Are you a witch? Believe in your magic and the power of ritual, with Poppy Jamie

Did you listen when your gut told you to turn down that job... and did you seize a better opportunity after? What about when you were tired but something told you to go to the party anyway? Did you meet your partner there? Entrepreneur and author Poppy Jamie says there’s no such thing as a coincidence. In this chat with Fearne, Poppy explains why our collective exhaustion comes down to trusting logic and data over our gut instinct and inner wisdom. They talk about why it’s the inexplicable moments in life that expand our understanding of what’s possible. Poppy has been diagnosed with near-infertility and couldn't see how motherhood was possible; she explains how a true belief in magic, intuition, and the wise women around her have helped her cope. Plus, Poppy has an incredible announcement that was prophesised many years ago... Poppy’s book, The Book of Magical Living, published by New River, is out now. CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains frank conversation about pregnancy loss and abortion. If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like: Sonia Choquette https://pod.fo/e/376871 Estelle Bingham https://pod.fo/e/2c3bf2 Rhonda Byrne https://pod.fo/e/ba4b1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Fearne Cotton?

  Before we start, this episode contains some chat you might find difficult to hear, so do check the show notes for more details.

• 0:09Fearne Cotton?

  Hello and welcome to Happy Place with me, Fern Cotton. This is the show that wants you to trust your gut. Today, I'm chatting to Poppy Jamie.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  I called my mum and she said, Poppy, I don't know whether you want to know this, but I knew you weren't going to have this baby. I said, what? And in that moment, it's so strange, but for me, that was the most healing thing I could have received because I thought, oh my gosh, Poppy, I was never, this is, I don't know why I was pregnant, but I was never supposed to have this baby. Like, the fact that my mother wrote down I wasn't going to have a baby next year was giving me kind of so much hope that everything was unfolding, even though it was desperately painful and the most traumatic thing I've ever been through. It was kind of unfolding as it should.

• 0:53Fearne Cotton?

  Oh my God, I am going through a very mad period of life at the minute. Everything feels very busy and I am overwhelmed. That's the word I'm looking for. I have just got, I feel very lucky and I've got lots of exciting projects that I'm working on and things that I'm doing at the minute. But that alongside sort of parenting and just being a human, it just all feels mad. I'm sure many of you listening to this will feel equally as overwhelmed. So let this be a moment for us to pause and not be racing ahead to what you've got to do next. That's what my brain constantly does, like, oh my God, right, I'm, I'm doing this thing, but actually I'm thinking about the three activities I've got to do, or jobs I've got to do, or things I've got to tick off a list in the future.

• 1:38Fearne Cotton?

  Let's just all be here for the minute because I promise this chat, whatever your inclination is, whether to be more science minded or woo woo minded or somewhere in between, this chat will prove to be positive and hopeful and just actually bloody lovely. I, this chat came at the right time, as did Poppy's book, The Book of Magical Living. There was some synchronicity with all of it and I hope that you find that from this conversation too. So let's talk about lovely Poppy. Poppy was well known as a TV host before pivoting into the mental health space. She experienced a lot of anxiety and burnout, which led her to write her first book, Happy Not Perfect.

• 2:21Fearne Cotton?

  And now she's written this new book, The Book of Magical Living. I love anything with the word magic in. We all need more magic. I love this book because it's basically pointing out the extent to which we've been trained to dismiss the stuff that we can't measure. We're meant to trust logic over intuition and data over energy. And I think that has been massively accentuated more recently. And look, I'm here for it. If we think that quantifying, you know, tracking our sleep or our footsteps or whatever it is, if that is helpful to you and it feels like it's a positive in your life, bloody brilliant, I'm not going to argue with that. But I do think if we are only looking at numbers, you've all become sort of slightly

• 3:06Fearne Cotton?

  obsessed with quantifying everything from likes and followers to how well we're sleeping, to how much energy we're burning off, to whatever. We're just trying to quantify everything, like there's meaning in the numbers, when actually we're not looking at just the meaning in life, just the little magical moments that we feel mean something. I think we've, the balance has tipped so far into numbers and I'm guilty of it. You know, I can get totally carried away with that. Like, how many people listen to the podcast? How many people are following me on Instagram? Like, who fucking cares? It doesn't matter. Actually, what we all really need for our mental health, our general wellbeing, is proper, meaningful moments. They don't have to be huge.

• 3:51Fearne Cotton?

  I think they can be tiny little glimmers throughout your day, throughout your week, that just calm you or make you feel like you're on the right path, on the right track. That's what I'd rather deal in. Also, stick with this podcast. I mean, quite early on, Poppy has a huge announcement that got us all totally teary in the studio. Maybe get a tissue to hand.

• 4:17Fearne Cotton?

  Hello, I'm Joanna Fletcher.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  And I'm Marco Burchella.

• 4:21Fearne Cotton?

  And this is Boots Off.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  We are friends who have spent a decade together, walking up mountains, across deserts and along coastlines with some seriously awesome groups of humans.

• 4:32Fearne Cotton?

  And something happens when you're out there, feet on the ground, surrounded by nature. The conversations just spill out of you.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  This series is about the adversities that lead to adventure.

• 4:42Fearne Cotton?

  The adventures that lead to adversity.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  And how life can be one big adventure in itself.

• 4:47Fearne Cotton?

  Listen every Thursday. Just search for Boots Off.

• 4:54Fearne Cotton?

  All right, let's do it. Here's the show.

• 5:17Fearne Cotton?

  Poppy, it's so lovely to see you in real life, not just on an Instagram grid.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, I cannot tell you how much I am excited to be here. I am obsessed with this podcast. You've been always such a pioneer in all of this, so it's a real moment for me to be here.

• 5:33Fearne Cotton?

  Oh my God, that means the world. Thank you. And thank you for writing your beautiful book, The Book of Magical Living, which I cannot tell you, came to me like good books do at the right time. I love it when you get a book and you're like, I had no clue that you'd written a book about this stuff. And it landed on my doorstep and I was like, oh my God, I needed this right this second.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  That makes me so happy. The book did the same thing for me as well. It just came right on time.

• 6:03Fearne Cotton?

  I love that. I love that. So before we get into exactly what's in the book, tell me what you mean or your understanding of magical living. What is that to you?

• 6:13Speaker 01

  I think that it's best to start off talking about magic in the way that it feels. Because everybody understands what magic feels like. That moment when you meet the love of your life on the night that you didn't want to go out. But there was a small voice that said, oh, just go to the party. And suddenly you're standing there and your destiny is about to change. Or that idea that comes in the middle of the night that completely sends you on a different journey. Or perhaps it's when a loved one has died and suddenly they send a sign and you know it's from them. It's these inexplicable moments that expand your understanding of what is possible. And I often think that we see and feel magic often in tragedy.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Or when you're on the edge of life, whether that be birth or death. You know, it's like something like one in 400 trillion chance of being born. I mean, the fact that we are just magic, even by the fact that we live.

