Speaker 1: 0:15

Hi, this is Omid Ashtari.

Speaker 2: 0:17

And Natasha McElhone. Today we talked to Tim Minchin. We managed to catch him on his book tour between Brighton and Piccadilly Circus, london. He is an Australian actor, writer, musician, poet, composer and songwriter. Tim is also a piano playing comedian extraordinaire. His recent book, you Don't have to have a Dream Advice for the Incrementally Ambitious, became an instant Sunday Times bestseller.

Speaker 1: 0:41

He has released several albums, comedy specials and live comedy shows that he has performed internationally. He's the composer and lyricist of the Olivier Award winning, Tony Award winning and Grammy Award nominated show Matilda the Musical, and the Olivier winning and Tony Award nominated show Groundhog Day the Musical. In 2013, he played rock star Atticus Fetch on Californication and in 2019, he co-wrote and starred as Lucky Flynn in the TV series Upright.

Speaker 2: 1:12

Tim has been awarded several honorary doctorates for his contribution to the arts. His Nine Life Lessons acceptance speech went viral and has been viewed tens of millions of times. He was appointed a member of the Order of Australia. In the 2020 Australia Day Honours, we will talk about self-censoring and policing opinion.

Speaker 1: 1:38

Free speech absolutism.

Speaker 2: 1:40

Life without social media. Assertion of tribal identity People just wanting a hug. Decontextualizing of text messages.

Speaker 1: 1:49

The sloganization of the world's information Ginger-haired people being consumers versus creators.

Speaker 2: 1:57

Both-side-ism.

Speaker 1: 1:58

Male homo sapiens being a dangerous thing.

Speaker 2: 2:02

Oh, you would know all about that.

Speaker 1: 2:04

Let's get into it. Hi, this is Amita Shtari.

Speaker 2: 2:13

And Natasha McElhone and with us today.

Speaker 3: 2:15

We have oh me, tim Minchin, yeah, another person.

Speaker 1: 2:20

That's a great start. Another human yeah, I really picked up the ball there.

Speaker 3: 2:24

I'm a real yes and kind of guy. Thanks for taking the time, Tim. It's a great start. Another human.

Speaker 1: 2:26

Yeah, I really picked up the ball there. I'm a real yes and kind of guy. Thanks for taking the time. Tim, it's a pleasure you being here.

Speaker 1: 2:29

We wanted to talk about hypocrisy today oh, really okay yes I'm a pro, yeah, yeah, I think we all are in a way yeah and I want to use, uh, the time together for a thought experiment, thought experiment being we are humans of the early 22nd century looking back at the 21st century the early 21st century, maybe year 2024 potentially and we will pontificate about the predominant notions in the zeitgeist. Okay, good, should I get us started with?

Speaker 3: 2:59

one, yeah, go let's talk about free speech absolutism so we're looking at free speech, absolutism, as it's talked about in 2024, from 21 24, with a particular focus on hypocrisy.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Yes, you got it this is like an I mean you want, you want me to trigger you further. Improv for philosophy nerds.

Speaker 3: 3:27

I don't know. I don't know how to. I'll get there eventually. I'm not quite sure how to square the circle in terms of whether hypocrisy is the main problem with it. What will we think of how we talk about free speech now in the future?

Speaker 2: 3:45

is. Is that kind of what we're talking about? I think that's it, and I mean don't overthink it.

Speaker 1: 3:48

So to give you a sense right, for instance we got a prominent figure who owns a social media platform, who's walking around and saying free speech, absolutism, is on my flag, but then obviously he's adapting the rules to China right.

Speaker 3: 4:05

So the trouble with so many things is that what we want to do to guide our behaviour is have really good overarching rules, like these stories we tell ourselves. That are positive stories All people are created equal and everyone should have the opportunity to strive and they're good stories. Unfortunately, unfortunately, like with all cultural narratives or narratives, the closer you examine them, the harder they are to hold up. You know, yeah, we're all created equal, but some people have big brains and some people have less efficient brains, and some people have strong bodies and some people have, uh, less able bodies, and so on, so forth.

Speaker 3: 4:42

Um so, so, with free speech, I am inclined to think the more dangerous of the two ends of the spectrum is restricted speech or compelled speech. I think history would show that people do better in societies that value free speech, better than they do in societies that demand adherence to compelled speech, which is the one we don't talk about, which is all part of the same other side of the same coin. To define compelled speech well, compelled speech is well like if you're in stalinist russia or something, or in any religion, you have to say I believe in the one, two, whatever, any, any and and in the um politics of our time, on the what everyone calls the far left, which I don't think is left, which is not left, it's just something else.

Speaker 3: 5:32

It's like it's something else, the sort of the, the, the W word which is so annoying, but it's sort of performative Righteousness, non, non utility based, tribal righteousness or something. Whatever that thing is, we all know what it is. That's not particularly left in my mind. It's something else. But there's a lot of compelled speech at that end and on the other end, if there ends, there's things that you have to say, you know and things you're not allowed to say. But so, although I'm compelled to think society's function better if free speech is valued, it simply isn't simple. It's unbelievably difficult, and there's something meta about this too, because in order to tackle what level of free speech, what is not sayable, the extent to which performing free speech absolutism when it suits you but restricting it when it doesn't like Elon, all these things require ongoing, difficult conversation.

