Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast, Episode 12 of Season four, this is an episode the dad and I did together featuring none other than Russell Brand. If you guys want the video option, it's available on my channel on YouTube. Russell Brand, if you don't know him as an English comedian, actor, author, activist and father. This episode was insane. We spoke about family life, having kids, the role of sacrifice, mentor, apprentice relationships, seeing the divine and others working with family, the aspiration of fame and much more.

Russell has just released an audio book, Revelation Connecting with the Sacred in Everyday Life, which is linked in the show notes and available at Audible Dotcom. Russell's podcast, Under the Skin, is also available on Luminary, which is a subscription podcast service. And I got you a month free by going to Luminary Link MP if you want to check it out.

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I'm a little bit starstruck, got to say, it's not actually that like it's just an indication of how my lifestyle has changed. What it actually is in objective terms is I fortified, but in my memory of 45 is late because I live with a four year old and a two year old. And of course, their mother bear my children, I urgently point out and right. How everything is everything is different. There's so much life around me, but of course, also so much death.

I'm handling the death part. They're having a life part. OK.

Can you delve into that a little bit? What do you mean? So much death.

What a bloody exhausting these the children, the animals, these dogs, these cats. Everywhere I look, this is more life that that's probably a dog hair in my mouth right now. And it's just invades every every facet of my being.

That's what you're supposed to have children when you're young and stupid instead of old and wise.

Yeah, I see that now. Thank you very much. I wish you when I was twenty, I possibly wouldn't have been able to absorb the information that I thought.

No, no, that's another problem. I think you have to have children when you're young by accident. That's how I did as it worked out really well. Yes, that was do you mean you have children all that you all do. All right. I have a three and a half year old girl.

That's good, yeah, I can see that we could see that would be good. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, there's no other way I could have done it. Yeah, you don't think you could have handled it well, how have things you said you have a four year old and a two year old. That's precisely right. And they've been home all the time because of covid, too, huh? Well, as a matter of fact, we like they do have like a play group that they can attend part time and actually in again, I should probably from most people's perspective, it's a it's kind of a breeze.

I mean, you know, I'm not I'm not a coal face. I'm not running a farm and is actually, in loads of ways absolutely blissful. In fact, all this information really is just to sort of provide some context for how eight forty five in the evening when most sophisticated people are sitting down to dine, is to make some kind of witching hour. Yeah, yeah, that's fair enough, I'm getting tired around seven o'clock, especially if Scarlett comes in at night.

I wanted to ask this just before I forget, and this is a question for both of you guys, but we could start off with Russell.

What's been the most difficult part of having kids for you other than being asleep early? Well. I don't know if anything about it has been jarringly difficult because it's been such a total transformation from not only a life, you know, I had a life, I'm a performer and like through celebrity has been a component in my life. And it's about being a performer, being a celebrity, both, I suppose, amplifying aspects of self ness in a way that can, in retrospect, be rather rootless.

And having children in a way that I'm present for has been very, very grounding. So it's very difficult to to break it down because it's so, such a holistic change. It's very difficult to break it down into components. And because it is overall so glorious and so wonderful and profound, it's difficult to frame it as being in any way negative. But it has been holy, holy, transformative in a way that's beneficial, beneficial in incredibly important part of maturation.

And I had I had this happen to be in my 20s. I don't think I would have been able to have rooted myself. Yeah, that's fair. I was pretty wild before I had skied, really? Oh, yeah, like in an uncomfortable way. And I mean, getting pregnant, you have absolutely like you don't really have much of a choice. If you're pregnant and you're going to have a kid, then you're immediately a healthy, sober person.

So unless you want real trouble.

Yeah, unless you want real trouble. But that switch things around really quickly and then the first year staying, you have to be pretty much attached. Like as a man, if you're good and you're there, then it's one thing. But as a woman, if you're breastfeeding, then you're just completely attached to the baby for like a year. So that kind of takes away the party element, too. And it was probably. It probably.

SPED up. It probably actually ended up speeding up my career because it put the partying on hold, which is a funny thing to say about having kids.

Well, my my observation for young people in university was that, for example, the students I had who who were studying psychology, who also started working in a lab, and then so we're working 12 to 20 hours extra a week, got better grades, not worse, doing more things well, because they had to discipline themselves and they quit wasting time.

Yeah. And there's some real utility in.

Shouldering the sort of responsibility that stops you from wasting time and you asked about negative elements of having children. Yeah, I feel I think in some ways similar to Russell, at least with regards to what he said so far as there was virtually nothing about it that was negative as far as I was concerned.

I suppose I was somewhat. It was difficult to sort out how the attention was going to be split in the household, I missed your mother when she was so occupied with the infants, but having children more than made up for that. And, you know, kids get a bad rap and people think of them as an impediment to freedom. And it's such a foolish way of thinking because it's so remarkable to have children and you can have the best relationship.

You have the opportunity of having the best relationship with anyone you've ever had in your life when you have children.

And then also someone is finally more important than you. You know, I mean, hopefully when you get married or you fall in love with someone, they're as important as you are, perhaps even more so. But when you have children, it's definitively the case that now someone is more important than you.

And that's that's such a relief. And it is it it is a crucial part of maturation to have that happen. And I don't believe that people will get pilloried for this. Or maybe you will, because it's your podcast I blame.

I can handle it. I don't think it's possible to grow up without having children.

Oh, it's unlikely he's still got it.

What's that? That he's still got it. He can still drop a bond. What is going to stab people up?

Yeah, well, it's hard to grow up until someone is more important than you. So why would you why would you why wouldn't you continue being sybaritic and and and living at least to some degree, for pleasure? So it's true, the children are amazing, and so everyone out there who's thinking about having children, you should do it because they're they add they add to your life. And then when you're older, like me, I'm 60, almost 60 now.

I have grandchildren now. And I can't imagine what would my life how empty my life might be without that. And more of that on the way. So. Yeah, and I saw all the brilliant people, as I'm sure you both do, that have a foregone or decided against or unable to have children, I suppose the values that are brought to the surface in parenthood about duty, devotion, and perhaps if there is a sort of some transcendent component to your life.

And I don't mean that necessarily in a spiritual way, but it's difficult to avoid the connotations of that word, then perhaps perhaps maturation is possible. If you take, for example, like a straightforward mendicants life monasticism, celibacy, devotion in a very explicit way to God, then would you say that they are unable to reach maturity? Or what if it was a secular version like devotion to the arts or to a sort of a political cause? I do not think that that could.

Well, that of course, that's reminds me of something I wanted to talk to you about. I read your book Mentors, which is this book right here. And one of the things that it made me think about was. I've thought for a long while that. The. One of the processes that marks the transition from childhood to adulthood is apprenticeship. And so one of the things Neches said about the Catholic Church was that. The European mind, this is speaking in Nietzsche's voice, the European mind disciplined itself by adhering to a single interpretive strategy for centuries to explain everything under the conditions on.

Do you explain everything using the axioms of a single intellectual system and that disciplined the European mind and enabled it then to go off and use other disciplinary strategies to discover other. To discover other ways of dealing with the world, maybe to develop science, for example, and Nicha was very convinced that you had to enslave yourself in one manner or another before you could be free. And that's an apprenticeship motif. And to me, that's what you explored in your book, mentors.

You know, you present yourself, I believe, as someone who was striving in various ways to mature and that you identified people who came into your life as targets for emulation that could impose a discipline on you and help you mature and a hunger for that like like people do. And yes, I do think that. If you don't have children, there are other disciplinary strategies that you can use to further your maturation, but it isn't obvious to me that any of them are as profound as having children.

And I mean, I've had a good career and I've been very interested in intellectual pursuits as well. And I suppose I've disciplined myself in some manner because of that. But I still stand by my statement about children there in a different category of of profundity.

