EP.244 - LOUIS THEROUX & RICHARD DAWSON LIVE

Adam talks with British journalist (and old friend) Louis Theroux about AI, awkward interviews, alopecia, and arguing with your partner. There's also live music from Newcastle's Richard Dawson. Conversation recorded in front of a live audience at the Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith, London, on June 9th, 2024 Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and conversation editing and to Becca Bryers for additional audio mixing. Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/ NORD VPN EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal https://nordvpn.com/buxton Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! RICHARD DAWSON 2025 TOUR https://www.instagram.com/richarddawsonofficial/?hl=en PRE-ORDER 'I LOVE YOU, BYEEE' https://lnk.to/ILoveYouByeee by Adam Buxton - 2025 PICS AND LINKS https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/podcasts/rhwkafw2z2x3xe6-6ysb3-pfp9n-6xxa2-jnpn5-2cacw-6cz8f-gx8fb-nkb87-c6mae-bd5zy-yby4r-6392t-jf5tm-ph55s-cktl3-dsw49-r8ccg-sj9we-wzpe5-nzgjl-hn42k-r46sa-bp623-t4w8l-2pdd3-rbfnb-8hlw3 (on Adam's website) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:02Adam Buxton?

  Hey, how are you doing, podcast? It's Adam Buxton here. What the hell's going on? There's no intro jingles, Buckles. Have you lost your mind? Well, it's just that this week for podcast number 244, I've got another live episode for you, and I'll be singing the intro jingle onstage in front of thousands of people in a minute or two. But before then, how are you doing? Hope you're very well. I'm doing fine. Finished recording the studio parts of my audiobook this week. Saw Joe on Thursday. He came in and we had a slightly hysterical encounter with him going through bits of my book and me just laughing mainly,

• 0:46Adam Buxton?

  although there were a couple of poignant moments there as well. That's going to be one of the bonus features on the audiobook version of I Love You by my book, which comes out next month. You can preorder it in the description. I'm sorry that I keep banging on about it, but I hope you'll understand. I can't quite believe that it's finished and

• 1:12Adam Buxton?

  I'm keen for you to check it out. Anyway, that's all nearly done. My best dog friend, Rosie, is not with me today. She's gone for a walk with one of the boys. She's doing very well, looking even more beautiful this week. Now her coat is beginning to grow out. Looking very silky and youthful. It is a lovely evening out here in the Norfolk countryside, towards the end of April. The sun is going down. It's quite cool. Got the North Face coat on. Anyway, look, let me tell you about this live episode. This one features a conversation between myself and my old friend and friend of the podcast, Louis Theroux. There's also a wonderful musical

• 1:57Adam Buxton?

  performance and a duet, uh-oh, with British musician and another former podcast guest, Richard Dawson. This was recorded in June of last year, 2024, as part of my live podcast tour.

• 2:13Adam Buxton?

  And as I've said before, I won't be putting out every live episode that we did last year. For various reasons, some of them ended up being too visual to work as audio only. Couple of them had sound problems, some of them we couldn't clear the music, we only just cleared Richard Dawson a couple of days ago. But I think that you're going to enjoy these bits from the show that we recorded with Louis and Richard. At the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, West London. Over three thousand five hundred people were there that night, that's the biggest live show I've ever done. Sold out show. Even though the audience that night didn't know who the guests were gonna be.

• 2:55Adam Buxton?

  As with all the live podcast shows I did last year, we had a big screen on stage. And I was showing bits and pieces of video stuff throughout from my laptop. At the beginning of the shows, I would do some very funny and topical material about artificial intelligence. Which of course, has continued to evolve at a dizzying pace in the intervening months. You know, the multimodal models like G P T five and Gemini two have achieved human-like reasoning. A I agents have gained autonomy in complex tasks. Open weight models like Lama three have closed the gap with closed source A I and robotics.

• 3:37Adam Buxton?

  Saw breakthroughs in real world generalization via embodied A I. But I did use A I to get that information. So it's possible that it's just learned how to exaggerate and make itself look cooler than it really is. But last June, I was mainly using A I to generate amusingly wonky images of my guests. And their best known work as part of their introductions. And if you click on related links in the description of today's podcast. You'll find a few of those images on my website, along with photos from the day. And the play as well, the transcript of the play that Louis and I performed.

• 4:21Adam Buxton?

  On stage seconds after it was generated live by Chat G P T. And it was genuinely live and the audience could see the text appearing.

• 4:33Adam Buxton?

  As it was generated and they could see it as we scrolled down and read along. So anyway, it might be interesting for you to look at the actual text and see the stage directions that the audience were laughing at as we performed. If you'd like. I will be back for a very short bit of waffle, just after halfway through the podcast, to introduce the final section of my conversation with Louis. But right now, let's time travel back to the ninth of June, 2024. A simpler time, 8pm to be specific, and I've just arrived on stage. Here we go. It's very nice to see you. Thank you so much for coming along to the Hammersmith. In my mind, it's still the Hammersmith Odeon.

• 5:18Adam Buxton?

  It's still 1973. Zayvid is just shuffled off the stage, having broken up the spiders without the spiders realising they were about to be broken up.

• 5:30Adam Buxton?

  And it's a different time. No, it's not. It's 2024 and you are watching a live podcast because you've run out of options.

• 5:43Adam Buxton?

  But I'm going to do my best to make you not regret that decision. So I'm going to sing the intro theme, and this is a polka arrangement that I've done specially for you. And if you do know the words, I would appreciate you joining in.

• 5:59Adam Buxton?

  I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin. Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening. I took my microphone and found some human folk.

• 6:14Adam Buxton?

  Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke.

• 6:19Adam Buxton?

  My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan.

• 6:33Adam Buxton?

  Hey, good job.

• 6:41Adam Buxton?

  Right, now this is exciting. You don't know who my guest is going to be tonight, so this... Might scramble a few heads. Because this is someone that perhaps you're not expecting. My guest tonight is a face that will be familiar to you all. It's someone whose insights into human nature are always fascinating and, I dare say, increasingly relevant in divided times. Please welcome the leader of the Reform Party, Nigel Farage.

• 7:19Adam Buxton?

  That's not respectful to Nigel.

• 7:23Adam Buxton?

  I'm sorry Nigel.

• 7:26Adam Buxton?

  But I don't know if they're going to be sufficiently respectful. So he might have to fuck off. And instead, I would like you guys to welcome my backup guest. Who is Luther.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  One, two, one, two.

• 7:49Adam Buxton?

  Hey.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  I would have quite liked to have seen Nigel Farage. I would have been curious to see what he came out with. But we'll try and be every bit as witty and full of bonhomie as Nigel.

• 8:04Adam Buxton?

  How are you doing, Luke?

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty good. Sunday night, nice to be here. My first time here on stage. I've been here as a paying guest many times, so let's see how it works the other way around.

• 8:14Adam Buxton?

