“We’re At The Beginning Of A Revolution” - Jimmy Carr

Chris Williamson 0:00 How many shows did you do last year?

Jimmy Carr 0:02 Uh, maybe, oh God, I don't know, 250, 300, something like that. Uh, it's the, it's the two shows a night thing that, that ramps up the numbers.

Chris Williamson 0:09 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 0:10 And that's been the big kind of innovation in my touring. Of like going if you-- Yeah, there's an old line, um, I think it was B.B. King said it. "I do the shows for free. They pay me to travel." And I kind of feel like that. I feel like getting there is the hassle. Doing the show is a joy. And the-- So I do a show at 7:00 and then a show at 9:30 in most places. So it's that thing of like, it's one for me, one for HMRC.

Chris Williamson 0:34 [laughing]

Jimmy Carr 0:36 Right? One goes to the tax man. The other one's just all-

Chris Williamson 0:38 Does it really?

Jimmy Carr 0:39 ... all mine. Yeah, pretty much these days, yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:40 Yeah, it'd definitely be after that much scrutiny.

Chris Williamson 0:43 What's your-

Jimmy Carr 0:44 [laughing]

Chris Williamson 0:44 ... relationship with worry like? Do you get overwhelmed? That's a pretty intense schedule.

Jimmy Carr 0:50 Oh, no, not, I mean, not at all. I think that thing about if anything that, um, decreases the stress level. Doing that many shows makes you less nervous because it's, it's kind of like being an airline pilot. It's about sort of hours in the sky. So if you spend that much time on stage. And then, you know, I, I, I film everything now, so it's often you're, you're kind of, in the shows you've got-- you never get bored of it because, you know, a good third of it is just that night, just that show.

Chris Williamson 1:15 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:15 And it changes all the time. But it's interesting. I was like, I, I, I sort of used to think about jealousy and envy a lot. Like the idea that they're different and one is, I don't want that person to have that thing, and it's a really dark energy, right? And then there's envy, which is telling you what you want. You see someone's got something. You go, "Oh, wow, I want that." And I remember looking at like, um, uh, Matt Rife and Andrew Schultz and their video content online, and they were kind of blowing up and going, "I should, I should do that. I should take someone on the road and film it and just, you know, copy that methodology." And I did it, and I've absolutely loved it. It's really kind of changed the way that I, that I gig.

Chris Williamson 1:54 Why is it the case that you're not-- I mean, I've been backstage with you before you go out and within minutes before you're about to go on stage, you snacking on an apple, not really thinking about it, and then going out and performing in front of 7,000 people. Is then just reps now under the belt that-

Jimmy Carr 2:13 Yeah

Chris Williamson 2:13 ... nerves kind of don't kick in in the same way?

Jimmy Carr 2:13 Well, I think it's also like it's, it's quite self-selecting being a comedian at sort of at that level where people are... You know, if I play a club, then people have just gone out to see comedy. But I'm, I'm not in the entertainment business. I'm not in the comedy business. I'm in the Jimmy Carr business.

Chris Williamson 2:27 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 2:28 And people have come out to see my show, so they kind of know what they're gonna get. If anyone's offended at this point, it's like they bought tickets for a horror movie and they're complaining they're scared. It's just, it's like, "Okay, dum-dum."

Chris Williamson 2:39 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 2:39 It's like d- it doesn't, it doesn't count. It's like-- So it's also that thing of like the, the moments you can have with the crowd now are because they've seen it online, because they know what, what you do. They're, they're expecting it. "You okay?" "Oh, wow, okay, perfect."

Chris Williamson 2:52 There you go.

Jimmy Carr 2:52 Can't believe my luck. Thank you.

Chris Williamson 2:54 The service is fantastic. There's this line that, um, made me think about the level of intensity perhaps that you go through with your touring. "Your life does not need to be easier. It needs to be simpler. Your system is designed to handle stress and challenge, but not complication. You probably handle hard things pretty well but feel overwhelmed when they become messy. Do not attribute to difficulty that which can be explained by complexity." And it seems like if what you're doing is touring and focusing on touring and doing the live shows and getting to the next show and being in a good mood and performing well, that's kind of one thing all the way-

Jimmy Carr 3:27 Yeah

Chris Williamson 3:27 ... as opposed to trying to do that whilst number two and number three and number four and number five.

Jimmy Carr 3:31 Well, I think it's also that thing of like it's not repetition. It's like how many gigs last year. You go, uh, you know, 250 or 300, and that sounds in a way kind of boring, like it would be the same thing again and again. And actually, it's not. It's never repetition. It's iteration. So you're changing it subtly every time.

Chris Williamson 3:46 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 3:46 You're changing the jokes. You're trying new jokes in, at every show. Every single show at the end of the show, you're trying new things. So it's con- it's quite-- it's very, um, stimulating intellectually to-

Chris Williamson 3:55 Mm

Jimmy Carr 3:56 ... to be writing.

Chris Williamson 3:57 Why do you think people get stuck in overthinking?

Jimmy Carr 4:01 Uh, well, let's, let's have a think about it. That'll help. It's like trying to sniff our way out of a cocaine problem. It's just like-

Chris Williamson 4:07 Correct

Jimmy Carr 4:08 ... how, how, like the fact that you're the person asking that, the, the rumination king.

Chris Williamson 4:12 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 4:12 Um, I don't know. I think it's like, it's, it's anxiety, I suppose, is what it is, overthinking, uh, in, in a larger form. And my sort of view on it is anxiety is thought without control. Your thoughts are just wild. And a flow state is control without thought. And so on stage, you are in a flow state. You, you know what you're doing. You know what the jokes are. They're just like, you don't even have to think about it. It's the next thing.

Chris Williamson 4:39 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 4:39 And then people are talking to you and you're just being sort of yourself. You're just being loose. So it's, it becomes like it's a flow state. It's not, uh, you're not being anxious about anything. So finding something where you can do that is, that's the secret sauce. Finding something that you enjoy doing that you can be in that kind of flow state.

Chris Williamson 4:56 A thought without control is an interesting insight. I think helplessness. A lot of people have this sensation that I can't enact my will on the world. I can't ensure that this thing is going to, uh, behave in the way that I want to.

Jimmy Carr 5:10 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:10 But if I think about it enough, it's kind of the same as preparing for it.

Jimmy Carr 5:15 I, I, I, I wonder, are we, um-- Mark Fisher wrote about this beautifully, about the privatization of anxiety and stress and the idea that we're blaming the individual for mental health problems, when if you look at the numbers now, if you look at the stats of how many people are suffering with depression and anxiety, I think you have to, uh, conclude that it's a societal problem. We're not arranging our society in a way that is, uh, conducive to good mental health. People are incredibly stressed-

Chris Williamson 5:43 Mm-hmm

Jimmy Carr 5:43 ... uh, in the world, and it's a collective action problem. It's not something that you can solve on your own.

Chris Williamson 5:49 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 5:49 If you're a depressed young man, you cannot solve the problem on your own. You have a dispersed identity. If you want to be happy, go and make some other people happy.

Chris Williamson 5:58 It's a vicious cycle though, right? Because the thing that you need is to rely on other people, but given that you're around fewer people than ever before, you don't have the same level of cohesion as you would have done a few thousand years ago.

Jimmy Carr 6:09 Well, look at, look at what we've done. Everything's now for the individual, right? So what used to be a game of five-a-side- You know, uh, uh, you know, on a, on a Wednesday night is now a personal best at the gym.

Chris Williamson 6:19 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 6:20 Well, that's isolating.

Chris Williamson 6:21 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 6:21 And the idea that you're tracking your, uh, steps every day rather than going for a walk with a friend, it's like, it's, it's very isolating. So I'd think of like, you know, think about the, uh, the manosphere. Um, you know, there's, there's a lot of kind of talk about it the last six months after Louis Theroux's brilliant documentary, and you, you kind of look at it and you go, "Well, it's, it's the wrong prescription for the right problem." There is definitely a problem going on. So I mean, my, my take on it is I'm very, I'm pro-gang, pro-drinking, pro-gambling.

Chris Williamson 6:51 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 6:51 Let, let me, let me give you the argument, right? So pro-gang, where should men be? Together. Men are really good at checking other men. Now, gangs, gangs have got a bad reputation because some of them do shoot people and deal drugs, okay? But that's a very small percentage. Mostly it's like guys with other guys, you know, hanging out, and they kind of check themselves, and it can be an incredibly positive force.

Chris Williamson 7:11 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 7:11 And I'm very pro-, uh, drinking. I mean, Scott Galloway has the best line on it. The risk to your liver is as nothing compared to the risk of social isolation. So I think we should, like, lower the drink... I, I've set up these, like, youth clubs around the world. Uh, they, they've got like jukeboxes and pool tables, and they play sports on a big TV, and they're really fun. Uh, they're called pubs, and they're everywhere, right? And what we should do is just lean into that and go, the youth clubs are already there. They're called pubs.

Chris Williamson 7:41 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 7:41 We should lower the drinking age to 16, because if you think 16-year-olds aren't drinking, well, you're living in a fucking fantasy world anyway.

Chris Williamson 7:49 Certainly in the UK. I don't know about... How much do people drink in the US at 16? Quite a bit.

Speaker 7:54 A lot.

Chris Williamson 7:54 Right. Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 7:55 Yeah. Uh, people drink at 16. Here's what you do, though. You legalize drinking at 16, not for individuals. So you've got to bring three mates with you.

Chris Williamson 8:02 [laughs] So you can get hammered in a group and not on your own.

Jimmy Carr 8:04 You can get ha- ... Well, you're not gonna get hammered. There's four of you. You're gonna check yourself. You're gonna make sure you don't get kicked out of the pub. And what's gonna, what's gonna check 16-year-olds?

Chris Williamson 8:09 And sometimes I've egged, I've egged friends on. In a group of-

Jimmy Carr 8:11 Yeah

Chris Williamson 8:11 ... a group of people, it gets worse sometimes.

Jimmy Carr 8:13 Yeah, but, you know, but maybe, but I'm very happy to... I'd rather they were together doing that in a space with other people and people of all ages.

Chris Williamson 8:20 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 8:20 And there's other adults in the room. I'd rather that than they were drinking in a park.

Chris Williamson 8:23 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 8:24 I'd much rather.

Chris Williamson 8:24 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 8:25 And gambling is like, there's a, there's a huge problem with gambling at the moment where people are gambling, um, you know, online and sports betting. That's like, it's a... Because you're trying to game the system because you can't see a way out, right? You've got to deal the younger generation in. But I think gambling should be, it's the bigger things. It's taking a gamble on yourself.

Chris Williamson 8:41 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 8:41 Taking a gamble on a career. That's the, the big gamble, the big risk, saying that you want to do something and kind of coming out as someone that's, you know, ambitious. I don't know. I think the, the younger generation sort of need to be dealt in in a way that they're not at the moment. You know, the, what, what hope is there to, to buy a house and start a family?

Chris Williamson 8:58 Mm-hmm. Mm.

Jimmy Carr 8:58 It's not that they don't want to. It's like they're not given the conditions to do that. I don't think there should be any tax on the under 30s.

Chris Williamson 9:05 Have you seen Rory Sutherland's one, which is he thinks, I think your first 250 grand should be tax-free, which is, uh, uh, an equivalent.

Jimmy Carr 9:12 That's a great idea. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:13 So you just get that first £250,000 and no tax on that, and then the tax kicks in afterward.

Jimmy Carr 9:21 It's a great idea. It's a great idea. I mean, under 30 is just like that thing of, like, that life stage of, like, going, just trying to get sort of, uh, to the table. Trying to-

Chris Williamson 9:29 It's the same reason that Bill Perkins suggests giving your kids their inheritance when they're 30. Because if-

Jimmy Carr 9:35 Yeah, that, that book, Die With Zero, is so brilliant.

Chris Williamson 9:37 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 9:37 It's, it's kind of about so much more than that as well, like, kind of what you should be doing at what stage of life.

Chris Williamson 9:41 Correct.

Jimmy Carr 9:41 So the idea that there's young people, you know, feeling anxious, yeah, great. Well, we've arranged our society incorrectly then.

Chris Williamson 9:46 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 9:46 If everyone... It's almost like we've inverted Maslow's hierarchy of need. You know that kind of pyramid thing where you go, okay, so you need food and shelter and security, uh, on, on the base level.

Chris Williamson 9:58 Everyone's trying to self-actualize without any friends or a house.

Jimmy Carr 10:01 Yeah. So n- so, uh, 200 years ago, people worried about starving, but proud of their name, and now people are, you know, calorifically they're fine, and they're anxious. It's, it's, it's not a great situation.

Chris Williamson 10:12 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 10:12 It's like, it's, it's kind of, you get into kind of, I suppose, slightly Buddhist almost immediately because it's like, I think happiness is a time machine. I think depression is, is thinking about the past, and anxiety is a worry about a future self.

Chris Williamson 10:26 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 10:27 In the moment, you tend to be fine. But it's, you know, people, people don't have a sense of, you know, being able to do that, being able to kind of sit in the moment.

Chris Williamson 10:35 Well, it's interesting with the flow state thing because at least in my experience, when you're in the deepest flow state possible, you actually don't have much memory of what happened. Like, when you turn around and think about what-

Jimmy Carr 10:45 Hmm

Chris Williamson 10:45 ... you were doing at that time, I, I, I guess it might be the same.

Jimmy Carr 10:48 Yeah, no.

Chris Williamson 10:48 At least when I've done my show-

Jimmy Carr 10:49 Yeah, sure

Chris Williamson 10:49 ... we did shows within days of each other in Sydney at Darling Harbour a few months ago. And when you drop into the show, you actually... Someone said, "How did, how did that section go?" Or, "How did, how did the, the..." You know?

Jimmy Carr 11:01 You can't remember saying it.

Chris Williamson 11:02 I have no idea what happened.

Jimmy Carr 11:03 Yeah, you were in the moment. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:04 Because you have moved yourself out of the way. And it's, I don't know. It's, it's interesting that what we say that we want is more memories, right? We want to have time expand and for us to be able to look back, and yet the most enjoyable way to spend the present moment is in a way that we won't be able to remember in future.

Jimmy Carr 11:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:19 It's this sort of odd... I don't know.

Jimmy Carr 11:21 Yeah, it's a paradox there.

Chris Williamson 11:21 Yeah, it's, it's an interesting-

Jimmy Carr 11:22 But it's kind of nice, isn't it?

Chris Williamson 11:23 Yeah, it's cute. But I mean, the worst thing is to go, "Oh, well, I can definitely remember what happened, but I remember that I wasn't there."

Jimmy Carr 11:30 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:30 "I remember that I was worrying about this thing that was going to come up next, or that I was fearful about this, or I was distracted. I wasn't really in the moment." That seems like the worst way to spend the present.

Jimmy Carr 11:41 Isn't that the, isn't that the, that's kind of the, the Eckhart Tolle story, isn't it? You know that story about him, like, d- he was horribly depressed in his 20s. I mean, really, you know, kind of thinking about ending it all. And he was on a, a, I think it was-

Chris Williamson 11:54 Park bench

Jimmy Carr 11:54 ... park bench, and then he, and he thought to himself, "I can't live with myself." And in saying that, he went, "Well, who's I and who's myself? Wait a second." And just realized you can kind of separate those two things and get kind of beyond that.

Chris Williamson 12:05 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 12:05 And, and kind of there's a equanimity in, in being able to kind of separate yourself from your thoughts sometimes.

Chris Williamson 12:11 I really do think that the worry is about control, right? It's strange because no amount of anxiety is going to make any difference. To what's going to happen

Jimmy Carr 12:19 But control is w- uh, control is an illusion right the way down. I mean, I've said this before, I think it's... I blame the Plato and the, um, Zarathustrans for coming up with the idea of heaven and perfection. There is no heaven and perfection. It's all... You know, I'm, I'm with Nietzsche on this. It's, it's embrace the chaos. The-- Like, you can't have control over what happens, only how you react to it. So it's, it becomes very stoic very quickly because you just go, "Well, I'll... I just... I'm in charge of how I react to this stuff."

Chris Williamson 12:44 I definitely think a lot of people blame themselves, and to some degree I understand why, because you want to feel like you have agency over what's going on. You want to be the person that's in control. You don't want to have to rely on anybody else. But a good question to ask yourself is, "Am I depressed or is my life depressing?" Right? Like, am, am I anxious or-

Jimmy Carr 13:02 Well, maybe-

Chris Williamson 13:03 ... is my life anxiety inducing?

Jimmy Carr 13:04 Well, is it, is it, is it depression or sadness? You know? If, if it's circumstantial, then I think it's sadness. I think it's much more acceptable to say, "I'm depressed," than to say, "I'm sad."

Chris Williamson 13:11 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 13:12 But if it's, if it's circumstantial and you could do something about it, then, then great. I've been thinking about a thing recently. Uh, okay, I don't believe in generations. And you won't find someone who's a bigger Neil Howe fan than me, you know, the guy that coin-coined the phrase millennial, but I don't really believe in generations. I think, like, putting a whole cohort of people into one box, it makes about as much sense to me as horoscopes. So you go, the idea there are people that are, um, entitled and there's people that are ambitious in every cohort. You know, I mean, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are in the same generation, and they're very different motherfuckers, right? So you go, well, actually, there's entitled people that are young and there's, there's people that are very ambitious, and the difference would be where you are and where you wanna get to. If you wanna do something about it, you're ambitious. And if you want someone else to do something about it, if it's their responsibility-

Chris Williamson 13:58 Mm

Jimmy Carr 13:59 ... then that's entitlement. It's a pretty good working definition. And there's lots of... You know, you meet young people that are just... That are, you know, that are great, and they get lumped in with this, "Oh, millennials be like this." Nonsense.