• 7:08Fearne Cotton?

  Totally.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Those, those moments that suddenly you go, we don't understand life. And to me, that mystery and the fact that science is now validating how little we know. NASA says we've only ever tracked 5% of the universe, 95% is totally unknown. You go, wow, why don't we lean into this 95%? Because if we think we know, that's when I think we lose hope.

• 7:31Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, God, I feel depressed when I think, oh, that's it. We're just blobs walking around a planet and I actually can't bear that thought. I need some magic.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:39Fearne Cotton?

  I need it.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  And everybody has experienced some form of magic. And so the book was this deep dive into let's reawaken magic. Because the moment we decide we're not going to see it, we don't see it. But the moment we open up going, I know my life is magical. It comes faster and quicker and signs arrive before you've even thought about where they could be coming from.

• 8:02Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, that's what your book did for me. It just put a positive spin on some stuff I was not feeling positive about. And I think that's the joy of having your eyes wide open to the possibility of magic. Is that you actually start to just feel a bit more optimistic.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:19Fearne Cotton?

  I, I find anything like, whether it is signs or having that.

• 8:25Fearne Cotton?

  Almost childlike awe about things. I find it comforting. And especially like the signs one. So I had read the chapter on signs and me and my daughter, who's ten, go for a walk after dinner most nights. It's like my favourite bit of the day. And we have a little walk and we chat about her day and like she's got all friendship dramas going on always. So we dissect that. And then I said to her, oh, should we chat about signs? Cause you know, I hadn't really, we'd talked a little bit, maybe, you know, in an abstract way about it previously, but we started having this really cool chat about it and, and I said, so you could pick like anything and say that's going to be my little sign that there's something positive on the way. It could be like a butterfly or whatever.

• 9:05Fearne Cotton?

  And we were stood by the river and she went, literally as I'd said that, she went, oh, look there. And there was on a post sticking out of the river, a massive heron. Like, you know, a metre tall heron stood there and I was like, oh my God. I remember reading somewhere that herons represent something like really positive forward motion, like a step into something good. And then it kind of gracefully flew above the river and we both just stood there going, oh my God, this is so cool. And if we hadn't had that chat, probably wouldn't have seen the heron. Like that whole moment would have been missed. It's like those little moments, I think, really add up.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  And it's interesting because children are more intuitive. The average five year old sees ten more details than the average adult. NASA even did an experiment in the sixties looking for genius creative talent. And they looked at a thousand six hundred children. When they tested five year olds, ninety eight percent of them scored creative genius levels.

• 10:00Fearne Cotton?

  Wow.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  By ten, only thirty percent did. By fifteen, twelve percent. And by adults, only two percent scored creative genius levels.

• 10:07Fearne Cotton?

  It's knocked out of us.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  It's knocked out of us. And that's kind of what really made me want to write this book because if we're not careful, we're living in a world that wants to destroy our magical senses. We're living in a world that prioritises logic, reason, science over intuition, inner knowing, the, the unknown, the things that you can't explain, but you know they mean something. You know the universe is going fun.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  This way, this way, or this is a good thing, or actually, hold on a minute, no, no, don't go down that door. And, and I think it opens you up to start questioning life, which then becomes like a scavenger hunt. You're like, okay, if I'm on this incredible maze, this snakes and ladders maze, that I know I'm gonna go on this amazing journey and I'm gonna be given, I kind of think of it a bit like Hansel and Gretel. There's these breadcrumbs that you can follow and the universe is always winking at you and it's always giving you breadcrumbs. But it's learning to see the breadcrumbs.

• 11:05Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, without doubt. That knowing that you talk about, I think is really important because you don't have to be particularly like woo woo minded or think magically already or identify with that. If you, like, everybody on the planet has had that moment where they've gone, I had a feeling that either I shouldn't do that or I should do that. And there's often no logic. I've had moments where I think, there's one particular moment that I, I won't really share because it's something like I'm still doing therapy about. But there was one moment where I was like, I just had a knowing, I had a knowing. And I think looking back and seeing those little moments through life, we were like, oh, I definitely need to walk down this path.

• 11:49Fearne Cotton?

  Or I definitely don't want to go down that path, whatever it might be. We do know and it's a feeling and it's like, it's a very physical feeling and that, you know, yes, we can be scientifically minded, we can be cerebral, but our bodies are so tuned in. And that's why we call it, I guess, a gut instinct. It is usually, you know, you feel it in your gut or you feel it in your body or I get like, I feel almost um sort of like lightheaded when I know something's off. When I know like, definitely don't go down that path or, you know, this situation is not good for you. I feel like I'm sort of like spinning out a little bit. I can, I can, it's a physical thing rather than a train of thought that I'm following.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  And we've been taught to dismiss those feelings.

• 12:32Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  We've been taught to override them. And actually, I think it's interesting. Women often have the capacity to be more intuitive than men because we evolved without the same physical strength. So we needed to be so much more aware of our environment to stay safe.

• 12:46Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  And it is the body. I think seven percent of communication is verbal. Ninety three percent is nonverbal. Our body is the greatest wisdom tool that we have. And it's constantly giving us messages. And if we, if we're numbing, if we're separated, if we're so busy, we're not listening to these signals, we can miss them.

• 13:04Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  And that's what the book is really helping people, hopefully, to go on a journey reconnecting with their innate magic inside.

• 13:13Fearne Cotton?

  Like even all of us, I'm sure, have walked into a room and gone, oh, something's off it, like the vibe is bad.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:19Fearne Cotton?

  Or you've walked in and gone, oh, my God, this is, this is like electrifying. Like, this is so amazing. Like, it's a feeling. It's not something you can say, these are the reasons why I felt like something was off. You just felt like it was fucking off. Do you know what I mean?

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:33Fearne Cotton?

  It's like, and you're so right. We are, we're actually encouraged to numb via just stay scrolling on your phone or just keep eating shit or keep buying things or like anything to distract us from feeling anything, actually. Like feeling any sense of emotion or knowing, we're kind of encouraged to just numb it down to nothingness.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  And I think when you start to reconnect with science and the body, when you're going through the worst times possible, it gives you the gift of going, you're going to get through this. When you allow the universe to talk, it will talk back. And I was, I remember being at my cousin's wedding and his mother died far too young. And he just started his speech and this bird came to perch on top of this see-through tent. The moment he started and the moment he finished, the bird flew off. And my mum said, oh, she was here.

• 14:27Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, there's so many, I bet, you know, if we put this out on Instagram, there will be thousands of people that have got stories like that, whether it's somebody that's died and there's something inexplicable that happened. Or just some magical, I even had like a weird sign this morning with a reg plate that had a word in that was related to something that I was worrying about. And I was like, that's gotta be, it was a word. I was like, that's got to be a good sign. I love that shit.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Oh, me too.

• 14:57Fearne Cotton?