It's partly because you have to take on so much responsibility when you have children.

Is it the sacrifice, too? I mean, if you think about people who work in churches or what Russell is saying about, you know, people who devote themselves to God and it's kind of what they do is kind of sacrificial. And I suppose part of what you do when you have kids is sacrifice that hedonistic part if you're going to be a good parent.

So is is part of what helps you mature the sacrifice associated with having children or is it something else?

I don't know if that's part of what helps you mature or if that's a definition of maturation, is that it's a sacrificial act. But, you know, people often think of sacrifice in terms of loss. But the reason you sacrifice fundamentally is to gain something higher.

That's that's the sacrificial motif. You give up something that's that's attractive in the present. But but the purpose of the sacrifices is to is to. To organize things more effectively at a higher level of being so and that is that is maturation, that that's the forestalling of immediate pleasure for medium to long term well-being and maybe for more than you as well.

Hmm. OK. I have a question, even though I know it's not my podcast, and when you transduced a metaphysical idea like sacrifice and sacrifice as an invocation of a great power further down the line, and you transduced it into materialist and rational rationalist terms, perhaps to make it more relevant to a cultural group that don't think in that way anymore. Do you think that. We risk missing part An a central part of the mystery that much of the devotional life, by its nature, doesn't have a direct translation in secularism, i.e., of course, you know, I've heard you say before, Jordan, that it's says if there were a father that's a stern father that's going to guide you and discipline you and child you into being a stronger man or woman.

But I can't. But I feel, too, that there is something that that through sacrifice, we are also acknowledging that on this plane of being on this plane, of being all our needs cannot be met. In fact, really all we can do is generate need. And by sort of sacrificing food or sacrificing and sacrificing something important, we reaffirm our connection to the sublime.

OK, well, I think that whenever you. Bring a transcendent concept, in some sense down to earth, you risk inappropriately constraining it if you assume that your act of bringing it down to Earth has explained it fully. So I don't believe that my explanation of sacrifice explains it fully. And so I think you can retain that. You can retain the info, you can retain the advantages of ENF ability, for example, if if I assess a piece of literature or film for and make its metaphysical presumptions more explicit.

I don't believe that that necessarily takes away from the film, but it can because it can be reductionistic, but it can add an additional. By furthering understanding, it can add an additional layer of of utility to the to the experience, I've tried to do that with the biblical lectures I've done, for example. I'm not trying to explain everything away, although I do think that, generally speaking, you should use the simplest explanation that's at hand. So it's a risk, but but hopefully it can be a risk that is fundamentally productive.

Yeah, I reckon I suppose suppose that mentorship and education is dependent on crossing the space between the ineffable and the least palpable that apprehend able to tell.

That's the thing, is that if the ineffable stays entirely ineffable, then you can't put it to use. And I think you're absolutely right that the mentorship does that because and there's a profound religious instinct there. And I think it was really operating in you. You you make reference to it a number of times. For example, you had, by your own admission, a strong tendency to romanticize the women in your in your life. You say you deify them in some sense or maybe more accurately, you perceive them that way to begin with.

And then over time, in some sense, the stars fall away from your eyes. But that's the action of an instinct that would be the anima projection from a union perspective, is that there's an instinct in you that's pushing you towards development. And the way it manifests itself is by illuminating certain elements of your experience.

And those might be that might occur, for example, when you meet a male figure who you admire, who you then start to imitate, it's the deep workings of your unconscious. Illuminate that figure and make him say stand out against the background because you've apprehended that there's something about his pattern of being that addresses a lack in yours. And the same thing can happen in romantic relationships and that can also not be purely illusory. You know, in some sense, when you when you have a romantic relationship with someone, you are chasing the divine in each other.

Now, both of you may fall short and the relationship may fall apart, but by seeing the divine in the person that you fall in love with, you also invite them to manifest that. And by opening the door to that, they're actually more likely to manifest it. It's very complex. It's very complex and sophisticated instinct.

I have a complex I understand this. I understand this. I have experienced this. I recognize that. I have spent a lot of time through my inability to comprehend my own psychic energies. I projected onto another resources that were available, perhaps through tutelage within myself. One of the mentors I write about in that book, who has been incredibly valuable in my life when we first met like by Synchronicity or which gave me a copy of the Robert Johnson's book on Gold and Gold, which is a sort of an essay on mentorship and habit, holding one another's gold.

And I think, yes, that how mentorship has functioned in my life has I've gained a great deal of perspective. I've understood that they are kind of psychic. Sinak, the case holding for me a space holding meaning. I recognize the fallibility of these people that I like, I adore or aspire to. But in my psyche, they function as coordinates. I was just talking to a brilliant therapist today in therapy I like and he said that, you know, you don't need to overcome your father and mother in the physical world with them.

You need to overcome the imprint of them in your psyche. And I said, yes, in a sense they are hollowed out. Carapace is in reality. I don't mean any disrespect to my actual mother or father, but the mother and father that I deal with and live in my psychic landscape, they don't live in Essex, England, you know. So like I recognize. Yes. That we can use relationship as an external cold and that to activate dormant psychic energies.

So there's a kind of reductionism in that, too, in some sense, right, because by by doing that, you reduce the the the experience of the divine in someone else to activation of an unconscious complex, let's say.

But one of the things you point out in the book, and it's possible to go deeper than this to one of the things you point out in the book is that. When you allow or ask or invite someone to be your mentor, you also allow them to manifest that element of them that's most mentor like, and they can do that independently to some degree of their other flaws. Just like when you're a parent, a father, you can act paternally as a figure of authority, even though you are by no means a perfect figure of authority.

The child still needs you to be the best authority figure that you can be despite your flaws, and you will manifest that.

But. It it that's also not false because. The ideal that we're all chasing, we don't know what its ultimate reality is, you know, if you have an instinct towards further development, let's say what that means is that there's something about you that could be greater than it currently is. And we don't know the limits to what that currently greater could be. And that's where the the idea of mentorship, let's say, shades into something like religious worship, because I suppose if you think about the Christian world, the ultimate mentor is Christ.

And you could say that being a Christian or you could say that being a psychologist. And if you said it being a psychologist, you would say, well, it's by definition that the ultimate mentor is Christ. And what Christianity has been as it unfolds itself over the last 2000 years is an attempt to engage all of the people within that belief system in a dialogue about what that ideal actually constitutes.

You know, when there's tradition that feeds into that, the biblical stories and the corpus of tradition that goes along with that.

But all of it is a collective attempt to specify that ideal so that people can use it as a target to further their development. And that's not delusional, that that furthering of development is unbelievably useful practically. Yes, yes, and forgive me, because I have a response to a question once again, and I want to ensure that McKayla, who surely has had a lifetime of tolerating this kind of business, a father sigh in young passers by, like I would like to I would like to say when Edinger, in his analysis of William William Blake's engravings from the Book of Job, says like of the passage where your wife shows the behemoth and Leviathan to Joe, but said, look upon the Leviathan behemoth that I have made as I may be.

Edinger, in his analysis says that you always saying to Joe here the. The potentiality is held in your way is beyond good and evil, how does this transition between an Old Testament version of God that requires of us to become good, that God itself or himself or herself is also good? How does this idea, this interpretation of our relationship with God, this Old Testament, which places this sort of obligation so that punishes Joe for his phatic impersonation of worship?

How does that evolve into the Christian idea of Christ as the perfect mentor?

Christ, and why don't you ask a difficult question, Jesus?