Speaker 3: 6:32

There is no tweet that can describe the sort of free speech I value, and the reason, apart from anything else, is, I don't know, it will move a little bit here and a little bit there for the rest of my life because it is really, really complicated. So I guess, if we're looking backwards, from 100 years hence, like nearly every other issue on the planet. I think the thing we'll say is gee, we really wanted it to be simple and it wasn't. Gee, we loved grabbing a flag at either end of a false binary when actually what it always was was an ongoing discussion about the tension between free speech and it's so much like the gun question in America.

Speaker 3: 7:13

Oh, I have to be, it's my freedom to hold a gun. Well, as soon as you're holding a gun, you're restricting the freedom of the person that you're pointing it at. And it's the same with speech. I want to say what I want. Well, I will defend that argument. But if you constantly just say things that mean other people can't say what they want, then we're in trouble, right. So I mean, it's insoluble, it's an impossible problem.

Speaker 1: 7:39

I think your point is valid. I think it's about protecting right, like restricting speech for convenience is exactly the problem, and it's more about protecting people. I think that that's really it, but protecting is everybody can. It's incredibly dangerous right, because it?

Speaker 3: 7:53

would be better if we could have a big old rule that we all adhere to. You know, better rules are things like do unto others as you would have done unto you, or you know that's a much better rule. That's why that rule has emerged out of every single faith and idea ever.

Speaker 2: 8:08

And if we universalised the way I'm behaving today, would the world be a better place?

Speaker 3: 8:16

I think about all the time if everyone did this if everyone did what I'm doing.

Speaker 2: 8:20

Or would it be a much worse place? And then I'm examining my opinion as much as I'm criticizing someone else's.

Speaker 3: 8:27

I think that's right and that's my great hypocrisy is, I think, a lot about ethics from a position of hopping on planes and burning carbon. You know, like the big things I could do. If everyone did what I did, we'd have a huge problem with the carbon footprint. But in other, in most other areas of my life, no, yes, if everyone owned as much as I own because of my wealth and privilege, that would be problematic. So I'm a filthy hypocrite In terms of the way I try to treat people.

Speaker 3: 9:03

I mostly get it right. But then I look back at some of my work where I have used my right to free speech to eviscerate Cardinal Pell or whatever, and I think that was a moral thing to do. It certainly helped a lot of people. For people who don't know what that is, it was a sort of activism song about the head of the Catholic Church in Australia who spent a lot of time trying to sort of covering up and stuff, arguably allegedly child abuse and things and I look back and think, yeah, but if everyone, that's like picking up a weapon. It's like I chose to take the moral high ground and I don't know if that's universally applicable as a thing.

Speaker 2: 9:43

It's a quick check, isn't it? It's a quick check-in, rather than being apathetic and saying, well, I don't know, I can't control any of this.

Speaker 3: 9:51

No, the world goes the way it goes.

Speaker 2: 9:52

It's worth just checking in to see if I can't remember what the Buddhist teaching is. But is what I'm about to say helpful, useful, kind.

Speaker 3: 10:02

Oh, this is what I this this is. I didn't know that. Of course there's precedent in in buddhism, but, um, I'm off social media now, but basically my rule for a long time, as soon as I realized that, um, all I was doing is shouting my feelings into increasing anxiety and increasing other people. You know, most of what happens online is people asserting their feelings, which does the opposite of what they hope. It mostly drives people they disagree with away, because it's not a reaching out, it's a assertion of, of tribal identity mostly, or just expression of anxiety. But either way, if what your aim is is to change the behaviors of people you disagree with, it's nearly never.

Speaker 3: 10:43

And so my rule was um, has it been said by everyone before? Like, is it original? Like, is it a contribution that isn't just another, a meme on a meme on a meme? Copy paste, yeah, and is it? Is it useful? Uh, so, is it original? Is it useful? And, oh, yeah, but there was a third one. But, um, yeah, that's so helpful. And and I think, if, if people in day-to-day life treated people like I treat people, I think that that would go well. Like I, I'm, I'm there, I'm pretty good at. Like I, I don't treat people poorly in day-to-day life. And, yes, I and and I've decided that online behavior has to be the same. You can't dehumanize people just because you can't see them. Yeah, that feels like something everyone should understand by now but it's not so easy.

Speaker 1: 11:29

Let me throw in I'm triggered by in quotation marks and my truth in quotation marks because it fits in here, I think yeah, I so.

Speaker 3: 11:39

So I want to just go back to, because it connects to those prompts, free speech mitigated by is it helpful to the powerless or the less empowered, or is free speech mostly in service to the powerful? That's not quite what you said, but I think we all understand that. Like, free speech is good, but if it's just used as a, as a cudgel by the powerful, like in the elon sense probably, um, it's problematic. But but the mitigation of that, here's one that's deliberately something I'm not settled on right in. I think most australian states over the last few years have put into place laws about posting swastikas and if you put a swastika, if you show that symbol, that's illegal and you can go to prison. And I found that quite confronting because I understand that that symbol is terrible and is triggering for people. And yet I find the idea of handing to the government the ability to litigate about symbols very difficult. And it's the same with hate speech laws, right.

