See all The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett transcripts on Applepodcasts

That's a brilliant evil question.

It's evil. I've asked so many people this question. No one's ever wanted to answer it. Well,

here I am. Yeah. Russell brand is 1 of the most famous comedians in the world.

Actor and author, who's 1 of

the most unmissable performers on the planet. He don't wanna be around when the laughter stops.

Your earliest years are particularly hard to read. Drugs and self harm, your mother's illnesses. How do we go in the journey of changing?

Wow. This is a proper diary of the CEO stuff. There is deep spiritual appetite within all of us for connection, but we have a culture that is predicated upon individualism and materialism. My initial solution to feeling disconnected and lonely was to try and become famous. If you are using impermanent means to achieve a permanent solution, you can only fail.

But what I would say is in that loneliness, in that sense of I'm not good enough, I'm worthless, are all the ingredients of success because it is sadly a gift to you.

What can I have added to 10 year old Russell's life? Do you think that would have made him feel valued?

You are enough. You are sufficient. We are going to be okay.

What brought you otherwise? Us. Russell brand is 1 of the most fascinating individuals I have ever spoken to. A former self harming heroin addict, self confessed narcissist, bulimic, that craved fame and attention and was so addicted to sex that he slept with 5 women a day that married Katie Perry 3 months after meeting her and then divorced her with a text message, have you ever felt that subtle feeling that the way you're living is not quite right, that something somewhere is out of balance, that you are not living your life as that human somewhere inside you should be living their life. The Russell brand that sits before me today can relate, and he's found a new cure for that feeling, a better way to handle pain.

A new blueprint to live by, which he believes that you, and me, and all of us will eventually realize through failure and frustration. We are all addicts, searching for ways to feel less pain through porn and screens and sugar and addiction and drugs and whatever our vices might be. But maybe. Just maybe. Maybe Russell is right.

And maybe there is a simple cure for all of us right there in plain sight. Brussel. I read a comment at the top of a YouTube video that of an interview you did, and this was the comment This man is a hero. He's truly an example of transcendence across the spectrum from the archetype of selfishness enthralled by addiction to complete selflessness and self awareness, I love this man with all of my heart. Wow.

That was a comment left regarding you on a recent interview you've done. Now I'm gonna be completely honest with you.

I should have meant that I wrote that comment. I sometimes I do even though I know I've written it, when I read it back, it still gives me a boost. I said

to you before we start talking, I wanted to talk about disconnection.

Yeah.

Disconnection for me and my life started early. Disconnection for me was coming to the UK from Africa as that the only black kid went to Plymouth. Everyone's richer than me. Everyone's white. And that pursuit of filling that void of whatever it was, that shame, that insecurity, which is very clearly the reason I'm sat here.

Yeah. What do we need to know about your childhood? How did it shape the man that sits in front of me today?

I have had a life that is being defined by addiction. And the addiction, and in particular, the models of recovery that are available for addiction is a convenient framework for addressing the problems we have in our age. That are expressed extensively and identifiable through materialism and attachment. I'd get attached to stuff. I was when I was a little boy, I grew up in a single parent family, just me and my mom.

I come from an ordinary background in Essex, Grey's, Ordinaryness, normalcy, these can be terms that are difficult to define. But I think we all know what we mean when we say a normal, ordinary, modest, blue collar, background, low expectations, state, schools, We know what images that conjures. My mom was sick a lot when I was a kid, and my mom was and there was a defining influence in my life. All of us that are lucky enough to have mothers are gonna be defined by that relationship as well as the other parental relationship. I feel like real early on something in me, which I would now, because it's almost impossible, Steven, not to reverse engineer.

These narratives isn't it? And to thread it through with newly accrued and acquired wisdom. But I feel that I was looking for something. I feel that there is a deep spiritual appetite within all of us for connection, the subject you have identified as our framing for this conversation that we are having. But we do not have a culture that presents us a discourse around connection.

We have a culture that is predicated upon individualism and materialism. Your value. And this is I think across the political spectrum and even in more compassionate narratives around identity, individualism is still enshrined as the centrifugal point. So I felt like that I was in a state of lack. I don't know what it is to be a man.

I don't know what it is to be a success. I don't know what it is to have power. I don't know what it is I recognize now, even to feel at ease. Even to feel serene, even to feel relaxed. It's probably only by the time I got clean from crack and heroin and alcohol, that I'd noticed that I'd been in having an anxiety attack for basically my entire life.

When I first told my life story in which is an ordinary exercise at treatment centers that help people to get rehabilitated from chemical dependency, and I was fortunate enough go to 1. When the fella read it, Chip Summers, 1 of the first people in recovery I ever met, when he read it, he went, poor lonely little boy. And I was 27 then. So I suppose my life has been find by addiction, and addiction is in part a lack of connection and attempt to synthesize the connection to self, other, and God. God of your own understanding, perhaps understood as a totality, a sense of unity, a unity force, a highest principle when it says in the Old Testament, worship no other gods than me.

The implication I offer is that we are a species that worships. And if you do not access the divine, you will worship the Mandeel You will worship the profane. You will worship your own identity. You will worship your belongings. You will worship the template lane before you buy a culture that wants you, I don't want you, but gets you distracted and relatively done.

So my initial solution to feeling weak and disconnected and lonely and somehow silently brilliant was to try and become successful, was to try and become famous, was to try and have resources, to try and address all of the problems of my original condition, My original condition culturally and socially as I saw it was lack of power, lack of value, lack of connection, lack of influence, and what does our culture tell us is the solution to this be somebody. And my God, I'm talking about a long time ago now. I'm talking in the eighties, in the nineties, now the culture. It is amplifying that message a hundred fold with a million screens in every direct and 50 lenses like the eyes of on the inside of a fly, rather than the almost 2 d experience of lenses that I grew up with.

What could I have added? To 10 year old Russell's life, do you think that would have made him feel valued?

10 year old. I reckon mate, now that I'm a dad, and you can't be a father to anyone else until you're a father to yourself. Is a sense that who you are is alright. You're alright. You don't need to worry.

That you are enough, you are sufficient, we are going to be okay.

What told you otherwise?

All conditions that isn't the broad cultural message. You are insufficient. You will not be sufficient until you require this body, these objects, this approval, these affiliations. I don't even think it's personal to me. Like, whilst like, you know, necessarily our conversation has to be framed by sort of biographical detail that's particular to me.

Don't you find that when you know anyone's story really that the universe was there waiting for you, that there is a ubiquity of this message. How many times have you heard people? That are hugely successful. So I felt inferior. I didn't feel good enough.

I wanted to achieve this. I didn't have this or that. It's a like, it's a else wise, what could Jung have achieved? Elsewise, what could Joseph Campbell have achieved? Were they not archetypes strewn about us maps waiting to be discovered?

It's true. Most people that sit here have achieved phenomenal things. It starts with a story of not being enough and you often wonder whether they're driven or dragged. Driven by their own, you know, because they're framed in books as driven. But in reality, they're being dragged by insecurities and shame and -- Mhmm.

--

1 of these things, that feeling of not enough Your your earliest years are particularly particularly hard to read. And I I when I I I'll be when I when I read about the circumstances of your earliest years, I do see a story that is very unique in in a sense of self harm, your mother's sicknesses, and heart illnesses. And there's that guy underneath there that knew he was brilliant as you say. Believe he was brilliant.

Mhmm.

Brilliant in what way.

Well, I suppose and I find this to be quite common to addicts and alcoholics. There's this pre metabolized quality that's waiting to be activated. Brilliant is obviously a comparative and relative term. And the training I've been fortunate enough to receive prohibits me from leaning too heavily into a framing like that now, superior to better than But I feel that there I had a sense of a resource that was waiting to unfold. I was had a sense that there would be a secondary coordinate that might arrive.

In the form of a destination. All energy, the most fundamental level, requires polarity. It requires polarity. And I suppose that word parent in and that word parenthesis, another word for bracket in, suggests that You need to be held in some way. You need something that's gonna be able to hold you.

Now, if not me, believe I believe in God. Steven. So the thing that defines me now is I believe in God and I don't believe that I have unique access to God or superior access to God there's this little set of dances or codes or clothes that need to be worn to access God more privately or more privately. I believe that in absolute loving God that all of us have the right to be here, that I don't need no special adornments or epifets or epilets or badges or medallions. It's enough for me to be 1 of everybody else.

Back then though, I was a little kid when I felt inferior and broken I just wanted to feel a little bit special. I wanted to feel a little bit valuable. And I suppose the first time that I really felt that was making people laugh, doing a school play at my little school grace school, bugs him alone, and feeling the overwhelming, terrifying, adrenaline and the accompanying sense of competence that comes with being able to corral and direct that energy when it comes, a sense of purpose, revelation, When you asked that, you know, what could you have added and what do you mean by silently brilliant? Like, I don't wanna feel better than no 1 else no more. I don't wanna feel worse than anyone else.

And I wanna participate in other peoples becoming who they are. Intended to be. There's a beautiful phrasing recovery you may enjoy. We recover the person we're intended to be. That somehow we can respect individuality, limitless, limitless diversity, while somehow accepting that there is something unitive among us.

Something collective to be realized and achieved. So I suppose it was my own savoring of my particularness. That I was experiencing even though, and this is no fault of my parents, although I might analyze my culture, I felt that that I couldn't express it and I didn't know what value it had and what its use was. It was in neutral until the culture tells you it can be monetized or it can be mobilized in order to. Now that framing isn't necessarily 1 that I'll ordinarily gravitate to, but that's the 1 that is available to.