Well, you know, Young talks about this a fair bit, an answer to job. And that's a very difficult book to summarize. And it's also a very terrifying book. But the upshot of it is essentially something like this, which is that whatever God is, the the best element of him can plausibly be brought forth as a consequence of the manifestation of what's best in us. And that might be the willingness to sacrifice and the willingness to trust and the and that the courage to love your neighbor, the courage to love your enemy.

And this is a profound question.

It's like, would reality shine a more benevolent face upon us if we are all as good as we could be?

And that's the Christian idea. And I can't see that that idea is wrong now. And I think certainly Young interpreted the story of Joe, but not light, and he believed that job sort of set God back on his heels, so to speak. Bye bye. Being a more moral agent in some sense than God himself was, but underneath all that was this notion that if you acted as if God was love, if you believe that, and that would be manifest in your perceptions and your actions that that would invite.

The deity of love into existence, and if that's true, you know that you know that when you when you when you interact with people with love and there's a tremendous courage in that. It makes the world a better place and we don't know how deep that reaches, and it certainly reaches as deep as humanity itself, but unless there's something transcendently real about it beyond that, who knows? Who knows?

It's a that's that's a far enough target for for anyone as far as I'm concerned. A hell of a question, Russell. Yeah, I'm just sitting here just like, yep, I'll just. That was. But but anyway, that's that's fine, not so much, because you said, you know, before we did this podcast, we were talking about mentors and you said that you're you're one of the things that you've done is to pick someone to imitate and to pull yourself towards them by that process of imitation.

And then when you got close, you picked someone else to imitate or to compare yourself with compare myself.

Well, I'm not sure, but it's the same thing. The comparison is the same thing, because when you compare yourself to someone, you start pulling yourself towards them unless you get envious and resentful.

Yeah, before we were before we hopped on the podcast, I was just talking about how I have like I consistently have. I'm getting a lot of opportunities with the podcast I have, but I consistently have my dad to compare myself to, which I think is fine because I have something to aim towards and it's kind of something to get to. And that's what I've done throughout my life, is, hey, you know, that person is really smart and interesting trying to achieve what they're achieving.

And then once you get there, you pick somebody above you. And the problem is that means you're always kind of unfulfilled, but it also means you're always growing. So that's what we were taught so well.

That's also why you pointed out, for example, he believed that the Book of Revelations had been tacked on to the New Testament because the Christ in the Gospels was portrayed too much as a figure of mercy, whereas in Revelation, Christ is portrayed primarily as a judge. And Jung's explanation for that was that every ideal is a judge and the ultimate ideal is the ultimate judge. And you could say the ultimate ideal judge is your soul. And because that's virtually the definition of the ultimate ideal.

And so the ultimate ideal is something transcendent and divine that judges your soul.

Now, what that means about the way the universe is constituted, again, I have no idea.

But but. But the higher the ideal, the more severe the judge, that's clearly the case. And that should make you quake. I think it does when you're conscious, when your conscience assaults you in the middle of the night for things that you've done wrong, it's because you're quaking in your boots morally, because you failed to live up to this ideal. And there's no escape from that. Not not not truly. I don't believe there is. How are you to managing to conduct the intimacy of a father and daughter relationship in this new medium?

You know, having two children, my two little daughters, myself, and I love them so dearly that children and adults, of course, but I I felt like it made me, like, fantasize a little, you know, I wonder if I work with them or wonder who they'll be. I wonder who they'll be. The idea of bringing your relationship into this space, has it been challenging for free for you, McCaleb, particularly when you hold your father up in such high regard, in such high esteem?

And I know you've been through a very challenging time as a family and thank God that you're both well now. But how is it to find yourself in this sort of situation that has a sort of a public dimension to it?

Yeah, it it hasn't been easy. I mean, for my entire life, especially when I've gotten older, I've said yes to every opportunity that kind of came my way just to see where it would take me. And I think that's something I learnt from my dad. Just just say yes to everything and see what happens. I started, like, formerly working for him in twenty eighteen because I'd already built his kind of social media platforms, just the profiles on Facebook, I knew how Instagram worked and I was like, Instagram's new Facebook likes, which we've got to get your profile there.

So and then I started like simple with I was cutting YouTube videos and just making clips. And then I was booking theaters and then I started coordinating between companies or agents. And it's been complicated with family. It hasn't been it's not all fun and games. And we get into serious work discussions where we're we're talking about, I don't know, maybe. Producing something and whether or not that's a good idea and it's. I don't really have a comparison, so I don't know if it's more stressful than working somewhere else like the other places I've worked.

When I was a kid, I was working at like a hockey rink and as a waitress and I I was working at a club at one point. And it's not like that wasn't stressful. So I'm still working in this position. So apparently I like it and it's definitely challenging.

You've taken a fair bit of public flak, I would say, for people who, because of what's happened to me over the last couple of years, because of people who doubt your motivations and yes.

You know, and who feel that you might be exploiting me, which I would like to state very forthrightly, is not the case. Quite the contrary. You've been of tremendous help, but it's difficult to keep those boundaries straight. I mean, the problem with working with family members is you run into dual relationship problems. And, you know, many ethicists think those are best avoided completely. And there's some real wisdom in that. But that doesn't mean it's unethical to enter into a business relationship with a family member, but it does mean that it's fraught with difficulties.

It's difficult to be a father and also supervise Mikaela's role in my business affairs, for example, because it isn't clear when I'm one and when I'm the other, and I suppose not clear to her when she's daughter and when she's employed.

Yeah, there are there are definitely benefits, though. I found like part of the reason I thought that I was good at the role I'm doing was because I was more comfortable pushing Dad on on decisions that I really believed he should do, pushing much harder than somebody else would push.

Like me, for example, like you would push.

She's less she's less agreeable than me.

So I quite a bit less of that. So I could do I could make congratulations. Thank you.

It makes getting along with people hard, but it's entertaining. Yeah, it was tricky, I, I mean, I like it, I mean, I wonder forgive me interrupting, McKeyla, I wonder when the conversation has a propensity to move into areas such as archetypes and when such strong opinions are being expressed, whether or not you feel like he could be exposing just because of the draw. Jordan, your clinical background and the type of conversations that you evoke and I'm just talking about the actual conversations themselves, let alone the sort of secondary component when other people start to evaluate, stroke, judge this stuff, exposing in what way?

What are you what are you thinking about? You mean violation of privacy? I reckon provocative, more like a some like I feel like if I talked to my mother or father is difficult to imagine what my little innocent, albeit potent children like. But but with a parent like, I feel like that if my mother or father was talking about sort of archetypes and psychic energies and parenting like and I feel like that, but I could potentially feel like, hey, you know that so that that territory is not entirely academic and not and not solely rhetorical, but is in this context is empirical.

And I think the very fact that you're doing evidences is evidence of a great deal of trust and rapport sympatico between you. I just wonder if it like how how it feels now that you are actually doing. I think I can I can answer that.

OK, I've got an answer to. Go ahead. At least from my perspective.

People are people have asked me, is your dad like he is on YouTube at home? And the answer is yes, like, you know, generally speaking, you don't get a 90 minute search like sermon like speech with nobody interrupting. But we've been talking about the meaning behind the biblical theories and myths and talking about what do you want to do in your future, since I can remember so. It's not something new at all, and it doesn't seem uncomfortable because that's how I was raised and it doesn't, having a public component doesn't make it jarring it.

Because there's still a distance, right, like even even in twenty sixteen or twenty, seventeen, seventeen, it was there's a distance between reading about newspaper. It's weird like you walk down the street and Dad was on a newspaper and I'd be like, that's that's jarring. But at home it's not jarring. Even doing podcasts like this. It's intimate, right. It's just us three. So there's the public element, but. It would be maybe it would be different if it was in front of a crowd, but it hasn't really seemed less.

I think you've had a different experience.

