Louis Theroux: "The Thing That Makes Me Great At Work, Makes Me Bad At Life!"

From his recent global TikTok fame to his BAFTA award-winning documentaries Louis Theroux has delighted audiences and grown a cult following with his distinctive brand of personality. Best know for his documentary series ‘Weird Weekends’, and ‘When Louis Met……’ Louis has explored the most controversial subjects with wide eyed curiosity and openness. In this conversation Louis discusses how his childhood and upbringing affected his career, channeling his anxiety and social awkwardness into his work of exploring the darker aspects of human psychology and behaviour. He also talks about how his work has evolved and grown, from his initial big break in America to his new series of celebrity interviews, and how he has had to balance this with his family life. Just like with his documentaries, in this episode Louis brings his trademark honesty and openness. Louis: Instagram - bit.ly/3AIepJg Twitter - http://bit.ly/3EXtCsF Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What makes me good at my job is also what makes me bad at life. This is maybe more than you bargained for.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Our next guest has interviewed everyone.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  My money doesn't jiggle jiggle. It's a cathedral of poor. That's a little offensive.

• 0:17Steven Bartlett?

  You're a very fascinating person. How do you connect with people?

• 0:20Speaker 00

  I'm just so curious about what takes someone to that place.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  Why people do the things that they do. The question I get asked most often is like, how do you not get angry with some of these people? Especially the ones who are spewing hate. If people see your attempt to wrestle intimacies from them, that's never going to go well. I think also there's some part of me thinks maybe the other person's got it figured out and I haven't.

• 0:43Steven Bartlett?

  Your former wife said, there's nothing real about you. Jimmy Savile, he also said something about insincerity being your speciality.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  This girl, glad you brought that up.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  I remember it vividly. First of all.

• 1:00Steven Bartlett?

  I neglected my personal life to focus on achieving professional success. The price was paid by those nearest and dearest to me. When did you get that feedback?

• 1:08Speaker 00

  I saw my relationship as a life support system for my work self. Instead of the other way around, saying to my wife, well, this is what I do. I did a lot of great segments just by being available at a moment's notice. I just think, oh, this isn't going well. So it became a bit of an impasse.

• 1:24Steven Bartlett?

  Is it something that comes with a cost and is it something you want to change?

• 1:38Steven Bartlett?

  Louis, you're a very fascinating person.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:43Steven Bartlett?

  And I've, you know, I've, as I've read through your story, I read your autobiography as well. I was trying to understand. What I needed to understand about your earliest experiences to really understand the man that you are today, the interesting personality you have and the trajectory you went and took in your life. So please enlighten me. What are the most pertinent things that I need to know about your earliest years to understand you?

• 2:08Speaker 00

  Oh my goodness. I could, I could, I spent two hours answering that question on its own. I don't know how interesting it would be. I'll try and give you a brief answer.

• 2:16Steven Bartlett?

  I like the long answers.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  Oh, do you?

• 2:17Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, my parents are, my mum's British, my dad's American. They are both, in different respects, were free thinkers. They grew up in the 60s and they embraced aspects of the counterculture. They regarded their own parents as being in certain respects are limited and cloistered. And so my mum joined VSO, Volunteer Service Overseas, to get experience of life in Africa. My dad joined the Peace Corps. He would have been probably enlisted to serve in Vietnam and he didn't want to do that. So he went to teach in Africa as well. And that's where they met. So I was raised, I was born in

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Singapore where they were teaching. My brother was born in Uganda where they were teaching at that time, my older brother. But then they settled in London. And so, growing up, I was conscious of them as people who really encouraged us to open our minds. And maybe, you know, it was 99% positive, like 1%, I think, like a lot of people, you know, people use this term, social justice warriors, right? As a form of judgment about overly do-gooding. Like, there's an element of, I don't tend to use that term because it's been weaponized. But I suppose in a sense, my parents were kind of social justice warriors. Like, they were very much encouraging me to challenge, or us to challenge racism where we saw it,

• 3:46Speaker 00

  to challenge sexism, to be open to new experiences, not to fall into easy judgments about other cultures and other countries and other people. And and and I only say the one percent. Sometimes that could be inflected with a little bit of a sense of superiority. And I talk a bit about that in my book, a slight feeling that we weren't really like, quite like other people, you know, other people were maybe not quite as smart or not quite as literary, you know, and I don't, I don't, you know, I strive not to endorse whatever is in me, remains in me of that, I try to unpack and eradicate. But nevertheless, that's the way, looking back on it, that's something that I see and pick up on. My dad's a writer, novelist.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  My mum is a, you know, after teaching, my dad became a very successful literary novelist and travel writer. My mum went on to become a radio producer and worked for the BBC World Service, which is, for those who don't know, that's the service that broadcasts all over the world. And it's, it's a bit like Radio Four, but broadcast, you know, this tiny language, it's extraordinary institution, it sort of represents in some ways the best of the BBC. But so I was growing up sort of aware that we, you know, we were a family that loved books and, and loved reading and, you know, we watched TV and listened to pop music and did the normal things. But I think underneath it all was a feeling that to really count in life, you should be a literary writer.

• 5:11Speaker 00

  That was, that was, without me fully maybe acknowledging it, that was underneath this thing that you should really, I think still my dad probably feels that, like he's very supportive of me and my TV making, but he's like, Lou, have you thought about writing another book? Lou, you're, you know, you, you, you've got time, you've got the talent, you can, I don't, I don't want to push you into this, but Lou, you know, you should think about writing a book. That's a great idea for a book, you know, that kind of thing. Anyway, so that, all of that was underlying my attitude to life. Then they sent me off to school, primary school. I'm gonna have to, I mean, you wanted a long answer. This is maybe more than you bargained for. I suppose alongside that is the, the influence of friends and, and, you know, I can start,

• 5:57Speaker 00

  and, and so the countervailing impulses of growing up in the seventies and eighties in South London and being exposed to funny, creative people and my friendship group, which, who, you know, some of them had gone on to work in sort of civilian quote unquote lives as. You know, restaurateurs or, or, or, you know, music, other stuff. But, but saliently were Adam Buxton, Joe Cornish and another friend, Zach Sandler, who were super creative. Adam and Joe went on to have their own TV show and I was conscious of falling in with a little group, Amelia, of, of like-minded kids who were very funny,

• 6:37Speaker 00

  really into movies, TV. And that was where I suppose I began to feel that there was, well, you know, I don't wanna, oh, in hindsight, it's tempting to sort of read back, read back what I do now into that. But I just know that that, that friendship group was very important to me and maybe counteracted some of the more, because I was academic. I was, I was, I did really well at school. I feel like I could just go on and on. Shall I, shall I keep going? I just listen here. Because the other part of it was that I was, I was quite an anxious child. So I, I worried about everything. And I, I would think about things that were on the horizon.

• 7:20Speaker 00

  Like when I was five or six years old, I remember fixating, you know, there were various things that came and went that really worried me. But one was the idea of maypole dancing, which was a big, I don't know if it's still like in state primaries at that time, every May holiday, like you would do maypole dancing. What is that? It's, it's, it's, it's an old English or maybe British tradition where there's a big pole. I think it's like a fertility rite, you know, it's a touch of Wicker Man about it. You know, it's an enormous kind of mast, a pole, like maybe, like, like a totem pole, almost like, sort of 20 feet high. And then there's ribbons around it. And as children, you would skip around it and you would sort of braid the ribbons together

• 8:02Speaker 00

  to form nice patterns. And I remember seeing them doing it in primary school and thinking That looks really hard and I'm gonna have to do that next year and I don't know how I'm gonna do it and just I remember being preoccupied with how am I gonna learn how to do that. I only mention that as an example, like there were other things like just reading. Before I could read, I remember seeing my older brother reading and thinking like, I don't know how you do that and just getting very worried about it. So in general, I'm someone who is pre- I know everyone worries, but I just feel as though that feeling of worry and anxiety was quite a strong background note. And sometimes I would control my anxiety, not consciously, but again, looking back, by working hard, like by sort of just sort of becoming almost like super focused on academic work.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  And as a result, I did very well in school and you know, like those people who look back and say like, well, I was a fuck up in school. I was the opposite. Like, I didn't always, you know, I would get in trouble, like and sometimes I was regarded as, especially when I was younger, twelve, thirteen, as a disruptive element, because I was also quite cheeky and sometimes tried to communicate and connect with people via teasing, right? Which is, I don't know, that's a common, it's quite a British thing in a way. It's certainly a big thing in my family was what's now called bants, right? And sometimes I'd try and do bants with my teacher and then it wouldn't go well. And so, but, but in general, which is confusing, like regarding, being regarded as a black

• 9:30Speaker 00

  sheep in class or a disruptive person in class and then, but then also getting in trouble. They said like, it's fine for you to mess about and get in trouble and then you do the homework and you're fine, but you're a bad influence on the other kids. I used to get told that. You're a bad influence on your, I was like, that's not true at all. Like if anything, my friends were just as naughty and were leading me astray, but nevertheless, because I could go home and then become sort of organized and focus on my work, I got a, I got for a brief period, I got labeled as the troublemaker. Anyway, going through school, I, I sort of, the sort of the load stars for my sort of

• 10:14Speaker 00

  sense of who I was and how I would progress in life, such as it is. I mean, I was never that tactical, but as I went. As I went through school, I thought, well, I'm pretty good academically. I guess I'll just do well in exams and stuff and then see what happens. And meanwhile, with my friends, we'd be seeing movies. I got into rap music in the late eighties and so were dressed like a sort of hip hop nerd. I was smoking quite a lot of weed, but still studying. This was sort of, again, age sixteen, seventeen, but it never really interfered with my, with my work. I went on to Oxford and then, having done well at Oxford, um, left university. And, and at that point it was like, well, what happens now?

• 10:59Speaker 00

  That was when it felt like, okay, now I've no longer really got a clear path. Does that make sense?

• 11:06Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 00

  You know, I think if you, if you are, if you're academic, if you find academic work not easy, but you find that you do well at it, because it's not easy, but you apply yourself and you do well at it. Then sometimes life can be a weird, um, bump in the road, like real life. It's something like, well, where are the exams? Because I know I can do those, you know, what do I do now? So for a while I thought maybe I would be like a professor or an academic or something. But then something in me told me that wasn't quite right. So then the rest of life is another story, but I hope that sort of answers your questions about or those different, um, those different, uh, sources of, of, of how I, you know, my,

• 11:51Speaker 00

  whatever it is, personality and interests.

• 11:54Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things that really stood out to me in that answer was your, your early relationship with work. You said you used to work hard to kind of suppress or kind of distract yourself from the anxiety of life. Is that accurate?