  I absolutely love it. Now, just there, you mentioned when we're going through the worst things, this is often when, yes, we need to be maybe more open minded to this sort of thing. Because it can be not only comforting, but also pointless in, I think, often a healthy direction. I'm the sort of person that could spiral into a negative mindset really easily.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  We all can.

• 15:21Fearne Cotton?

  Get totally wound up in the drama of a situation or going to self loathing. But if I am more open minded to, right, what are the, what are the signs pointing to here? What can I have hope in? What can I have faith in? I will act better. My mental health will be in a better state. I know that that's the way to go. And you talk in the book about your own dark times and losing two late pregnancies, which I'm imagining tested you in every area. How, how did this mindset, this way of thinking, these methodologies, how, how did they help you get through that period of your life?

• 16:02Speaker 01

  So I remember when I was nineteen, I was told by this incredible wise mentor I have called Ruth Namiass, and she said, Poppy, there's no such thing as a coincidence. Everything is a coordinated instance. And I feel that that was one of the best things she could have ever told me because in these moments, I've been kind of taught to pause and say, this isn't the end of the world. You've just got to see this story through. And so I started writing this book and I had been diagnosed with extremely low fertility at thirty years old. I went for a check randomly, woke up in the middle of the night and I just had this feeling, I think you need to go look at your ovaries. And, you know, five years ago, there's a lot more talk about fertility now, but five years ago, nobody was speaking

• 16:45Speaker 01

  about it. Anyway, so I'd go online, find the closest clinic, go along. And I really assumed I was very healthy and very fertile. And they, they sat me down and they asked me all these kind of weird questions that started making me think, oh, things don't seem quite right here. And she said, Poppy, I'm really sorry to tell you, but your markers are as if you're in your late forties. You're on the verge of infertility. And at thirty years old, I'm single and I'm thinking to myself, my whole life is kind of crashing down because I'm thinking, oh, maybe I can never be a mother. And so I had to do the egg freezing process, do that multiple times, I had very few follicles and as a consequence, eggs.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  And so I assumed that this maybe just not on the cards for me. And my partner also had had a history of cancer. So I always, when I found a partner, absolutely in love with him, and you know, even, you know, when I thought, wow, I'd love to have children with him, I also knew his history of cancer, so I knew that also might not be a possibility. So I just thought, okay, this might not be our future. And I went, I have an amazing tarot reader who's a bit like a mentor, and she's a union psychologist called Dykeberg. And she said, she was pulling my cards and she said, Poppy, you're going to be pregnant. And I laughed, I said, hilarious, like, love the cards of saying this, it's actually biologically kind of impossible, but whatever. And she said, just call me in five months, you're going to be pregnant.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  And I just put it to the back of my mind because I knew it's impossible. Uh, maybe they think pregnant with a new book, or pregnant with a business, or you know, the tarot is a, is a, is a form of kind of storytelling. And anyway, so five months later, I, I suddenly started to notice, you know, my period's missed, but I thought, I'm stressed, you know, obviously that. And I find out I'm pregnant and I cannot believe it. And I call up Dykeberg, second person I call up after my mother. I said, I cannot believe I'm pregnant. And she laughs and she said, okay, you know, enjoy. And it was a, felt like a real miracle pregnancy and I loved being pregnant. It felt like I was evolving this life and it was amazing and told my mother.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  And anyway, every time I was coming up to a scan, she would say, I mean, look, you know, sometimes scans can go wrong. And I thought, why are you being so negative? You know, my scan is going to be fine, I'm positive thinking it's going to be fine. And the scan was fine. So I thought, honestly, she's being such a worry wart, it's fine. Anyway, get to five months and.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  We go for a scan and basically very critical bones are missing. And so the baby wouldn't be able to live after it was born. And so we have to go through a termination. And when you're so late along, so many plans have been made. So the loss is just you're, you know, you're grieving so many, so many things and the shock and then the trauma of an abortion that late is the most painful horrendous thing in the entire world. You know, I, I was halfway through an abortion. I'm on the, I'm on the street floor fainting because the medicine had hit me too soon. Hadn't been able to get to the hospital at the time. It was one of the most physically horrendous experiences I've ever been through.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Anyway, I called my mom and she said, Poppy, I don't know whether you want to know this, but I knew you weren't going to have this baby. I, I said, what? And my mom has a crystal pendulum that she asks questions to. And the crystal will either swing right or left depending on yes or no. So when I had told her in October, I'm pregnant. She'd asked the crystal but hadn't told me. And she said, is Poppy going to have a baby next year? And the crystal had said no. And she wrote down all the answers the crystal said and she sent it to me. And in that moment, it's so strange, but for me, that was the most healing thing I could have received because I thought, oh my gosh, Poppy, it was never, this is, I don't know

• 20:46Speaker 01

  why I was pregnant, but I was never supposed to have this baby. Like the fact that my mother wrote down, I wasn't going to have a baby next year, knowing her daughter was pregnant and she thought, I'm being crazy. Ignore this crystal. What am I doing? Of course I want my daughter to have a baby. This is crazy town, but she wrote it down anyway, just in case. So I had the abortion and then six weeks later. A total shocker, I'm pregnant again. And at this point, I really cannot believe it. I think I'm basically on the verge of infertility. How on earth can I get pregnant again? But it was obviously a total miracle. It was, you know, super healing. I was still kind of traumatized, but I was like, wow, this is so amazing. And my mum had, the crystal had said Poppy is going to have a baby girl in 2026.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  So me and my partner kind of assumed like, oh, okay, well, the crystal's slightly wrong. So we're gonna have a baby in 2025 because it's gonna be the end of the year now. And so we get to the three month scan and then like, do you wanna know the gender? And we said, yes. And they said, oh, what do you think it is? And we go, it's obviously gonna be a girl. And she said, oh, sorry, guys, definitely a boy, you know, from the scan. And then we had the test and it was a boy. And I thought, oh, that's weird. Okay, my mum just was so wrong. You know, these are things that, whatever, this magical crystal stuff, whatever, fun things, but don't take us seriously. And I get to five months again and the same thing happens. There is a huge problem with the baby that would mean that it wouldn't be able to breathe on, on birth.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  And I have to have another abortion at 19 weeks. And, you know, and the doctor who saw us just said, I don't, I haven't, in my whole 30 years, I haven't seen this. I've not seen a woman having to have two abortions at five months. And it was weird because the crystal had said I wasn't gonna have a baby in 2025. So I kept kind of going back to this prophecy, thinking, how is it that I'm pregnant again? But, you know, this crystal was giving me kind of so much hope that everything was unfolding, even though it was desperately painful. And the most traumatic thing I've ever been through, it was kind of unfolding as it should. And so what I can tell you is I'm pregnant with a baby girl. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Seventeen weeks. Oh. Yeah. And it will come in 2026. Yeah.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  I know, and it's just like if, if, and that's why I truly believe in, truly believe in this because I just wouldn't have got through it had I not known it's gonna be okay.