I think we're both relieved and pleased to be doing something together that isn't intensely focused on, like fatal or or highly painful illness.

Yeah, that because that's just it's just been nonstop. That's just been nonstop for for way too long. Way, way too long. And so this is a break from that. It is very strange, but we're in a strange world. I'll never get accustomed, I don't think, to the degree to which I've become public. And that's something I wanted to ask you about. I mean, you've got famous and then there's nothing more appalling than people who are notorious or well known whining about their fame.

And I don't want to do that, but. But. But it's still something interesting to note and to contemplate and partly to get a handle on, it's very it's been very difficult for me to. Reconceptualize my circumstances, given that I became well known when I was relatively older, you know, what happened after I was 55 and it's strange. Strange to understand that the conversation that we're having, no, is going to be watched and listened to by some hundreds of thousands of people or perhaps more than that over time.

It's uncanny in some sense and surreal.

I just don't understand those numbers. So it doesn't like I can't. I can't understand those numbers. Yeah, well, you've grown you've grown up with the reality of YouTube, for example, like you've grown up in a world where you could be a TV producer as well as a TV consumer. I mean, when I was grew up, when I was your age, even a bit younger than that, when I was in my teen years, we had two TV channels.

It wasn't long before that that, you know, the United States only had three and certainly there was never any conceptualisation that. Any particular individual could become a TV station or a media center, and so it's a very foreign reality for me. And I guess I do have some sense of the numbers, perhaps because I've done so many live talk, I've seen very large crowds.

And in any case, the reason that Mikael and I do this in large part is because, well, we're curious. We wanted to see how it would go, but. We also we're also seeing if we enjoy it and I'm happy to be here doing something like this with her, it's a real privilege. I toss back to, you know, having children. I always. I don't even have a joke, I joke right now, I supposed to this has been enhanced by my ill health in recent years, but I always feel that it's a privilege to spend time with my children.

And I have some sense of how fast time goes, you know, I've always had a very acute sense of the finitude of existence and so and this is a good hint for people who have. Children, but with regards to your family members at all, is. Don't take it for granted. No, every second you get. It isn't painful. You should cherish. You got a modlin, you came up with the joke. That's good.

I felt like I took it as an expression of your love for one another, just as with the content I watched. And I imagine that would be the motivation given the trials that you've endured with regard to your health. And then this is, of course, entirely speculative, that what preceded it in the rather unique, certainly unparalleled cultural position that you, Jordan, had occupied leading up to the period of abstinence and its accompanying medical complexity. And I know that you know that Tami and I know that health issues have been quite prevalent.

Some familiar with you and I'm familiar with your work, and I sense that it would be it was a sort of a common expression of love and gratitude and warmth and an opportunity for you both to be together. And it's very heartening to hear that. It's that with regard to your sort of inquiry about the nature of public life, for me, as the older I get, the more I recognize it was in an unsophisticated attempt as perhaps or early grasps at the ground must be of trying to heal the seminal wound of seeking some kind of value, of trying to impose some kind of a myth.

The less world, some pursue something of value to chase after and and then increasingly discovering various points in the journey arrive that they couldn't fulfill me. Now, I was sort comparatively old also like I wasn't like 16. I was like 13 when I sort of became well known when I was set to make films in America and things like that. And I always felt that there were, I'm sure, numerous, but at least two extremes running on this sort of need for validation and approval on a scale that could only indeed be provided by YouTube numbers.

McKeyla, I'd need to see that speedometer clocking up 100000, 200000. That can never be enough, never a high enough number. This is the road that lies at the root, perhaps, of all addiction, this constant requirement for more and no way of healing that wound, not materially at least, but some of it's actually some of that's even actually healthy.

Russell, I mean, one of the things that we do constantly is to evaluate our worth by the responses of others. And, you know, if that's all you do, that's a mistake. And if you're doing it in a false way, that's also a mistake, because then you're gaining as a consequence of doing something that isn't real, but like the person who cares nothing for what anyone else thinks is actually a psychopath, not a saint.

And so it's easy for that mechanism to go astray in a world that's so dominated by social media because.

You know, when went before social media, if you were a teenager, it was really important how your peers responded to you and it should have been because that's part of apprenticeship. You're socializing yourself against the group at that point and their opinion should matter. You use them as a proxy for your parents to escape from your parents. It's crucial, even though it can go too far. But now that's elevated to such an immense degree. It's like how it's like it's like pornography or cocaine.

It's you know, it it both pornography harnesses the sexual drive and drugs like cocaine hijack the the incentive reward the pleasure circuit. And they're unbelievably powerful.

They're unbelievably powerful, and it's not surprising that you'd be addicted to watching the numbers rack up. I mean, I can see that in my experience that as well, it's almost impossible to avoid wanting to see the numbers climb. And to some degree, that's egotistical and it can really lead you astray. But to some degree, it's just the natural workings of a mechanism that is actually there, in part to keep you socially acceptable, insane.

This potency that you describe with cocaine and pornography, it's difficult to locate comparably potent influences when it comes to more positive attributes, along alongside my craving for attention, etc., and perhaps walked ordinary anthropological drives for acceptance was always a vocational urgency, a devotion of an untapped or at least misguided devotion to that was always present there. And I feel that so many of the things that I've heard you previously discussed chime with this. If they do not express this exactly, the problem of not having a shared public myth is that everything is up for grabs, for a being anointed with that status, without a clear depiction of God, God as ideal's God as a shared standards, then why not just pursue fame?

Why not just pursue coke if nothing means anything anyway? And I only saw more recently with, you know, in my case, a sort of a spiritual program through the 12 steps, through mentorship, through the obligations that having people that rely on me for their own recovery as well as being a father. These I wouldn't call them secondary. I'm sure their primary characteristics, but they were secondary in my own behavior have been brought to the forefront, have been realized.

Actually, I didn't like that. To your point earlier about sort of mentorship is not that they just exhibit the divine and that it's only relevant in so much as they may activate the divinity or sublime energy in the menti. I see is beyond that. I see it somehow as a kind of symbiosis, a kind of osmosis, a kind of that that isn't ultimately the optimistic view of life, one of oneness, one of love that separate that we are not ultimately separate, then therefore there is recourse to the universe or there is a possibility of me in admiring another person or adoring another person, imbibing and taking on these attributes.

If the ultimate reality is separation, separateness. And I sometimes I think that takes us back to the discussion about the.

So-called Christian transformation of the idea of God. I've had Jewish friends of mine point out that the God of the Old Testament gets a bad rap from Christians to some degree, and that there's a lot more love there than than you might presume if you viewed the New Testament as a transformation of the Old Testament, God into the God of love. But we'll leave that aside. I think it's a valid point, but we'll leave that aside. It. The question, if you're if you're mentored in a particular direction, well, here's here's how you might.

Conceive of it. Is there something that all mentors share in common? Well, you would say so because they're all in the category mentors, and then you might say that, well, whatever all mentors share in common is the pattern of the divine. Again, that's almost by definition. Now, then there's a deeper question, which is, OK, if that if what all mentors share in common is the pattern of the divine, is that a real pattern?

And the answer to that to some degree is, well, you'll find that out by acting it out. And it seems to me that the answer to that has to be yes. I mean. If we're adapted to the world and if we pursue the fullest extent of the possibilities of our adaptation through mentorship.

Then. And if that improves the quality of our life, then it seems that whatever it is that mentorship is pushing towards is. Is real insofar as it works in the world. Hmm. Now, does that mean it's materially real or objectively real? I don't think that reality is bound completely by the categories of objective and subjective. I don't think that captures the entire essence of reality. And so but I don't believe that our instinct towards mentorship. Is a delusion.