That is the totemism of our culture. That's the paradigm that we are offered. So I suppose that's the 1 that many of us inevitably pursue.

Do you have any emotional sentiment towards that young man's circumstances as you look back on what he the situation he was in and what he was experiencing? Do you feel you feel sorry for him? You know, do you feel happy for him? What did you feel anything towards?

Lately, due to the principles of recovery. Due to the fact that I have mentors, I have peers, I have people that look to me, for guidance. I have service. I have duty responsibility. Latalie, Steven.

I come to feel incorporated with that little boy. But if you'd spoke to me 10 years ago, I doubt I would like to have heard him referred to. I wouldn't have liked that specter to have risen a phantom I'd happily put aside. But now like that little boy, like, hopefully, the little boy that you described down there in Plymouth of all places, that famous rock from where they depart across the oceans. That personal Mayflower journey.

He's with me now. Mhmm. I love him. And he's like, he is a great asset when I'm dealing with young, vulnerable, broken people, when people tell me that they wanna end their own lives, when people tell me they self harm, when people tell me they wanna kill themselves, or they can't cope with life, they don't feel that they're good enough, I'm not faced. I can say 100 percent present with that.

And that is a great gift. No.

Was there was there I think about this a lot with myself. Was there another path to where you are now?

Yeah. Probably may. Probably. I mean, look, you may like, you know, you may a lot of people. I know a lot of people.

But for me personally, I'll just tell you why I asked that question. I believe that I had a belief that was ill informed by the society I lived in, and I believe I had to pursue that belief to find out that I was wrong and have it fail me.

Mhmm. Well, it happened now. Now it has happened. So the answer is 100 percent, of course, absolutely indefagably. This is the reality that was designed for you internally that your consciousness is creating this reality.

This reality is not coming externally at you. This consciousness is unfolding from within you in the moment. Where else could it be? Where else could it be? But potentially limitless alternatives, potentially unbridled possibility.

And for you, you think you could have become the man that sat in front to me now with via a different pathway?

Yeah. But look but or, you know, also, no. You know, like, because, like, I'm what I suppose I'm saying is I accept this the the path that I've worked and that, you know, that I'm sort of continuing to walk. And I suppose anyone that's in the engaged in the process of recovery has to as a part of that except the various chapters, episodes that that have led to that. I mean, I think that's part of self acceptance.

Part of self acceptance is to appreciate and understand the various steps that have led you to where you want. And just again, I think, to reiterate that that's why I mentioned addiction and recovery early on because it provides you with access to an archetype. But this is who I was. This is the way that I lived. This is the way that I try to handle the challenges that life gives you impermanence, temporality, death, inequality, hypocrisy, destruction, and all of these things.

That sort of are pervasive, whether that's cultural or simply part of being in an atem in a temporal and spatial reality. Recovery gives you a different set of tools, a different a different way to deal with those same challenges, which for 1 of a better word, I will call spiritual, a spiritual solution to what I regard now as a spiritual problem. Once again, tag an idea of connection that you've helped us set up this conversation using.

Spirituality as a as a as a as a form of connection. You know, when a lot of people are put off by the terms spirituality because it sounds a little bit exclusive and a little bit. But the the you know, I've would class myself now as being spiritual. That thanks in part, I have to say to my my partner who is a breath work instructor and I met in, you know, Bali and so on. But 1 of the quotes that I love from you is like many desperate people.

I need spirituality. I need God or I cannot cope in this world. I need to believe in the best in people. Since I've become spiritual, I found that it's easier to be alive. Oh, spiritual.

What is what is that word?

Spiritual literally means not material. That's what it means. It's not observable or measurable. The problem perhaps that we have nowadays is that we live in a quantitative reality where all things are measurable, where all things are base predicated on rational principles, but all of us know what love is, all of us know what intuition is. All of us know as CS Lewis doobly outlines in mere Christianity when we have transgressed against some moral code that appears to have been instilled in us and in spite of the advocacy and campaigning of evolutionary biologists seems to appeal to some new monistic tendency, deterministic meaning simply a sense of awe, a sense of oneness, a sense of glory, a sense of glory you might experience at.

Sunrise or sunset or looking into the eyes of a loved 1 or even a stranger and knowing that the connection is real, knowing that the unity force is real. And that somehow this connection implies a set of ethics, morals, and principles. It's not just, oh, wow. God is 1 that's lose ourself in some hedonistic revel that pleasure is not an endpoint. That service is our way of acknowledging this unity.

So spirituality for me is a survival technique. You won't get very far in this world without it. And if you don't have it in a declared explicit And I don't mean diopteron away. I mean personal but somehow connected and communal way. You will try to create God You will try to create spirituality from your preferences.

Your preferences will become your God. I prefer it when people talk to me like this. I repel this my versions and my preferences will become my religion. And this is I'm capable of that today. If I don't I'm lucky to be such a craving mad smack it, and it's nice to walk around the streets of Shoreditch where I have used, where I've scored, where I know the back streets of brick lane where there are on clothes where they serve up Muslim men wearing for Regalia that would never deal with that kind of business.

It's against the Quran, but serve it up, to slip down them, wrap runs, to see it trace across the silver page, to lose myself in Smack World, and to come back here now with A different way. A different way. The city has changed and I have changed and no man crosses the same river twice and no man visits the same sure that it's twice because the man is different and sure that she is different. I was looking for the same thing then. I was looking for the same thing then.

Like, when I was looking around then for smack and crack and all of that, I was looking for the things that I'm looking for now. And if I'm not very rigorous, in my spiritual practices. And they're so simple. I know I can use a lot of long words. It's a thing I like doing.

I get off on it and stuff. But spirituality ain't complicated. My nan's better it than I am. My mom, my wife, they're all better at than I am. They do it natural because they're not like mobilized by this sort of primer primordial yearning that can become my fuel.

It ain't no easy task to turn all that gungs, that swamp gungs, that neolithic jet fuel into love of 1 another.

There's been there's people now that I live in a life where including me probably too many many respects that are using preference as our God. Yes? You sniff that strangely.

Well, because I thought is there chlorine in it?

Really. I

just wondered.

What is it? Water. Water. Okay. I don't think there's chlorine and I hope there's not chlorine.

Those people that are choosing preference as they're got now that are living a life maybe where materialism is their is their their savior. Mhmm. What is there's a couple of questions I have here. You know, the the Russell that was in shortage for other reasons once upon a time, and the Russell that's in shortage now. You said that they were both looking for the same thing.

What was old Russell finding? And why wasn't the thing he found as good as the thing he finds now? I. E. What is the outcome of those that are choosing preferences, their god?

Like, why why is that such a bad thing? What is the long term or short term consequence?

Well, I wouldn't suggest that there is but 1 path. As they say, as Krishna Murray says, truth is a pathless land. We got to find it ourselves. But that said, there are templates, paradigms, conditions, and practices that might help us. So I'm not making a judgment on anyone else's path.

My spirituality is not about you should be doing this and you should be doing that. My spirituality is I should be doing this. I should be doing that. My morality is about my conduct. If someone else wants me to judge them or help them or guide them or aid them and I'm able to, then it is my duty to do it.

But what I would say is is if you are using impermanent means to achieve a permanent solution, you can only fail. If you are mistaking the vehicle for the self, for the essence of the self, you can only fail. If you have not interrogated, who is this in here? What is this subjective experience that only I am having? How do I deal with the tension of the paradox and remember, all energy comes from polarity.

All energy comes from polarity. That I am infinitesimally small to the point of being absolutely irrelevant in a cosmic framing and yet all reality takes place solely as far as I know within my consciousness.

You said, well, you can only fail if you go on that pursuit. You said, if you do this, you can only fill. You can do this. You you will only you will only you will only fill. What is failure for the modern person that is pursuing that?

What does that feel like specifically? Is it Is it a feeling? Is it a sense of dissatisfaction? What is that common failure that those in that sort of impermanent pursuit of Preference. What is failure?

Pain, pain, disconnection, loneliness, despair a sense of worthlessness. But even in these flaws and failings offer is the DNA of success. I know it's a lot with addiction, of course, and forgive me, using this framing. It's just the best model I've ever been given to not kill myself is that addicts are so close to realizing it Nothing is real. Nothing matters.

Not even your identity is real. Destroy it. Destroy their self. Destroy their self. Their self is not real.

But they're killing the wrong thing. You know? They're killing the wrong thing. They're killing the the host vessel. But in the end, it becomes everything you need to become recovered is present in your addiction.

Everything you need to become awakened is present in your sondulants. How could it not be? Where else could Nirvana be back here? So what I'm saying is, is in that loneliness, in that sense of I'm not good enough, I'm worthless, are all the ingredients awaiting reorganization. And perhaps this is what a program, a system, a practice.

And some mentors and some peers can provide. And I think it is different for all of us. But the the the the the failure is the sort of the sense, isn't it? Because you you asked an important question, David. You asked many important questions, David.

Yes. But but this 1 in particular is why what is it let's say again with CS Lewis. What is that you're feeling? You know, you know if someone is good to you and treats you in an open hearted way, and you cuss them or muck them about or diss them or slander them, something in you guys. You shouldn't have done that.

But what is that? What is that in your belly? Not the God of the heavens. Not the gods of the Old Testament or the Quran, though they're all fantastic. But the God that's in your belly, telling you, that wasn't right.

That wasn't right. If you have to, in the end, answer to this God. And as I say, the ingredients are all present. In this sense, there's something I'm supposed to be doing. There's something I'm supposed to be doing.