Speaker 3: 13:01

So one thing we all agree might be a good way to mitigate free speech is you're not allowed to incite violence. So that seems easy and there's not many arguments I've heard against that. It has to be clear you're inciting violence. You can't say well, that that three stages down would incite violence. It's like no, it has to be. You're saying let's go hurt these people. But the one, the hate speech one, is much harder. And I've got in, you know, trouble talking about this stuff from my point of view as a privileged. You know cis, white, blah, blah, but it doesn't matter about my point of view. It is still the case that hate speech is complicated because a government governing what is hate. It depends on the government right.

Speaker 2: 13:45

So I think a lot about context.

Speaker 3: 13:47

If the government is a conservative government and you're marching in the streets with a black power fist or a fuck the police sign, surely that is hate speech? It could be construed as inciting violence against the people who are paid to protect us. So do you want the government to have control of your ability to to paint a black power fist or or, uh, fuck the police sign on a wall? And if you don't, then I, I think maybe you have to cop the nazi symbol, which is awful, but you don't. I don't know if you can have it both ways easily. And I'm not talking about cultural norms, I'm talking about law. You know and that's the other conversation that 100 years hence we'd have to acknowledge that we confuse, um, cultural norms versus laws. And because the internet isn't meant to be a free marketplace of ideas, but it's an absolutely controlled, weird space.

Speaker 1: 14:46

What gets complicated in that example? In germany it's illegal, yeah, that's right, and you could see how in germany.

Speaker 3: 14:53

That is maybe a different context maybe, but but I get what you're still handing the government power over speech and symbols and you know what I?

Speaker 1: 15:02

you had a skit about the N-words.

Speaker 3: 15:03

It was like a piano bit yeah, yeah, yeah, and the G-word yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:06

And so we self-police when it comes to those words. Right, and maybe that responsibility actually should be with people to police each other when it comes to these things. I'm sure it's different in Germany.

Speaker 3: 15:30

And I want to say again, I'm not an expert on this and I'm not sure how I feel about it, um, but surely people posting nazi symbols, swastikas around the streets of melbourne are already social outcasts. They're already. They're doing it deliberately because they are sad, alone, poorly educated and trying to take power where they have none. And if you tell them it's illegal, well, if anything, it's going to increase the incidence of such behavior because they are already outsiders and now they get to be legend martyrs.

Speaker 3: 15:52

They let it show off to their friends, even though the pigs want us to stop posting our truth.

Speaker 1: 15:58

You know it's actually them putting up the bad signal for a hug. They really just need that.

Speaker 3: 16:02

They just want a hug. You know the same as me, except that's not how I get them.

Speaker 2: 16:07

I get them by playing the piano but with this, with the social media I know you've sworn off it, but do you think? Well, you do think, because I've heard you say that your behavior changed because of it and you or maybe not even your behavior it was changing you and making you much less connected. And I don't want to go down the whole alley of is it because of economics and is it because the algorithms are optimizing for?

Speaker 2: 16:37

extreme behavior and lizard brain activity and we're going back to those old systems which actually work if you're running away from a lion, but they don't if you're trying to have a civilized conversation. I wonder in 100 years' time what we will think about what the hell we were doing when we created the possibility or the technology for everyone to have access to information and facts.

Speaker 3: 17:02

Isn't it amazing how differently you feel about it, I mean, like 100 years from now? How differently do you feel about it now, from 2010? Like because you know, even when you look at the Arab Spring and stuff, we're like it's happening. We have created a thing that connects people and the people can rise up.

Speaker 2: 17:22

And it's democratic, no matter what place you hold. Well, you know, I guess. Yeah, you need Wi-Fi.

Speaker 3: 17:28

You give humans access to all the information in the world. The vast majority, all of us can't parse it. P-a-r-s-e parse it.

Speaker 3: 17:37

We can't do the work. The algorithms make it seem simple enough for us to get our heads around. But it's not simple, it's unbelievable. It's like there are experts within niches, within niches, that still find this stuff hard to pass. And not only do we think because of how we access it, wikipedia or our social media page, not only do you think I've got a beat on this, but we think, oh, and I can express my opinion in a tiny little like what will we think in 100 years? Not only about the fact that we thought all the information all the time would be all good for all people, but that we thought, oh, now let's communicate through text. No, it's decontextualizing. It takes away our humanity. It makes us, it takes out nuance by necessity.

Speaker 2: 18:30

It takes out irony.

Speaker 3: 18:31

It takes out tone and, more than anything, every time I see my words in print, even when I don't do it myself, I go well. That's not how it sounds when I say it, even though it's my words, Like the way I swear I go well, it's fucking silly. And you read it and it looks like I'm saying it's fucking silly, Like it's like it takes out, and it takes out our eye contact and our natural empathy, the fact that we're sitting in a room and can smell and touch each other like the monkeys that we are.

Speaker 2: 18:59

I'm assuming that's where this podcast is going Absolutely monkeys that we are. Um, I'm assuming that's where this podcast is going. We end up, we end up on top of one. I'm already.

Speaker 3: 19:06

Yeah, squishing closer. Yeah, that's right. I think I just felt your foot rub against my back um, like, like what?