I don't believe that our religious instinct is a delusion either, even though all instincts can go astray. Yes, and when you were saying that this idea of Christianity being that, you know, if we live in God's lie or we aspire to God's light or if we embody God's love, then that this is beneficial. I was thinking how as a paradigm is comparable to the Daoist idea that you are. Bringing the path into being as you walk in, that you are, though, but reality is interacting with your consciousness, that your belief, your perception, the manner in which you hold and enact your life influences life becomes life is life.

And in that tradition. And let me tell you, I've never felt anything about it. It's sort of presented in a more Gnostic way, sort of somewhat more opaque. It's more minimal, as one would expect to have, just as it is within that culture. But the central message appears to be the same, that there is no object, that these categories of objective and subjective perhaps have to be simultaneously held, perhaps a pose perhaps are interchangeable.

But reality is being reality is being believed into being through our consciousness, through the agency of our consciousness. Certainly, we can never know what reality we're separate from our consciousness is.

Well, I don't think we would ever sacrifice if we didn't believe that reality was opaque to our beliefs, because we we we sacrifice because we believe in the possibility of a better future being brought into reality by our actions.

And that actually seems to work. I mean, it's quite remarkable we can imagine something, we can strategize toward it and it generally it manifests itself well enough so that we don't stop doing that. And it is quite. It's quite remarkable that that's the case. On that note, I hate to break this up because. We're getting going, I know that we have a hard out. So, Russell Brand, thank you so much for talking to us.

Oh, my God, are we done already? I know it was fast, but that was fine. Thank you very much. Where where can people watching find you? I have a podcast called Under the Skin, which is on Luminary, I have a book coming out inaudible, which I'd love to talk to you about. You know, further about the finding the sacred in the everyday, the rather rather grand title revelation. You'll be pleased to hear like a like we're just talking about.

I personally can't live without sacredness present in my ordinary life and how I find it in a post secular world. But when you were just talking just then, sorry to interrupt my own hard out, but I was thinking that perhaps much of the dissatisfaction polemic ism and fragmentation that we're currently experiencing is a result of people not feeling that agency, not feeling like they lack the ability that you say to manifest your reality through the practice of certain principles. It feels like that we're having a sort of an externally imposed nihilism that you can't influence reality, but you can't impact reality.

These swathes of disillusioned, disenfranchised, dismissed people. It just occurred to me when you were talking to then, I think you can influence reality. That's what I've decided. It's too weird. That doesn't make any sense. Otherwise, it's the simplest explanation. So when is your when is that book coming out? Russell? I think it's in March, which might be so far into the future, is not to exist in this of social space that we're currently occupying in March.

How long have you worked on it? I worked in it for a couple of years, sort of like leading up to and during the pandemic, do we still have March? Is March still a thing? Are there do we have equinoxes now or Equant I what is reality now?

Well, hopefully we'll return to something more approximating normal reality when this pandemic ceases to exist. God willing. I'm so happy. I'm so happy to see you looking so well and to see you both together as a family, as a father and a daughter. And it's a very comforting for me as a father of two daughters to see you working together well and to sit and to see so many of the principles that you have espoused and beautifully articulate children manifest in.

Yumkella, it is a real privilege to meet you both. Thank you.

Thank you. Russell Brand. Very good to see you again, Russell. I hope I get to see you. I've got your email. I'll be in touch. I've got a few e-mails. Do you have a you have a remarkable capacity to.

To dig into things. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's a beautiful compliment for me. Yeah, well, it's quite striking. I remember the last couple of times we spoke. I was struck exactly the same way. Is that. You have a very fast mind and it goes very it goes down a long ways. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's a wonderful compliment. If if it were earlier in the day and I'd made the good life choices to have children in my 20s, I would stay up now with pornography on another screen and cocaine on the back of my hand and into the long hours.

Perhaps if those were the choices I made, I wouldn't find myself in this esteemed company.

Well, I have a go now. No, I have a good night. Good night. Thank you. So we just finished talking to Russell Brand. Yeah, what did you think of that? I told you I watched Rebirth, which is his comedy special from twenty eighteen yesterday. I don't I wanted to ask him, but there wasn't time I want to ask him a couple of questions. One of them is how he's so verbally fluent. So I can just ask you that.

I guess it he's just really smart. Or is it because he's read a lot and watch a lot, or is he just naturally like that? He's really smart. So then the rest of us that aren't like that or we're just never going to be that. He's really smart. He's also extremely high in openness, that creativity, trade, and so people who are high in openness can see patterns, but a lot of that's that's you're born with that it can be hurt and ruined.

How would that trauma. It's like PTSD type of malnourishment, oh, just brain development, you mean? Yeah, but a lot of that's that's the way he is. You know, he was born like that. I've met a number of people like that. Camille Palios like that are very, very sharp and fast.

Although Ben is Ben isn't as open opener's as Russell. Yeah.

He's crazily open to ideas from all over the place. Yeah. You're pretty open and verbally fluent. I want to go to your lectures or when I hear you talk sometimes you'll go off on a tangent and I'll be like.

He's gone. Yeah, there is no way that whatever he started an hour ago has anything to do with what he's talking about now and then it'll be like attach it. You'll just attach it at the end.

Like, how do you even remember? It's so fun. How do you even remember what you're talking about?

It's like if you're listening to a great piece of music, like a Bach concerto, so. Mark will go off on a tangent and then he'll return to a theme, and it's so satisfying you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it just flattens you and it is that it's that ability to make things come together that's so exciting to be able to do that. And that's one of the reasons I love lecturing, is that I can go out on a tangent, way out and explore and then think, OK, that comes right back here.

And if I'm in good shape, I can do that continually in lecture. Right, because I can remember that thread and I can go back. But if I'm not in good shape when my health starts to go, I can't keep remembering and remember it.

Well, I thought even when we were talking to Russell, there were times I thought I'd listen to his question. Long question, a hard and oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Most people, like I said, when I, when I went like this, I was like that. I don't know what I was. I was there and then he said something. I didn't know where he was going with that and then I lost it.

Did you lose it or were you afraid? And let yourself lose it. I don't know what the difference. Would be well between us, I thought I thought that you didn't give yourself enough credit and that it was maybe your fear of not being able to. Understand? That made you say that? I mean, did you feel that there were parts of the conversation that you didn't understand, all things considered, or were you speaking specifically about the question that he asked?

That was the question about about the transformation of the idea of God. It's kind of a highly technical question.

I don't think that there are I don't think there were parts I didn't understand. There are references he made that I didn't pick up. Yeah, fair enough. That made the question is more complicated. Well, I mean, luckily, I know a little bit like when you're talking about job and the references there, he said one thing he said. Oh, God, I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was something about jobs, false.

Um. False, he said something that just. Wow, something like he was faking something towards God. Did you pick up on that? No, I can't. OK, part specifically.

I can't remember it exactly. I just remember it was like that was where I was going to comment on it. But now I can't remember. No, I actually do think I have trouble. I think because of how ill I was and how many medications I was on, I got I've done for whatever it's worth, I've done IQ tests over time and I know it can change when you're younger and when you're older, but they kind of measure that stable, OK, it's stable.

Well, in fact, when I was on medication, when I was trying to get better, when I was twenty two and so I was taking Adderall and I was on Superbikes and immunosuppressants and Tylenol three and antibiotics and gravel and trying to like stay awake, propped myself awake and things I hit one twenty to. On a on an IQ test, and I was like, yeah, OK, that's pretty good. I hit one thirty two after I went off of all my medication.

Mm hmm. Right. And my memory, just my memory has improved so dramatically, like I couldn't remember phone numbers. I couldn't remember seven digit numbers. So I didn't I honestly believe like when I took OxyContin for a while, it was about two years after that where my memory just when I was in class and I put up my hand, I'd be that student they'd call on and I'd go, I remember what I say.