There's only some tweaks I find. I used my program for recovery over a 20 year period from the Smachead crack head that I was, and I also use it in 5 seconds. When I'm like, when I'm caught again, as I will be, as I am capable of being, when I feel temptation, when I feel inferior, when I feel that someone is trying to impose status on me, I feel all the machines fire up. Still? Yeah.

It's a mechanical. It's biomechanical. It's biomechanical. The swamis, the masters, the rishis, the yogis, and the sis, and interest in Limey. Swamis means he who is with himself, they are able, I believe, to observe it, there it goes, but it's not me.

Your thoughts are merely the first layer of the external world. They would have a weight they would have a charge if we had the instruments to observe them. Instead of identifying with my thoughts and locking into them, oh, look, there it goes. Us all thinking it matters if everyone loves him. He's thinking that again, cool.

Why wouldn't he think that with that little childhood? Why wouldn't he think that with that little society that he lived in, some compassion for him, but some duties also.

Quick 1 before we get back to this episode. Just give me 30 seconds of your time. 2 things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had. And couldn't have imagined getting to this place.

But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24 percent of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm gonna make to you. I'm gonna do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're gonna deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're gonna continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Back to the episode. 1 of the things I've thought a lot about recently, you mentioned a God in your belly or that person or that signal in your belly that's that's trying to tell you how you feel and we've all become so phenomenally good at tuning out of that and tuning into the kind of external how how you feel. Like how you should feel based on the job or title status that you have.

And this is a stronger noise and signal now than this 1. Your life has been this you talked about mentors as well. Your life has been this amazing journey from chapter to chapter to chapter this person described as transcendence. The question I'm getting at is like, I'm thinking about someone right now that sat in the city. And they know they feel like shit at a deeper level, but they've gotten so good to listening to their mother's opinion of them becoming a stockbroker.

That it's almost hard to hear that feeling of I feel like shit. How do we go in the journey of changing? How do we get there?

Well, typically, Steven, the journey begins with a departure from home, interestingly, whatever home is you have to leave. You have to leave the familiar, the place that you are familiar with.

Scary.

Often, this is induced by crisis. A crisis that you cannot avoid or delay or defer. A crisis of some kind may come. Of course, this can be an inner crisis. A moment of despair.

Often, a psychic breakdown can be can precipitate change, transition, awakening. I suppose what you have to what 1 way that you can do it. This is the way that I would do it, the way that I have done it. It's firstly to acknowledge the problem of my condition, to admit there is a problem and that my life has become unmanageable. These are not my ideas.

What are the signals of that?

Unhappiness. Yeah. Like, in a sense, that's like, the the 1 1 thing that's good about that is you're trusting your personal integrity. It's not like, oh, you're delirious. Why are you not happy?

Why is this not working for you? Problem and manageability. You're sad. I'm using, in fact, the example you use, someone in the city hold up left with the familial and cultural conditioning that is left them at odds maladjusted to a maladjusted world. 1, there's a problem.

Life is unmanageable too. You've got to believe it's possible to change. If you don't believe it's possible to change, you will never be able to marshal your inner resources towards making that change. 1 way that this change can be made is through mentorship, even if that mentorship is in the abstract, even if you've just chosen hey, this person seems to be able to have done that. He says that he used to feel weak, inferior, incompetent, important and he says now that he doesn't feel those feelings.

So maybe if I do what they did, maybe I can change also. Mhmm. So this. So this. And the third component, first 1, acknowledgement of powerlessness.

Second 1, belief change is possible. Third principle, it will not come from the same map and rubric that you've been running on up till now. You're gonna have to import new ideas. You will need help. That help I would offer you might be of a divine nature, prayer meditation, humility to ask for something great and then your my individual want, my individual preferences, not just some wish list, passed up to the cosmic center.

It is an it is a acknowledgement that there is a requirement for growth and indeed that I'm no longer prescribing what outcomes I want. It's curious. There are often paradoxes in this. So for me, mate, it's like first that you would meet the powers the the powerlessness and the nature of the problem. Second, I believe it's possible to change and I base that 1.

Hang on a minute. These people used to have that problem and they've changed. So what if I do, what they did, then maybe my life will change. These are all things derived from 12 step ideology. The first thing is accept someone else's plan, accept someone else's help surrender because in the s in the end, this is the think perhaps the hardest contradiction.

At least I find it a very hard contradiction to live with. This idea of activated surrender and a return to the original condition. Activated surrender, Russell is no longer in charge. Russell is no longer in charge. Russell is a servant.

There is a master. I am in the service of this. Now in I recognize those words are pretty loaded, but I'm saying that this is if you can envisage a benign and loving mother or father rather than authority. And if you do consider authority to be, mostly malign, I could not identify more strongly. My distrust and my dislike of authority is a deep, deep fuel in me.

I do not like being told what to do. I do not like it. It is a big, big part of my religion. I have to stop myself reflexively doing the opposite of what I'm told if someone speaks to me authoritatively. Someone asked me to help them I will do my level best to help them.

If someone tells me what to do, I find it very, very difficult indeed, not to do the opposite, anarchist, calisthenics, break rules every day just to remind yourself that you belong to something higher than a set of systems potentially imposed by a malevolent force.

The step 3, there's you you referenced the first time was about running basically a new instruction manual for your life. Like, accepting

--

Mhmm.

--

because the current instruction manual is clearly not producing the results you seek. So a new instruction manual for your life. And My my brain went, but how do I know which 1 to pick? Because there's many temptations for it for a new path forward. You know, there's the I could join a Coke Colton, Arizona or I could I might see seek meaning and surrender and all the and another wrong place from my preferences to something even more destructive or how do we know, you know, how do we know what what new instruction might not to run our lives on when we find ourselves in such a situation?

I'm thinking again about that person. Who finds himself in a in a job because their parents have told them to go and get that job. And now, or they they're working any job where they feel like something is wrong. They admit it. Step 1.

Step 2 is they seek account mentors to provide evidence that it's possible to leave the situation. And then step 3 is this idea of surrendering and running your life on a new extra instruction manual. Where do I find that instruction manual? Is it from my mentors?

It's interesting. Isn't yes. Possibly. Yes. Quite quite likely.

Yeah. Because I feel we're in a crisis of authority. Most people don't trust the government. Most people don't trust the media, many people don't trust the judiciary or state authority, and I would have to confess that I am inclined to agree that we are in a true crisis of authority. Who indeed would you trust to say, I will do what is right?

I will do what is right for you. I will do what is right for the community and trust that they are speaking on behalf of a set of principles that would could be somehow universal and truly valid. How I have handled this is I've been fortunate enough for a crisis and despair to find myself primarily connected to a group of other people the same as me who cannot cope with reality unless they drink or use drugs, and those people provide me with a paradigm for moving forward and a program. And I like that word program because it's both a sort of very old fashioned word, but also a ultra modern word in terms of, you know, software, for example, if you thanks me. Yeah.

And I guess at some point, we're gonna have to trust ourselves. But when embarking on this journey, it's not easy to lean into into intuition, and it isn't easy to trust others. I find trust very, very difficult. I don't know about you, mate. I don't know what kind of experiences you had there as a young man in Plymouth.

But for me, trust ain't my go to. That's not my go to. It takes me a little while. My strategy is do not put yourself in a situation where you require

trust. Why?

Because maybe people are gonna let you down bad. Maybe. Maybe the the systems of authority be their educational, legal, judicial. Maybe they're gonna let you down. Maybe they

can't really lie down. Mean, I was kicked out of school. But, you know, I was expelled from school. I went to university for 1 day, left that.

Oh, yeah. I did all these things.

I remember if I recognize it in your story, but that that I don't have the same level of I I'm skeptical. I require evidence to accept things. No. Some kind of subjective or evidence that I but I'm not I wouldn't say I'm distrusting broadly. Oh, well, maybe I am to some degree.

What is

my criticism? Criticism is is that.

Yeah. It's a critique. It's an analytic. It's a perspective of until you know.

But your problem with your your your challenges with authority that are clear in your story through your school and institutions and all these things. Where does that come from in you? That that What is and how would you describe it?

Well, now I would describe it as a very deep love of God and a great deal of respect for other people's individual liberty and freedom, and the idea that any central authority would impose that without clear consent achieved through democracy and community community dialogue seems ridiculous to me. But obviously, it's biographical and interpersonal that the circumstances of my life have shown me that the people 1 way or another that are in positions of authority on the various scales of authority that most people encounter familial, social, educational, have not been able to fulfill feel the Jew is required of him. Of course, there's a person that is a certain way down the path now because it in the words of Philip Larkin, they in their turn were fucked up too. But we are just part of a long lineage of people coping with broken broken systems, and I would say, from agriculture onwards, systems of aggregation, centralization, accumulation that can't enshrine the rights of the individual except for sunset of individuals that we are living in a system that's about centralizing of centralizing power and increasing authority, diminishing individual freedom using whatever rhetorical tricks are required, safety, convenience, whatever is required to achieve the centralized authority.

Now so I now feel like you said before there are other ways that you could have ended up being this man in this chair. Now I am glad that I have been deeply schooled in mistrust of authority that it's almost like it burns in me.

I can tell.

Watch them. Watch what they're telling you. Watch what they're telling you. I give it to my own children and I hope I'm not doing them a disservice. Question authority.

Question it. Question it. And of course, this makes bedtime difficult because who's the person telling them bedtime. But it makes schooling plus institutions have an inertia institutions have a tendency. They might start off with we're gonna educate these kids to be creative and individuals.