Speaker 3: 19:11

why did we ever think I thought this is amazing? Why did we ever think the sloganization of the world's most complex information is is going to make it better? It's, oh my god. It really feels like we were fools to think it was. But but I know I've said this stuff in public before people go it saved my life. You know I'm I'm not able-bodied, and I found my community. And you go yeah, oh yeah. Of course, all that's still good, and yet it feels, sum total, I think 100 years from now, we'll wish we hadn't done it or we'll have found a new one of the biggest criticisms of it is that it robs our attention right.

Speaker 2: 19:49

We are unable to concentrate or to focus more than a few minutes and and with each increased platform they monetize that. Then it becomes 15 seconds that you watch a video for, instead of whatever you know youtube if you have the patience to go all 15.

Speaker 3: 20:05

Yeah, yeah and so?

Speaker 2: 20:07

and what is intelligence, or what's deep thought, or what's deep communication? It's about how you apportion your attention what? Yeah, what you prioritize and what you think, what you filter out as irrelevant and what you keep and remember as important, relevant, helpful. So whether we will even be interested in what happened 100 years before, whether we will even be looking at history, because the obsession with now, yeah, and with the latest bit of information on a google search takes us further and further away from our context.

Speaker 1: 20:41

Sorry, but the point that you're making is basically we're energetically depleted by the onslaught right. And the onslaught in your words also leads to apathy, and so either you're apathetic or you have some fire in your belly, and even you have fire in your belly. The most informed generation that we are right now allows you to find whatever facts you need to make your point, to support your fire and not only that, it also allows you to find 250,000 people who are just as deranged as you are, or arranged, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 21:11

What's the opposite of arranged. As you are to go and do the flat earther thing.

Speaker 3: 21:18

There's so many avenues of conversation here and it is sort of the conversation of our time and it feels hard to know what the levers are that we can pull or the dials that we can turn.

Speaker 3: 21:33

I feel like the next generation will turn them.

Speaker 3: 21:37

I think we got sideswiped. We're the guinea pig generation and my age group, the people who grew up digital free that's all of us really and then somewhere in our late teens or 20s were the first people to get this stuff. And then in our 30s, when we were politically active and stuff had these tools, I feel like we inevitably got it all wrong and got really anxious about it and agitated. And perhaps this is a slight digression, but a big thing we did because we're moral creatures is realize now we can see the pain and suffering of everyone all over the world, which we could always do, but just on the Saturday paper and then international pages or, you know, on BBC World or whatever. But now all day, every day, you've got a thing that you're addicted to looking at, that helps you feel the pain of the world, and that I thought that that would be good because it would increase empathy and increase what I think of as the boundaries of our concern, away from the small, away from the people like us.

Speaker 2: 22:53

Empathetic circle yeah, that's right. Our circle of concern yeah, circle of empathy.

Speaker 3: 22:59

So you think that would be good, right? As a person interested in ethical philosophy, I'm like, wow, here we go. This is great. But actually what I believe and I've observed in myself, is that I can't function. It's not apathy, it's what's the word.

Speaker 1: 23:14

Overwhelming being drained. Yeah like petrified, paralyzed.

Speaker 3: 23:19

Paralyzed, that's the word. Not only do you have access to all the pain in the world, but the voices that the algorithm promotes are the most in pain, the people who feel the angriest about their place in the world. And because we're empathic creatures, they're the ones we retweet or we share, because we're like look at this poor person and then that they represent their particular minority group that I don't know it's. It's very hard to talk about this without sort of offending someone, but whatever let's talk about, um, just talk about queer people, because it's a relatively not hot topic in 2024. Ginger head people, ginger head people, right, gingerbread man.

Speaker 3: 24:00

So the people who are most bullied will become the spokespeople of ginger head people everywhere you know, and that's good. It's good that I know that they exist. But actually, if all day long I'm hearing about the distress of the world, it definitely makes me paralysed and makes you think, well, I can't help. This is a shit show. I'm just going to the world's burning. I'm just going to do nothing, except maybe every now and then say something that shows that I'm right thinking not wrong thinking.

Speaker 3: 24:41

And at its worst, what it does is it makes you not do your main job with the small circle of concern circle of empathy to be present for your children and your partner and your old mom and dad and your, your, your friends and the the old lady down the street who whose husband's just died, and the slightly wider community of your kid's school or your sports team. I think it takes away from that stuff. Anxiety stops you being a really good person in your community.

Speaker 1: 25:14

So at its worst, at its worst.

Speaker 3: 25:17

not only are you not helping all the the the crying, suffering people at the world, but you're not even helping your friends and family. So I wonder about that Do you think that's just me imposing my feeling? There's no doubt, when I'm caught up in some painful thing online, I'm not as good a person as the people I love.

Speaker 1: 25:37

I think you're focusing on the painful only. I'm actually thinking that a lot of people have these ostentatious excesses that they post as well, and that also makes you feel bad because you don't live that life right it's. It's actually also the flip side when we're on instagram and when we're looking at all this stuff, so that's right, it says something about what I follow I use social media I used social media to deliberately expand myself.

