SPEAKER_07: 0:15

Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Our guest this week is Alain Le Boton. Alain is a London-based writer and psychotherapist. His first book, Essays in Love, was published when he was 23 years old and went on to sell 2 million copies. His books emphasize philosophy's relevance to everyday life. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life, Status Anxiety, and the Architecture of Happiness. He's written 15 books under his name and many more under the School of Life imprint, which have become bestsellers in 30 countries.

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He is not only a writer, but also an organizer of ideas and institutions. He founded the School of Life in 2008, which is dedicated to help people lead more emotionally intelligent lives through classes, books, therapy, films, articles, games, their app, and their podcast. Their website says everything they do supports self-knowledge, better relationships, and brings a calm to modern life. His public profile emphasizes his desire to bridge intellectual ideas into our lived experience. We talk about how two and a half friends is plenty.

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A more rigorous approach to friendship.

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Different kinds of friends. From the teasing to the micro.

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Platonic sleepovers, one-way friendships, enemies of friendship.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40

The bravery of being weird.

SPEAKER_07: 1:42

Good substitutes for friends.

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Let's make friends.

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Hi, this is Amida Shadari.

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And Natasha McElhone. And with us today is Alain DeBottle.

SPEAKER_07: 1:56

Hey Anna. Hello. How are you? Good. Very good. Thanks for coming here, despite uh fire trucks outside. Tube Strike. Tube Strike as well. Yeah, true, true, true. You have uh written a little book here. It's called The Secrets of Successful Friendships. So we'll talk about friendships today. Maybe let's start off by looking at the different types of friendships that you define within. I'll rattle them off here. Balancing, teasing, occasional thinking, silly old gangs micro. Pick a few that you like, your favorites, and then explain to the listeners what it's all about.

SPEAKER_04: 2:30

I like the idea of balancing friendship, which is that you know you need a friend who draws out of you a kind of latent side that you know is a little bit recessive in you. I um there's a wonderful film called Sideways. Oh yeah. Yeah, of course. Love that film. And um that's a film about friendship. And the two characters, Miles and is it Jack? Um I don't know. Something like that. I think he's called Jack. You know, they're very different. One is kind of macho, one is nerdy, and and yet they obviously see the point of one another. And there's something very beautiful about that, that you know, there's someone there who brings you something in a friendship that you can't access on your own. You know, I would love more friends who were respectful of my introverted pessimism, but could also pull me in another direction by constantly taking the piss out of me. Uh as and you know, because I identify with with the Miles character in uh in Sideways as possible. I have to rewatch that after nice.

SPEAKER_07: 3:31

Which one of these friendships do you think we underestimate the importance of in the Western world right now? Do you think it's a balancing one or any other of the types?

SPEAKER_04: 3:41

Well, look, I mean, let's start from the beginning. Yeah, sure. I think that we generally have a really tricky time assessing the value of friendship and then putting in place things that can properly deepen friendship. So we leave friendship a little bit to chance. And we also imagine that anyone decent has friends. It's it's it's odd. There's a kind of patience for people who don't have a relationship. We'll go, oh, you know, that's unfortunate. And there's this kind of pity for the single in a way, a certain level of you know, understanding. But the friendless, I mean, it's more shame. You know, if you say I'm single, nah. If you say I'm friendless, that's really tricky. That's what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02: 4:20

Well, it's contagious, isn't it? There's a fear of contagion.

SPEAKER_04: 4:23

It's not like there must be something wrong. Because I guess the idea is it's not that hard to have a friend. So if if you don't have a friend, there must be something wrong with you, as opposed to the reality, which is, as in uh single romantic life, you may simply have quite recondite standards, um for better or for worse. Um it'll probably make your life difficult. But but those standards, if laid out, aren't necessarily squalid. I mean, if you're if you're really searching for a friend who combines, you know, psychological perspicacity with a sort of generous sense of humour, with a kindness, with a sympathy for the arts, with a you know, nuanced political uh worldview, etc., you'll probably be lonely. Um or at least you might be uh at certain points. Yeah. So we do have a hard time ascribing to friendship um the value that it it it could deserve. Um You know, I think in the book I say that in different periods of history, people have taken friendship more uh seriously. At certain points, you know, you you would uh be tolerated for treating a friend as we would nowadays treat a lover, as an incredibly valuable part of your life, someone who uh you know you would uh you would tell them that you loved them, that you weren't having sex with them, but you really loved them. And you would be heartbroken if they went away, or if you didn't receive a letter from them when you know you were a part, or whatever it is. Um that sounds peculiar. So we we value friendship, but we also have a fairly tepid view of what it is to be a friend, particularly men. There is a gender here, uh gender issue here, which I think we should get onto because it's a ticklish issue.

SPEAKER_05: 6:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 6:06

Um I like what you addressed in the book around holding someone to account that perhaps one of the things that we fail to do in contemporary life is call someone to their highest self or uh bring up their transgressions or misdemeanours or I I don't use the word judge, but maybe it is judge, say that behaviour was beneath you.

SPEAKER_04: 6:32

Well, I mean, I don't know. I'm not a fan of simply saying that. I think that all criticism has to be allied to redemption and and and growth. Um so I think I think people do sometimes call each other out, but they they tend to sort of say, you know, that person's a bad person, you know, that person's failed in some way, and you know, cancel culture is all about pointing out how awful people are. But it doesn't really give them a narrative of redemption. So I think that friendship is a good friend could and should be able to say, you know, some tricky things to you. But but the key point is because they are wrapping it up in so much support, they're so on your side, um, that they're able and they're allowed to do things.

SPEAKER_07: 7:16

Because if we think of the teasing friendship, by the way, I think falls into that category that you have, right? It's it's it's essentially trying to show your your inadequacies in a in a playful manner that is still supportive in a way. Um but yeah, there's also moments where there needs to be an intervention. I just think what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00: 7:33

For me, what I miss about not being married is being called up for stuff I've got wrong. And I love, because family of origin, you tend to fall into the same patterns and you have the same role in that. But if a friend who's invested in you and you and their lives, who's able to witness um a passage of time and remind you or mirror reflect what you said before and now how you are, by the way, we're allowed to change, of course. But being in a friendship where you're you're called out if you want to eat.

SPEAKER_04: 8:05

I'm happy to call you out anytime.

SPEAKER_00: 8:07

Can you do it more?

SPEAKER_04: 8:08

I wanted to run a question I think is in the book, but we certainly use it at the School of Life a lot, which is that you know, what would you what do you need to be teased about, you know, if in a teasing friendship, insofar as warm teasing gets at flaws of character. So, Natasha, what would you like to be teased about?

SPEAKER_00: 8:26

But the thing by a loving thing. But the thing about teasing is it can go into banter and bad nage, which I love, and therefore not really be taken as a criticism or constructive criticism. It could just be battered away as, oh, they were just being funny. Whereas actually being challenged.