• 23:14Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, I'm so happy for you.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks very much. Yeah, so it's been such a journey, but it's weird, this book, and you know, the people in the book that everybody will kind of find out about, you know, there are these incredibly, incredibly wise women. And these women, I, to me, are the heroes of today. These women stand outside of society and they are able to notice things that other people can't notice. And these women, those magical women, I think everybody has the ability to, you know, harness this sort of magic. But honestly, if it wasn't for these incredible, you know, and, and how I describe them as witches, if it wasn't for these witches, the last two years would have been unmanageable.

• 24:00Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  And it was the magic that just has got me through.

• 24:06Speaker 03

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• 24:38Speaker 04

  Hello, I'm Joanna Fletcher.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  And I'm Marco Burchella.

• 24:42Speaker 04

  And this is Boots Off.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  We are friends who have spent a decade together, walking up mountains, across deserts, and along coastlines with some seriously awesome groups of humans.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  And something happens when you're out there, feet on the ground, surrounded by nature. The conversations just spill out of you.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  This series is about the adversities that lead to adventure.

• 25:03Speaker 04

  The adventures that lead to adversity.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  And how life can be one big adventure in itself.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  Listen every Thursday, just search for Boots Off.

• 25:15Fearne Cotton?

  We're going to get on to witches in a minute, but I am goosebumps over my whole body hearing you tell that story. And I think for so many people out there who are going through, might not be the exact same story as you, but their own challenges, own personal battles, you know, we've all got shit going on or have had. And I think to be able to see the reasons as to why something isn't unfolding in a certain way, even though it feels terrible, is there is some sort of comfort in that, like you say. And I'm just, I'm so thrilled to hear your news. I can't tell you.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Thanks so much. I can't believe it.

• 25:59Fearne Cotton?

  Absolutely buzzing for you.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it's very, very, it's the, the whole thing has been so bizarre in this pregnancy. When I was finding out the gender, because I knew this prophecy two years ago, I thought, I wonder what the gender's gonna be when they called me up, say it's gonna be a girl. And I read these notes, my mother wrote down everything. So I could read these notes back from 2024. And I thought, wow, this is beyond wild.

• 26:26Fearne Cotton?

  That's, it's magic. It's pure magic. I mean, you talk about your mum a hell of a lot in the book. And she really laid the foundations for you to think in this way. It's, it's almost been a language that you've had from childhood, thinking about the world in this way.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  And then forgot it. You know, we grew up with this really amazing, magical woman that taught us to kind of, you know, notice the small things, you know, the things that make my mum's day is seeing a blue tit in the garden. And I just, now I appreciate that so much because there was nothing, she doesn't want anything that society tells you that you should want. Her joy is seeing a blue tit in the garden. And I think that, you know, when I left home, you kind of go, I'm gonna go and do all of these things. And I chased after all these things I thought I wanted, I probably didn't really want. And it was a journey back to this kind of simplicity of noticing these smaller things in life.

• 27:23Fearne Cotton?

  I love that. I mean, let's talk about some of, because a lot of it really resonate with me in your story of how, you know, first of all, you're thinking, right, I wanna go to LA, I wanna host TV shows, you know, I did all the went to LA thing and I was like, fuck that, I'm coming home, I do not wanna be there. But, you know, we have these ideas set out by society that these are markers of success. And this is what other people will deem success is if you tick them off the list. And I can still sometimes fall into that trap and go, no, I need to be achieving more and doing more. And actually, what I really wanna do is be at home with my kids and paint. I wish I could paint every damn day. Like, that's my dream and hopefully I am moving towards that down the line.

• 28:06Fearne Cotton?

  And all the other stuff is like, why am I doing this? Is this like to prove it to myself? Is it ego? Is it because I need validation? And you start to really challenge a lot of the stuff that is pushed our way is like what we should be doing. So at what point did you think, oh, something's missing here, something's not quite right?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting because I I did that, all of those things, went to LA, wanted to set up a company, built a tech company. And then I kind of sat there going, I am so deeply unhappy. I am not a natural tech founder. I, I, yes, I did it and we were able to build this amazing company, but I I did it forcing myself to be a triangle when I was a square or the other way around. And I think it's so easy for us all to change our shapes, knowing that actually the original shape was so much more in line with our true self. And I love what Carl Jung said, says, well, said years ago, the greatest privilege of a lifetime is to be who you are, to know yourself.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  And so it was a journey of going back to the purest version of myself. And that was a lot of taking off many outfits that I'd put on and realised they didn't really fit.

• 29:17Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  And I think probably a lot of people can resonate with that. And the other thing that I got really obsessed with was, oh, I am gonna learn everything about the brain, that's gonna kind of stop my anxiety. And if I know about the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala and da, da, da, da. You realise, science is desperately short when it comes to the matters of heart and soul. And actually, when I was going through a hard time, I didn't want to go see a scientist. I wanted to go to a wise woman that was going to expand my understanding of what was possible. I wanted to go to a healer. I wanted to go and touch the invisible world and realise that my reality was very limited. And what I was seeing was super limited. And that was kind of the big, the big change to going.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  I am doing life in such a mechanical way. And I am chasing things that society has told me to chase. And actually, what really makes me tick?

• 30:12Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Really makes me happy? And who actually am I?

• 30:14Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, and you know, it's no bad thing to try on these different hats. And, you know, you built something massively successful and that was helping lots of people. And also you were, you know, learning the science of it and we can all do that and great and understand it. But I think to have it in tandem with this other stuff. I like learning about the brain. I find it really interesting. I'm not massively academic, but I'm, I love learning and I'll always be up for chatting to people in this forum and going, right, tell me everything you know and I'll take it on board. But I still wanna go and do the magic stuff.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:42Fearne Cotton?

  And also, you know, you write about rituals in the book, which is another thing that I'm very interested in. And again, it could be very easily palmed off as like, what a load of shit, like doing a ritual, that's not going to do anything. I've got proof in my own life and that's all I'm worried about. Like, I don't need to have some data led experiment. I know that for me, I've done a bunch of different rituals in different settings. And it has made a huge difference to my mindset and therefore the outcome. So like one of them, I've talked about this on another episode before, but I had to go for a medical procedure that I was dreading. And I'd had like a bit of kind of, I'm not gonna use the word traumatic, but like a not very pleasant situation before that, that freaked me out.

• 31:27Fearne Cotton?

  And I couldn't, I was really disturbed by it. So I felt very unnerved. And I spoke to a brilliant wise woman that has worked in that field for years. And I said, please give me a ritual or something to do on the day so that when I go into that room, I feel better. So it was on the 12th of December. So I was like, oh, 12, 12, that that seems like a pretty good sign. And she gave me a bunch of stuff to do before. And then she said, when you go into the room, scan the whole room, first of all, just so you go, right, I know exactly what my surroundings look like. Second, every person you meet, as you enter the hospital, from the person on reception to every nurse in the room, every doctor, you say, oh, what's your

• 32:11Fearne Cotton?

  name? So I had everyone's name. So it was much more human experience. And then that kind of seemed to soften everything. And one of the nurses said, oh, would you like me to hold your hand? And I said, I would really like that. Thank you. And I held her hand. And then there was a big delay. So I was like, no, don't get frustrated. It's going to be okay. So by the time I was ready to have the procedure, I looked up and it was bang on 12, midday on the 12th of the 12th. And it was meant to be at 11. So it was like an hour delayed at that point. And my whole mindset changed to, I've spotted a tiny little speck of magic.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:45Fearne Cotton?