  Yes. How do you feel about the old AI situation?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, I feel like I should be really worried about it. And I think, I think I'm just too stupid to know how to worry sufficiently. But also, like, machines have always been better than humans. Do you know what I mean? I don't mean like morally, you know, but you know, they've always, they've always been faster and strong. I mean, they say always since the Industrial Revolution, not to get all historical about it. I went to Oxford, I don't like to make a big thing out of it. But, you know, there are photos, they're like, "There's not going to be any painting anymore, because we've got photos now, we don't need you." And they find a workaround, like, "We'll do smudgy paintings, we'll call it impressionism." And actually, and as long, my thing is that, as long as you feel like,

• 9:02Speaker 01

  you know, I work in non-fiction, so maybe I would say this, but there's something very special about connecting to something that you know is made by a real person. You know, there's, people pay more money, and it's like when you're a kid, you're like, "But that's, that plate's shit." And you turn it over, and it says, "Hand painted." And then, like, "Oh, that's why you pay more for it." Yeah, it's shit, but someone actually went to the trouble of doing a human in a little cottage somewhere.

• 9:25Adam Buxton?

  Exactly.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  That's why it cost fifty pounds. And so, the, the idea of humans, it's like, if you, so it's about policing the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, is the way I look at it. If you told me, the analogy I was thinking about is like, if you told me for the last twenty years, my wife had been a robot, and I never realised it, I would feel cheated. Do you know what I mean? I wouldn't think like, "Oh, well, it's all the same thing."

• 9:48Speaker 02

  I wouldn't be surprised, personally.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Speaking about your wife, I hope.

• 9:55Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Not mine.

• 9:56Adam Buxton?

  No, my wife. And...

• 9:58Speaker 01

  My wife. So it's that feeling of like, you know, it matters, it matters to you, like, whether something's made by someone human, or whether it is, and that will always be the case. Like, like it or not, we will, we have special feelings towards our fellow apes.

• 10:11Adam Buxton?

  And the imperfections are part of what make us human. And I'm sure they will be able to ape and imitate our imperfections as well. You know, you get that thing, and when I use music software, on Logic you get virtual studio instruments that you can use, and they are getting better and better, and they're mainly made up of samples a lot of the time. But you can add things like, with the VST pianos, there's a button you can use to turn up the creak of the seat of the person playing the piano, to make it even more authentic. And with the guitars as well, you can have the sound of the fingers slipping over the strings, you know what I mean?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:48Adam Buxton?

  All those little human touches are brilliantly mimicked by the AI. But I just am sceptical about the extent to which it will be able to... You know, replicate genuine mistakes and kinks and oddities and hangups and all the things that are so wonderful about humans.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Maybe. I mean, personally, I think it'll do those really well as well.

• 11:10Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, probably.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  But I don't want to be Debbie Downer. But I do think that, like, I mean, not to get too meta, but like a live performance like this one, there's something about the connection of all the good people here and the fact that we know that we are real.

• 11:23Adam Buxton?

  I think I know that I'm real.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Pretty much.

• 11:27Adam Buxton?

  I'm not absolutely sure sometimes. But yeah, exactly. I mean, have you used ChatGPT, for example?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  I, for the first time, um, two days ago, a friend of mine was saying, like, you know, it's great for generating a bio, you know, in the, in the creative industries, sometimes they say, you're gonna do an event and can you send your lady's bio? And you're like, oh god, there's half an hour wasted writing. About yourself in the third person, which is always a weird experience. Like Louis Theroux went to Oxford University and studied history. And, and then here, here I am, sort of writing it up, saying, this Dwyane of filmmaking, which is three BAFTAs, you think.

• 12:05Adam Buxton?

  You don't have to use the word Dwyane.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  You have to throw a few words in like that, you know, you've got to gee yourself a little bit. But now, apparently, if you put it into ChatGPT.

• 12:14Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  If generate a bio for Louis Theroux, it does a pretty good job.

• 12:19Adam Buxton?

  Well, I thought it would be nice to see, to challenge ChatGPT to generate a short theatre production for us to perform in front of the audience.

• 12:30Adam Buxton?

  Do you think that's a good idea?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  I mean, not really, but let's do it. Because it's always quite shit. And for the first bit, you're like, okay, this is funny. And then after ten, ten seconds, you're like, oh, it, it's not very good yet. But that's why we're gonna do it.

• 12:43Adam Buxton?

  We are going now to come out of the keynote presentation, and we are going to switch to the old ChatGPT.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  This is real.

• 12:52Adam Buxton?

  This is real.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  You're on a tight rope.

• 12:55Adam Buxton?

  I'm gonna type in two minute, like, let's keep it short, theatre script. Oh no, live typing is difficult.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  About. Two minutes, Jesus.

• 13:10Adam Buxton?

  A famous documentary filmmaker and podcaster Louis Theroux, fifty-four.

• 13:22Adam Buxton?

  Being interviewed by his old school friend, Adam, fifty-five,

• 13:33Adam Buxton?

  who is also a podcaster, but is threatened

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Oh jeez.

• 13:42Adam Buxton?

  by his old friend's success.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  I like it. Built-in conflict.

• 13:50Adam Buxton?

  The encounter

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Oh my god, can you, I've never done this. You can give it that much information.

• 13:56Adam Buxton?

  The encounter becomes awkward, surprising, oh, I really should have just pasted this beforehand. And shocking.

• 14:07Adam Buxton?

  Here we go. All right, so we've got to, we've got to read this out, Lou. Can you read that?

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Uh, yes, I can.

• 14:14Adam Buxton?

  All right, here we go. Who's first? So

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Setting: A small cozy podcast studio, two microphones set up on a table. Louis and Adam sit across from each other.

• 14:25Adam Buxton?

  Adam, smiling, but with a hint of tension.

• 14:31Adam Buxton?

  Welcome back to another episode of Pod Talk.

• 14:37Adam Buxton?

  Today, we have a very special guest. It's my old school friend and now famous documentary filmmaker and podcaster, Louis. Great to have you here, Louis.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Thanks, Adam. It's been a while. This is quite nostalgic.

• 14:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 14:56Adam Buxton?

  Who would have thought back in the day, huh? You with your award-winning documentaries and me, well, still here.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  You've built quite a following with your podcast, Adam. It's impressive.

• 15:14Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, but not as impressive as a BAFTA, right?

• 15:21Adam Buxton?

  Well, how's it getting that, just from Louis?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  It's quite amazing. How does it get that? Scroll up. It's not a competition. We're both doing what we love.

• 15:32Adam Buxton?

  Is that what you tell yourself?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 15:38Adam Buxton?

  You remember in school, how you always had to outshine everyone? The star of the debate club, the top grades, and now this? Always in the spotlight.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Adam, I had no idea you felt this way. I thought we were just following our paths.

• 15:53Adam Buxton?

  Your path just happened to be lined with red carpets.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Adam, it wasn't easy. There were struggles, sacrifices you don't see.

• 16:05Adam Buxton?

  Oh, poor Louis, sacrifices. Like what, choosing between caviar and champagne?

• 16:14Speaker 01

  No, like losing friends because they couldn't see past my success.

• 16:21Adam Buxton?

  Realizing he's gone too far, then softer. Louis, I...

• 16:30Adam Buxton?

  I'm sorry. It's just hard seeing you up there and feeling like I'm stuck.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  We all have our own battles. Your podcast is real, raw. It reaches people. That's powerful.

• 16:52Adam Buxton?

  Do you really mean that?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Every word.

• 16:59Adam Buxton?

  Thanks, Louis. Maybe I needed to hear that.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  We're still those kids from school.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Let's not let this come between us.

• 17:11Adam Buxton?

  Agreed. So tell me about your latest project.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Gladly. It's about reconnecting with old friends.

• 17:20Adam Buxton?