SPEAKER_04: 8:42

Yeah, but oh wait, but teasingly, lovingly challenged, what would you like to be challenged about?

SPEAKER_00: 8:46

Being lazy.

SPEAKER_04: 8:48

Okay, interesting. Yeah. We've had conversations about that. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 8:52

Yeah, but you just kindly say that I'm not.

SPEAKER_04: 8:55

Ah, what would you like to be teased about? Um being too much in my head. Okay. Yeah. I'd like to be teased for being too anxious. Yeah. Yeah. So I wouldn't say anxious. Yeah. And it and it's very nice when a friend does that. Yeah. You know. Yeah. I agree.

SPEAKER_00: 9:11

So Can I ask you a question about your formative friendships? So it doesn't have to be school, but as a child, did you find it difficult to make friends or not?

SPEAKER_04: 9:21

I never found it difficult to make allies, but I found it difficult to make friends. I I got quite early on what you needed to do to get people on your side. Um but that's different from making a real friend. Um but but I did I I mean, I was very friendly with my sister, um, which is not necessarily, you know, you can you can have a sibling but not be friends with them, but I really was friends with my sister. Um and that was a very important friendship to me. And then um since then I've been friends with with uh women, and it's sort of mirrored the relationship I had with my sister in some ways in in adult life, in different periods of life. Um I've tended to have problems having friendships with men for a long time. I I was I was sent to male boarding schools until I was 18, from when I was seven to eighteen. And so I was surrounded by boys, but I didn't find it particularly easy. I didn't they weren't really my kind of people. Um but um so so it's been a sort of challenge of adult life to find my way to men that I can be friends with. But it's slowly getting there. Um Yeah, I think it's I I admire how women seem to do better at friendship. I think. I want to say Go on, Natasha. Maybe that's not true. But I look at I look at I mean, even I said this to somebody the other day, you know, if if women go travelling with a friend, they always share a bedroom.

SPEAKER_02: 10:49

So I I heard you say that.

SPEAKER_04: 10:52

And and and I'm amazed, but maybe you have a perspective on it. Yes, it does. Please, please tell me. You don't want to, you don't share a bedroom.

SPEAKER_00: 10:58

Two things. I think the male boarding school experience is is quite a unique one. And I I have quite a few friends who've been a product of that and have similar, I wouldn't call them difficulties, but you know, learning curves that you describe. I also, probably partly because of my profession, know tons of men who haven't had that kind of upbringing and who find it incredibly easy to be very open and vulnerable with their male friends. My sons, including other friends, share beds all the time when they go on holiday. Okay, that's really interesting. Do you share that?

SPEAKER_07: 11:32

I have, I have. I wouldn't say that I just have a child. Yeah, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_04: 11:36

Okay, I'm glad that we've had a chance to introduce nuances really demystify this a lot. So much nuance here.

SPEAKER_07: 11:42

I do think that this whole boarding school thing, at least in my um, you know, superficial assessment, it feels like uh alpha male dominated kind of arena, and that people who are maybe a little bit weird or different or don't really conform to those standards, feel a little bit left out.

SPEAKER_00: 11:59

And maybe maybe that's well, maybe it's that that's weird. And I think 100%.

SPEAKER_07: 12:03

Yeah, I'm just saying that that's that's the backdrop uh that that is kind of dominant. Uh clearly nobody's weird, everybody's the same in a way.

SPEAKER_04: 12:11

Look, I want to push back. I I don't think that um the sterility of male friendships, insofar as it exists, is simply a a product of English boarding schools. Sure, sure. I think it exists beyond that. I I really do think it exists.

SPEAKER_07: 12:25

You're right. Uh in the sense that we have to we we have to be the providers, we have to be strong, and all that is also part of the narrative, right? So therefore you can't show weakness, etc. Um, I agree. I think that's part of the narrative.

SPEAKER_00: 12:37

And maybe being in the arts means that it attracts people who are uh more in touch with their feelings. Well they're crazier, right? So that's why they went into the arts. They they stopped being crazy. Well they're mavericks, they're outsiders, they're crazy. Yeah, and and so they they seem yeah, from drama school on, um all the guys I've seen rolled around on the floor together, share beds, right? Uh you know, constantly hugging and they're all fun. Okay, why not? Why not? Um no no, but but uh the locker room thing I think is another the the sort of group team friendship. Yeah, I think you talk about sport at some point and um it was not something I was ever a part of. Um but I notice in both genders, I think, is incredibly bonding. And that then goes into team work, right? Whether you're in a play or a film or whether you're in an office or you're working on a project. And and I would just extrapolate from that when you talk about getting together and this restaurants or cafes or sort of sitting across the table from someone rather than engaging in an activity um or cleaning a sink or fixing a car or whatever. I so agree with you. The amazing conversations that happen when you're not looking at one another. Right. The the driving one being classic with the kids, right? Yeah, you're sort of not there in the back and you're both looking um uh outwards. I I think there is something wonderful about yeah, just an act alongside.

SPEAKER_04: 14:07

But but also you know, the pressure of of trying to pull something off with a group of people that you couldn't pull off on your own, and that there's then kind of joint pride. I mean, I'm thinking of um when I was at university, I did I did get involved in drama and there were plays that were put on, but uh I made television uh shows in my twenties that again required a certain sort of group activity. We travel somewhere and then you know pull together something, and it was you know, there were real friendships. They didn't lasted, but at the time they were very intense.

SPEAKER_07: 14:38

I I want to point to one other friendship that I find really interesting, which is a bit of an antithesis of this, is like the micro-friendship that you bring up. I th I find that notion quite profound, and it's like um to define it as a fleeting encounter with another human being, and you see like a glimpse of somebody else's life. I to give one practical example, I went to the Coldplay concert, there were 92,000 people in the stadium, and when Chris Martin's singing yellow, and everybody starts singing at the same time in a chorus, I always start crying. I don't know what overcomes me, but it is this moment of like sharing a micro connectivity with a whole stadium of 92,000 people that I barely know. And and that makes gives me so much, I don't know, energy. And so these macro encounters, these macro encounters in some ways, yeah, that they can save one's life, as you say in the book. Um, do we really kind of culturally maybe undervalue these?

SPEAKER_04: 15:31

Yeah, and we don't set up, I mean, you know, it's fascinating. I was thinking about Oxford Street. When you go to Oxford Street, people go, I hate people. They're everywhere. I just hate crowded people. And you go to a Coldplay concert and everybody's singing yellow, and you think I love people. Yeah. So it's not people that's the issue, it's what bit of them you're accessing. And there are circumstances in which you you're driven to access people's most, you know, um unedifying sides, and others where you're really in connection with something beautiful. Yeah. Um, but it's not it's not the number of people.