  And now I feel comforted. I feel safe, which is the main thing.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:49Fearne Cotton?

  And I feel like everything's working for me, rather than this is an awful experience I don't want.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:57Fearne Cotton?

  Changed everything.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. It's Einstein has a great quote, you know, you can either approach life that nothing is a miracle, or approach life that everything being that everything is a miracle. And I love the other quote from Martha Beck that says ritual, the magic in ritual, isn't that it changes the world, the magic and ritual is that it changes us.

• 33:15Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  And it is, it's a ritual completely change, it rewires your body to your mind, it helps you to see different things. And that's kind of where I do love science, where it backs up magic. Because as we know, our brain filters out 98% of what we see. We're bombarded with 11 million pieces of information a second, and our conscious brain only processes 50. So what is your brain filter filtering out? And that's where I think we're at risk of losing the ability to see magic. And that's why it's so important to intentionally say, I'm going to go into this hospital and I am going to create my own magic.

• 33:49Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  And and ritual helps you to see things that you wouldn't have otherwise seen. And that's kind of where I love the science of spells. The idea of a spell feels so kind of magical, a bit whimsical, but kind of woo woo rubbish. And actually, what a spell does, it makes a ritual feel really fun.

• 34:07Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  And when you're learning, you learn something forty times faster if you're playing.

• 34:11Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  And and and the other thing is is is the intention of focus. Abraham Hicks says if you focus on something for seventeen seconds, you create a thought wave that then kind of goes into the ether. And I just, I could, look, that's hard to kind of quantify, prove. But I think to myself, in our distracted world, when you can turn making tea into a ritual, into an intention setting ceremony to start your day. What kind of day you're gonna have, probably, even if it's a naught point naught naught one percent better day than you would have had if you were just going, okay, tea bag in, milk, da da da. Or, you know, it just slowing down for a second to say, what do I want today? I want today to show me something that I haven't seen before.

• 34:54Fearne Cotton?

  Yes, intention is a key word because ritual to me is the marker of intention. I am intending to walk into whatever situation in the most positive mindset I can. And if I haven't done something, some sort of prep or got my head in that space, I'm walking into it like anything could happen, good, bad, ugly. Whereas I think if you set the intention, doesn't mean everything's gonna work out perfectly. But at least you've set the tone that you will gain the most positivity you can from that shitty situation. And there are so many things that you write in the book that I needed to hear again that week when I read it. About how things unfold and on what timeline.

• 35:38Fearne Cotton?

  Because we might expect like, I've done the ritual, everything's gonna be fucking great. And actually, it's like, no, sometimes you go through the worst possible thing. Your own anecdotes that you told today could be your life fucked because you've been through this trauma and the physicality of it. And your headspace could be entirely negative. And I've been through my own hell and back. You know, you could think, oh, that was just fucking shit and I've moved on. But actually, I know from my own. Horrible shit that happened. I've created Happy Place.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:11Fearne Cotton?

  I wouldn't be doing any of this.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:13Fearne Cotton?

  So it doesn't unfold on the timeline you want.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:16Fearne Cotton?

  But you can usually look back retrospectively and go, oh, I get why that bloody awful thing happened. And I had to go through it because I've learned this. I have grown in this way. I have changed in a positive way. I might see life with a slightly different lens to the one I had before. Like, there has to be something, some sort of positive something that comes out of it. It's fruitful.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Some of the greatest magic is realising how happy you are that you didn't get the thing you thought you wanted.

• 36:45Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  And you look back and you go, thank God, thank God I did not get that job. Thank God. Oh, thank God that person rejected me. Oh, thank God we never moved to that country. And I kind of love that because at the time you have these plans. And this is where I am slightly, I find manifesting in the way it's taught quite a little bit tricky to kind of totally get on board with because I think it gives almost people too much of a set idea of what they think they want.

• 37:12Fearne Cotton?

  I agree. This is my big problem with manifesting.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 37:15Fearne Cotton?

  I don't think you should sit there writing a list of by next year, I want this, this and this. Because like, what the fuck do we know?

• 37:20Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 37:21Fearne Cotton?

  Know what we need is, is the issue with it a lot of the time. And then I think it sets us up for

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Failure.

• 37:26Fearne Cotton?

  Huge disappointment of failure. Like,

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:28Fearne Cotton?

  I failed at manifesting. I wrote my list. I did all the things I was told to do and it still didn't happen. It's like, that's not how life works.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  No, ninety two percent of people do not achieve their goals.

• 37:37Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  That is not because ninety two percent of people have failed. That is because we are on these magical journeys that we've got no idea our soul wants to go on.

• 37:46Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  And actually being nimble and saying, okay, these are things I think I want, but next week I might be a totally different person. So we need to constantly reassess.

• 37:56Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  And I studied a philosophy called Kabbalah for now pretty much over fifteen, sixteen years and this kind of ancient magical philosophy that they have. And one of, one of the laws of Kabbalah is the law of cause and effect. This idea that the universe and physics also says the same thing. Physics has, in physics, it's the law of causality. Life, the universe works on equilibrium. So the cause and effect, so if you are trying so hard and you are not getting the effect you want, that's not because it's not coming. To your point, you have gotten, you will always get what you have given.

• 38:32Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  For good or bad.

• 38:34Fearne Cotton?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  And but if you know you're putting all this energy and goodness into the world, you will be, you are hundred percent going to be receiving it back. You just don't know what, in what shape or form.

• 38:45Fearne Cotton?

  Correct.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  And I also think the other thing with the law of cause and effect is you always have a choice. Do you want to be the cause or the effect?

• 38:51Fearne Cotton?

  This is the bit that I've said to myself all week, because you, one of your teachers asked you or said to you this question in a situation, are you the cause or are you the effect? And I asked myself that question in a situation and I was like, ah, like it's humbling.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Yes, so I.

• 39:10Fearne Cotton?

  In a good way.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Yes, I had this spiritual teacher say, Poppy, have you been the cause or the effect this week? And I thought, what is she talking about? And then I thought, oh, my gosh, I've definitely been the effect because I've come home, my partner's in a bad mood and suddenly I'm in a bad mood because they're in a bad mood and they shouldn't have been in a bad mood because, you know, I've just come home that, well, I could have chosen to be the cause. I could have observed their bad mood, taken myself on a walk, protected my energy, been the cause of my environment, come back and changed his mood because I have remained in my upbeat energy.