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Well, what it is, is, um, well, I, I worried about things in general. And, um, you know, one of those worries was homework or doing well in, in, in school. Like another worry was getting on with my peer group. But, uh, insofar as I can, I could control those sources of anxiety, like, you know, you, I.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  Work is actually relatively straightforward. Like, in terms of like, how do I get more, you know, how do I attempt to relate to people better? Well, that's, that's kind of hard. It's like mysterious. But how do I do well at these assignments I've been given? Then you just sit down and do them until you get it right. And, and a lot of these things are, are subconscious. Like, I'm not thinking like, oh, how can I control my anxiety? But I would just find that I, if exams were coming up, I'd get super anxious. And, and I don't mean to pathologize it. Like, I've never been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. I'm just slightly worry prone.

• 13:15Speaker 00

  And as it happens, I've become less worry prone as I've grown up. And it may be that there were other things going on, you know, in my family life. Who knows? In, in, you know, my parents' marriage wasn't always happy. They subsequently divorced. There are other things that probably were going on that were stressful. But for whatever reason, I found that, almost without meaning to, I, I would, I took my studies very seriously. I have to sort of slightly check myself when I say this, because I do, I'm also aware that I've looked back at some of my reports, having kind of got quite attached to this narrative of myself, a sort of super swat, right? Super studious. And I've looked at some of my old report cards,

• 14:00Speaker 00

  and some of them are, are, especially when I'm six or seven, sort of say, you know, Louis is a pleasure to have in class, but sometimes it would be nice if he would let other pupils speak. He, he enjoys the sound of his own voice, kind of thing, which is very apropos for this podcast, probably. You know, and like, so, so I, I had a sort of rambunctious side. And almost in social settings, my mum tells a story, it's actually in my book, but of how when I was about five or six, I would come home and I'd be really sad. I'd be like, I don't know, I don't think, I don't like school anymore. And she'd sort of think, well, Louis is obviously not getting on well at school. I need to talk to his teacher. And she went into, to class and, and talked to the teachers and said,

• 14:45Speaker 00

  do you understand Louis is very sensitive? He's a very sensitive young man. As I said, I would have been maybe five or six, seven. Years old and the teachers were like, really? Yes, he's a very sensitive, like you would just be mindful that, you know, things you can say might hurt his feelings, something like that. And they were like, struggling to recognize her description of me. And then on the way out of class, she passed the classroom, could see through one of the glass windows in the door. And I was running along the desktops or doing a dance on top of a desk. In other words, like, it was almost like in the setting itself, I was a wild child. And and just running amok. But also I had like his doubling, like, then I go home and be kind of be worrying about small, which I think is probably still true of me in some ways.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  That I have a um, I have that sort of disruptive trickster impulse alongside a certain um, a certain sensitivity.

• 15:40Steven Bartlett?

  Is that a defense mechanism or a a way to, I don't know, survive in a social setting? Or is that the true nature of you?

• 15:48Speaker 00

  I think it's who I am. And I think, you know, I could say, oh, well, I was a younger child and my parents found me funny and I wanted to perform and I I wanted my dad to, you know, I wanted to get the approval of my parents by being silly, but the fact is, is who knows? Like, I just know that, you know, things like your sense of humor or your inclination to to be cheeky, that's just always been in me, you know? And you know, I'm slightly wary of attempting to to sort of um, unpick where that comes from because I just know that's that's that's always been in me.

• 16:25Steven Bartlett?

  The relationship with work, I I think even for myself, I I learnt my relationship with work at a very young age. And I I think I developed quite an unhealthy relationship with work at the expense of other things that matter in life.

• 16:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, me too. I think I can relate to that.

• 16:37Steven Bartlett?

  And that's what I was trying to understand is like, when did you, where did your relationship with work come from? On one hand, I was guessing maybe it's from his father, who was very, you know, insistent on in in being an intellectual is a is success, Louis. Or is it from the distraction of that, from anxiety and from the social thing where you could be successful at exams because you were good at that, so you doubled down?

• 16:57Speaker 00

  I think it was all of the above, like my dad's got, both my parents have work ethics, that border on the sort of being over the top. My dad would, you know, he's a, he's a, as I said, he's a writer and the weekends, like he didn't really take weekends off, like certainly Saturdays he would often be writing and Sunday mornings he was often writing and, and he, he's an extraordinary, I wanted to give both my parents a shout out. See, I'm, my parents were, um, were basically first generation university educated, came from very much not at the high table of, of life.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  And, and so for my dad to, to sort of become a wealthy literary writer is kind of an amazing thing that he did. You know, in the world of, it's one thing to be a popular novelist, that's hard anyway. To be a, a novelist or travel writer who's extremely successful, hadn't, you know, sold hundreds of thousands or millions of books, just without any leg up in life is an amazing thing. And, um, I wonder if I've ever told him that, I, I hope I have. Anyway, he'll listen to this probably because he, he follows my, he follows my career with interests.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  So some of that I would have taken on board just through osmosis of seeing that. Likewise, um, my mum being super studious, going to Oxford, she grew up in Tooting, you know, and, and her, her sense of self-belief or her sense of her own destiny, whatever it was. And in her small, you know, peer group of kids who were educated at a state school and then through her own hard work and the support of her teachers going to Oxford, you know, in the sixties as a woman, that was extremely unusual. So that was, that was in the air. But in the end, and my older brother, who was very studious, and the other thing just to reflect on is that I saw my brother as.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  The more brilliant child, like he was, the way I saw it at the time was more effortlessly brilliant, like sort of child prodigy material, you know. And I thought I was just kind of a sort of irrelevant bit of afterbirth that, you know, trailed around after him. And so when I noticed that I was getting fairly good results, when I was sort of eleven, twelve, it didn't feel particularly impressive. Like it felt like, well, I guess I can do well if I work hard. It's not like I'm kind of brilliant, like my older brother.

• 19:42Speaker 00

  But I think when I, you know, again, in hindsight, I think mainly what I see is, is a sense that I just felt like this was something I had to do. It wasn't a choice. And I even later on, when I was at university, I sometimes used to worry that, I wonder if I'm missing out. You know, people say it's the best years of your life and you should be hanging, you should be just going wild, having fun. I did, you know, some of that, but I was also conscious of like, maybe I'm missing out by working, by studying too hard.

• 20:15Steven Bartlett?

  That's what I read into your story of university was that I wrote, I actually wrote in my notes, worked his ass off at Oxford. On the point of affection, this is also something I probably didn't learn from my parents, if I'm honest. I still call my parents by their first names.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Did they encourage you to do that?

• 20:33Steven Bartlett?

  Yes. Yeah. I just didn't, I didn't learn affection. And actually, you know, even growing up at 10 years old, when one of my friends turned to me and went, you're my best friend, my body like, oh, because the, the idea that I was someone's best friend made me cringe. And I had this, I think I had this like emotional intimacy affection issue growing up.

• 20:53Speaker 00

  Although I think being a best friend is something you show, but don't say. It's a bit creepy. You're my best friend. I remember feeling stressed when a friend said that to me and I'm thinking, because then you feel like if you say, oh, you're my best friend, and then it feels a bit inauthentic.

• 21:08Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  Yes, you're like, do it, don't say it. Do you know what I mean?

• 21:12Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:13Speaker 00

  I love you.

• 21:14Steven Bartlett?

  It didn't feel necessary to say.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  Then, steady on.

• 21:16Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. But what is, what did you learn about affection at a young age?

• 21:23Speaker 00

  I feel really lucky that my parents, um.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  I feel as though they were, you know, they, they worked hard, like I had a working mum. My dad was, as I say, had a huge drive to be successful, but I, I always felt like the love that they had for me was just taken as read, like I, I never questioned it. Do you know what I mean?

• 21:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 21:45Speaker 00

  In a way that felt positive. And even though, you know, I think there's a tendency or a temptation nowadays to look back and, and be thinking about things that could have been otherwise. And I think, you know, parts of that therapy culture are really valid, but there's also a sense in which you can focus on negative stuff. And I'm not sure at a certain point how, how healthy or helpful it is. And, and so for me, I, I never kind of questioned, but the love, the love that they, they had for me. And it was, it was never the case that I felt I was kind of seeking their approval.

• 22:28Speaker 00

  Like I remember friends at school saying, well, my, my parents say if I do well in Common Entrance, they're going to get me a watch. And I remember thinking, that's quite weird, you know? Or my, my parents never, I never felt like they needed to be, that I was in any sense doing, like working hard for them. And if they took an interest, that was kind of a bonus, but I didn't rush to show them. Like I got all A's or, you know, I was, I came first in all the exams or whatever. I wouldn't really talk to them about it. Like that was just something that I did for me.

• 23:05Steven Bartlett?

  What about emotional expression? I think that's something that we learn, how to say like, I love you and to hug and to be, to touch and. Cause you said bants.

• 23:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, like I.

• 23:20Speaker 00

  Humor is really important. I say such a kind of what though, because that's so dead. It's cringe. I mean, I have my kids' voices in my head, but you know, humor is a very important way of communicating. You know, humor is really, I often think, you know, in terms of how I see life, that's why I'm worrying I sound a bit humorless. But anyway, how I see life is like, humor is like the missing dimension in terms of, it's almost, it can't really be expressed, but we shared a sense of humor as a family. And so we would make each other laugh. And so

• 23:57Speaker 00

  teasing was important, just not taking yourself too seriously. My parents, I would say, like I respected them. I would have, I see how my kids behaved towards me. And I'm that classic thing of like, God, if I did that to my parents, that would not have gone well. It's not that I think of them being especially strict. I didn't feel they were at the time, but I wouldn't have dared to, I don't know, like, there was a sense of them having boundaries that I would respect and observe. Also, they slightly cheated because we went to boarding school, me and my brother,

• 24:39Speaker 00

  aged thirteen. So those difficult teenage years of sort of thirteen to eighteen or thirteen to seventeen, they were part timing it. And if mum and dad, if you're listening, I'm sorry, but that's what it is, right? I mean, it was weekly boarding and they got me in the holidays, but other than that, they were getting me half of Saturday and Sunday. So I've got kids who are teenagers and, you know, that's where like the, a lot of the conflict kicks in. So when I look back at how I related to my parents, there were times when it felt like they didn't get me, or they were being too hard on me, or the mixed messages because they were sort of on one hand

• 25:23Speaker 00

  being free spirited and saying like, if you wanna smoke some spliff. Louis, like, that's fine. Just be careful you don't get caught, like, kind of thing. Or other times you'd be like, how dare you, you're going out there, you know, what are you doing? Like, it was like, well, which part of the, are we being, are you being countercultural kind of dudes? Or are you gonna be like Victorian parents? Like, which is it? But in general, um, I, I kind of, I kind of got it. I kind of got, I got, I kind of got that, um, you know, that it was about, there was a foundation of love and approval that was, you know, was unconditional. And, and, and I think if I had anything to sort of, and to sort of reflect, reflect or reproach them for, not reproach, but sort of reflect on things that in hindsight could have been different.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  It's the feeling that because they were work focused and also because their relationship was complicated. Sometimes it felt like, um,

• 26:21Speaker 00

  that me and my brother and I were slightly a side, a side effect, like we weren't. And again, I could spin that as a positive, actually. Like, there was a sort of, a level of us being autonomous. You know, we had whatever, the opposite of helicopter parents is, they, we, we slightly had that. Like, they were like, okay, cool, you know, you do you. And, and, and, um, and I think, again, that can be, I, I kind of quite grateful in some ways for that. But, um, you know, they had their own thing going on.