SPEAKER_07: 16:00

Um but it's a user experience around that. Yeah, I I I like product design. I think it's the user experience of the city that you can set up in a way. Right. There's this part when you come out of Tottenham Court Road tube station for those people who are not in London, it's like a digital setup where there's like a wall of digital art and there's some seating arrangements around that. And people gather there in this hubbub of mess of London where there's so much going on, hustle, bustle. People actually rest there, they sit down. It old people, young people, every kind of ethnicity, and they stare at this thing and they kind of participate in this like harmonious togetherness in some shape or form, and this like oasis in the middle of time.

SPEAKER_04: 16:38

And I think, you know, people are very, very suggestible. People will do what you tell them to do. So if you tell them, you know, sit on this bench and talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors, they will. And if you say, you know, stare right ahead and don't talk to anyone, they will too. So it it really depends. What are the cues we pick up on cues, which is tantalizing when it comes to discussion of friendship, because it means that if we got better at having the right cues, um, good things might happen. Um the question is, you know, what are what are the right cues? I mean, an average dinner party, people sit down around a table, food is served, and the cue is well, there aren't any cues, it's just talk. But most people settle on certain kinds of topic, house prices, skiing holidays, recent tube strikes, traffic, etc. Um, and but if if there was a cue to say, you know, discuss mortality, aging, dying, um, you know, whatever it is, the big themes, um, you might get into a really important discussion. So we're not uh none of us are resolutely superficial, but we often end up in superficial connections with others. And that's just to do with that we haven't been sort of prepped right. Um but we're we're often aching to, we just don't know how to. So I think a lot of um the arrangement of social life should be towards guiding us towards th the right the right kind of prompts that that can bring us out of ourselves that get us to connect.

SPEAKER_00: 17:57

I think that that goes back though in a way to playing with one with one another and then the conversations that erupt and emerge in the gaps between that playing, even if it's playing uh cards, or people who don't do dinner parties might go and play bingo or or play a sport. I think that um there's something else that you bring up, which is that the transient I live just by cemetery and I walk in it every day, and even if it's someone filling up water to put on the plants on a grave, and there's a nod and there's just a hello, or can I help you with that, or the water's dripping, or whatever. And it it's incredible. It just makes you smile for the next ten minutes. And I don't know what that's called, but you've had a moment, you've had an impact, and they've had an impact on you.

SPEAKER_07: 18:46

Yeah, you're really good at this actually.

SPEAKER_00: 18:48

But but I love I love that, and it it's not a friendship, as you say, but I like sort of micro friendship. I'm not I'm not sure what what my experience of it is, but it it is food for me. It it really helps me through a day. I cannot talk to anyone for days, and if I have that nutrients from that. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04: 19:08

Yeah. So I mean, just to explain to the listeners, I mean, it's just it's really a defense of the small encounter which our culture generally devalues and doesn't really think to throw into uh emphasis, really. Um but but you know, the the meeting in the hallway, the uh the the casual chat. And also there's just there's a way of of making it just slightly deeper than than it could be. Just trying to trying to take it down a level. Also asking things like open questions, which therapists are very keen on, you know, not did you have a good weekend, but how was your weekend?

SPEAKER_00: 19:40

But I guess what I'm trying to get to is it's counter to the dinner party where it's expected that there's going to be deep connection and deep conversation with people who have things in common with you. The incidental passing of someone and a sort of soul connection or a smile or just a beam of energy between you that is actually sometimes wordless, that cuts through so much artifice. I find words can sometimes be the things that you talk a lot about vulnerability and asking direct questions and getting into what you're really feeling. I feel like we have a surplus of that at the moment online, in social media, people constantly posting about their vulnerability, that in fact there's a lot of signalling that takes place in that arena that I don't entirely trust. And I think sometimes when there's no words and there's a kind of stoicism, the the connection can be really profound. But that it you you address this somewhere in the book and it it's just a little moment, and I was like, yes, that's the thing I can identify with.

SPEAKER_07: 20:47

And in uh all the critiques of social media aside, there's a friendship that I think is evolved through the changing media landscape that we have access to right now. I've lived in many different places and kind of have pockets of friends that I've left behind, quote unquote. And they update uh me passively through posting on their Instagram feeds, so say, and I voyeuristically participate in their life in some shape or form. And once a year we meet, so it's the annual friendship rather than the weekly or the monthly. That's how I tier some friends, you know, in a way. And we're the richer for it, you know, in the sense that they value the fact that I'm up to date about the happenings of their life and didn't have to make that much effort in keeping me up to date, right? And and my question sometimes is like, are we wasting time or is this actually really valuable in some way, shape, or form? You know, um, what are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_04: 21:37

Um, I think there is a real value in a friendship that lasts over time, uh, you know, over a long, long time. We talked about the microfriendship, but the end of the opposite is yes the childhood friend. Um, I think we talk about childhood friend that it's you know often childhood friends are not particularly the old friend, yeah. Yeah, the old friend. They're not particularly good friends now, but but their value is that they knew you, you know, a long, long time ago. And so that has terrific resonance the more you age, the more you change. And you keep going back to those touch points, you know, remember that summer when we did so and so, or remember and and they are a link to this earlier version of you that becomes ever more distant but ever more uh fascinating because this it's so different from who you've uh grown into.

SPEAKER_07: 22:22

Yeah. So it's funny, a friend of mine actually just reached out that I know from school times he's coming to London tomorrow. And like last minute just sent me a message says, Hey, let's meet up. And I know exactly what's gonna happen. We're gonna meet up two minutes in, it's gonna be like it was like we've seen each other just yesterday, right? And we haven't seen each other for maybe three years now. Right. And immediately go in there, uh, you go into that state again. And I wonder if that implicitly conveys the value of investing time into a person, right? That that kind of comes back right away. You go back to the same level that you had before.

SPEAKER_04: 22:53

But there are also those friendships where nothing much, you know, you're not necessarily connecting in the here and now. There isn't anything binding you now. It's just that connection with that holiday in Scotland when you were five, or whatever it is. And and you just keep coming back to that thing. And which is perhaps more curious. I mean, yeah, we call it nostalgia, but it's it's also a kind of touch point. It's a it's a um spirit level by which we kind of measure other things that have gone on uh in our lives since.

SPEAKER_00: 23:23

So it's more of a sort of time capsule. Yeah. That than a current, yeah. And I'm aware too that because of the age I am now, that you can lose touch with someone for many, many years. Yeah. And then you meet back up, and necessarily so perhaps to both forge and form your own paths and become who you want to become and not constantly be reminded of the person that maybe you were at school if you don't have a great school time. Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 23:47

And vice versa. And then when you can meet back again, and there's a wariness, of course, like, are we going to fall back into that same freighted? Oh no, there's a whole new path that's possible.

SPEAKER_00: 23:58

So then you do become current friends.

SPEAKER_02: 24:00

I love that.

SPEAKER_00: 24:01

Go on. No, that's right.

