Speaker 1: I'm bad for the same reason because if someone asked
Speaker 1: me a question, I just answer it to the best
Speaker 1: of my ability one hundred. But if it's really a
Speaker 1: silly question, I'll go I'm not much good with those
Speaker 1: sorts of questions. What I need to be better is
Speaker 1: someone asked a good question and I think, oh, that's
Speaker 1: a good question. I'm going to unpack it, and now
Speaker 1: I don't. That's what gets me in trouble, because although
Speaker 1: you could look at it like this, and you could
Speaker 1: look at it like that, and then the press will go,
Speaker 1: he said that thing, and I'm like, no, I was.
Speaker 1: I was doing the thing I'm trying to do, which
Speaker 1: is to be self aware about my biases. A bit
Speaker 1: doesn't work out.
Speaker 2: Hello, I'm mini driver. I've always loved Proust's questionnaire.
Speaker 3: It was originally in nineteenth century parlor game where players
Speaker 3: would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing
Speaker 3: the other player's true nature. In asking different people the
Speaker 3: same set of questions, you can make observations about which
Speaker 3: truths appear to be universal.
Speaker 2: And it made me.
Speaker 3: Wonder, what if these questions were just the jumping off point,
Speaker 3: what greater depths would be revealed if I asked these
Speaker 3: questions as conversation starters. So I adapted Pru's questionnaire and
Speaker 3: I wrote my own seven questions that I personally think
Speaker 3: are pertinent to a person's story. They are when and
Speaker 3: where were you happiest? What is the quality you like
Speaker 3: least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love
Speaker 3: for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place,
Speaker 3: or experience has shaped you the most? What would be
Speaker 3: your last meal? And can you tell me something in
Speaker 3: your life that's grown out of a personal disaster? And
Speaker 3: I've gathered a group of really remarkable people, ones that
Speaker 3: I am honored and humbled to have had the chance
Speaker 3: to engage with. You may not hear their answers to
Speaker 3: all seven of these questions. We've whittled it down to
Speaker 3: which questions felt closest to their experience, or the most surprising,
Speaker 3: or created the most fertile ground to connect. My guest
Speaker 3: today is the musician, composer, writer, and comedian Tim Minchin.
Speaker 2: Tim's live shows.
Speaker 3: Are unlike anyone else's, and I urge you to go
Speaker 3: and see him if he's playing anywhere near you at
Speaker 3: any time. He has this magical spectrum that he plays
Speaker 3: within where one minute the mundane is being examined and
Speaker 3: poeticized in a hilarious way, and in the next moment,
Speaker 3: an existential philosophical viewpoint enters the scene or song, and
Speaker 3: now all things are transformed, including you, the audience. Tim
Speaker 3: wrote the music and lyrics to the multi award winning
Speaker 3: musical Matilda. He has released five DVDs and seven live albums,
Speaker 3: and this summer in June, his show Songs The World
Speaker 3: Will Never Hear is touring in the UK.
Speaker 2: Like I said, go and see.
Speaker 3: Him perform if he possibly can, because he is a
Speaker 3: proper magic Can you tell me wherein when you were happiest?
Speaker 1: You have to tell me yours, I will tell you mine.
Speaker 1: Do you have one?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think it can either be like it's either a moment,
Speaker 3: because obviously there are I would hope lots and lots
Speaker 3: and lots of different happy moments. I think it's really
Speaker 3: about isolating one that reflects something about you. So for
Speaker 3: me it is there is this clear day when my
Speaker 3: mum was still alive and she was on the beach
Speaker 3: with my son and they were like having a picnic,
Speaker 3: and I think my sister was there with a couple
Speaker 3: of her kids, and the waves suddenly picked up, and
Speaker 3: I was like, I'm just going to go for a
Speaker 3: quick surf, and I paddled out and I was just out,
Speaker 3: and I could see that there was a set coming in,
Speaker 3: and I just turned around, knowing the set was coming,
Speaker 3: and I just saw them on the beach and the
Speaker 3: feeling seeing them all there and then turning back and
Speaker 3: there was this perfect set of waves and there was
Speaker 3: probably only a couple of other people in the water
Speaker 3: paddling for that wave, catching it and then riding it
Speaker 3: and watching my son holding my mum's hand, like jumping
Speaker 3: up and down on the beach. It was such undiluted
Speaker 3: joy of connection.