Speaker 3: 25:59

That's why that's what I thought was cool about it back in the day in 2010. And I've suffered from that ever since. But it did expand my consciousness, which is great. But that thing, by the way, how dumb are we. That thing you said about comparing yourself to others like the fridge magnet Buddhism, the most bumper sticker, wisdom, that comparison to others is the key to unhappiness, like we've known that for thousands of years. And then we created these things that just do that even though it's a new creation invention.

Speaker 2: 26:37

At the same time, human beings have always been both competitive and supportive. And it goes back to your original point of being able to be two things at the same time, of being able to be contradictory or hypocritical, that you know. I could love my sister and want the very best for her, but I could still feel very competitive with her. And why is why? I mean we're going back into the binary thing.

Speaker 1: 27:01

That's what it's made us do right.

Speaker 2: 27:03

It's made us not to have complicated package. We have to have package loyalties, don't we?

Speaker 3: 27:13

If we believe this and this, and this yeah, I call it a suite of beliefs. Like I've never understood why people think oh well, I'm a person who believes in climate change, therefore I have to believe something about gender, it's like well they're very different issues, you don't need to sign up to the whole suite you can take each one versus set menu.

Speaker 2: 27:31

Yeah, exactly, but um you that to your thing around being affected deeply by what's going on in the world at large, or your version of someone wearing very expensive shoes that someone else can't afford. It's still all the cheapest way to grab attention. These things are the most shocking, the most extreme versions.

Speaker 2: 27:54

These are the best shoes, or these are the best yeah and interestingly, why do we all have exactly the same products at a time when there's more on the market than there's ever, ever been in the history of mankind? Why is it that we all have exactly the same products at a time when there's more on the market than there's ever ever been in the history of mankind? Why is?

Speaker 3: 28:05

it that we all gravitate towards exactly the same things and we all wear the same.

Speaker 3: 28:10

Lots and lots of surprising people love taylor's I don't want to end up on a list, uh, that the swifties put us on with yeah, yeah, that's the worst thing you can do be careful what you say about taylor swift this is so I I like that you sort of brought it back around to like the idea that there's either free speech or oppression of free speech as if it's a binary like. I have talked about this on another podcast recently about um, how soaking up the pain of the world is not in itself a moral act. You know Like it's not ethical to observe.

Speaker 2: 28:46

It doesn't make you a better person.

Speaker 3: 28:47

It doesn't make you a better person to say I am looking at videos of kids in Gaza all day. It doesn't make you a better person, right? And it certainly doesn't if it damages your ability to be a good person to the people around you. And I got that, was you know one of? I mean I get you know shit all the time. I mean it sucks, but I'm not whining, it's just you know, some people heard that and just said this normal stuff. You privileged white bloke telling us we should close our eyes to the and I'm like okay, it's just not one or the other.

Speaker 3: 29:22

You don't either have your head in the sand completely or you spend all day just paralyzed by the pain. You're observing, but observing it nevertheless, it's. It's just about how do we adjust to this new reality, how do you make sure? So there's a few things we one. One is distress, one is, um, jealousy, or the comparison to people who have more than you, and the other is attention. Are the three things we've touched?

Speaker 3: 29:49

on the last few minutes and and they're all addictive, you know. It's addictive to trauma scroll. In a weird way it does something to our brains. It's addictive to look at people who have lives you want, even though it hurts your feelings. And it is addictive to have attention and to feel connected and it's a myth that we're connected.

Speaker 3: 30:09

But me, getting off social media eight months ago, I felt sort of bereft. I felt like I'd been set adrift and I wasn't a little bit I'm exaggerating, for I felt a little bit like well, well, now I'm more present, I'm reading a novel, I'm sitting in my lounge room, I'm waiting for my kids to come and talk to me.

Speaker 3: 30:30

And actually I just feel sad that I don't know. I don't know. Is my friend publishing a book? Is someone going to a play tonight? Like I'm out? And it's really hard and I wish I could manage my addictions more, but I've learned I can't, so I have to be out and it does mean I don't I, you know that's how we communicate because I notice, oh, you don't post much, but so many people I love in the world and I have friends all over the world that I now I don't know what they're up to yeah and it's sad, but my mental health was just not coping yeah, or at least it

Speaker 1: 31:04

was not making me happy I think a lot of the things that you're mentioning have something to do with energy management. And it's funny you can go on a treadmill and really expend a lot of energy, but you will be more energized by it afterwards.

Speaker 3: 31:17

So this, this energy management, has nothing to do with calorie burn or with free with friction or with avoidance of like hardship or any of that.

Speaker 1: 31:26

It's actually a very separate concept and I relate very much to what you're saying. It's like figure out how you can manage your energy, whatever the walls that you have to set up or all the restrictions and the limits that you have to set up.

Speaker 3: 31:40

Admit you're not bottomless emotionally, intellectually. Admit you're not bottomless Emotionally, intellectually and physically. You're not bottomless, exactly.

Speaker 1: 31:45

And figure out how you are not an automaton in the games that people have created for you and just participate in them willy-nilly, not knowing what's actually going on. It's unconscious addiction, exactly, and once you break out that, you find the constraints. Maybe you will get back on social media, maybe not. Whatever it is that works for you that allows you then to be empathetic, to slowly open this circle again or to widen as much as you feel comfortable, but at least to not be an automaton, not be somebody who's wasted your life and you said why are we all wearing the same stuff?

