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Speaker 1: We'd like to acknowledge that traditional custodians of the land

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Speaker 1: on which this podcast was produced, the Galliger people of

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Speaker 1: the Orination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.

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Speaker 2: It's twenty fifteen and we're in London with journalist Joanne Harvey.

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Speaker 2: He's about to take to the stage and for the

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Speaker 2: next twenty minutes he'll explain that everything you know about

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Speaker 2: addiction is wrong.

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Speaker 3: He should know.

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Speaker 2: He's spent the last three years conducting research around the

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Speaker 2: world trying to answer the core questions on addiction. This

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Speaker 2: topic is one close to his heart. One of his

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Speaker 2: earliest memories is trying to wake up a family member

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Speaker 2: and not being able to. A room full of people

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Speaker 2: watching his Ted Talk will hang on to his every word,

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Speaker 2: and they aren't the only ones. This Ted Talk, along

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Speaker 2: with another four years later, will go on to be

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Speaker 2: viewed more than ninety million times. I'm at Middleton and

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Speaker 2: this is head Game today, Joann Hari on making an

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Speaker 2: impact by investigating life's biggest issues. Thank you ever so

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Speaker 2: much for coming on my podcast, head Game. Fascinated with

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Speaker 2: getting into an in depth conversation. You've just got a.

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Speaker 3: Nose for knowing what you want.

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Speaker 2: It's almost that you have an addiction for a certain subject,

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Speaker 2: knowing what you want and then going after it tenfold

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Speaker 2: and getting the best out of not only yourself, but

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Speaker 2: out of other people and out of a situation.

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Speaker 3: So talk to me about your upbringing.

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Speaker 4: I cover from a fucking weird background. So my parents

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Speaker 4: met here in London. They were both run away. It's

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Speaker 4: my dad had run away from the Swiss mountains, who

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Speaker 4: grew up in a tiny, little wooden hut on the

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Speaker 4: side of a mountain, where like, from the age of

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Speaker 4: five you'd be working with the pigs, you'd be working

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Speaker 4: in the fields. And when he was seventeen, he's like,

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Speaker 4: there's got to be more to life than this, and

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Speaker 4: he heard there was something going on. It was the

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Speaker 4: sixties in London, so ran away came here. And my

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Speaker 4: mum was a run away. She grew up in a

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Speaker 4: very poor working class family in Scotland, you know, where

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Speaker 4: life for women was not that good. And with her

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Speaker 4: best friend Mary, she ran away and they met in

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Speaker 4: a nightclub just off Carnaby Street when my dad spoke

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Speaker 4: literally ten words of English and my mum only spoke English,

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Speaker 4: and they had what my mum calls a series of

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Speaker 4: one night stands, which I've tried to explain is not

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Speaker 4: a concept that makes sense if there's more than one

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Speaker 4: of them, it's not a one night stand. You know,

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Speaker 4: the family I grew up in, there was a lot

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Speaker 4: of without going into too much detail, because it's their story,

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Speaker 4: other people's story, not just mine, but it's a lot

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Speaker 4: of addiction, a lot of madness. Really. I was mostly

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Speaker 4: raised by my grandmother, my Scottish grandmother, and it was

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Speaker 4: weird because they were you know that everyone in my

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Speaker 4: family left school when they were Like my grand left

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Speaker 4: when she was thirteen, most of them they were fifteen.

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Speaker 4: And it's really weird. If you watch our home videos.

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Speaker 4: Even when I'm a little kid, I have this weird

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Speaker 4: posh voice. I'm like Stewy from Family Guy, right, So

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Speaker 4: like my mom was like, why Cheah fat Sam, And

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Speaker 4: I'm like, really, mother, I find this most It's just bizarre.

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Speaker 4: And I don't know what edgeway. Where I grew up,

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Speaker 4: no one, no one had this weird posh voice that

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Speaker 4: I have. I must have got it off the TV

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Speaker 4: because I can't think no one spoke like that. So

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Speaker 4: it was this weird even when I was very young,

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Speaker 4: I had this slight kind of I had a great

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Speaker 4: love for the place I was from and the people

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Speaker 4: I grew up with. I also had this weird kind

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Speaker 4: of doubleness about it.

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Speaker 3: Do you yeah, I can see that in you. Where

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Speaker 3: did you think that? Because it certainly didn't come from

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Speaker 3: your mum? And where do you think it that came from?

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Speaker 4: I genuinely don't know. It's a really strange thing. I

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Speaker 4: don't know it was. I think because they were not

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Speaker 4: from the place we were from, right, and they felt

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Speaker 4: very alienated from the place My dad couldn't. My dad's

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Speaker 4: English was, you know, imperfect, Like, yeah, I could sort

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Speaker 4: of navigate that world better than they could in a way, right,

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Speaker 4: So I was sort of translating for them, and my

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Speaker 4: mum was from a very you know, working class Scottish background.

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Speaker 2: Between the two, sort of merging the two together, translating.

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Speaker 4: For them, but also figuring out how this place worked. Right.

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Speaker 4: So I didn't have this, Yeah, they didn't, and in

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Speaker 4: a way, as a kid, I understood it better than

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Speaker 4: they did.

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Speaker 2: And you're trying to figure it out for them as well. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: what's figuring out your journey?

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Speaker 4: And I think one of the reasons I think, really,

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Speaker 4: the only talent I have that's not being forced to

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Speaker 4: abduplicating it is a real talent, but it's the only

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Speaker 4: one I've got is communication. Right, I'm good at communication.

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Speaker 4: I think it's partly because of that early experience of oh, right,

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Speaker 4: they don't know how this works, right, I've got to

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Speaker 4: figure out how this works. And also that thing if

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Speaker 4: you grew up in chaotic environments. Lots of people who

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Speaker 4: grew up in chaotic or violin or environments where his

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Speaker 4: addiction or mental health problems or whatever. This is really

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Speaker 4: amazing statistic. I can't make the exact figure, people can

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Speaker 4: look it up, but something like sixty percent of the

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Speaker 4: presidents and prime ministers US presidents and British prime ministers

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Speaker 4: of the twentieth century grew up in a family where

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Speaker 4: one of their parents either died, became disabled, or became

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Speaker 4: bankrupt when they were a kid. And there's a big

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Speaker 4: debate about why that might be. Right, it's an incredibly

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Speaker 4: high figure compared to the general population, right, and I

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Speaker 4: think an extreme incredible You just do the prime ministers backwards,

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Speaker 4: you can do it right and the presidents, and I

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Speaker 4: think that must be something about if you grew up

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Speaker 4: in a chaotic environment, you've got to be the grown up.

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Speaker 4: You've got to be the adult very quickly, right, And

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Speaker 4: it's a thing about you want to make it all okay,

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Speaker 4: you know, you want to solve the problem.

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Speaker 3: Or make sense of it.

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Speaker 2: I suppose as well, wasn't it You know, try and

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Speaker 2: try and try and make sense of it so it's

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Speaker 2: not as chaotic. And I suppose it just takes a

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Speaker 2: different way of thinking, different way of problem solving, different

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Speaker 2: way of tackling a situation that your parents or the

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Speaker 2: people around you don't use, but you sort of adapt

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Speaker 2: as you go along.

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Speaker 4: Well, you've got to be the problem solver from a

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Speaker 4: very young age and that becomes your skill set. Not clearly,

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Speaker 4: not everyone. Some people it just breaks them and fucks

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Speaker 4: them up. But a lot of people, I think it

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Speaker 4: means that you become the person who then thinking about okay,

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Speaker 4: from a very young age, you're like, Okay, no one's

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Speaker 4: going to come and solve this for me. I've got

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Speaker 4: to solve this situation. And I think that that becomes

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Speaker 4: a habit you can take over to other things. Right, Okay,

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Speaker 4: there's this other chaotic thing going on in the world.

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Speaker 4: I'm not gonna wait for someone else to solve it.

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Speaker 4: What's going on here, Let's figure out what's going on.

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Speaker 4: Let's figure out how we can sort it out. So

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Speaker 4: I think that was very deep in me that, you know.

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Speaker 4: I think the Persian poet Roomy said the wound is

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Speaker 4: where the light enters you. It's something I think about

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Speaker 4: all the time, right. I'm sure it was somewhere and

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Speaker 4: Leonard Cohen's heart when he wrote this famous line about

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Speaker 4: there's a crack in everything. It's how the light gets in. Right.

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Speaker 4: I think it's the thing about if you have very

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Speaker 4: a very extreme childhood, or extreme experiences in general, you

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Speaker 4: can see that as a curse and it can just

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Speaker 4: fuck you, right, And of course that does have to

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Speaker 4: many people, it does have terrible effects on them. Or

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Speaker 4: you can say, Okay, this is not good. It's not good.

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Speaker 4: This happened. I wish it hadn't. But given that, what

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Speaker 4: strength can I take from this? What have I learned

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Speaker 4: from this experience that can be used to help other

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Speaker 4: people or to go forward? So I think it's always

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Speaker 4: you know, we talk a lot about post traumatic stress, right,

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Speaker 4: which is a real of course, a real thing, But

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Speaker 4: there's also a lot of scientific evidence for something called

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Speaker 4: post traumatic growth. Right some people go through like for example,

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Speaker 4: you can look at survivors of plane crashes. For example,

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Speaker 4: right now, no one is ever glad they've been in

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Speaker 4: a plane crash, just to be clear, But some people go, oh,

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Speaker 4: I was in a plane crash. It fucked me up.