Speaker 1: And that's a convergence of so many things that you love.
Speaker 1: So you managed to get your mom now be artified
Speaker 1: by demise and your son, who you love because he's
Speaker 1: your son, and your hot favorite thing, which is being
Speaker 1: in the ocean, and then the ocean serving up adrenaline
Speaker 1: and dolphins in the form of a good step, and
Speaker 1: then you catching them set, so you communing with the
Speaker 1: ocean and being witnessed, and there's so much there that
Speaker 1: you're right, that's a moment that speaks.
Speaker 2: To who you are exactly.
Speaker 1: I fear that I don't know if I can make
Speaker 1: them converge, because I am very when I'm down on
Speaker 1: my block where we have some trees, and I've just
Speaker 1: done like eight hours hacking away at some drop that
Speaker 1: some people would find absolutely horrible, like trying to clear
Speaker 1: an area of weeds of invasive species, and I'm just
Speaker 1: hot and sweat. But there was a task which eight
Speaker 1: hours ago looked actually futile. But just by putting my
Speaker 1: head down and not stopping, I made something difficult. I
Speaker 1: put it behind me, and then I'm hot and I'm tired,
Speaker 1: and I walk into that little shitty house we have
Speaker 1: down there and get a beer and feel like I've
Speaker 1: earnt that beer, rather than I'm having that beer because
Speaker 1: I find the ends of days anxiety making. But rather
Speaker 1: this is a beer I've learnt by doing labor. And
Speaker 1: you know that is a version of it, as is
Speaker 1: the me that runs my ten k in a time
Speaker 1: I'm proud of, as is me watching my son play guitar.
Speaker 1: And then there's the version of happiness that you get
Speaker 1: when you've got ten thousand people standing up at the
Speaker 1: end of a concert that is unmatched, or just me
Speaker 1: on stage buying piano. That's a type of happiness, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. There's a sort of selfishness womania
Speaker 1: call happiness, and then it's opposite. There's eight hours of
Speaker 1: weeding where I've managed to convince my kids to help me,
Speaker 1: and then there's being on stage in front of a
Speaker 1: lot of people, and they're very, very different.
Speaker 3: I think what I like about that question because a
Speaker 3: lot of people have rolled their eyes at it, But
Speaker 3: what I think it does is ask us to distill
Speaker 3: what it is in ourselves that we connect with around contentment.
Speaker 3: So it doesn't surprise me at all that running a
Speaker 3: ten k in a time that you deem appropriate, clearing weeds,
Speaker 3: or standing on a stage, that all of those things
Speaker 3: are a distillation of a part of you, and that
Speaker 3: they become part of your self knowledge.
Speaker 2: And I like how revealing that is.
Speaker 3: Because we don't ask ourselves, I think enough, or share
Speaker 3: with ease each other what helps us distill those things?
Speaker 3: Like happiness is such a kind of ephemeral idea for
Speaker 3: most people, and they're like, oh, I'm so busy thinking
Speaker 3: about not being able to pay my mortgage or my
Speaker 3: shit job or my boring relationship or whatever it is
Speaker 3: that we don't go. These small things or these big
Speaker 3: things are the things that make me feel better.
Speaker 1: An amazing one yesterday morning, because it was a Sunday
Speaker 1: morning and we've just moved back into our house that
Speaker 1: has been being renovated for two years, and my daughter,
Speaker 1: who has not found a high school easy, just in
Speaker 1: her final year. Twelve weeks o and we're back in
Speaker 1: the house and my boy was going to do an
Speaker 1: audition for a musical. And he's not an extrovert, he's
Speaker 1: not a show kid, but he really wants to do it,
Speaker 1: and so I spent now with him warming up his
Speaker 1: voice because he had cold, and I was teaching him
Speaker 1: how to warm up, and for the first time ever,
Speaker 1: he understood the benefit of warming up. And I sent
Speaker 1: him off to his audition, and my daughter woke up
Speaker 1: having had a bit of a night out, which you know,
Speaker 1: it's quite new and exciting to have it. I'm in
Speaker 1: this house that we spent all out of time and
Speaker 1: money on and making coffee and my coffee machine. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are those moments where but they're rare ones because
Speaker 1: they're ones where you've gone. If I renovate my house,
Speaker 1: and if I get my daughter through high school, and
Speaker 1: if my son likes music like I do, those are
Speaker 1: the sort of things that will make me happy, and
Speaker 1: if I have a good coffee machine, And often they
Speaker 1: are false. And then every now and then you get
Speaker 1: day where you're like, ah that I thought this shit
Speaker 1: would make me happy, and usually usually so I thought
Speaker 1: it would make me happy and then didn't. And the
Speaker 1: happiness comes at you from the side in a moment
Speaker 1: you weren't expecting. And that's a hard lesson to learn.