  Well, you're off to a great start.

• 17:25Adam Buxton?

  All right, Louis, let's dive in. Where do we start?

• 17:38Adam Buxton?

  I thought that was shit.

• 17:41Adam Buxton?

  And I didn't like any of it.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  I thought that was better than expected.

• 17:44Adam Buxton?

  It was grotesquely unrealistic. And not accurate.

• 17:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that was quite good, wasn't it? Like, it got the BAFTA just from Louis.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Is that what it was?

• 17:56Adam Buxton?

  Well, I guess Louis and documentary maker, maybe there's not...

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Maybe. I'm quite, I mean, not, I mean, that actually was way better than I thought it would be.

• 18:04Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  We're fucked, aren't we? We are fucked.

• 18:38Adam Buxton?

  Now, I'm going to show you some AI-generated images of some of the guests you've had on your Louis Theroux interviews programmes. And you have to tell me who you think they are.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:49Adam Buxton?

  How about this one?

• 18:53Speaker 01

  That, that's actually a pretty good Chelsea Manning.

• 18:56Adam Buxton?

  That's not bad, is it? Yeah, that's Chelsea Manning.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  But the Louis Theroux is not so good.

• 19:03Adam Buxton?

  No, it's very sort of...

• 19:04Speaker 01

  The Louis Theroux's gone a bit Edward Snowden, oddly enough.

• 19:08Adam Buxton?

  Well, there you go. I wouldn't be surprised if it's being asked to generate Chelsea Manning and it's searching around the whistleblower files.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:16Adam Buxton?

  And it's thinking, oh, I'll pop a bit of Edward Snowden in there just for good measure. Anyway, I only watched that interview that you did with Chelsea Manning fairly recently. And I really enjoyed it. There's the real Chelsea Manning. It was very moving and intense, that one. I didn't know much about Chelsea Manning, so fill us in if people aren't familiar.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Well, Chelsea Manning, probably the most famous military whistleblower and responsible for the biggest data leak in US military history. Who was working as an intelligence operative and leaked vast numbers of files to WikiLeaks, then under the stewardship of Julian Assange, revealing the extent of, I mean, they were so vast, it's hard to summarise, but among other things, complicity of the Iraqi regime in torture, higher numbers of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan than had previously revealed, those were the war logs and then international diplomatic cables that showed Realpolitik behind the scenes. And for me, you know, in this circle of trust, it was

• 20:16Speaker 01

  one that I really thought very hard about before doing, mainly because I thought, well, actually Chelsea Manning's been out of the spotlight for a good 10 years.

• 20:26Adam Buxton?

  She was in prison for seven years.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  She was in prison for seven years and then it had come out, had a kind of short-lived political career which didn't really take flight.

• 20:35Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, I mean, she's a very damaged person in many ways, suppose unsurprisingly considering what she's been through and, you know, she obviously divides opinions.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:44Adam Buxton?

  And she's brittle. She talks about the fact that her therapist suggested she might have undiagnosed PTSD.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:52Adam Buxton?

  And she gets upset a few times, one when you talk about Julian Assange, you ask her about that and

• 20:58Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 20:59Adam Buxton?

  She gets upset by the idea that she is, quote, "a side character in her own story", she wants you to focus on her.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  That's right. And in fact, there was a short clip that went on Instagram that became the most viral clip that I'd ever shared on Instagram. I don't know if that's, that sounds like me kind of bragging, sorry about that.

• 21:18Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, it does, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  But there we are. And I think it got like, because normally you put something on Instagram and it gets like, I don't know, 50,000 or 100,000 if you're lucky, but this one, and it was like a minute and a half, two minute clip, and it got, it was up to 2 million, 4 million, 10 million, I think it's around 20 million at the moment, when I last checked, which was about 20 minutes ago. No. And it was her saying, we're sitting down, I go, "Thanks for doing this", and she goes, "Doing what?", and I go, "This interview", and she says, "Oh, it was in the schedule."

• 21:49Adam Buxton?

  I've got the clip.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Oh, have you got, are you gonna, I didn't even know, sorry.

• 21:52Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, it's a very awkward beginning to a series of awkward moments.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Here we go. Now I don't have to do the offensive impersonation.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Thank you for doing this.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  Doing what?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  This interview.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, it was on the calendar.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  It's on the calendar because you agreed to do it?

• 22:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  I've got a high tolerance for awkwardness, but yours is off the charts.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  Explain.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Well, you seem to be more comfortable sitting in silence.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  You're even better at it than I am.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  I've done it for a long, long, long time, way longer than you can imagine, Louis.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  What do you mean? Like, I'm older than you. I've had way more practice than you.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  I was in solitary confinement, and that's all that was. Me sitting there in silence. I can just sit in silence for hours and hours and hours.

• 22:52Adam Buxton?

  That was sort of as you were setting up the interview, wasn't it? There's people setting up cameras and things as that is happening. Was that right at the beginning?

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Do you know what? Can I tell you a secret?

• 23:02Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  So what it was, was that's actually two bits, okay, through the magic of editing. The first thing, I'll say, "Thank you for doing this," that was like when we sat down the first part of the interview. And I'm pretty sure that the second half of it is taken from the very end of the interview. I might be wrong, but my recollection is that at the end of the interview, I said something like, "Wow, you've got a high tolerance for awkwardness, but, you know, I've got a high tolerance, but yours is off the charts." And it was at the point where I just sort of noticed enough about her to be comfortable kind of calling out her eccentricities.

• 23:37Adam Buxton?

  Right. So it's a tissue of lies, is what you're telling me?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  It's an absolute farago of editorial unethical decisions. But I think it speaks to a higher truth.

• 23:48Adam Buxton?

  It speaks to it. Presumably, there were moments of genuine awkwardness and tension in there.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  And then I made a couple of jokes that I thought were pretty funny, where I was like, "If you don't tell me the secrets, I'll have to get my bucket out," like it was a waterboarding gag. And then afterwards in the edit, I was like, "Why do we put... Those were good gags, man." And apparently, while I was saying that, Chelsea's manager was off, like, having a tantrum because I was being so offensive.

• 24:14Adam Buxton?

  Oh.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Sometimes I don't always call it right. I thought it was kind of funny, like, we'd got to a point where we can joke about being tortured in solitary, because it's, isn't it funny in the end?

• 24:27Adam Buxton?

  It's always hard to know when that moment is.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:31Adam Buxton?

  I was fascinated though by, I mean, I'm well aware of your coolness under pressure. That's part of your brand.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:39Adam Buxton?

  Not to be rattled in these situations. But I thought I would love some tips, genuinely. I can't remember if we've spoken about this just as friends before or not. But increasingly, I find myself really in trouble when I get into awkward situations. I don't know if it's getting older or, and just generally getting more fearful or I don't know what. I did an interview the other day remotely for the podcast, for an episode that hasn't been out yet. It was on Zoom. They were in another country and we were, and this was someone a few years, you know, a couple of decades older than myself, quite well established, revered figure. And I don't think, they probably knew who I was.

• 25:20Adam Buxton?

  They probably had been told that it was a good thing to do by their PR people. And we spent about half an hour trying to get the mic to work. If you listen to the Werner Herzog episode, I had a similar problem with Werner and he got quite annoyed as well when we first tried to do it. I knew it would be like this. It's grotesque.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Did he actually use the word grotesque?