Speaker 3: 32:19

That's. The other thing is, I'm meant to be an artist and I'm online. Whatever the hot thing is whether we're teasing an australian break dancer because she was weird, or whether we're saying something about carmela and brat summer or like. It's so homogenous this we thought this was going to be our access to everything, but it's homogenizers and I, as an an artist, find myself thinking how can I talk about this stuff in my art? The answer is that's not what I'm good at. I don't want to comment on pop culture. I never did. Even when I was a comedian, I was doing stuff about ethical philosophy, you know.

Speaker 3: 32:56

God and sex and death. That's the other problem for me. Some people have jobs, they work nine to five and then they get on and they do an engagement. For me, there's nothing stopping me just being online all day and that's not the brain space. I need to make beautiful stories that make people feel connected as humans and and increase the empathy of the planet, which is my job.

Speaker 2: 33:19

Maria Popova, who we interviewed. She was sharing that essentially, we do all of this so that we don't have to stare into the abyss, that it's just a way of being constantly distracted, and I know for me that that's true. If some connection with being online, I have to have an intention, and that's an overused word.

Speaker 2: 33:41

But if I'm going on to find something out and I find that thing out and then I hop off, if I then go into a wormhole of this leads to that, leads to that, leads to that, and I come away, as you say, more depleted than energized or there's nothing new that's been generated I know that I have to get out yeah, but but I think that's because, to your point, when you were little and playing, you did get bored and you did have to make stuff up and you did have to imagine things and create and invent, whereas I know from my youngest son I mean he, he fortunately uses some of it as a creative tool, but he himself just gets completely swallowed up by it.

Speaker 1: 34:28

He thinks it's being creative you'd be 100 consumer, not creator, and as a child you can. Actually, when you grew up without these things, you were creator for a large part, rather than just consumer and now it's just coming from all. It's just the passivity yeah, oh yeah, exactly yeah. That's the consumer, so um I.

Speaker 3: 34:49

I think my kids are okay and I think it's because they're just wired that way, like my daughter just doesn't like it. Probably she's spectrum-y, so she finds the social complexity of endless Because most of the kids spend most of their time just on chat groups. They've got different problems right and the boys tend to spend time just watching YouTube vids. That feeds them another YouTube vid, that feeds them another YouTube vid. But the main thing Sarah and I have done is just said how do you feel? Note how you feel. Note how you feel. We've been saying it for years and Casper now at 15, is like oh, I got stuck, I watched YouTube for an hour. How do you feel? I'm just shit, I'm going to go for a run. You know, we think they might. We, this conversation we're having people.

Speaker 2: 35:32

I think, they might.

Speaker 3: 35:33

We, this conversation, we're having people of our generation with all our anxiety about it, we are handing it to our kids and they will grow up knowing it's poison and they might find some solutions that we can't quite conceive of yet.

Speaker 2: 35:45

We have a friend who's doing a digital diet proposal around how to manage your social media and your content diet and just keeping a diary about what it is you feel when you've checked into and which platforms make you feel which way and how much curation you do, essentially, rather than it controlling you yeah, you control your, I think I also have a different experience of it, and I'm sure you guys know a lot of people like this and I, because I'm basically a centrist, as in, I'm um, you know both sides.

Speaker 3: 36:20

Ism is a is an insult these days, but I'm like, oh no, that's, that's, that's the principle of charity, that, like, obviously there are. I'm not drawing moral equivalence by all, then. I'm not a post-modernist, I'm. All ideas are just ideas like that. I definitely think there are good ideas, but there's not evil people, it's just people have come to their ideas through a different route. Um, because I'm a determinist, I don't believe there's such thing as evil, and so, of course, I'm always going to be interested in these two screaming extremes and the dysfunction of that, and so over the years, I with the exception, uh, over the years I've said things that I think are conciliatory, and because the extremes are populated by very, very upset people for their reasons, I've had enough times on social media and sometimes it spills out into the press, in Australia, particularly, where suddenly I'm being told I'm something that I do not recognise, and this is why shouting at people you disagree with never works, because if you say to someone you're a fascist, they go oh, I'm not a fascist, then they will never listen to you again.

Speaker 3: 37:28

And I've been called all sorts of things in early years by the far right and in latter years by this thing we call the far left. And I now, when I look at comments on any of my pages, I find myself literally in fight or flight. And I'm not an anxious person by nature, it's not been a problem in my life. I mean, there are things I do that you know, like if you have to get in front of 10,000 people and do your job, it kind of teaches you not to sweat the small stuff. But the reason I got off really is because I found myself sweating, physically sweating, just looking at going through the hundreds and hundreds of people saying beautiful things about my work, waiting for the one who calls me or whatever you know, and I just went. I can't, I'm scared of the internet?

Speaker 2: 38:17

you know, have you read a book by david mcrainey called how minds change?

Speaker 3: 38:21

oh, how minds change. As in how you can change mine, yeah, and how to?

Speaker 2: 38:27

it feeds into exactly what you were saying, that the yelling at someone or criticizing them or making them feel small and dreadful has the opposite effect. It consolidates whatever they are thinking and makes them more tribal and makes them only find the people that believe and think the same things that they do and never ever be open to another, Whereas listening and finding one thread or one strand of this sort of Venn diagram, crossover between you and that person, and we've known this the Greeks knew this crossover between you and that person, and we've known this.