Chris Williamson 14:11 But there has to be some sort of delineation, and I do think that there are changes that occur across time, right, across group. From a long time ago to now, there are changes, and if you just put these random bars in between them to break them up, does that not make sense?

Jimmy Carr 14:28 I don't think... I, I don't think it's helping.

Chris Williamson 14:29 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 14:29 I don't think it helps. Um, and I, I think it's, uh... Well, I mean, listen, uh, uh, you know, there's me sort of saying, um, contradicting myself and say, well, I do think we need to do something for the younger generation. I think we need to sort of change the way... 'Cause e-effectively, what have we done? We've raised the school l- leaving age in the UK to 21.

Chris Williamson 14:48 Hmm, because it's mandatory to get a degree now.

Jimmy Carr 14:50 Yeah. Every-everyone, you know, goes to university and, you know, a university is a... A university degree is a luxury item. It's a Louis Vuitton handbag, right? It's, it's... That's what it is. And you go, and n- if everyone's got one, the value of that obviously decreases. So you get into... Peter Turchin talks about the end of civilizations. He's a brilliant... You know Peter Turchin, right? He's probably been on the show.

Chris Williamson 15:10 No.

Jimmy Carr 15:10 Um, so he talks about there's two thing, two reasons why a society collapses, and one is the inequality of wealth, which we've almost supercharged now with social media, 'cause everyone can see everything all the time. And then he talks about the overproduction of elites. So when you overproduce elites, um, and, and they don't get what they're promised. So if you go out and you work hard at school and you get a degree from a good university, and then you go, "Well, where's, where's my four-bedroom house? Where's my wife and family? What's... What..." It hasn't delivered, then that elite that feels let down by the system and what it tacitly promised them becomes the counter-elite.

Chris Williamson 15:46 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 15:46 And that counter-elite fights against the system and tries to bring it down. So I think that's why we're kind of in the, in the, the beginnings of a revolution at the moment.

Chris Williamson 15:55 I think that's one of the reasons why America has more prevalent victimhood culture than somewhere like the UK does, and that's because when you're growing up in the UK, you're not really told that you can be whatever you want to be. That kind of blue sky thinking, helicopter vision, I don't think is given to British people in the same way. If you diverge from the path, that tall poppy syndrome kicks in and you tend to be chopped down pretty quickly. Whereas in the US, for all that it's a horrible and misogynistic, judgmental, xenophobic country trying to keep everybody down, the American Dream still kind of is a-accepted. It's part of the fabric, I think, that most people believe, and that means that if you did everything right and then grow up and become an adult and the world doesn't deliver to you that which you were promised as a kid, quite rightly, you feel indignant. Like, "Hey-

Jimmy Carr 16:41 Yeah. Well, I think it's-

Chris Williamson 16:42 ... where's my stuff?"

Jimmy Carr 16:43 I think it's the-

Chris Williamson 16:44 But the UK, I don't think has the same

Jimmy Carr 16:44 ... you want there to be some social mobility. You wanna be able... You want... Essentially, you want your kids to do better than you did-

Chris Williamson 16:50 Mm-hmm

Jimmy Carr 16:50 ... in life. You... That's what you kind of want. But it really, I suppose it's about-

Chris Williamson 16:53 And the kids also want to do better than you did as well.

Jimmy Carr 16:56 Yeah. Sure. I think, I think that thing about going, you know, from a political point of view, I'm less concerned with equality. You know, Peter Turchin's very worried about there being equality. I'm more concerned with abundance. You know, what does the future hold? Is it gonna be, um, uh, Star Wars or Star Trek in 50 years' time? And I'd love to believe it could be Star Trek. I'd love to believe that there is abundance.

Chris Williamson 17:20 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 17:20 Although even if there is, we'll get used to it. 'Cause the world that we live in now, if you showed your great-great-grandfather your life now, he would think you'd be made emperor.

Chris Williamson 17:29 Habituation's a hell of a drug, right?

Jimmy Carr 17:31 Yeah. You, you just... You get used to this stuff, right? So, but, you know, rich and poor is always... It's gonna be relative and whatever we... You know? But, but the idea that everyone's needs are taken care of.

Chris Williamson 17:40 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 17:40 'Cause really, people think they want more money, but really money is, is the, is, is the thing that gets you what we really want, which is, you know, good healthcare and good education and, uh, y- the right amount of calories-

Chris Williamson 17:52 Mm-hmm

Jimmy Carr 17:53 ... and, you know, all, all the important stuff.

Chris Williamson 17:54 Until you start to fold status in, right? Because one of the big reasons that you want money is to have more money than the guy that lives next door.

Jimmy Carr 18:01 Yeah. Well, I think that thing about taking care of everyone's, um, physical needs in society is, is a collective action problem.

Chris Williamson 18:08 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 18:08 Making sure that there's a safety net there that isn't a hammock. But, but you can't take care of people's metaphysical needs.

Chris Williamson 18:14 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 18:15 And so the difference would be between, you know, a Casio watch that tells the time perfectly reasonably and a blingy Rolex- That shows that, hey, you, you made a baby or what- or whatever that, that, whatever the, the, the extra value you get from what it means to you rather than... Well, I mean, you, you know, getting to that kind of René Girard, we're, we're full of kind of mimetic desires.

Chris Williamson 18:34 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 18:34 We don't know what to want. And that thing of, like, not having to impress other people, that's the superpower.

Chris Williamson 18:40 Yes. Yes.

Jimmy Carr 18:40 That's the thing that really makes a difference to the quality of your life. If you, if you know what you want, you don't have to impress other people. Like, that really does simplify

Jimmy Carr 18:47 life.

Chris Williamson 18:47 That would be a wonderful gift. I don't know how the hell you would give it to people, but the gift of being able to say you don't have to impress anybody else would liberate so many people from perverse desires, from being distracted by things that they don't actually want to do, that they're only doing to perform. It's the hidden versus observable metrics thing that me and George talk about all the time.

Jimmy Carr 19:06 Well, it's, it's interesting. Getting, getting stuff is fun. Having stuff isn't fun. Getting stuff is fun.

Chris Williamson 19:10 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 19:11 Um, and that's... It's a, it's a weird kind of lesson. I mean, you talk about that, the 2D, 3D lessons.

Chris Williamson 19:15 Correct.

Jimmy Carr 19:16 It's a real 3D lesson. You have to experience that.

Chris Williamson 19:19 Correct.

Jimmy Carr 19:19 You kind of go, you know-

Chris Williamson 19:19 Bill Perkins was my first big-

Jimmy Carr 19:21 Yeah

Chris Williamson 19:21 ... 2D, 3D lesson thing. I read the book, and then I brought him on the show. That's like a 2D and then maybe a 2.5D lesson, getting to sit down with him and, and-

Jimmy Carr 19:28 Yeah

Chris Williamson 19:28 ... talk about these ideas about how to structure your life and to focus on having fun and spending money in smart ways that brings you together with other people. And then we finished the episode, and he said, "What are you gonna do now?" And I was like, "I'm pro- probably gonna go home and, like, write the show notes for this episode and upload the... get the file across to my editor and stuff." And he says, "Do you wanna come wake surfing?" I was like, "Okay."

Jimmy Carr 19:48 "Of course, of course I do."

Chris Williamson 19:48 Went, went downstairs. He had a driver outside waiting for us. We got on the boat with the boat captain, who had swim shorts and, and a towel, and then we did that, and then we went back to his house on the lake, which the most expensive house ever sold in Austin. And then we did this thing, and then his driver, on the way to take him back on his jet, dropped me off at home. I was like, "Oh, that's a, that's a 3D lesson."

Jimmy Carr 20:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:09 Like, I could have read the book 50 times and not had the same tangible, visceral experience-

Jimmy Carr 20:15 Yeah

Chris Williamson 20:15 ... than that.

Jimmy Carr 20:16 What should be... What you... Yeah, what you should be doing right now is, is... It's hard to get your head around that, though. I think it's, uh, it's not easy for young people.

Chris Williamson 20:23 I think-

Jimmy Carr 20:24 I think-

Chris Williamson 20:24 I, I-

Jimmy Carr 20:24 It, it's... It feels like, it feels like, um, limitations are very freeing.

Chris Williamson 20:30 Correct.

Jimmy Carr 20:30 Feels once you decide what you wanna do and what you're gonna work at and who you're gonna be with, life gets very simple because you, you stop thinking about how to live, and you start thinking about living.

Chris Williamson 20:43 Well, yeah. I, I guess an analogy would be if you were in a boat in the middle of the ocean, if you just have to row real hard, and you know the direction you're going in, that's-

Jimmy Carr 20:53 Yeah

Chris Williamson 20:53 ... probably not-

Jimmy Carr 20:53 It's not a... That's a Marcus Aurelius line, isn't it? The, uh, if, uh, "If you don't know where you're going, no wind is favorable."

Chris Williamson 20:59 Uh, yeah, yeah. Not, not too dissimilar. But I suppose if you're also having to direct yourself, you're lost in the rumination of, "Ah, well, I n- I took five miles in that direction, but maybe I should... Maybe if I take a slight right here and..."

Jimmy Carr 21:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:10 So yeah, I mean, David Epstein's new book is all about this. It's all about the power of constraints and how they breed creativity. And yeah, people think that they want as much optionality in life as they can get.

Jimmy Carr 21:20 Hormozi's very good on this. I, I met Hormozi the other day for the first time. But, but we kind of felt... It felt like getting together with an old friend because we've known-

Chris Williamson 21:26 I can't imagine two people that are sartorially more different than you and Alex.

Jimmy Carr 21:29 [laughs] Yeah, it was. We d- we looked slightly, slightly odd at dinner. Um, yeah. It was, uh, it's, it was really interesting. It was, uh, it was really interesting 'cause his thing is, like, his new big idea was, like, there's too much optionality, and if you never cash in those options-

Chris Williamson 21:42 Correct

Jimmy Carr 21:42 ... what's the point?

Chris Williamson 21:43 Right.

Jimmy Carr 21:43 Like getting a, a, you know, a, an MBA, you know, master's, and then a PhD in business. It's like, no, no, just start a business. Doesn't matter if it goes bust. Start another one.

Chris Williamson 21:53 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 21:53 The map is not the territory. Get out there and do the thing.

Chris Williamson 21:56 Yeah, there's a... I think that's another challenge that young people have, everybody has. Fuck saying young people. It's anybody that is existing in this current world, which is that your ability to say things as opposed to do things has never been more tuned up.

Jimmy Carr 22:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 22:11 Like, like, you are what you do, not what you'll say you do.

Jimmy Carr 22:16 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 22:17 And unfortunately, talking about the thing and doing the thing vie for the same resources, right?

Jimmy Carr 22:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 22:22 You need to allocate yours appropriately, like Ryan Holiday says.

Jimmy Carr 22:24 Yeah, don't tell me about your priorities. Show me last week's diary.

Chris Williamson 22:27 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jimmy Carr 22:27 That's what you actually did.

Chris Williamson 22:28 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think if the prospect of being able to kind of talk your way or proclaim your way publicly and privately, right, to yourself, "I'm gonna put this plan together. I've got this..." This is one of the issues of obsessing over productivity too much, that productivity ends up becoming the goal, not the means in order to be able to get a goal.

Jimmy Carr 22:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 22:50 The sort of masturbation of, of productivity keeps on happening.

Jimmy Carr 22:56 And they're off.

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Chris Williamson 23:52 There's a Mark Manson line I wanted to get you to react to. "The small thing you didn't say six months ago has been collecting interest ever since. By the time resentment shows up fully formed, most people have forgotten what the original conversation even was." And I think that the same thing is true for when we don't keep promises to ourselves as well. When you had this plan, you made this deal with yourself a long time ago. You can't quite remember it, but there's this latent distrust in you doing what you said you were going to do, and no one else knows about it.

Jimmy Carr 24:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:25 It's just you. It's your relationship with you. I said that I was going to do this thing, and I didn't show up And I didn't show up, and I didn't show up, and after a while, you begin to resent the part of yourself that makes plans because you don't think that it's going to come into fruition.

Jimmy Carr 24:40 Yeah. Well, I suppose it's that thing of like, you know, having a, a six-pack doesn't give you confidence. Being the guy that shows up at the gym every day gives you confidence.

Chris Williamson 24:48 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 24:48 Like, the, the... You, you, you take care of yourself. I think it's that... Yeah, it's a, it's a very interesting sort of... I think the- it's about compound interest, really, 'cause compound interest on money is miraculous. When you, when you look at, you know, uh, Buffett and his wealth, most of it was built through time. Time is the factor-

Chris Williamson 25:05 Mm-hmm

Jimmy Carr 25:05 ... that people don't take into consideration there. A very smart investor, but really time was the thing.

Chris Williamson 25:10 90% of his wealth was accumulated after the age of 60.

Jimmy Carr 25:13 That's exactly right, yeah. It's, it's like... But compound interest on your skills is insane. If you put the reps in, if you do the work-

Chris Williamson 25:20 Mm

Jimmy Carr 25:20 ... it's insane what you build over time. But it's, it's-- it gets back to that thing for me about your, your goals will be beaten by your systems every time. Everyone's got great goals. Everyone's got big ambitions. But, like, what are you gonna do tomorrow? What's the small thing that you can break off and it's manageable and you can do it today?

Chris Williamson 25:37 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 25:38 It's why I love kind of what I do. You know, m- mainly it's jokes, and writing jokes is, is comparatively easy because you can just sit down and write one. And then you test it. There's no point discussing it. There's no point having a, a meeting where you go through it with some, some friends. Just go out, find an audience, tell them. They'll tell you whether it's funny or not. Great feedback loop.

Chris Williamson 25:57 I suppose the problem with most other projects is that you can't iterate a product and get audience feedback quite so quickly. You can't work out whether or not you want to release a, a T-shirt design in one small chunk.

Jimmy Carr 26:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:11 Go through all of the process of getting the T-shirt design, get it printed, see how many people wanna buy it. Oh, one person bought.

Jimmy Carr 26:16 Right.

Chris Williamson 26:16 Well, let's get updated again. The iterative nature of that is, is pretty cool.

Jimmy Carr 26:21 Yeah, it's, it's, it's harder. It's hard. I mean, I've-- you know, I'm, I'm very lucky, I think, to be in a business where it's, it's that thing of like if, if the audience like it, they tell you straight away.

Chris Williamson 26:28 Mm-hmm, and they can't not tell you either. Even people can dislike you, but if you tell a joke that's sufficiently funny, I think that the response just sort of kicks in.

Jimmy Carr 26:35 Well, even if it's like my favorite noise, uh, uh, in, in comedy is still that kind of cognitive dissonance laugh, where there's a laugh followed by a deep [gasps] where they go-

Chris Williamson 26:45 They're shocked at themselves-

Jimmy Carr 26:46 Oh, God

Chris Williamson 26:46 ... for having just done that.

Jimmy Carr 26:47 Oh, I guess you laughed at it 'cause your, your, the laughter kind of betrays you. I think your laughter, like, you, like, it's kind of a deeper level of you.

Chris Williamson 26:52 I, I suppose, actually, I might be a little bit wrong there. If you really, really don't like somebody and you decide to sit in the third row with your arms crossed, you know, "Go on then, funny man, make me laugh," I think you can will yourself or convince yourself into not liking somebody that's doing well at their craft in comedy. I don't think that the same thing is quite so true in music. I think that an absolute banger pierces through your defenses even more so than comedy. I think something that would be less than that would be a conversation, right? Conversation between two people on stage or some sort of like keynote speech or whatever. "Uh, it wasn't even that interesting. I didn't find it engaging."

Jimmy Carr 27:30 It is interesting.

Chris Williamson 27:31 Comedy is deeper, and then music is deeper still.

Jimmy Carr 27:33 It's like the art, the art and the artist, and can you, can you separate them?

Chris Williamson 27:36 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 27:36 Can, can someone that's done a terrible thing and you know they've done a terrible thing-

Chris Williamson 27:39 Mm

Jimmy Carr 27:39 ... can they still be funny? Can they still be musically gifted?

Chris Williamson 27:41 Yeah. Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 27:42 I think you probably can tease it out. I think it's probably fine.

Chris Williamson 27:45 Mm. Peter Crone's got a question: "Who could you be in the absence of your concerns?" It made me think about-

Jimmy Carr 27:52 Oh, that's, that's, that's really good, isn't it?

Chris Williamson 27:55 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 27:55 Like, uh, that's, that's, uh-

Chris Williamson 27:56 Who could you be in the absence of your concerns?

Jimmy Carr 27:58 There's a, there's a great line I often think of which is the, um, uh, you can do anything you want. You only have to face the consequences.

Chris Williamson 28:06 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 28:07 It's like it's really powerful 'cause it's that thing of, like, going, you've got absolute freedom, but you have to wear it. Like, there's freedom of speech, but not freedom of consequence.

Chris Williamson 28:15 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 28:16 And I think about St. Lawrence a lot. You know the story of St. Lawrence?

Chris Williamson 28:19 No.

Jimmy Carr 28:19 He's the patron saint of comedy, and St. Lawrence was, um... He was burnt by-- I think it's like... He's a really good name for an emperor. Some, like, it's something like Voldemort.

Chris Williamson 28:29 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 28:29 Like, this emperor burnt him alive over a fire, and as he was being burnt alive, St. Lawrence went, "Turn me over. This side's done." And it makes me think of bravery, right? That's, that's a very brave thing to say in a pretty awful moment.