But in the end, it's gonna be about health and safety. In the end, it's gonna be about fire drills. In the end, it's gonna be AAAAA bureaucratic, a measurement, and maze that prevents individual freedom. The great David Graeba got restless solo, who's a common so he maybe wouldn't thank me for saying that. David Graeber said that our 1 of our great dialectics against Soviet communism, for example, was they were bureau bureaucracies that prohibited individual freedom.

But look at the bureaucracies we live within now. How do they solve the problem of spying and stealing your data? Just make someone tap, I agree. Don't stop spying. Continue to spy.

Continue to accumulate the data. Just tap agree. You agreed to be spying on. This is bureaucracy. This is these are the observable tendrils and symptoms of a centralized authority that is not necessarily sent a sentient, a cultist, or overtly corrupt, but a tendency to accumulate power to dominate resources that is plainly observable in the geopolitical dramas that play out in our time, the ecological crises and the evident main straight main stage players that occupy our current time that many of whom have not been elected to get there.

I'm talking about unelected acronym organizations that have a great deal of influence in the world today. So the reason I don't trust is not I love my mom and dad, Ron brand, Bab's brand. If I look today, sat here in Shoreditch as an adult man, I wouldn't just walk around Essex and go to find some couple of working class kids and say, why don't you and you take responsibility for my spiritual development? They did their very best they couldn't. I couldn't love them more.

I couldn't love them more. But my mom, she had cancer like 8 times in a few years My bad, he's got his own deal. He's got his own deal. And I recognize what it is to feel strong individualistic fervor. I love them.

I love them. When I'm trying to formulate, and I know I'll make errors as a parent, of course, I will we all do, and as you will discover, it is our duty to wound our children. It is not our duty. It is a necessity beyond the duty. It is a tendency.

It's just gonna they're gonna end up wounded. They have to. They're gonna have to find a second mother, a second father. They're gonna have to. They're gonna have to.

So it's not anybody's fault. It's not even the systems fault. I'm kind of grateful to all of it now. I'm grateful to these institutions. I'm grateful to the mainstream media.

I'm grateful to these governments. I'm grateful that they have set out the instruments required for the change that we will encounter in the coming few decades.

You you mentioned your mom and your father again there. Your father, what role? What impact was did did his departure have, do you think, on hindsight, on your relationship with authority, if any, at all?

I would say, fatherless men, like, I don't wanna be so polypsistic as to make this entirely about me. He says 20 years into a career. Yeah. But I think for and I experience with fatherless men who I deal with a lot in my, what I would say, my spiritual life is to be around men a lot that are in recovery, both being men or bi and mentoring and recovering mute in support communities. Broadly, fatherless men feel a big burden, and they do not feel safe in this world.

A big burden, not safe in this world. If they're with the mother, I think they feel he's there. Do you eat to look after their mother? If they are without other parents, I mean, you know, if without other parent, my god, who knows what kind of chaos. And I'm not saying there is only 1 way and that there is only template but 1 template.

But I'm because I'm already talking about a subset. I'm talking about a subset of people to become drug addicts and alcoholics in order to deal with these kind of challenges. But also I know people that don't identify as addicts in exactly that way, and still the absence of the father. And that also, by the way, you know, could be food there or it could be could break up of the relationship or it could be because father doesn't have the emotional lexicon to connect.

Yeah.

1 way or another, because I can think of examples off my head of all of those. I think it feels that you are prematurely invited to be a man. In fact, we're not thinking about our interview, Stephen, because you'll be glad to know I thought about before I

name it.

I felt the significance of anthropology, the significance of what the original condition might be. I do not use these terms to suggest there is some 1 template that could be imposed and stamped upon everyone. I would never take away people's individual strike rights struggles, particularly those connected to obvious and evident civil rights, cultural, and identity issues. Those are their stories for them and I support them in those stories. But when it comes to how human beings might have lived for hundreds of thousands of years, it appears we do well when we are a connected unit that communicate together in order to achieve a common goal.

Time and time again when anthropologists and even contemporary psychologists study these forms of society, they discover that there are rights of initiation for both males and females, although there often appears based on what I have heard and as you know I'm not an expert to be particular emphasis on male initiation as the body is not so uniform in the way that it informs a boy, that it is a grown up now, not a child anymore. And that there are new duties to be undertaken. 1 of the best examples I ever heard and I feel like I see somewhere in Freud or maybe in Joseph Campbell. Is that I feel this is some Australian aboriginal tribe that they what they do, and I think they're doing this now. I figure, I don't know, you know.

I'm putting this stuff together. You know how it goes. That the boys at a certain age are dragged away from the mother and they make much of it. They wear masks the men of the village or the men apart father or the women apart mother and of course there are categories for other forms of identity too which they honor and revere, often in the form of the shaman, who is beyond gender identity, incorporating both. You see reflections of this to this day, even in monotheistic face where the priest wears what appears to be neutral or androgynous attire distinguishing them from the rest of the community yet honoring them and reviewing them.

And you went through that initiation way too early. In your own words, you say that you were that you're prematurely forced to be a man because you've got the duties of care over your over your mother. At a young young age, your father leaves, I think, 6 6 months old. And then the the other thing that happens, which feels like a a horrible turn in you know, horrible sense of chances. Your mother has cancer, and she struggles with it for many, many years.

So you've got this young boy, and I was thinking about this when I was doing the research for this conversation. You've got this very young young young boy who's struggling with a lot of things on his own, disconnection coming from all angles. And then the stability in his life become gets the the uncertain horror of cancer come into her life. And what that does to that young boy who's already destabilized and sense of like connection. These are all interpretations I have from reading a piece of paper.

You

know, if I'm just being honest now, I just I was putting myself in those shoes and saying I've got this stable figure here in my life, my mother. And I'm dealing with all this instability over here. And then this becomes unstable. Stable.

Yeah. This is good analysis. But, you know, really, my mother struggles. Then it's her struggles. She has to go through that.

And bravely, she's done it. What life force that woman has in her. And to pick up on a point within your question, you cannot fake being a man or a woman or adult, let's say, AAA word that doesn't have any cultural load to bear. You can't fake that or you can fake it, and I did fake it. And that is what people do.

They fake it. They fake it. But in a sense, maybe you need another adult to make you that. You need to be initiated you need a code, you need to know that it's about duty and responsibility, that it's not all just about swagger and personal achievement. And like many young men, I joined the group of lost boys.

I found men, young, men kids, kids because if I met them now, that's what they were as kids. Couple of years older than me, that that that becomes your tribe. Unless you have hierarchies and systems of acculturation and inculcation are based on higher values. Remember our earlier point about moral authority and trust, who you're gonna give it over to. You'll create your own 1.

You'll create your own little community with out elders, without elders that are reliable and trustworthy and duty for and understand the nature of sacrifice, sacrifice of themselves in in order to perform them duties. So of course, yes, I feel like when you feel the incumbency of adulthood upon you early due to the conditions of your domestic trial there, you will have to as they say, man up or woman up, you will have to. But it won't be real because it can't be real because it's not only a set of endocrine or imperatives It's also a system of instruction as laid out in that as laid out in the previous anecdote, the chameleon analysis of the Anthropological conditions of that aboriginal group there. So really until you find other adults, elders that are like, I'm I know what I'm doing. You don't need to worry.

I'm stronger than you. It's gonna be okay. I'll look after you. It's alright. Do this.

But you know, a father, a father, like a father that is, you know, you're gonna forego this now because in the future, this you know, without that, you will not forego. You will consume now. You will consume now. You will not understand. You will not understand your role.

It's time, but it takes a long while. But I I I've said it before, Steven, but I've said it again, so it bears repeating. You know, without shall worship no other gods than me because otherwise you will worship them gods. You will worship worship pleasure at Money fame. Them gods are greedy little gods too.

They're easy little deities to start worshiping. And the problem with the worship of those gods is you've lose the principle of the divine, the interconnect activity. The pleasure is not the result. Pleasure is a byproduct. Pleasure is an inadvertent byproduct.

Please God of doing the right thing.

I was just thinking then as you're talking about all of that and the gods we choose to to to worship in young men and fatherlessness, I was thinking about the Andute phenomena. As a former of, he really seems to have captured a huge amount of young men for some reason. And trying to diagnose why why that is. It's a very multifaceted process, isn't it? Because there's elements of purpose and meaning and having a figure in your life that you can can can guide you, can initiate you into what being a man is, that seems that young man are in search of.

Yes. I agree. I agree. I agree. No doubt.

1 of the challenges it feels like we have culturally, Steven, is we are unable to observe the difference between symptom and cause --

Yeah.

-- symptom and cause. And, obviously, as with matters medical, cause is what we must analyze -- Yeah. -- cause is what we must understand. Is no point saying you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that. If you have a set of values that are pretty simple, I call them sesame Street values, kindness, love, service, that's gonna take care of a hell of a lot.

If you have kindness, love service, it's gonna take care of a hell of a lot. Are you being kind right now? No. You have gone off track mate. You've gone off track.

You're not being kind. Are you being off service? No. Then we can maybe sift through them. Also, we live in such a curated space that it's difficult to discern what people are actually angry about sometimes.

What is it as 1 of my great teachers says to me. What is it? Don't get caught up in the phenomena, the epi phenomena, the distractions, the static. What is it that you are trying to understand? What is it you're trying to do?

All of these groups then, people that are big fans of and and you take, people that are radically left, people that are radically right, what is it that they that they are that they are they are seeking or that they are getting from from such a pro radical pursuit.