• 25:48Adam Buxton?

  This is grotesque. I told him it would be like this.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  But he's got form for hyperbole. He, in one of his films, he goes, "Los Angeles, home to Thatcher atrocities at yoga."

• 26:06Adam Buxton?

  Exactly. But with him, we managed it. We had to call it off the first time because we couldn't get beyond these technical problems. With Werner Herzog, we ended up hiring a studio. It was all fine in the end. We did it again and he was golden, you know, he was really nice and fun and friendly. And he never really got like personally fucked off with me. He was just frustrated with the situation. With this other person a few weeks back, they got fucked off with me. And they were just like annoyed, they were like, why is it important? Why does the, why do we have to use this mic? I'd sent them a mic.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:39Adam Buxton?

  And they were trying to plug it in. They were like, why can't I just do it the way I would normally do an interview? I was like, because the podcasts care about great, great sound.

• 26:50Adam Buxton?

  And I don't know if that's true or not, but I certainly do. When I'm listening to a podcast, I just want it to sound really good. And I, the thing I hate most is downloading a podcast with someone I'm interested in. And it turns out that it's down the phone, you know? And it's just really annoying. It's like a barrier between me and that person. And it was so bad. We spent half an hour fiddling around with this mic with me sort of going. It's down in the bottom left-hand corner, the mic icon. There's a little arrow, you just click on that. And so eventually we gave up and I said, okay, well, let's just see what we can do with just the, the mic on your laptop. And we started recording, but by that time it was very tense and this person was angry.

• 27:32Adam Buxton?

  And it was not in any way a kind of relaxed chatting environment that a buckles favors. And, you know, I wanted it to be a fun chat. I really thought this person and I were going to get on pretty well as well. And I said, okay, look, I can see you're, you're sort of frustrated and tense there. And I'm sorry about that. Maybe we can reset. And so I started trying to make small talk and said, you know, how's things today in where you are there, you know? What's the weather like? And they just got so angry with that.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Really?

• 28:04Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. And, you know, this person all but rolling their eyes at me. I need some tips. So what would you do? What's, how do you stare at Chelsea Manning there and not get rattled when she's?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  That's what you're describing is a kind of perfect storm of nightmarishness. I would be in exactly the same boat as you. Like with Chelsea, like it's all in the spirit of, of kind of inquiry and she's being standoffish, but a little bit, but not really. She's just being self-contained and did it warm up?

• 28:33Adam Buxton?

  No, no, no, not warm up, no. I mean, we, we got through it and they were very good. Like when they were monologuing, you wouldn't know there was anything wrong. It was just when it came back to buckles, it was wobbly voice time again.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  So the other thing is like ideally you can cut round it. I know it's, you can guilty secret of documentary making, the bits that make me look like a real dick or insensitive or incompetent or unprofessional, I like to cut those bits out.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  And you know, that's the great thing about things not being live. Yeah. You know, when I did a, I did a, um, an episode of a series called Forbidden America, and the episode called Extreme and Online, and there was a character called Beards and Beardly, and he was a kind of a ghastly troll of the internet, far-right, I would say, probably racist, definitely racist. And, long story short, I'd interviewed him briefly, and then went back to interview him again, but in the interim, I'd found a, um, a video of him in which he appeared to be doing a Nazi salute. Right. And I thought, well, I'll bring that up. Now, full disclosure, I, I actually, I'm quite conflict-averse. Like, I don't really enjoy triggering or upsetting interviewees, even when they may be neo-Nazis.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Uh-huh. I, I, I'm not looking for a fight. Nevertheless, I'm enough of a program maker to realize that when it happens, sometimes it creates a spicy moment of conflict, but it doesn't feel good going into a situation where you think, "Okay, I'm gonna mention this, and it's probably gonna jump the tracks, and the person's gonna get upset, but, you know, this is the business we have chosen." So, I tried to bring it up in a way, I said, "Let's get this out of the way," and I showed him the picture of him apparently doing a Nazi salute. Oh, and I should say, when I turned up for the interview, he was wearing a Louis Theroux t-shirt. As a kind of joke. Yeah. So, anyway, surprise, surprise, he said, um, you, you know, something along

• 30:27Speaker 01

  the line, "You piece of fucking shit, what are you coming here calling me a Nazi? Get out of my house! Get the fuck out of my house!" Which was confusing for a moment, because I wasn't in his house, I was in his garden.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  You know, when someone's, like, a trivial thing in a big church, like, "Get out of my fucking house!" I'm like, "Dude, I'm not in your house, I'm in your garden. Like, I know you're throwing me out, but what part of the property are you throwing me out of?" You know? I'm being thrown out of, off the property of a man who's wearing a t-shirt of me, and also, I've only been, I'm only fifteen minutes into the conversation at this point. Like, I knew it might get awkward, but I didn't think, having driven, like, three hours to a part, a remote part of Kentucky, that he- would be fifteen minutes in, be like, fuck off, get the fuck out of here, stick on a dick and spin. So I slightly weakly was like, really? Like, oh, hang on, can't we do a bit more? And what the hell, you know, seriously?

• 31:21Speaker 01

  At first I was like, well, I was going, I breathing hard, my heart was beating, I was like, what, what just happened? I think I just really fucked up. I think I was ro- you kind of made a royal hash of that encounter by getting myself thrown out. And then late, and then my sound guy was like, no, well, that was the best thing that could have happened, wasn't it? And I was like, yeah, well, maybe it was, you know, definitely make a lively interview scene. And then in the edit, we just cut out all the bits where I said, oh, please, can I carry on the interview?

• 31:48Speaker 01

  So it looked sort of like I'd done it kind of deliberately and I kind of looked a little bit like tough and mad. I looked vaguely Jeremy Kyle.

• 31:55Adam Buxton?

  I'm sorry I mentioned the Nazi salute. Maybe it wasn't a Nazi salute.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Can we start again?

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it looked like, you know, I'm the kind of guy who goes into reviews, I don't give a shit. I insult the people, they throw me out and I'm fine with it. So that was, that was the version that the world saw.

• 32:10Adam Buxton?

  Editing, there you go. But tonight, podcasts, you're seeing everything, what's and all, not edited. And right now, you are going to enjoy some music with my musical guest tonight, who is, let me tell you, a mar- a marvelous man. I go into Jules Holland mode. Whenever I introduce a musical guest, Aloysius J. Oldman, all the way from Chicago, playing on the bum flute with... No, uh, it is a man, a male man hailing from Newcastle.

• 32:48Adam Buxton?

  This man has been releasing albums of folk-inflected deconstructionist eastern sci-fi metal jazz for over ten great years. This is one guy that AI would struggle to approximate. Richard Dawson! Hello, how are you?

• 33:07Speaker 04

  I'm here to sing a song.

• 33:08Adam Buxton?

  How are you doing, Richard? How have you been?

• 33:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm all right. I'm very well, in fact. And for about two years, I wasn't able to give that answer. So for about six months, I've been able to say I'm well when people ask. And it's a new novel treat.

• 33:24Adam Buxton?

  Oh, good. I'm glad to hear it.

• 33:28Speaker 04

  Okay. The song is inspired by going to watch my nephew Matthew play football when he was 12. And he was playing for Walls End Boys Club, and they were playing Seaton Carew, who are a notorious bunch of bad bastards.