SPEAKER_04: 24:02

I mean, in in in some ways, sometimes we do have to leave people behind because they are uh they're too assiduously guarding an earlier version of ourselves which we're no longer interested in. And they can't see past that. You know, they will always see us as the person who was very interested in dogs or religion or um cooking or something. And they and they just go, oh, you know, remember that time when you and you think, I'm really different now. That's not me now anymore. And and yet they perhaps over jealously guard that that earlier memory for whatever their own reasons, they're invested in that version of you. They don't want you to have changed. And then there can be a reason that we might need to leave them behind.

SPEAKER_07: 24:42

Yeah. I remember in elementary school, what was I? I not elementary, I was like uh 15 or something. There was this girl who lost her dad. And then everybody around her just treated her as the girl who lost her dad. And I remember like two years later, I you know, actually became really good friends with her, and she's like, Thankfully, you're not treating me like the girl who lost my dad. I'm no longer in touch with a lot of my other friends anymore because that's just who I've become. So this kind of notion of like having to jettison some friends because they actually hold you back or like put you into a cage that you don't want to be in is is uh quite pertinent. The there's a chapter in the book called The Enemies of Friendship. And I'd love you to talk a little bit about the absence of shared challenges a bit. Natasha touched on it briefly, but uh yeah, maybe explain what that means and what why it's important.

SPEAKER_04: 25:28

Yes, I mean just the idea that um that you've got no battle to fight with with a friend. There's no there's no issue that you're battling against. And and it is terrifically important um in a friendship to have something that you can hate together, fear together. I mean, it's wonderful just to look at the hate. It's just wonderful when you can um realize that you you know hate the same person. I mean, that's how many friendships at school start. It's like, you know, there's that person that you both hate or that teacher.

SPEAKER_01: 25:54

We're talking about alliances, weren't you? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 25:56

And um, and that's a very, very important glue. And in adult life, I mean, I was on a podcast with somebody, and then at the end of the podcast, it's remained utterly nameless. We both discussed that we were suspicious of another podcast host that we both knew, and and we didn't know each other that well. But the the revelation of a shared mistrust in this other anonymous podcaster brought us so close together, partly because we were taking a risk. We were we were sort of saying, this podcaster who's quite famous and distinguished in people that, you know, we both have suspicions. So that's a risk that we're kind of venturing. So I mean, you know, in the olden days, sometimes you know you'd share blood with a friend, you know, you'd cut yourself and you you'd mix your blood with a friend or a lover to show the depth of your devotion. There needs to be sometimes a little bit of a risk in friendship. It's like, can you can you risk revealing a hatred, an unpopular opinion, something that would make you a pariah? Um and that's why the fastest uh I mean the fastest way into friendship could also be dangerous, that's the point, is to tell somebody a secret. Um I mean, to your listeners, we don't want to encourage reckless uh divulging of secrets, but but uh you know to be able to take someone into something that they could use against you is you know a gift. It's really a a gift. Um which which could include, by the way, also doing something embarrassing or again, vulnerability or fighting adversity, I think you mentioned as well.

SPEAKER_07: 27:22

I think that's an important one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 27:24

I I like that you talk about the glue of criticism of something you've for me. That's noticing that two people have noticed the same thing is as important as appreciation, isn't it? Obviously, and yet we we get criticized for doing that. I mean, we're not meant to talk ill of anyone, and we're definitely not meant to bond or gossip or so forth. These things are frowned upon. And it's a thin line, but there's something where you see a glimmer of someone having noticed something you've noticed that really matters to you because it's about integrity or but also if it's a small thing.

SPEAKER_04: 27:58

I mean, I bonded a uh with somebody the other day about windblowers. Mike windblowers? For a leaf. And you know, we're getting into a season of leaf blowing. Yeah, and and she was going, you know, yeah, it's crazy you can disturb the peace of everyone a mile around. And I was going, yeah, it's just unbelievable. You know, she was a writer. I was, you know, we thought, but were writers disturbed by and and it was a very intimate way into a part of her psyche, and we were we had that in common. So sharing irritations, things that you both think I feel that way about loud sports cars that they drive me nuts. Right. So things, but also, you know, it's like neurotic things like sleep habits of certain kinds, like do you need earplugs or what kind of bed do you like, or or things that might can might deem you get you deemed spoilt or difficult, neurotic. You know, it's like, are you like that in the bathroom?

SPEAKER_00: 28:45

When da-da-da, or you know, do you also mind about we do bond so much, but even at a bus stop with a stranger, the late the tardiness of the bus will be this you can have a ferocious conversation about it and care so much more than you really care in order to reach and bond with the other person. And I'm sure they're pretending that they care so much more as well. But then from that, you carry on a conversation on the back.

SPEAKER_04: 29:09

That's where unpopular governments have such a role to play because they're really facilitating fantastic conversations. Trump has been the friend to make a friendship over the dazzling stupidity of others.

SPEAKER_07: 29:23

So let me let me take this point because I think it's an interesting one. The other enemies that you mention is um, you know, envy, shyness, essentially a sense of inferiority. Um and I I feel on this point as well, and maybe that kind of fits into the wider point I'm trying to make, is there's an in group thing that you just described that you bond over. And these in group um I guess instincts are sometimes also not great. We should actually find them to a certain extent. And and you know, in general, I think what you're giving people in this book, and I think in general in your philosophy, which you know I I like to an extent, but I also Want to maybe push back and see how you react is very badly. Really, really badly. We'll see. We'll see if he's still around enough to get this question is asked. Um, so is that you give a lot of people essentially the license to be their worst selves in some shape or form and like to be as weird and crazy as they want to be in a way. And I'm I'm I'm a stoic uh in in many ways, or try to be, right? Or or I also think there is value in regressing to the mean. And to do that by yourself, not that other people have to call you out for this to happen, but there has to be something that happens within you that actually stops you from also just being really uh neurotic to an extent that makes you incapable of connecting with anyone. You mentioned earlier this long list of things that some person may want as friend as a friend, right? And of course they're gonna be lonely because the bar's really high for them to be a friend. Well, maybe they should change a little bit, right? Rather than keeping the bar that high. But these are all things that, you know, I don't know, how do you feel about this whole notion that we need to change ourselves in the process?

SPEAKER_04: 31:01

Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm dazzled and crushed by your your entire world view is is needs to change, really. Um I mean, so you're saying my my I'm I like the idea that I I give license to the weird and the lazy. Um I mean, how do I feel about that? I don't know. I suppose I I see the danger. I mean, I take your point. I see the danger maybe coming from another direction that people are too conformist and too, you know, ashamed really of their true selves. But but of course, one could go and dig out examples of people who've you know drunk the Kool-Aid and gone the other way. They've they've they've yeah, they've they've gone too far. So it's a sort of balance. And um You're right. I guess one always writes for one's own sort of internal economy. So this is really just giving you a map of my own, you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 31:53

That you've been very well behaved historically and now you want to misbehave rebellion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 32:00

Yeah, exactly. That's the struggle for me. Yeah. Rather than, you know, I've been misbehaving and now I need to rediscover Stoicism. I mean, I feel I've come from Stoics. I want to leave the Stoics behind. But I can see their appeal as well. After maybe a dissolute weekend, one thinks that a bit of Marcus Aurelius might set you back on turn. Every day track. Every day.