Well, a argument might be that we are recognizing that there is nothing in our evolution to suggest that we live in cultures of 300000000 people who live by 1 ideology. But we have to truly respect diversity. But we have to acknowledge that many of our most influential and powerful systems do not have our best intentions in mind, but they, in fact, benefit from ongoing cultural conflagration. If we can do 1 great service in this cultural space, I recognize that part of your goal and your mission is to awaken latent potency in individuals in honor of your own journey and it is a great mission, if I may say. But part of this mission must be for us to learn this simple lesson.

We have more in common with 1 another than than divides us and it is our duty to reach out in particular to the people we disagree with in a spirit of love and good faith. Firstly then, identify, oh, am I reaching out and good faith to people I already agree with? No. No. No.

No. No. That's not it. Disagree with. I disagree with that on this important hot button hot button topic of guns or pro life pro choice or identity or tradition or progression.

I disagree with them and I respect your right. I respect and I love you. And I know that I do not know what you know. That I am not god. I am not god.

I do not know. I do not have any authority over you, but I believe that together we can achieve a consensus and this consensus must be founded on good faith. We must allow 1 another to communicate in good grace and openness. We cannot yield to censorship. Not because we want people to feel the air with toxicity and hate, but because we know that if we try to control it, who has the right Who are we grant in the right to now?

Have you investigated any of these organizations? Have you investigated their funding, their affiliations, their agenda, their impaired active because to some degree, I am sorry to report that I have and I have found them wanting. They will not be getting my consensus for authority anytime soon, and I would offer you this. You have more in common with the people you are fighting with than those you most loathe. Whatever hue, persuasion, or a cultural garment you've conveniently strewn upon him, than the people that are saying that they will protect you.

The institutions that are saying they will protect you.

Are you optimistic?

Yes. God is real.

You're optimistic that we'll get to a place where we recognize that our similarities are greater than our differences. Yes. And so if I make Russell brand, I know I don't think this is a role you want. But if I make you Prime Minister or President of the World, how how do you systemically change things to help us achieve the objectives you've described in connection community kindness and togetherness. What other thing?

I've asked so many people this question. No one's ever wanted to answer it. Well Because it's so big because

I am.

Yeah. Yeah.

Bring power as close as possible to the people affected by it. Default to decentralization and localization wherever possible. Of course, this will not immediately yield perfection but have you looked out of your window? We are not competing with perfection. We are competing with corruption.

So what do we want Most of all, we want true democracy, all the values that people espouse, all the values we should be practicing. They say, the world does not need more people to believe in God, just for those of us that do to start acting like it, to start acting like you believe God is real. Redistribute the control of municipal facilities to those that are affected by them. Do not have water companies in the United Kingdom, like Tim's water, owned elsewhere in China or Canada, Accuay, or or wherever those facilities are held have municipal facilities run by the community that is affected by them. I'm not talking about renationalization.

I'm talking about community. The community runs its water wherever possible I recognize, but there is some complexity when it comes to electricity, municipality, running roads, running hospitals. But who among us has ever been into a hospital are not marveled at the beauty, the compassion, the ingenuity, the commitment, the devotion of the people that work there. Wouldn't it be better if the people that clean the floors in the bill felt that they were invested in it, that it was their hospital, their nurses, their doctors, that they have real power, that those are their hospitals. Wouldn't it be better if both sides of our political conversation I'm talking about in the United Kingdom right now hadn't agreed already that privatization is the way to go and they're not gonna do anything about way.

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with capitalism in its basic format of we create a product and the people want the product, then look at that we made a little bit of money. I'm talking about this gigantic metastasized monster devouring everything right down to spirit. We must recognize where centralized authority is coalescing most, and this we must address. This we must address, whether it is financial, corporate, or state power, wherever it is possible, we, the people, we, the people, those 3 magical constitutional words if they were listened to, if they were lived by. It's already there.

The kingdom of heaven is spread upon the Earth and man sees it not. It's already here. It comes from inside your consciousness. You awaken, you believe it's possible to change, you act like it's going to happen. That's how these things unfold.

It's happened again and again. The miracles of transition and change, the great beauty of science and medicine and technology. When it is freed from its tendrils, when it is untethered from the mendacious objectives of a system that sees all things as dominion for materialization and commodity. When it is freed from that, you will see the true genius of our scientists, the true genius capable in technology. If we can just address the model.

If we can just have as an agenda, an awareness that we are just on 1 little rock in infinite space right now that we're all participating in this 1 centralized idea and yet infinite diversity, infinite individual freedom, infinite ways of being human. We must all take responsibility for becoming the person we intended to be in. If you don't know who that is, you find someone who does and you find a system and a program that can help you, and we'll all do our best together, and it's gonna be glorious. Glorious. But beyond glorious, it is necessary.

1 of the things you said within there was about empowering nurses, for example, in cleaners. Cleaners in a hospital. And it reminded me of a study I read many years ago that showed nurses that were given ownership about the decisions within a hospital. Had higher satisfaction. There was less accidents.

There was less accidents with with misprescribed medications. There was higher attention. And when they they leveled out the the payment, the remuneration policy, so there was less unfairness in how people remunerated all this standards of the hospital went through the roof because people were empowered. They have autonomy and control over their lives and work. So I completely relate to that.

My question though is about step 1. Because it what you described there sounds like it's at the top of Everest. And sometimes when something feels it does even for me, it feels like it's a long way away from where we are now. So I'm asking what's the first pebble? What's the first domino that has to fall?

What's the first thing that I can do as an individual to help us get closer to that world?

Well, firstly, Steven, people climb Everest every single day. Yeah. They have to clear the litter from that mountain now. Once it was considered inconceivable. And every time there is any pokal shift, every time we say, oh, it seems that the sun doesn't go around the earth.

It seems like we earth goes around the sun. Oh, there are things that are smaller than atoms. It appears that these subparticular phenomena that are so small is even difficult to label them exist in the unified field that they are emanating but somehow connected to I am speaking, of course, of quantum entanglement. If you reverse the charge of a particle, thousands of miles away, the partnering the partnering particle will reverse its charge also. There appears to be some unity force.

What I'm expressing is the most simple, practical, effortless achievement that we will ever yet undertake. It is merely the realization of the truth that we are individual, yes, but we are connected also, that there are goliath's that have incrementally coalesced due to the progression of the great sometimes unacknowledged revolutions, I'm loans acknowledge agriculture, industrial revolution, technological revolution, that all of these have been undergirded by principles of dominion that might as well be feudalism. In the sense, there is no change at all except for the individual change that you yourself can make. This is why I think people get a lot when they say, you know, look after yourself. This is part of it.

Eat well, awaken, pray, meditate, recognize that it is normal. Feel sometimes total despair and total despondency. Remember all of these great journeys that we're describing that you're fascinated with began with exactly that Exactly that. But the great sages and secular saints that we have been granted have shown us and told us be the change. You wanna see in the world, whether it's Algan d or Al Algan x, people that are willing to give their life for what they believe in because what they believe in is bigger than their life.

And you're gonna die anyway. You're gonna die anyway, but your principles, this is eternity. That we can touch eternity in the moment. So it's not like Wu Wu to say meditate wake up. This is changing the prima materia.

It is the field of consciousness. This is I suppose what I'm advancing. Consciousness precedes matter. You have unique individual access to consciousness. You are online.

You are on the grid. You are responsible for whether or not you believe this is possible. Nobody else can tell you what to do there. That is your private kingdom, your private domain where you can be for now for now whoever you wanna be in there. Please do not relinquish that right by not taking it now.

For I tell you, authoritarian forces are abundant and abound. They are looking to colonize the very space of attention that exists right now. This moment, This is what is being colonized at attention. They are they are on what? You.

The territory of the self. This is fertile. This is not nothing. It is not nothing to awaken to the reality of who you are in this very moment. That is not nothing, Steven.

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1 of my team members had a question for you. I was just chatting to them about about you, and they said I really wanna know how he lives on a day to day basis because I know from your books and stuff the the Russell that roam the streets of Shoreditch once upon a time. The Russell, I see now is through the the lens of YouTube, and I see him what it looks like the countryside somewhere. We'd like some logs in the back. What is your what how do you live your life now?

I'm glad you've asked this because this is proper diary of a CEO stuff because this is actual scheduling. I have to live sorta like a monk basically. I have to be conscious all the time. I have to be conscious about why I eat. Otherwise, I'll eat something stupid.

I have to be conscious about what I say. Otherwise, I'll say something stupid. I have to be conscious about what I do. I have to familiarize myself with extremes continually. So I thank you god, have access to hot temperatures and cold temperatures.

I expose myself to them regularly. Every day, if possible, do a lot of cold therapy. I get right in that cold. And while I'm in that cold, I think this thing taught to me by Michael Singer and anyone who's willing to watch Michael Singer your stuff. The moment in front of you is not bothering you.

You are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. They're getting very, very hot temperatures and I think the same thing the moment in front of you is not bothering you. You're bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. I do Brazilian jiu jitsu because for me it was not natural to tango like that. And I love Brazilian jujitsu so much because of Rogen actually was the first person I know.

So talk about all that stuff and I do that a couple of times a week. I

do that. I need more detail on my

We see why, like, we it's good for, I think, people to touch 1 another in a way that is playful, and absolutely consensual but sort of assertive. It's like kind of I heard a YouTuber say, like dance actually. And it's very good for me. It really puts me in my body. It's not cerebral.

I don't know about you, Steven, but I suspect you're the same. I am very intellectually oriented. I live in here. I find it very easy to be self obsessed and to get caught up in all that stuff. So things that put me in my body, the body, the body holds the key, the body, the body you've got a body is important, the body of Christ.