• 26:54Steven Bartlett?

  It reminds me of something Tim Grover said, which I've repeated a few times. He says, he used to train Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. And he, I spoke to him on this podcast when we did the LA run. And he said that sometimes an event that happens in our life or something that happens can create our brilliance. It can be responsible in the case of that kind of void of independence your parents create. Create someone that works and that goes and gets stuff and that's able to travel and be an island. Um, but it also can create our dark side, like the same event creates our brilliance, but also our dark side. So my question to you is, from that particular experience of having that independence and feeling a bit like you were a side thing in their lives, what was then the, the dark side? I can see the upside.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  What's the upside?

• 27:37Steven Bartlett?

  For me, it felt like the upside you were saying is the independence you had.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, that being a space to grow and become your own person and not feel that you're especially kicking against anything but licensed to follow your own interests. I think that's all positive. I think, um, Uh, what is the, the, look, I think in general, well, you know, I've said this and probably someone else said it as well, like that, you know, what you think maybe your disability is also your superpower. Exactly. And I think, um, uh, I think that I in, I think I've struggled with intimacy sometimes.

• 28:21Speaker 00

  My, you know, and, and I think I, you know, in terms of relationship building in, in my private life, like it's, it's a running joke between me and my wife, like that she's extremely sort of emotionally acute and that I'm slightly the opposite, which is kind of weird when you think about my job, which hinges on supposedly being sort of maybe emotionally or psychologically perceptive, but it's almost as though, but I see it in my mum as well. Like my mum, having worked at the BBC, went into therapy and became a relationship counselor.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  And it's funny because um, my mum also finds it difficult sometimes to, to fully inhabit her, her emotions, if it does sound an odd thing to say, I, I, and, and I don't, I'm gonna probably regret saying that, but let's make it about me. And I think with me, I think, um, yeah, I don't always find intimacy easy, like it's, it, it, it's, so, so, so I sort of, I, I experienced, like, a lot of the times my work is, is a license to be intimate without consequences, like to get to, to, a bit like what you're doing now, like you talk to people, someone in a prison, you know, who's been sentenced to ten life

• 29:42Speaker 00

  sentences, he's like, okay, how does that feel? So what is, what's life like? And, and then kind of getting, whatever happens to me, all the work I've done in some sense is about attempting to peel layers back and, and, and see inside someone's psyche and then get on a plane and fly off and go home and live my normal life. Almost at a less intimate plane of existence. And so clearly, you know, and the other joke I've made over the years is like, oh, what makes me good at my job is also what makes me bad at life. So so for me, it's I think, and I think if you ask my friends, they might say, you know, be like, oh, yeah. You know, Louis is a good guy. I hope they would say that.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  But but they'd also might say like, he's a little bit absent, like he's a little bit.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  I don't feel I'm an especially attentive or present friend. And and and, you know, I'm not, you know, some people are really gifted at friendship. Like they they like really get they're there and they think about and they make arrangements and I don't make really, I'm not very good at social arrangements, all these sort of boring things that are the qualities that are really the stuff of life, like just getting together, reaching out, are you okay? How's it? It's been a while since I saw you. I wanted to, let's meet up, let's which in general, this is a cross generalization, but I think women are slightly better at than men. And I think that's been one of the many gifts my wife has given me is actually involving me

• 31:14Speaker 00

  in life, like in just a normal sort of neurotypical way. Whereas my tendency would be to sort of disappear into my slightly incel like shell, you know, of of kind of in a metaphorical shed of kind of counting. The joke in making my book is like, you know, separating my collection of screws and nails into their different jars. You know what I mean? Like that for me is like that, you know, a lot of guys would be like, yeah, that sounds like heaven to have two hours to organize my shed. You know, and not and not realize that you're missing out on the tapestry of life. So I plead guilty to whatever that is. Maybe that's just being a man.

• 31:54Steven Bartlett?

  I can, I can relate to, it's funny, I was having this conversation yesterday with my friends where they were saying, yeah, Steve doesn't like to socialise. You know, I, I would rather sit upstairs for seven days on my own, working than like, someone said to me, you meet all these wonderful people on this podcast. And you, and it's such a wasted opportunity that you don't text them, hey, let's go for a coffee. And it's just outside of my nature. My nature is to sit alone on my laptop and work.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:18Steven Bartlett?

  And so, again, my girlfriend, my partner is the opposite.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:21Steven Bartlett?

  So she's dragging me in.

• 32:22Speaker 00

  I think it's quite a common dynamic, you know, not bragging, two nights ago, I was a GQ man of the year.

• 32:29Steven Bartlett?

  I saw.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  Thank you, applause, thank you.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  I was one of the honorees and so there was a, like, there was a banquet, like a posh dinner, catered by Heston Blumenthal. And, you know, Stormzy was going to be there, Mo Salah, Leah Williamson, the footballer.

• 32:50Steven Bartlett?

  I didn't get an invite, I must have got lost on the post.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Men now, it turns out, extraordinary list of like Andrew Garfield, an extraordinary list of incredible people. And it wasn't even an awards banquet, it wasn't even like the BAFTAs, like, where you sit and sit through the speeches and then at half past 10, when you're starving, hungry and quite tired, you sit down and eat your food. This was like a banquet banquet where you just sit around and have a delicious meal. And then a few people pop up and say a few words between starter and the main course. So it was like, and it wasn't even that, it was like maybe a couple of hundred people, like quite small as these things go. But the point is, is before, on the evening of, I was like, I don't want to go.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  And I said, I knew I had to go, but I said to Nancy, my wife, I was like, I am not feeling this. She's like, what is it? I said, I just, I can't, you know, I don't know, I just feel really anxious. And she's like, but you're not even giving a speech, are you? You know, because sometimes it's that, like, what if we win and I have to give a speech? Or, or you're worrying about whether you're going to win. It's like, I knew I was an honoree and I knew I wasn't going to say any, I wasn't going to have to give a speech. And it was just the idea of of having to talk to people like oh, and in a relatively high wa- high wattage setting. So you think like, I don't want to be wandering around like a blithering idiot. So there's a sort of little stress that sits alongside that. But there was no real reason on paper why I shouldn't have been thinking, well, this is going to

• 34:16Speaker 00

  be amazing. This is going to be a night I'll remember my whole life, you know. And I attempted to adjust my mindset, you know, using kind of Paul McKenna like or Yuri Geller like, you know, just visual like, think about what this is. This is going to be, no one's expecting anything of you. This is a chance to sit down with some amazing people and have fun. But nevertheless, for the first kind of hour, I was there just thinking, I kept just sighing.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  And Nancy was like, what's the matter? So I think that's just for, I think that's in me. It's probably in a lot, a lot of people. And you just deal with it. But, you know, why, why should that be the case? I don't, I don't really know why.

• 34:58Steven Bartlett?

  Is it something that comes with a cost? And is it something you want to change? If you're being really honest.

• 35:03Speaker 00

  If I could dial down, I think sometimes, I think I have changed it, actually, is the first thing to say. Because there were times in my life where I said no to things, just because I thought that's going to be a bit like, you know, I did the maypole dancing in the end, and it went fine. I did learn, this will surprise you, but I did learn how to read. And, you know, despite all the anxiety I had about doing that. And so, and then as life went on, I think there were times when I said no to things, opportunities, which probably, just because the idea, I was asked to go on David Letterman's chat show, when it was on CBS, this would have been in around 2001. And I said no, because I thought that's

• 35:48Speaker 00

  just going to make me anxious. And looking back on it, I probably wish I'd done that.

• 35:55Steven Bartlett?

  Why would that, why would that make you anxious?

• 35:57Speaker 00

  I find the chat show experience, not especially. I mean, I've done it a few times. And as life goes on, it seems, you know, the idea of public speaking, or, you know, when I first got into TV.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  It it was like, why am I doing this? This is not me. Like, this is not what I was cut out for. This is not something that I aspire to do. And it sounds really, you know, the whole notion of it feels intimidating and and and just a bad fit. And and nevertheless, I knew that, you know, just briefly, like, I was working in magazines as a um as a journalist in New York. And um that's I I I aspired to be a a TV writer, partly as a way of sort of avoiding comparison with my dad. Not directly, but I suppose that was in my mind was like, I wanna write and be creative, but I know I'll never write books.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  You know, I didn't feel like I wrote, when I wrote, it didn't feel especially as though it came as easily as I as it should. You know, it's hard when your dad, like, I relate to people with famous parents, like, you know, people like, you know, Jacob Dylan. Yeah. Who's Bob Dylan's son. I don't know why I reached for that comparison, but Jacob Dylan, that track won headlight. Do you remember that one? No. Okay, for people who know, they know. You know, it's a great track, was a huge international hit, but his dad's Bob Dylan. That's a painful, maybe not painful, but that's an extraordinary legacy to be born into. And in a in a related way, like, I was conscious of my dad, his name as a writer really meant something.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  And that it was um that if I was to attempt to write something, it was gonna be a case of very likely kind of falling short, at least in my own mind. But the idea of writing in television was was less, I felt, would set would would wouldn't invite the same comparisons. Plus, I used to watch TV and I liked TV and there was something about the democratic kind of nature of television, the fact that everyone watches TV. I thought, well, that's a way of working in a medium that will connect with people. And so it was in the mid nineties, TV was. In a kind of mini golden age, The Simpsons was on, Seinfeld was on, Friends was just about

• 38:18Speaker 00

  to come on, there were all these amazing TV shows, Larry Sanders was another one.

• 38:25Steven Bartlett?

  Did you want to connect with people? You studied history at Oxford and as someone that is, appears to be a bit of an introvert by nature, from what you've said about your experiences.

• 38:33Speaker 00

  I have a duality where I'm partly shy and introverted and then partly outgoing and an extrovert.

• 38:40Steven Bartlett?

  So with your writing and with the TV writing, was your, and with the magazine writing, I know you did a stint at Spy and was it Metro in Boston?

• 38:47Speaker 00

  Metro in San Jose, San Jose, California.

• 38:50Steven Bartlett?

  Was your, was your objective and the thing that you found fulfillment in your work from, was that connecting with people? Or was it just?

• 38:57Speaker 00

  I don't, I think I connected with people, not to sound, you know, oxymoronic or whatever it is, no tautologist, by connecting with people. Like in other words, like, I always find, I do my best connecting.