Speaker 1: I mean, I say it in my little book I've
Speaker 1: just put out, don't see happiness. Happiness is like an orgasm.
Speaker 1: If you think about it too much, it goes away.
Speaker 1: I think happiness is the side effect, and you should
Speaker 1: be very careful about pursuing it. And you'll notice that
Speaker 1: all those things when you send them back to me.
Speaker 1: I was a bit mortified to realize they're all goal
Speaker 1: or into which there's something about my brain. I need
Speaker 1: a task now.
Speaker 3: But that's interesting, Like what's that mortification? Because it's you,
Speaker 3: but it's but that's also that's who you are, and
Speaker 3: in a way, it's like it's how you achieve the extraordinary,
Speaker 3: very very very idiosyncratic things that you tim achieve, and
Speaker 3: you being goal oriented, I wish that you would rethink
Speaker 3: your mortification.
Speaker 1: Well it's not a horrific mortification, but it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that clocks that's me. Yeah, I like to have a
Speaker 1: goal and do it and then have a beer at
Speaker 1: the end with my family. That I'm a pretty simple orrobot.
Speaker 1: Really I need a thing to feel like I've achieved,
Speaker 1: and then that's just a relaxation of me.
Speaker 3: So what quality do you like least about yourself?
Speaker 1: Probably related to that need to achieve, which I don't
Speaker 1: know if I like it. The thing I think is
Speaker 1: a bit of a trial. Is it slightly re inless
Speaker 1: sense that I need to do something more to prove
Speaker 1: myself to myself or something. It's a bit tiring when
Speaker 1: it works, tiresome to be needing to prove myself to myself.
Speaker 3: Who is the you that is proving and who is
Speaker 3: the you that needs to be proved too.
Speaker 1: I've talked about this idea that I think maybe just
Speaker 1: second child stuff or whatever, or going to a boys'
Speaker 1: school where you kind of made you feel like if
Speaker 1: you're not whatever footy player. There's a bit of that stuff.
Speaker 1: But also because I've got a lot of closed doors
Speaker 1: in my career as a musician and an actor and artist.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of closed doors for about ten years,
Speaker 1: which in hindsight, of course, were the best thing that
Speaker 1: could have possibly happened, because it made me work out
Speaker 1: and got me where I got. But I think those
Speaker 1: closed doors gave me a little mechanism in my brain
Speaker 1: that has a bit of a I'll show them, and
Speaker 1: the me I'm proving myself too could also be described
Speaker 1: as this esoteric them. But there is no there. There
Speaker 1: is an I'll show them training in my brain, and
Speaker 1: I think artists get that all the time, a bit yeah,
Speaker 1: well you oh idea all the time.
Speaker 3: And I've only recently started asking myself who who the
Speaker 3: fuck is the them? Who is the them? And why
Speaker 3: do I think they care?
Speaker 1: They don't care. In fact, the people who said no
Speaker 1: to me, I'm very happy for me. I know people
Speaker 1: who said no to me, You're like, oh, you did
Speaker 1: so well, so great, Like there's no one to prove
Speaker 1: itself to. And that's connected to the other thing that
Speaker 1: I think is unattractive in me, which is I can
Speaker 1: get a bit sort of how dare they know? A
Speaker 1: bit righteous when I'm unfairly criticized or i feel like
Speaker 1: I've been mistreated, or specifically, if i feel like I've
Speaker 1: been treated in a manner that I would not treat others.
Speaker 1: I'm not claiming any sort of ethical even goodness, let
Speaker 1: alone perfection, but I have a very this is the
Speaker 1: right way to treat people, and this is how one
Speaker 1: should behave And when I'm treated in a way that
Speaker 1: I don't think I'll trick someone else. I have a
Speaker 1: tendency to be a bit right and it's not really attractive.