And it's not because I wasn't paying attention. I honestly couldn't read what I was going to say. So I was writing everything down so I could remember it. So I do think part of my developmental years have being sick to not not just the medications, but also being sick has dampened down my ability to remember. Even even like questions like Russell was posing, you know, like it's hard to remember all the ideas that are in there.

Yeah, well, I was having I wasn't sure, but to be fair, that was a very he has some very complex questions as well.

Yeah. And I think he went easy on us, to tell you the truth. I've heard I've heard him talk sometimes and. I think he's tired. It's good. His kids are dampening their health. The health is really relevant because I also find, like, identifying patterns like that and going way out on a tangent and coming back and holding all those things simultaneously takes a tremendous amount of energy. I found the conversation with Russell took a tremendous amount of energy.

And it isn't obvious to me that I have the stamina for it like I pay for it. It also makes me wonder how much I paid for doing all the lectures that I did. And in that short period of time from twenty seventeen, when I did the biblical lectures through, I get I get people like I don't know, I don't know why.

And I've seen you lecture at university and things and you were on fire when you were lecturing to the public like in twenty eighteen particularly. And that must have taken a massive amount of energy because it was. Really long lecture like it wasn't and how long were you lecturing for 90 minutes, 90 minute lectures, then a Q&A meeting people. You're eating like four times a day and then you'd fly to the next city, right, and you did, how many cities did you do?

Hundred and thirty to one hundred and fifty. I thought it was one hundred and eighty. No, it's not that many, but it was a whatever.

One hundred thirty two. One hundred and fifty. OK, that's enough, right. Yeah. And about two hundred days. Yeah. So a lot of people message me all.

I did the biblical lecture series in twenty seventeen in the fall and then went to Europe for the book launch and then I went on the tour. Yeah, and even the biblical series here was intense, very so I don't know, I get people I wish so much that I could do another one on the on C..

I can't even remember the book now, the Moses the Moses books Exodus, because I have all that material in my head.

You're going to get, you know, like part of part of the problem. OK, everybody has this. If they ever get sick and I've been sick so much that I know this to my core. But when you're still sick, there isn't really anything you can do about it except wait to get better. And then as soon as you're better, you don't even remember the period of time that you were sick.

You're like you're like, oh, and that was nobody knows how to wait.

When I was healing my ankle, I repeatedly injured it because I was like, I'm feeling a little better. I'll just and it wasn't my fault, really. I was like, I'll just wear a pair of shoes that are a little bit closer to flat, just a little bit closer to flat, and I'd go a little bit closer to flat and then I wouldn't be able to walk for three weeks and I'd be like, that's not fair. That's not because I wasn't paying attention.

OK, it's just because my body is slow.

And. When I like I said, when I got off of OxyContin, it was two and a half years and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it, and when I got off Accessorize, it was the same thing. There's nothing I could do about it. And then when it's gone. You got to wait for the time when it's gone. Yeah, and I don't waiting is horrible how to live like that, because throughout my whole life I've juggled as many things as I could possibly put up in the air all the time.

And that was exciting and fun, but.

I watched yeah, I there is I don't know how not to do that. I've only been experiencing that. Juggling a whole bunch of things now, I didn't experience that earlier, and I'm not very old, right? I'm twenty nine, I'm almost 30, but I'm only experiencing the juggling act now because I was too sick before.

It's so fun to see how many things you can do, you know, and it forces you get efficient too. And such an interesting way as you know, you think well you shouldn't take on more and you think well no, that's not necessarily true, because as you take on more, you get better at delegating and you get more efficient. And so then you can do more.

Yeah. And it's it's hard to know when when you can't do more.

Well, I kind of learned when I was writing and when I was writing maps of meaning, I spent 90 minutes to three hours a day on that for about 15 years. And at the same time I was raising a family. And, you know, although obviously your mom took primary responsibility for the continual child care, I was around a lot and I had my job as a professor in my clinical practice and all of that, but. You can tell if you're doing too much, if you can't sustain it across days, so I would find some days I could write for five hours, but then what would happen is the next day I could I was impaired in my writing or two days later.

So you have to push yourself to see what you can iterate across days. And I found that I should never write for more than three hours. I wore I wore myself out so that I was stealing energy. From the next few days, it produced less productivity rather than more. When I worked with counseling, I counseled lawyers mostly who were they were high end lawyers working in very prestigious law firms. And the deal that my the company I was working with made with their firms was that we would work with them as individuals, but we would remember that reduce a productivity gain that would pay for the treatment treatment, so to speak, and often.

Lawyers, you can measure lawyer productivity by billable hours, and so the law firms want to push the billable hours up above two thousand if they can. That's a lot, right, because there's only three hundred and sixty five days in a year. So that's six hours a day. Across weekends and everything of solid work, yes, of billable work. Right, that's that's efficient work. That's not administrative work and that sort of thing. But often what would happen as a consequence of the conversations I had with these people is that we would plan for them to take time off.

It had to be planned several weeks or months in the future, and that actually made them more productive.

I've heard that. I've also heard that if you allow particularly productive people to work from home, that they're more productive.

I was I often work from home. Yeah.

And although there were conditions for that, it I had to be a junkyard dog. This is a good piece of advice for any of you out there who want to write or to pursue anything that's your own interest is you have to cordon off a space and time for that and then you have to guard that. I always thought the metaphor that struck me was junkyard dog like I was a junkyard dog when I was guarding my guarding my time to write. And when your mom would come in, I'd snap at her or you kids.

It was like, don't bother me, I'm writing. And the reason for that was, you know, I might have had 30 ideas in my head that I was trying to that Laura, I've got OK.

And then if someone came in and interrupted me, all that would fall and be like an hour of thinking. And I had all these plates up in the air and then they would all fall. But so, yes, you can work effectively at home, but it's difficult to cordon off your time, partly because if you're writing particularly, you're doing something that might not work, like it might not bring any money, you might not be able to sell it.

It's a long term game and there are short term emergencies that are always calling out for your attention.

Yeah. That appear to be more important than whatever you're doing because whatever you're doing isn't showing any benefit yet. Yeah, well, that's right. It's just a time suck that has a question mark for the payoff. Right.

Exactly, exactly. And so, so. Well you can increase the chance of the payoff if you're actually disciplined and productive. So I mean, I trained myself to sit down and write every day and I wrote even when I didn't have anything to say, you know, it would take me twenty minutes. All the little devils in my head would be telling me that I couldn't I wouldn't be able to think of anything today, that there were other things I should have been doing, that this whole thing was a waste of time and I'd have to quell all those.

Now that's fun. And then then I could write as I wrote more and more, the amount of time it took to quell those decreased. And then if I was tired, it would increase again. But I found and this is this it might be useful for people to. You can force yourself to sit and stare at the damn blank page, if you do that every day, you'll write something, you'll write a paragraph, you write two paragraphs, you'll write three paragraphs, you write a single sentence.

If you do that for a couple of years, you have a book. Hemingway wrote something that was really useful to me, too, he said he said, write every day and make that a habit, but he also said stop when you still have something to say and just make a few notes about what you have to say, because then the next day you can pick up where you left off. And that was also very useful. That is useful and very smart.

So I've been I've been writing this memoir, so I think I've had I haven't really had times when I don't know what to say because I'm not at least at the moment, I'm not connecting. Grand ideas about the universe. I'm recollecting what happened to me, so. I'm not making anything up, not that you're making things up, but it's literally events that happened in my life. So I don't usually I don't think I've ever had writer's block. I certainly have the problem where I have a whole bunch of other things, especially because I'm juggling a whole bunch of different parts of whatever it is I do.