• 33:49Speaker 04

  And their coach was effing and seeing at these 12-year-old boys. And I just thought, that's fantastic. I must write a song about this. This is that song.

• 34:36Speaker 04

  Bellowing instructions from the touchline, that's my dad. Purple in the face, getting really mad. Man on, man on, an empty stadium yells, man on.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  Come on, come on! The cross goes sailing wildly over the heads of everyone.

• 35:17Speaker 04

  Stop fannying around! Keep it nice and simple. You're not Lionel Messi! Just pass the bloody ball! Man on, man on! An empty stadium! Yes, man on! Come on, come on! The cross goes sailing wildly over the heads of everyone.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  Perhaps we were expecting this to be a walk in the park. But these bastards from King's Priory are kicking lumps out of theirs! Man on, man on! An empty stadium! Yes, man on! Come on, come on! The cross goes sailing wildly over the heads. The left back slips, taking a free kick.

• 36:42Speaker 04

  It trickles over the monstrous man. In desperation, he scrambles and slides. I lit the flailing lad on dinket.

• 36:57Speaker 05

  Over the sprawled body of the gold. The net is clearly clear. The ball takes a rubble. Eyes wide of the mark. Everything goes quiet staring into the red dark of my palms. They launch a long ball into our box.

• 37:37Speaker 05

  Suddenly we find ourselves with a corner to defend. I am on the near post. Somehow it gets put down underneath my feet. At the final whistle. I am inconsolable. Man on, man on.

• 38:18Speaker 05

  I reckon dad is really disappointed with me. Come on, come on. He tries his best to not show how he really feels in the car home. He says dust yourself down, move on to next week's game. Shall we pick up a Chinese or would you rather fish on chips?

• 39:05Adam Buxton?

  Richard Dawson! I only discovered Richard's music a few years back, and it was the first gig that I saw in Norwich Art Centre after the end of all the lockdowns. And it reminded me how much I value and love live music, and to see someone as extraordinary as Richard just lifted my spirits in a very valuable way. So I love you, Richard Dawson.

• 39:36Adam Buxton?

  And if you're not familiar with Richard's stuff, I really recommend exploring it. It is very varied and unpredictable, and it's a wonderful journey. But right now, Richard has kindly agreed, and I really felt kind of embarrassed even asking him to do it, but he has kindly agreed to play a kind of semi-extemporaneous version in a Richard Dawson style of the "Halfway Through the Podcast" jingle. So you go where you want to go with this, Richard, and I'll come in when you start giving me a rhythm.

• 40:43Adam Buxton?

  We're halfway through the podcast. I think it's going really great.

• 40:55Adam Buxton?

  Conversation's flowing like it would between a geezer and his mate. All right, mate.

• 41:07Adam Buxton?

  Mmm, there's so much chemistry. It's like a science lab of talking.

• 41:19Adam Buxton?

  There's fun chat and there's deep chat. It's like Chris Evans is meeting Stephen Hawking.

• 41:33Adam Buxton?

  Richard Dawson! Thank you, Richard.

• 41:43Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back, podcast. There we are, you see. I think that was a successful duet. Don't you, with one of my musical heroes? What do you mean I was singing flat? I know, that was deliberate. Anyway, if you enjoyed Richard's music and fancy exploring further, click the link in the description of today's podcast. That'll take you to my website, where you'll find some pictures that I took on the day. There's a couple of Richard's music videos, one for Two Harves, that's the track he just played, from his brilliant album 2020, released in 2019. And that's probably quite a good place to start, maybe, if you're new to Richard.

• 42:25Adam Buxton?

  There's also the video for his track "Polytunnel", from this year's album, End of the Middle. And there's a video recorded by my producer, Seamus, who was there at the Hammersmith Eventim Apollo on the day and recorded us rehearsing our halfway through the podcast jingle. Anyway, that's all there, waiting for you on my website, accessible via the link in the description of today's podcast. But right now, let's return to the second half of the live show, in which Louis and I compared notes on domestic strife with the help of my argument with wife log. But we began the second half,

• 43:09Adam Buxton?

  after I'd checked in the interval that he didn't mind talking about it, with me asking Louis about his alopecia areata, the common autoimmune condition that causes sudden, non-scaring hair loss, typically in patches, most commonly on the scalp or beard, that Louis has been dealing with for a couple of years now. Lou posted an update in March of this year on his Instagram page, saying that he was considering going for the full head shave in the next 12 months. And getting the Stanley Tucci glasses and all that. Under the post, I saw that British artist Tracey Emin,

• 43:52Adam Buxton?

  who spoke to Louis on his podcast about her recovery from bladder cancer, posted, "You are you, with or without your hair. Your alopecia is not what you are known for, as I am not known for being bladderless. Accept what you don't have and rejoice in what you do." Very nice message, which I will also take some heart from, considering the continuing desertion of my own cowardly hair. Although only from my head, why couldn't the hair on my back fall out? What about that? No, it just has to be the head hair. The rest of my monkey hair is doing fine. Sorry, that's more info than you need.

• 44:36Adam Buxton?

  I apologize. Back at the end for a bit more waffle, but right now, back to Louis onstage at the Eventim Apollo, Hammer Smith, in June 2024.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Um, the alopecia is, it's weird, like it's, there's one part of me, you know, kind of when I first, certainly when I first noticed that not only had my beard fallen out, because that's what happened first. The beard fell out by little patches here and there. And, and I thought, well, that's not ideal, but especially when it was wonky. And then when it got to a stage where it was kind of, it was like a wonky Van Dyke, as they called them in the day, and then it became a hit, like a Hitler moustache. Like the only parts of beard that was left was, was like a little, you know, a Hitler moustache, which is obviously not ideal.

• 45:16Adam Buxton?

  That's ironic. After all the time you've spent with the far right trying to...

• 45:19Speaker 01

  I know. It felt like nature had played a cruel trick on me. But then that fell out and I thought, well, you know, maybe that's fine. Like I just don't have a beard. Then the eyebrows mostly went. And then I had a tiny little tuft of eyebrow and I thought, oh, I'm just going to shave that off. And then I posted a picture of myself on Instagram and people thought I was having a full Britney Spears meltdown, I think. But, um, it was just, I thought it looked neater. Anyway, I got them microbladed back on. I'm giving a full report on this.

• 45:46Adam Buxton?

  That's what I asked for. What's, what's microblading?

• 45:48Speaker 01

  That's, it's like a temporary tattoo where they like do little lines so it looks like you've got... Eyebrows. But then one day, my son said to me like, Dad, you've got weird patches at the back. And that was, I had a sinking feeling, I was like, oh, shoot. Like, I thought it was gonna stop at the beard and the eyebrows. And then I realized I was getting little patches all over.

• 46:07Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  So, but you know, you get over it and you're like, okay, well, there's definitely worse things in the world than that. And my kids call me like freaky baldy ratty man.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  And especially if they're, and the nine year old, if he's upset, he says, you baldy ratty man. So I'm totally like inoculated against any kind of trolling or abuse. I've been called baldy ratty man on a more or less daily basis.

• 46:30Adam Buxton?