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Speaker 4: It was the worst thing that ever happened. I've been

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Speaker 4: traumatized ever since. But a lot of people who've been

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Speaker 4: in playing crashes, so you know, it was a terrible

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Speaker 4: thing that I was in that plane crash. But after

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Speaker 4: I survived, I quit that job I hated, and I

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Speaker 4: left the husband who was treating me like shit, and

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Speaker 4: actually it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

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Speaker 2: Going back to your childhood, it was addiction that really

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Speaker 2: sort of highlighted one of your first memories when you

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Speaker 2: tried to wake up a family member from I don't

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Speaker 2: know if it's an overdose. Can you just take me

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Speaker 2: back to that moment, because you know, it's it's fascinating

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Speaker 2: how you've you talk about this but you've actually been

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Speaker 2: through it yourself, don't.

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Speaker 4: I don't remember the exact age I was. I've tried

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Speaker 4: to figure it out with my sister, but I am

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Speaker 4: so one of my relatives was using a lot of

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Speaker 4: most prescription drugs and was just out of it a

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Speaker 4: lot of the time. So I have these kind of

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Speaker 4: formative memories of trying to wake up this relative and

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Speaker 4: just not being able to because they were just out.

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Speaker 3: Just on the bed or on the couch.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and both. And one of the reasons

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Speaker 4: I spent so much time researching addiction for a book

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Speaker 4: I wrote called Chasing the Screen was because these addiction

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Speaker 4: problems continued in my family, actually more than my member

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Speaker 4: of my family. And also, I think, like with a

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Speaker 4: lot of people who grew up with addiction, it was

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Speaker 4: a thing that was very if that feels like home

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Speaker 4: to you, I ended up being in a relationship with

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Speaker 4: someone who had a very bad crack and hero in addiction.

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Speaker 4: It's like, weird, we're shortage. And this was where I

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Speaker 4: lived at the time, and it's a place I really

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Speaker 4: associate with that relationship. So I could tell you the

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Speaker 4: map of all the dealers he went to, and there's

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Speaker 4: a in a mile radius of here, but the and

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Speaker 4: and I think that one of the reasons I wrote

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Speaker 4: the book is every book I ever write. For me,

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Speaker 4: it's because there's got got to be I'm not an

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Speaker 4: expert on anything, right, I'm a journalist. For me, it's

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Speaker 4: got to be that there's a mystery that I don't

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Speaker 4: understand and I want to understand, right, so I then

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Speaker 4: go on this kind of journey all over the world.

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Speaker 2: You said, would you say you get addicted to a topic?

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Speaker 2: Were we talk about? Because there's multiple forms of addiction, right,

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Speaker 2: and we talk about the obvious ones, which are alcohol, drugs,

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Speaker 2: from drugs, But you know, for you and having read

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Speaker 2: you know your backstory and meeting you, I think addiction

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Speaker 2: sort of runs in the family. Is it Is it

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Speaker 2: something that that has passed down from generation to generation

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Speaker 2: or do you just have an acute sort of curiosity

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Speaker 2: you need to know everything about that topic?

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Speaker 3: Is that an addiction?

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Speaker 4: You know? It's interesting sad because that actually the research

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Speaker 4: I did for Chasing the Screen completely changed how I

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Speaker 4: understood what addiction is. I wanted to figure this out

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Speaker 4: because I could see nothing I was doing was helping

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Speaker 4: right with these people that I loved, I couldn't solve

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Speaker 4: the problem. And I also had that if I'm honest,

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Speaker 4: I was quite angry with them, right, And everyone has

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Speaker 4: ever loved someone who'st an addiction problem has got a

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Speaker 4: bit of voice in the head that's like, why don't

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Speaker 4: just fucking stop right fuck saying put yourself together? Right?

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Speaker 3: Natural?

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Speaker 2: Yes, that's the natural sort of thought process to have.

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Speaker 2: You're ruining yourself, you're running the people around you. You know,

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Speaker 2: your your waste of space.

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Speaker 4: You know, I could see that. I think almost everyone

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Speaker 4: has two natural impulses. They have that voice, yeah yeah,

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Speaker 4: and they have the voice like I can see you're

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Speaker 4: really suffering and in pain, and that this is not

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Speaker 4: just you know, you're not just partying hard and indulging yourself.

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Speaker 4: There's something really deep going on here that you need

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Speaker 4: help for. So I think almost everyone has those two things, right.

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Speaker 4: But I wanted to understand what was really going on here.

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Speaker 4: So I ended up, I mean, it ended up being

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Speaker 4: this kind of insane journey all over the world, like

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Speaker 4: thirty thousand miles, ended up meeting a crazy mixture of people,

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Speaker 4: from a you know, getting to know rot so right

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Speaker 4: aback in the book, from a transcrack dealer in Brooklyn

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Speaker 4: is one of the smartest people I know, to a

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Speaker 4: hit man for the deadlist Mexican drug cartel, who actually

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Speaker 4: is not one of the smartest people I know, to

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Speaker 4: the only country that's decriminalized all drugs with incredible effects

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Speaker 4: we can talk about. But that actually in relation to

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Speaker 4: your Christian it was just tranges think because I realized,

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Speaker 4: I mean, I learned so much writing Chasing the Screen,

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Speaker 4: but one of the things I learned is that actually

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Speaker 4: I had profoundly misunderstood what I had seen in front

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Speaker 4: of me for so long. So let's talk about let's

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Speaker 4: say heroin addiction for example, right, because that's something it

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Speaker 4: was close to me. So if you'd asked me thirteen

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Speaker 4: years ago, when I started doing the research on this, Johan,

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Speaker 4: what causes heroin addiction? I would have looked at you

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Speaker 4: like you were muppet and I would have said, well, mate,

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Speaker 4: the clues in the name man right, obviously exactly. We've

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Speaker 4: been told this story for one hundred years. That's become

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Speaker 4: totally part of our common sense about addiction. Right when

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Speaker 4: I was in this story about the earliest story about

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Speaker 4: addiction that we've all been told, which has some truth

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Speaker 4: in it. Right, So we think we're sitting here in

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Speaker 4: Shoreditch if we kidnapped the next twenty people to walk

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Speaker 4: past this recording studio and.

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Speaker 3: Can make that happen.

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Speaker 4: You are one of the few people I don't. We

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Speaker 4: could actually do it right, and we held the more

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Speaker 4: hostage and it's weird fucking little room, you know, like

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Speaker 4: a villain in a Saw movie. And we injected them

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Speaker 4: all with heroin three times a day for a month.

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Speaker 4: At the end of that month, they'd all be heroin addicts.

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Speaker 4: For a simple reason. There's chemical hooks in heroin, and

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Speaker 4: if you're exposed to them for long enough, your body

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Speaker 4: would start to desperately crave these chemical hooks. Right. That's

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Speaker 4: why in English another word for being addicted is being hooked. Right.

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Speaker 4: It turns out that is a very small part of

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Speaker 4: what's going on in addiction. Right. It's some role, but

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Speaker 4: it's very small. And the first thing that alured to

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Speaker 4: me to the fact there's something missing in that story

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Speaker 4: is when it was explained to me by lots of doctors.

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Speaker 4: If you or me, if we stepped out of this

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Speaker 4: studio now and we got hit by a truck and

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Speaker 4: you broke your hip or I broke my hip, we'd

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Speaker 4: be taken to the Royal London Hospital of the Road,

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Speaker 4: and they give us a lot of a drug called diamorphine.

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Speaker 4: Diamorphine it's much better than the ship my ex exactly.

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Speaker 4: It's medically pure heroine. It's the best heroine you can get. Right,

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Speaker 4: If anyone listening, if you've got a grandmother who's ever

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Speaker 4: had a hip replacement operation, your NaNs take lots of

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Speaker 4: heroin right now. If what we think about addiction is right,

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Speaker 4: that is caused primarily or entirely by exposure to the

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Speaker 4: chemical hooks, what should be happening to all these grandmothers

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Speaker 4: having hit replacement operation. They should be leaving and trying

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Speaker 4: to score on the streets. Right, This has been studied

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Speaker 4: very carefully. It never happens with hit replacements, right, never. Right.

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Speaker 4: And you hear that, you think what I remember when

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Speaker 4: I first learned this from a brilliant doctor call Gable Marte,

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Speaker 4: just saying, well, gabble, that can't be right. How could

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Speaker 4: you have a situation where you've got someone in hospital

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Speaker 4: bed they're be giving loads of medically pure, strong heroine.

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Speaker 4: They don't become addicted. Yeah, the best grade of it really,

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Speaker 4: if you put it in Layman's terms, exactly, the best shit,

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Speaker 4: and you've got someone in the alleyway outside, you know,

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Speaker 4: shooting up actually a weaker form of the drug, and

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Speaker 4: they do become adicted. What's going on? And I only

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Speaker 4: began to understand it when I went to Vancouver and

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Speaker 4: an interview an incredible man named Professor Bruce Alexander, who

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Speaker 4: did an experiment that has really transformed how we understand

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Speaker 4: addiction all over the world. See explained to me this

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Speaker 4: story we've got in our heads that addiction is caused

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Speaker 4: primarily or entirely by the chemical hook comes from a

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Speaker 4: series of experiments that were done earlier in the twentieth century.

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Speaker 4: You take a rap, you put it in a cage,

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Speaker 4: and you give it two water bottles. One is just water,

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Speaker 4: the other is water laced with either heroin or cocaine.

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Speaker 4: If you do that, the rat will try both. Almost

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Speaker 4: always prefers the drug water, and it almost always kills

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Speaker 4: itself by overdosing pretty quickly. Right, So there you go.

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Speaker 4: That's our story. The rat tries the drug, it needs

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Speaker 4: more and more of.

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Speaker 3: The chemists all it has to do, that is right, Yeah.

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Speaker 4: That's our story. But in the seventies, Bruce, Professor Alexander

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Speaker 4: was working with people addiction problems in Vancouver. He's he

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Speaker 4: looks at these experiments and he said, what happened a minute?