It's very important to get in that cold war. Very important to get into that yoga. Very important. These things are important and beautiful on connecting. So I do a lot of BJJI do a lot of yoga.

I do a lot of other type of exercise calisthenics body weight type staff to try and stay fit I got, you know, I got young children. I have another child coming. I have to stay fit. I have to be able to be God willing. Present for these children drone going forward.

And I love it. And it's what we're gonna do with animals. Again, this anthropological idea, how might we have lived for those hundreds of thousands of years that predate the great miracle of agro culture. How might we have lived? We've worked.

We touched 1 in Nava. We are socializing. We groom and we graze -- Mhmm. -- together. It's nice.

Like, the kinda trust you develop with people in Brazil and Fujitsu like they they choke you on to the point of unconsciousness, but then when you tap, it's over. And this is something that you share between you.

It's it's a trust in that as well as an ah.

Yes. Trust. Good to embody the trust that experience the trust as they say. If you wanna know if you can trust someone, trust someone, and that maybe it's difficult to seek out those kind of opportunities where it can play out, you know, so microcosmically and practically.

Because I I did a Brazilian jitsi lesson or 2. And that man could have killed me. At any moment, I really knew he could have killed me. He had me, like, tied up like a, I don't know, like a ball of elastic bands. And I knew at any moment he could've killed me, but I trusted him.

And I didn't know this man.

It's lovely, isn't it?

There's something amazing about it. And it's an instant bonding that this man has his life in my hands. Yet he's he's teaching me an art for me. He's teaching me a discipline and holding my literally my life in his hands. It's funny because I didn't know him, but I felt like he was my mentor, my father, my immediately after.

Yeah.

Because I trusted him so much in my life. Right? So -- Absolutely wonderful thing.

-- touch very important for us late ape creatures that's why a hairdresser, you tell the hairdresser or the barber staff. This is why, like, it strictly come dancing. They can't stop falling in love. They're performing these rituals that are undesigned to elicit certain states.

The vulnerability isn't it. That's the connection.

The vulnerability, the touch, the awareness of sameness, but different nurse, the acknowledgment that we are creatures. That we are embodied creatures. All of these things, I think, contribute to that. So for me, on my day, yes, everyday prayer and meditation first every day rigorously ensure that I have done things for other people preferably without letting other people find out that I make myself available to other in my case in particular men that require help with their issues around addiction and mental health that I have checked in with other people that I consider to be peers around the challenges that I faced psychologically, but I don't spend all my time obsessing just about what I want. Like, that I have to do quite a lot to not be crazy.

I have to do quite a lot to not be crazy. So the hot, the cold, the BJJB yoga, there's someone I work with once said everyday, I get up, I meditate, I pray, I do exercise, I do green juice, I do hot cold, I attend a support group, and then I feel okay. Okay. That's what I get to feel if I do all that. Then I don't feel like a lunatic, a vacillate in while glasoo of mad vicissitudes that could lash around anything in its search for connection.

Is there not another way at this point? This also is attached to another question. I've I've often pondered from doing what I do here, which is about how I mean, it still says Steve Peters, who's a psychiatrist, I believe, talks about these goblins and gremlins, and I I spoke to Gabor Mate as well. I know you've interviewed him and I watched that fantastic unbelievable guy, but I wonder if the the traumas, the things that are hard I use the word hardwired, tends but the things that are hardwired into us are ever overcomeable. If they if we can ever take them to 0 in terms of the power they have over us infants we have over, or we will spend our lives managing.

I was taught from the wound comes the south. From the wound comes a self. The place of the deepest wounding will provide your salvation. This is what you must investigate. It is not when people love you, we always feel it's because of their strength for the capacity or the virtuality, but often it is the vulnerability and the fragility because we all know that this vulnerable and fragility is something we share.

This is what comedy is to me, Stephen, is the ongoing acknowledgement. Everyone's running some game. I'm this. I'm doing this. I've got this going on.

You're gonna die. It's all gonna fall apart. It's all going to fall apart except for these permanent principles and a connection to the eternal achievable through conscious this is why I need ceremony. This is why I need practice. This is why I need beers and mentors and mentees.

And from the wound from this place of I'm not good enough. Nobody loves me. I don't fit in the only way that I can achieve trust this through having some authority or value as accredited by a culture that I don't even bloody trust. As compared with a metric that I don't even agree with. Instead of this now, and again, continual moment to moment, I'm not suggesting that I am any better than anybody else, just that I'm not any worse than anybody else.

That's the biggest thing that I'll offer. It's ongoing is continue, but the the thing, I'm glad of it now. I'm glad of the wounding, and you will be too, whoever you are. You will be glad of the wounding too because it is Sadly, a gift to you. That doesn't mean it was right or that that that there weren't perpetrators or that it's not bad or culture doesn't need to change or any of those things.

All those things are definitely true. But from it, you we how all of the time you see it, go great Ormond Street. Go anywhere. Watch the Paralympics. It's everywhere.

It's everywhere. People overcome.

And I asked that because so many become frustrated that the the wounding they haven't been able to overcome it. They become frustrated by that because a lot of the kind of, I don't know, maybe spur production, maybe whatever says you can take this pill or you can do this exercise, you can do this retreat, and then you won't be a narcissist or you won't be a whatever. Right? And then they try it. They they by the course, then they still are.

They find themselves reacting in those old ways and being triggered in the machinery that you spoke of that comes up when we triggered. Mhmm. We're still there, then they go fuck. Mhmm. And he's a minor of the course.

We do need to be very self compassionate, and I think we have to perhaps recognized that it is not a commodity that can be externally required, but an external coordinate can indeed ignite that which is already their dormant and late and and awaiting and be born. It precisely the necessity for initiation we return to here, the initiation is to act activate. Activate. That which is already there. Activated surrender.

Not passive surrender. They're not passive surrender, activated surrender. I'm a vessel. I'm here for whatever you are. I trust myself God.

I pray to you God, not my limited conception of you God with my tiny little man kind mind. I pray to you God as you know yourself to be and I offer myself to you God 100 percent and totally please use me. Please take away from me. Everything that is not of use to you, put aside all my preconceptions and use me God. This this utilizes the wound.

The wound becomes a poor or you become a vessel.

I wanna stay on how you live. I understand your your sort of morning routine there, but if I zoom out on where you live, why you choose to live there, your relationship with work, now now that you have this I think greater clarity on institutions and how you balance that.

Well, I I have to make a lot of content -- Yeah. -- because every day, I'm on rumble every day and make an hour of content. Every day, we make an additional 10 to 15 to 20 minute video on a news subject that generally encompasses an establishment narratives and a way of explaining that that is hopefully inclusive. Every day, we have other social media content. We have a business like that I I'm part of a significant business endeavor that I've regard as a movement rather than a business but as you are all too aware if it doesn't function as a business, it will not function at all.

So it has to have good hygiene and housekeeping.

You're a CEO.

I literally am here not under the pretense of being a CEO, but because it is part of my job and do have a diary -- Mhmm. -- although I don't keep it myself and I try not to look at it. But it exists. And so I have to participate continually with that and ensure that an organization is around me that is able to facilitate the things that I'm good at and accommodate the many things where I am currently looking to improve. I have to make all of the content.

We try to do this in 3 days. That means a couple of days a week unavailable for different types of expedition and adventure such as this 1. This is why for me the spiritual life it has to come first, but not not out of a sort of an ethical evaluation. Spirituality in the end is a survival technique. It's not like esoteric.

It's not like I'm doing this thing like waving around in the sense or dressing up in a row. I'm trying to not go crazy and end my life and damage the life of people around me by devoting myself. They say only the really crazy people become saints. Only the really crazy people would even consider it. You have to need it.

It has to be beyond wanting. Because wanting is just here to keep the blob going.

How does it feel to be in your mind? Could you describe it to me?

No. Sometimes it's amazing, but sometimes it's very very sometimes it's very, very fast, sometimes it's very volatile, feel like it undulates a lot. This I understand to be very common to addict experiences of extreme high extreme low, fastness, not natural to be serene evaluating information very, very quickly. It feels fast sometimes very fast. And it has a strong sense of craving and longing, which is a type of magnetism I suppose.

And I suppose magnetism is a longing for unity connection. Very difficult to discern physical forces because they are by their nature non anthropological. And it's very easy to anthropomorphize physical phenomena like gravity or magnetism or whatever. So what feels like, if me, is that there is a great deal to get done. That's what it feels like there is a great deal that needs to get done.

And in order to do it, I have to surrender strongly. Otherwise, I will mess it up badly. That's what it feels like. So that's why there's a lot of ceremony that is communing with that which is unknowable. You know, prayer ceremony with other people acknowledging the sacred, not forgetting the sacred, but the most important things are difficult to measure and weigh.

But they are there anyway. And so each day, there is much work to be done, and I'm a father of young children. And I have a dog that I adore and I have many animals. So I have a lot of very simple pastoral dualies. That have to be done.

And I have a lot of spiritual things that have to be done, told me to give it. So there's a lot to be done, and then often I get to a point around. So tired that the whole enterprise feels like it could collapse inward like a narcissistic semi gothic souffle. So there has to be a lot of caution. A lot of caution.

Also, I'm a person or perhaps you identify and agree with a sense of purpose. And mission, and a deep deep belief that the most profound and significant change is imaginable, are possible, by virtue of the fact that they are imaginable in fact, because the role of imagination we see all around us in every building, every object, every book, every cultural artifact, as well as the many flawed and defunct ass effects of our culture, also imagination, is the device that brings the unmanifest into the manifest.