• 39:12Steven Bartlett?

  Sounds a bit weird.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Face to face? I mean, maybe at one level, but in the end, I think I was just trying to do good work and get approval, like maybe more than connection, like just trying to sort of get an A at work. Do you know what I mean? Like, so I would feel good and think like, oh, I got 10 out of 10 on my article or on my piece of writing, my, my film review. And then if people said to me, that was really good, that was like getting, you know, like you got a good review or whatever, you know, people say like, you, you did a good job, then it, it was maybe a way of, it's just a little, it's just a little spurt of whatever that is, like, just kind of pleasure, you know, you're.

• 39:55Steven Bartlett?

  Worthiness.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  A feeling of worth, you know, I don't want, I, I think I've got a healthy, relatively healthy sense of self-esteem, but nevertheless, I, I think I, I, whether I require it, I enjoy, you know, getting, I've got, I've got a series out at the moment, this isn't my attempt to segue into the promotional portion of this interview, but nevertheless, here we are. I got a, I've got a series out at the moment on iPlayer called Louis Through Interviews. And we had one that went out a few days ago where I interviewed Bear Grylls, an alumnus of this very podcast. I listened to your interview with him, by the way.

• 40:32Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  In preparation. And, and when it went out.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  For whatever reason, I think because I thought it was a good show and I hoped it would, I hoped it would get a good reception. I was on, um, I thought I'm gonna go on Twitter and see what people were saying. And it was surprisingly quiet. And then I felt a bit like, um, okay, now I'm gonna, I'll try at Louis through, I'll try hashtag Bear Grylls. I tried a few different search terms. And then I suddenly had a vision of my, you know, you get a vision of yourself like, oh, I've become that grubby guy. Kind of like, it's sort of sad, isn't it? Like trying to fish for, fish for approval in the vast swamp of the Twitter verse, right? Casting my line and nothing much is coming back.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  And I thought, well, and then one came back, I looked at it and it said, just watched Louis through his interview with Bear Grylls. Wow, it was hella boring. And I was like, I just caught a boot. And then I was like, well, that's what you get. And by the way, it isn't boring. No, it's not boring. The point I was trying to get to was, um, then a couple of days later, I got a review, great review in the Times. Just sort of pointing out all the things about it that I knew to be really, really good. It was sort of the perfect review, you know, rave, saying like, this is fresh, it's new, it's different, it's fun, it's entertaining, it's revealing. And I felt really good. And then one of us like, because before that, the first three episodes, I hadn't really checked Twitter.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  I thought, I don't, I'm not that guy anymore. I don't really care like, I make the shows and I know they're good. And the ones that aren't so good, I know, none of these is, is a clunker, they're all solid. And, and then here, and then, and then I suddenly thought, oh, I went back to, I regressed into being the needy sort of, um, the needy insecure person, which is, you know, and, and that guy is always there, by the way. I think a lot of people could probably relate to that, which doesn't, it doesn't mean, you know, which, which is, um, which is fine, by the way. But I suppose to, to your point, um, all, you know, in all the kind of work, in the work I do, it's not like, is it an urge to connect? Like it's an urge to do good work. And then it's nice for that to be recognized.

• 42:51Speaker 00

  And as much as I, I could, I'd like to pretend that. I don't really care whether people like it or not. I do care, actually.

• 43:00Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know what's funny is my team are very honest with me and we're in the car the other day and I believe it was Holly, Holly in my team, who might be upstairs now. And I said, um, we were talking about your, Louis coming on the podcast. I said, oh, he's got the new series out where he interviews people. I turned to, I think it was Holly, it might be someone else. So sorry if it's someone else. Um, I turned to them and said, how is it? Cause they'd seen it before me and they went, it's actually really good.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  Oh, nice.

• 43:22Steven Bartlett?

  That's what they said to me and they would be, and they would be so honest with me. They went, it's actually really good. And then they explained why it was good.

• 43:29Speaker 00

  Cause me, here's my thing, like that actually, like, isn't it, it's actually like.

• 43:34Steven Bartlett?

  It's actually really good.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  But see when I, because I'm a very glass half empty kind of guy, it's with respect to praise.

• 43:41Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  So what I'm hearing there is it's actually.

• 43:43Steven Bartlett?

  Surprising.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, like, cause I'm here, is that a surprisingly, in which case, why would that be surprising?

• 43:50Steven Bartlett?

  I can, I think I can assert why it would be surprising. Um, I think that the generation Holly's in, they don't watch, um, shows like that on BBC One typically.

• 44:04Speaker 00

  And BBC Two, but.

• 44:05Steven Bartlett?

  BBC Two, sorry, on the BBC, should I say, yeah. Um, but that's what I got from it is her generation who are like twenty two, twenty three, who spend a lot of time on like TikTok and Instagram and these other platforms. I think, um, it was, I was actually quite surprised.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  Well, that's fine. And I think that's probably true. And also I think in my world, if I'm going to talk about stuff, you know, we're, there, there's a troll in all of us, right? And, and, and in general, it's more enjoyable to talk about stuff and dunk on stuff because it's shit, right? Like, I, I know that sounds horrible and I'm slightly oversimplifying.

• 44:36Steven Bartlett?

  I think you're right.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  There's a little part, especially in the, in the journalistic or in, in sort of the media village, it's like, did you see it? Nah, yeah, that was rubbish, wasn't it? And there's a sort of reassuring feeling of like, yeah, let's all, let's all give it a kicking. So, so when you acknowledge that something's good, you're sort of saying like. I'm gonna grudgingly acknowledge that that was good.

• 44:58Steven Bartlett?

  I think you're correct.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  You know, that's a bit of that.

• 45:00Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I think pretty much everything, especially when, because we probably consider ourselves working in the media industry.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 45:04Steven Bartlett?

  So for the team to go, it's actually really good.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:07Steven Bartlett?

  And then she went on to explain to me.

• 45:08Speaker 00

  Most things aren't that good.

• 45:10Steven Bartlett?

  They're not.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  I mean, most things are fine.

• 45:12Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  But most things are like, only about as good as they need to be. Do you know what I mean?

• 45:18Steven Bartlett?

  Especially in the interview format, like, how many other ways can you can create an interview format that is original and inspiring?

• 45:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:24Steven Bartlett?

  And that's also what I got from her was like, she was talking to me about the way the format was constructed.

• 45:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think we pushed things forward a little bit, like, it's not a paradigm shift. Like, we haven't completely flipped the script, as they used to say in hip hop circles. But it is, you know, we worked on the grammar, we tried to do things a little differently. So we created a, for want of a better term, format, you know, that allowed for elements of actuality, just being silly, having fun, or being in live settings where the unexpected could happen, but also bits of conversation that would be going to places that were quite deep. So yeah, thank you for that. And that, that's, that's, thank you for passing that on.

• 46:11Steven Bartlett?

  TV, I, I read when you were eighteen, I think maybe sixteen, if someone had said to you that you would end up in TV, you would have, you would have been sort of perplexed at how that would have, the steps that it would have taken to get you there.

• 46:22Speaker 00

  That's definitely true.

• 46:23Steven Bartlett?

  You're, you're in San Jose, I believe, at the time. Is that where Spy was, the magazine?

• 46:29Speaker 00

  No.

• 46:30Steven Bartlett?

  Was that Boston?

• 46:30Speaker 00

  So, just to rewind, and I also want to mention one other thing, which is, because we talked a little bit about studying and, and I feel as though, whatever that is, that work ethic has stood me in good stead, but I don't feel that that's, I often think there's, you know, a very understandable misconception about the level of importance of academic work, you know, that whole stay in school kids and. You know, we were talking, I think, off, off mic about Mr. Beast, the YouTuber. And, you know, the media landscape we're in now, it would just, it's just simply not correct to say that, oh, the path lies through academic work, right? And I was talking to my cousin, Justin Theroux, oddly enough, he says Theroux, who's an actor,

• 47:14Speaker 00

  he's a director, a writer. He wrote Tropic Thunder, Iron Man Two. He's been, he's also like high profile Hollywood actor. I interviewed him for my podcast, I'm not trying to plug, that would be weird to plug one podcast on another podcast, but he, and he, he was like someone who struggled in the academic setting, like he, he had ADHD, he flunked out of a school, he went to another school where they recognized his special needs. But the point is that I sort of think so many, I think we under, there's a tendency to undervalue those parts of, of, of life that, that lead to success that, that exists. I mean, maybe you, maybe I'm sort of out of line here because it sounds like you are all over this, but those parts of, like the parts of life that helped me become whoever

• 47:58Speaker 00

  I am, part of it's academic, part of it was almost inimical to academic success. It was the part that was free spirited and naughty and that was bunking off school and seeing movies and, and, or, or getting me in trouble and, and, and, and whatever that is, and it's hard to really bottle it and know quite what it is. You know, there, there is something that I struggle sometimes with over discipline, right? And, and, or a sense of like doing well in controlled settings, but actually it's that you need the yin and the yang of both. And, and when I went out and did stuff that was successful on TV, like working, doing my first segments at a show called TV Nation, having been hired by Michael Moore when I

• 48:42Speaker 00

  was 23, partly like a work ethic, you know, doing preparation and being, you know, turning up on time, as they say, is like 90%. Of the battle, but actually then being just sort of allowing those creative juices sort of to, you know, whatever that mysterious quality of humour and connectivity, just being silly and disruptive, like those are really valuable.

• 49:12Steven Bartlett?

  They say, don't they, they say conformity is great to succeed in school, but it's not great to succeed in life.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  Maybe that's what it is.

• 49:18Steven Bartlett?

  You kind of need to be to unconform once you get out.