Chris Williamson 28:45 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 28:45 But the only reason we remember him is 'cause he said that. You go, "There's, there's a certain amount of, like, bravery." Like, yeah, no, say the thing. Say the thing. Good luck.

Chris Williamson 28:52 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 28:53 Some people won't like it. Be all right.

Chris Williamson 28:55 Who could you be in the absence of your concerns? But me and George keep on talking about the fact that so many people are held back by a lack of confidence rather than a lack of competence. Like, their self-belief is the biggest rate limiter on what it is that they can achieve.

Jimmy Carr 29:14 Yeah, but I mean, that self-confidence comes from-

Chris Williamson 29:17 Reps

Jimmy Carr 29:17 ... it's Bill Mose's line.

Chris Williamson 29:18 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 29:18 It's, you know, self-confidence comes from giving the world irrefutable proof you are who you say you are.

Chris Williamson 29:22 Uh-huh.

Jimmy Carr 29:22 So it's that thing of, like, find something small that you can do. You know, do what you can with what you've got where you are.

Chris Williamson 29:28 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 29:29 You know, it's, it's... You could wish away the first two. I wish I had different things, and I was somewhere else. Just, you know, accepting the reality of where you are and working with that seems to, seems to be pretty powerful 'cause you just, you know, start off. And, you know, you can't choose where you start. You just choose where

Jimmy Carr 29:43 you finish.

Chris Williamson 29:43 What's your relationship like with gratitude?

Jimmy Carr 29:46 I do a lot of gratitude practice. I think it's... There's a, um, Meister, uh, Tolle, um, said, uh, "If you only said one prayer and it was thank you, that would be enough." I think that's bang on.

Chris Williamson 30:01 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 30:01 I think it's the, the only... Because disposition is more important than position. Where, where you are in the world doesn't matter. Your disposition is everything, and the only thing that seems to shift disposition is a sense of gratitude. So across sort of time and space, like, we're lucky to be here now, and we're lucky to have the friends that we have. We're lucky to have, live in the world that we live in. It's extraordinary. We're in a privileged position, uh, and I think acknowledging that on the regular is, is great.

Chris Williamson 30:28 Are you able to take time to celebrate when you're moving so quickly?

Jimmy Carr 30:31 Yeah, I, I kinda think that thing of, like, celebration and gratitude are kinda linked. I think done correctly- Celebration is gratitude in action

Chris Williamson 30:38 Mm

Jimmy Carr 30:38 Like you, you know, you throw a party and you invite everyone and you celebrate and you, you know, there's kind of a, there's something lovely about that kind of connection to other people and, and kind of doing it with others. I don't think you can really celebrate on your own. I think being grateful with other people is really good as well. You know, sit down and chat with other people about how great is this. It's really nice

Chris Williamson 30:57 Well, I think a lot of people struggle, especially when they're at their busiest, to take time away from doing the thing, to think about the thing, and to realize how fortunate they are to be in that situation

Jimmy Carr 31:07 Yeah. Well, Chairman Mao, wasn't it? Uh, you can't smell the roses from a galloping horse

Chris Williamson 31:11 [laughs] Right. Okay

Jimmy Carr 31:12 I think I should, I should put together-

Chris Williamson 31:13 Dropping Chairman Mao quotes

Jimmy Carr 31:15 I should, I should put together a book. I was thinking about this. Put together a book of like incredibly wise stuff-

Chris Williamson 31:20 From dead people

Jimmy Carr 31:21 ... shared by shitty people.

Chris Williamson 31:22 [laughs]

Jimmy Carr 31:24 Like it'd be, be quite a good quote book of like going, "Well, I guess, you know, a stopwatch is right twice a day"

Chris Williamson 31:28 Well, it would be nice to have the quote on one page-

Jimmy Carr 31:30 Yeah

Chris Williamson 31:30 ... and then the person that said it on the next page

Jimmy Carr 31:32 Yeah, yeah. Oh, "Equanimity within permanence. Wow, Hitler. Oh, fuck"

Chris Williamson 31:36 Damn it. Yeah

Jimmy Carr 31:37 Fuck.

Chris Williamson 31:37 Yeah

Jimmy Carr 31:37 That's ruined that for me

Chris Williamson 31:38 Yeah. Uh, but, uh-

Jimmy Carr 31:40 Not that he never said that. Don't panic

Chris Williamson 31:41 It is a, it is, it is an interesting challenge, right? When things are going well and everything's busy and you're not really paying that much attention, that is the time when gratitude is probably most available to you, but you're so busy and the calendar is always packed, and you're moving forward. You're excited about the future. So taking time to reflect on the present is pretty tough.

Jimmy Carr 32:01 Yeah

Chris Williamson 32:01 And then when things slow down and stuff starts to go a little bit worse-

Jimmy Carr 32:04 It's-

Chris Williamson 32:04 ... that's when you wish that you'd had the gratitude from before to be able to rely on, and you're retroactively trying to think about-

Jimmy Carr 32:10 I think it, it's the frames as well. It's how you think about stuff. It's like problems, right? Problems are, uh, a feature, not a bug. Pro- a problem just means something needs your attention, and I think, I think people have a crazy notion if they stop and think about it, that one day their problems will be over. They'll have dealt with everything, and it's done, and it's, it's, well, obviously not. There'll be... You just level up. All you do is level up, and you get more compli- complex problems.

Chris Williamson 32:36 Mm-hmm

Jimmy Carr 32:36 If you can solve really complex problems, you're doing very well in the world. You know, Elon Musk is a trillionaire. Why? Because he solved some very complex problems.

Chris Williamson 32:44 Mm-hmm

Jimmy Carr 32:44 And there's money to be made doing that, right? So you go, so problems are a bug, a, a, a feature, not a bug. They're, they're, they're great. It just means something needs your attention. You should be grateful for that. Someone needs your time. Someone needs... You need to take this call. You need to deal with this thing. Boredom, I think is, um, boredom is unappreciated serenity

Chris Williamson 33:02 Mm. Mm-hmm

Jimmy Carr 33:03 It's just you're in a serene moment. There's nothing going on. Great. Doesn't happen often. Like I can get to where Tibetan monks get to in an airport lounge in Detroit. Nothing going on. Couple of shops-

Chris Williamson 33:15 As long as you don't get your phone out

Jimmy Carr 33:16 Yeah, it's fine. Just, yeah. Well, that thing of like we're kind of, we're carrying the phone everywhere with us now. The, the, the, it's, it's like the mobile labor camp, tracking our every move

Chris Williamson 33:27 Mm-hmm

Jimmy Carr 33:27 Crazy

Chris Williamson 33:29 I was in the gym a couple of months ago

Jimmy Carr 33:31 Of course you were. Look at you

Chris Williamson 33:32 Yeah. And one of my friends was talking to me about how his wife keeps on complaining at him that he uses his phone at night, and he's always sending messages, organizing stuff, running businesses or whatever, and he came up with a very fortunate but, uh, I think actually philosophically pretty interesting excuse, which was he said, "I've got a mind that likes to solve problems. I'm just trying to give it good problems to solve."

Jimmy Carr 33:58 Yeah

Chris Williamson 33:58 I think lots of people have a problem-solving brain-

Jimmy Carr 34:01 Yeah

Chris Williamson 34:01 ... but only some people have great problems that they're going to solve with it

Jimmy Carr 34:04 Well, that's what I think of with anxiety. Like a- and my, my, my mind is often racing. I often like wake up, um, with I suppose what you'd call a panic attack at like f- four, five in the morning. I'll wake up and my mind's just on

Chris Williamson 34:16 Mm-hmm

Jimmy Carr 34:17 And I'll worry about stuff, and it's, it's often counterfactuals. Worry about, you know, things going wrong, people getting hurt. You, you just kind of ruminate on crazy stuff. And if I give it like, "Oh, w- we, no, but we need to write a joke about Keir Starmer or Andy Burnham or something," you go, "Okay, right. Oh, great." Give it something to do

Chris Williamson 34:36 Mm. So using action as an antidote to anxiety then

Jimmy Carr 34:39 Yeah, I love that. I love the idea that you go, "Well, that's, that cures it pretty, pretty well"

Chris Williamson 34:43 It's very difficult to worry about the future when you feel like you're moving yourself toward it. And yeah, that, that problem-solving brain thing is interesting because I, I wonder how many people are churning themselves up inside because they have a brain that likes to solve problems, but they don't have any good problems to solve. So they pay attention to politics or porn or their ex or, uh, this situation that's outside of their control in some foreign country that they, they can't get access to

Jimmy Carr 35:11 Yeah. What, what have we... Is that not what the news is, though? I mean, if you were trying to design something to, um, engender mental health difficulties, you'd make someone aware of a problem and, and give them no agency, right? And that's what reading about the Middle East is, right? So you just go, it's a absolute clusterfuck of a situation, and there's nothing-

Chris Williamson 35:29 Good luck dealing with that

Jimmy Carr 35:30 ... we can, we can do about it. There's nothing we can-

Chris Williamson 35:32 Well, there's nothing that you can do about it

Jimmy Carr 35:33 Yeah

Chris Williamson 35:34 Because if... I don't know. I wonder whether it would feel better or worse for the situation to actively have nothing you could do about it. There's an asteroid coming to Earth, no one can do anything about it. It's the, the simulacrum that someone could fix this, but not you

Jimmy Carr 35:50 Yeah. I mean, we're not, we're not in that game. It's, uh, yeah, it's, it's very... I think that thing about having, uh, agency at a... I think, I think that... Okay, there's a, there's a bigger thing here, which is I think we give maybe empathy to people that we like-

Chris Williamson 36:07 Mm

Jimmy Carr 36:07 ... and agency to people that we don't like. So if you imagine there's two marches, right? And one of them is like super far-right, uh, dudes marching with skinheads and jackboots. We give them agency. If they put a brick through a window, we say, "Right, lock them up and throw away the key"

Chris Williamson 36:25 Mm

Jimmy Carr 36:25 Right? And then there's another, um, march, and it's people marching for social justice, right? And we, we, and they throw a brick through a window. We go, "Well, you know, that's the language of the, the streets, you know, the unheard." Uh, that thing of like going, so we give them empathy and them agency, and actually you should give both, both

Chris Williamson 36:42 Mm

Jimmy Carr 36:43 You need agency and empathy for everyone Like the idea that you go l-l... believe that people can handle it and believe that they, you know, everyone's got like, um, a part to play

Chris Williamson 36:55 Well, you need to be responsible for the things that you did, but also you're enmeshed in the situation that sort of brought you to that point, too.

Jimmy Carr 37:02 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 37:02 Like the motivations of, of what got you there. But yeah, that, that, that problems thing, I really do think... I, I, I wonder how many people would... All that they need are better problems to solve. All that they need is something to focus their time and their attention on in a better way. And yeah, if you've got this situation that's occurring overseas. I came back from a, a meditation retreat last week. I'd spent seven days without my phone, almost exclusively in silence, and I came back and I was flying out of SF and walked into the departure terminal, and one of the pieces of advice that we'd been given was to put sunglasses on and put AirPods in, because you've basically been in silence for a week and no screens, no nothing. Like, it's a lot of stimulus to go from-

Jimmy Carr 37:42 Yeah

Chris Williamson 37:42 ... zero to 100. I went and sat down in this, some airport r-restaurant thing, and I looked up at the screens, and it was wildfires in Europe raging. That was the first thing I saw on a screen, basically, since I'd got-

Jimmy Carr 37:57 Right

Chris Williamson 37:57 ... off of this retreat. And I remember feeling this like-

Jimmy Carr 38:00 Almost-

Chris Williamson 38:00 ... strange constriction inside of me. And I'm like, "How?"

Jimmy Carr 38:03 Right, better get a hose.

Chris Williamson 38:04 Why? Yeah. How? Why the fuck is that what's on... I'm aware. Like, is it newsworthy? Like, yeah, kind of, but, like, what is it do... I-it's, it's, it makes us feel like we're being informed about the world, but really all it's doing is just piercing our nervous systems and making us feel worried about stuff.

Jimmy Carr 38:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:20 It's strange.

Jimmy Carr 38:21 And yet I wanna be informed about what's happening in the world. I feel like I, I'm so, I guess, addicted to that. Like, I like knowing what's going on. I like thinking about what the solution might be.

Chris Williamson 38:30 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 38:30 But I, I guess you don't... You know, you get to chat about it, but you don't really get to, uh, influence what happens.

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Chris Williamson 39:53 The gratitude point is Michael Smoker's got this line where he says, "I have a hard time celebrating my achievements because in my mind it was my obligation to achieve it." A lot of people that are high performers have this sense that the higher that you climb, the further you have to fall. As you get better, your standards are always going to increase, so you're always going to suck in comparison to what you think that you should do. And that's great because it continues to push you to work harder, to improve.

Jimmy Carr 40:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:19 But also it means that success isn't a cause for celebration. It's just the minimum level of acceptable performance, and anything less than success becomes a failure.

Jimmy Carr 40:29 Yeah. Well, I think that, that thing then, you need to, you need to be in, uh, a state of, um, uh, I guess imposter syndrome once every 18 months, two years. You need to level up constantly-

Chris Williamson 40:44 Hmm. Hmm

Jimmy Carr 40:44 ... where you feel like you're in a space where, "Oh, wow, this is, this- I can't believe I did that."

Chris Williamson 40:47 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 40:47 "That was good." Uh, like push yourself a little bit. I think try and do something else.

Chris Williamson 40:51 Is that difficult when you've got close to the top of your game?

Jimmy Carr 40:54 Well, it de- depends what game you're in.

Chris Williamson 40:56 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 40:56 You can change games. You can just sort of do things a little bit differently. So that thing of like going... It's, um, it's about, uh, I suppose, you know, my, my business is, uh, you know, you... I'm in the service industry, right? I'm, I make something that people want. I make them happy.

Chris Williamson 41:10 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 41:10 And no one seems to remember any of my jokes, but they remember how I made them feel, and the show tonight is nothing more than an advert for the show when I come back next time. That's the way I'm kind of thinking of it. And then you're trying to find these moments now. I f- I... The show's changed over the last couple of years, where there's moments in every show. There's like a moment someone will ask something and you'll chat to them and it'll be slightly more, um, heartfelt, and it'll l- they'll, they'll always be kind of they're, they're kind of sweetening the pill with laughter.

Chris Williamson 41:38 Why did you change that?

Jimmy Carr 41:40 I, I, I think it was... I, I don't know what happened. I don't know what, you know, went on that I suddenly started chatting to people in the audience and we started to connect in a slightly different way. It's been really lovely.

Chris Williamson 41:52 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 41:52 And people, I think, I think comedy is, it's a... I love that line, "Laughter's the shortest distance between two people." And I've often done this thing, I've spoken about it, I think, to you before about, um, if you... Your best friend is the person you have the least filter with.

Chris Williamson 42:07 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 42:08 Right? So, so if you meet someone on a plane and you go, "Wow, see the World Cup. It's a good game, innit?" Nothing, right? Surface level. And if you say, "Oh my God, you have to see these hemorrhoids."

Chris Williamson 42:17 [laughs]

Jimmy Carr 42:17 "It's incredible." Like, so you c- you know, it's connecting at another level. You're just like, you've got no filter with that person. That's your best friend in the world.

Chris Williamson 42:24 Right.

Jimmy Carr 42:24 And if you treat the audience like that, you get paid back, um, 10 times over. Like, people feel that, oh, okay, there's no... He's treating us like adults. He's saying the things that he thinks are funny, and there's a real, there's a connection there. And then increasingly, like, people aren't talking about things in the, in the, in the media, in the mainstream media. So there's a gap there to chat about things that, you know, what's going on in the world.

Chris Williamson 42:46 Isn't it interesting that what you're looking to do with comedy to kind of say the thing that maybe lots of people think or hadn't realized that they thought- And to say it with a degree of, um, no fucks/bravery that mean that you're the person that, that, uh, pushes the boundary in that regard. But-

Jimmy Carr 43:05 Well, I think the, the Overton window, like people talk about the Overton window in politics, the idea that you go, "There's-- What's the most left-wing and what's the most right-wing thing you could say that's socially acceptable at a dinner party," right? That's the Overton window of conversation, right? And it's expanded massively in politics the last couple years to the left and to the right, m- for better or for worse. I think comedy does that for conversation. I think the real benefit of going to a comedy show isn't necessarily the two hours you spend laughing at the jokes at the show, it's the conversation you have on the way home.

Chris Williamson 43:32 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 43:32 Where you've-- the conversational Overton window has, has broadened. I don't think people were as open talking about sex and politics, uh, before and after George Carlin and Richard Pryor came along.

Chris Williamson 43:43 That's interesting.

Jimmy Carr 43:44 I think they expanded the window, and I think, you know, someone like, you know, Chappelle's out there expanding the window of what you can and can't talk about.

Chris Williamson 43:51 So you've got that with, uh, I don't know what to say, how to categorize it, spicy topics, uh, uh, uh, um, insights that might be somewhat controversial or inflammatory or on the edges of what people would typically do. But there's another dimension which is a sort of level of sincerity or earnestness or emotionality, a depth maybe-

Jimmy Carr 44:13 Yeah

Chris Williamson 44:14 ... uh, a, an unapologetic, self-deprecating, sometimes exposing look at how people are motivated and maybe how you are motivated or maybe how somebody in the audience feels about something. And that almost feels like another type of Overton window, and it's separate from the first one.

Jimmy Carr 44:32 Yeah. It's, it doesn't all need to be, um... You know, you, you talk about the incredibly controversial thing. I'm very happy to talk about third rail topics and try and be funny about them. Uh, but I'm also very happy to, to be earnest and to be sincere about stuff.