Do you ever find yourself because you are a content creator? Do you ever find yourself slipping in And when you play that game, you're dealing with algorithms and metrics and numbers and rankings and I'm trending and I'm not trending. Do you does that ever trigger your old, you know, the old -- Yes. -- machinery.

Yeah. I try to not go near it. I try to not go because in a sense, back to basics for me. Recovery is somewhat based on abstinence. Like, I don't have a odd drink or the occasional line or the occasional or the occasional I don't do it.

I don't do it. So I try to practice good hygiene there. Because if I start, it's very difficult to stop and another momentum takes over. So, yes, it is. Of course, it is.

Because these are part of, you know, game part of the blog the Primal Ooh's competition is part of who we are. It is part of who we are. So I tried to stay out of the ring as 1 of my teachers says, stay out of the ring, stay out of the ring. What are

you working on?

What

are you working on improving? You highlighted you said the strengths and then your things you hope to improve? What are the things that you hope to improve?

For me, always patience patience. Try to be patient because impatience is ridiculous to think I know when something should happen is mental concept. So I try to work on patience to be very, very patient. Mostly, I work on this. But is more to be achieved by surrendering self will than can ever be achieved by utilizing it.

And that's a very, very, very difficult thing to practice particularly when agitated.

What does that mean? I I didn't understand.

Ah, okay. We achieved so much through Will. I'm gonna create a podcast. Oh, look, I did that thing I was gonna do. Now I have to create various sets around the globe.

But to believe that there is a greater power that will come into being if I surrender but become intuitive to what 1 teachers calls the whispers on the wind that I will be directed, that I my job is to stay out of my way, that my life is none of my business. To not look at my day. Like, it's a chunk of thing that I want my day. I'm gonna eat it up. This is, oh, wow, this gift.

I'm alive. Oh my god. What a miracle, this credible and to stay in that feeling of grace and stay in that feeling of gratitude and to spot as quickly as possible when I inevitably give it up Give up your connection to God for a biscuit. Give up your connection to God because someone has a nice car. Give up your connection to God because someone says something about you on the Internet.

Give up your connection to God because people lie about your attack you. Don't give up your connection to God. And in order to not give up your connection to God, you are going to have to cultivate a very strong connection to God. Because elsewhere as you say, March noise, March destruction, water coincidence, and we live in an environment that seems to be cultivated in order to distract us from the ever present divine.

When you say God -- Yes.

--

are you talking about a religious specific religious deity? Or you is there how do you define your God?

Loving unity and absolute respect for individual identity within that.

Do I find this god in a particular book or every book?

It's up to you, mate.

Do you consider yourself to be part of a religion?

I do. Yeah. I mean, this 1, the only 1, they're all the same. I suppose if you want some help, perennialism by Aldous Huxley is a good place to look at. Where he identified in the same way that Joseph Campbell and Karl Jung, it could be said, identified respectively that there are mythic tropes that appear to recur in all cultures.

He's began a write AAA famous book at which I believe gave the name to phrase perennialism in which he observed that eastern mysticism, sufirism from the world of Islam, and certain aspects of Christianity, particularly gnostic Christianity and what is commonly regarded as first century Christianity had within him, not archetypes as in, you know, the crucifixion, which we know occurs in many folktowers and mythology, just in Christianity, not narrative devices or characters that recur, but ideologies Mhmm, that occur principles --

Yeah.

-- values that occur in all of them. And many of them, or this Huxley is his Huxley offers, are about overcome the self. There is something bigger than the self. You're not real. Who are you when you don't have your name?

They call it the unborn. In Buddhism. Markus Aurelius says, you are dead. Your life is over. Now live the rest of your life properly.

Get rid of it, put down the corpse they say in Buddhism. In Christianity, die that you may be born again. The flesh man must die. The carnal man of wanting and longing must die. That the transcendent man be born.

You're getting in the way. Getting in the way with your memories and your story and your projects and your values and your virtues, all but the universal ubiquitous ever present archetypal virtues that huxley explains and elsewhere for Yonge and Campbell, we get the idea that there's some sort of ulterior cultural force not cultural force beyond that way beyond, way way beyond culture culture is what we create. Yeah. Indigenous, primal reality. Trying to be not trying to expressing itself through us.

It's still talking to us all the time. All the time, it's here, it's everywhere, it's waiting to be discovered by us collectively. And individually. And what better job could we have than to find ourselves and help others to find it?

But what I think the reason why is because when people hear the word, God, they think of a man in this guy.

Well, they should stop that. But unless it helps them.

That's that's good. If you don't behave, you're gonna go to hell. That's and that's an idea that a lot of people struggle to get on board with.

That's because people have been lazy, because we are in the Kaliuga, we are in a time of darkness, they have forgotten in this darkness that when people say there is a father. They mean there is a figure that is more powerful than you that loves you. And if you don't do what's right, you are going to hell. Not after, you are in it. If you don't do what's right, you are Oh, no.

I'm so unhappy. I'm in this bed seat that we talked about earlier. Why? Because you didn't listen to the father because you perhaps couldn't find the father because as I've alluded to many times, you live in a culture that wants to distract you from the father or the mother or whatever word help you that is there within new way you need to be born that you've been distracted from understandably because of the primal urges to compete and acquire and eat and defecate all of this is normal, ordinary, forgive yourself immediately, and now move forward to what it truly means. What do you understand to me?

I understand all the problems of religion. Religion doesn't make you hate other people. Religion should make you love everyone. They've all got that written in there, then why don't we focus on that bit? But because if people start doing that, you can't manipulate and moving around on a little board and turn them into little consumer blobs, obviously, obviously.

Well, when does love fit into all of that romantic love? Because I I thought about some of the stuff you said about our ancestors and is monogamy? Is is monogamy? The the path forward is is romantic love a framework for stability that we need to find God.

Oh, my friend. Well, there is an argument that romantic love is derived from the idea of chivalry, which consists as there were to guess a kind of late medieval notion that we should focus Al Alda on the individual that night would attack match the colors of their bequeathed, betroved, or beloved to their lance as they jousted metaphorically. And really though, this chivalrous idea is about 1 aspect of love and they know that many people never had actual conjugal relationship with the symbolic feminine, divine feminine figure that they would attribute that quality to. Rheumatic love, I feel, romantic love perhaps as all forms of love, obsession, attachment ultimately are. I was taught this.

I didn't make this up. The inappropriate substitute for the true love of God. What is love? When you whether you love West Palm, you unite it, or your wife, or your children, or you're due to for it sounds new, breath worker, girlfriend, except for the desire, longing, yearning, to be at 1 with, to be connected to, to acknowledge that what's in there is the same as what's in here that we have a shared purpose, isn't love the felt awareness of the true unity, the undergoods apparent separation We come into form for a little while. All of us were twice twice before we were a single cell.

You were a single cell, then you were 2 cells in the belly of your mother. And way, way, way back you were an amoeba. And there it is in your programming and your coding. The unity is there materially practically forget esoteric theology, forget ontology. It's there as a fact as an observable fact.

It's there as a cosmic fact. There was a big bang, unity is there. Love is the felt remembrance of this. Why does love feel good? Although love, as we know, can be very painful.

When love is not reciprocated, when love is rejected, when love cannot unfold, this love is more than a sensation, it is a duty, and it is the deepest truth of our kind. That when we love 1 another, we acknowledge the truth that we're not separate from 1 another. Isn't it glorious? To move from that position, we feel, I don't like that person. I don't like that person.

Then, oh my god. They're the same as me. I love them. I love them because you have recognized the truth and truth and beauty are 1 as Wilde said, that there is something We it rewards us. It rewards us.

It's speaking to us. I heard it argued that once there was a great unity and the infinite intelligence for its own amusement lost in the atemporale spatial. Abyss sent all things into fragmentation. Only to see which ones would awaken and recognize the unity of our origin, the deep unity of our origin. When will we come home?

When will we come home to love?

You fell in love and you had 2 children. You've got a third on the way around the corner. That's a very special love that you've you've you've found fatherhood. What is what is I'm not a father yet, but I'd love to look down the road and get some lessons from you as a father what lessons did fatherhood teach you about life and how we should be living?

Teach you teach is me taught me this a lot more important things in this world than me, but I learned this lesson in a variety of ways now. There's a lot more important stuff in this world than what I want and what I think and what I reckon. It don't amount so much amidst the infinite. It taught me that love is real, that the most miraculous things are accessible and ordinary and animal. That you can procreate life into being what a gift and it flows through you and we're part of an endless chain and God has no grandchildren.

They belong to the world. They don't belong to you and your job to just stand there and bring out of them, whatever's in them, and just stand back and marvel and weep at what's in them. Weep. Like the horror, the beauty, the horror, the dreadful beauty of what a child unfolds into. Your awareness that they that they in the best case scenario, the best case scenario, they are walking into a future.

That you will not be there to guide them through. So I suppose what that asks of you, is an understanding of your place in this world. And acknowledgement, both of your relative insignificance, but simultaneous, omniscience, omnipotence, simultaneous is a paradox. All energy come from polarity. Ignoreish the polarity.

Don't hate the polarity. Don't hate the others. Don't let them tell you those people are different from you because they wear a baseball cap while they voted to leave Europe or because they identify with these pronouns. Or because they believe in this cause or that, the the absolute unity. It shows you that.