Speaker 2: 38:57

The grapes knew this. Yeah, you know, and that's why I wonder if it's possible to change our lives online. Someone was talking the other night about being charged or fined for posting things that weren't true. There was some kind of mechanism by which you would think twice, or that there was a penalty of some kind that we need to legislate.

Speaker 3: 39:20

We need to. I mean, how do you do it? I mean, you can't even find donald trump for lying, and that should be a system. But the untruths I see online are all the time, are the untruths of all the logical fallacies. They're not necessarily lies. They're like, you know, being a black woman in america be like this and being a white man, be like this, and and they're jutted up against each other and you're like well, I get the message behind that and there's a truth underneath it, but that's not. That's not data, that's so. It's like whatever that logical fallacy is there, it's's just the constant, like memeification of complicated things.

Speaker 2: 39:58

And that's one of the things that McRaney talks about is belief systems and strongly held values are never based upon facts, and data is emotional and you know around faith and, increasingly, the faith is identity.

Speaker 3: 40:14

Like so, when you challenge someone's identity, they will never come to you when and when you say, tell them they're a bad person for holding the beliefs that they hold sacred game over. It's completely gone and I understand that I'm in such a privileged position I can entertain these thoughts. Some people are hurting so bad. I understand that they will never be able to sit in an uncomfortable conversation with someone with whom they disagree. But don't pretend it's virtuous. It's understandable, but it is not virtuous and that's perhaps the thing I find most insane.

Speaker 3: 40:48

Making is my intelligent friends, some of whom are as privileged as me, making a virtue of this thing. I understand you're angry. I understand that you feel like you need to express your anger, but don't pretend that makes you good, because I've said to people, if I could show you data that all your online behavior is making your mission unsuccessful, you are actually making it worse for the people you're trying to. If I could show you that data, would you change your behavior? Your behavior and they're like well, you can't show me that data. I'm like I can. I absolutely promise you if the last 10 years has taught us anything in the politicization of america, the fact that boys are going right wing and girls are going left wing like it's all making it all worse.

Speaker 3: 41:34

I'm asking you could you control your feelings if I showed you it's making it worse for you and your tribe and they can't answer the question because they feel like it's non-overlapping magisteria. They're like these are my feelings. Why are you talking about their outcomes? And I'm like it's all about the outcomes. What you say has either utility or not, and do you want to fix stuff or not? And are you able to swallow your feelings if your feelings are doing damage? And mostly the answer is stop policing my tone or whatever.

Speaker 1: 42:06

But the problem is that what they're expressing there is a religious belief. For them, it's no longer an idea that can be interrogated from different perspectives. It's something that's bound up in their identity, and anything you say about your identity is, by definition, right to you.

Speaker 2: 42:22

Well, ideas and identity have got conflated. Exactly. They're completely conflated, which is the issue.

Speaker 1: 42:27

What is the panacea to all this from the perspective of the 22nd century? Looking at the 21st, what?

Speaker 3: 42:33

did we do to fix it back then? More podcasts century. Looking at the 21st, what?

Speaker 1: 42:39

did we do to fix it back then?

Speaker 2: 42:39

more podcasts, maybe more people pontificating on moderacy, but moderately applied I think, um, how much do you feel you have to police yourself? You talk a lot about policing people, policing one another's opinions and how they get affronted by being told what they can and can't say. But in this current zeitgeist sorry to overuse the word but as a guy now, how much do you feel you're having to police what you say, but not just what you say, what you allow yourself to feel, and I mean this as as a male.

Speaker 3: 43:19

I feel like I police myself a lot, I self censor a lot, but I don't think all of that is bad. I really genuinely understand that over the last 20 years I have learnt and taken on board the idea that voices of authority have looked a certain way for a very long time, that the dominant paradigm of authority has been white and male and heterosexual, and so I take the note. So you turn the volume down on that. I really have taken the note. You turn the volume down on that. I really have taken the note. I understand that in the arts we've really put straight white guys to the side really in a slightly zero-sum way to promote other voices. And I get all that and I'm not here to defend straight white guys. They were the blokes I got the hell away from as soon as I left school. I am not a defender of my type and that is my great privilege is I don't feel like I have a type and I understand that's because by being the neutral case I get to say I'm tribeless and I get how much of a privilege that is and I'm genuinely tribeless, like I don't even feel like defending artists or white blokes or blokes or hetero people at all. I feel like defending others most of the time. That's the good bit. I'm happy to take the note. However, I am this guy with this brain and I have lots of thoughts and a platform.

Speaker 3: 44:54

I believe an artist's job is to put good ideas into the world. And I'm not just an artist, I'm a bit of a you know, public chatter and I think I put good ideas into the world. And this book I've just put out, I think, does that and says that that's what the job is. What's the name of the book? The book's called you Don't have to have a Dream Advice for the Incrementally Ambitious. Called you don't have to have a dream advice for the incrementally ambitious, but it has exactly that. Our job as artists is to put good ideas into the world and to thoroughly examine what good ideas are and shape them into beautiful things. Not just, but not just chuck out our feelings, but to really look at our feelings and shape them into stuff. That's, that's an artist's job. Right to reflect, or well, you say reflect.