Chris Williamson 44:44 There's a level of earnestness as well, which is commonly publicly accepted, and there is a level of earnestness and depth which pushes outside of that as well. Kind of obsessed with this idea that people are desperate for authenticity, but they're allergic to sincerity. That people love the idea of someone just being themselves, speaking their truth forward.

Jimmy Carr 45:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:03 But when you see a father break down, crying because his wife left him, there's a, a, a lot of the internet has this sort of allergic aversion response to that. The, the, there is a-

Jimmy Carr 45:16 Yeah, but I think if-

Chris Williamson 45:16 We want people to show themselves.

Jimmy Carr 45:17 I think if you, if you're gonna do anything that's, that's even vaguely out there, you've gotta turn off the comment section.

Chris Williamson 45:23 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 45:24 Other people's opinion of me is none of my business. Just you do your thing, and you go, you've got your audience, and they come, and they enjoy it, and we have a good time. Great. Like, a-anyone kind of, you know, throwing shade on that and going, "Well, you know, how can, how can you talk about serious things? He's, he tells offensive jokes."

Chris Williamson 45:38 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 45:38 Okay. Well, I mean, we all contain multitudes.

Chris Williamson 45:41 You get what I mean though here, right?

Jimmy Carr 45:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:42 That you have the classic Overton window, and then you have this emotional Overton window as well.

Jimmy Carr 45:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:46 Which is how, how deep are you prepared to go in a live sh- how, how edgy are your jokes allowed to be?

Jimmy Carr 45:52 Yes.

Chris Williamson 45:52 And how earnest are your conversations allowed to be? And there is a limit. There is a, a... not even a limit, but there is an expected bar beyond which, ooh, like, the, it-- people really sort of prick their ears up and pay attention and have a kind of... They have a more animated response to it. And I think that one of the areas that you can dig into is like, "Holy shit, like he really, he really went there." Or when you're sat down with a friend or you're hav- having a conversation with a friend over dinner, and it's, you know, bouncing between the level of emotionality that's normal, and then it descends into one that is not so common, and that, that really sticks with people.

Jimmy Carr 46:27 Well, well, I think it's something about what are you, what are you solving for in a comedy show? Like, laughter is the main metric, right, for comedy. You want there to be three big laughs a minute, and you wanna have that frequency with the jokes. But also, silence. Don't be, don't be afraid of silence.

Chris Williamson 46:41 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 46:42 Like a, a, a silence where there's a poignant moment and everyone has a little think. Good. Fine. We can have that as well. But it's nice that it's changing 'cause, I mean, it keeps it very exciting for me.

Chris Williamson 46:51 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 46:52 That you're not, you're not doing the same thing again and again. It's not like you're doing the same show.

Chris Williamson 46:55 Well-

Jimmy Carr 46:55 That we've got kind of different flavors

Chris Williamson 46:56 ... certainly, you're looking to optimize for memorability to a degree as well, like for people to go like, "Yeah, I really, really loved that sensation," as opposed to, "What did you do? What was it like to go and see this artist last year?"

Jimmy Carr 47:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:11 And you're like, "I can't fucking remember."

Jimmy Carr 47:13 Well, the memorable is interesting 'cause if someone choosing to come and see you live, it's a, it's a big deal, right? But really I think people want to go out to festivals, see music, see... They wanna see play, but they also like, We used to gather around the fire and talk, right? And then we gathered around the radio, and we talked, and then we gathered around the television, and we talked. And even something like The Royle Family, you know that, remember that sitcom-

Chris Williamson 47:37 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Jimmy Carr 47:37 ... in the UK, right?

Chris Williamson 47:37 Yeah, it was great.

Jimmy Carr 47:38 That, it's like a distant memory, people watching TV like that.

Chris Williamson 47:40 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 47:41 Because now we have the phones, and people are on their own.

Chris Williamson 47:44 Individual.

Jimmy Carr 47:44 They're watching their own thing. They're watching their own stream.

Chris Williamson 47:46 Even if they were in the same living room together, each person would be on a screen of their own that nobody else-

Jimmy Carr 47:52 Yeah

Chris Williamson 47:52 ... is looking at. And I suppose, "Hey, have you seen this thing?" But yeah, the, you are right. The Royle Family, which I guess Americans are definitely not going to understand the ref-

Jimmy Carr 48:00 Reference. But people sitting around watching the television together as a family, and l- you would watch shows that you weren't necessarily, uh, into because Mom liked it. So you'd go, "Oh, I guess we'll watch Desperate Housewives," whatever it was.

Chris Williamson 48:10 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 48:10 Was the thing-

Chris Williamson 48:10 Because there's only one TV-

Jimmy Carr 48:12 Yeah

Chris Williamson 48:12 ... as opposed to five TVs per

Chris Williamson 48:14 room.

Jimmy Carr 48:14 I was thinking about this recently, about the, the idea of social media and the, the issues around it, the bigger picture. There used to be a thing when I was at school where people talk about, um, uh, the Native American peoples having this belief that if someone took their photo, it would steal their soul.

Chris Williamson 48:31 Okay.

Jimmy Carr 48:32 And I remember thinking, "Oh, that's crazy. [chuckles] That is ridiculous. They think their photo's gonna steal their soul." And now I think, yeah, I mean, it might not be one photo, but a thousand a day, that'll do it. That'll absolutely do it. That will, that will break you away from who you are.

Chris Williamson 48:48 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 48:48 That'll, you'll, you'll be alienated from yourself. And then I was thinking about the, even the language of it. It, it's not hiding. It's nets and webs, the internet.

Chris Williamson 48:58 How so?

Jimmy Carr 48:59 It's the web, right?

Chris Williamson 49:00 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 49:00 It's the internet. What do nets and webs do? They catch people. That's what it's doing. I think Aldous Huxley was right about this. Our power will not be taken from us by some overlord. I think we'll give it away for cheap dopamine. And Aldous Huxley said it was, uh, soma, which was the tablet, right? And he was even right about that. It's just a different kind of tablet.

Chris Williamson 49:21 So not some equivalent here of, uh, treating people like slaves caused them to not work as hard as you might want them to, and they would rebel, and sometimes they would be lazy. But if you can manage to create a system where people actually want to work as hard for you as you want them to work by incentivizing them on the back end, then you'll get them to continue to drive themselves insane as they work harder and harder. I guess it's kind of the same here, but with regards to distraction and freely giving away your information and giving away your attention as well. You don't need to demand it from people. You just need to make the incentives align that they want to give it to you.

Jimmy Carr 49:56 Yeah, it's, I mean, it's a, it's a really interesting time. I think we haven't got this... It's a very new technology as well. These new technologies are coming along. We have to, uh, sort of integrate them into our society. I do- I think it will be, ultimately, the trajectory will be up and it'll be better, but we have to learn how to work with this stuff.

Chris Williamson 50:10 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 50:10 I mean, AI is the other thing that everyone's kind of talking about. You go, "We haven't quite figured out what it is yet." I think AI is like a musical instrument, and anyone can sit down at a piano and make a noise at the piano, but it takes time and attention and practice to direct it into creating a, um, symphony, right? It's, it's, it's like an instrument. You g- we're gonna be using that tool, but how do we use it? And at the moment, it's, it's very sort of early stages. It's that thing of, um... I mean, my take on AI is like I don't have religion. I don't think we were made in God's image, but I think we so wanted there to be a God, we created one in our image.

Chris Williamson 50:48 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 50:49 It's all-knowing, all-powerful, can create miracles, and lives in a cloud. Well, what am I talking about?

Chris Williamson 50:55 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 50:57 I think it's like that, that it's, it's... Hegel and Nietzsche had the idea hundreds of years ago, the idea that the God wasn't there for the Big Bang, but the universe is a device for creating God.

Chris Williamson 51:10 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 51:11 And that we are the universe experiencing itself. I think everyone's very impressed with AI because they've forgotten what they are.

Chris Williamson 51:18 Yeah. It-

Jimmy Carr 51:18 We are much more impressive than AI. AI is really good at left brain shit, really good at left brain stuff. But the right brain stuff... And, and, and the left brain, um, apprehends, but the right brain comprehends. It's all in McGilchrist's stuff. And that idea that you go the gestalt, the whole, the, the complex stuff, it can't do. It can do the complicated though so well. So in a sense, maybe it'll take away the drudgery of life and allow us to be more human and to do more artistic, fulfilling, fun things with our lives that make us feel more connected. That's the dream.

Chris Williamson 51:53 Yeah. That's, that's the dream that's being put forward. I think a lot of people have kind of forgotten about the connection, comprehend side of things, o- of their own existence, so much that if there is a threat to the drudgery being taken away... And that's not to say that that's all it's going to do, right? It very well might take away everything else as well.

Jimmy Carr 52:15 Well, it b- b- but we can only see the jobs it will take away because they already exist. We can't see the jobs it will create because by definition they don't exist yet.

Chris Williamson 52:23 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 52:24 So it's that thing of like going, well, it's, i- i- we're in this... We're in a pickle now, and it's, this has happened before. This is precedented. The Industrial Revolution really made physical strength, uh, obsolete. You d- you don't need that anymore to farm the land, to, to, to make things. You don't need physical strength. Machines do all of that for us.

Chris Williamson 52:42 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 52:42 And then this is taking away some of the, the drudgery of white collar work, but hopefully the creativity will become, will be uniquely human.

Chris Williamson 52:52 "Favorable conditions never come. There are always plenty of rivals to our work. We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come."

Jimmy Carr 53:18 Yeah. That's really good, isn't it?

Chris Williamson 53:20 But just there is this sense that at some point in future, my problems will be out of the way, and I can finally get down to doing the real thing, as opposed to thinking this is the situation that I'm existing in. I'm always going to be faced with problems. There is never going to be a time where I have none, like completing a video game and arriving at a level where there's no more enemies.

Jimmy Carr 53:43 Mm.

Chris Williamson 53:44 That's just what life is.

Jimmy Carr 53:47 Yeah. Well, you want people to have some idea that there's a future, that there's a, um, that, that they wanna start families, that they wanna, um, live a life. You know, there's, you know, shocking statistics about the abortion rate in the UK. Have you heard this?

Chris Williamson 54:02 I don't know.

Jimmy Carr 54:03 So it's, uh, I think it's one in three viable pregnancies now end in abortion in the UK.

Chris Williamson 54:08 Right.

Jimmy Carr 54:08 Which, you know, put the morality to one side. Um, that's not my business. But the idea of going, well, what does that really suggest? That people feel that they can't start a life.

Chris Williamson 54:17 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 54:17 They can't build a family. They can't, you know, settle down. They don't feel able to with the, you know, the, the climate that we have at the moment.

Chris Williamson 54:24 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 54:24 The idea-

Chris Williamson 54:24 Favorable conditions never come.

Jimmy Carr 54:26 Yeah, the favorable conditions. You want people to feel like they can... you know, that life's gonna be better for their kids.

Chris Williamson 54:30 Well, wouldn't it be-

Jimmy Carr 54:31 That life's gonna be better for them

Chris Williamson 54:32 ... wouldn't it be wonderful if favorable conditions felt like they were here even when they weren't? Like, that's the kind of world that you want people to be in, right? An abundance mindset as opposed to a scarcity mindset. Uh, believing that you need-

Jimmy Carr 54:42 Yeah

Chris Williamson 54:42 ... to wait for favorable conditions in future is by definition a scarcity mindset. Right now is not enough, and in future it may be better if I can construct the world into this very specific kind of a way.

Jimmy Carr 54:52 It does feel like we're living through a very kind of unique time. I mean, I suppose everyone always thinks this, but, like, did, did they in the '90s? There was nothing going on in the '90s.

Chris Williamson 54:59 There was... I mean, you-

Jimmy Carr 55:00 Pretty quiet

Chris Williamson 55:00 ... you, you lived through it. You tell me.

Jimmy Carr 55:01 Yeah. Rel- relatively quiet.

Chris Williamson 55:03 Right. Yeah. I-

Jimmy Carr 55:03 Good times since the, kind of the end of Pax Americana, and really since this phase of history sort of starts in '89, '91.

Chris Williamson 55:11 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 55:11 As the Berlin Wall collapses, the Soviet Union's gone, and suddenly you go from being a bipolar world to a unipolar world. And no one noticed for, you know, 30 years. But just as the American Navy got smaller, like the canary in the coal mine was the Somali pirates. Like, that never would have happened when the US Navy was at full strength-

Chris Williamson 55:31 Mm

Jimmy Carr 55:31 ... with an enemy in Russia, that it was, you know, they, it would have policed that, no problem at all. Safe navigation, yeah, they would have, they would have schooled them. And, and then suddenly sort of things fracture. Suddenly you've got all these sort of different things. We live in a multipolar world now, and it, it's very confusing. It's, you know, on a geopolitics level, it's, it's a very strange time, and you're seeing this revolution go on. You know, if you take revolution to mean the replacement of elites, like the mainstream media is being replaced. Um, the, the, uh, academia, there's a replication crisis, and they've lost a lot of credibility. Um, politics now, the, the major parties in the UK may never win another election, uh, the ones that we've had the last 100 years. It's, it's really is kind of a, a, a fracturing of our system. I suppose it gets back to Robert Frost and the idea civilization is a clearing in the forest, and we have to relitigate and rebuild all of this stuff.

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Chris Williamson 57:22 Do you think that people are gonna look back in 50 years' time, 30 years' time at 2026 and go, "Those were the good old days"? The nostalgia that a lot of people have for the '90s.

Jimmy Carr 57:32 I, I don't know. I think there's, there's something about the, uh, the... What's that lovely quote? The, uh, "Strong men make good times. Good times make weak men. Weak men make hard times. Hard times make strong men," and so it goes.

Chris Williamson 57:46 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 57:47 And I think there's something about we're in a very tumultuous time now, like the, the technology plays a-

Chris Williamson 57:51 Do you think this is hard times?

Jimmy Carr 57:53 Yeah. Yeah, I think this is, this is hard times. I think it's, it's very tough out there for people.

Chris Williamson 57:58 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 57:58 And, um, I think that there's a lack of leadership and there's, you know, you look at how countries are being run, it's, it's, yeah, it's clearly these are, these are hard times.

Chris Williamson 58:07 So you know the idea of kayfabe, right? That thing-

Jimmy Carr 58:10 Yeah

Chris Williamson 58:10 ... from WWE where it, it's all about the kind of the meta game that's being played, the optics. It's everything is unreal and surreal.

Jimmy Carr 58:18 Mm.

Chris Williamson 58:18 And definitely if you look back, I mean, there was that, um, debate analysis between Obama and I can't remember who it was that he was going up against, uh, in sort of 2012, 2008. And before they begin, they just wanted to, "I just wanted to say my opponent, I respect him very much and I appreciate that this thing," you know, da, da, da, da, da.

Jimmy Carr 58:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:41 And then you roll the clock forward to this literal WWE event where there's personal insults and swearing and-

Jimmy Carr 58:51 Yeah

Chris Williamson 58:51 ... back and forth, and you think, I, I, I don't know. The, the, the, is statesmanlike behavior unnecessary stodge? Is it this sort of, uh, prim and proper pomp and circumstance which isn't needed? Or has something there been, if not lost, like caricatured, sort of turned into this, this, uh, uh, exposition of itself, this sort of ridiculous role-playing game? Everybody's LARPing as what they're supposed to be, and it's all been turned to extremis.

Jimmy Carr 59:24 It certainly feels very extreme at the moment.

Chris Williamson 59:26 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 59:26 I mean, it really, it really does. Uh, but I think it, I don't think it's unfixable. I think we've been in worse spots-

Chris Williamson 59:31 Mm-hmm

Jimmy Carr 59:31 ... than this in the past. You know, there must have been, there must have been people sort of in 1943 going, "This is... We're in the middle of a world war. This is bad, isn't it?"

Chris Williamson 59:39 I, so I think about-

Jimmy Carr 59:40 "This is bad. What's gonna happen? How are we gonna straighten this out?"

Chris Williamson 59:42 I think about that a lot. I think about how sort of kinetically and literally things were significantly worse at almost every period in human history up until now.

Jimmy Carr 59:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:50 But I wonder whether sort of metaphysically and symbolically things were quite as bad. I wonder whether we have the most sort of confusing time now, even if it's not the most kinetically dangerous time.

Jimmy Carr 1:00:02 Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I think there's, there's solutions out there, and I think it's a, it's a question of, um... I think statesman is really the thing that you, you need. You need great leadership in these kind of times. You need someone that's kind of thinking about sort of 20 years in the future rather than the election

Jimmy Carr 1:00:17 cycle. Um-

Chris Williamson 1:00:18 What's happening in the UK at the moment? I've not been back for a while.

Jimmy Carr 1:00:20 The UK is not, it's not in a great situation. And I mean, I, I think Andy Burnham's gonna take over, and, uh, I wish him well, and I don't know what's gonna change. I think it requires some sort of radical realism. You know, if you were gonna fix the UK, what would you do? I think the fundamentals are it needs to be more competitive as a nation, and what makes a nation competitive? Well, it, 2% on income tax either way or changing the stamp duty laws. It's, it's all kind of nothing, just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. They need someone to come in and, and actually address the real problem. Uh, you know, there's four things that affect a country's competitiveness, I think. There's the currency, the rate of the currency. There's the energy cost. There's the amount of, um, uh, what do you call it? Um, red tape bureaucracy. Uh, and, and there's, uh, well, and then... Hang on. I'll have a drink.

Chris Williamson 1:01:15 Culture?