The way you love your children must become the way you love all people. Love as Ramdas was told by his teacher. Tell the truth and love everyone, not easy. Not easy if you tell the truth to love everyone. It teaches you everything.

It teaches you everything to become a father. It teaches you you're gonna need other fathers. It teaches you you're gonna have to become a father. Teaches you you're gonna have to become a father to that little boy. It teaches you everything.

All lessons are there. All lessons are there.

A future you're not gonna be a part of. Why why it was so visible in in your in your body and in your consciousness that that particular sentence was difficult for you to say. As it relates to your children.

Because it's so ordinary, Steven. Any old lady, any old man who's chatting to anywhere, Oh, yeah. My mom was like that. My dad was like that. My little girls.

It's just it's just so beautiful.

What are the lessons about the future that they you you try and give them if any at all. And how do you feel about the future that they're going to to go into.

I'm trying my best to arm them. I'm trying my best to arm them. I'm trying my best to arm them like Sarah Connor or something. No. I was trying to tell them, like And also, they are them.

There's I see every day how they're more powerful than me already. So, you know, they'll be alright. God has no grandchildren. They'll be alright. They've got their path.

I know they're gonna hurt me, you know. I know that. I all we can do for each other, beyond father, daughter, is become who you are, become who you are, become who you are, become who you are, trust that it's gonna be beautiful, that you're not ugly, that you're not hideous, that you've made mistakes, you've done stuff wrong, You've had stuff done too, make all of this, all of this, and yet become who you are, become who you are, become who you are. So All I want is I try to not go This is everything, I think. Don't go unconscious.

Don't go unconscious. Stay present. Stay present. Things will make you go unconscious. It might happen as I leave this room.

It might happen when the people from the next room come in. I don't you you can go unconscious at any moment. Don't go unconscious. Stay presence. Stay present now.

God is now. May you find God now? That's the only page you're gonna find God. I'm gonna find him yesterday and I'm gonna find him in a week. God's ear.

Now, Find it. Find it. Absolutely. And when I say God, I mean absolute unity, absolute inclusivity, absolute love, absolute unity. Among us all.

So me, I'm basically look, you know what I mean? You can't live like that with my kids. Kinda like banging on it and like John Wesley from the pulpit or MLK, I just gotta say, alright, how's it going? Do you want that to me? I'm not letting you eat that.

I'll come to, why not? You know what I mean? I'm laughing. Why don't you tell me stuff you're done at school? You mean you've got a boyfriend?

I'm doing all I'm saying all the normal chats everyone's happening, Avin. But what I'm trying to do is recognize they ain't gonna get a better conduit than me for real for real. So I better get out of the way. I could get out of the way for them, you know?

Russell, thank you so much. Thank you for thank you for being an inspiration to me in so many ways. 1 of the ways that I think I mean, you you're completely in a in a league of your own outside of the committee and all that is the way that you communicate ideas and a way that is so I know you must be aware of this. They're so brilliant and poetic. And you said it halfway through this conversation that it's intentional your use of words.

Yes. You could you know you could use simple words.

Yes.

But you choose the poetry. That's the best way I can describe it. Why?

Because it's a it's a big item. Why? It's not only aerudite to talk like that. Think of perhaps 1 of the great archetypes of the working class we have now based Danny Dyer,

Yeah.

He's a poet. He talks beautifully. It's nice to be specific.

Yeah. If you can.

Be specific. What do you mean?

What do

you mean? And to be honest, it's, you know, it's always been there. It's always there. It's there.

It's funny because as I was observing you today, you seem like you're just 1 step ahead. Of the thing coming out of your mouth. And that's why you're able to string this poetry together in such a cohesive way a coherent way because your brain seems to just be 1 step ahead of mark, like, of the way that I would speak. Yours, it's wonderful to observe, and it's a wonderful talent. I observed it as well in your your new show.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Good. Pandemic.

Oh, god. Jesus. No. No.

No. No. I but no. But it was a it's wonderful. I I watched all of the clips.

So watch the trailer. What you manage to do in that show. So for anybody that doesn't know, Russell has a show called Brandemic, which is gonna be available for just 2 weeks from June 20 fifth you can watch online globally. You can preorder it now. I preordered it and my partner's preordered it.

So we're even though we're gonna be watching on the same screen. So there's pre 2 preorders But it's this wonderful confrontation of the last couple of years of our lives mixed with comedy at the heart of it, with also this this permeating really important message underneath there somewhere, which you I think you use comedy in such a wonderful way to if I may say, inject an important message into me through the through the medium of humor. And it's it's a wonderful skill that I've seen in some great comedienne, some of, you know, Jimmy Carter to his credit. He's wonderful. What he does, he uses a different form of comedy.

But the form of comedy you use to address very important subject matter is Genius. It's very, very hard to do. And in fact, when I sat here with Jimmy, he said he's trying to do more of that. I've seen a few great com comedians like chapels of the world where I saw in New York a couple of weeks ago in Aziz Azari. Aziz Azari?

He's fantastic at that. I saw him at the store do that as well. Yeah. I highly recommend everybody go and get pre order brand epic. It'll only be available for 2 weeks.

And if you go check out the trailer in YouTubers, fucking hilarious. It confronts all the things, a lot of people, a bit too scared to confront. But with a real a real elegance, a real class, so thank you for that. And also, I have to mention community, which is an event that's taking place. But when is when is it July?

Yeah. July the fourteenth. July the fourteenth. Is it polite for me to ask your girlfriend's name.

Melanie.

Melanie. Yeah. Come with Melanie. She's she's should be right up her alley. We're lives there, be it Simkins, there, Vandana Shiva.

Proper leaders, both in political and spiritual spaces because in the end, these are fake divisions. There is only 1 space. You'll love it. Come come into a turn on a Saturday night.

I saw I saw a poster for it and I thought this can't be real because of the the people that are there. And they're all gathering. I thought it can't be in person. It must be online. And then I found out it was in person as well.

So fourteenth of July to the seventeenth of July in Hey on way? Hey

on wire. Why is there a river that, like, that bifurcates England and Wales or at least separates England and Wales, although actually England and Wales was conceptual. So by the case, it's not a bit of land, but it's currently called England and Wales. It's a rare so on a camp site. I went to during pandemic.

I went there in a holiday, in a 1 in Vans, you know, that you can do up -- Yeah. -- from within. And we had such a lovely time there, and we did a small festival last year. And this year, we're doing a bigger festival. And the money that we make, we give to people with addiction and mental health issues, various charities that we support for the Stay Free Foundation.

Is proper. It's an attempt to live how we might live.

That that is probably the most compelling thing to me because I literally read and we've got called the journey back to human. And so it's wonderful to see something called community that's doing exactly that, bringing us back to what it is to be a human. And as you say, the cause is that the the proceeds of this event are going to are phenomenal, including a plebodian charity, I believe.

Which was that?

This is charity in Plymouth

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Too much. Trevy. Trevy. Yeah.

Trevy women. That's their only treatment scenario in the country that is able to take women with with addiction issues and complex needs that have kids already because obviously it's very difficult to look after women at drug addicts that have kids and stuff So that place though, they do a fantastic job down in your end in Plymouth.

My old neck of the woods. So you can heal yourself, but also the proceeds will help to heal others, which I think is a phenomenal thing. So thank you for that. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. You can have a 60 second conversation with anyone in your life.

But it is the last conversation you will have with them.

No. I can't do this. Well, that's a brilliant or evil question. Evil.

I always tell the guest I say, because they've all been stitched up by the last questions when they stitched paid for it. You know?

Well, you've already got another minute. 60 seconds. And then that's

the last question. Who who who'd you call them what you say?

Well, but the thing is is that can I just break this down a bit? You're dispatching them after that. Yeah. So it's in a way. I do have to know them.

Is that contained in the connection?

No. It's you can interpret it.

It's only 60 seconds. 60 seconds, and I've never seen it again. I mean, there's no 1 in my life that I love that I wanna give up in that. So 60 seconds. I'm never gonna see him again afterwards.

Yeah. Card. There's some good people that I've met though, I know. Because I'm gonna pluck astray like a virtual stranger. A virtual strange.

Interesting.

Because why? It's only 60 seconds. Are you letting go of them?

Honestly, you're not I don't think it means that you can never see them again.

Mom daughter, I mean, wife or

I think what the way I interpreted it was You run it's your last day on earth. You get a phone call.

It's getting worse. Then there's no more me. Oh my god. I can route this question.

Some evil. I'm joking.

You don't tell us his anonymity.

Sometime, so it'll eventually come out on a card that people can play with their friends.

You're fine.

You're fine.

Always with hustler. You hustler every day. Alright. So just to just say something I love. I'm gonna talk to you for seconds.

Yeah. But that and they're alive already. You can't even get someone that's dead back. Come on now. Can't you?

Of my name back. I know that

I'd love a million people.

I'll take my nan. Okay. I'll take 60 seconds of me nan. I love you nan. I'm alright.

I'm not so crazy. You were right by the drugs, though.

Why

because she was so lovely. It's actually she loved me so much. It was so unself conscious. It was so unself conscious. Dole.

You are darling, shame on it. What's that drugs you're doing? I'll tell you I see you on Kilroy. It lead to worse things. 60 seconds.

Let her know you're okay.

Yes.

You're okay?

Yes.

Perfect. Thank you, Russell, and I'll not have to meet you, and thank you so much for being here. You could have been anywhere, so I really appreciate your time. I really, really appreciate that.

Thanks. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It was a really lovely intense experience. The scenery, the environments are gray and the conversations are levels.

Yeah. Intentionally, I told

you, excellent.

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