I have a whole bunch of things that I'm not doing all the time. There's this huge list of things I haven't had time to do and it's always there that's you're so lucky to have that. I had that for so many years and I don't have it at all now. And it's killing me. The lack of that.

I just can't stand not having that you're going to get and it was like that from it's a real but it's good to know that that's a privilege. Your life is full when you have too much to do. And then but then you have to learn how to manage having too much to do. And the first thing you have to realize is that it's always going to be like that as long as you're fortunate and opportunities keep coming. So then what do you do about that?

And the first answer is, well, you don't wear yourself out. Yeah, so that. OK, so that's something we could talk about a little bit, and I am I'm completely aware of how fortunate I am because I was so sick that I couldn't do anything. Like I waited for the periods that I was really sick, especially. Especially when I started the diet, went off accessorize and was like having those kind of severe neurological problems. I spent weeks being like, I just have to stay alive and I'll just watch TV.

And I hate watching TV, like I really don't like watching TV is a complete waste of time. Not if you're watching The Simpsons. I don't I don't even like watching The Simpsons anymore. Like, I don't like watching TV unless I'm sick. And so there were weeks where I was like, I'm this is what I'm doing. And I'm just and I had like I had this idea. I was like, I know I'm going to get better one day.

I'm going to get better. I don't know when that is, but one day I'm going to get better. And so I'm going to wait. How do you think you were able to maintain so I was angry, OK, like I had a couple of good days where I didn't have any arthritis, my skin was healed and I was happy and I was clear and my memory was good. And I had a couple of those days and I was off of my medications and I was like, this exists and I'm not making it up.

This reality exists. And so when it went away, I thought somewhere something I'm doing is wrong, perhaps, but that reality exists and like, fuck you world. But I'm getting back to that. Yeah. And you're not taking that away.

And I was like and I was, why do you think you have angry? I'm asking part of it, I know well, I don't have a vision of you once I remember this, that you emerged. I was. I was. Experiencing some pain. Because I've become more aware of how much pain you were in and I had this image of you coming out of the darkness. It's kind of hackneyed when you describe it, but you were on the back of a dragon and.

It was the dragon in the chaos and you were coming out of that on the dragon and now bursting out of it. That was right before. So that vision was right before I moved out and maybe half a year before I started getting healthy. It was right before, if you remember it, maybe six months before I started getting healthy, healthier. So the first time I experienced that was when I needed my ankle replaced after I had my hip replaced.

And I was so I had my hip replaced. People watching would know I had my hip replaced when I was 17. And I was it was I was in so much pain I couldn't sleep. I couldn't put my hip in a comfortable position. Like usually if you have kind of like a broken bone, it just except it was way worse. I broken my arm and needing a hip replacement was way worse. I had my hip replacement. It was absolutely brutal.

I healed. I was healing from my hip replacement. I'd kind of come to terms with the fact that I was a 17 year old with a hip replacement and then my ankle stopped working. And I just like it's like it makes me upset now to think about it. It still hurts.

So that's that's trauma like I've seen that my clinical practice is that people get traumatized when something bad happens to them. And then just as they're recovering, they get laid low again. Boy, that takes the stuff. That's just because you're like I just I just made it. And you're just like climbing up, bringing your head above water. And then you get pushed onto and use a lot of energy to do that, like all your energy. And I was I was on a whole bunch of medication.

I was barely holding it together. And I was like, oh, I finally through it. And then my eight, they're like, oh, you need a replacement is going to be three and a half years of waiting. And I was like, I can't wait that long, I'm going to die like I'm going to do myself in, I can't not sleep for that long. And I had like I was in bed, you were there. And I was just like having a panic attack.

I had, like, I don't know, hours. I don't know how long the last lasted hours of pure terror because I thought I was going to kill myself. And then I have I don't know how to explain it, but something. Snapped and I and that fear got what I what I actually did was I thought, OK, how long can I keep this up for realistically without a plan? And I thought it was I think it was June because I had my hip done in May.

I think it was June or July. And I thought I can last until October, I can last until October, and then I'll start to make a plan. Right. I'll just I'll just last until October and then I'll make a plan. So I put that off into the future, into a bearable moment. And then in I believe it was August, we found out that I could have my ankle replaced because you did a bunch of organizing to get it replaced faster.

And we found it. I could have it replaced in November. And by that time I had a potential end date. But something happened that day. And I can I remember it kind of visually that I put walls sky high, like all all the way up that I could see between me and.

The pain I was experiencing and like and I turned it into anger and I can remember the walls going up and I've had a really hard time bringing them down. And Andre's helped me since I got healthy because I had put the walls up between me and everything that could hurt me. I don't know if any of this is helpful, but I all the I've talked to make contact with that anger, like I've been able to use anger my life.

You know, it's one of the one of the sources of energy that I've drawn on, even in my lectures, aggression that energy put in a positive direction. But when you're when you're depressed enough, like. When I went when I started the diet and when I got off of SSRI and I started having those, like, hallucinating reactions and I was really depressed, I didn't have that anger when I was really depressed. I only got that anger when it when it came.

Yeah. When the depression came up there.

No pot like anger is a part of your positive emotion. And there was nothing there. So but I, I know I knew I had experienced it so I. A couple of things I got good at being sick, one is I knew that everything I was thinking was possibly a lie because I was extremely depressed. I was having these hypomanic periods and I knew how volatile I was around other people. So so I kind of thought, OK, everything I'm thinking might be a lie.

So I have to think about this logically and kind of unattached myself. So when I was having these reactions and severely depressed and I didn't have that anger, I just kept repeating. You know, there was that one time that I felt good. And I do believe that the body has a capacity to heal. And so I should be able to heal and get that again, and then I just waited and then when I got to hang, but I made it through man so it wasn't fun.

It was horrible.

But then also experiencing that has allowed me to help a lot of people, like I get a lot of people who they're their friends and family don't understand, because if you have never experienced severe illness, you can't understand it even when you see it. And sometimes that means that when you see it, it makes you angry. So a lot of these poor suffering people who are chronically ill who are going, I'm hurt, I'm hurt, I'm hurt, look how hurt I am.

People are just like, stop it, stop it, stop it. Right. I don't want to be around that. And it's probably some sort of evolutionary response to avoid. To avoid infection, I don't know what it is, but sick people get a lot of hate for being sick. Well, it's frustration, too, on the part of the people in sadness.

Right. And it's a lot easier to be angry at somebody than than sad at them well enough to understand what they're going through.

You have to allow yourself to feel that.

And sometimes if you can't help, it's easier being mad at them than being like, wow, life is so unfair. Right. So I get a lot of people reaching out saying, well, you know, it is that also brings up the issue, you know.

I don't know what to think of this, but. Sometimes some of that cruelty, so to speak, is pushing, it's like get the hell up. I know it's sometimes people need that, although, you know, I'm less certain of that than I used to be. Well, do you think you're do you think that what do you think of the way that we treated you when you were a kid and you were sick? Do you have any residual?

I'm let me let me answer that carefully, for the most part, I think that my illness was so complicated that I don't harbor any resentment about it.

I'm probably still. A little bit. Maybe resentful is the right term, unfortunately, about some aspects, like when I was a teenager, I drank and I didn't. It's not like especially after I had my hip and ankle replacement because I hadn't gone out for a number of years and I just wanted some fun right after being, like, suicidal for a year.

And so I, I drank. And before that I started drinking when I was like fairly young, kind of once a week and was probably drinking more than I should have. But I was absolutely miserably depressed. I was I had this idiopathic hypersomnia and I couldn't stay awake. And drinking made me feel good, like it didn't just make me feel. Normal, I had energy and I think. There was some blaming the drinking for my sleeping and my health.