• 49:21Speaker 00

  You sort of do, and I think, and I want to come back to your question, but, but I do think that that's also, you know, three, four years ago, I started a company and there's a part of me that's overly, so overly conventional, you know, and, and as a result seeks out unconvention in my work and that's positive, you know, because it means I love spending time with people who feel like they give free rein to the darkest, weirdest impulses that I think to an extent we all share but keep repressed, you know, whatever those happen to be, people involved in sex work or, or people involved in religious cults or, or hate groups and, and that's sort of my stock in trade is talking to those people because I feel as though I kind of get it, I, I understand that that's part of the full complement, as horrible

• 50:05Speaker 00

  as it might sound to say, like, we all have like unacknowledged and secret impulses that, you know, we, we have sort of civilised, you know, and, and kept and repressed into, you know, we've inhibited them into our souls so that we can function and not go to be sent to prison or whatever, be cancelled. But for, for me, like, I, I sort of, I do it to a fault to the point where I worked at the BBC in-house in BBC studios, just because I sort of liked the idea of the structure, like I'm a company man going to the factory and, you know, building my TV. Programs but not owning them and because I just thought, you know, and I like going to

• 50:47Speaker 00

  the can, I used to love working at TV center because it felt like going to the factory and then eating at the TV center canteen, you know, it just felt felt like comfortable. You know, my, my granddad worked at the London Waterboard his whole life. He had one job that he started when he was eighteen and and finished when he was whatever sixty five, you know, to some extent, those were the times, but that temperament is slightly in me. The whole time when, when, when he left, they gave him um some a box of cutlery, you know, that was the, you know, you've worked here for forty seven years. Here's, here's your silverware in a walnut case and was on a, it was in pride of place, like not pride of place, it wasn't on the mantelpiece, but you, you used to, we used to look at it. That's what grandpa got when he'd worked at

• 51:28Speaker 00

  the Metropolitan Waterboard for forty seven years. You know, you sort of reverence it like, and it was only used for special occasions. And, and there's a little bit of that in me. And so when I finally went outside the BBC and set up a company three or four years ago, I'm sure most of your listeners probably have their own, many of them, not most, but many of them will have their own companies or will be fully cognizant of what it takes to make it in the sort of the world of, of, of free market and entrepreneurship. But for me, that was just absolutely not my lane. And it was my wife who pushed me to do it. And so that was a case of me needing to break out of whatever I was doing and say, do you know what, whatever you think

• 52:08Speaker 00

  that is risky or mysterious or um, you know, a bit a spiffy, you know, like just a little judgment like, oh, I don't want to be one of the yuppie guys like, we just had an IPO. I'm, I've just got my first Maserati like that kind, because I'm, I'm antagon, you know, I'm completely, that, that whole mindset, I feel like I'm alienating maybe some of your listeners. That's not my mindset. Like, I'm just like, I, I almost valorize the opposite of that, you know, to a probably um, an extent that's sort of faintly unhealthy. Like, like, I don't want to be the guy, I don't want a flash car, I don't want to flash clothes, I don't want anything,

• 52:49Speaker 00

  I want to be anti-flash, right? Like, my watch, you can see this. My wife was saying to me last night. You know, maybe time for a new watch. This is a Casio, whatever that one is. It's a F91W. These cost like £10, £15. You can get them at Argos. Have you ever seen that watch before? I have. I was listening to a program about Andrew Tate on the way here, a podcast. You know who Andrew Tate is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's your, anyway, so Andrew Tate feels like he's that guy reduced to its quintessence where he's like, one of his catchphrases was, people say, why have you got a, you know, green Bugatti? Do you know this meme? And what does he say to them? He says, well, he says. He says, what colors, I say to them, what color's your Bugatti?

• 53:35Speaker 00

  Right? That's him in a nutshell. He's like, unapologetically troll-like, ostentatious displays of wealth and arrogance, right? So I'm the anti-Tate. You can put that on my, you put that on my gravestone, the anti-Tate. So I'm like, I don't give a fuck about your Bugatti. I think it's embarrassing that you have one. No offence if you've got one. No, I don't. I don't have a car. But, you know, fine, you know, and that's kind of a joke. Like, that's, I, my point really is that that's something I need to keep an eye on. You know, because actually ostentatious, almost like ostentatious humility is its own poison. Like, like, why are you so wedded to the idea of having a shit watch? By the way, it's not a shit watch. It's completely reliable and it's, I've never had it.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  The only thing that goes on it is the strap. So I've got one that's got a, you can replace the strap. After about five years, the strap goes. I've got two of these. I'm not bragging. I've got one, I've got my, I've got my spare one in case I can't find this one. Anyway, last time my wife said, might be time for a new watch. I've got to embrace, I'm trying to lean into being the guy

• 54:39Speaker 00

  that isn't showing off about what a lack of, what a not show off he is. You think I've lost the thread? I haven't. The point I'm getting to is that, so I needed to start a company and not, because it's oddly infantilizing after a while. Like, there's nothing, there's nothing cool about. Making like hundreds of hours of TV and not owning any of it, right? That's just me being a little bit of a chump. And partly that's, you know, there's a quid pro quo, I suppose, like, well, you don't get stressed, you turn up, you're making things for a public broadcaster. You're getting a decent salary for sure. But people would say like, why, you know, everyone else. So who do you work for? It's like, well, I'm BBC, I'm on contract. I work from contract to contract three years at a time. Like, really? You don't have your own company?

• 55:23Speaker 00

  Like, no, why not? Like, you know, because everyone else does, like Jamie Oliver or Hugh Fernley Wittingstall, or, or, you know, whoever you care to mention, any presenter.

• 55:33Steven Bartlett?

  Bear Grylls.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  Bear Grylls, if any longevity would be making their own shows, you know, it's, it is, it's a no brainer. And I was like, I guess I just, I'm fine doing my, I'm a creature of habit. You know, that was sort of what I've just saw. I don't want to mess around with it. And then having done it three or four years ago, like, yeah, I probably should have, should have done it a bit earlier. But it's so, so it's that thing of the point, which now landing on the point sounds a bit banal, was that you can sort of get in, being a creature of habit, being sort of embracing whatever that, you know, your own sense of self as risk averse and conventional. Sometimes, you know, I needed to challenge myself in order to discover

• 56:18Speaker 00

  that there was a, you know, a world out there that was sort of more creative, more lucrative, more fun, more adventurous.

• 56:26Steven Bartlett?

  That's happened a few times in your life where you've kind of taken a leap into the unknown, which is actually quite surprising, having, you know, described yourself as a creature of comfort, even.

• 56:33Speaker 00

  Habit.

• 56:34Steven Bartlett?

  Have habits, sorry.

• 56:35Speaker 00

  I don't mean to habit, like, I'm trying to like tell you off. I did say habit. Maybe of comfort as well, although, but habit is really what I meant, yeah.

• 56:43Steven Bartlett?

  Creature of habit. Because I, because I was reading about when you made that transition from being a writer to a TV presenter. And. I remember writing some quotes about how, there was one about feeling like an impostor a little bit to some degree and getting on that plane to go and interview these Christians when, once Michael Moore had sort of put you front and centre in the documentary. And thinking, what the fuck am I doing here?

• 57:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was, I remember it vividly. It's extraordinary as you go through life, so much disappears, but there are times when you realise you're at this momentous moment. I suppose often it's high stress moments, which, which is really revealing, isn't it? Because actually, risk avoidance, you know, that, that almost like, God, my mind's whizzing now, but that bent the my idea, like, the greatest happiness, you know, in philosophy, there's a utilitarian ideal that's supposed to be the metric for how you judge whether an action is good or not. And it's like, the greatest, will it cause the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people? But then if you unpack that, like, well, what is happiness? Like, and what actually, how do you measure it? And how do you measure, is it happiness in the moment?

• 57:51Speaker 00

  Is it happiness as it's recollected over time? Is it a happiness that, you know, you can, that will spread to other people or, you know, it will exist for a hundred years? And, and so actually, there's, there's a sense of fear and discomfort that will subsequently lead to sense of, of triumph or self satisfaction. I, you know, is it happiness? Is it, I don't know, like, that feels such, such a blunt instrument for attempting to measure reality. And, and in general, fear, which you would equate with unhappiness, can very often be what ends up creating the conditions for real achievement.

• 58:35Speaker 00

  And I, I, I remember sitting on this plane, having been given a job by Michael Moore as a presenter on, you know, TV Nation, it was a network TV show on NBC, one of the, there were then three networks in America. I was 23. I was, as I say, awkward, in every apparent way disqualified for being a correspondent on a network TV show. I was in, I was having, I was in the union, like, you know, as probably still the case, but definitely then these TV shows were unionized to an extent in America further than they would be in the UK. So I would be, I was in the Writers Guild of America as a result of being hired. And so they were required to fly me business class.

• 59:19Speaker 00

  Like, I don't think I'd ever been in business class. And somehow that contributed to my imposter syndrome, my sense that I shouldn't really be here. I remember sitting there thinking like, this is all kinds of wrong. Like, I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know why they think I'm qualified to do this. And nevertheless, this is what's happening. And, and I was, there was a segment that was about, you know, TV Nation was a kind of satirical, fact-based comedy show where you went out and slightly made fun of people with, to prove a political point or to sort of make some sort of social point. So I was interviewing religious cults about when the end of the world was going to happen.

• 59:58Speaker 00

  So it was sort of like slightly cheeky, irreverent take on religious fanaticism or religious weirdness. So the guys are like, I wanted to know, so when will the world end? Is it on a Tuesday? How can I get prepared? And I was sort of wide, in a wide-eyed way, oh no, like, will there be, you know, and are the spaceships going to land? And what will the aliens look like? But I was just incredibly conscious of, of thinking like, why have I been given this huge, it felt like a big slab of pressure and, and sort of license to fail very publicly and very embarrassingly. And, and I also knew, I wasn't, you know, but I'm also wasn't so disconnected from reality

• 1:00:41Speaker 00

  that I didn't think like, well, it's a huge opportunity, like, my, my, and my, my girlfriend at the time was very supportive and was like, you know, you, you should, you, you can do this, Louis. Like, you're, you're really good with people and, and, and, you know, don't, don't, don't worry. Like, you, you can, you've, you've got this, you can handle it.

• 1:01:00Steven Bartlett?

  Were you trying to talk yourself out of it?

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  I was, it wasn't like I ever thought I, um.

• 1:01:07Speaker 00

  I I won't do it like it it was no question of like I'm gonna do it like I have to do it. But I I I sort of didn't want to do it. Does that make sense?

• 1:01:15Steven Bartlett?

  Has that been typical of your life where you you know you've got to do it, but it feels kind of painful and anxious as you approach the challenge? Even like with starting your own company?

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, I think so. Like, there's times when, you know, I suppose that's where the work ethic part fits in or whatever, like that part of. If if you commit to doing something like I'm very, I I hate to let people down. Like if I commit to doing something.

• 1:01:42Speaker 00

  Or turning up on time or. I still struggle with that part, like especially as you're in the, when you're in the public eye or you're in demand. And people write and ask for things. I still, you know, will you come to our school and give a talk or I do I? I I'm a very, I'm very agreeable in that sort of technical sense. I'm I'm very inclined. To agree to do things and that can get you in trouble because you find you're over, I I find I over agree. And make unrealistic commitments like, oh, that'll be fine. And then I'll do that. And then I'll do that. And then you look at it and you're like, there's just no way on earth I can do all of these things. So I try and ring fence my commitment levels, but that's not easy. So but in a in a positive way.

• 1:02:24Speaker 00

  That sense of like feeling like I need to show up, having agreed to do it, having been offered a a an opportunity. Even though it might sound enormously stressful like I would never, I think this may be a world in which.