  Also, that is a good rapping name.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  It would be good, like, that's probably my new identity. And honestly, like, there's a part of it that's a bit like being on an adventure. Every day, there's a little change, like, there might be a new patch, or there's signs of, little signs of regrowth, you know? So, uh, it, it sounds, it sounds like I'm being maybe a little bit glib about it, but I genuinely look at my hair and I always found I had too much hair. Like, I, it was a problem for me, like, go to the barber's, like, it was sort of untamable. It was, it just sat there like a big wedge of untamable, you know?

• 47:05Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Hersuitness. And now, it's like, there's not nearly as much, it feels manageable.

• 47:10Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  And, and so I'm kind of in a strange way grateful about it.

• 47:13Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  I'd like to keep, I wouldn't, I just don't wanna look like, it would be a shame if it, like, if it fully went, like, if the patches got bigger than what was left, and I, I guess I'd just have to shave it off.

• 47:25Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that is a definitely good option. Would you change the style of glasses, though, if you went full Tucci?

• 47:30Speaker 01

  I think I'd probably get something, good question. I think I'd get slightly thicker rims, cause you wanna make more of a statement.

• 47:37Adam Buxton?

  Exactly.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  There needs to be more for the eye to rest on.

• 47:40Adam Buxton?

  That's right. I think you look great, whatever your hair is doing with you or to you. And do they know, I mean, yeah.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  I might post an update on Instagram, like I haven't done much, I've been more Insta, like just through, you know, lack of interest, but I, um, I don't know, I did a few pictures of myself with all the patches on display.

• 48:02Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  And then I was like, oh no, that looks a bit, that's a bit, that's quite strong stuff, it looks like a medical textbook, you know, people don't, people don't go to Insta to look at illustrations of common diseases, I don't think, you know what I mean?

• 48:16Adam Buxton?

  They probably do.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  But maybe they do, I don't know, maybe I'll, I think maybe that would be the front photo, I have a front photo like that, and then you'd scroll past and be like, ooh, that looks disgusting.

• 48:27Adam Buxton?

  Would you ever go wig?

• 48:29Speaker 01

  You know what, funnily enough, my wife said, what about a wig? And I'm like, if you think I'm the kind of guy who wears a wig, we don't know each other.

• 48:38Adam Buxton?

  But a lot more people wear wigs than you might imagine.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Go on.

• 48:41Adam Buxton?

  For all sorts of reasons.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Putting them out there, who are they? Did you mean secretly?

• 48:47Adam Buxton?

  Uh, no, I mean, the, I always grew up imagining that, um, well, my mum used to wear wigs the whole time, I know it's more common for women to wear wigs.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Really?

• 48:57Adam Buxton?

  But they still, you know, it still is a common thing.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Isn't that a hairpiece?

• 49:00Adam Buxton?

  She wore a whole, like, proper old wig.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Really?

• 49:03Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, she had a few of them, and I think as well, you know.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Terry Wogan wore a wig, Paul Daniels wore a wig, there was a time when a lot of people wore wigs, I think nowadays, sorry if I've shocked anyone, I feel like I'm giving away the secrets of pro wrestling, the wrestling is real, I don't think, I would wear a wig as a gimmick or a joke, but if you're wearing a wig in the spirit of like, and this is my hair, I'm a journalist, you know, people rely on me to try and tell the truth about things, and I'll be like, but I uncovered a story, be like, his hair isn't even telling the truth, I can't trust anything he says, do you know what I mean?

• 49:37Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, fair enough. Because the thing about alopecia, am I right, is that it can totally reverse itself as well?

• 49:42Speaker 01

  So I'm told, I went to a specialist, alopecia, there's so much information about alopecia, and they said within two years, I think 60 or 70% of cases are reversed.

• 49:52Adam Buxton?

  Oh, really?

• 49:53Speaker 01

  And the regrowth is often white, so I'm hoping I get this sort of Dave Vanian from The Damned look, you know, I could be one of those people who has like, a white streak.

• 50:01Adam Buxton?

  Yes, like Caitlin Moran.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that goes, but a real one.

• 50:04Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, hers is real.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Really?

• 50:06Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  That's pretty cool.

• 50:08Adam Buxton?

  This is interesting info you're getting from the live podcast, this is heavy stuff.

• 50:15Adam Buxton?

  Jeez.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Well, you, you said you were coming to a podcast and you're getting a podcast, folks.

• 50:20Adam Buxton?

  Exactly. This is what, you know, some of this stuff, if, if this was an episode, some of this stuff might even get edited out. Now, I am transitioning conversation-wise to talking about how you are to live with. And what kind of arguing techniques you use when you're at home.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Oh gee.

• 50:42Adam Buxton?

  And maybe how you would have dealt with some of the arguments that I want to share with you from my log.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 50:50Adam Buxton?

  I'm a mature guy and I like to keep things harmonious where possible. Obviously, within a long-term relationship. I've been married to my wife 25 years now.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Congratulations.

• 51:01Adam Buxton?

  Thank you.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 51:03Adam Buxton?

  Or thereabouts. And, you know, there's bound to be some rows from time to time. But I do think that we've managed to talk through some of the underlying causes of those rows with quite an admirable degree of maturity. There's always something big bubbling away that's unresolved, you know, under the trivial disagreements, right?

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 51:26Adam Buxton?

  And I think we have tackled a lot of those quite well. But I do think that another important factor has been my decision to keep a log of the arguments.

• 51:36Adam Buxton?

  Because it just cuts down, you know, it just reduces the risk of covering the same ground.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:42Adam Buxton?

  Invaluable argument time. When things get heated, you know, there's always a moment where you think, "We've covered this one."

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:49Adam Buxton?

  And I'm pretty sure I won that time and I wish I could just refer you to that.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:55Adam Buxton?

  What do you like when things get tense in the house?

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Uh, okay, so, can I give you a little background?

• 52:01Adam Buxton?

  Yes, please.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Uh, so, my wife and I, we've been together about 20 years and, um, we've got three boys. And I'd like to think I've made some compromises, like part of marriage, a long relationship is adapting. Uh, I, we started a company together.

• 52:17Adam Buxton?

  Yes, it's doing very well. You won a BAFTA this year for one of your programs.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  My wife won a BAFTA a few weeks ago. And, uh, full disclosure, like, before we started the company, I was very nervous about working with her. You know, it was almost as though I wouldn't have that escape. And the fault lines in the relationship, instead of being, instead of having those moments to have time out, this other space. Uh, we would be fully, we would be fully in each other's pockets and it would almost short circuit. You know, there'd no, there'd be no sort of lying fallow, you know, at work and then coming home refreshed.

• 52:50Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, man. When you told me you were starting the company with Nancy, I just thought, well, that's the end of that.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay, so it turns out like, so one, one of the, um, one of the big sources of conflict in the relationship. And I can say this because it's, it's in my book, Gotta Get Through This, available on Amazon, five stars from me. They took, they took the review down. Apparently you can't do that.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Is I talk about the way in which work would come between us because I was traveling a lot. So work was the enemy is my point.

• 53:22Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Work was like the third person in the relationship. Work was my mistress, if I want to put it slightly fruitily. It was a mistress I would make love to passionately.

• 53:33Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  And in a dedicated and creative fashion, experimenting a lot of different positions.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  So you can see why it would get in the way of a marriage. But it turns out like when you work together, my work suddenly is no longer an enemy. It's actually a friend and a friend to the point where it's like, it's been introduced into the relationship to the point where it's like, when are you gonna make love with your mistress again? Because we've got deadlines to meet.