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Speaker 4: You put the rat alone in an empty cage. It's

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Speaker 4: got nothing that makes life worth living. For rats, all

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Speaker 4: it's got is the drugs. What would happen if we

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Speaker 4: did this differently? So he built a cage called rat Park,

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Speaker 4: which is basically like fucking heaven for rats. Right, They've

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Speaker 4: got loads of friends, they got loads of cheese, they

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Speaker 4: got loads of colored balls. Anything a rat likes is

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Speaker 4: there in rap Park. It's got its needs met, right,

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Speaker 4: psychological needs. And then it gives them both the water bottles,

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Speaker 4: the normal water and the drug water, and of course

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Speaker 4: they try both. This is the fascinating things have fun

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Speaker 4: well in rap Park. They don't like the drug water

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Speaker 4: that much. Right, they don't use it compulsively. None of

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Speaker 4: them music compulsively. None of them die by overdose, because

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Speaker 4: they've got The way I would think about it is

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Speaker 4: everyone knows you've got physical needs. You need food, you

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Speaker 4: need water, you need shelter, you need clean air. If

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Speaker 4: I took those things away from you, you'd be fucked.

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Speaker 4: But it's equally strong evidence that all human beings have

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Speaker 4: natural psychological needs. You need to feel you belong. You

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Speaker 4: need to feel your life has meaning and purpose. You

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Speaker 4: need to got people see you and value you. You

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Speaker 4: need to for your love, you feel, got a future,

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Speaker 4: you understand right, And this culture we've built is good

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Speaker 4: at many things. I'm glad to be alive today, but

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Speaker 4: we have been getting less and less good at meeting

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Speaker 4: these deep underlying psychological needs. So the reason I wouldn't

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Speaker 4: put it as because you asked it totally understandably, and

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Speaker 4: it's the way I used to think about it is

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Speaker 4: oh can these can you override the chemical thing? I

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Speaker 4: would put it differently, The core of addiction is about

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Speaker 4: not wanting to be present in your life because your

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Speaker 4: life is too big a place to be exactly right.

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Speaker 4: And when you understand that, you begin to see. Firstly,

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Speaker 4: for me, the first thing you see is how what

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Speaker 4: we do it's a value.

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Speaker 2: You start to value yourself, start to value things around you,

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Speaker 2: and you know your product. And again that excuse a cliche,

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Speaker 2: I'm sure you hate it.

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Speaker 3: But your product is your environment exactly.

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Speaker 4: It's not you, it's your cage. Right now, there's other

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Speaker 4: factors going on as well. It's not the only rap

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Speaker 4: park doesn't explain everything about drug use, obviously there's lots

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Speaker 4: of other things going on, but it explains a really

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Speaker 4: big missing part of the picture, and it can lead

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Speaker 4: you to quite pangful and difficult realizations. I mean, the

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Speaker 4: most important thing though, and the really powerful realization, is

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Speaker 4: what it made me realize. I never forget when I

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Speaker 4: interviewed Bruce the first time, and I went and sat

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Speaker 4: in a We were in this area called the downtown

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Speaker 4: Eings side of Vancouver, which has a lot of chaotic

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Speaker 4: street addiction, and I went and sat in a pigeon park,

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Speaker 4: which is a park with loos of pigeons in it

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Speaker 4: and where people are. You know, it's pretty free for

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Speaker 4: all chaotic drug scene. And I remember thinking, I right,

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Speaker 4: so the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite

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Speaker 4: of addiction is connection. That's what you're saying, right. I'm

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Speaker 4: never get that moment because now like people put that

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Speaker 4: on t shirts and things since I wrote about it

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Speaker 4: and totalk on it. But but the core of it is,

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Speaker 4: and it's why when when you asked, is this an

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Speaker 4: addiction for me? I don't think of it as it

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Speaker 4: may have elements of addiction because I do overwork, But

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Speaker 4: for me, this is not a way of not being

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Speaker 4: present in my life. It's actually a way of being

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Speaker 4: more present in my life. So it's a it's a

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Speaker 4: healthy obsession rather than an addiction, is how I would

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Speaker 4: think of it, right, if it would be an addiction,

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Speaker 4: if it was actually I was avoiding being present by

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Speaker 4: doing this stuff right and super present of what you do. So, yeah,

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Speaker 4: there are moments like that. I massively over work. I

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Speaker 4: tend to get burned out because I'm very bad at

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Speaker 4: taking breaks or pacing myself. So I wouldn't want to

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Speaker 4: totally rule out the kind of implicit thought in your question.

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Speaker 4: But yeah, but when you understand addiction in this different way,

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Speaker 4: you understand firstly why that natural angry, why are you

397
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Speaker 4: fucking doing this? Doesn't get us very far? Right? But

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Speaker 4: also for me that the most important thing about it

399
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Speaker 4: is you realize how what we do as a society,

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Speaker 4: why it has so catastrophically failed when it comes to addiction.

401
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Speaker 4: The US at the moment, for example, has the biggest

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Speaker 4: addiction crisis in its entire history, right, horrendous, And obviously

403
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Speaker 4: I live after the U in the US, because what

404
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Speaker 4: we do is we think about addiction totally differently. The

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Speaker 4: theory of the War on drugs, right is, people who

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Speaker 4: addicted need to have pain inflicted on them to give

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Speaker 4: them an incentive to stop. Right, So we make them suffer,

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Speaker 4: give them criminal records, we imprison and then but then

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Speaker 4: you realize it. Then we pigeonhole them exactly and fuck

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Speaker 4: them over. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And then you realize. But

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Speaker 4: once you understand that pain is the fuel, is the driver,

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Speaker 4: is the cause of addiction, suddenly realize. Sometimes we go, oh,

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Speaker 4: it doesn't work. It's not you know, that model doesn't work.

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Speaker 4: The answer is much worse. It makes the problem worse, right,

415
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Speaker 4: and never forget. I had a moment about this. I

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Speaker 4: went to lots of places for the for the book, obviously,

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Speaker 4: for you know, the killing fields in northern Mexico and

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Speaker 4: all sorts of places. But I think the place that

419
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Speaker 4: most haunts me was there's this place called Tense City

420
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Speaker 4: in Phoenix in Arizona, Maricopa County in Arizona. So it's right.

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Speaker 4: It was at the time run by a guy called

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Speaker 4: Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who we got a whole conversation about

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Speaker 4: childhood trauma and Joe ol Pio. But that is a

424
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Speaker 4: fucked up guy who was really at war with people

425
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Speaker 4: with addiction problems, and he opened this prison where bran

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Speaker 4: in mind, this is the desert is Arizona. People were

427
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Speaker 4: made to sleep in tents in the desert and they

428
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Speaker 4: were deliberately maximally humiliated. He you might have heard this

429
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Speaker 4: because Mike Tyson was sent there. I've talked to Mike

430
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Speaker 4: about it. They make the people with the diction problems

431
00:21:12,680 --> 00:21:15,080
Speaker 4: go out on chain gangs wearing t shirts saying I

432
00:21:15,160 --> 00:21:17,400
Speaker 4: was a drug addict on members of the public mock them.

433
00:21:17,560 --> 00:21:19,160
Speaker 4: So I went out one day with this group of women.

434
00:21:20,320 --> 00:21:22,080
Speaker 4: You only have to speak to this women for five minutes.

435
00:21:22,119 --> 00:21:25,480
Speaker 4: Their lives have been fucking horrendous, right, They'd all been

436
00:21:25,520 --> 00:21:29,919
Speaker 4: fucking abused in one way or another. And so we

437
00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:33,200
Speaker 4: go out and they were made to literally on a

438
00:21:33,240 --> 00:21:36,680
Speaker 4: chain gang and they're made to collect little while members

439
00:21:36,680 --> 00:21:40,639
Speaker 4: of public mock them. Right, and what was that?

440
00:21:40,680 --> 00:21:44,040
Speaker 2: In order to hopefully make them realize the errors of

441
00:21:44,080 --> 00:21:48,160
Speaker 2: their ways through that type of treatment.

442
00:21:48,359 --> 00:21:51,120
Speaker 3: So they go, oh, oh that's me cured. I'm good.

443
00:21:51,160 --> 00:21:53,280
Speaker 2: I won't do that again. Exactly, old Tom. What you're

444
00:21:53,280 --> 00:21:55,280
Speaker 2: doing is you're getting slashamer. You're just driving them further

445
00:21:55,320 --> 00:21:56,280
Speaker 2: into the ground, right.

446
00:21:56,119 --> 00:21:58,639
Speaker 4: I think you put it perfectly. So they had a block,

447
00:21:59,000 --> 00:22:01,160
Speaker 4: an isolation block this prison, in which people were put

448
00:22:01,160 --> 00:22:05,040
Speaker 4: in for the tiniest infringements like having a cigarette. And

449
00:22:05,080 --> 00:22:06,399
Speaker 4: I went and saw, I said to them, and it

450
00:22:06,440 --> 00:22:08,239
Speaker 4: was a weird thing most prisons. Obviously visits a lot

451
00:22:08,240 --> 00:22:11,080
Speaker 4: of prisons as a journalist. Most prisons don't want to

452
00:22:11,119 --> 00:22:13,320
Speaker 4: show you they're bad stuff. They try to steer away

453
00:22:13,320 --> 00:22:15,359
Speaker 4: from it. But this prison, because the whole point of

454
00:22:15,400 --> 00:22:18,240
Speaker 4: it is to humiliate people. It's like a pantomime of

455
00:22:18,280 --> 00:22:21,200
Speaker 4: fucking sadism, they actually want to show to you. So

456
00:22:21,200 --> 00:22:23,280
Speaker 4: I said, oh, we show me the isolation block. Thinking

457
00:22:23,359 --> 00:22:25,200
Speaker 4: they go, no, no, that's you know, like most prisons

458
00:22:25,240 --> 00:22:27,119
Speaker 4: with that, I shall come along. Yeah, yeah, So go along.