Jimmy Carr 1:01:16 Uh, no, no. Uh- Sorry, I'll, I'll give you that again. Um, so you've got the currency.

Chris Williamson 1:01:22 Yep.

Jimmy Carr 1:01:22 You've got energy costs, you've got, um, red tape, and you've got tax. And you can do things to all four of those to make the country more competitive. And really Britain needs to be competitive on the global stage. When, you know, when we left Europe, for better or for worse, people voted for, for that, and we never really did it, and we never really competed.

Chris Williamson 1:01:42 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:01:42 So I mean, if I was in charge, right, if you, if I was in charge for the day, I'd devalue the currency. I'd devalue the pound. I think the pound's overvalued. And y- you know, why a pint £7.50 in London? Well, because it's overvalued as a currency. Uh, the, the idea that you, you would decrease the value of the pound. People talk about redistribution of wealth to the North. We keep it high because of the City of London, and actually, I'm not really concerned about the exchange rate affecting your holiday in France being more expensive for two weeks of the year. I'd be more concerned with the other 50 weeks of the year where you work. We've, we've got to be a net exporter of things, so our things need to be cheaper, and in order to do that, we have to lower the, the currency value, which is relatively easy to do.

Chris Williamson 1:02:24 People say that the UK is the seventh biggest economy in the world, but it's not. It's the seventh biggest city in the world, surrounded by a very poor country.

Jimmy Carr 1:02:32 Yeah. And then, but you want it to be redistributed. You want there to be, you know, factories being built in-

Chris Williamson 1:02:36 As far away from-

Jimmy Carr 1:02:37 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:02:37 ... London as you can get. Um-

Jimmy Carr 1:02:38 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:02:39 ... yeah, it didn't feel like the wealth of the City of London was reaching Newcastle or Middlesbrough, Stockton.

Jimmy Carr 1:02:43 Yeah. We have the most expensive energy in the world. I think it's like four times higher than America.

Chris Williamson 1:02:46 No way.

Jimmy Carr 1:02:47 And you go, "It's crazy." We, you know... And it's systematically being, um, being con- I mean, we-

Chris Williamson 1:02:54 Is this Green New Deal stuff? Is that why that's-

Jimmy Carr 1:02:56 Well, there's a bit of that, but I mean, it's like we, we... I'm, I'm all for the Green New Deal. Just give me a long enough runway. Give me 25 years, and I'll give you net zero.

Chris Williamson 1:03:04 Not 2030.

Jimmy Carr 1:03:04 But, but what I want to do, I want to be as technologically advanced, if you can imagine this for ambition, as technologically advanced as France was in the '70s. So France in the 1970s built 56 nuclear plants. They've got the cheapest energy in Europe. They give a fuck what Russia says or what's going on in the Middle East because they've got their, they've got their energy sorted.

Chris Williamson 1:03:23 Hmm. Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:03:24 Do that. Do that, and then... But it's a very long range. Anyone that says they can fix energy in, in a, in two months, like you're living in a dream world.

Chris Williamson 1:03:31 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:03:31 It's a very long range problem.

Chris Williamson 1:03:32 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:03:33 And then regulation, the red tape, the regulation, just cut all of that. Cut all of that. We're like, we're like the sort of... It's like the end of the Soviet Union, the amount of regulation you need to do anything in the UK now. They could cut an awful lot of that red tape and, and kind of free people to be more, um, entrepreneurial.

Chris Williamson 1:03:50 Everybody likes the idea of being in a country that's got an illustrious history. It's so esteemed, like how long it's been around. It's got... The, the guy comes out and he's got this mace and he goes and dots his cap.

Jimmy Carr 1:04:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:00 And there's wood everywhere. Everything's fucking mahogany. You go, "Yeah, that's great," but you also do accumulate a lot of bullshit along the way.

Jimmy Carr 1:04:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:07 And a lot of bureaucracy, and there's a lot of hurdles that you need to jump over in order to get stuff done.

Jimmy Carr 1:04:11 Well, well, like, you know, the tax thing as well. It's very close to my heart. But the tax thing-

Chris Williamson 1:04:13 Yeah, sure it is

Jimmy Carr 1:04:13 ... is like if you go to, like, Estonia, post the Soviet era, they went, "We've got to do something," and they didn't have much time to think, and they've got one tax form. Estonia has one tax form. Estonia has a law where the government can't ask you for the same bit of information twice. So if you give it, if you give your address to your doctors, they assume that the taxman knows your address and everyone else because it's all joined up.

Chris Williamson 1:04:35 Right.

Jimmy Carr 1:04:35 So, and the, the tax form's one page, and they have a flat rate of tax, and they collect an awful lot of tax. I'm not interested in equality. I'm interested in abundance. Like, what would be the thing that would just get everyone living in Britain?

Chris Williamson 1:04:48 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:04:48 We just have to compete with other countries and get people to come to us, start businesses and want to live where we are.

Chris Williamson 1:04:54 We've got the same number of universities in the top 10 as America does, but we produce five times fewer entrepreneurs gi- out of those universities.

Jimmy Carr 1:05:04 I think we probably produce the same amount of entrepreneurs, but they end up somewhere else. They're not in Great Britain.

Chris Williamson 1:05:09 Brain drain.

Jimmy Carr 1:05:10 Yeah. They're all somewhere else.

Chris Williamson 1:05:11 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:05:11 Uh, which is... I think it's like the, it's possible to, you know, to change it. I mean, listen, that's, that's what I would do with the UK. I'd go, right, currency, lower that. Energy, you need a, you need a 20-year plan for energy in the UK. Regulation, you'd cut a bunch of that, and you'd have a flat rate of tax and, and then just you would, you would see if that works. And then if it doesn't, you would, you would change it. But I think that's, that'd be a kind of a positive thing to do. I think America's like, America's like... I think I could fix America in two moves.

Chris Williamson 1:05:39 Okay.

Jimmy Carr 1:05:40 All right. So I would have, um, open primaries-

Chris Williamson 1:05:47 Uh-huh

Jimmy Carr 1:05:48 ... for Congress, Senate, presidential. Everything would be open, open. So people would have to, they'd have to go to the center. You wouldn't be appealing to your constituency. You'd be appealing to the center. 90% of people agree about 90% of everything.

Chris Williamson 1:06:02 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:06:02 And then I would have term limits for senators, uh, and Congress, because it... Like, I don't blame Donald Trump for being powerful. I blame the checks and balances for not checking and balancing.

Chris Williamson 1:06:14 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:06:14 They haven't done their job. It's an amazing piece of technology, the American Constitution, but you've got to, you've got to work it. It doesn't just sit there. You've got to... It's, it's an active thing.

Chris Williamson 1:06:24 I mean, I had Bernie Sanders on the show, and he's been in government longer than I've been alive.

Jimmy Carr 1:06:29 Yeah. All right. I mean-

Chris Williamson 1:06:30 It's pretty intense.

Jimmy Carr 1:06:31 Yeah. That's it. I think the, the idea of like 20 years maybe. 20 years doesn't sound... That sounds reasonable. And-

Chris Williamson 1:06:36 Is there term limits in the UK?

Jimmy Carr 1:06:37 Um, no.

Chris Williamson 1:06:38 Right.

Jimmy Carr 1:06:39 But there, there were term limits. There, there didn't used to be a term limit on president. I think it was they brought it in with Roosevelt.

Chris Williamson 1:06:44 Right.

Jimmy Carr 1:06:45 Roosevelt did, I think, three terms.

Chris Williamson 1:06:46 He was trying to go for three. Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:06:47 Yeah. Well, anyway.

Chris Williamson 1:06:50 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:06:50 Yeah. That's... We solved the problems of the world there, haven't we?

Chris Williamson 1:06:51 Fix it. Yeah. It's super.

Jimmy Carr 1:06:52 Ha.

Chris Williamson 1:06:53 Uh, have you heard David Ogilvy's line, "You can't save souls in an empty church"? Heard it a couple of weeks ago, and I've kind of been obsessed with it since. This sort of idea that if you believe in something, you have a moral duty to spread that message around, and that a lot of people insulate themselves from having to have their ideas meet reality by, "Oh, it's just so, it's so sophisticated and refined. That's the reason that it hasn't managed to become sufficiently popular." It's like being the underground band whose music is just, you know, it, it, it's, it's very, it's sort of a virtuoso type thing. It would be very hard for you to... The, the, the, the, the proletariat, they wouldn't be able to understand how-

Jimmy Carr 1:07:33 Right

Chris Williamson 1:07:33 ... sophisticated it is that we're doing. Um, but yeah, you can't save souls in an empty church, to me Makes it kind of incumbent on anybody that believes in a thing to find a way to get that message out and to Monday morning quarterback whatever it is that you care about, whether it's climate or young people or suicide or the birth rate or fucking art or taxes or whatever.

Jimmy Carr 1:07:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:57 Like, it is kind of incumbent on you to find a way to-

Jimmy Carr 1:07:59 I, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. I think the idea of, like, talking about those things that are, uh, third rails and getting a message out there is really good. It's probably the most, um, difficult but the most kind of beautiful bit of my show at the moment is, uh, uh, I talk about suicide in the show, and I say... Well, I, I tell people the terrible truth, which is suicide doesn't work. People commit suicide because they want to get rid of the pain, but you can't get rid of the pain. All you can ever hope to do is redistribute the pain-

Chris Williamson 1:08:33 Mm

Jimmy Carr 1:08:33 ... to the people that loved you. And it's a big moment. It's like a... people that are, you know, and there's a non-zero number of people in the audience that are suffering that go, "Oh, right. Oh, this is, this is my burden to carry."

Chris Williamson 1:08:50 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:08:50 It's a, it's a tough thing, but it's, it's kind of... It's interesting to talk about that stuff. It's interesting to have that platform and to feel like, "Okay, I can, I can say that."

Chris Williamson 1:09:01 That's a terrifying realization.

Jimmy Carr 1:09:04 Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's big, but, but if it... if, if one person listens to that and goes, "Oh, right, okay, yeah, that means I can't," great.

Chris Williamson 1:09:16 There's some data from the... George from the Tin Men told me that I think 90% of men who took their own lives had sought help from a mental health practitioner before they did it. So the-

Jimmy Carr 1:09:27 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:09:27 ... we just need people to sort of open up and talk to the professionals thing, it doesn't seem to be working in the way that we anticipated it to.

Jimmy Carr 1:09:35 Yeah. It's, it's Rilke, isn't it? "Feel everything, beauty and terror. No feeling is final."

Chris Williamson 1:09:40 Yeah. Well, unfortunately, it can be if people decide to make that, make that decision. Yeah, I, um... There's, uh, something similar from Blake Burge. "One of the best pieces of advice I ever got: If you want a calmer life, you need to address small problems while they're still small. The cost of dealing with an issue rarely gets cheaper with time. Procrastination turns uncomfortable things into unavoidable things." Basically, like, if it doesn't fit, eventually it'll hurt wearing it.

Jimmy Carr 1:10:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:09 Uh-

Jimmy Carr 1:10:09 I think that's, that's really... That's again, it's on the, that kind of c- compound interest-

Chris Williamson 1:10:13 Yeah

Jimmy Carr 1:10:13 ... on the positive things and, you know, if you're saving money, it works. If you're building skills, it works. But also, if you have problems and you don't address them, it's gonna get worse over time.

Chris Williamson 1:10:23 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:10:24 Um, so addressing that and having the tough conversations. I think getting a quality of a life is kind of, is... You could probably track it with how many uncomfortable conversations are you willing to have.

Chris Williamson 1:10:33 Or do you feel comfortable to have, right? How many people around you can you speak to with no filter? And then there's the other half of that, which is who can you sit in silence with and not need to fill it the most? It's the way that you can work out who your best friend is.

Jimmy Carr 1:10:45 Yeah. Make a terrible fucking podcast.

Chris Williamson 1:10:47 [laughs] Yeah. Yeah, but it would be wonderful-

Jimmy Carr 1:10:49 Sounds like it. Yeah [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:10:49 ... regulating for the two guests that were there. Just don't publish those ones. Publish the ones where you talk-

Jimmy Carr 1:10:53 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:10:53 ... with no filter.

Jimmy Carr 1:10:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:54 But yeah, it's, uh... I don't know. I, I really feel like we're on the cusp of something happening where, okay, we've got these new technologies, and they're atomizing people, and they're distracting them, and then everyone kind of becomes a little bit aware of the fact that maybe they're dangerous or maybe they're making us live our lives in a way which is maladaptive and although immediately gratifying, uh, ultimately becomes kind of destructive. And now we're just about getting to the point where people are thinking, "I probably need to take some really intense action to try and get rid of that out of my life. I need to join a run club. I need to start going out to shows. I need to force myself to head to a coffee shop. I'm... don't want to be working from home anymore." The self-imposed working from home. "I'm gonna go back into the office. I'm gonna spend time around people. I'm gonna, you know, try and change the scope on my sniper rifle to adjust for the wind which is blowing toward me so that I can start to shoot more toward the target that I want to live my life like." But yeah, like, people's ability to adapt to new techno... Tech- technology is able to move so much more quickly than our habits are, and that means that for a long time, last decade, decade and a half, people were on the receiving end of it, and now I think people are starting to realize, "Okay, I can-"

Jimmy Carr 1:12:13 Well, yeah. I mean, I think it, it's knowing what we are as well. It's that, it's that great quote of the, uh, Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.

Chris Williamson 1:12:21 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:12:21 Well, let's roll the dice on that and see how we do.

Chris Williamson 1:12:23 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:12:24 I mean, it seems kind of... It, it, it's crazy, and it's only gonna get worse, I think, now with, um, the interface of AI. The idea that this, this new technology's kinda come along, and how's that gonna change the world? So it's kinda shifting sands. I just think people, people do... You know, we are... W- we need to be connected, and that's kind of the business model of what I do, is, like, getting people out to shows-

Chris Williamson 1:12:45 Mm

Jimmy Carr 1:12:46 ... and to sit in a room together and to laugh.

Chris Williamson 1:12:48 They've had to put pants on.

Jimmy Carr 1:12:49 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:12:49 That's a big deal.

Jimmy Carr 1:12:50 Yeah. I c- I, but I, I do think that thing of, like, that's what people kind of crave, going out and being together. But they'll be... They don't necessarily even have to know the other people just to be there. It's like, sort of, it's like church.

Chris Williamson 1:13:00 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:13:00 They're kind of coming together and finding something.

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Chris Williamson 1:14:08 Yeah, the addressing problems while they're small thing I think works very much personally as well. Like, the way that you degrade your trust in yourself, like we were talking about earlier on, happens with one missed promise, with one, uh, attempt at a change that you decided against doing or that you couldn't hold yourself to doing. And this is why, yeah, small changes do end up compounding. It's also why it feels very unfair that people can look at someone who's at the top of their particular industry and say, "Well, h- like, why is it that all of the gains accrue to that person?" It's like, well, because the compounding interest is working in their favor.

Jimmy Carr 1:14:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:14:43 And the same thing happens in reverse, unfortunately, too, that people-

Jimmy Carr 1:14:45 Well, it's, it's-

Chris Williamson 1:14:45 ... kind of spiral up but they spiral down

Jimmy Carr 1:14:46 ... it's another thing I worry about the, the arts for that reason. Like the, um, uh, oligarchy of the arts. There's an oligarchy in the arts now where you go, with movies, um, it's existing IP or it's sequels or prequels-

Chris Williamson 1:15:00 [chuckles]

Jimmy Carr 1:15:01 ... that dominate. I mean, really dominate. There's like five big movies a year that dominate like 90% of the box office.

Chris Williamson 1:15:06 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:15:06 And with music, it's the, uh, oligarchy of, like, five huge artists that dominate globally.

Chris Williamson 1:15:12 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:15:12 You know, and it used to be 100 artists or 200 artists that all sell pretty well. Books is the same. You know, books are the same. Um, you know, I hope comedy is broad enough that there's like, people can pick their favorite stuff and it doesn't get dominated too much by big names. That you, you want it to be so that there's lots of different people enjoying it. I think, I mean, my big kind of driver is I want to get more people interested in doing comedy rather than just going to see it. I mean, I, I've, I've written this book, um, on jokes with my friends, um, Abby Grant and Amanda Baker, and it's, like, how to be a comedian, really. Essentially, how to, how to write jokes.

Chris Williamson 1:15:47 Can anyone become funny?

Jimmy Carr 1:15:49 I think so, yeah. I think so. I think everyone's got kind of a story to tell. And if you think about what stand-up comedy is, right? It's, um, ordering your thoughts, writing them down, and finding your own authentic voice. That strikes me as an incredibly worthwhile activity. That should be taught in schools.

Chris Williamson 1:16:06 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:16:06 That's probably got more, um, going for it than learning music. I mean, music's very valuable to learn as well, but you go grade eight on the piano won't come in handy when you're doing a best man speech or a presentation at work or talking to your partner. And actually having that ability to, um, write down your thoughts and find, find some perspective in life, which is also kind of what comedy does. It's, it's, it's very good at, um, waking us up. Think about what jokes are, right? It's, it's kind of like Kahneman... Uh, is it Kahneman? Um, uh, Thinking Fast and Slow.

Chris Williamson 1:16:39 Kahneman.

Jimmy Carr 1:16:40 Kahneman.

Chris Williamson 1:16:40 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:16:40 Okay. So, um, first order and second order thinking. So the setup for a joke is first order thinking. It's, it's you, you make an assumption about what the guy's gonna say, and then the punchline kind of snaps you into, "Oh, I actually had to think about that."