• 39:40Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  And it's the same thing when you're, if you're in a traffic jam, are you the cause or the effect? If the effect of the traffic jam, you're really stressed. So it means you arrive at your meeting in a bad mood. And then as a consequence, you're not coming up with the ideas that you want to come up with. But if you're the cause, and the best way to be the cause is to pause, pause and be the cause. Because in that moment, we so want to emotionally react to everything, but it makes us a victim of everybody else's emotions.

• 40:08Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  And so when you're in an argument with someone, it is so easy to be the effect of their world.

• 40:13Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  So if we weaken, and this is like the greatest magical skill that we have to practice, and it's a lifelong practice, even for nineteen years, I've been told it most weeks, and I still am terrible at doing it. But you know, when I get an email I don't like, I'm so impulsive that I can just go da, da, da, da, da, da. But I have to now go, probably don't respond.

• 40:33Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Don't respond. Be the cause. Be the cause. Set the energy that you want to experience.

• 40:39Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah. It's so true. And it's tricky because it's so much easier often to be the victim in whatever situation. And I don't say that lightly because, you know, we've been through, as have probably most of our listeners here, stuff that we thought, I didn't want that to happen. And I also, I wasn't the cause. But if we can look, you know, I can look at my own backstory. I can't speak for anybody else, but I can see things that I really didn't want to happen. And I can see how, well, I can see my part in it. I can see what I am accountable for and how my string of decisions led me to be in a place I don't want to be in. That's not to say it's all my fault and turn on myself. There's a big difference, I think, here

• 41:23Fearne Cotton?

  in looking at, I was accountable for this and actually therefore I can be accountable to take a different route and for good change and to grow from it. And it's the harder route. It's much easier just to go, I did it last week. I had a tantrum about something. I don't want this to be happening, freaking out, whatever. It's so much easier than going, pause, how do I actually want this to play out? It's, it's, it requires more energy.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  It requires more energy. And as a consequence, to be magical, it is to nurture your energy. And that's, there's a chapter in the book called Charge Your Internal Power Source. Because in one study, eighty percent of workers said they were burnt out. They were exhausted. We are in an energetic crisis, I think, because everybody knows all the reasons. The schedules are packed, pressure has never been so much, content, social media, everyone is trying to get our attention. We are all exhausted. But in order to take back control of your life, to be the cause of your life, to be the cause of what you want to happen, it does require a tiny bit of energy to not react and be taken in a river that you don't want to go down.

• 42:28Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, it takes discipline, which is like boring. No one wants to do discipline. But discipline is like the key to so much of this is to have. The discipline to not do that.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Yes, and that was the other thing that was, that's very deep in this philosophy is this idea of restriction. Whatever you are, your natural inclination is, how do you restrict to create light? And they always give the example of when you light a match, in order to get fire and light, it has to have friction. So if you are someone who is easily impulsive, your task in this lifetime is to restrict and to pause and not to react. If you're someone who is so passive, never gets into arguments and kind of lets everyone walk over you, your restriction is to the opposite. Your restriction is to raise your voice and to be able to advocate for yourself.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  And then this is what's kind of interesting, when you go really nuanced into this deep philosophy, you can realise that there is no one size fits all. Depending on what our natural inclination is, is like, how do we just push slightly against it? Because that's how we create a new reality.

• 43:33Fearne Cotton?

  Yes, and we've all got the power to, to make this change. Like, sometimes it doesn't feel like it. When life feels heavy and there's a lot of shit going on, you just think, I am literally getting through to the end of the day. That's all I want to do.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:46Fearne Cotton?

  But if we can find those teeny moments, like I'm saying this for myself, I'm definitely not being authoritarian about it. Because again, like last week, I did not feel in a good headspace. But this week I feel good and strong and I can go, right, there's an opening here for me to preserve some energy to do something for myself. So I am less reactive, et cetera.

• 44:10Speaker 05

  Help I Sexed My Boss is the podcast where manners meets mayhem. I'm William Hanson.

• 44:15Speaker 06

  I'm Jordan North.

• 44:16Speaker 05

  And together we take on the hilarious challenges of modern life.

• 44:19Speaker 06

  William's the arbiter of etiquette.

• 44:21Speaker 05

  And Jordan's the chaotic yin to my perfectly polished yang.

• 44:25Speaker 06

  So if you want laugh out loud stories and brutally honest moments, then you'll love Help I Sexed My Boss.

• 44:31Speaker 05

  Watch and listen every Tuesday and Friday.

• 44:33Speaker 06

  On YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Just search Sexed It.

• 44:37Speaker 05

  Be warned, it's a bit rude.

• 44:43Fearne Cotton?

  Now, there's something you said a moment ago that's just been like whizzing around my brain. A lot of this stuff is unquantifiable, which is, to me, not a problem. For some people who just want science, it might be a trickier subject matter. But you talk about in the book, the, I guess, the detrimental effects of us trying to quantify everything and how it can sort of be a vibe kill essentially. So we've got all these tracking apps now. For instance, how did you sleep last night? I mean, if I wore one, it would say, like shit. But if you wear one of those, you wake up and it says, oh, you only got six hours. That could then set you off to go, well, my day is screwed. My day's gonna be dreadful. I'm going to be

• 45:25Fearne Cotton?

  tired. And that's you set for the day. Whereas actually, like, I'll give you an example. The other week, I'd had a bunch of people for lunch. I drank quite a lot of tequila. And I got a bit carried away because it was very, very fun. And I went to bed way later than I should have on a Sunday. And I slept really poorly because I'd drunk a bunch of tequila. And if I'd worn a tracking app, it would have said you had four seconds sleep. But anyway, I got up and I thought, oh God, I really don't feel too brilliant. But I came here, I had Joseph Fine sat in this very chair, you know, an esteemed actor, massive career behind him. I'm like, I am so unprofessional. There's no way I should have done what I did yesterday. Anyway, somehow it ended up being this lovely conversation where I thought, I actually did quite a good job there. And we vibed

• 46:07Fearne Cotton?

  and had a good chat together. And it's like, do you know what? I didn't listen to the little voice going, you're unprofessional, you're an asshole. I just thought, go with it. And I'm so glad I did because I had this joyful experience where I just had a great chat. And yeah, I was a bit hungover. I was a bit tired. But actually, it's fine.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Sometimes I think a hangover is amazing for magic.

• 46:27Fearne Cotton?

  I agree.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Because you slow down.

• 46:29Fearne Cotton?

  You can't even think of one thing.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  You can't even think of one thing.

• 46:32Fearne Cotton?

  You can't even think of one thing. What job am I doing? Because I'm so hyperactive normally. When I'm just like, you know, oh, pure sober, haven't had a drink like now, my brain is going, I'm hungover, I'm like, you're chatting to Joseph Fiennes, just chat to him, just keep talking to Joseph Fiennes. I can only think of one thing. It's like, I'm not saying like everyone's just gonna get shitfaced and that makes life better, but every now and then, it's no bad thing.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  I, this biohacking trend I am so against because it's just, it's making everyone out to be small machines.

• 47:03Fearne Cotton?