Speaker 1: You need to be able to take listenings and arrows
Speaker 1: with humility, and I worked on that as well. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I can get a bit defensive and a bit like
Speaker 1: not being treated well and I'm going to write a
Speaker 1: strongly worded letter. And I was like, oh, shut, you're
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 3: By the way, my boyfriend is constantly telling me that
Speaker 3: I need to write a book for the lou called
Speaker 3: a strongly worded letter because hot but him, I'm not joking.
Speaker 3: I think that we should because it is it is
Speaker 3: the funniest thing. Like he's walked into the kitchen on
Speaker 3: more than one occasion, and he's like, what are you doing.
Speaker 3: I was like, I'm writing to the New York Times
Speaker 3: about the first so I would not include the word
Speaker 3: dyke d y k e in Word today or some
Speaker 3: show that they've changed the design A write righteousness is
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's hilarious.
Speaker 1: I've got a fire called unsent Angry Letters.
Speaker 3: I think we should make a compilation and we should
Speaker 3: just solicit letters from people that we.
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, and take all the identifying factors out of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I read one the other day I wrote years ago
Speaker 1: where I pulled out of a corporate geek and I
Speaker 1: pulled out hugely apologetically, with plenty of time. I got
Speaker 1: a really good role in something. It was like a
Speaker 1: major thing, and I pulled out and they tried to
Speaker 1: sue me for the money and all that letter was hilarious.
Speaker 1: It was like so shaming and so self rutchous. I
Speaker 1: write them for myself.
Speaker 3: I do send my word spelling Being connections letters to
Speaker 3: the New York Times and they never write back.
Speaker 1: I was doing spelling be today and they wouldn't let
Speaker 1: me have na fair enough Pali pali as in pay
Speaker 1: like he's a bit pally with me.
Speaker 3: I think there's all sorts of words that at Anglo
Speaker 3: Australian was that they just won't have any chance. That's
Speaker 3: what person, place, or experience most altered your life.
Speaker 1: Well, see, I'm I'm a determinist fetishist, as in I
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 2: I'm writing that down.
Speaker 3: Hold on, I love that determinist fe.
Speaker 1: As in I am. I was on stage, they're not
Speaker 1: doing an interview, and I sort of made the point
Speaker 1: that the fact that you came to the show to
Speaker 1: know if you're in a relationship with someone and you
Speaker 1: intend to have children, the fact that you came to
Speaker 1: see me speech to night and that I am saying
Speaker 1: a sentence will change the child you have, because everything does,
Speaker 1: because the chance of you having any one child is
Speaker 1: a swimm into one. And so just the fact that
Speaker 1: I'm talking a bit long now means you're with this
Speaker 1: theater two seconds later than you would and everything from
Speaker 1: that moment forward will be slightly different than it would
Speaker 1: have been. Everything everything that you touch from that moment
Speaker 1: forward will be slightly different, and therefore your child will
Speaker 1: be a different child. Because I said the sentence track
Speaker 1: and so I fare to show that butterfly wing, flat stuff.
Speaker 1: So it's hard. I like to think about the tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny things that changed everything. I can't name, and I don't.
Speaker 2: That you could change.
Speaker 1: It's all of them, right, it's every every choice changes.
Speaker 3: Right then, can you tell me when that in your life?
Speaker 3: Do you remember when feeling that you were a determinist
Speaker 3: fetishist began?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Were you very young?
Speaker 3: Was that something that you were conscious of suddenly going,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I believe in every single thing affects
Speaker 3: every thing.
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure that out. I've been playing
Speaker 1: a song in my latest tour called Understand that has
Speaker 1: a middle eight in the song just as this loop
Speaker 1: that goes you believe in fate? I guess I believe
Speaker 1: in consequence and flapping butterflies and photographs and it's all
Speaker 1: just about this. And I'm like, oh that I wrote
Speaker 1: that in two thousand and two. I was in my twenties.
Speaker 1: Oh right, this stuff is earlier than I thought I
Speaker 1: would have pegged it as in my thirties. I think
Speaker 1: I was really issued into journalism before I really got
Speaker 1: my head around free will and the problem with free
Speaker 1: will anyway, What was the question, what personal? It was?
Speaker 3: What personal place or experience most altered your life. But
Speaker 3: that's such an interesting answer because the answer.
Speaker 1: Is all moments always, all.
Speaker 3: Moments affected, all moments affected, all moments affected moments.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. The particular jiz that my dad
Speaker 1: did on a train to Edinburgh in nineteen seventy five
Speaker 1: is the main event that after everything.