Chris Williamson 1:16:54 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:16:55 Oh, okay. So it's that idea of the brain-

Chris Williamson 1:16:56 It's a good way to think about it

Jimmy Carr 1:16:57 ... the brain is designed to not have to think.

Chris Williamson 1:17:00 It's a prediction machine.

Jimmy Carr 1:17:00 Your brain is designed to... Yeah, it's a-

Chris Williamson 1:17:02 Your brain's an LLM.

Jimmy Carr 1:17:03 Yeah. It's, it's pattern recognition. It's exactly LLM. Yeah, right, so and then comedy makes you kind of, "Oh, oh, okay. I'm think- I've got to think about that in a new way."

Chris Williamson 1:17:10 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:17:10 You've actually got to think about that thing. It, like, snaps you awake. I think it's k- it's quite childlike in a sense, because children really think, and grown-ups tend to be like, beyond a certain age, you're just pattern recognition. You've seen this all before. And so comedians have this ability to really think about stuff. It's a very attractive, um, uh, way of being. I think teaching that is, is a... I'd like more people to kind of get into it. I think they'd enjoy watching it more if they knew a little bit more about it. And also, I think the idea of going, there's so many great... It, it's quite a new medium-

Chris Williamson 1:17:39 Mm

Jimmy Carr 1:17:39 ... comedy. It's not been around for as long as music. You know what the, um... Well, hang on. I'll have a drink. I'll tell you a story.

Chris Williamson 1:17:47 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:17:51 You heard of Gregorian chants?

Chris Williamson 1:17:53 Yes.

Jimmy Carr 1:17:54 Okay. Do you know why you've heard of Gregorian chants? And I will tell you, don't panic. Okay. So Pope Gregory, I don't know, 1,000 years ago, is wandering around the Vatican, and he goes to some local churches, and they're all singing the songs differently. And he goes, "Well, this is some nonsense. I want them all to be sung the same. Um, write down the music." And the guy, the bishops or whatever go, "Oh, the thing is, though, you can't write down music because it's sort of ethereal. It's like from another, um, realm, and it just has to be... It's about soul and a groove and what- whatever the fuck they said." And he went, "Here's the thing. I'm the Pope. Write it down." And so they wrote down the music, and we know what Gregorian chants are. Now, interestingly, fast-forward 400 years from that, and you have Bach and Mozart, Beethoven, which couldn't have existed without musical notation. So writing down comedy, like there's too much magical thinking in my business.

Chris Williamson 1:18:55 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:18:55 There's too much, "Oh, that guy's just got funny bones," or, "Oh, he just gets up there and, and does the thing," and, "Oh, he just wings it. He's just funny." No, it's like jokes. They're, they're jokes. It, like, it doesn't, it doesn't diminish the, um, enjoyment of jokes to know how they work. I think it's, uh... And, and, and the less magical thinking, the more everyone can go, "Yeah, can you learn how to be funny?" "Yeah, course you can. Course you can." And you've got a story to tell, and you've got a voice. Most men live lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with a song unsung. I don't want that to happen. I'm on jokes.

Chris Williamson 1:19:30 Right. So you're kind of arguing that unlike music or acting or writing, comedy's never had a ... a shared vocabulary, and you can invent one. You've invented one. Why do you think-

Jimmy Carr 1:19:44 Well, I, I suppose it's about putting it together. I mean, that's, you're standing on the shoulders of giants. You kind of didn't invent anything. You just spotted what was there.

Chris Williamson 1:19:50 In the same way as musical notation-

Jimmy Carr 1:19:51 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:19:51 ... doesn't create music, it describes music that already exists.

Jimmy Carr 1:19:54 Yeah. And then can you reverse engineer it and, and see if it works? So I'm working on- I've written the book, and that's coming out in October. And then, or we've written the book, it's Abby and Amanda and I. Um, and then we're working on putting together a kind of a course, like, like kind of an interactive course whereby you could sort of... There's such great teaching methods out there, especially using AI as a teaching method. It's really, it's really interesting, like, what, what can you achieve with that? I mean, m- is it gonna grow corn? Can I, can I build a comedian with that? If I can, then great.

Chris Williamson 1:20:27 You say that you've got the first scientific theory of what actually makes jokes work.

Jimmy Carr 1:20:33 Well, I don't know if it's a scientific theory. You know, we've got... It's, it's kind of it's, it's all in there. I mean, it's a bit inside baseball, but-

Chris Williamson 1:20:38 Mm

Jimmy Carr 1:20:38 ... that thing of, like, the different ways the jokes work and the... I mean, it's, it broadly speaking, it is that thing of, like, um, taking that, that pattern recognition and reversing it, like ma- making sure that you're waking up the mind.

Chris Williamson 1:20:51 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:20:52 The sudden revelation of a previously concealed fact.

Chris Williamson 1:20:54 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:20:55 It's, it's so simplistic in a way, but that trick is just delightful. And-

Chris Williamson 1:20:59 Have you ever felt guilty at giving the trick away? Like, do you think that other comedians-

Jimmy Carr 1:21:03 No

Chris Williamson 1:21:03 ... are gonna get den- annoyed at you for demystifying it?

Jimmy Carr 1:21:06 No, it's like the, it's like the, the... Ev- everyone had a, a, a guild, right? Everyone had a, um, a, a secret society. It's like the, the magic circle of comedy. But I think most comedians that I know don't really know how they write jokes. They kind of, they find it on stage or stuff occurs to them, and they, they note it down, and they remember it and, but they don't have, like, a-

Chris Williamson 1:21:26 They're virtuoso musicians, but they don't know notation.

Jimmy Carr 1:21:29 Yeah, it's a, it's a... They wouldn't be able to teach it because they, they haven't thought about it in that way.

Chris Williamson 1:21:32 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:21:33 Great, well, they're doing their thing, and they're doing great. Fine. And but I think the idea of being able to be more sy- systematic about it is, is a really sort of positive idea. And I, I'd like to have that. I'd like to give that gift to people, to, to, to be able to, um, throw the rope down and say, "Come on, we, we can all do this."

Chris Williamson 1:21:51 Is writing harder than performing?

Jimmy Carr 1:21:53 I think writing's the, yeah, writing's the job. And writing is self-assignment. You've got to sit down, and no one ever tells you. There's no point in a comedian's caree- career where their manager sits down and goes, "Right, you've got to write." It's like the people just assume that. Um, and you know, and you, you... That's the preparation. That's the reason that you sort of, you know, succeed or fail. You've got to sort of deliver on that.

Chris Williamson 1:22:14 How do you feel about comedians having writers or buying jokes off other comedians?

Jimmy Carr 1:22:19 I, I guess, you know, if you write on TV shows or whatever, it's the absolute norm. It's like on 8 Out of 10 Cats or Last One Laughing or any of those shows that I do, we've got, like, a writing room, and we... They're brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and some people are great at writing. Some people are great at writing, and they don't really want to perform. So that seems pretty valid.

Chris Williamson 1:22:35 Yeah, I... There must be a comedian today who you think sort of embodies everything the book's trying to teach, and then presumably there's someone who you think is great despite discarding many of the rules.

Jimmy Carr 1:22:47 Well, I think, you know, it's comedians you're dealing with. So I mean, I think knowing what the rules are is the first step, and then breaking them all will be-

Chris Williamson 1:22:54 Who do you think breaks them the most?

Jimmy Carr 1:22:55 Uh, in terms of comedically, I'm just trying to think of, like, someone, um, that's funny. And it m- it might be someone like Bob Mortimer-

Chris Williamson 1:23:06 Mm

Jimmy Carr 1:23:06 ... um, which I don't think, Vic and Bob might be slightly lost on your American audience. But the, the, like, really surrealist comics where you go-

Chris Williamson 1:23:12 Kind of absurd

Jimmy Carr 1:23:12 ... I can't quite put my finger on why that's funny, but it's really, really funny.

Chris Williamson 1:23:17 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:23:17 And it's taken me kind of back and by surprise and out of nowhere. Um-

Chris Williamson 1:23:22 Is that stuff less formulaic? Is that a little bit more kind of the jazz virtuoso improvisation?

Jimmy Carr 1:23:28 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:23:28 It's less fungible than-

Jimmy Carr 1:23:29 I think so, but I mean, but Vic and Bob love jokes as well. So I mean, it's, it... Yeah and no, and it's, it's whatever you want to be. I mean, they're, they're very unique. I think also they kind of fall into that thing of going, this... If, if, if done correctly, I think learning how to write jokes, and then you put yourself into it. So it's that thing of, like, with comedy, you, you don't want to be the best. You want to be the only. There's no best in comedy. There's no, "Oh, he's the best comedian."

Chris Williamson 1:23:55 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:23:55 Like, a top 10 list is meaningless because it's what makes you laugh. What do you like? And the more someone is themselves on stage, the, the more people sort of gravitate towards them. So that idea of going, it's, it's like it's not a competition. It's like it doesn't matter how many people do well. It just makes it a bigger pie.

Chris Williamson 1:24:13 Let's say that you had six months with someone completely unfunny to try and make them as funny as possible. What would you be teaching them first?

Jimmy Carr 1:24:23 I think the, the, I think the first thing would be to recogni-- you know, their, their story. What, what do they want to say? What could they say that no one else could say? What's their story? What's their take on life? What's their... And it might be they want to tell a personal story. It might be they want to talk about politics. It might be they're, they're interested in sports or whatever they want to talk about. You sort of assess that and then, okay, how do we, how do we get into that? How do we get-- how do we make that surprising and delightful to, to listen to?

Chris Williamson 1:24:48 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:24:50 It's nice because I think everyone needs-- I think everyone's got a sense of humor. It's like everyone's got, like s- like, so when you say someone unfunny, everyone's got a sense of humor. How dark or sardonic or, or sarcastic it is-

Chris Williamson 1:25:02 Mm

Jimmy Carr 1:25:02 ... that varies. And what you like varies. It's, it's that thing of, like, your taste in comedy is like your taste in, uh, food and sex. Some people like spicy. Some people like vanilla. It's great.

Chris Williamson 1:25:15 What about timing? What's the secret to comic timing?

Jimmy Carr 1:25:18 There seems to be a pattern in rhythm that's the kind of the, the, the proximate speed of development, where if you speak at about sort of 92 beats per minute, if you speak in that kind of, in that rhythm, um, that tends to be, not just for comedy, actually for spoken word, for political speeches as well, and that seems to work very well for people That they c- they get into that, that rhythm, and you can see the audience kind of respond to that. So if you, if you're-- I, I-- It seems almost kind of, um, magical. I don't think it is. I think it's like a, uh, there's something about that cadence of speech that just lends itself to an audience being able to kind of tune into what you're saying and focus.

Chris Williamson 1:25:57 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:25:58 And some people kind of, they, they rush it, and it feels a bit garbled, and they're all over the place. And that doesn't mean speaking fa- fast or slow. It's like, it's where you put the, the intonations, where you put the beat.

Chris Williamson 1:26:08 So is it-

Jimmy Carr 1:26:08 So I think the rhythm is incredibly important.

Chris Williamson 1:26:10 Uh, I Have a Dream, is it '92?

Jimmy Carr 1:26:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:26:14 I think there's a Winston Churchill one as well.

Jimmy Carr 1:26:16 Obama's, Obama's '92. And he, he speaks quite slowly, but he's, he's on that, on that beat, and he's a magnificent public speaker.

Chris Williamson 1:26:23 What joke template do you think has survived longest? What's the most classic?

Jimmy Carr 1:26:29 The most classic is, uh, I, I guess, y- you know, the, the pullback reveal, where, like, it's almost like a comic strip, where you're, you're kind of looking at this thing, and then you pull back, and, oh, he's on the bus. Y- you know, that, that thing is, that seems to work sort of universally across time.

Chris Williamson 1:26:43 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:26:43 And there's wordplay. I mean, I think that, you know, jokes are the, the ha-ha and the a-ha are very similar. They're often kind of insights-

Chris Williamson 1:26:51 Hmm

Jimmy Carr 1:26:52 ... into something and when people kind of, um, realize something. I think the oldest joke is the, uh, it's like there's a, the Lover of Laughter. It's an old Roman book of jokes, and it has a joke in it that still works, I think, where a guy's in the barber's getting his haircut, and the barber says, "How do you want your hair cut?" And the guy says, "In silence."

Chris Williamson 1:27:16 [chuckles]

Jimmy Carr 1:27:18 It's almost like four thousand years old. It's joke-shaped.

Chris Williamson 1:27:22 I wouldn't open with it, but yeah. [laughing]

Chris Williamson 1:27:27 What's been the change since doing more of the crowd work stuff and putting that online? 'Cause I'm seeing an awful lot of that at the moment.

Jimmy Carr 1:27:35 I think it's, it's made it slightly, uh, bigger, um, in terms of the audiences. Like, you know, it's growing. Um, I think it's, there's, there's more of a connection to people now. So you kind of come up and it w- would have been, you know, five years ago, people might come up and say, "Well, I saw the show, and I... Thanks," and a photo. Now people kind of want to have a conversation about something.

Chris Williamson 1:27:55 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:27:56 It's very nice. You know, like-

Chris Williamson 1:27:56 It's deepened the connection.

Jimmy Carr 1:27:58 Yeah, I think so. I think I'm tr- trying to kind of... Okay, so it was like I had my stand-up sort of persona on stage telling jokes and then this kind of, you know, podcast mode, and they're merging.

Chris Williamson 1:28:11 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:28:11 And I'm really excited about that. I really like it. I really like the f- idea that there's like, there'll be-- Don't, don't panic. There'll be ninety minutes of bang on one-liners in the show, but there'll also be half an hour of this, of, you know, chatting about stuff-

Chris Williamson 1:28:24 Hmm

Jimmy Carr 1:28:24 ... and life. Great.

Chris Williamson 1:28:25 How much has that influenced you? Because obviously, you know, you were pretty well established doing the, the jokey thing.

Jimmy Carr 1:28:32 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:28:32 And then even though you've been well-read and you did the university stuff and all the rest of it, the, it does feel to me like there's been a pivot and, you know, fortunately, me and George have been able to, like, be a part of that and, like, be friends-

Jimmy Carr 1:28:45 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:28:45 ... and hang out and stuff. How much has the wisdom verse cum podcast world influenced that thinking?

Jimmy Carr 1:28:52 I think it's been a huge influence. Uh, it's also that thing of, like, it, it's what are you interested in talking about? You know, it's, it's like it's not... It also, you don't want to be one note. Like-

Chris Williamson 1:29:01 That develops over time

Jimmy Carr 1:29:01 ... like if, if like you see a band play on stage and they, and everything is a, is, uh, a floor filler. But sometimes y- you wanna slow it down. You need a couple of ballads in there. So it's, it's nice to have a mix in the set where you go, okay, well, I know, you know, go out there and do twenty minutes of just one-liners. Great. But then you wanna have a little bit of a chat with people and see where the evening takes us.

Chris Williamson 1:29:23 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:29:23 And to also make it feel like it's just live in the room, and this is happening now, and it's not gonna happen again. The quicksilver of it's really nice, the idea that it's like, okay, this is happening now and then the moment's passed.

Chris Williamson 1:29:33 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I've been thinking a lot about some of the reliance that me and the boys have had on, like, really trying to drill home a bunch of core principles. And I came across this Nabeel Qureshi quote that said, "A cursed fact of the world is that the most important life lessons you learn are the hardest to communicate to others because they always sound like clichés."

Jimmy Carr 1:29:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:30:00 And I understand why permanently drilling the same or what appear to be variants of the same kind of, like, trite insight around, well, you know, you just fake it until you make it-

Jimmy Carr 1:30:13 Is it-

Chris Williamson 1:30:13 ... but you need to believe in it and beforehand.

Jimmy Carr 1:30:14 Is it trite, though?

Chris Williamson 1:30:15 Well-

Jimmy Carr 1:30:16 I, I don't think it is. I think it's like that thing-

Chris Williamson 1:30:18 Yeah, maybe that's not the phrasing that's coming through

Jimmy Carr 1:30:19 ... if you go... But it's also that thing of, like, if you read the comments, you know, it's, it'll be someone being terribly kind of, um, above it all going, "Ugh, rubbish."

Chris Williamson 1:30:27 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:30:28 "Oh, oh, systems beat goals. Ugh, whatever."

Chris Williamson 1:30:31 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:30:31 Yeah, okay. Well, what have you done?

Chris Williamson 1:30:34 Well, there's definitely a question of if, if you're so smart, how come you still haven't done it? Like, if you get bored of people talking about cold, dark, quiet for your bed-

Jimmy Carr 1:30:41 Yeah, okay

Chris Williamson 1:30:42 ... why is it that your sleep still sucks?

Jimmy Carr 1:30:44 Yeah. Uh, it's, it's okay as well. It's okay to go through that. I think, you know, early twenties is really the best time for that. If you wanna be super cynical and uh, shit on everything, great. Do your thing. And then at some point you go, "Right. What, who's, [chuckles] what can I do? What, what..." Like, 'cause it, it's that thing of, like, there's two different ways of learning. Like, sometimes some lessons you have to go and... Like, the reason to write the book on jokes is I feel like I macheted my way through the jungle to become a comedian. I feel like, like it was not a well-worn path. You have to kind of, right, get there, and how do I write this, and how do I put on a show, and how do I do the thing, and okay, doing two shows a night. What- whatever that thing was that I kind of, I've created this career for myself, and I feel like now it's incumbent on me to help and to say, "Well, what, how? Look, just do this. Do this. That'll help. That'll definitely move you. That won't be wasting your time-

Chris Williamson 1:31:34 Hmm

Jimmy Carr 1:31:34 ... if you wanna do the same thing as me. Just, that's how you write the jokes. Great. Then go and do your own thing." But I, I think the idea of, like, not repeating the stuff because you think, "Well, uh, people heard this before." Well, maybe, but-

Chris Williamson 1:31:48 Well, I-

Jimmy Carr 1:31:48 Does-- I, I, I think, i-is that-- What's that great quote about, um, "In the work of genius, we see our own discarded thoughts"?