  Yes, little robots.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  And this is why I'm not afraid of AI. There's so much fear around AI because we're trying to make ourselves like AI. I don't want to be optimized. I don't need to think better. I want to enjoy life.

• 47:15Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  And enjoying life is being messy, things going wrong. And to your point, being a bit hungover and having to kind of, and in, you know, it's when you miss the train, it's potentially meet the stranger that's gonna change your life. Things going wrong is actually often where the greatest magic unfolds.

• 47:30Fearne Cotton?

  I agree.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  And so I feel that this, and, and, and the bio, and most of the biohackers I know are all men who are trying to control. And magic is actually releasing the control and the need to control, knowing that you know what, life is unfolding for you.

• 47:45Fearne Cotton?

  Yes, you're so right. There's something so important about that, like the, the level of control, like beating human nature somehow. And actually, I think especially as women, we are this wild mess often of menstrual cycles. Or how our hormones are fluctuating, or how we're expressing ourselves. Like, it's not in neat lines. It's not to this schedule that works exactly to the five minute time slots. It's like, I mean, I'm completely bored by stuff like that. It doesn't interest me at all. I want, I, I think I sort of feed off creativity and creativity is a mess. It, it's absolutely not neat.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  The greatest magic ever.

• 48:28Fearne Cotton?

  And it shouldn't be controlled. It should be wild abandon. So I.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Your art is the ultimate magic.

• 48:33Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  You have something in your head and you're able to create it.

• 48:36Fearne Cotton?

  Yes, that is such a good point, actually. For anyone out there who is sort of, I guess, more science led, I think any of the arts, doesn't matter what it is, and it doesn't have to be of a high standard or professional, but any level of art, whether you're like singing in the car, or you've had a little idea. And you make it happen for, I don't know, like a party or you are painting or you're making a pot, like whatever you class as art, like you say, is you've had an idea. And then the next thing, it's happening or it's a tangible object.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  And the oldest word for magic is a word called hacker and it's one of the oldest words we've ever found humanity wrote down. And it was found on the ancient kingdom tombs in Egypt and hacker stands for divine creative energy. And we are so unique as human beings that we can have an idea and create it.

• 49:25Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  And that's why, again, about AI, I'm not scared of AI because AI looks at what has already been thought.

• 49:33Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Human beings, we have ideas that no one has thought of before. And if you open yourself up, it is, I think that the sky is, there is, there is no limit to what we can think about.

• 49:44Fearne Cotton?

  I totally agree. Say someone's listening to this now and they're in the mindset I was in last week, like you just think, everything's fucked. This, what's the point? Like this is just a load of old shit and everything's going wrong. And like last week, my energy, it was sort of like the tail end of last week, like my energy's low. I can't see the positives. I can't see, um, I can't see the magic. It is not there. It is absent. I just cannot believe that it even exists. If people like that are listening to this now, where do they start? They, they get up today and they do what?

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Go and find nature because nature is such a gift. And I can prove it using science. There was a study out of Exeter University that found people that lived closer to the sea had 22% less chance of experiencing mental health issues. And it's because the sea is full of nega, it has negative ions, negative ions interact with our nervous system, calming us, raising our serotonin. If you go into the forest, again, trees are giving off chemicals that boost our immune system. There's studies that found that those people in hospital that had a view of nature recovered and healed quicker than those that didn't.

• 50:55Fearne Cotton?

  Why?

• 50:56Speaker 01

  So if we, we are, we are nature. So go into the, go into nature and there's this thing called restoration, um, attention restoration theory. We never evolved to see straight lines. We evolved to see natural landscapes. So as soon as we see a natural landscape, our nervous system slows down. When we are in cities or when we're staring at straight screens, it is so stressful for us. So firstly, I think it's go back to where we our ancestors came from. Because there's always a gift when we can connect to nature in some way, shape or form. And then I think it's really important, what content are you surrounding yourself and who are you surrounding yourself with?

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Because when I have had moments of total despair, that is when I will go seek out someone magical. Because actually, when you meet a magical person, they can totally shift your reality. And it is amazing that I I love Marion Williamson's quote, a miracle is just a shift in perspective. So that just when someone just gives you a nugget and you go, yeah, you're right. I I can totally understand my life slightly differently. And that's when I do love this emerging science. In twenty twenty two, the Nobel Prize in Physics went to scientists that proved quantum entanglement. This idea that particles can stay connected despite time and space.

• 52:19Fearne Cotton?

  Yes, I found this fascinating. Tell us, tell us about this.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  I mean, this is when when you don't feel magical and you've just reflect on this idea that it's been proven particles can stay connected despite time and space. They can be at other ends of the world and yet two particles can stay connected and affect each other. This allows us to go, well, does this mean that we stay connected to people that are loved ones that die? Does this prove that telepathy, that many scientists that have proven that telepathy happens to, it can happen to all of us. Eighty percent or seventy eight percent of people have experienced telepathic phone calls. You've thought about someone and they call.

• 52:56Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  And this is the content and the material that I seek out when I am at my wits' end and think that everything is going terribly and nothing is ever going to get better because I have to remind myself, I know so little. If I can stay connected, what thought can I put out there and what will come back?

• 53:15Fearne Cotton?

  Yes. I know, my god, it's, it all feels like liberating and relaxing to think of the world in this way. I think when we see or are indoctrinated by like dead ends, like this is just how the world works. And like, this is just how your life's going to unfold, or this is just going to be the outcome of something. I feel like very straitjacketed with that sort of language. And I know there are rules and there's etiquette and certain ways that we're going to rub along with people and the world around us. But having that. Bigger perspective of just noticing those tiny magical things, whether it's like, one of my little um signs that I give myself is a lion.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Love that.

• 53:56Fearne Cotton?

  And it all came about because I've been having a chat with a wise woman. They're always older. I love an older wise woman. I've got some great crones in my life and we've reclaimed that word in the most positive of senses.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:09Fearne Cotton?

  And and a chat came about about having this lion, or more accurately lioness energy of like, I stand my ground. I'm not scary. I'm not like scaring other people off, but my boundaries are set with this powerful lion energy. And um and I I really loved, it was a much deeper chat, but I I loved the idea of like, oh, a little lion could be my symbol. And now if I'm having a shit time, I'll go, right. Come on, bring me a lion like in the next, you know, hour or whatever. And I'll always see one. It will pop up. It will be like on the back of a van or it will be like a statue on someone's, you know, house or whatever. And I just think it's having those little moments of like,

• 54:49Fearne Cotton?

  ah, it's all gonna be okay. Even if it seems like it's not, it's all gonna be all right. There's no harm in doing it. There's no harm in doing it.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  There's no harm. I mean placebo is the greatest magical phenomena that has ever been observed.

• 55:04Fearne Cotton?

  And that is science backed. As we all know, there have been countless studies of the placebo effect. People actually taking sugar pills and being told there's something and then them having some healing property.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Yes, they can change health outcomes.