And I don't think that had anything to do with that. I think I was using alcohol as a treatment. I don't like I don't know, I'm not. To your mom asked me the other day if I felt guilty about the way we treated you when you were a kid and well, I don't. Well, I mean, I can remember one time when I put you up against the wall in the bathroom when you were mouthing off to your mom.

And you were being very disrespectful to her, and I think both your mom and Julian, who were also there, thought I went too far at that point. And I think probably I did. I was doing it to some degree, calculated like I wanted.

Well, you were probably trying to break through the haze I was in, but like I was trying also to ensure that you didn't act in a way that would alienate you from your mother. Yeah, I think like but we you know, we we. I think it was extremely complicated and you talked about how sometimes negative. I guess pushes can push people out, like there's some people there's the fat part of the problem I have with the fat acceptance movement, there's a whole bunch of problems.

But one of them is there are people who are. OK, it's complicated. I've heard from people who were pressured to get then who got thin and healthier. I've heard from people who were pressured to get thin and they ate more. Right. So it depends on the person.

But you always do the same with disciplining children is the disciplinary strategy has to match the child well and the parent for that matter. There's no one size fits all. You know, you are much easier to discipline, especially when you were a little kid than your brother was. It was easier to stop you when you were misbehaving. I've noticed that Scarlet doesn't respond to negative feedback, really.

Julian was like, she doesn't really care. She's just like, you know, who are you? I'll just go do what I want. And I'm like, What? I don't really.

Can you talk about the offers that you've got recently? Yeah, that'll be fun.

I've been I've been thinking of doing I used to do you put up some Q and A's on YouTube and do kind of more personal stuff. And I haven't mostly because we've been dealing with health things. I think that's actually the main reason, but also because I was like, wow, people probably want to hear the interviews more, but now that I've become more sure of myself, I think I might start to tune up.

I don't think necessarily that people would want to hear the interviews more. I mean, when I did Q&A, they were they were extremely popular.

Now, more popular than the interviews. Yeah, that's interesting.

So I think I would I'd like to do them again, but we should start doing them up again. Like what you were thinking about why you have to like you're going to be limping along for a while because you can't go through some health catastrophe and then pop back up. And it's really annoying, especially if you're a hyper productive person. And I've talked to a lot of people who have sick kids and they they go, oh, I'm so like, I'm feeling so horrible for this sick child, like everything is unfair.

And what I've told them is.

One, I think that they can get better, right, if you look everywhere for answers, but to it's not as hard in my experience it wasn't as hard being a sick kid as it was being an adult that was sick, because if you're healthy and then you get sick, you have a comparison. Like when I when I grew up and was limping around, all I did was adjust my movements so it didn't hurt as much. I didn't think, damn, it used to be better when I could run.

Right, so it's going to be harder and then when I got healthy, right, and then, like, went off of all my medication and got sick kind of again in a different way, I was just like, you're kidding me. Or when I got pregnant, my arthritis came back. I was just like, that's what made me angry, I guess, because I was like, how is this happening again? There's got to be a way out.

But it's harder psychologically as an adult for sure. But you're going to have to limp along and do like do podcast's and do Cunard's. And that's way more work than most people are doing. But you're not holding yourself to a person's standards, so that doesn't matter if it's more than most people are doing.

People work. Media wise, yeah, that's what I meant. I mean, it's not 14 hours is not 14 hours waiting tables. Right, yeah. Which is work. Yeah, for sure. Just waiting. OK, yes, we're clarifying that.

I'm not. Not Daejeon on waiters. Was a waitress. My feet hurt. I didn't really enjoy it. Right. I didn't enjoy it at all. But I just I mean, produce and then wait, and one day you're going to snap out of it. And then you can be on top of the world. And I will be here to tell you that repeatedly throughout this period of time. But but opportunities that I've had well, some summit called the Canadian Wealth Summit, this is so random.

I said, well, I've said I say yes to everything right for now, although I say no to some things now, which is nice, like, oh, I'm at the level where I can say no to a few things. That's kind of cool. But the Canadian Wealth Summit reached out and asked me to do some of their like.

Are you saying are you choosing between things? I'm choosing between things, I'm choosing between things. That's not the same nose. When you could do it and you say no, choosing between things is when you don't have enough time to do all of it. Yes, that's true.

I'm not just arbitrarily saying no, I'm judging opportunity and saying no to the ones that don't make sense or are clearly so that everybody listen to that.

Thanks. Good to have you here. But I have an opportunity to. To interview Edward Snowden. Mm hmm. And a bunch of other, like, potentially very interesting people, and so one of the things I've been trying to do with my brand or whatever it is, is I kind of started in the food.

Health. Kind of sphere, I was doing conferences at paleo effects and kettle corn and low carb stuff, and that was because. That's because of how shocked I was that food mattered was like, oh, my God, everyone, look, I'm cured. How long did your mom tell you that? Yeah, but she didn't say only eat beef, OK, like she said, it's food somewhere, but she didn't say it was all foods.

Who's going to tell me that? Only beef you'll be cured. I probably would have tried it, though. You remember how much I like jerky. I can like thinking back. I see all these patterns like I asked for jerky for Christmas. I remember going out for I think it was Morgan's birthday and I got a steak for dessert. What you want for dessert and a steak like I wanted it. But like, who's going to tell you that anyway?

I thought that I'm not really. I think that diet is the most important element to health, what you ingest is the most important element of health, but because I've kind of sorted it out enough myself, I want to do other things. Yes. And I was like, oh, what have I banished myself in as this, like, quacky beef girl?

Like, I don't want. It's a very lirone. It's a very narrow niche. I don't really want to be cracky.

It's a T-shirt quacky vif girl. No, I'm trying to move away from that. But it looks like because I've started this podcast, I've started talking to other people that will talk to me that I'm getting other opportunities.

Why do you think people are willing to talk to you on your podcast? Well, there's I guess there's a number of reasons. One, I think I listen and I think I hope I'm I'm fair.

Like I've started this new series, which I'm really excited about, called Opposing Views, where I'm interviewing people from. Both sides of a contentious subject. So I released one about porn and I'm releasing one about abortion, and we're going to talk about BLM and these subjects that are very one sided. And most people only hear one side of the story. And I'm. And people are tentatively saying, yes, even though they're on both sides of the argument, opposite sides.

Yeah, and so I'm hopefully I'm less aggressive, but I'm not too much of a pushover. And then, of course, my platform's grown, so most people will just say yes to opportunity. There's also a link to you so I can get guests easier because you're my dad if you can.

What do you think about that? Do you think that that's are you taking unfair advantage because of that?

No, I think I think anybody who wouldn't take advantage of opportunity that comes their way is losing is losing out like I can.

Do you think you're taking advantage of me? No, not at all. I think I've helped you grow. I think social media, I mean, you disappeared for a year and a half. Nobody would have known what was going on and I kind of kept. People updated and social media is a huge aspect of. Kind of communication and keeping people around. So, no, I don't have any guilt or thinking I did anything wrong. I think people misunderstand that, but I think those are people that are going to be angry no matter what I do.

Yeah, well, you can understand why there might be some skepticism and some poking. You know, he will certainly, especially with the Russia thing, I get it. But they weren't here, thank God for them, because maybe they're not having nightmares, like, oh, yeah, man.

Yeah.

So I don't know. Plus I do know that. If you get like the bigger your audience, the more criticism you're going to get. I might be getting more criticism than the average slob, but maybe but maybe not, right.

And I think if I hadn't been so stressed here also at that point in the Preto distribution, where you're you've grown your platforms enough so that they're now feeding back into themselves. Right, you're well-known enough, you have a large enough market so that other people are going to see it as valuable.

Thanks.