• 54:05Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  And I'm saying like, I'm a bit tired. Right? Are you following the metaphor?

• 54:11Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, it's very good.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  And, and, and I'm tired and it's Sunday night and I don't want to do that right now. And she's like, well, you said you'd write this treatment. I've, I've actually jumped out of the metaphor. You said you'd write this treatment and we've got a meeting with Sky tomorrow and what are we supposed to show them?

• 54:28Adam Buxton?

  Chat G P T.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  And I'm like, are you serious? Like, in the old days, for me to do anything at the weekend was a total no. Like, you're not working, are you?

• 54:38Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  No, I'm looking at my fantasy football on my phone. Are you sure? Let me see that. Whereas now, it's like, hey, look alive. So the good part is I've short-circuited, in a sense, one source of conflict, but it means that I'm at work all day, every day.

• 54:53Adam Buxton?

  Nightmare. I don't have that with my wife. She strongly disapproves and is uninterested in everything I do professionally.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Start a company with her.

• 55:03Adam Buxton?

  So, yeah. Things are satisfyingly separate, which means that we tend to disagree about other things. I'll share with you a few entries from the log, and you can tell me where you think we're at. Subject of argument: Me picking Banshees of Inisherin as our Christmas Day family movie.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:24Adam Buxton?

  Christmas 2023. I was all excited about it because they were getting the team back together from Imbrugge, which I love.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Yes. It's an interesting film.

• 55:33Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, but...

• 55:33Speaker 01

  Not that festive.

• 55:34Adam Buxton?

  No. My brother and sister were around, and I assured the children it would be fun to watch.

• 55:42Adam Buxton?

  Main point's wife: It was depressing, pointless crap designed to win awards. That was the verdict at the end. And I really thought that, you know, whether you liked the movie or not, I thought that we could sit around and discuss it. No, there was no discussion.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  That's harsh. I think that's a little harsh.

• 55:58Adam Buxton?

  It's a little harsh. Well, I countered with it. It was a powerful allegory about cis men yearning for immortality because they can't give birth.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 56:06Adam Buxton?

  Like, I, you know, it was a good take, I thought. Legacies, that whole, it's a penis word, a legacy, isn't it? There you go. And mental illness, and the troubles in Northern Ireland.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  That bit I saw. I didn't see the bit about cis men, but...

• 56:21Adam Buxton?

  And donkey nutrition.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  And playing a guitar with no fingers, right?

• 56:27Adam Buxton?

  Does he actually play the guitar without his fingers?

• 56:29Speaker 01

  I think he tries to. Spoiler alert.

• 56:31Adam Buxton?

  Mate. Additional points: Wife: It was a big depressing wank.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  And everyone hates one of those.

• 56:38Adam Buxton?

  And we should, we should have watched Top Gun Maverick again.

• 56:49Adam Buxton?

  Winner, that was, my wife won that one.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably.

• 56:56Adam Buxton?

  How about this one? Being moody.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:00Adam Buxton?

  Main point's Buckles. "I don't understand why you're so moody." Main point's wife. "You're the one that's moody."

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:07Adam Buxton?

  "It's like a toxic cloud. I don't think you realise how moody you are." Does this ring any bells at all?

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Um...

• 57:16Adam Buxton?

  This is a regular one, we have this one.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  No, I haven't had, I used to get that when I came back with jet lag and my wife would say, "You don't seem very happy to be here." And I was like, trying to keep my eyes open, saying, "No, no, I'm just a bit tired." But we haven't had that one lately. I'm beginning to wonder why.

• 57:34Adam Buxton?

  I don't like that one. We have it quite a lot.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  It's a vague, the nebulous. "What's wrong with you?" You know, it's also a great way of starting an argument.

• 57:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. "You were moody first. I'm moody because you're moody. I'm normally fun, like on my podcast."

• 57:52Adam Buxton?

  In fact, right now, you're gaslighting me.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  There you go. I love as a man, as a man being able to fling gaslighting in a woman's face. It feels very, because you just know it's such a trigger. You know what I mean? "You're gaslighting me."

• 58:07Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  You know.

• 58:08Adam Buxton?

  Because you can accuse people of gaslighting more or less all the time.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:14Adam Buxton?

  Winner Buckles, I won that one.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't miss. If you can draw the gaslighting card first, you're basically home free.

• 58:23Adam Buxton?

  This one, I don't know if you can relate to this one. Subjective argument. "Me throwing away the random crap that's been in the big bowl in the hall for years, including old chargers, membership cards, lanyards, packs of pills, cables, remotes, mini toiletries, shoelaces, receipts, interdental brushes, the red ones, hair clips, knackered headphones, phone numbers on scraps of paper, key rings and keys."

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Old blue tack that's accumulated what looks like pubic hair.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I could go on and on.

• 58:50Adam Buxton?

  Main Point's wife, "There might have been stuff in there I needed." Main Point's buckles, "You haven't needed it for the last 10 years." Additional Point's wife, "You should have checked with me first." Which is true. That is true. And I knew that was true.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Is it though?

• 59:07Adam Buxton?

  Well, then I made the point, but then I wouldn't have, it wouldn't have got thrown away.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:13Adam Buxton?

  And the winner in that case was my wife. Yeah, because she was right. I should have checked with her first. But it did get thrown away, so in a way, um...

• 59:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:25Adam Buxton?

  It was actually a buckles that won that one.

• 59:30Adam Buxton?

  How about this one? "Whose family is more dysfunctional?"

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a high-risk argument. That can go to a dark place quite fast. Uh, and the old, "You're just like your mum." Because that's a double whammy, like, you're a dick and your mum's a dick too.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Right? What's wrong with my mum?

• 59:56Adam Buxton?

  I love my mum!

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:58Adam Buxton?

  Main Point's wife, "Yours is." Main Point's buckles, "I think yours is." Winner buckles.

• 1:00:08Adam Buxton?

  Subject of argument, "Wife updating me on which friends and family members have cancer just before scheduled marital relations."

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  I'm interested to see where this goes.

• 1:00:24Adam Buxton?

  Well, Main Point's buckles, "It's not exactly sexy." Main Point's wife, "It's the only time we get to discuss important things."

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  I'm impressed that you have scheduled any marital relations. That's the sign of a healthy relationship.

• 1:00:39Adam Buxton?

  Well, buckles won that one. Now, you've got to schedule the relations, but then to start covering, like, admin and illness, death, bad news bulletins, that is not in any way sexy or cool.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would happily tolerate that.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  If that was the price of admission, I would be like, "How's the cancer? Yeah, anyone else got cancer?"

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Do you want to talk about cancer? Upstairs, in the bedroom.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  Won't take very long.

• 1:01:33Adam Buxton?

  And finally, subject of argument, wife leaving dirty plates and coffee mugs by the sink to clean later. This is a tough one because she works very, very hard. We both work from home. So it seems so petty to pull her up on something like that. I just, I don't like it. So what I do, rather than being grumpy about it, I frame it as like a helpful hack.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  That's a good, yeah, I like that.

• 1:02:00Adam Buxton?

  And I say, "I always think it's better to clean as you go."

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the trouble with a helpful hack. In your mind, comes out and sounds passive aggressive. Something between the thought and the action, it becomes passive aggressive, doesn't it?

• 1:02:16Adam Buxton?

  Yes, and that's why she replies, "I always think it's better to fuck while you are."