• 1:02:40Speaker 00

  I never got into TV. I don't know quite what I did end up doing. The thing that it makes me reflect on is the extent to which. We're conditioned and groomed into behaviors that can be healthy or unhealthy or positive or not positive. And I think. That's the part of the libertarian ethos that I have a huge, well, among others that I have a huge issue with. It's like, oh, just let people be themselves. People need help to fulfill their potential, right? That idea that, oh, you know, you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps like. I, with all the advantages I had of like a first rate, private education, supportive parents, even I like didn't see myself as someone who would have various kinds of success.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  I didn't feel that that was in me, for whatever reason. But other, along the way, people, Michael Moore, people at the BBC who then commissioned me to do my own series off the back of TV Nation, when I got commissioned to do Weird Weekends, my wife Nancy, other people along the way have sort of seen things in me that I didn't see in myself. Even this interview series going out at the moment, I, I never, it sounds awful, I never aspired to have like a TV interview series, like it was something that would be mentioned from time to time and I would say like, that's not really me, you know, I like going out,

• 1:04:03Speaker 00

  like my, my comfort, like my happy place really is, in terms of TV, like, oh, go and be in a prison for two weeks and film the inmates, or go to a mental hospital, or go to a, a brothel, like I made a film about a brothel, and just hang out there for two or three weeks and just be a, that, that to me is, it sounds awful, but that's, that's like pure bliss, like work wise. But the idea of, oh, we'll have a formal sit down interview and you'll talk to someone famous who probably only has a couple of hours for you and then we'll piece it all together and do shoot, I, I never thought like that's really something I want to do. But Patrick Holland, who was then in charge of BBC Two, had listened to my podcast and

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  said like, I really think this would work, some, not this exactly, but there's, there's, there's a TV show that takes aspects of this that could exist, that would, you know, involve you talking to people. And I, and I remember you would think like, oh, that would, that must have been exciting, like someone saying like, I wanted to do it, this TV format involves partly chat show, partly documentary, I just thought, I didn't think like, that's something I'll never do. I did think like, I just felt very blank about it. I know that's horrible. People are going to listen to this and throw up in their cars. But I just thought, that sounds sort of stressful. I'm not sure if I really want to do that.

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  What, but I made myself. The point is, I made myself do it because I had a team around me who I knew expected me to do it. And at some level, I had enough sense to recognize that it was an opportunity.

• 1:05:37Steven Bartlett?

  These people that have seen things in you that you maybe couldn't at the time have seen in yourself, or seen roles for you that you maybe at the time couldn't have seen for yourself, Michael Moore, Nancy, and then people at the BBC that you mentioned.

• 1:05:49Steven Bartlett?

  Are you aware of what they're seeing in you?

• 1:05:52Steven Bartlett?

  Now, in hindsight, what they saw in you?

• 1:05:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think so. And I think with with a bit of time, I've been able to appreciate.

• 1:06:00Speaker 00

  That, I know, it sounds sort of glib and maybe even false modest, but to appreciate that I have something to offer.

• 1:06:08Steven Bartlett?

  What is that?

• 1:06:10Speaker 00

  Well.

• 1:06:11Steven Bartlett?

  It makes people feel uncomfortable when you ask them these questions.

• 1:06:13Speaker 00

  No, no, I'm fine with it. Like, because I feel as though I can analyze it.

• 1:06:19Speaker 00

  With the benefit of 25 years of doing it, I think it's something to do with like a little bit of intelligence, a little bit of humor, a little bit of un sort of unsort awkwardness. Like, I think that's part of it, like just being a little bit awkward, a little bit of.

• 1:06:42Speaker 00

  Sort of authenticity, or whatever that is, like just sort of feeling like, I think maybe that that same thing of not really. Fully chasing it or fully sort of needing it. Oddly enough, is almost the, you know, it's like to go through the door, you have to not want to go through the door too much. I don't know if that's even, that's definitely not a saying, and it doesn't actually make any sense. But whatever sense you can make of that contradictory statement, if you want it too much. I think that this this then you need to step back and think about quite, it's almost like then you're not ready. Grasshopper. Is that the, is grasshopper, is that what these are saying? Karate Kid? I think if I can, if I can call you a grasshopper, Steve, no.

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  You know, it's like, it's that feeling of, you know, at the end of the day.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  There's more important things in life. And I don't want to overdo, I actually got lost in my metaphor a bit. But I think in the end, it's like those different qualities of, of, of, it's that complement of qualities. And then just luck, but I don't think luck really is a quality. But alongside, I'm now at the position where having done my job for long enough, it's put me in a slight, I think there's loads of people who could be whoever I am, like occupy that cultural place that I'm in. But, you know, and partly I've earned my place here and partly I've been really lucky. But I think, you know, when you said something earlier, it also made me think of another quality,

• 1:08:15Speaker 00

  which is to do with, which is a negative thing, which is that, you know, the idea like you, when you were told, you know, when I was told that, oh, you know, Patrick, you know, he's quite keen to do some sort of talk format or some interview thing where you're on TV. And I, and I just think like, well, I'm not really sure. I, I, I think one of my, because it goes back to what you were asking earlier about, oh, what is the downside of these various qualities? Like, I do think there's a term anhedonic. Have you ever heard that term? It just means, I think it's a clinical term, but it sort of, it sort of means averse to pleasure or lacking in pleasure. Like, there's a part of me, again, that I think my wife has helped me with,

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  is that I, I kind of sense that I'm not always connected to pleasure. Does that sound weird? Like, I, I, you know, sometimes I sort of drift through life and I have to sort of stop and remind myself. I think because I sort of, I, I tend to see downsides and I'm working on that. And I really do like, I, I sort of need to, it's really odd. Like, I've won three BAFTAs, not bragging. It just came up and I, and I mentioned it's a fact. And, and when you win a BAFTA, you've got a lot of awards up there. I'm not seeing a BAFTA. Maybe those are just. I presented BAFTA to someone else. Some of them ones a camera.

• 1:09:39Speaker 00

  I'm not sure that camera is an award or you can do a cutaway of that later. You know, it's odd, like I, my main thing on winning each time I won a BAFTA. My first thought has been, oh shit, now I have to give an acceptance speech, right? I'm gonna have to get up there. And, um, you know, in highly, like, the pleasure, you know, you get a little pleasure over the subsequent years when you can bring it up again and again, as I like to do. But actually, it's really odd, like, I, I, most of the time when I get good news, sometimes I don't even, I can't notice the good news. Does that sound really weird?

• 1:10:13Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 1:10:14Speaker 00

  I don't know if that makes, uh, you, thank you for saying that, I think you're being polite.

• 1:10:17Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  I'm not someone who, I'm not someone who, um, is, uh, who, who automatically feels connected to the good things that happen to them.

• 1:10:27Steven Bartlett?

  How does one remain happy if they have that sort of kind of default, uh, oh my God, where am I gonna put this third BAFTA that I've won, or now I have to do a speech?

• 1:10:35Speaker 00

  Well, it sounds awful, but you just sort of follow your routine, you know? And actually, I am a happy person and, um, I, um, I, you know, the, I, I, I take pleasure in the simple things in life, you know? I, I, I like, um, doing stuff with the, you know, stuff with the family or, you know, really, I really am, again, it sounds terrible, I've made a simple place, like, I wa, I like watching Match of the Day at the weekend, like, you're saying, oh, yeah, okay, lots of people like doing that, what's that? But, you know, like, that, that for me is one of the small things in the week where I'm like, I know I'm gonna be happy for the next forty-five minutes or, or hour, you know what I mean?

• 1:11:18Speaker 00

  Or, or, on a, on a Saturday night, I listen to Loose Ends on Radio Four, and often I'll be cooking, and, and that's a small thing, and I get a little, a little tiny little boost out of, um, now I'm gonna enjoy, I would, usually I enjoy listening to it. This little thing, I, I mean, I, I'm not, if someone says, like, you're gonna go on holiday to the Bahamas, you know, I, I'm trying to imagine what a really big happy thing would be. I, I would normally experience that as, as stress and anxiety. I think that's quite normal, though holidays are stressful, aren't they?

• 1:11:54Steven Bartlett?

  Maybe you've got your priorities in order, in fact, because you, you don't seem to be compelled or sat, um, Or derive your happiness from like the big wanky stuff, from like the Lamborghini, the Bugatti, the BAFTA.

• 1:12:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, what colour's your Bugatti?

• 1:12:06Steven Bartlett?

  The GQ man of the year stuff. You seem to derive it from the the simple, intrinsically fulfilling things like, you know, cooking, listening to a thing that's intellectually stimulating. So maybe we're all, maybe everyone else is a weirdo and you're actually incredibly normal.

• 1:12:20Speaker 00

  Don't know. I think there's more of us out there than you might think, but maybe not. We're all trapped in our own brains. There's no way of measuring. I do think that, you know, I mentioned that when I saw that I got a nice review in the Times, that gave me like, as I said, I gave me a buzz.

• 1:12:37Steven Bartlett?

  You cared about your work, though. You really cared about.

• 1:12:39Speaker 00

  Well, that wasn't even about, I mean, I do care about the work. I mean, work is a big source of pleasure, like in the sense of either being on location and being aware of it going well and getting into an almost like a mindset in an interview of feeling like, yeah, this is all good. Like, I feel connected. I feel, because it's a high stra- in a way, I'm sure you have a little bit, if you have an interview with someone, you feel like you've been trying to book it for a while, the moment comes, you're like, the next two hours are really important. You want it to go smoothly. You want it to feel like a revealing encounter. You want to be probing and insightful and attentive and immersed and not distracted, but also thinking ahead and and all of that's going on. And then it starts and then you feel like, oh, it's going okay. And then afterwards, you're

• 1:13:24Speaker 00

  like, that was a good one. And then in the edit, you're putting it together and you're piecing things in like that. All of those, the simple pleasures of of craft, you know, like, it's really, and it is simple, like, it's no great mystery, but that's, that's a big part of of how I connect with, well, my own happiness.

• 1:13:46Steven Bartlett?

  How do you connect with people? So actually, I wanted to ask you this for my own sort of learning. You've done this for multiple decades. You've sat with people from every corner of the world. You have all of these different experiences and some of them are a little bit, you know, in the nicer sense, a little bit out there. I'm glad I landed with a PC word.

• 1:14:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:03Steven Bartlett?

  A little bit out there.

• 1:14:04Speaker 00

  Wonder what the non-PC word is.

• 1:14:07Steven Bartlett?

  But you have, it was funny, when I asked you about the qualities you have, I think you absolutely nailed it. And all of those make you incredibly disarming. That almost like lack of intense seriousness makes you a really disarming individual.

• 1:14:19Steven Bartlett?

  How do you connect with people? How intentional is your approach to connecting with them in your new interview series? But also just generally.