459
00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:32,720
Speaker 4: And the first thing happens. So the women are in tiny, little,

460
00:22:32,800 --> 00:22:36,560
Speaker 4: bare stone cells in the middle of the desert. It's

461
00:22:36,680 --> 00:22:40,160
Speaker 4: unbelievably hot. They're completely on their own. They've got nothing

462
00:22:40,240 --> 00:22:43,159
Speaker 4: in this cell. Literally, you're in a stone It's about

463
00:22:43,160 --> 00:22:44,399
Speaker 4: the size of this room we're in. We're in a

464
00:22:44,440 --> 00:22:48,520
Speaker 4: tiny little podcast studio, right, And so they open the

465
00:22:48,760 --> 00:22:51,679
Speaker 4: little flat and a woman starts immediately screaming at me,

466
00:22:51,720 --> 00:22:54,520
Speaker 4: showing me that she's been cutting herself, just screaming and screaming.

467
00:22:54,560 --> 00:22:56,760
Speaker 4: It's one of the worst things I've seen, right, And

468
00:22:58,080 --> 00:23:01,760
Speaker 4: I looked at this woman and I thought, this is

469
00:23:01,800 --> 00:23:04,800
Speaker 4: the closest you could get to a literal human replica

470
00:23:05,480 --> 00:23:09,080
Speaker 4: of the cages that guaranteed addiction in rats. And this

471
00:23:09,160 --> 00:23:10,960
Speaker 4: is what you're doing to this poor fucking woman thinking

472
00:23:11,000 --> 00:23:14,240
Speaker 4: it will stop her being addicted. Now, Okay, that's very extreme, right, Okay,

473
00:23:14,240 --> 00:23:16,600
Speaker 4: that's that's the hardest edge, the tip of the spear.

474
00:23:16,760 --> 00:23:19,679
Speaker 4: But actually, most eighty percent of the money we spend

475
00:23:21,040 --> 00:23:23,680
Speaker 4: in some countries, actually it's more, but eighty percent of

476
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:28,200
Speaker 4: the money we spend on drug policy is enforcement, punishing people,

477
00:23:28,280 --> 00:23:31,919
Speaker 4: shaming people, fucking them up more right. The other twenty percent,

478
00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:34,920
Speaker 4: by the way, about ten percent is treatment, and ten

479
00:23:34,960 --> 00:23:37,720
Speaker 4: percent is the ridiculous, fucking fantasy we can keep drugs

480
00:23:37,720 --> 00:23:40,399
Speaker 4: out of the country. You know, if you want to

481
00:23:40,440 --> 00:23:42,280
Speaker 4: think about how well that's going to work. We can't

482
00:23:42,280 --> 00:23:44,240
Speaker 4: even keep drugs out of our prisons, where we pay

483
00:23:44,240 --> 00:23:45,960
Speaker 4: people to walk around the fucking wall. The whole time,

484
00:23:46,320 --> 00:23:48,320
Speaker 4: so good, like we're keeping them out of the United

485
00:23:48,320 --> 00:23:51,520
Speaker 4: States with two three thousand mile borders or Britain, which

486
00:23:51,560 --> 00:23:55,080
Speaker 4: is an island, ridiculous, insane fantasy.

487
00:23:55,320 --> 00:23:57,399
Speaker 2: And this is like the human rat cage that you

488
00:23:57,440 --> 00:23:59,359
Speaker 2: talk about, right, This is the human form of the

489
00:23:59,440 --> 00:24:03,040
Speaker 2: rack age where all they have to do is shoot

490
00:24:03,160 --> 00:24:05,600
Speaker 2: up and drug. So the addiction gets worse and worse

491
00:24:05,640 --> 00:24:08,800
Speaker 2: and worse because because of their environment and where they're around,

492
00:24:08,840 --> 00:24:13,400
Speaker 2: they've got no no one, if anything, people are belittling them,

493
00:24:13,680 --> 00:24:17,960
Speaker 2: punishing them, fucking limiting them, telling them that they're fucking

494
00:24:18,040 --> 00:24:20,080
Speaker 2: no good that then you know they're waste of space

495
00:24:20,119 --> 00:24:24,880
Speaker 2: that they belong down there. You're almost amplifying that problem tenfold,

496
00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:25,880
Speaker 2: right exactly.

497
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 4: And the reason that is so fucking enraging it's because

498
00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:31,480
Speaker 4: somebody will hear that and gut, isn't it sad? Isn't

499
00:24:31,520 --> 00:24:33,439
Speaker 4: it bad? Yeah? I get it. But the thing that

500
00:24:33,480 --> 00:24:36,359
Speaker 4: is so fucking enraging about that is I went to

501
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:39,480
Speaker 4: places where they tried completely different approaches that actually do

502
00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:42,320
Speaker 4: reduce addiction, and where all these people I knew in

503
00:24:42,320 --> 00:24:45,520
Speaker 4: that tunnel, or the vast majority of them, would have

504
00:24:45,600 --> 00:24:48,119
Speaker 4: lived and had decent lives and not fucking died. Right.

505
00:24:48,400 --> 00:24:51,480
Speaker 4: Give an example of Portugal. So the year two thousand,

506
00:24:51,600 --> 00:24:53,359
Speaker 4: Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in the

507
00:24:53,359 --> 00:24:57,080
Speaker 4: whole world. One percent of the population was addicted to heroin,

508
00:24:57,119 --> 00:24:58,719
Speaker 4: which is kind of mind blowing right when you think

509
00:24:58,760 --> 00:25:01,880
Speaker 4: about it. Every year they tried the American way more,

510
00:25:01,920 --> 00:25:04,200
Speaker 4: they arrested more people, they imprison more people, they shame

511
00:25:04,280 --> 00:25:07,480
Speaker 4: more people, and every year the problem got worse, until

512
00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:09,919
Speaker 4: finally the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition

513
00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:12,560
Speaker 4: got together and they were like, look, we can't go

514
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:15,960
Speaker 4: on like this with ever more people dying and getting addicted.

515
00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:18,359
Speaker 4: What are we going to do? So they decided to

516
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:20,960
Speaker 4: do something really radical, something no one had done in

517
00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 4: nearly one hundred years since the War on drugs globally began.

518
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:27,479
Speaker 4: They were like, should we like ask some scientists what

519
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:30,240
Speaker 4: to do? So they set up a panel of scientists

520
00:25:30,280 --> 00:25:32,000
Speaker 4: and doctors led by an amazing.

521
00:25:31,680 --> 00:25:33,080
Speaker 3: Manner common sense exactly.

522
00:25:33,400 --> 00:25:36,399
Speaker 4: This amazing guy became friends with called doctor Juaugulau, and

523
00:25:36,440 --> 00:25:38,520
Speaker 4: they said to them, you guys go away figure out

524
00:25:38,560 --> 00:25:41,880
Speaker 4: what would genuinely solve this fucking massive crisis. And we've

525
00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:45,600
Speaker 4: agreed in advance we'll do whatever you recommend, right, So

526
00:25:45,640 --> 00:25:47,639
Speaker 4: the goal was to just take it out of politics.

527
00:25:48,040 --> 00:25:49,919
Speaker 4: So the panel went away, they looked at all the evidence,

528
00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:53,200
Speaker 4: including rat Park, and they came back and they said, okay,

529
00:25:53,200 --> 00:25:55,720
Speaker 4: here's what we're going to do. We're going to decriminalize

530
00:25:55,760 --> 00:25:58,440
Speaker 4: all drugs, from cannabis to crack, the whole fucking lot.

531
00:25:58,760 --> 00:26:01,000
Speaker 4: But the probably didn't say fucking can not as me,

532
00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 4: But we're going to decriminals the whole lot. But and

533
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:06,640
Speaker 4: this is the crucial next step, we're going to take

534
00:26:06,840 --> 00:26:09,800
Speaker 4: all the money we currently spend on screwing people up,

535
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:13,440
Speaker 4: on shaming them, imprisoning them, and we're going to spend

536
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:16,520
Speaker 4: all that money instead on turning their lives around. And

537
00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:19,560
Speaker 4: what's interesting was when they did it, a lot of

538
00:26:19,600 --> 00:26:21,320
Speaker 4: it was not what we think of as drug treatment

539
00:26:21,359 --> 00:26:23,760
Speaker 4: in Britain, right, So it was they did a lot

540
00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:26,000
Speaker 4: of a rehab, right, they did do that. But the

541
00:26:26,040 --> 00:26:29,120
Speaker 4: main stuff they spent money on was housing, because you're

542
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:30,720
Speaker 4: not going to fucking sober up when you're living in

543
00:26:30,760 --> 00:26:31,600
Speaker 4: a tunnel under a.

544
00:26:31,520 --> 00:26:32,360
Speaker 3: Bridge ground here.

545
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:34,919
Speaker 4: And the biggest thing was the big programmer job creation.