SPEAKER_00: 32:20

But also, um, how often did you used to ask for help?

SPEAKER_04: 32:26

Um never.

SPEAKER_00: 32:28

I mean and and it's the same for you.

SPEAKER_04: 32:30

Yeah. I guess. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 32:32

And you Well, I've got a controversial repository asking for help thing. Um part of it's witnessed. So to older people who've asked for help who I've witnessed have asked for help and haven't received it when they've really needed it. Um so trying to step into that gap sometimes and being terrified actually about the future when I see what some people go through and how abandoned they are. Um and it's not about changing friends because they don't have that choice anymore. Um, and also how humiliating it is to ask for help and then not receive it. And I've definitely experienced that myself.

SPEAKER_04: 33:11

Um give us some examples of of help that you've asked for and not received.

SPEAKER_00: 33:15

Aaron Ross Powell There's multiple uh people in my mind right now who I've I mean, some of them I've met on the street, honestly, and helped them into a hospital appointment or something because their friend hasn't shown up. I remember that story. Or you you know, various things like that. And so it's very anecdotal and I couldn't really say the backstory and I don't know how they've alienated that. You you know, I don't I don't know the whole and and I'm sure this is the thing, it's all about misunderstanding, isn't it? Probably. Um, or we want to believe that. That's what we do to self-protect. It's sort of I must have asked that person at the wrong moment, or they had six other things going on, or maybe I didn't ask overtly enough. You know, maybe I was too oblique in my request. And that person thinks, oh, that person needs more space, rather than, oh, maybe I should go and help. Right. But asking directly for help, I think, God, I think it's impossible. I think it's so hard.

SPEAKER_04: 34:06

You know, there's a there is this tantalizing thing that we would help out more people if they asked us. I think we can take that as a general rule. Most of us would be readier to help people than we currently do. We're simply not asked. Because occasionally, I'm sure we you have all have this experience, that someone will come forward and say, I'm so sorry. Uh I don't really want to bother you, but can you help me with this thing? And uh at least at times we're really happy to do that thing. It really fits in with our wishes, our aspirations. Maybe it's something that we, you know, we positively enjoy giving help. No, not always. Sometimes people say, you know, can you drive me to the airport at four in the morning? And you're like, oh God, not really, actually. It's really a pain. But sometimes people might say, Can I come see you for a bit of advice? People love giving advice, don't they? So that's that's something you can always happily ask people. But um, even sort of help in in some way. Can you connect me to someone or you know, can you do me a favor with so and so, etc.? And and one's happy to do it.

SPEAKER_00: 35:05

So I think those things are easy. I mean, you're right. We all love to do that and to be the easy thing.

SPEAKER_04: 35:11

But it's not obvious, and it's not necessarily why are we calling them easy? I mean, they're not they're not necessarily always easy, they somehow fit in because they could be relatively arduous, they just somehow fit in with our self-image, our sense of what's meaningful. Uh I mean uh let's think live here as philosophers. Um, you know, what is the difference between a request that you're happy to take on and a request that you're not happy to take on ever? And it may not be size might not be the thing. So for example, if someone says to me, Will you drive me to the airport at four in the morning? I'm not particularly pleased. If someone were to say, Can you at four in the morning come to my house and talk to me really urgently about Aristotle and Freud, I'd be much more inclined. So what's the difference there? The difference is that the person asking for help in the second example is latching onto something that is quite important to me, something where I've invested my own sense of self. And therefore the help they want is is at the core of my own sort of value system. Whereas driving to the airport, I think, well, anyone could do that. It's nothing, nothing particularly for me to do it. So I guess one could, if one arrives at a sort of general principle of friendship and help, it's sort of like if you can manage to ask people for things that are really tied to aligned to their self-value system, etc. Then they might go really very, very far. It's not size, scale, income as well.

SPEAKER_07: 36:38

I think it's a pain and, yeah, as you say, connection to their self-worth in some way. Those those are the two dimensions that would matter to me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 36:44

Because somebody somebody says, look, can you hold the hammer here? Because I'm just I've got a painting to hang. So you think, oh God, this could be anyone. I give it as a robot.

SPEAKER_07: 36:50

Yeah. Um but if they say you have to do this for two weeks to show up every morning at first, then the pain gets quite the pain is too much, right? So as long as it's not super painful and connects to your self-worth.

SPEAKER_04: 37:02

When people say, when people say I want to be helpful. Yes. You know, retired people have this, don't they? They say, they say, I want to be helpful. It's not, it's not for money, I just want to be helpful. It's really saying I want somebody else to recognize the extent of my capacity to make a difference. And that could be quite ongoing, you know, so long as the task is is deep and meaningful, you might want to keep going with it.

SPEAKER_00: 37:23

This is maybe unfair, but and maybe too anecdotal, but the same people seem to ask for help, and the same people seem to never ask for help. I and the same people will expect help from you, and then there's other people who just never ask. And so you're very excited when someone who never asks for help needs help. You kind of will move mountains in order to help them because you want to give them approbation for having reached out and asked, right? Whereas the person who asks every week, you might want to dissuade that slightly and kind of contain it a bit.

SPEAKER_04: 37:57

I decided to give a friend a problem the other day, I think it was a sort of gift. Like I just I gave him uh a pain, a sorrow, a dilemma, and I thought, I wonder how he'll react. He's mad, he wasn't he He was too quick to quite understand what I was giving it, giving to him. He he thought he needed to find an immediate solution to the thing and sort of minimize the problem rather than well, perhaps it's sunk in somewhere. What I really wanted to say was, I trust you with uh sorrow. That's really the message. Uh, and therefore I want to deepen the friendship and I want you to trust me with your sorrows. Difficult to get these things across.

SPEAKER_07: 38:32

Yeah. You have this part in the book as well where you say that uh one friend and that takes us to the friends of friendship is good listening. And that as a matter of fact, when somebody is bearing their soul with sorrows, with issues, that it is uh not so much about finding a solution immediately in that moment in time, but it's actually in sitting there and listening.

SPEAKER_04: 38:54

And you know, it's very fascinating. I I did a training in psychotherapy um during COVID, and one of the most fascinating things about the training was all the arts of listening that psychotherapists have in their toolbox. And they they sound relatively simple, but what they're really inclined, uh encouraged to do is to not shut down people. And there are such surprising ways in which you can shame people into not speaking, and and in the contrary wise, also encourage people to say the sort of tightly forbidden or private things that you know they're aching to tell you. But you know, I I'm I'm constantly struck by how much in terms of micro interventions um people will either help or hinder um the kind of flow of information from one person to another. And we don't notice ourselves doing it. But I was talking, you know, about if you say, have you had a nice weekend rather than how was your weekend? Again, that shuts down the possibility of negativity. And we and we do this in in all sorts of ways, um, through little jokes or sarcasm, etc., which essentially erects an idea of don't go here, do not trespass, do not say certain things because I can't take it. So suggesting that you are someone who can take a lot of news from another person is is a real skill. Having room for other people's confessions is is rather a subtle art.