Chris Williamson 1:31:56 Yeah. Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:31:56 So the idea that we, we're constantly, uh, we're hearing stuff that we kind of know a lot of the time.

Chris Williamson 1:32:02 Right.

Jimmy Carr 1:32:02 It's like there's nothing that I'll say, uh, that people will go, "Oh, wow, this is, uh, totally new." But they might go, "Oh, I'd kind of forgotten that."

Chris Williamson 1:32:09 I think if it's something that is totally new, often people probably will be more likely to discard it. You know, I've got no anchor point at all. You need to be incredibly, uh, brave and have quite high conviction around whoever it is that you're listening to, to pivot your entire worldview based on something that you had no reference point prior to. But yeah, I, I don't know what the critical mass is of people needing to hear an insight before they become convinced by it, but I know that it's usually not once. And with that in mind, yeah, I, I... Look, I, I really like trying to drill home pithy insights that are condensed down in a way that you can remember. Like, my memory's not that great. So for me, synthesizing or condensing down a big idea into a pithy little aphorism or a mantra-

Jimmy Carr 1:32:54 But it's almost like it's what remains, right? So let's say you read a book and it's five hundred pages long, and you remember one little quote from that book. Well, that's what remains. That's the, the, the thing that you just can't get rid of. You can't get it out of your head. It's just, it's in there. And you go, "Well, that's, that's kind of brilliant. This is great. That's, that's the, the nugget that you were looking for."

Chris Williamson 1:33:12 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:33:12 And then you, you walk with that, and if it changes how you interact with the world a little bit, then fantastic.

Chris Williamson 1:33:17 Has your opinion on trajectory and position changed, given that your trajectory has sort of continued to rise now to, I think, whatever the most dates in the world or something like that, that you did last year? Or the-- Was it the biggest global tour by tickets sold in comedy? Something like that.

Jimmy Carr 1:33:33 I, um, you'd struggle to find anyone to care.

Chris Williamson 1:33:36 Right.

Jimmy Carr 1:33:36 Um, but yeah, the, uh, like, I think the trajectory is, is very good. It's kind of, it, you know, it's building nicely. And I think more important than that, I think, when are people happy? When they're getting good at stuff.

Chris Williamson 1:33:47 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:33:48 I think competence is the, um... It's such an important thing for people, like, to, to get good at something. It doesn't matter what it is.

Chris Williamson 1:33:56 And to feel like they're getting better as well.

Jimmy Carr 1:33:57 And you think about, like, kids. Kids learn lots of different things. They learn, you know, how to, how to ride a bike, right? So you couldn't ride a bike, and then you struggled, and then you could. It's really fun to learn how to do stuff, right? And, and then some people get better at it and can do tricks and mess around or whatever. Comedy is something that y- there's endless amounts of tricks.

Chris Williamson 1:34:12 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:34:13 So you just keep on getting a little bit better all the time. I really like that, um, is it Kaizen? I think is the name of the Japanese thing. Like getting very-- Like British Cycling does it really well. Getting very slight improvements, incremental improvements-

Chris Williamson 1:34:26 Yeah

Jimmy Carr 1:34:26 ... over time brings an awful lot of satisfaction. I kind of think that thing about going, "That's very exciting to me," and then trying to put myself out of my comfort zone every eighteen months or so, trying to put on bigger tours or play different rooms or do it in a different way that makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. Maybe try and hold some silence and space on stage for people in a way that feels new to me.

Chris Williamson 1:34:48 You know what else is interesting about the spiraling up or the compounding of doing things and, and becoming brave at trying new things with a bigger skill set underneath? I think that, uh, people's sensitivity to cynicism keeps them in place, and as they don't do much more than the basically zero that they're doing now, their fear of cynicism just stays the same. And you need to be able to kind of get past it, because there are gonna be people who just say, "I don't think that that's cool," or, "That's a silly idea to try and do something new." But the fewer fucks that you give, the more you become acclimatized to not giving a fuck, which means you give fewer fucks over time, which means you can be more brave and you can be more experimental. You can take bigger swings with a bigger skill set underneath. But if people are welded in place by their fear of criticism or skepticism or cynicism-

Jimmy Carr 1:35:37 Yeah, I mean-

Chris Williamson 1:35:37 ... that means they don't get started.

Jimmy Carr 1:35:39 Yeah, that's a really... It's, it's slightly tragic, I think.

Chris Williamson 1:35:42 It is completely tragic.

Jimmy Carr 1:35:42 Like worrying about what, what other people are thinking of you the whole time and then not wanting to do it. I remember like mid-twenties, I remember when I, um, I left my job, and I told my friends that I wanted to be a comedian, and I'd left my job. And the reactions were really like, "Oh, I think Jimmy's having a breakdown."

Chris Williamson 1:36:00 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:36:01 "I think he's..." 'Cause obviously they didn't see this. They didn't see where it ended.

Chris Williamson 1:36:04 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:36:04 They just saw the beginning of it, of like going, "No, no, you've got, you've got a good job. Why? What are you doing-

Chris Williamson 1:36:09 Mm

Jimmy Carr 1:36:09 ... you lunatic?" And it was like, I was like, "Yo-ho-ho, a pirate's life for me." And it, like, seemed kind of crazy. But if you'd listened to that, it was that... You talk about it very nicely, that, the, the, the lonely, uh-

Chris Williamson 1:36:20 Yeah

Jimmy Carr 1:36:20 ... chapter, where you kind of go, you have to slightly leave who you were behind. You have to say goodbye to that, and there's a grieving to that, and you have to sort of move on to that, that new phase.

Chris Williamson 1:36:30 Well, there's two things. There's a, a grieving of where you were, and there's a fear of where you're going, because you don't know that the next step has actually got any promise for you. And again, if you're in a world where you don't have an abundance mindset, which I think a lot of people don't, there's so much complexity and uncertainty and chaos, what's gonna happen in future? I don't know if this thing's going to go completely terribly wrong. Why would I give up a certain five out of ten for an uncertain eight out of ten? Because it might be a three out of ten, and that would make me feel really bad. And if you've got high inequality too, you can see not how high you could climb, but also how low you can fall. You know, oh, fuck, like I really don't wanna fall low. That, that, that-

Jimmy Carr 1:37:10 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:37:10 ... that looks, that looks horrendous to me.

Jimmy Carr 1:37:12 Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, um, uh... There's two most important days. Uh, the day you're born and the day you find out why.

Chris Williamson 1:37:21 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:37:21 And the finding out why is like, what, what could you commit to? What could you say, "Well, I'm all in on this. I'm gonna do this thing"? I mean, I'm a big advocate of specialization. You know, find the thing that you enjoy, that you can't stop thinking about. What's play to you and work for them?

Chris Williamson 1:37:35 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:37:36 That's kind of where your edge is. That's gonna be the thing that you're gonna do, you know, better than anything else. And the, the safe option is, you know, it's, it's fine. You know, some people, some people don't find that in work. They find that in, you know, hobbies and other pursuits.

Chris Williamson 1:37:50 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:37:50 And I was chatting to someone recently about... Someone in the crowd was asking about music and saying, "You know, I'm, I'm a, you know, musician. Have you got any advice?" And I'm like, "I don't know anything about music." It was like, well, if you would do it anyway, then do it. Like, it doesn't have to be the way that you make money. Doing something creative and fulfilling-

Chris Williamson 1:38:05 Mm

Jimmy Carr 1:38:06 ... could be the hobby. And if it, if it becomes the way you make money, well, great, but you should be... It should be something that you would do anyway.

Chris Williamson 1:38:12 There's an interesting relationship between discipline, motivation, and obsession. So discipline is saying, "I will make myself do the thing." Motivation is, "I want to do the thing." And obsession is, "I can't not do the thing." And a lot-

Jimmy Carr 1:38:27 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:38:27 ... of the time when we look at somebody who on the outside appears motivated, what they're actually doing, it's just the cooled off version of a past obsession. It's this thing that they were obsessed with 20 years ago that is now just, it's formed into a part of their identity. It's somebody that goes to the gym, but they were completely obsessed with, "This is me." Like when I was in university, I would not go on nights out, and I'd stay in and read bodybuilding.com forums, and I'd get up and make sure that my protein was right and all the rest of it.

Jimmy Carr 1:38:54 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:38:54 And I'm like, "This is fucking lame" at the time. But now, when I go to the gym, it doesn't really take discipline to go and do it. I'm not superbly motivated. It just is who I am.

Jimmy Carr 1:39:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:39:04 But people are kind of serial obsessives. Some people are serial obsessives. But if you don't ever allow that obsession to sort of climb inside of you and, and, and really weigh your life for a little while, kind of like a puppet, you don't get to benefit from all of the accrued gains down the line because this obsession isn't gonna last forever. It's this weird-

Jimmy Carr 1:39:24 But those forearms are

Chris Williamson 1:39:25 ... alignment. This is true. These, these, these are gonna-

Jimmy Carr 1:39:26 [laughs] These-

Chris Williamson 1:39:27 The heat death of the universe-

Jimmy Carr 1:39:28 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:39:28 ... is gonna be gone before these finish up. Um, the-

Jimmy Carr 1:39:31 [laughs] It's like, it's like talking to Popeye.

Chris Williamson 1:39:34 That's true. Yeah, but no spinach. The, uh, the problem I think that people come up against is that if you don't allow yourse- if you're not prepared to let that obsession kind of really, really get inside of you and drive you forward, you miss out on this, like, beautiful opportunity. Like, lots of people go their entire life without having an obsession that's worth anything, and sometimes people can become obsessed with shit that they really shouldn't be, right? Which is the politics, porn, your ex-

Jimmy Carr 1:39:58 That's right

Chris Williamson 1:39:58 ... gambling, video games, stuff like that.

Jimmy Carr 1:39:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:39:59 Unless video games can be quite fun. But if you're the sort of person that is consistently becoming obsessed with stuff, like, that's good. I think that you really should allow that to embrace your life for a period because it's this, it's this odd alignment of, like, motivation and opportunity and skill set and timing and life situation. It's all of this shit kind of comes into alignment in one go, and then this weird kind of magic... I don't think you can engineer obsession particularly well. You can force discipline, right? Which is why people love it.

Jimmy Carr 1:40:32 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:40:32 People are obsessed with discipline because if you're prepared to pay the price, it's always there.

Jimmy Carr 1:40:37 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:40:37 Motivation is halfway house. You can kind of engineer it a little bit. Maybe you start to spend a lot of time around other people who do-

Jimmy Carr 1:40:44 Right

Chris Williamson 1:40:44 ... the same sort of thing that you do.

Jimmy Carr 1:40:46 And it becomes a bit of a feedback loop, I think.

Chris Williamson 1:40:47 To a degree.

Jimmy Carr 1:40:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:40:48 You can have some social pressure.

Jimmy Carr 1:40:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:40:49 Maybe you can listen to your favorite playlist, you know, get yourself amped up. Like, motivation's-

Jimmy Carr 1:40:53 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:40:53 ... halfway between the two, but obsession you can't really engineer, and that means that when it comes along, it's got a, a, a, a certain sort of magical quality to it, and it's temporary. It is gonna leave. You're not obsessed by the same things. Typically, most people aren't obsessed at 50 by the same stuff that they were at 30. And-

Jimmy Carr 1:41:11 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:41:12 ... that, I think, means, okay, if I'm gonna have-

Jimmy Carr 1:41:14 I think the people that are you've heard of.

Chris Williamson 1:41:16 Correct, because they've never done it.

Jimmy Carr 1:41:17 I think the people, the people that have got that... Like, because again, it's the compound interest. They've really... Uh, like, that really builds up over time if you can keep doing that thing, if you're still interested in that thing.

Chris Williamson 1:41:28 It's the freest discipline and motivation that you're ever going to get, right? I can't not do the thing.

Jimmy Carr 1:41:33 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:41:33 I... It's what I think about when I go to the toilet. It's what I think about when I fall asleep at night. It's what I think about when I'm eating my lunch. It's what I think about when I'm waiting in line to get into the airport. Like, all of every single part of your life is cohesing to get you toward this thing, and that's fucking cool. Um-

Jimmy Carr 1:41:49 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:41:49 ... I don't know. We, we have... Society has a really bad relationship, I think, with obsession because it comes laden with a lot of baggage that... I don't know. People either don't understand it or they fear it.

Jimmy Carr 1:42:00 Well, I guess it's, it's linked to addiction.

Chris Williamson 1:42:03 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:42:03 You know, I think people with addictive personalities, uh, never really get over the addiction. They just get addicted to something else.

Chris Williamson 1:42:08 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:42:09 So some of my best friends that are in, you know, AA would've been then addicted to the gym afterwards, or addicted to eating right, or addicted to w- w- shopping, what-

Chris Williamson 1:42:17 Yeah

Jimmy Carr 1:42:17 ... whatever the next thing that comes along is.

Chris Williamson 1:42:19 Yep.

Jimmy Carr 1:42:19 But they'll be addicted to it. They'll... The... It's compulsive behavior. But if you can direct that compulsive behavior to something that builds and, and grows and feeds back, then fantastic.

Chris Williamson 1:42:30 That's the problem-solving brain thing again, right?

Jimmy Carr 1:42:32 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:42:32 It's like give yourself good problems to solve. Give yourself an obsession that's worth something. And again, you can't generate all of them, but I think you can, you can kind of help to, to guide yourself. So yeah, I just... That really is the, the freest way to become... Granted, it's your insight around, like, do what feels like play to you but looks like work to everyone else, Naval's line. If you can manage to, I don't know, find something that is positive sum and pro-social and isn't gonna destroy you or the world around you-

Jimmy Carr 1:43:01 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:43:01 ... like, that... Just let it, let it fucking weigh you for a bit.

Jimmy Carr 1:43:04 Yeah, as long as it's not fentanyl, great.

Chris Williamson 1:43:06 Yeah. Well, you know, there's tranq now, which is like fentanyl's fentanyl. They just keep on releasing new versions that are more powerful at all times.

Jimmy Carr 1:43:13 I think fe-fentanyl really scares me. I think you know a drug is powerful if, if you're using heroin to take the edge off it.

Chris Williamson 1:43:19 [laughs] I'm gonna come down from this fentanyl.

Jimmy Carr 1:43:21 This is, this is a bit strong. I might put some heroin in this.

Chris Williamson 1:43:23 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:43:23 Like, okay.

Chris Williamson 1:43:24 Uh, I, I cut-

Jimmy Carr 1:43:25 Enough

Chris Williamson 1:43:25 ... my fentanyl with heroin.

Jimmy Carr 1:43:26 Enough now.

Jimmy Carr 1:43:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:43:27 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:43:27 There's a, there's a, there's an argument that the fentanyl crisis is, uh, is China's revenge for the Opium Wars.

Chris Williamson 1:43:34 What were the Opium Wars? Because I've heard this, but I don't know what the Opium Wars were.

Jimmy Carr 1:43:37 It's when, uh, the British went to, uh, China and forced them to trade with us, and we sold them a bunch of opium. That's what, that's what we did.

Chris Williamson 1:43:44 But fentanyl is mostly landing in America.

Jimmy Carr 1:43:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:43:47 So the-

Jimmy Carr 1:43:47 Well, we are-

Chris Williamson 1:43:47 ... British started it, and the Americans-

Jimmy Carr 1:43:49 We are paying the price. Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:43:50 ... on the receiving end of it. [laughs]

Jimmy Carr 1:43:52 Yeah, but I can s- I can definitely see a connection. We are, we are Greece to America's Rome.

Chris Williamson 1:43:56 Right. Right.

Jimmy Carr 1:43:57 You know, we're kind of part of the same thing-

Chris Williamson 1:43:58 Mm-hmm

Jimmy Carr 1:43:58 ... really.

Chris Williamson 1:43:59 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:43:59 I mean, I know they had the War of Independence, but come on.

Chris Williamson 1:44:01 A lot, a lot's coming over the southern border through Mexico.

Jimmy Carr 1:44:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:44:05 The fentanyl.

Jimmy Carr 1:44:06 Crazy.

Chris Williamson 1:44:06 Yeah, I-

Jimmy Carr 1:44:07 Right

Chris Williamson 1:44:07 ... I've seen some videos. There's this area in Philadelphia, I think, uh, where, like, constantly YouTubers are going and, and filming the- these, like, it's Skid Row's Skid Row.

Jimmy Carr 1:44:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:44:20 It's so intense.

Jimmy Carr 1:44:21 No, I've seen it in some, in some cities around America. It's really, uh... It's... Well, I mean, look, you know, what happened, though? We, we shut down all the asylums in the '80s because we saw One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and we decided asylums were terrible places. We didn't run out of crazy people.

Chris Williamson 1:44:35 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:44:36 You know, there's a lot of crazy people out there. So I think that thing of, like, going, you know, the homelessness problem is ultimately a, a, you know, a drugs and addiction problem and, uh, and, and a problem with, um, mental health, and we need to treat that and, and take it very seriously rather than, you know, it's, uh... You know, building new houses is a part of that, but it's a very small part of it.