Speaker 2: That way is that where you work and see.
Speaker 1: I believe I was considered back with my mom's just
Speaker 1: diver well a year ago now and so I'm sorry
Speaker 1: I used to not say particular things. Now I've been
Speaker 1: saying whatever I want. No, the story goes my dad
Speaker 1: and mum were on a sleeper trained to Edinburgh.
Speaker 2: Oh that's very romantic.
Speaker 1: That's why.
Speaker 2: Maybe that is why you rock and roll.
Speaker 3: But I also I like how you what did you
Speaker 3: just call it awayward jizz?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's lots of little moments that changed my career.
Speaker 1: And I suppose because I've had this one relationship in
Speaker 1: my life, Sarah, who I met when I was seventeen.
Speaker 1: That's sort of turning up on the first day of
Speaker 1: UNI and seeing this girl I've met before and finding
Speaker 1: out we had all the same lectures. I mean that
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to put any quantity on her influence
Speaker 1: on my work. I guess I would have been a musician.
Speaker 1: I would have been an artist whatever I think it's
Speaker 1: built to do. But my first girlfriend happened to be
Speaker 1: someone who suited me. But it is very unusual in
Speaker 1: this day and age and in our industry to have
Speaker 1: one relationship and to have to fall in love with
Speaker 1: someone who's so different in it, so compatible, and who
Speaker 1: has been so unbelievably supportive of every eight hours of
Speaker 1: weeding I've ever wanted to do. She's like, all right,
Speaker 1: if you want to do weeding, or you want to
Speaker 1: write an orchestra tour, or you know, you want to
Speaker 1: have kids and move to England when I'm six months
Speaker 1: pregnant with that first child, Okay, we're moving to England.
Speaker 1: She's not a pushover, she's just up for it. And
Speaker 1: that's obviously massively influential in allowing me to do what
Speaker 1: I've ended up doing. Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 2: Little true lovely Sarah. Give her a big hug from me, please.
Speaker 1: I'll do that. She's Quoked's hell at the moment, is she? Yeah,
Speaker 1: look after yourself. I'm doing a podcast.
Speaker 3: In your life, and I know that this going to
Speaker 3: dovetail into something else that I just said, But I'm
Speaker 3: asking you in your life, can you tell me about
Speaker 3: something that has grown out of a personal disaster.
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah. That's one of the great bits of learning
Speaker 1: that you can only get from time, is that everything
Speaker 1: that seems bad at the time because everything that happens
Speaker 1: after any given event is dependent on that event to happen.
Speaker 1: Because there is no faith and no God with my worldview,
Speaker 1: with all due respect to people who believe in fate
Speaker 1: and God, because it's just a deterministic thing. Every disaster
Speaker 1: is the shit in which all your future flowers grow.
Speaker 1: And getting your head around that is really great bit
Speaker 1: of wisdom, and it's very hard to apply in the moment.
Speaker 1: When the next bad thing happens, you think, well, hold on,
Speaker 1: I've learned that when bad things happen, they are the
Speaker 1: shit in which future flowers grow. It that's just how
Speaker 1: causality works. But in the moment you still ray on
Speaker 1: against it. Of course you do. It's a negative thing.
Speaker 1: It's a tortered expectation. It's a thing about which you're
Speaker 1: going to write and anyway later. But I think it
Speaker 1: would be true wisdom to be able to, in the
Speaker 1: moment of disaster, access your knowledge that out of this
Speaker 1: desans will grow something beautiful.
Speaker 3: I've banged on about that since I was in my
Speaker 3: late teens early twenties, of how it is possible that
Speaker 3: this duality exists, that one can categorically know what you're
Speaker 3: saying is true, which is, I know that something good,
Speaker 3: invariably something else, not just good, something else is going
Speaker 3: to grow out of this.
Speaker 1: Unless nothing good is ever going to happen again, everything
Speaker 1: future good will rely on this moment.
Speaker 3: How can we become experientially so shit? How can one
Speaker 3: hold both those things to be true? Is that just
Speaker 3: fundamentally being a human being that you're experiencing a terrible time?
Speaker 3: How can one fully piggyback onto the notion that this
Speaker 3: is going to create something else, interesting, good, whatever adjectivity
Speaker 3: you want to use, something else will grow out of this.