SPEAKER_07: 40:22

And another friend, yeah, another friend that you mentioned, um or you mention a few friends here. I would I would kind of generalize the them into one word. And by the way, again, now actually arguing for your uh position of you should be as weird and wonderful as you are. You'll get rampant. Um and that is authenticity. Uh you say that authenticity is really a friend of friendship, that you can be as weird as you really are in front of friends, that you are seen, that you can be seen by everyone. Um, as a matter of fact, I actually think that being authentic is the most important thing for my mental well-being. Yeah. I remember a lot of people saying, Oh, as I got older, I'm kind of no longer as social. I've become antisocial. And what I tell them is, I think what you've just realized is what things you value much more now than before, and that you cannot be in environments that don't value the same thing. So if you're actually around 30 people that value the same thing, you're not gonna be antisocial. You're gonna be very social, you're gonna enjoy yourself. But you're in an environment where 30 people are around and they don't value the same thing, and you have to filter yourself and put on a face, then you're gonna be drained.

SPEAKER_04: 41:32

So I had a friend who who's a left-wing female academic, middle-aged academic, very progressive cause, et cetera. And the other day at a party, at a gathering, she very bravely said to everybody that sometimes she finds herself sexually excited by Donald Trump. You know, she loathes him, she despises him. She just imagines his small penis, his overhanging belly, and his just disgustingness pressing down on her. And she somehow turned on. And this was such a wonderful confession. It broadened the whole evening. From there, everything was possible. If that was something that could be admitted to, then everything, you know, as I say, there was more oxygen in the room thereafter.

SPEAKER_08: 42:10

Right, right. Authenticity, yes.

SPEAKER_04: 42:14

Well, also, but you know, but this raises something very um important, which is if you put a microphone in people's heads, uh the news is a lot weirder than the Stoics would would uh would accept. And but also fascinating. It's it's you know, we are beautifully complex and we operate with a very thin version of who we are socially. Um and, you know, what is great art other than an attempt to slightly broaden a spectrum of what is in circulation between human beings? And friendship is in that sense another art form. It too is a public realm in which stuff is circulated that goes beyond the normal. So a great friendship is in that sense a great work of art.

SPEAKER_07: 42:55

Okay, you you're challenging this point again now, so I I have to just pick it up. I'm sorry. So I think that society does, a functioning society requires somewhat a regression to the mean, right? Just to an extent. Let me say this.

SPEAKER_04: 43:09

Yeah. I think a lot of it depends on how it's done. Yes, I agree with you. Um there are more or less appealing ways of divulging things. Yes. Um, for example, there's an accusatory way, which generally is not a very popular way of doing it. I mean, you know, the the attitude of mind that gets called bitter is not very appealing. In other words, I'm having a terrible life and it's somebody's fault, perhaps yours. Yes. No one really likes to hear that. Everybody takes fright when that happens. Right. So that's a kind of confession that is not a friendship builder. But but if you're dark, but not blaming anyone, if you're accepting it lightly, if you're accepting the the misery of existence with a with a smile, Monty Python style. Absolutely. You know, then that's extremely beguiling. So I think I think we we have to, you know, talking about friendship as an art. One of the the the arts, as it were, the shaping work that we need to do with our raw selves when we when we bring them into a a social um arena is to make sure that they can be sort of digested and and absorbed by other people. Um and that has to do with timing, all the th all the things that that artists know about, you know, timing, presentation, tone of voice, modulation of voice, etc. These are very important features of the way in which something can be got across. And that that's why great comics are often telling us extremely sad, difficult things about ourselves and our societies, but they've just got it so charmingly done that we absorb it all. But if it was said in another way, you know, that Oscar Wilde quote, right? Yeah. Who said you tell them?

SPEAKER_07: 44:42

Send them to hell and that they should enjoy the ride or something like that, right? That one?

SPEAKER_04: 44:46

No, if you tell them people the truth, they would kill you unless you have to make unless you make them smile or something.

unknown: 44:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 44:52

But I see you and you see me now. I I feel we're aligned because I do think that it's about the fact that I want to be my domesticated self in all the weirdness that I have within. But I want to make sure that I'm domesticated so that people can actually interact with it in a way that it doesn't step on their toes too much, make people feel awkward too much, expect too much from others. Yeah. So I had a great friend at university.

SPEAKER_04: 45:16

His I won't tell you his name in case you track him down. No, but anyway, he was a wonderfully funny friend who quite a lot of friends. And it was his despair, but his well-worn despair that attracted people and his his strangeness. He he turned himself into a comedic, intelligent character. He became a character which we all loved. And one of the high points was that, and we always, every time we were around him, we sort of thought, where's he gonna go next? What's the next sort of divulgence that he's gonna divulgence? Things divulge? Um, that he's gonna think. And and there was a high point when he said that he'd found himself masturbating over Italian sports cars, that the shapes of Italian sports cars. He'd got into this and he'd become obsessed at masturbating over cars. And we just thought this is so extraordinary. This is a kind of a sexual revelation that is just just off everybody's radar that someone could masturbate over a car. And yet it sort of made sense once, you know, he said, well, they're very kind of feminine curves and you know, they're kind of exciting. And he talked us through which, you know, which car he'd been thinking about, etc. And so we just thought, yeah, this we became friends uh uh around a character's, you know. I mean, I'm thinking of Larry David as well. Yeah, exactly. Larry David's everybody's friend. Yeah. Because again, his his eccentricity is is is so invitingly done. So we have to think about that. It's not just about invitation, not invitation. It's how it's done, 100%.

SPEAKER_00: 46:35

They're sort of hacks, aren't they? That when you do the construct of meeting in a cafe and having a conversation, there's only so much that's possible in a certain way, which is why I go back to games or tearing around. Sometimes kids can be a great conduit for this. Like if you are looking after your kids and someone else's kids and you all start playing in the way that they play, you can suddenly find it's like one of those lava and acting techniques. You find this line to this person that you didn't even know was possible because they're just being completely absurd and you're allowed to be as well. And then you're crawling around on the floor as animals or whatever it is, and you realize they've got this incredible imaginative hinterland that you didn't have access to before. So I I often think those things, you don't have to be a comedian to show that side of yourself, right? You can create Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 47:20

I mean, children are fascinating, they really do tell us what's missing often from adult friendships and the things they do. I mean, take the sleepover. It's such a bizarre thing. I mean, why would you sleep over at somebody's house if you've got your own house? That's so odd. And yet children recognize there's something important that happens at night time, that you you get to know people uh around the rituals of the night and the and the and the waking, uh the awakening the next morning. And that this can't be just done through conversation. You need to sleep with someone. Now, of course, in adult life, we we have this sexualized, you know, it's like somebody, you know, you go and have a date with someone that goes well, you stay over the night. But but friends, friendships, uh children are much cleverer in this. They realise that you, you know, that's not what you need. You you you can do with anyone, just it's just something that you share. It's an intense experience. And what would that look like in in the adult world? We don't really know.