546
00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 4: So say you used to be a mechanic, you've got

547
00:26:37,520 --> 00:26:40,000
Speaker 4: a smack addiction. They'll go to a garage. They'll say,

548
00:26:40,040 --> 00:26:42,160
Speaker 4: if you employed this guy for a year, we'll pay

549
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:45,760
Speaker 4: half his wages. So it was a huge program of reconnection,

550
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:48,920
Speaker 4: getting people reconnected because you're a junkie, you've got a

551
00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:51,680
Speaker 4: criminal record, you're you're not getting a job, you're not

552
00:26:51,720 --> 00:26:54,720
Speaker 4: getting trusted, you are you looked at as the scum

553
00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:57,760
Speaker 4: of society. And instead of that, they wanted to take

554
00:26:57,800 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 4: all that message you and go, actually, we love you,

555
00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 4: we value you, here's a job, we're on your side,

556
00:27:04,440 --> 00:27:06,679
Speaker 4: we want you back. Right. And by the time I

557
00:27:06,680 --> 00:27:11,520
Speaker 4: went to Portugal it was and when was this They

558
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:14,520
Speaker 4: started the decriminalization in two thousand and one, and when

559
00:27:14,520 --> 00:27:16,159
Speaker 4: I went there it was for the first time. It

560
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:19,440
Speaker 4: was twenty twelve. I must have gone there maybe twenty eleven,

561
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:22,840
Speaker 4: think twenty twelve. And the results were in best research

562
00:27:22,880 --> 00:27:25,320
Speaker 4: on it is in the British journal Criminology. They had

563
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:28,840
Speaker 4: a massive fall in addiction. They went from having the

564
00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:31,720
Speaker 4: highest level of overdoses in the European Union to almost

565
00:27:31,760 --> 00:27:34,840
Speaker 4: the lowest. They had a massive fall in street crime,

566
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:39,640
Speaker 4: massive fall in street prostitution, massive full in HIV transmission,

567
00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 4: and one of the ways you know it worked is

568
00:27:42,560 --> 00:27:44,919
Speaker 4: that no one in Portugal wants to go back. I

569
00:27:44,920 --> 00:27:47,760
Speaker 4: went and interviewed one of the leading opponents of the

570
00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:50,960
Speaker 4: drug decriminalization at the time, a guy called schul Figuera.

571
00:27:51,040 --> 00:27:53,280
Speaker 4: He was the top drug cop in the country when

572
00:27:53,280 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 4: they did it, and he said, totally understandably, he said,

573
00:27:56,320 --> 00:27:59,119
Speaker 4: this is fucking madness, right, we can't decriminalize all drugs.

574
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:01,640
Speaker 4: We'll have an explosion drug use, will have an explosion

575
00:28:01,640 --> 00:28:03,960
Speaker 4: in kids using drugs, We'll hav an explosion in drug tourism.

576
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:07,040
Speaker 4: This is a nightmare. And when I met raw he

577
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:11,840
Speaker 4: said to me, everything I said would happen didn't happen,

578
00:28:12,680 --> 00:28:15,639
Speaker 4: and everything the other side said would happen did And

579
00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:18,080
Speaker 4: he said he felt really ashamed now when you look

580
00:28:18,119 --> 00:28:21,159
Speaker 4: back on it, that he'd spent twenty years making people's

581
00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:23,120
Speaker 4: lives worse when they could have been helping people turn

582
00:28:23,160 --> 00:28:27,200
Speaker 4: it around. Now, drug decorverisation hasn't worked everywhere. Public hasn't

583
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:29,439
Speaker 4: been done on the Portuguese model. The Portuguese model was

584
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:32,080
Speaker 4: stop punishing people. That's the first step. It's the equivalent

585
00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:34,480
Speaker 4: of stopping kicking them in the head. But then crucially,

586
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:37,360
Speaker 4: take all the money we spent screwing them up and

587
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:37,960
Speaker 4: spend it.

588
00:28:37,880 --> 00:28:40,200
Speaker 3: Helping them right, get them out of their box exactly.

589
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 4: So the core of it actually is the social change, right,

590
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:47,280
Speaker 4: the reconnection, the getting people back to a.

591
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 3: Decent life, my changing that stigma exactly.

592
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 4: And also people, especially when you undo the stigma, people

593
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:54,920
Speaker 4: are more likely to come forward for help. Right. It's

594
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:56,920
Speaker 4: interesting if you in Portugal's one thing was fascinating me

595
00:28:57,000 --> 00:29:00,600
Speaker 4: going out with some of the social workers. If you

596
00:29:00,640 --> 00:29:03,720
Speaker 4: go out with the authorities, people with addiction problems fucking

597
00:29:03,760 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 4: run away from you. Right in Portugal, they run towards you.

598
00:29:07,600 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 4: It changes the whole dynamic. Yeah.

599
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 2: Wow, So again talking on either said, is that drastic

600
00:29:14,520 --> 00:29:16,400
Speaker 2: change of flipping on its head.

601
00:29:16,560 --> 00:29:18,200
Speaker 4: And this is true for loads of the topics that

602
00:29:18,240 --> 00:29:20,640
Speaker 4: I write about. Where you know, my book's Chasing the

603
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:23,680
Speaker 4: Scream is about addiction obviously in the war on drugs. Actually,

604
00:29:23,800 --> 00:29:25,480
Speaker 4: there are even worse things about the War on drugs,

605
00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:27,520
Speaker 4: like the violence it causes, which we can talk about

606
00:29:27,720 --> 00:29:29,040
Speaker 4: as well. It's why I spend a lot of time

607
00:29:29,040 --> 00:29:34,840
Speaker 4: with dealers and cartels. But you know, my second book,

608
00:29:35,120 --> 00:29:37,520
Speaker 4: Lost Connections, was about why so many people are depressed

609
00:29:37,560 --> 00:29:42,080
Speaker 4: and anxious My third book, Stolen Focus, was about why

610
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 4: some people are struggling to pay attention. My most recent

611
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:46,840
Speaker 4: but Magic Pill, is about these new weight loss drugs,

612
00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:49,000
Speaker 4: what they're going to mean for all of us. Yeah,

613
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:51,840
Speaker 4: but with all of them, I think there's a thing

614
00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:56,200
Speaker 4: about reframing what the problem is really about. If you're

615
00:29:56,240 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 4: stuck in a mindset where you just think, I'm a

616
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:01,840
Speaker 4: fuck up, there's something wrong with and there's definitely individual responsibility,

617
00:30:01,840 --> 00:30:06,720
Speaker 4: and I'm in favor of individual responsibility passionately. But if

618
00:30:06,720 --> 00:30:08,120
Speaker 4: you're stuck in a model where you just think, oh,

619
00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:10,320
Speaker 4: I'm a fuck up, and it's like if you're the

620
00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:12,480
Speaker 4: rat in the isolated cage, but you're not thinking about

621
00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:17,640
Speaker 4: the environment. So many our problems are a combination of

622
00:30:18,040 --> 00:30:22,240
Speaker 4: you know, our individual psyches, our biology, and our environments. Right,

623
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:26,000
Speaker 4: And if we're stuck in just thinking as an isolated individual,

624
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:29,600
Speaker 4: it's usually pretty fucking hard. It's not impossible. Some people

625
00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 4: can do it. You get heroic individuals who can do it,

626
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:34,160
Speaker 4: and all credit to them, right, I've got nothing but

627
00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:38,000
Speaker 4: praise for them. But actually, at the moment, we've got systems.

628
00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:40,120
Speaker 4: For example, with addiction, I would argue with depression and

629
00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:44,240
Speaker 4: attention as well and with wait, actually, where the system

630
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:47,400
Speaker 4: is rigged against you. Right, It's like you're having to

631
00:30:47,440 --> 00:30:49,840
Speaker 4: run up and down escalator to get to be healthy. Right.

632
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:51,760
Speaker 4: Some people can do it something run up and down escalator.

633
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:55,040
Speaker 4: I fucking can't. Yeah, there's a few. But what I

634
00:30:55,080 --> 00:30:57,040
Speaker 4: would do is, let's get the escalator carrying you in

635
00:30:57,040 --> 00:31:00,160
Speaker 4: the right direction. Let's make it easy for you to

636
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:02,360
Speaker 4: make the positive changes in your life, not to make

637
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:03,160
Speaker 4: it hard.

638
00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 2: Right, because a lot of people want to do that, right,

639
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:07,600
Speaker 2: A lot of people do that. They realize the areas

640
00:31:07,640 --> 00:31:10,320
Speaker 2: of their ways, they get so down and but there's

641
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 2: there's just not the support, support element of being able

642
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:15,520
Speaker 2: to for someone offering their hand.

643
00:31:15,560 --> 00:31:16,680
Speaker 3: It's like, no, no, it's too late.

644
00:31:16,720 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 2: Now you're you're a druggie, you're you're you're you're an addict,

645
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:21,800
Speaker 2: you're a criminal. You know, you're tarnished with so many

646
00:31:21,800 --> 00:31:25,000
Speaker 2: black brushes that because ultimately, let's be honest, they've made

647
00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:26,640
Speaker 2: a mistake, they've sucked up in life.

648
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 3: We all do it.

649
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:29,960
Speaker 2: We failed in life up to now. So you meet,

650
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:31,239
Speaker 2: all of us in this room have and we're going

651
00:31:31,240 --> 00:31:32,480
Speaker 2: to fail to the day we die. We're going to

652
00:31:32,520 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 2: make mistakes, right, But it's just that stigma of addiction,

653
00:31:36,840 --> 00:31:39,720
Speaker 2: of being a crackhead, of being a junkie, of being

654
00:31:39,760 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 2: a fucking criminal. It's like that, you know, it's that's

655
00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:47,720
Speaker 2: that's almost like not the impossible task, but it sounds

656
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 2: like it is.

657
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:50,280
Speaker 4: I think it's partly. I think you put it brilliantly,

658
00:31:50,320 --> 00:31:52,800
Speaker 4: and I think it's partly about undoing stigma, but it's

659
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:57,200
Speaker 4: also about knowing where your power lies. Right. So we

660
00:31:57,320 --> 00:31:59,360
Speaker 4: talk a lot when we're trying to help people, and

661
00:31:59,400 --> 00:32:01,240
Speaker 4: this is not just true addictions, true people who've got

662
00:32:01,280 --> 00:32:05,040
Speaker 4: all sorts of problems. We talk absolutely rightly about what

663
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 4: you can do as an isolated individual to change your life.

664
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 4: You can change your mindset also, and I'm passionately favorite that.