Speaker 1: Shit Because you'd be a psycho, you'd be a psycho
Speaker 1: robot to be able to just skip a step, because
Speaker 1: the whole reason the good stuff comes is because you
Speaker 1: don't skip a step because you rail against what you've lost,
Speaker 1: or you rail against your thoughts of expectation, or you
Speaker 1: grieve for your mum, or you grieve for your relationship,
Speaker 1: or you grieve for the four years you spent working
Speaker 1: on an animated film in LA and then get shut
Speaker 1: down or whatever like. But I got to meet me drag.
Speaker 1: So there's personal stuff everyone goes through. But in terms
Speaker 1: of a sort of more illustrative thing is my experience
Speaker 1: of my movie in La America, Harry, in my movie
Speaker 1: the Dream Wreaks film, we spent years building this thing
Speaker 1: and it was going to be amazing, and then the
Speaker 1: studio got sold and I got shut.
Speaker 3: Down, and it really was four years work, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, and that's when we met.
Speaker 2: It was in that period because we lived in a
Speaker 2: neighborhoods So.
Speaker 1: In hindsight, we had a great time in LA, but
Speaker 1: I didn't both been Broadway in LA. I've had fantastic
Speaker 1: times and met fantastic people, the artists and practitioners, I've
Speaker 1: met some of my favorite people in the world. But
Speaker 1: the businesses were ruthleous and yell and shitting and unethical.
Speaker 3: And all against the backdrop of the sunniest most blue sky,
Speaker 3: easy going.
Speaker 2: It's such a fucking line.
Speaker 1: It's so weird, and everyone's complicit and I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be complicit. But anyway, I came back to Australia,
Speaker 1: not with my tailor between my legs. We were always
Speaker 1: going to move back to Australia after the film, and
Speaker 1: I was very grumpy. I was really that was a
Speaker 1: huge thought of expectation. I really didn't like that someone
Speaker 1: had stolen my time and my heart. Yeah, I felt
Speaker 1: really the opportunity cost of what I could have been doing.
Speaker 1: I felt really cross. And then this project came about
Speaker 1: that became a TV show called Upright, which I was
Speaker 1: the sort of head writer on and active in. And
Speaker 1: not only what I have not been able to help
Speaker 1: create Upright if I haven't gone through that, but I
Speaker 1: put this actual lesson that we're talking about into Upright,
Speaker 1: because Upright it's about a guy who's got this shit
Speaker 1: in his past that he can't get past, and he
Speaker 1: has to get to this place that you were just
Speaker 1: asking your rhetorical ish question about. He has to get
Speaker 1: to the point of realization that we are not ourselves
Speaker 1: despite our scars. We are ourselves because of our scars.
Speaker 1: We are beautiful because of our messiness and our errors.
Speaker 1: And you know, in the final episode, of season one
Speaker 1: of Upright. He actually he's giving a piano to a child,
Speaker 1: and he's describing the piano, but really he's describing himself. Well,
Speaker 1: he's tropping. He probably doesn't know that's what he's doing,
Speaker 1: but he's saying, it's all scratch, it's a bit out
Speaker 1: of tune, but that's what makes it what it is.
Speaker 1: And you know, you should just play it and don't
Speaker 1: worry about making mistakes because sometimes when you make mistakes,
Speaker 1: you make something accidentally beautiful. This is this monogue in
Speaker 1: the final and I didn't realize that what I was
Speaker 1: doing was making sense. I was using my art to
Speaker 1: make sense of my lost art. And I know it's
Speaker 1: not a big deal. Many worse things can happen then
Speaker 1: losing a few years work, but just an illustrative idea.
Speaker 1: I guess how I love that lesson in a really
Speaker 1: profound way. As you say, though, applying it in the
Speaker 1: moment when shit's going wrong is perhaps understandably impossible, because.
Speaker 3: You still have to and maybe that's the point, like
Speaker 3: you said, you have to go through the steps of
Speaker 3: the experience because we're here in this experiential reality, and
Speaker 3: that it's later with further reflection that you can perhaps
Speaker 3: again distill. I hesitate to use the word meaning because
Speaker 3: I'm actually a bit anti meaning. I don't really like meaning.
Speaker 3: I don't like the assigning of meaning because it feels
Speaker 3: full of dogma and that.
Speaker 2: My meaning is more meaningful than your meaning. I think
Speaker 2: it's bollock.