• 1:14:26Speaker 00

  Some of it is stuff that, you know, I didn't, I just sort of came by by accident, probably most of it, which is a thing that, you know, natural curiosity, which I think you have, a feeling of, of just, just wanting to know why people do the things that they do. Right? And, and, and sort of getting out of your own way a bit, you know, in the sense of, because the question I get asked most often is like, well, how do you not get angry with some of these people, especially the ones who are sort of spewing hate or coming out with stuff? That's really objectionable. I find it a slightly confusing question because I think that's so, it's so far from what's in my head most of the time.

• 1:15:11Speaker 00

  I'm genuinely thinking like, why, if, if it is someone like, say a neo-Nazi or someone involved in religious intolerance. I'm just so curious about what takes someone to that place, what, what's in their mind. But to actually berate them, to give them a hard time, or even be particularly journalistically confrontational. That's not, that's not my default mode.

• 1:15:39Steven Bartlett?

  That's so interesting because I just think in life generally, those who like seek to, even in our personal relationships and romantic relationships, those that seek to understand tend to build bridges. But if you seek to like, as you say, berate, I get told off on this podcast a lot on like Twitter and in the press, like because I don't berate people. Like when I had Matt Hancock here, I asked him the questions I really wanted to know, but I didn't, I didn't come to berate him.

• 1:16:01Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:16:02Steven Bartlett?

  He would have gone, the wall would have gone up had I done that.

• 1:16:05Speaker 00

  There's other ways of, and some people use a confrontational approach and that's fine. And then I think in general. Um, you know, there's many ways of doing interviews. And I think probably, you know, I haven't interviewed many politicians and it's probably related to that, the feeling that they, they have their, they tend to have their guard up. They tend to be, uh, follow a, a strategy of, of attempting to be as, as risk averse, headline averse as, as possible. And it's like, those aren't the people. I'm, I'm interested in people who are genuinely attempt, who feel that they've got something figured out or, or, or are involved in a, in a world or a lifestyle or just some situation

• 1:16:48Speaker 00

  that is, is either self sabotaging or, or filled with angst. So in the end, I see it as not, I'm not trying to get one over on people. I'm not trying to, I honestly, most interviews I see as a, as a potential win-win. You know what I mean? Like, I, I sort of think like, well, there's no, there's no reason why you shouldn't tell me the truth and you're involved in something that you're relatively open about and, and I'll, I'll just assume that that's probably the case. Now, obviously you're briefed, you've done as much research as you can, but um, I think

• 1:17:27Speaker 00

  if you feel as though you're coming from a position of, um, so shared inquiry, then that's contagious. Um, I think also, I sort of tend to think, I think there's some part of me thinks maybe the other person's got it figured out and I haven't, right? A level of humility. So that when they say stuff, I'm genuinely thinking like, well, I guess maybe, or may, or they say something bonkers and I'm like, well, that isn't right, but I enjoy bumping up against that. And I don't go in there thinking, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get this person, like I'm gonna get one over on them. I sort of feel as though, you know, you come in and you just sort of try and just see what's going on, you know? If, if people see like you're

• 1:18:13Speaker 00

  You're attempting to wrestle intimacies from them. That's never going to go well. You just create the space and the sense of of understanding and allow them to sort of walk through that.

• 1:18:25Steven Bartlett?

  Everything you've just described there, that creating the space to like, understand them, the humility, which is ultimately creates that safety, which allows them to open up, are the exact things that I know my partner wants from me in all of our interactions. So because you've got that skill in your work, I'm here assuming that you're to have that at home. Is that correct?

• 1:18:46Speaker 00

  Um, I think I could work better on it. Like, I'm very aware that the skill set, I often think about the skill set I have in my work of being supposedly a good listener and an empathetic and present person. I I slightly fail at, in a kind of, I think, a very probably normal way in in my relationship. Like, I I have a very happy marriage and probably you should check that with Nancy. Cause I'm aware I'm slightly reviewing my own restaurant, if I can use that metaphor. Um, and but, yeah, on Goodreads, I gave my book a five out of five.

• 1:19:26Speaker 00

  And and, you know, I'm giving my marriage five out of five. Uh, so I think, I think I could do. I think I could, I could improve.

• 1:19:35Steven Bartlett?

  In your autobiography on page one hundred and fifty seven.

• 1:19:38Speaker 00

  Are you serious?

• 1:19:39Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 1:19:41Speaker 00

  Got to get through this, My Life in Strange Times in Television.

• 1:19:45Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know what I'm gonna say?

• 1:19:46Speaker 00

  Get it on audiobook for an extra chapter about Jimmy Savile. That's true.

• 1:19:52Steven Bartlett?

  Speaking of page one hundred and fifty seven and Jimmy Jimmy Savile. On that page, your former wife, seeing as we're talking about relationships and reviewing them, et cetera. She said, there's nothing real about you.

• 1:20:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Steven Bartlett?

  And to the point of Jimmy Savile, he also said something which was to the same vein about insincerity being your speciality.

• 1:20:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:13Speaker 00

  That's good. Glad you brought that up.

• 1:20:18Speaker 00

  It's quite a telling, sort of ringing piece of self-exposure. Where, yeah, my wife and Jimmy Savile both make the same critique of my interpersonal qualities, finding me lacking in, basically, authenticity, lacking in sincerity. There's nothing real about... Well, the first thing is, when a relationship is ending,

• 1:20:46Speaker 00

  you seize whatever you can to hurt the other person. I think it's, I think when someone you really love and you think really loves you, I mean, it was my girlfriend at the time, although we were married and that's a whole other complicated. But, but yeah, when that relationship was ending,

• 1:21:06Speaker 00

  I think there's a feeling of betrayal, isn't there? It's like, I thought we were, we were together forever and I trusted that that would be the case. And, and here we are, clearly you don't feel the same way. And, and so I'm in the position of, in her eyes, being a kind of traitor, an inauthentic, somebody who didn't deliver on, on what was promised. Although it wasn't promised, but what was, what seemed to be implicit.

• 1:21:35Speaker 00

  I think, yeah, in sincerity, I mean, I remember where we were, like, when the Jimmy Savile, the first documentary I made about Jimmy Savile, when he was alive, when Louis met Jimmy, not available on the iPlayer, but it's on the internet, you can find it. And I remember when we promoted it before, I think it was when we promoted it, and he, he agreed to do an interview to promote it. And he, part of that was a profile interview in The Guardian. And he was interviewed at the King's Cross in one of the, in the hotel there, in one of the hotel rooms. And the guy from The Guardian came down, and I don't even know why,

• 1:22:16Speaker 00

  I don't even know why it came up, but I made a joke and he said, "Ah, insincerity, your speciality."

• 1:22:25Speaker 00

  Gosh, you asking me to get inside the mind of Jimmy Savile? To think about what he meant when he criticised me? I think he thought that um.

• 1:22:36Speaker 00

  I think that journalistic role where um. Well, I think part, I think, you know what it is, is like. The best construct, there's two constructions I can put on that. One is just that. In journalism, you sort of required to inhabit this place of intimacy. Like actually like, hey, let's do this and let's do that. And then afterwards. You sort of disconnect and sometimes that can feel jarring. I don't think actually that's what he meant though. Like, I think, I think maybe in some cases. There's a, there's a part of journalism that can feel slightly. In sort of transactional way, like. Let's bro down on location and, and have fun and, and yet if you looked at it.

• 1:23:19Speaker 00

  Dispassionately, it's slightly cynical and calculating is like, well, you're doing this for a TV programme. And, and so there's a part that slightly feel a little bit uncomfortable. I think really what he was talking about there was a sense of humour. He was, he was calling out. My sense of humour, which is some, an aspect of it, which sometimes involves um.

• 1:23:43Speaker 00

  Almost self parody, like an element of where you say something.

• 1:23:49Speaker 00

  Almost. A, as a way of sort of parodying or satirising your own. This isn't going to make any sense, Steve, but you satirise your own worst impulses. Like, the best example I can give is when I said to um. When I was with Neil and Christine Hamilton, right? I did a programme and they were accused of sexual assault. And, and while I filmed with them and then I, and then it became media circus. And I carried on filming and then they did a deal with the Mail on Sunday. To sell their story and I was interviewing them during all of this. And I said to Christine. How, how much did the Mail on Sunday pay for you? For the interview, I was just curious because I knew probably they got 10 or 15 or 20,000 pounds and I was just curious.

• 1:24:34Speaker 00

  And Christine said, I'm not going to tell you. And I said to Christine, Christine, this is me. I'm not a journalist. I'm a friend. Like, you can tell me. And a lot of people gave me shit for it, right? Like, that what I said. But in my mind, like, that was a funny thing to say, because quite obviously, um, I am a journalist. And whether I'm a friend or not is actually not established. I'm not clearly not a friend, but I'm not also clearly a friend, right? So that was kind of a funny remark, because I was being nakedly insincere.

• 1:25:12Speaker 00

  Which is fun, like, sometimes, to me, what's funny is saying, like, not, like, sort of saying the wrong thing, saying the thing that's sort of brazen, as a way of, of just sort of identifying the hypocrisy and having fun with it. So I, I tend to think that, I think that's what Jimmy Savile meant, was that sometimes I would say things that would kind of definitively either untrue or quite clearly being said because they were not clearly true. Anyway, that's the way you asked that question. And when you ask a question about Jimmy Savile, I'm gonna give you a long answer, because it's easy to be misconstrued. But I think that's what he meant. I think I'm in general, like, fairly, um,

• 1:25:55Speaker 00

  a fairly straight-up person. But I also think that the tendency to believe your own bullshit, to drink your own Kool-Aid, is, is almost universal, almost a precondition of life, right? You know, Nietzsche, the German philosopher, uh, who I try not to quote too much, because it makes me sound pretentious, but he has, he has a couple of really good quotes on this, where one is, um,

• 1:26:21Speaker 00

  for the true deceiver, you know, for the most effective deceiver, first, he must believe his own deceptions. I'm mangling that quotation, but the idea that in order to con someone, you sort of have to believe, the most effective con artist is the one who believes their own con, you know? You, and, you know, like, or a seducer, like, they say that about Casanova, you know, one of the most, um, Notorious womanizes in human history. And they say that he actually, for each time he seduced someone, he fell in love with them. You know, maybe it's true for sales in general, like you really got to, if you believe in that. And, and so I'm, I'm fully aware that for me to say like, I'm an authentic

• 1:27:02Speaker 00

  human being and that my journalism relies on a kind of true connection. I'm, I, you know, there's a little part of me thinks like, I think I believe that. Um, I'm pretty sure I, I, I know I do believe that, but I'm not my own best reference on whether or not that's really the case.

• 1:27:20Steven Bartlett?

  I neglected my personal life to focus on achieving some sort of professional success. The price of my lack of emotional nous was paid by those nearest and dearest to me. When did you get that feedback? Cause I remember the times in my life where I've got that feedback from friends, family, romantic partners. And at first, sometimes we sometimes argue against it. We go, fuck off. And then we walk away and we go, this is true.