665
00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 4: A lot of my book about Attention is about how

666
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:14,160
Speaker 4: we can get our attention back through doing these individual

667
00:32:14,160 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 4: things as well. But I also would want to add

668
00:32:17,360 --> 00:32:18,959
Speaker 4: a prong to it, which doesn't take away anything from

669
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:21,800
Speaker 4: the individual responsiblity back. Then it adds to it, which

670
00:32:21,880 --> 00:32:26,320
Speaker 4: is there's another source of your power, which is you

671
00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:29,800
Speaker 4: can change yourself better when you change with other people,

672
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:31,360
Speaker 4: and you change with the cage.

673
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:42,160
Speaker 2: When I sat down with you I thought you had an,

674
00:32:42,640 --> 00:32:46,520
Speaker 2: let's call it a healthy obsession with the topic addiction.

675
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:50,240
Speaker 2: But it seems like that you've got an obsession with

676
00:32:50,320 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 2: helping people. Everything that I try and put back on you,

677
00:32:53,840 --> 00:32:56,160
Speaker 2: you put back on other people. And I'm just like, Wow,

678
00:32:56,320 --> 00:33:01,120
Speaker 2: you have got a nate just obsessional passion to want

679
00:33:01,120 --> 00:33:01,600
Speaker 2: to help people.

680
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:03,000
Speaker 3: Where did that come from?

681
00:33:03,320 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 4: I mean everyone listening has people who helped them. Because

682
00:33:06,360 --> 00:33:08,360
Speaker 4: you didn't raise yourself as a baby, right you didn't.

683
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:10,920
Speaker 4: So if I think about my grandmother who helped you?

684
00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:13,920
Speaker 4: Think about my grandmother for example. So my grandmother, my

685
00:33:13,960 --> 00:33:17,600
Speaker 4: Scottish grandmother, was who brought me up, basically me and

686
00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:21,360
Speaker 4: my sister, and some agree my brother who's a bit older. Yeah,

687
00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:23,520
Speaker 4: my grandmother was an amazing person. My grandmother left school

688
00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:25,840
Speaker 4: when she was thirteen. She went to work in a laundry.

689
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:30,360
Speaker 4: Her husband died when he was very young. She she

690
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:33,080
Speaker 4: had a very so she raised her kids on her own.

691
00:33:33,240 --> 00:33:35,480
Speaker 4: She had job was to clean toilets. She did every

692
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:41,160
Speaker 4: job she could do. I think about my grandmother, she

693
00:33:41,360 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 4: was just an amazing person, incredibly loving person, and you know,

694
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:46,920
Speaker 4: she'd had this fucking hard life. And then when I'm

695
00:33:46,920 --> 00:33:48,320
Speaker 4: a kid, you know, she must have had a million

696
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:50,960
Speaker 4: she wanted to relax, right, and then she suddenly got

697
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:55,200
Speaker 4: these this kind of looking after these kids, I think.

698
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:57,720
Speaker 4: I think my grandmother was a great example. I had

699
00:33:57,760 --> 00:34:00,280
Speaker 4: so many teachers who were really good to me, had

700
00:34:01,240 --> 00:34:04,520
Speaker 4: just so many people in my life have been really

701
00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:06,920
Speaker 4: really good to me. Have been mean to me as well, obviously,

702
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:08,880
Speaker 4: But the but.

703
00:34:08,680 --> 00:34:11,359
Speaker 2: Is that compassion to want to help others, which are

704
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:16,000
Speaker 2: is evident for me, that sits at the forefront of everything,

705
00:34:16,040 --> 00:34:18,800
Speaker 2: that almost that is at the forefront, and everything trickles

706
00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:21,000
Speaker 2: down your topics of addiction, your topics of wanting to

707
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:25,160
Speaker 2: really you know, your journalism, and that sort of filters

708
00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:27,359
Speaker 2: down where a lot of people put journalism at the top.

709
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:30,520
Speaker 2: You're maybe interested for me, I see your compassion to

710
00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:33,120
Speaker 2: want to help people, because ultimately that's where your journalism

711
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 2: fits in. You're not going out of I can trying

712
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:37,480
Speaker 2: to bring down criminals. You're trying to say, why are

713
00:34:37,520 --> 00:34:40,040
Speaker 2: these people like this? Why do people get addicted? What

714
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:42,800
Speaker 2: can we do to better? You know, the human side

715
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:45,480
Speaker 2: of it is so fucking present and obvious, but it

716
00:34:45,600 --> 00:34:46,960
Speaker 2: must have something must have happened.

717
00:34:47,080 --> 00:34:49,399
Speaker 3: I think I think we all have that compassion comes

718
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 3: from I.

719
00:34:50,080 --> 00:34:55,480
Speaker 4: Think everyone is. We all exist, and we all see

720
00:34:55,480 --> 00:34:59,719
Speaker 4: saw around a spectrum between concern for other people and

721
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:02,200
Speaker 4: narcissistic concern for the self. Right, And of course you

722
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:04,040
Speaker 4: should be concerned for yourself to some degree as well.

723
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:05,680
Speaker 4: That's important. It's not we don't want people to be

724
00:35:05,800 --> 00:35:10,200
Speaker 4: totally self sacrificing. And the truth is, so we live

725
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 4: in this culture which is constantly pushing people to be

726
00:35:16,560 --> 00:35:21,279
Speaker 4: self obsessed. Think about yourself, to be narcissistic. Think about

727
00:35:21,320 --> 00:35:24,640
Speaker 4: how you feel after half an hour looking at Instagram,

728
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:29,160
Speaker 4: right like the So we live in this culture that

729
00:35:29,239 --> 00:35:33,320
Speaker 4: is constantly pushing us towards the ego and self obsession.

730
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:36,799
Speaker 4: And I'm probably more vulnerable than that to that than

731
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:42,560
Speaker 4: most people. And the truth is that will make you

732
00:35:42,600 --> 00:35:46,800
Speaker 4: feel like shit, whereas moments of openness and love towards

733
00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:51,160
Speaker 4: other people will make you feel better. So in some sense,

734
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:54,719
Speaker 4: there's a kind of selfish impulse behind my desire to

735
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:57,080
Speaker 4: be compassionate because I think about this a lot in

736
00:35:57,120 --> 00:35:59,520
Speaker 4: relation to this guy I interviewed a lot, amazing man.

737
00:35:59,520 --> 00:36:01,800
Speaker 4: You should have a your podcast called Professor Tim Kassa.

738
00:36:02,560 --> 00:36:05,400
Speaker 4: So when I think about his work, is everyone knows

739
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:08,200
Speaker 4: junk food has taken over our diets and made us

740
00:36:08,239 --> 00:36:12,400
Speaker 4: physically sick, right, but actually a kind of junk values

741
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:15,279
Speaker 4: have taken over our minds and made us mentally sick. Right,

742
00:36:16,680 --> 00:36:19,560
Speaker 4: And Professor Kassa was the first person to really research this.

743
00:36:19,640 --> 00:36:22,880
Speaker 4: So for thousands of years, philosophers have said, you know,

744
00:36:23,520 --> 00:36:25,840
Speaker 4: if you think life is about money and status and

745
00:36:25,880 --> 00:36:27,680
Speaker 4: showing off, you're going to feel like shit. Right. It's

746
00:36:27,680 --> 00:36:29,520
Speaker 4: not an exact quote from Confucius, but it's basically what

747
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:33,120
Speaker 4: he said, right. But weirdly, no one actually scientifically investigated

748
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:36,000
Speaker 4: it until Professor Cassio did all this amazing psychological research

749
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 4: over forty years, and basically he proved, to give you

750
00:36:39,200 --> 00:36:42,239
Speaker 4: the headline, the philosophers were right, the more you think

751
00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:45,960
Speaker 4: life is about money and status and showing off and ego,

752
00:36:46,719 --> 00:36:51,719
Speaker 4: the worse you will feel. Right, And the way we

753
00:36:51,719 --> 00:36:53,879
Speaker 4: began to think of it, it's almost like, just like junk

754
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:55,960
Speaker 4: food has taken over our diets, are kind of junk

755
00:36:56,160 --> 00:37:00,799
Speaker 4: values have taken over our minds, right, rained to look

756
00:37:00,880 --> 00:37:02,920
Speaker 4: for happiness in all the wrong places. It's like we're

757
00:37:02,960 --> 00:37:05,399
Speaker 4: fed a kind of KFC for the salt. Right, Yeah,

758
00:37:06,040 --> 00:37:08,239
Speaker 4: we're you know if you think about there's a really

759
00:37:08,239 --> 00:37:10,480
Speaker 4: a bit interesting bit of research. It was done by

760
00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:12,680
Speaker 4: lots of scientists, but one of them was Dr Brett Ford,

761
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 4: who I interviewed about it. Really simple research. They looked

762
00:37:17,600 --> 00:37:21,400
Speaker 4: at four countries. It was the United States, Japan, Taiwan

763
00:37:21,440 --> 00:37:24,440
Speaker 4: and Russia. And they want to figure out, let's imagine

764
00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:28,480
Speaker 4: you deliberately wanted to make yourself happier. Right, so you said,

765
00:37:28,600 --> 00:37:30,040
Speaker 4: right from now and I'm going to spend two hours

766
00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:33,839
Speaker 4: a day deliberately making myself happier. Would you actually become happier? Right?

767
00:37:34,440 --> 00:37:37,920
Speaker 4: I wrote about some my book Los Connections, and what

768
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:42,560
Speaker 4: they found at first seems really weird. In the United States,

769
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:45,319
Speaker 4: if you try to make yourself happier in the main

770
00:37:45,400 --> 00:37:48,960
Speaker 4: you do not become happier. But in Russia, Taiwan and Japan,

771
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:51,239
Speaker 4: if you try to make yourself happier, it works. You

772
00:37:51,239 --> 00:37:52,920
Speaker 4: do become and they're like, what's weird, what's going on?