Speaker 1: Just be obnoxious and quote. You know I was saying
Speaker 1: earlier about that middle eight that has everyone will also
Speaker 1: the lyric before that, yes, yes, the lyric before that
Speaker 1: is it's not karmic destiny. It's just consequenced avoid of
Speaker 1: meaning makes us miss the issue anyway. So it's just
Speaker 1: I just felt like i'd missed out that lyrics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, looking for me.
Speaker 2: I think it's a bumsteer. I think it's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that doesn't exist in America. That would not be
Speaker 3: a phrase on anything ever.
Speaker 2: In America.
Speaker 3: A bomsteer doesn't exist. What question would you most like answered? Hmm?
Speaker 1: I want to give a flip and answer, but I
Speaker 1: can't even think of one of them. Eight sevens seven
Speaker 1: eight fifty six. Yeah, that's my favorite. I got to say,
Speaker 1: I love the unpacking more than anything else in my life,
Speaker 1: you know, like I am really disinclined to be attracted
Speaker 1: to answers that are simple.
Speaker 2: So you like questions, I like questions.
Speaker 1: Answers, I don't want anything answered. I want to constantly
Speaker 1: be chipping away. And I really like And maybe it
Speaker 1: makes me a buffoon, a wanker, or certainly a sophist,
Speaker 1: but I really like a Priori contemplation. It was the
Speaker 1: same when I was at Uni, like doing my aunt's degree,
Speaker 1: I would always get my best grades when I didn't
Speaker 1: go to the library at all and I didn't read anything,
Speaker 1: and I just went at it. And I think I'm
Speaker 1: for good or ill. I really don't want to know
Speaker 1: what other people have made it at all. It's the
Speaker 1: same with musical theater. Right before I wrote Matilda, I
Speaker 1: have I studied a musical theater score. I'm not particularly
Speaker 1: like I love musicals, but I'm not trained. I can't
Speaker 1: read the music. I didn't go looking for what Sondeine
Speaker 1: does or what Moieber and Jim Rice do. I just
Speaker 1: went what would majit are? Seeing? Like I really liked
Speaker 1: sitting down with Dennis Kelly, who had also never written
Speaker 1: a musical, and just going how do we make this
Speaker 1: story make people feel things? And I feel that about
Speaker 1: life and about comedy. I've never analyzed comedy. I've not
Speaker 1: ever watched much of it. I just don't want to
Speaker 1: know what other people's answers are. I want to find
Speaker 1: out my version of the answer. It's probably really arrogant
Speaker 1: or something, but it's just served me being like, what
Speaker 1: do I think about this? I'm a secret of answers
Speaker 1: in like bashing through the bush kind of way, not
Speaker 1: in that kind of looking for what someone else figured
Speaker 1: out kind of way. Obviously with a million fucking exceptions,
Speaker 1: including seven which I couldn't possibly do myself.
Speaker 2: I love that answer.
Speaker 3: It's very there's a real cook quote that's been in
Speaker 3: a thousand sort of marriage for our ceremonies paraphrasing with
Speaker 3: you sort of remain interested in the question. You eventually
Speaker 3: live the answers, So just ask those questions that you
Speaker 3: feel rather than seek the answer. Yeah, I think that is, and.
Speaker 1: Not to get mine in the kind of question of
Speaker 1: our time too much. But I've got off social media
Speaker 1: and I finally got got a place in my life
Speaker 1: where my phone is not governing my input. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I got offer is it seems to
Speaker 1: engender in curiosity, even whilst making people feel like they're
Speaker 1: being really curious, because I feel like they're getting information
Speaker 1: and they're learning stuff. But there's something about being fair
Speaker 1: information all the time that buggers up our unnatural curiosity.
Speaker 1: And I don't want anyone to think I think everyone
Speaker 1: should make up their own theories about what medicine works
Speaker 1: or whatever. I'm a massive data and evidence a science nerd, right,
Speaker 1: so I'm a fact guy. I'm not saying we should
Speaker 1: all make up our own facts. I just think we
Speaker 1: should embrace creating an environment for oneself where your natural
Speaker 1: curiosity and your own capacity to unpacked meaning to generate
Speaker 1: your own meaning, to figure out what you feel about
Speaker 1: the big questions about life and death and ethics and parenting,
Speaker 1: and like just giving yourself space.
Speaker 3: I feel exactly the same way, and I feel exactly
Speaker 3: the same way.