SPEAKER_00: 48:07

I suppose people go and stay for weekends when they're traveling and stuff, and and you do learn so much more about something, right?

SPEAKER_04: 48:12

Absolutely. But but again, that's often done under the cover of, well, we happen to be nearby, so we're coming to see you because you know you happen to but but there's something nice about the the the purely sort of arbitrary nature of the friend's sleepover. It's not because they live somewhere in particularly glamorous or or they're on holiday or whatever. It's just I'm just gonna spend Tuesday night with with somebody else. And yeah, so what would what would that version look like for adulthood? But it's it's suggestive. We could we could go there.

SPEAKER_07: 48:40

Uh another suggestive friend of friendships is the horizontal conversation. It kind of ties to the sleepover. Tell tell us more about that.

SPEAKER_04: 48:48

Well, that's just a suggestion that if you lie on the floor, um uh that's automatically really interesting. Again, children know about this, they spend a lot of time on the floor. Um, we as adults, particularly when the other adults around, we don't tend to do that. But it's it's very interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 49:01

Unless it's a yoga class.

SPEAKER_04: 49:02

Unless it's a yoga class, that's true. But but at home, it can be really interesting. And so imagine if the next time you have friends around, you say, well, let's turn out the light and just all lie in the darkness together and just chat. That could be very weird. I mean, the darkness is a is a wonderful thing, of course. Um, so these are simple prompts that can move a friendship remarkably. We we we we almost don't notice how hard we're making it for ourselves to connect at the level of depth that we want. We we we've forgotten to notice that if we just keep meeting people for coffee, we're not gonna get anywhere. Yeah. Just try something else, whatever it may be. Try it.

SPEAKER_00: 49:40

Another thing I do with friends, sometimes you've been victim of this. Yes. No, not just the hat game. I was just about to say the hat game. Not the hat game. Uh is three-minute writing. We did that too. Particularly when I have someone stay over. Um, and I do for some reason have sleepovers. I do. You do this in the morning, right? Because it's the morning. So we get up and with the coffee, it's like, okay, let's get a pen out. And just there's always a protest, you know, there's always resistance. And it's like, just do it anyway. Yeah. We do it. Yeah. And then people read out the thing and like bang, you're right in there.

SPEAKER_04: 50:09

Yeah. And and it's interesting the idea of protests. Because at the School of Life, we make cards and games and things. And I've seen how people use them, and they they often go, oh, it's so silly, it's so silly, you know, I don't want to do this. And then, of course, they enjoy it. So, so there's this sort of way in which we're we're we're curiously loyal to the boring traditions that we follow. And if someone suggests something else, they have to take quite a lot of flack. Um, but that's fine. So be.

SPEAKER_01: 50:34

So be you.

SPEAKER_04: 50:35

You know, it's it's it's a it's a curious tribute actually to the value of what you're doing. It's all like, oh, I really don't want to do this. But you know, it's for the greater good. Secretly, they do, they're longing for it.

SPEAKER_00: 50:45

But um, one other thing I wanted to go back to, and I loved your honesty in this, and I I concur, it's my experience, but you say, Oh, I I I think it's in the book. I hope it is, otherwise we're misleading people. But it was in an interview where you're asked about how many friends you have. And you said, well three two and a half. Two and a half, yeah. One sometimes maybe you can rely on and sometimes not. Exactly. Um and I think that's about right. And also, I too it's not that I'm skeptical of anyone who has tons of friends. I think that's great if that works for them. I I'm not capable of that. And have you got a friend? When did you you don't have to name them obviously these people, but is it reliant upon knowing you for a very long time? Are they new friends? Is it someone that you met when you were at school?

SPEAKER_04: 51:36

Um both friends date from my twenties. Um I'm totally open. My door is open to new deep friendships, although I don't know, you know, why it is hard to get that sort of deep friend, but uh but anyway, the 20s was maybe a somehow a live period. Um and you know, it is the friend that you call, you know, when something terrible has happened or there's an anxiety or you think the world's coming to an end or whatever, and and you just know that they're gonna be there. That you can send them a message in the middle of the night or whatever, and they will, you know, by dawn the next morning, they'll be there. They'll and they'll have some an interesting perspective, and you crave that perspective. Um, because you know that it's a perspective which you're not able you if somebody said, What will your friend say when you tell them so and so, you could probably write it down. But the interesting thing is you need to hear it from them. It's it's completely different. You know what they might say, but the fact that they've said it is a vital thing. And I think we're, you know, we often too have too much of an intellectual sense of what holds us together, which is we think that we're made of arguments and and ideas. But often it's the personalities of others that are holding us and and keeping us safe and keeping us optimistic, hopeful, etc. It's it's not it's not that a particular friend has a totally dazzling uh set of interpretations. It's just that they care about us, we trust them. Um and I think it's trust. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 53:05

Because the best advice I might get may not be from the person I trust the most, strangely. They can be two different things, right? That I can go and solicit advice from someone who I really respect and I think they have amazing ideas, but I haven't known them for long enough. I can't be vulnerable with them, whatever it is. Whereas my trusty friend who may not have a dazzling insight, but will be there.

SPEAKER_04: 53:29

And I actually, you know, I actually think, you know, we we often give medals to to war heroes, etc. I I think that there are some people, certainly in my life, that I would just want to give a medal to. And it's kind of weird because uh, how can I give a medal to? I can't give one to them. But but but I want to say, and I do something to say, you know, you have got me through this period. And and you know, I I think I wonder if and perhaps I've done this with with other people, I hope I have. Um that but we we don't really have a way of sort of honouring that happening. It's it's an extremely important part of kind of you know human functioning. Um that there are people who you know heard from space that are like little whispers between members of the species that that are just keeping people alive and helping people keep people uh things things going. Because we do lose sight of our own interests and of our own capacities, etc. And things can get very dark without someone going, hang on, we've been here before, this didn't happen, it's okay, blah blah. And you think okay. And then it, you know, it can a good friend can turn a situation round from utter despair to things being manageable in five minutes. It's you know, and they they haven't got training, they've just this is how they are.