773
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:55,120
Speaker 4: So it did more research on it. I discovered was

774
00:37:55,160 --> 00:37:56,480
Speaker 4: in the US. I'm sure it's true of ours in

775
00:37:56,480 --> 00:37:59,520
Speaker 4: Britain and Australia as well. If you try to make

776
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:03,600
Speaker 4: yourself hap you do something for you, You work harder

777
00:38:03,640 --> 00:38:06,839
Speaker 4: to get a promotion. You buy a load of shit.

778
00:38:06,920 --> 00:38:08,759
Speaker 4: You don't need to display it on Instagram to make

779
00:38:08,800 --> 00:38:11,840
Speaker 4: people go OMG so jealous. You do you right, you

780
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:15,080
Speaker 4: treat yourself. So we have that. The fancy weight putting

781
00:38:15,080 --> 00:38:17,680
Speaker 4: it would be we have an individualistic conception of happiness.

782
00:38:18,080 --> 00:38:20,799
Speaker 4: You think your happiness stems from your ego and you

783
00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:24,520
Speaker 4: doing well, you as an isolated individual. In the other places,

784
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:27,439
Speaker 4: when you try to make yourself happier, you did something

785
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:30,799
Speaker 4: for someone else, your friends, your family, your community. Right,

786
00:38:31,360 --> 00:38:35,160
Speaker 4: So they have an instinctively kind of collective idea of happiness, right,

787
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:38,120
Speaker 4: that happiness comes from being part of a group, from

788
00:38:38,160 --> 00:38:40,120
Speaker 4: being part of a group that rises with you or

789
00:38:40,160 --> 00:38:45,120
Speaker 4: falls with you. Right, And we've moved way too far.

790
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:47,120
Speaker 4: I'm in favor of some level of individualism. Individuals is

791
00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:48,440
Speaker 4: a good thing to some degree. I don't want to

792
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:50,080
Speaker 4: go back to them. But the village of my dad

793
00:38:50,120 --> 00:38:52,520
Speaker 4: lived in where there was no room for individual expression.

794
00:38:53,160 --> 00:38:57,040
Speaker 4: But we've gone so far towards that, and it trains

795
00:38:57,120 --> 00:38:59,240
Speaker 4: us to look for happiness in all the wrong places.

796
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 4: You are not to fix right totally, or even a

797
00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:05,520
Speaker 4: slow fix in the wrong direction, Like you're not gonna

798
00:39:05,560 --> 00:39:07,560
Speaker 4: lie on your deathbed and think about all the likes

799
00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:09,759
Speaker 4: you've got on Instagram and all the shoes you bought. Right,

800
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:11,800
Speaker 4: you're going to think about moments of love and meaning

801
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:14,320
Speaker 4: and connection in your life. But the way Professor Kassa

802
00:39:14,360 --> 00:39:16,920
Speaker 4: put it to me is we live in a machine

803
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:18,840
Speaker 4: that is designed to get us to neglect what is

804
00:39:18,880 --> 00:39:21,680
Speaker 4: important about life. Right, We live in a machine that

805
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:28,600
Speaker 4: is constantly pushing us towards Yeah, these these individualistic, narcissistic

806
00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:28,920
Speaker 4: forms of.

807
00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:30,920
Speaker 3: Expression almost like synthetic highs, isn't it.

808
00:39:30,920 --> 00:39:33,560
Speaker 2: It's like you're getting these synthetic highs because they're boosting

809
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:35,400
Speaker 2: you in the moment, you feel good about yourself.

810
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:38,680
Speaker 3: Ultimately, like I said, strip all that away. It's just

811
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:39,240
Speaker 3: been thought.

812
00:39:39,239 --> 00:39:41,799
Speaker 2: But I think society has a huge part to play

813
00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:44,400
Speaker 2: on that because you know, these big companies, and we

814
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:46,279
Speaker 2: can we can get into the politics of you know,

815
00:39:46,360 --> 00:39:49,000
Speaker 2: big fire, big companies, et cetera, et cetera, but they're

816
00:39:49,640 --> 00:39:52,520
Speaker 2: ultimately what's feeding these these addictions in order to keep

817
00:39:52,600 --> 00:39:53,480
Speaker 2: us in that state.

818
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:55,600
Speaker 4: Of mind totally. So there's a lot for all of

819
00:39:55,640 --> 00:39:58,520
Speaker 4: the things we're talking about, whether it's addiction, where it's

820
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:01,560
Speaker 4: attention problems, all the stuff I wrote my books spout.

821
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:03,759
Speaker 4: There's sort of two levels of which I think we've

822
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:05,879
Speaker 4: got to defend. We've got to respond to this, right.

823
00:40:06,200 --> 00:40:08,640
Speaker 4: I think of them as defense and offense. There are

824
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 4: loads of things we can do at an individual level

825
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:13,160
Speaker 4: to defend ourselves, right, but also we've got to go

826
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 4: on offense against the forces that are doing this to us. Right.

827
00:40:16,040 --> 00:40:18,200
Speaker 4: You mentioned some of the companies big tech. We've got

828
00:40:18,239 --> 00:40:21,799
Speaker 4: to regulate those fuckers. Right. There's all sorts of things

829
00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:23,879
Speaker 4: that we can do, Like think about the fact that

830
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:26,400
Speaker 4: more three year old children know what the McDonald's m

831
00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:29,560
Speaker 4: means than know their own last name. Right now, you

832
00:40:29,560 --> 00:40:31,040
Speaker 4: don't put that in your head when you were three

833
00:40:31,080 --> 00:40:33,240
Speaker 4: years old. I didn't put that in my head. That's

834
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:35,480
Speaker 4: a machine doing that to us. Well, some countries have

835
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:37,360
Speaker 4: banned advertising junk food to children.

836
00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:38,919
Speaker 3: It's fucking bad brands washing.

837
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:42,080
Speaker 4: Basically, don't fucking poison your kids' brains to then want

838
00:40:42,120 --> 00:40:45,000
Speaker 4: to poison their bodies. Right, there's all sorts of things

839
00:40:45,040 --> 00:40:49,640
Speaker 4: we can do that regulate the environment. Now, you can't

840
00:40:49,640 --> 00:40:51,000
Speaker 4: do that on your own. There's lots of things you

841
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:52,880
Speaker 4: can do individually on your own, and we should do

842
00:40:52,960 --> 00:40:55,719
Speaker 4: both and the individual stuff makes you stronger to fight

843
00:40:55,800 --> 00:40:58,000
Speaker 4: for the collective stuff, and the collective stuff makes you

844
00:40:58,040 --> 00:41:00,000
Speaker 4: more likely succeeded in the individual stuff. So it's actually

845
00:41:00,200 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 4: very happy kind of.

846
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:03,120
Speaker 3: How do you do it because you can't?

847
00:41:03,520 --> 00:41:05,480
Speaker 2: Because you can't do it, especially now when we thought

848
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:09,879
Speaker 2: we had this free voice of social media platforms are

849
00:41:09,880 --> 00:41:13,520
Speaker 2: now and we talk about big tech that's so controlled nowadays.

850
00:41:13,520 --> 00:41:17,319
Speaker 2: If you actually speak out the trivia, you're you're restricted,

851
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:20,000
Speaker 2: or your your shadow band or your ghost band, whatever

852
00:41:20,040 --> 00:41:23,239
Speaker 2: it may be. So but it's like we're fighting an

853
00:41:23,239 --> 00:41:26,439
Speaker 2: almost impossible task. Because you mentioned big tech, big fun

854
00:41:26,680 --> 00:41:27,520
Speaker 2: they rule the world.

855
00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:29,399
Speaker 4: I understand why it feels that way, but I would

856
00:41:29,400 --> 00:41:31,400
Speaker 4: just tell you two stories. I think that answer that.

857
00:41:33,520 --> 00:41:35,640
Speaker 4: So whenever I feel hopeless, and there are days when

858
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:36,200
Speaker 4: I feel.

859
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:36,759
Speaker 3: That way're the same.

860
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 4: That's natural. I think a lot about a really close

861
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:43,520
Speaker 4: friend of mine called Andrew Sullivan. He's a British American writer.

862
00:41:44,160 --> 00:41:47,160
Speaker 4: So nineteen ninety four, Andrew was diagnosed as HIV positive.

863
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 4: It's the height of the age crisis. It's best friend

864
00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:51,560
Speaker 4: Patrick had just died. As far as anyone knew, there

865
00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:55,440
Speaker 4: was no hope in sight. He's like fuck' whatever. He

866
00:41:55,560 --> 00:41:57,799
Speaker 4: was in his thirties. I've got a couple of years

867
00:41:57,800 --> 00:42:00,560
Speaker 4: to live. Fuck. And he decided I need to do

868
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:04,120
Speaker 4: a completely crazy thing. He quit his job and he

869
00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:07,200
Speaker 4: went to a little place called Provincetown and he decided

870
00:42:07,239 --> 00:42:09,320
Speaker 4: he was going to write a book about a crazy

871
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:12,200
Speaker 4: utopian idea that no one had ever written a book

872
00:42:12,200 --> 00:42:15,359
Speaker 4: about before. Right, And he was like, Okay, no one

873
00:42:15,360 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 4: alive today is ever going to see this put into practice.

874
00:42:17,600 --> 00:42:18,799
Speaker 4: I'm clearly not going to live to see it put

875
00:42:18,800 --> 00:42:20,719
Speaker 4: into practice. Maybe somewhere down the line someone's going to

876
00:42:20,760 --> 00:42:23,840
Speaker 4: find this fucking crazy book. Right. The idea he wrote

877
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 4: the first of a book advocating for was gay marriage. Right.