Speaker 1: That's why we're going to be friends until we.
Speaker 2: Exactly until we die.
Speaker 3: What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think i'd be making it up.
Speaker 1: Just say though, is why?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 2: Well, what define give me the tenets of what defines
Speaker 2: love for you?
Speaker 1: Because I haven't had many romantic relationships. Sarah and my
Speaker 1: relationship grew out of a friendship and I felt in
Speaker 1: love her, But I don't have be romantic. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what defines much for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it doesn't have to be romantic, and.
Speaker 1: It's quite pedestrian, and it will make me seem nauseatingly auxorious.
Speaker 1: Although I think auxorious has been.
Speaker 2: I think using the word auxorious means is quite nauseating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so for the people who aren't wainkers enough to
Speaker 1: know the word uxorias means inordinately fond of one's wife,
Speaker 1: too fond of one's wife, and auxoria's implies that it's
Speaker 1: a little bit nauseating. Anyway, this is what I understand
Speaker 1: about Sarah and me. We are so different, like you've
Speaker 1: met us both. I mean, we couldn't be more.
Speaker 3: You couldn't be more different, And the fact that you've
Speaker 3: jumped on the same train of your lives together is
Speaker 3: fantastic and amazing.
Speaker 1: What the great stroke of luck is. Notwithstanding to early
Speaker 1: where she's disgusting and snotchy and gross, I'm not so
Speaker 1: good with sick people. I'm like, apparently, no, I'll bring
Speaker 1: you to a cup of tea but get out of
Speaker 1: my face. I basically have been with Sarah for the
Speaker 1: vast majority of the last thirty one years, and when
Speaker 1: she goes upstairs to do something and comes back down
Speaker 1: and comes into the room, I'm in the kitchen. I mean,
Speaker 1: I basically am happy to see her when she walks
Speaker 1: into the kitchen. And that is not something I did.
Speaker 1: That's not a choice I made. It doesn't mean I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, so hot, and I just, of course
Speaker 1: we are normal people in a relationship that's been around.
Speaker 1: We've had kids and we've watched them grow up, and
Speaker 1: we're not like fizzying with But the fact is, I'm
Speaker 1: very rarely over thirty one years, have not wanted her
Speaker 1: to walk into any room I'm in, And that is
Speaker 1: That's what defines love for me. It's just we just
Speaker 1: happen to be a functional paer and we like seeing
Speaker 1: each other walk into that and I think we'll probably
Speaker 1: go the whole way. I mean, you've come with my God.
Speaker 3: I love that answer. I love that answer. I love
Speaker 3: all your answers. I knew the excellent talking to you.
Speaker 1: This is why I don't read questions, because I would
Speaker 1: be worse if I've read them.
Speaker 3: It's right for you. It's absolutely right for you. It's
Speaker 3: funny the humanness of people invariably seeps out even when
Speaker 3: there's a prepared answer. I've noticed even when.
Speaker 2: People have what to say, probably big question.
Speaker 3: What's interesting is how people like you and everyone that
Speaker 3: I interview bellies up to answering a question that is
Speaker 3: asking something of them, is asking for some excavation, and
Speaker 3: even the most prosaic answers invariably lead their way into
Speaker 3: stuff that is much more raw, rawer.
Speaker 1: Your Americans.
Speaker 3: Mirror for my favorite episode potentially of thirty Rock, the.
Speaker 2: Rural Durer, the Rural Duror.
Speaker 3: You're an angel for taking time out of your wine drinking,
Speaker 3: your sick wife and your tour to come and talk
Speaker 3: to me. And I just couldn't appreciate it more. I
Speaker 3: fucking wish that we live next door to each other.
Speaker 3: I'm so annoyed. Thank you so much, Tim, Loads of
Speaker 3: love Tea. Mini Questions is hosted and written by Me,
Speaker 3: Mini Driver, executive produced by me and Aaron Kaufman, with
Speaker 3: production support from Jennifer Bassett, Zoe Denkler, and Ali Perry.
Speaker 3: The theme music is also by Me and additional music
Speaker 3: by Aaron Kaufman. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay Addison, O'Day,
Speaker 3: Henry Driver, Lisa castella, A, Nick oppenheim, A, Nick Muller
Speaker 3: and Annette wolf A, w kPr, Will Pearson, Nicki Etoor,
Speaker 3: Morgan Levoy and Mangesh had tick at