• 1:02:25Adam Buxton?

  So I don't know. Not sure who wins that one.

• 1:02:31Adam Buxton?

  Anyway, so that's the, that's the argument situation.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Well played.

• 1:02:36Adam Buxton?

  And the thing.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  I wish I could relate.

• 1:02:46Adam Buxton?

  This is an ad for Squarespace. Okay, we'll return to the AI apocalypse in just a wee, wee moment, but first, I wanted to talk about Squarespace. Do you know about Squarespace, Steve? Uh, yes, Monty. I think I might even.

• 1:02:58Speaker 06

  Be a little bit more tuned into modern tech, websites, et cetera, than you. I don't know, just guessing. Oh, Steve, I love this dynamic. I'm old and conservative and you're young and progressive and that's what makes the Newswind podcast such great listening. But yes, you're right. I must admit, I didn't know much about Squarespace, but because my new grumble book, Hell in a Handcart, is out this month. And I look forward to getting enraged by that. So I should hope.

• 1:03:21Speaker 06

  Anyway, the publishers, Bluestar and Dogwhistle, made a beautiful website for the book using Squarespace. I know, I got the newsletter that you sent out using Squarespace and the website does look great. Videos of you airing your views, members' areas for your mad fans. You've even got a merch store, I see. That's right. The Union Jack top hat is a big seller, but they constructed it all so fast with Squarespace. They did most of it over one lunchtime, Steve. Well, you wouldn't want to spend much longer on it, would you? Shut up, Steve. But here's the thing, anyone listening to this can start a free trial right now at squarespace.com/boxton and see how easy and versatile Squarespace is. And when they're ready to launch a new website or domain, they can save 10% off their first purchase by using the offer code BOXTON at checkout. Right, well, maybe I'll visit squarespace.com/boxton and start a new website just to refute all the nonsense in your new book. Oh, don't do that, Steve.

• 1:04:06Speaker 06

  I will. Oh, shut up, Steve. Uh, shut up. Now, back to more depressing matters on Newswind.

• 1:04:13Speaker 06

  Wait. Continue.

• 1:04:25Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back, podcasts. That was Louis Theroux, of course, joining me on stage. I'm so grateful to Louis for coming along and being my guest. I think both of us were quite nervous to be in front of such a large audience in that legendary venue. But it was a great night. I think everyone had fun. Louis' podcast on Spotify continues to go from strength to strength.

• 1:04:52Adam Buxton?

  But I'm encouraged to see that he has a new documentary out. I think he should do more of that. He's good at that. Don't worry about the podcasting. Just have a break. Ten years or something. And you carry on with that documentary making because it's good stuff. The one on tomorrow night is called The Settlers. Fourteen years after his first visit, Louis Theroux meets some of the growing community of religious nationalist Israelis who have settled in the occupied West Bank. Louis also meets Palestinians whose lives have been impacted by the settlers. There you go. That'll be nice and light. Anyway,

• 1:05:36Adam Buxton?

  thank you so much, Louis, once again, for being my guest. I really appreciate it and I look forward to the next time. Couple of brief podcast recommendations before I say goodbye today. I was very pleased to see that the Horn Section podcast is back. Alex Horn and his brilliant band pissing about. That podcast got me through some dark times in the lockdown. It's high quality silliness and musical fun. I've also been listening to another podcast that I've liked for a while and I mentioned before years ago though, Ezra Klein's podcast. He is an American liberal political commentator and journalist

• 1:06:20Adam Buxton?

  and his podcast, The Ezra Klein Show, is excellent. I mean, he's, what is he, forty or something? But, I mean, he's very smart, articulate guy. And he has lots of interesting people on his podcast, usually talking politics in a fairly involved way. But on the latest episode, it's a slightly different type of conversation.

• 1:06:50Adam Buxton?

  He talks to a conservative American author and a fellow New York Times columnist called Ross Douthat, D O U T H A T. He wrote a book called Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, and he himself is a Roman Catholic. Ezra Klein is Jewish, but more of an atheist, but he does talk about the fact that his mind is open to the mystery of the universe. And it's a good conversation. It reminds me of the kind of conversations that sometimes me and my friends would have at school, albeit at a far stupider level.

• 1:07:30Adam Buxton?

  But Ross and Ezra start off talking about Christianity within the Trump administration, and to what extent Trump and people in his cabinet are governed by their religious faith. But then the conversation goes to more unexpected areas, and they talk about various forms of mysticism and the supernatural, and the possibility that the supernatural world could be accessed by the use of psychedelics and mind-expanding drugs, and the fact that that would be dangerous because a lot of people accessing those realms wouldn't have the

• 1:08:14Adam Buxton?

  proper training to deal with what they find there. That's just one of the sections. And Ezra Klein, as a skeptic, is pushing back on some of this, and Ross Douthat, and... Well, you have to listen to the conversation. I'm not going to do either of them justice by describing it, but it was really fascinating. And it reminded me as well of my mum, who was religious, and told me when I was quite young about the dangers of Ouija boards. And I remember being surprised that she would warn me about those things, because even though she was religious in her later life, like when we were kids, I didn't get the sense that religion was that important to her.

• 1:08:59Adam Buxton?

  But I guess that was the way she was brought up. And um, she was warning me off the old Ouija board, saying that that was a possible portal to the dark side that I didn't want to mess with. And I was very struck by that because I thought, really? Do you believe in all that then, Mum? Anyway, this conversation with Ezra Klein and Ross Dalforth reminded me of that. And made me think, actually, maybe I should have taken Mum a little bit more seriously. I write about that in my book. Sorry to mention the book again.

• 1:09:35Adam Buxton?

  Uh, but I write about it in quite a stupid, irreverent way. You won't be surprised to hear. And listening to the Ezra Klein podcast today made me think, perhaps I should have been a little more reverent.

• 1:09:49Adam Buxton?

  See what you think? Okay, I'm gonna head back now. Thank you very much indeed, once again to Louis and Richard. And everybody as well who was involved with the podcast tour, particularly the tour crew, Ben Saunders, Richard Walsh, Anna Lisa Lembo, and everyone at Crostown Promotions. Thanks to Becca Bryers for her wrangling of the live recording. Thanks very much indeed, even more than usual to Seamus Murphy Mitchell. He was there on the day in London last year and it was great to have him there. I was very nervous and Seamus was really a crucial part of helping it all go smoothly and enabling me to enjoy it. So thank you so much, Seamus.

• 1:10:30Adam Buxton?

  Thanks to Helen Green. She does the artwork for the podcast. Thanks to everyone at Acast. And thanks to you for coming back. Oh, it's quite cold now. Come here. Allow me to warm you up in a completely non creepy way. Hey, how are you doing? Good to see you.

• 1:10:50Adam Buxton?

  All right. Till next time, please go carefully. It's still nutty out there. And for what it's worth, I love you. Bye.

• 1:11:11Adam Buxton?

  Possible record.

• 1:11:14Adam Buxton?

  Like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, please like and subscribe. Gimme like a smile and a thumbs up, I sick a pat when me bums up. Gimme like a smile and a thumbs up, I sick a pat when me bums up. Like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, please like and subscribe. Gimme like a smile and a thumbs up, I sick a pat when me bums up. Gimme like a smile and a thumbs up, I sick a pat when me bums up. Like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, please like and subscribe.