Chris Williamson 1:44:56 Well, the safety net in America doesn't sweep people up in the same way as it does in the UK. I don't see in the UK the same kind of shuffly, shouty at the sky, clutching a-

Jimmy Carr 1:45:08 There's, there's still, there's still too much of it. There's still... I mean, it's like it's really... It feels like a, um... There's other places you go. I mean, I travel maybe 50 countries around the world on tour, and you become very aware of the... It's my favorite quote. Wil- William Gibson, the sci-fi writer from Canada, said, "The future is here, but it's not evenly distributed."

Chris Williamson 1:45:25 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:45:25 I think the more you travel around the world, you see how different places deal with different problems. You sort of go, "Oh, right. It's kind of..." Like, we could have a utopia if we took all the elements from all these different places.

Chris Williamson 1:45:35 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:45:36 Uh, th-

Chris Williamson 1:45:36 It's like having the perfect outfit, but you'd have to go to 55 different stores.

Jimmy Carr 1:45:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:45:40 Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Where's had the least intense problems with homelessness that you've been to?

Jimmy Carr 1:45:46 Well, I think Lisbon really turned it round, because Lisbon was one of the roughest towns in the world. Lisbon, Portugal, was one of the roughest towns. Port town in Portugal was really rough. Big heroin problem. And they, um, they legalized drugs. But that's only half the story. It's a very small bit of the story. So they legalized drugs, but they basically said, "We're gonna ring-fence the money we spend fighting the drugs war, and we're gonna spend all that money on rehabilitation and education and, uh, some housing." So they, they basically took that money, legalized drugs, and then went, "Okay, anyone that wants to get off drugs, you come here. Anyone that needs to be housed, you go here. Anyone..." And they basically solved the problem. They ended up with very few people on heroin, um, that, that, that they can get from a pharmacy.

Chris Williamson 1:46:29 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:46:30 And the crime rate obviously falls off a cliff when you take illegal drugs out of the situation because people don't have to feed their habit and they don't... Petty crime goes, goes down massively.

Chris Williamson 1:46:39 Presumably organized crime as well also has the ass pulled out of it.

Jimmy Carr 1:46:42 Yeah, a lot of it. So it's that thing where you go, "That kind of solved the problem." I think it's slightly creeping back a little bit now because the ring-fencing that money you can do for a certain amount of time, but then politics gets in the way and people go, "Actually, we need that money for something else."

Chris Williamson 1:46:55 Right.

Jimmy Carr 1:46:55 And you, you know-

Chris Williamson 1:46:56 Because you take for granted the progress that's been made.

Jimmy Carr 1:46:59 Sure. So the problem creeps up again. But the idea of going, there's always gonna be the, you know, a, a problem around that. We're gonna need to fight that.

Chris Williamson 1:47:07 It's kind of like the, uh, strong men make good times, but the equivalent for-

Jimmy Carr 1:47:12 Hmm

Chris Williamson 1:47:12 ... government in relationship to-

Jimmy Carr 1:47:14 Well, it's like-

Chris Williamson 1:47:15 ... society

Jimmy Carr 1:47:15 ... Kesterson's fence. They forget why they're spending that money on that thing.

Chris Williamson 1:47:18 It only happened-

Jimmy Carr 1:47:18 And they go-

Chris Williamson 1:47:18 ... like 10 years ago.

Jimmy Carr 1:47:19 Yeah, 15 years. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:47:20 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:47:21 It's, um... Yeah, it's not... Yeah. It's, it's, it's interesting those kind of problems that are solved. I mean, I've got quite, I've got quite spicy views on drugs. Right. Here's my, here's my take on marijuana. Do you want to hear my hot take on marijuana?

Chris Williamson 1:47:32 Bring it on.

Jimmy Carr 1:47:33 Okay. I think it should be illegal for the under 30s, right? Because it's, it's kind of the opposite of a performance-enhancing drug. It's a performance-inhibiting drug. It takes away people's drive and ambition, and in those kind of, you know, early mid-20s years when people really need to have that drive.

Chris Williamson 1:47:48 Hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:47:48 'Cause y- you're out of the kind of school system and on your own, and you've got to be a self-starter, and you... It's, it's, you know, self-assignment, right? So banned. 30 to 50, it should be legal, okay? You're a grown-up. You, you make a decision as to what you want to do, what you want to put in your body. 50 and above, mandatory. A- and not because I think it's a good drug. I don't think it's a good drug. But I think it would, it would redistribute the wealth to the young because old people would be slightly high and out of it.

Chris Williamson 1:48:16 Right. Okay. So you're going to pharmacologically retard the people that are old-

Jimmy Carr 1:48:20 Yes

Chris Williamson 1:48:21 ... and make the playing field more even for the people that are coming up.

Jimmy Carr 1:48:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:48:24 Okay. Yeah, but I'm down. I'm down.

Jimmy Carr 1:48:26 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:48:26 I hate weed. It does not, it does not agree with me at all. But, uh, yeah, I think it, it, it's a, an interesting theory. I, I... On the Portugal thing, I really get the sense that the more we try to legislate our way through things, those are kind of like the one good article per hour-long doom scroll on X insights-

Jimmy Carr 1:48:55 Right

Chris Williamson 1:48:55 ... that encourage people to keep chasing red tape. And it's like, ah, but w- what about that one thing that went well, and therefore we just add bureaucracy and add bureaucracy and add bureaucracy?

Jimmy Carr 1:49:04 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:49:04 I would be fascinated to know what the relationship between organized crime and the government is, 'cause it's one of those, like, nationwide slapdowns that completely cut off at the knees an entire universe of, like, pretty dangerous, pretty nasty guys who are all trying to, like, cartel their way to, to, to wealth. But it is a single move that would be able to basically put a huge industry of people out of business. They're all just in an underworld as opposed to listed on the FTSE 500.

Jimmy Carr 1:49:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:49:37 It must be so much pressure between a government and then... Can you imagine if you're part of some organized crime group, how many different favors you're gonna call in to try and not get this thing passed because it's gonna stop your entire business? I, I, I don't know. It... I, I feel like I'm writing a new Tom Hardy series here, but-

Jimmy Carr 1:49:51 I, I, I like the idea, though, of the, the cartels getting, getting a lobby group together to go, "We can't have drugs legalized."

Chris Williamson 1:49:56 You're putting us out of business.

Jimmy Carr 1:49:58 "This would be terrible for our business plan."

Chris Williamson 1:50:00 Exactly. Think about the gang.

Jimmy Carr 1:50:01 Our five-year projections. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:50:02 What do you think, what are you thinking about the gang? The year on year is gonna fall behind.

Jimmy Carr 1:50:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:50:07 Yeah. I, I, I, I like what you're saying, though, about young people really need to use that drive, and it's kind of like the obsession thing that- A lot of the time people talk about nobody is coming to save you as a line, but-

Jimmy Carr 1:50:20 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:50:20 ... nobody is coming to save you also implies that nobody's coming to stop you.

Jimmy Carr 1:50:23 Well, yeah, and nobody cares more than you. I think that thing about, you know, empathetically, you, you wanna have there be a great safety net for everyone, right? You, you want there to be universal basic income, which essentially we sort of have in the UK under the benefits system. You know, there's, there's a version of that where, you know, you'll get something from the state, and you'll be, you'll be okay. You won't go hungry. Uh, we hope. Um, but the idea of going the universal basic income is a bit too close to we don't need you.

Chris Williamson 1:50:51 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:50:51 You know, and I, I worry about that. I worry about purpose being one of the key things of, like, if you take, uh, Morgan Housel has a great, um... He's got great equations, Morgan Housel.

Chris Williamson 1:51:00 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:51:00 He's got this great equation on happiness being, uh, it's, um, freedom and purpose.

Chris Williamson 1:51:04 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:51:05 If you have those two, you're pretty much on, you're on a good road 'cause everyone wants there to be benefits available for everyone, right? Everyone wants there to be a, um, a safety net. But no one... When you think about it, no one wants that for their kids. No one looks at their newborn and goes, "Oh, wow, I hope he, hope he gets really great benefits."

Chris Williamson 1:51:21 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:51:23 You want him to have, uh, or her to have a fulfilling life where they, they go out and they, they do something and they add value to society. That's what we want.

Chris Williamson 1:51:32 It is an interesting challenge, I suppose, where we want to be able to support people. We've got this future of automation coming through. We know that purpose is important, but if you clear off all of the bottom levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which was all that anybody was obsessed by for almost all of human history-

Jimmy Carr 1:51:50 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:51:50 ... but self-actualization, you, you asking the question, "Am I self-actualizing?" is actually an indication that you're in a really wonderful position-

Jimmy Carr 1:51:58 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:51:58 ... right across the expanse of human history.

Jimmy Carr 1:52:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:52:00 But that is much tougher to answer.

Jimmy Carr 1:52:03 I think it's a-

Chris Williamson 1:52:03 Like, where do I get my next meal from?

Jimmy Carr 1:52:05 I think it's a false read though on the... I think we- in liberal democracy, we've oversold for the individual, um, the liberal bit, and the demos is underutilized, so there's not enough connection between people.

Chris Williamson 1:52:18 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:52:19 So the idea of, like, going, it's the, um, the, the, the family and the friends and the community beyond that. So it's, it's that smaller level stuff, those connections, is what people are, I think, missing. Um, so I, I, I do think that kind of it's the safety, security, you know, calorific... You wanna take care of the basics for everyone, you know, education and healthcare and, uh, you know, ma-making sure everyone's okay to a level, and then you wanna give them the, uh... You want it to be abundance. You want it to be that everyone can have an exciting, fun time.

Chris Williamson 1:52:53 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:52:53 You, you want that for your kids, and if you want that for your kids, you want it for everyone.

Chris Williamson 1:52:58 Yeah. Yeah. Uh, the intergenerational competition theories, I'd never even thought about it before, but what you said earlier on, you want your kids to do better than you did, and also your kids want to do better than you did.

Jimmy Carr 1:53:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:53:11 But that means that there is this, like, embedded growth obligation, that everything always needs to be getting better all of the time.

Jimmy Carr 1:53:17 Well, there's another way of... Again, Morgan Housel is, is such a genius writer. He's wonderful, but he has this idea of going, there's, uh, the biggest inflation in the world is not currency inflation. It's expectation inflation. But there's another word for expectation inflation. We expect so much more than we did in the 1970s, right? I remember the '70s. It was shit, and it's so much better now. But the expectation is so much higher than it's ever been. But the other name for expectation inflation is progress.

Chris Williamson 1:53:44 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:53:44 That's what progress looks like. You just factor in all the stuff that's there, and you go, "Yeah, and we want more." And that's a good thing ultimately. I mean, if you look at it on a global scale as well, you go, if you care about humanity as a whole, like, getting everyone up to our level would be an incredible achievement. You know, that's... The, the biggest things in the world are, are not talked about, like the, the worst things in the world, the easy fixes that we just ignore-

Chris Williamson 1:54:08 Mm

Jimmy Carr 1:54:08 ... because they're not sexy. Like burning, burning biomass kills three million people a year. Just burning, like, uh, wood and peat-

Chris Williamson 1:54:17 Done

Jimmy Carr 1:54:18 ... and stuff-

Chris Williamson 1:54:18 Yeah

Jimmy Carr 1:54:18 ... inside, inside homes. It kills three million people a year.

Chris Williamson 1:54:22 From asphyxiation?

Jimmy Carr 1:54:23 Yeah. Uh, well, it's, it, it, it's cancer.

Chris Williamson 1:54:25 Right.

Jimmy Carr 1:54:26 It's, it's, it's horribly bad for people. Smoking is a much bigger problem than we think it is because we've solved it here. Solved in America and, and kind of the English-speaking world really.

Chris Williamson 1:54:36 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:54:36 But in South America and Africa and Asia, it's... Smoking is a huge problem, and it's so easy to fix. We could just... The playbook is there.

Chris Williamson 1:54:43 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:54:43 We know exactly what to do, but we don't.

Chris Williamson 1:54:45 So that's the future being distributed to a different area, from our future-

Jimmy Carr 1:54:48 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:54:49 ... to theirs.

Jimmy Carr 1:54:49 Actually, like, uh, I think it's Peter Singer is, is very good on this stuff. The, uh... Oh, no, um, is it, is it-

Chris Williamson 1:54:56 No

Jimmy Carr 1:54:56 ... Derek, Derek Parfit's got really good things on, like, the, the debt that we owe to future people-

Chris Williamson 1:55:01 Yes

Jimmy Carr 1:55:01 ... and to geographically d- you know, disperse people.

Chris Williamson 1:55:03 Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Carr 1:55:04 The idea that we should care about that stuff at least.

Chris Williamson 1:55:07 I had William MacAskill on the show. He's the longtermism guy.

Jimmy Carr 1:55:11 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:55:11 What We Owe The Future. And, um, I for- I think he was the youngest philosophy professor. It's long... The youngest tenured philosophy professor in the world, William. And, uh, anyway, he's, he's talking about, yeah, what we owe future generations. But-

Jimmy Carr 1:55:28 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:55:28 ... people don't really think about that in quite the same way. They think about-

Jimmy Carr 1:55:30 Well, it's, it's odd, that thing of, like... 'Cause you go, like, net zero is a really good example of that, of, like, going, "Well, we have to, uh, in- decrease our reliance on fossil fuels." But in the short term, like, that's very, very difficult to do.

Chris Williamson 1:55:42 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:55:42 And it affects the poor, um, massively.

Chris Williamson 1:55:45 Disproportionately.

Jimmy Carr 1:55:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:55:45 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:55:46 So the idea of going, "Well, that should be an aim in, like, 25 years," but you go, "But you have to start building nuclear plants now-

Chris Williamson 1:55:52 Yeah

Jimmy Carr 1:55:52 ... in order to make that happen," and then you could have that eventuality. That, that'd be great, but it takes statesmen to look on those timescales. It's-

Chris Williamson 1:55:59 And everybody just wants to get elected for their next four-year term or whatever it is.

Jimmy Carr 1:56:04 Yeah, and it's that thing of, like, going, you know, what... You know, Britain, I think, uh, could, could put its feet up now in terms of going, it's had a big effect on the world. But the idea of being a, an example to other nations of how to do that- That would be the flex. That would be the thing to do.

Chris Williamson 1:56:20 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:56:20 To go, to get there before anyone else because you go, "Well, we built the plants, so in twenty-five years we look like geniuses." And also, if you get energy down to essentially zero cost, how many businesses would that attract to,

Jimmy Carr 1:56:33 to the UK?

Chris Williamson 1:56:33 When it comes to culture, British culture, what do you wish more British people understood or knew?

Jimmy Carr 1:56:39 What, culturally?

Chris Williamson 1:56:40 Yeah.

Jimmy Carr 1:56:40 Um-

Chris Williamson 1:56:40 Like, I, I... For me, the... British culture has an awful lot of charm to it, but there's some kind of, like, lethal poisons thrown in with it. Like, the tall poppy syndrome is one of them. The sense of a l- maybe a lack of mobility, the k- quite ossified class system that in the US what somebody earns kind of determines their-

Jimmy Carr 1:57:04 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:57:04 ... current level of class. But in the UK, it's where you went to school or it's your accent. Is there something that you wish more British people sort of... I- if you could, uh-

Jimmy Carr 1:57:11 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:57:11 ... inject something into British culture, what would it be?

Jimmy Carr 1:57:13 I think it'd be, uh... I think there's a, I think it's oikophobia is the fancy term. It's the hatred of one's own culture.

Chris Williamson 1:57:20 Okay.

Jimmy Carr 1:57:20 I think that people need to take a bit more pride in that. You know, it's not immediately apparent that a place without a past has a future, and I think having that shared, um, belief in what, what we've done in the past, I mean, it's, you know, we beat the Nazis and we ended slavery. It's not nothing. It's, it's, it's big. And going, "And the English language is a beautiful thing." I mean, it's really... Uh, George Max got a good line on this on, like, if you had Top Trump cards for Great Britain, and you go, "Well, name a thing." "Okay, music." "The Beatles." "Okay, physics." "All right, Stephen Hawking." Uh, you know, uh, biology. "Okay, well, uh, Tim Berners-Lee for the internet." Whatever, y- we've got lots and lots of kind of... We've done great things, and we continue to punch above our weight, and people should take some pride in that. I think taking some pride in where you're from is, is quite an important thing.

Chris Williamson 1:58:04 Mm.

Jimmy Carr 1:58:04 And the local communities are kind of... There's, there's that kind of at a, at a lower level, I think. People like where they're from. They have a sense of that.

Chris Williamson 1:58:12 Heck yeah. Jimmy Carr, ladies and gentlemen. Jimmy, love you.

Jimmy Carr 1:58:15 It's a pleasure.

Chris Williamson 1:58:15 Appreciate you coming, for coming through.

Jimmy Carr 1:58:17 No, I, I really enjoy... I think, you know, you're, you're right. I think coming on this show and doing this kind of thing has really changed me as a, as a performer. It's been really incredibly valuable to me.

Chris Williamson 1:58:27 Helped you in the right direction.

Jimmy Carr 1:58:28 I really appreciate it. Yeah. Well, [laughs] they, they'll decide.

Chris Williamson 1:58:31 All right.

Jimmy Carr 1:58:31 Look at the comments section. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:58:32 Until next time.

Jimmy Carr 1:58:33 Thanks, mate.

Chris Williamson 1:58:33 Bye, everybody. Boo, yes.

Jimmy Carr 1:58:35 Is that all right?

Chris Williamson 1:58:36 Yes.

Jimmy Carr 1:58:36 Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:58:37 Best. [upbeat music] Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, YouTube knows who you are deeply. It thinks you're gonna like this one even more. Go on, press it