• 1:27:43Speaker 00

  I think I've had that feedback in my relationships, more or less consistently. Uh, and, and, and until maybe four or five, six years ago, like I think, again, I feel like I'm reviewing my own book like. And now folks, I am happy and healthy and well adjusted. And I've arrived at a kind of a spiritual place of tranquility. But I do, I am conscious that I, um, all through my twenties and thirties, I saw my relationships as a, um,

• 1:28:27Speaker 00

  um, I think, I think the other phrase I use is like, I saw my relationships as a life support system for my kind of work self. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:28:36Steven Bartlett?

  Amen, I can relate.

• 1:28:37Speaker 00

  Instead of the other way around, you know? And so I would say like, well, I would take off when I went to work for Michael Moore. It was even back in the nineties. It was a source of friction in the relationship that like without much warning. Cause I became the fill in guy who when other people couldn't do segments or because they were, they found weren't available, weren't stressed about it. I I'd be like, let's get Louis to do it. I I did a lot of great segments just by being available at a moment's notice to fly somewhere. And and never thought really, which I don't know that that it was the wrong thing to do at that time. We didn't have kids.

• 1:29:15Speaker 00

  And so I'd be like, okay, I'm off for three or four days. And but as it went on and then as I had kids. And I was still doing the same thing, sort of saying to my wife, well, this is what I do. There's a chapter in my book called this is what I do. You know, you knew when we married that we would be that I was a sort of globe trotting TV documentary maker. And she um, she said, yeah, what did I do when we when we met? I was a TV director as well, and I've changed what I do. And you need to change what you do. Like, I don't mean to sound like she was being horrible about it, but her attitude was like, people make a you need to make an adjustment to accommodate the fact that we now have two small children. And How did you receive that?

• 1:30:00Speaker 00

  Um. At first. I think I received that as.

• 1:30:10Speaker 00

  Well, not not well, like it didn't make me angry, but I I was somewhat inflexible. Because my attitude was, look, I was because I went, you know, I my parents had my dad traveled a lot for work. My mom was a full time TV producer and we had people at home. Opers who um, who made sure that when we got home, someone was there and would make us a meal. And so I was like, well, we just need to get help. She said, I don't want I don't want us to get help. I said, you she she said, what I said, you I said, you can do whatever you want to do. You you can carry on working five days a week, six days. You can travel as well if you want, we just need to get help. And she's like, I don't I want one of us to be here and I want for some of that, I want it to be you.

• 1:30:55Speaker 00

  I don't know, does that sound so? You sound like me. Really? Yeah, yeah. And I was like, well, I said, I guess I don't see it that way. So it became a bit of an impasse for a while.

• 1:31:07Steven Bartlett?

  And then?

• 1:31:07Speaker 00

  And then, um.

• 1:31:11Speaker 00

  Well, then we had another child and um. And she said, well, now we've got a baby and two small children. And you've agreed to take, to make sure you only work in the UK. And I was like, did I agree to that? She said, yes, and I couldn't remember it, but I was like, well, she's probably right. And um.

• 1:31:32Steven Bartlett?

  Did you make rules? I read that you made some rules.

• 1:31:34Speaker 00

  We had a rule that I wouldn't go away for more than two weeks and um. And actually, for most of the time, it was between sort of a week and ten or twelve days.

• 1:31:45Steven Bartlett?

  Are you flexible now?

• 1:31:46Speaker 00

  I don't want to make my wife sound like, I know there's some people that hear that and go like, well. You know, Louis was obviously bringing back the bigger wage and and so he should have been. I I honestly think my wife was right about most of that.

• 1:32:00Steven Bartlett?

  I feel the same way about my partner and it's almost identical that it it took me to find the right person to compromise my inflexibility. Where they they made the case to me that quality time and this relationship was actually an equal priority, let's say, to the work. And with the right person, I was finally willing to bend. And I was finally willing to, you know, so but I think it takes the right person. For me, it does anyway.

• 1:32:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, the right person, the right relationship, the right life stage.

• 1:32:26Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:26Speaker 00

  I also say that these interviews I'm doing, part of that is an agreement that we made. Well, even an agreement, a kind of agreement I made with myself in lockdown and being around, my kids are now sixteen, fourteen and eight. You know, it turns out older children in many respects. Need more management, need more sort of parental presence in their lives than younger children. And so I said, well, maybe a way for me to travel less and not be taking off for. You know, two or three months a year, because you aggregate those two week trips or ten, and they add up to maybe a quarter or a third of the year. And now I I can, I can, my schedule is much more, I said, if I do these interviews.

• 1:33:06Speaker 00

  And we make TV shows in the UK and that there's a more controllable schedule and I can be around more. Nancy helped me set up the company, she's working more, I'm home more. And so it's actually like, it turns out conforming to those expectations of family involvement. It is really positive, like it can actually be a creative boon, you know? It's not the enemy necessarily, it can be, it can make you a more rounded person that ends up being beneficial.

• 1:33:37Steven Bartlett?

  That's exactly what I used to think it was. I used to think it was the enemy of my professional success, but I've come to learn that it's actually.

• 1:33:42Speaker 00

  It may be the friend.

• 1:33:43Steven Bartlett?

  It's the, yeah, it serves it. You mentioned anxiety throughout this conversation. Now, sometimes when people talk about anxiety, they talk about it as in,

• 1:33:52Steven Bartlett?

  like, like an emotion, they kind of, it's a flippant word to describe a situation where you're thinking a little bit much. But then there's what people would describe as sort of real anxiety, that kind of crippling like, oh, you know, that we've all felt that, it's like insane, unshakable, sort of deep nervousness about a situation and worry. Which one are you referring to?

• 1:34:11Speaker 00

  I think the first one, I don't think I've ever had a panic attack, for example.

• 1:34:17Speaker 00

  I don't think I've ever had a feeling of kind of being incapacitated. I mean, I've had moments where I've had stage fright or mo, you know, that, that thing where, due to, you just get, even recently, like, there's been moments where you just get this tremulous feeling of nerves and your voice starts to shake. Have you ever had that? Where you've been in a situation where, or sometimes it's just, sometimes it's to do with you're in it, you get into an argument with someone and you get really upset and your voice goes a bit like this, like it doesn't, you know, it was just kind of horrible.

• 1:34:59Speaker 00

  Or sometimes it's just where you feel like you're, like, I've been once or twice in, in situations where, I just think, oh, this isn't going well. And then your confidence goes, I don't know if that's quite, that's sort of nerves, which is slightly different from anxiety. Anxiety like where, but the anxiety I mainly mean is just a kind of sense of foreboding, a pervasive feeling of, of worry about something that's going to happen.

• 1:35:30Steven Bartlett?

  Because one of the themes we talk a lot about on this podcast is about mental health and about how that affects people that are in high profile, high stress positions. What's your, you know, mental health is a topic that kind of emerged in cultural relevance about maybe a decade ago now. But when I was a kid, I didn't understand it. I didn't know what that was. And I, I'll be honest, I think the stigma was very much my belief. It was kind of like people are, some people are crazy.

• 1:35:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:52Steven Bartlett?

  What's your journey been like with your own mental health?

• 1:35:54Speaker 00

  I feel really lucky to have, broadly speaking, good mental health. I also think what you're saying is exactly right. And I think that there's a kind of, there's a continuity, a blurring that exists so that, you know, I think mental health as opposed to mental illness is a good way of thinking about it, like that, because actually, we should all be striving towards being our best selves. We should all be managing our anxiety. I think a lot of men especially fail even to recognize when their mental health may not be as good as it could be. And at the extreme end, you've got incapacitating

• 1:36:33Speaker 00

  mental illness that requires a set of interventions, possibly medication, even sort of residential rehab settings. But for, for, for the rest of us, it's just, it's keeping an eye on, on how you're doing. And, and you know, sometimes I notice my emotions from the outside. Like, I, I noticed that my voice is raised. I'm like, wow, I'm angry, you know, like, or, or, and even when I'm sad, I, or grumpy, or whatever it is, I'm not the first really to see it. Or my wife will say like, are you in a bad place? I think we've been guilty of failing to see mental health as a holistic condition. Like, in other words, that your

• 1:37:15Speaker 00

  support network needs to be in place. You need social, these are really basic, but you need social interaction, you need, you need exposure to things outside of work. You also need endorsement and approval in work. And all of these things need to be sort of pulling in the same direction. There may be people in your life who are undermining you, and you may need support from people to nudge you in the right direction. But, you know, not to sound really bland about it, I feel as though I've.

• 1:37:47Speaker 00

  You know, through my wife's perceptiveness and her ability to sort of see how you sort of involve me in life a bit more, that that's kept me in a good place.

• 1:38:03Steven Bartlett?

  We have a closing tradition on this podcast, which is the previous guest writes a question for the next guest.

• 1:38:10Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 1:38:10Steven Bartlett?

  And the previous guest, you don't get to know who the previous guest was, but the previous guest has written a question for you, not knowing it was for you. And they said, what is your opinion on hallucinogens?

• 1:38:23Speaker 00

  Hallucinogens. My opinion is, I think, you know, if you feel like you're of age, like 18 plus, I don't know how your younger listeners are, you know, maybe even maybe slightly older. And you feel like you've got solid mental health. I think it's not a bad avenue to go down. It's not something I've massively dabbled in. I've noticed, I don't know about you, in my social settings,

• 1:38:58Speaker 00

  it seems to be mushroom oil is something that's increasingly being used.

• 1:39:05Speaker 00

  And I think actually, and I think we're all aware of the slight, there's a dissonance between our levels of acceptance of alcohol and then the sort of relative unacceptance of things like whether it's marijuana or mushrooms and mushroom oil. Like, I'd like to see that leveled out. Like, I'd like to see, as it is in California and elsewhere, I'd like to see cannabis legalized. And I think mushroom oil, without giving too much away, could be really positive.

• 1:39:42Speaker 00

  From what I understand.

• 1:39:43Steven Bartlett?

  Louis, thank you so much for your time today.

• 1:39:45Speaker 00

  Pleasure.

• 1:39:45Steven Bartlett?

  So much from you for so many reasons.

• 1:39:47Speaker 00

  Pleasure.

• 1:39:48Steven Bartlett?

  And your new documentary on the BBC Two and on iPlayer, Louis Through Interviews is incredible.

• 1:39:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, seriously, there's six of them out there.

• 1:39:56Steven Bartlett?

  They're up right now. They're incredible and you're interviewing some incredible people that are being very vulnerable and open with you. But thank you for the inspiration as well. You're someone that I've watched for decades.

• 1:40:07Speaker 00

  Thanks, Steve.

• 1:40:07Steven Bartlett?

  And that's given me a life full of enjoyments. And thank you for coming and doing this.

• 1:40:10Speaker 00

  Pleasure.