878
00:42:27,440 --> 00:42:29,160
Speaker 4: She got a picture craze. It was, You've got two

879
00:42:29,280 --> 00:42:34,440
Speaker 4: thousand years of gay people being fucking burned, imprisoned, hated,

880
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:37,440
Speaker 4: every religious text in the world, every country in the world.

881
00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:40,640
Speaker 4: And he's like, no, let gave you all get married, right,

882
00:42:40,680 --> 00:42:42,440
Speaker 4: And this is the height of gay people being hated.

883
00:42:42,440 --> 00:42:46,600
Speaker 4: There's this paranoia about AIDS and fear about AIDS, and

884
00:42:46,640 --> 00:42:48,440
Speaker 4: so he writes this book. And when I get pessimisty,

885
00:42:48,480 --> 00:42:50,239
Speaker 4: I'll try to imagine, right, Okay, tried to imagine going

886
00:42:50,239 --> 00:42:53,000
Speaker 4: back in time to nineteen ninety four when Andrew's writing

887
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:56,040
Speaker 4: virtually normal and going, Okay, Andrew, you're not going to

888
00:42:56,040 --> 00:43:01,719
Speaker 4: believe me. But twenty six years for now, A you'll

889
00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:03,719
Speaker 4: be alive. That would have fucking blow in his mind.

890
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:06,279
Speaker 4: B you'll be married to a man because that will

891
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:09,400
Speaker 4: be legal. See, I'll be with you when the Supreme

892
00:43:09,400 --> 00:43:12,240
Speaker 4: Court of the United States quotes this book you're writing,

893
00:43:12,600 --> 00:43:14,799
Speaker 4: when it makes it mandatory for every state in the

894
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:17,480
Speaker 4: United States to introduce gay marriage, and the next day

895
00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:20,160
Speaker 4: you'll be invited to have dinner with the President in

896
00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:22,000
Speaker 4: a white house lit up in the colors of the

897
00:43:22,120 --> 00:43:24,960
Speaker 4: rainbow flag to celebrate what you and millions of other

898
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:27,680
Speaker 4: people have achieved. Oh and by the way, that president

899
00:43:28,080 --> 00:43:30,640
Speaker 4: he's going to be black. Right, it would have sounded

900
00:43:30,680 --> 00:43:34,000
Speaker 4: like there was fucking crazy science fiction, right me go right,

901
00:43:34,080 --> 00:43:36,120
Speaker 4: So twenty six years from now and you and me

902
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:38,760
Speaker 4: are trans Prime Minister's gonna invite us to smoke cracking

903
00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:40,880
Speaker 4: downing Street where there? Right, it would have sounded not

904
00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:46,239
Speaker 4: that we want that, but you see what I mean? Right,

905
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:51,920
Speaker 4: two thousand years fucking horrific homophobia. It falls in us

906
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:55,319
Speaker 4: A generation or two is hope and so and you

907
00:43:55,360 --> 00:43:56,800
Speaker 4: think about that in relation to tech, I give you

908
00:43:56,880 --> 00:43:59,560
Speaker 4: know a story, right, tech is so powerful, and of

909
00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:02,319
Speaker 4: course it's enormously powerful. But I'll give you example of

910
00:44:02,320 --> 00:44:04,240
Speaker 4: someone I would never normally praise. Let's do the spirit

911
00:44:04,239 --> 00:44:06,760
Speaker 4: of Philippo in and I'll praise someone that I fucking

912
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:10,160
Speaker 4: hate ninety percent of the time. Scott Morrison. Right. So

913
00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:14,960
Speaker 4: Scott Morrison did something really good. So, as a lot

914
00:44:15,000 --> 00:44:18,839
Speaker 4: of people will know, the media is being bankrupted by

915
00:44:18,880 --> 00:44:22,200
Speaker 4: these social media platforms because you know, twenty five years

916
00:44:22,239 --> 00:44:23,839
Speaker 4: ago you were put an advert in the Sydney Morning

917
00:44:23,880 --> 00:44:26,040
Speaker 4: Herald and now you put an advert on Facebook. So

918
00:44:26,080 --> 00:44:30,120
Speaker 4: people get their news from Facebook, but the advertising money

919
00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:32,839
Speaker 4: goes to Facebook, not to the Sydney Morning Herald. Right.

920
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 4: So they're losing their print readers and they're losing all

921
00:44:35,239 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 4: their advertising revenue and this is happening all over the

922
00:44:38,040 --> 00:44:40,399
Speaker 4: world and it's very bad for democracy if you don't

923
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:45,960
Speaker 4: have media. Right. So Scott Morrison, not manadament, only praise

924
00:44:46,320 --> 00:44:50,160
Speaker 4: entirely to his credit, said to Facebook, you're going to

925
00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:52,040
Speaker 4: have to give some of your advertising revenue to the

926
00:44:52,080 --> 00:44:54,839
Speaker 4: Australian media. People go to your website for the news.

927
00:44:55,080 --> 00:44:56,880
Speaker 4: I heard about this, you got from this, and you

928
00:44:56,920 --> 00:44:59,520
Speaker 4: remember at the time, that's a Facebook shit. The BED

929
00:45:00,160 --> 00:45:03,319
Speaker 4: Australia often key functions. They cut them off completely right

930
00:45:04,520 --> 00:45:09,319
Speaker 4: and what happened quietly they gave in right now. Some

931
00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:12,200
Speaker 4: of that money goes to the Australian media. We are

932
00:45:12,840 --> 00:45:17,280
Speaker 4: so much stronger than they are. They are really fucking unpopular,

933
00:45:18,120 --> 00:45:21,080
Speaker 4: musk mat Zuckerberg. We are much stronger than they are.

934
00:45:21,120 --> 00:45:22,920
Speaker 4: They want to project this image that they're you know,

935
00:45:22,920 --> 00:45:24,359
Speaker 4: and there's good things and bad things about them.

936
00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:27,040
Speaker 3: Of course I agree. I know exactly where you're coming from.

937
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:29,520
Speaker 4: If you think about the history of collective struggle, if

938
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:33,440
Speaker 4: you think about the power we can claim together against

939
00:45:33,440 --> 00:45:36,000
Speaker 4: these forces that are fucking us up. My bookst On

940
00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:38,000
Speaker 4: Focus is about how these forces are sucking up attention

941
00:45:38,040 --> 00:45:39,640
Speaker 4: and actually lots of other forces are sucking up our

942
00:45:39,640 --> 00:45:42,440
Speaker 4: attention as well, and how we can reclaim our minds.

943
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:47,680
Speaker 4: But we don't have to accept being fucked over when

944
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:49,520
Speaker 4: it comes to addiction, when it comes to depression, when

945
00:45:49,520 --> 00:45:52,040
Speaker 4: it comes to attention, when it comes to the obesity crisis.

946
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:54,400
Speaker 4: We don't have to accept this. Right. It's not a

947
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:57,000
Speaker 4: force in nature, it's not inevitable to living in a

948
00:45:57,040 --> 00:46:01,240
Speaker 4: modern society. It is a result of very particular, powerful

949
00:46:01,320 --> 00:46:04,600
Speaker 4: forces that we can take on and change. But it

950
00:46:04,640 --> 00:46:08,080
Speaker 4: requires a shift in mindset. Right. You obviously talk a

951
00:46:08,120 --> 00:46:10,840
Speaker 4: lot about mindset, quite rightly. We need to realize we

952
00:46:10,920 --> 00:46:15,279
Speaker 4: are not medieval peasants begging fucking Mark Zuckerberg and King

953
00:46:15,400 --> 00:46:18,520
Speaker 4: Musk for a few little crumbs of attention from their table.

954
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:22,200
Speaker 4: We are free people. We are the free citizens of democracies.

955
00:46:22,239 --> 00:46:25,200
Speaker 4: We own our own minds. We can take our minds

956
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:27,399
Speaker 4: back from these forces if we want to, but we've

957
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:30,080
Speaker 4: got to understand what's being done to them. We've got

958
00:46:30,120 --> 00:46:32,800
Speaker 4: to understand it in a wider context. We've got understand

959
00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:35,680
Speaker 4: the cage we've been put in, and together we can

960
00:46:35,680 --> 00:46:37,080
Speaker 4: dismantle that cage. Right.

961
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:40,319
Speaker 2: I love that, you know what I'm going to finish

962
00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:42,800
Speaker 2: on that because that was super powerful.

963
00:46:44,280 --> 00:46:45,719
Speaker 3: Absolutely love this conversation.

964
00:46:45,800 --> 00:46:45,960
Speaker 4: Mate.

965
00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:49,879
Speaker 2: There's so much more to you than meets the eye,

966
00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:53,000
Speaker 2: and I think you know, talk about humanity. That's all

967
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:55,279
Speaker 2: we can do is be there for each other, lift

968
00:46:55,320 --> 00:46:56,800
Speaker 2: each other other, and if we can be there to

969
00:46:56,800 --> 00:46:58,360
Speaker 2: show a bit of love, a bit of guidance, and

970
00:46:58,880 --> 00:47:01,319
Speaker 2: to push people on the wide direction. Then you know

971
00:47:01,800 --> 00:47:05,720
Speaker 2: the world is a powerful place that we can control

972
00:47:05,960 --> 00:47:08,120
Speaker 2: right exactly, We not me and.

973
00:47:08,040 --> 00:47:08,799
Speaker 4: We not me.

974
00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:11,359
Speaker 3: I love that. Thank you, mate, Thank you so much

975
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:14,359
Speaker 3: for joining me on Headgame. If you enjoyed this.

976
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:17,600
Speaker 2: Episode, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any

977
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:21,080
Speaker 2: of our incredible stories, and leave me a review wherever

978
00:47:21,120 --> 00:47:21,720
Speaker 2: you're listening.

979
00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:25,479
Speaker 3: I'm Att Middleton. Catch you again next time.