrontation of a set of ideas that threaten or challenge you in some way, so we. I'd rather just create this little echo chamber of individuals who confirm my existing set of beliefs and that's what you know, one of the things I made the decision to do about two or three years ago was just follow everyone I'm viscerally friendly to. . of revulsion I should say yes and if you had them on the show if you had people on the show that you go to I don't really agree with what they say but yeah yeah I feel great to be back yeah that's interesting , I think that's really, I think that's really valuable, I think it's also a more interesting conversation because if you're just going to nod with someone and say, that's making sense, that's great, it's like you know and I think having those kind of difficult conversations is really a valuable thing.

One thing you said surprised me because it didn't come up at all in our previous conversation and even in my previous research you said that you feel like you have a low-level eating disorder, yes, I think I'm very, very conscious of my weight and my appearance, and I think that's maybe, eating disorders are very, very serious things and I'm not, I'm really not into that. category, but I am very aware of it as a man too. I was chatting to Chris Williamson about this thing about modern wisdom. I think it was like citing the statistic to say that men's body morphine exceeds women's.

I think about the next year in terms of the kind of young men who look at Instagram and want to look a certain way and present themselves a certain way. I think there's some kind of problem with that. I think that weird thing is like I've had a I had a little bit of work done, you know, I got my teeth done and my hair done, and I think there's something about being on screen all the time that you become very conscious.maybe it's a bit of a control thing, have you always had that? Or is it developed?

I think it's a little fleshed out, you know, I think if it wasn't on TV or Netflix or whatever, I think you probably would. Don't be so self-conscious about how you present yourself, um, so it's a little bit weird, like a little bit of a weird relationship with I mean, I have kind of a theory about drugs, the right drugs and alcohol, so I think about marijuana. when you think about it. Marijuana, uh, people are very carefree about H, well, that's just a little marijuana, okay, but think about what's right, it's not a performance-enhancing drug, it's a performance-inhibiting drug. performance, it takes away your ambition and your agency and it just makes you very calm and relaxed and I don't think that's appropriate for 20 year old men or teenagers, right, actually what you want is the performance and the sound and I think what we should promote is almost like a ban.

I mean, I did it more or less organically. I found comedy and stopped drinking for 12 years. I didn't touch a drop and that was mainly due to lifestyle because I would drive to gigs and come back and then I didn't want to be left hanging the next day because I wanted to and everyone was trying to buy you drinks all the time and I felt like it was already enough. I'm going to be I'm going to be straight, which I've always liked the term straight, it's a punk rock term for being. Totally straight, it's cooler, right, mhm, but I like the idea of ​​going straight.

I'm going to control that, I mean, I drink a little bit socially now, but not in a problematic way, but giving up was a pretty big thing because it was also the approach it gives you, so I don't know, I'm a little, a little anti-drug. for young. I think a little about men in their 50s and 60s who are workaholics, maybe a little marijuana wouldn't be it. It's a bad idea, but it's the idea of ​​young people taking it and not having it, that takes away from you, it takes away from you that kind of that raw ambition and that's something so valuable in those years, it's almost like that advantage that the young people can't see the advantage they have they see the wealth uh and the financial security of being 50 years old and when you're 20 what they don'tthe right moment.

I really appreciate that it's so precise, that it's an accurate assessment. I think it is. I think that's all. It's different from the last special and it has more of me in it and it's like I'm in a very privileged position where people you know, some people listen to me and I have my audience. I know my audience, so can I get a message under the wire that other people can't really talk about? So if I'm doing sex ed, I'm doing sex ed my way and it's a lot of fun, but it's conveying a message. to young men, I think it's very valuable.

I'm excited to hear specifically about the topic of consent, very, very excited Jimmy, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest without knowing who he is. I'll leave it to, well, I literally haven't thought about this, so it's okay, I can't see it either, which is funny, people don't believe me when I say that, but okay, what do I have? I have a question. you have a question they left you the question they left you is what would you tell your 20 year old self that you would like to know and that would have had a positive impact on your life and would have helped you avoid unnecessary pain.

I think I would have said: enjoy more, try to be more present. I think I was, uh, I think I was worried about the results and not the process at that age. I think he was worried about what kind of degree he would get and working hard. and I should have been worried about having more fun which tells you in retrospect that that's the important thing that you needed to hear at that moment what was the symptom of not listening that I think it was I think there's something strange about uh if you're in academia and you have that imposter syndrome and you feel like, oh oh god, what is it?

I do not belong here. I'm not bright enough. I need to work harder, that's valuable in a sense, it makes you work harder, but actually you know, you should have what college is for, it's just for growth, being in the moment, what do you think about college? I think college is a luxury item now. I think the intrinsic value of college is less important than it indicates. so I think a Cambridge degree is a Louis Vuitton bag is a luxury item that says oh I have this um you can get the reading list and read the books.

I'm not sure if it's academic, you know, I don't know. I have strong opinions about academia because when I went to university it was free, true, it was very difficult to get into, but it was free and I think we should bring that back. I think if you're doing it, let's say it's right. Let's say you are studying any academic subject. University should be free in the UK and if you get an academic degree from anywhere else in the world, it should come with a British passport attached. Come spend some time here. Great, not a bad policy for your child.

He turns to you one day and says dad, I want to be a magician, what do you tell your son? They want to be magicians or they say I want to be an NBA player, let's do that, what do you tell them? your son wait, come back, become a magician um uh, I don't know, I mean, listen, it's, uh, I guess it's that thing about following your dreams if they're hiring is the Chris Rocks line, isn't it? Follow your passion yes I'm hiring if you're good at it if I don't know if my son ends up being 7 feet I'd be surprised but if he is then maybe maybe then you know maybe there's a maybe there is There's a future in him , but yes, choose something that feels realistic to you.

Do you have a prejudice about what you want your child to do? Honestly, because we all have. I would have a I would have a little prejudice. I mean, no. I don't know, I don't know what jobs there will be in 30 years, right, you want your kid to be happy and maybe have some kind of foundation in critical thinking and beyond that, I know, good luck Jimmy, thanks. The first conversation really blew me away and taught me something about this podcast. You're one of the really defining conversations I had that taught me that we're all so much more than the surface you see and it's funny because it was the last time.

We recorded it, I was upstairs in my kitchen, my old kitchen, and the crew texted me when you arrived and they were like, "Oh, Jimmy, the car just pulled up. I think you came on your bike or something and I they said, "Oh God, it's just a joke about someone's mom." downstairs and I thought, oh, this is Jimmy's car, the Jimmy's car that I've seen in nine out of 10 cats and then we went up and had that conversation. and it blew me away, it absolutely blew me away, well this is the hard thing second album, how did I do it oh fantastic, oh fantastic, absolutely fantastic, but no, it really taught me that people are so much more than just the mask. that we wear and we all wear a mask, you know, Persona to get through life and we find.

Sometimes it's easier to wear the mask than to confront who we really are, but in that action I feel like I met the man behind the mask per se and I really like sharing that side of me. I really enjoy this. I really enjoy the show. I wish you much success, thank you very much Jimmy, thank you for everything and I highly recommend everyone to go watch Natural Born Killer, which is on Netflix right now. I'll put the link to the Netflix special in the description below.