Speaker 2: 45:36

So that's the opposite of, not the opposite, but it's different from reacting, which is what most of us are doing at the moment yeah, sure, reflect.

Speaker 3: 45:43

Yes, I mean there's some good art that is spontaneously reactive, but mostly good artists take it away and chew on it and, you know, mold it and and try and edge the conversation one way or another, or just hold a mirror up, but either way they're contemplative things. The policing I do is just like I would like to talk about the hard things, and I know that it won't sound good coming out of my mouth. I mean just talking about the problem of boys at the moment. I mean just talking about the problem of boys at the moment. I mean, bless Katlin, you know, she turned her eye to boys and realized that boys are in trouble.

Speaker 3: 46:21

I have really strong feelings about us just quietly blocking our ears and closing our eyes while boys drift right and the idea that men are horrible, right Like male sapiens, are dangerous things, and we think we want to make women's lives better, that the men that hurt women are all men with no self-esteems and no pride and no purpose, and we seem to think the way of fixing that is to give more men, less pride and less purpose. We seem to think, oh well, men are, uh, uh, women are outstripping men in education, in high school in america and in university by 20% now.

Speaker 1: 46:57

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 46:58

And men's jobs are being taken by machines and all the old narratives of maleness, the military nationhood, religion, strength, you know, chivalry they've all been deconstructed by postmodernism in a way that I would have always said is good, because I've never liked masculine masculinity. All my friends are queer and arty um, not, they're not all queer and arty, but you know that that's my world and yet I've it's become very clear to me that this is a conversation that people have to get and I literally say to my friends you know, I talk to women, especially women with sons, and they're like oh, oh, yeah, we're really worried and I'm like it can't be me saying this. I will not. It won't seem like it's coming, it will seem like I'm protecting my tribe.

Speaker 1: 47:45

No, yeah.

Speaker 3: 47:46

But so.

Speaker 1: 47:47

I police, and it's better than Andrew Tate saying it.

Speaker 2: 47:50

Well, yes arguably, but I think it's incumbent upon women to talk about it, or at least I do. It's something I talk about a lot, yes which is, in in a very micro way, changing the way we look at the domestic space or the responsibility for rearing children and the sort of respect that that garners in society if we can.

Speaker 3: 48:12

I know, I know we won't.

Speaker 2: 48:13

But if can elevate that, if we can make whoever's doing that job feel proud and feel like they have a high status and they get social reward for it and it's not considered or deemed to be insignificant, the guys that are doing it are going to feel better about doing it and that it's a viable alternative, as are the women who are doing it Exactly.

Speaker 2: 48:31

But I mean and this is, I'll get lots of shit for saying this but there's a lot of women and a lot of them are my friends who won't allow space in the domestic arena for the men that they're with. They will condemn and criticize the way that they do things and their approach to things, because it's not the way that the woman in the house wants things done. And if you transferred that to a workplace, that would be litigious.

Speaker 3: 48:56

But there is no body protecting male rights from being told they use how they change a nappy or how they, whatever, whatever it is, and this, no.

Speaker 2: 49:08

This seems small and trivial, but I think this is how it starts. Yeah, if we change those little micro changes, those changes in attitude and making that an equal space where both parties opinion counts and that one person isn't preternaturally disposed to doing it and the other one is, it isn't. If we want to change things and not make the version of masculinity or femininity this tiny, narrow thing that we have to try and fit into, we've got to be imaginative amen.

Speaker 3: 49:37

So because, um, we all have to go off to our next things. As you were saying that, I was thinking it's the same over and over again. I feel like the the lesson that maybe we need to learn is that we feel like a tiny voice in a massive, massive, massive, screaming chasm of voices and we are, but unfortunately, what emerges is a gestalt. You have to believe that how you talk and act in the world and online matters, and if I were to beg people to put a filter on how they talk, it would be a utilitarian filter. Yes, I understand saying men you have to do better or whatever is how you feel when there's a terrible crime done to a woman ever, but the question is does that do anything? And is it possible that saying saying men you have to do better is actually doing? Is is re-tribalizing men and women back to before?

Speaker 3: 50:41

creating panic the, the, the revolution of the 70s, 80s and 90s, where we thought you know we're more the same. Are you saying it's your fault, you people over there? Is that the best way forward? I don know, and I'm not trying to police that particular thing. I'm just saying we need to know that we are contributing. Like, everyone has a voice and even if it's a tiny one, if everyone thinks, will this actually be an act of reaching out to try and change the mind of the person I disagree with, or am I just performing my rage?

Speaker 2: 51:15

I think it's the most important thing and I teach my kids this but I don't even know if it's changing minds as much as building a bridge that you can cross back and forth from.

Speaker 3: 51:24

That's right, and you have to be open to having your mind changed, that's the other thing Exactly.

Speaker 1: 51:29

That's a great point to end it on. Thanks so much for being here, Tim.

Speaker 3: 51:32

It's a pleasure. Let's do it again sometime, when I'm not rushing.

Speaker 1: 51:35

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3: 51:51

Bye.