SPEAKER_07: 54:46

I I love the last chapter. Um and it talks about those moments where you don't have these friends, the substitutes. And there's uh there's some some many great points in here. Um uh implicitly what you're saying is like not every facet of our life can actually be covered by a friend that can fill that need necessarily. You could have three friends, but you still may have a gap. Yeah, and those gaps can be filled with various different folks. Um, for instance, I have my a lot of my friends are uh dead people, right? That reach out from the grave with their ideas to inspire me or to console me, or music that I'm listening to from people of yesteryear. And so um that that I find that very charming, and I think it's an important thing to remind people who feel lonely that they are maybe not as lonely as they think they are in in some ways.

SPEAKER_04: 55:33

That's right. That that our notion of a friend can be unfairly tied to a person with two eyes, a nose, you know, who you could be in the same room with, and that if we have to keep defining a friend that way, um, then we may find ourselves more friendless than we deserve to be. Exactly. But if we extend the concept of a friend to an animal, to an idea, to a dead person, etc., then we may find we have more friends than we than we thought. So so it's it's a book about friendship that that accepts that um there are more kinds of friendship than perhaps we considered before.

SPEAKER_07: 56:09

And by the way, the animal is an interesting one because actually the way you describe it is the um it made me chuckle. Uh you say their gift is indifference and that they return us back to modesty. And in a way, I see them as a catalyst for stoicism. Right, in a way, right? Because they don't care about our grievances, they actually make us think, yeah, I shouldn't be caring so much about this either. That's right.

SPEAKER_04: 56:32

They detach us from our more sort of egoistic concerns. I mean, um, maybe not dogs, but certainly if you've got a cat. A cat, exactly, they're indifferent, or a sheep in the garden, or whatever it is. You know, they they're just doing their stuff. And um, that's terrifically important. And I, you know, I do agree that that there are kinds of sorrows that that are best handled by taking us out of ourselves. I don't think a ever closer immersion in us is is always good. We need to to modulate that.

SPEAKER_00: 56:59

Yeah. I want to read two sentences. Um every literary endeavor is a testament both to loneliness and to a supreme effort to overcome it through an appeal to the mind of an imagined stranger. We become writers because when we tried to speak in company, someone laughed, someone walked away, someone questioned our legitimacy or our right to feel. And then I'm gonna skip to another bit, which is none of us needs, in theory at least, ever to be alone with anything again. Because somewhere in the hundred and seventy million or so books written since the dawn of time, some friend or another will have written down what we most needed to hear and to understand. We can almost feel grateful for the monumental scale of the loneliness of our species and the continuous, determined ingenuity of the writerly response to it.

SPEAKER_04: 57:55

Yes, and you know, it does make one think that you read that beautifully. Um uh it does make one think that, you know, when people say we want to increase literacy, we want to get kids reading, people reading. I I I sort of think really the best thing is we want to get people feeling lonely so that they will see the value of books. I mean, there's a there's a dark undercurrent there. I I mean, look, I speak as somebody who loves books, but I also genuinely know that books are connected up with sorrow, that we tend to turn to books because there's no one in the vicinity. And and I think we forget that at our peril when when reading is presented as just like a great thing we must do more of, like eating broccoli or you know, doing exercise or something. I mean, in some ways, I would wish uh a life on you know a loved one where they rarely had to turn to books because they were just having such a lovely time. They were dancing, having sex, you know, making money, going on a holiday, whatever. They didn't feel any need for books. Um and I have to observe that at the most flourishing moments of my life, I didn't read very much. Um and so, you know, make of that what you will, but I think sometimes we we hammer home the the importance of books without understanding that books are connected to kinds of loneliness. And that isn't an argument against them, it's just a frank recognition of where they fit into our lives.

SPEAKER_00: 59:17

I remember a friend of mine saying once when I was trying to encourage her to I I bought her a book of poetry and I said, just amazing, it's this incredible anthology. And she said, Absolutely not. She said, You'll know there's something wrong if I ever read that book. I only ever read poetry when I'm devastated.

SPEAKER_04: 59:34

Brilliant.

SPEAKER_00: 59:34

Brilliant.

SPEAKER_04: 59:35

I love it. And she's absolutely right. Oh he, she absolutely. She's absolutely right.

SPEAKER_07: 59:39

Um, you mentioned AI briefly, and it's a really poignant uh observation. I'm gonna tie it to another point. So, what you say is AI, in a way, is becoming a friend to many. The key differentiator here that it is that it's a one way relationship where you never have to show up for AI and it shows up for you all the time. And I think that is the key to feel fulfilled in a relationship, is the point that you're making. This is a flawed point, and I know the flaws. I'll still make it and let you comment on it. I have a lot of one-way friends, podcasters, thinkers, some of the dead writers and all that. And I feel deeply connected to them. And I do feel there is no reciprocity at all there. But it's still very much something that adds to my life. So how would you No, no, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:25

But all I'd say is it could be even richer if you know your favorite poet turned around and went, you know what? Could you help me? I know I've been dead 300 years and uh, you know, I'm in a grave. But but you know, could you get me a favorite sandwich or something? You'd think, oh wow, that's that's a further deepening of it. And so, you know, perhaps AI will occasionally tap us on the shoulder and go, you know, I've been helping you with sort of 8,000 inquiries from you know where the bus stop is to what you should do about your mother-in-law. It's it's my turn. I I'm my servers are overheating. Could you possibly give me a hand? How do I cope? And we might think, goodness, this we know AI is really alive because it's asking us for help. It would seem like a, you know, like a further ratcheting up of AI's humanity.

SPEAKER_08: 1:01:04

Uh, Turing test, the ultimate touring test.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:06

Absolutely, the ultimate Turing test would be that it would ask us for help.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:09

Reciprocity, yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 1:01:11

I love that. This has been really fun and uh a great journey through this book. Uh the School of Life is maybe something you should say one or two words about. I think it would be best for when it comes from the horse's mouth because we've been talking about it, but we haven't really.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:24

Well, I'll tell you something that's that's new. So uh we've always been putting out content about psychological uh matters. We we make uh films, we publish books, um all sorts of things. Um we do workshops. We do workshops content. But what we're what we're starting what we're launching next week is um a friendship group. Oh, friendship. Um we're launching a membership group where for a certain fee you get to join this massive, lovely community that love the kind of psychology and introspective material that we that that we're known for. And and so it's really a way of connecting over psychological issues. And um what what we found, I mean, it's very opposite to the the topic today. What we found is when we we did a sort of survey of our members basically going, you know, what do you guys want? What do you, you know, what's missing? And they went, we want to meet other people through the school of life. Um and that was really fascinating because again, it shows how often cultural institutions miss that. Yeah, they they don't realize that what people want to do is to commune around something they value. Um and so that's what we've tried to do. So if anyone's interested in talking about their childhoods at depth or um their sorrows or whatever, come and come and join us at the School of Life. Sign me up. Become a member. Yeah, please come.

SPEAKER_07: 1:02:36

Awesome. Thanks so much for taking the time, Allah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:38

Thank you so much. Thank you both.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:40

Thank you.