• 55:18Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  You know, people that believe they are luckier have been found to be psychologically more happier.

• 55:23Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  People who believe that they are luckier have been proven to live longer.

• 55:27Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Um, some antidepressants have had the same impact as a placebo pill.

• 55:33Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  The belief, having belief that the future is going to be better, having hope. Changes your entire physicality. You know, we have something like thirty trillion cells listening to our thoughts. So this idea that we can shift with our thought, my mum always says, Poppy, if you can tell your little total wiggle, what else can you tell your body to do?

• 55:55Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm, I love that.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  Isn't that, it's such a, it's such a simple thing to think about. And, and that is the greatest, that magical tool. And you, I, I, I'm fascinated by, uh, well-known people that have been very explicit.

• 56:12Fearne Cotton?

  I love that you do this on Instagram.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Secret mystics.

• 56:14Fearne Cotton?

  Yes, secret mystics. I love, tell us the Coco Chanel one.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Well, I was gonna say, because when you told me the lion is your symbol, the lion was very important for, to Coco Chanel. Coco Chanel built her whole business based on signs, synchronicity and magical wisdom and psychics. So a psychic told her that number five was going to be her lucky number. So as a consequence, she named the perfume number five, which I think is the most successful perfume to ever sell in the history of perfume. Uh, she, in, in her house, in throughout the, you can see through the collections of Chanel, they've used symbolism to have a magical effect. Christian Dior is the same. He spent his entire life speaking to a psychic. He went at the, when he was a young child, he went to a fair and someone looked into a crystal ball and said, you're going to change women's lives, you're going to empower women.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  And you're going, that's how you're gonna make your money. And he then, he had a lucky number and everything was based around number eight. And there was a, you know, it's all been documented and people around Coco Chanel and Christine Dior have documented their interest in the, in the mystical. And even there's American presidents, Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan, to use an astrologer for his entire time throughout the White House. Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton. The greatest scientists that have ever lived spent more time focused on the mystical and the magical and the unknown than they did on science. J P Morgan, one of the greatest financiers that have ever lived, he had a personal astrologer

• 57:46Speaker 01

  called Evangeline Adams in New York, who he asked her for all the dates that he should do big money moves.

• 57:53Fearne Cotton?

  Wow.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  And as a consequence, was one of the most successful Americans that have ever lived. And so when I started to like unpeel the history of these huge empires.

• 58:02Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  That were all built by people who were very rational. All these people were building very rational businesses and yet they did not deny the mystical.

• 58:12Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, you can do both.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  You can do both.

• 58:13Fearne Cotton?

  You can do both. I fucking love it. Oh my God, it's like, I feel buzzed. I needed to have this chat. I absolutely needed to have this chat. Before we wrap up, which I don't want to happen, quite frankly, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions and I wonder if they relate to what we've talked about today. One of them is a music choice, because we're making a happy place playlist. Is there one song that makes you feel maybe it is the essence of magic and everything that we've talked about today?

• 58:40Speaker 01

  I quite like Nina Simone's I Put a Spell on You.

• 58:43Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, I love Nina Simone so much.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  She was very magical. I mean, if you listen, even if you listen to his lyrics.

• 58:50Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, it's a great song.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  And so I think she was particularly magical.

• 58:55Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm, I love her song, A Little Sugar in My Bowl. I love that song. She's just got the best voice.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  She's the best voice and it comes from the heart.

• 59:04Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  And I think music is an amazing magical tool. And I'm sure you've spoken about on the podcast tons, but dancing.

• 59:11Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  We know how dancing, you know, raises your energy. If you're going to do a ritual, do a dance beforehand because you've raised your frequency. So then whatever you put your mind to, I think is charged with the energy of dancing.

• 59:23Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, I love that. And this is often a tough question because it could be anything or any place or anyone or any mindset, but where is your happy place?

• 59:35Speaker 01

  I think my happy place must be at my parents' lavender farm. They, in their retirement, they set up a charity lavender farm to raise money for Parkinson's and Huntington's. And it's just, it's so amazing because that, even how it came about was magical. My dad was driving down this country road, he'd taken the wrong road, he didn't know where he was going. And he saw this field and lavender is very difficult to grow because it needs very certain soil. And it just so happened that this random field on a road he shouldn't have taken was the right soil. To have this dream, he's worked his entire life just to be able to build a lavender farm.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  And they, yeah, and that, when I go there, I think, wow, this is just totally magical.

• 1:00:22Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, it's the outcome of magic. I love it. Oh, that's so gorgeous. Look, I cannot thank you enough for being on the pod and also I am thrilled to hear your news. It's honestly.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:00:35Fearne Cotton?

  Made my day and I wish you all the love and all the luck.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Oh gosh, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Really appreciate you having me on.

• 1:00:44Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, that was absolutely electrifying. I loved that chat so much. I'm buzzing for Poppy and her beautiful news. That was such a great moment. I didn't know she was pregnant. I had absolutely no idea. So it was the most amazing surprise to hear that. And after hearing the heartache that she's gone through and the physical trauma that she's gone through on that path to getting pregnant, or having been pregnant twice before. I'm absolutely elated for her, so, so happy for her. And honestly, this book is just beautiful. It really cheered me up at a time when I needed it. So go get it.

• 1:01:27Fearne Cotton?

  It's called The Book of Magical Living and it's out right now. And look, speaking of books, are you part of our Happy Place Book Club? If you're a bookworm, you love a good read, even just a beach read, then we are your people. It is not an exclusive club. All you need to do is follow us on Instagram, basically, and we. All read the same book together every month and then have a nerdy natter about it on Instagram. So our handle there is at Happy Place Book Club, nice and simple. In a couple of days' time, you'll be able to hear my chat with our June author, Amani Thompson, who's written an incredible debut novel called Honey. You will love that chat, whether you read the book or not, so stay tuned for that one. All right, until next time, a massive thanks again to Poppy and to you, you are completely wonderful and magical.

• 1:02:33Fearne Cotton?

  Happy Place is researched by me, Fern Cotton. The producer is Anushka Tate at Happy Place Studios, with studio engineering by Basil Oxtaby.

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• 1:03:14Speaker 06

  Help, I sexed my boss. It's the podcast where manners meets mayhem.

• 1:03:18Speaker 05

  I'm William Hanson.

• 1:03:19Speaker 06

  I'm Jordan North.

• 1:03:20Speaker 05

  And together we take on the hilarious challenges of modern life.

• 1:03:23Speaker 06

  William's the arbiter of etiquette.

• 1:03:25Speaker 05

  And Jordan's the chaotic yin to my perfectly polished yang.

• 1:03:29Speaker 06

  So if you want laugh-out-loud stories and brutally honest moments, then you'll love Help, I Sexed My Boss.

• 1:03:35Speaker 05

  Watch and listen every Tuesday and Friday.

• 1:03:37Speaker 06

  On YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:03:40Speaker 05

  Just search Sexted.

• 1:03:41Speaker 06

  Be warned, it's a bit rude.