Hamish Blake on What Matters Most in life, Kyle & Jackie O, & working with Andy Lee

Hamish Blake is one half of Australia's most enduring comedy partnership and a creative force who's turned curiosity into a multi-decade career. In this conversation, Hamish opens up about his Melbourne childhood, the mathematical thinking behind his comedy, and how boredom shaped his creativity. He reveals the inner workings of his partnership with Andy Lee, from their first meeting at Melbourne Uni to navigating success whilst maintaining their friendship. We explore his transition from full-time broadcasting to prioritising fatherhood, his approach to screen time with his kids, and why he believes doing things "just for fun" sits high on the hierarchy of importance. We also spoke about: • Growing up and the power of childhood boredom • The mathematical approach to comedy and creative problem-solving • Meeting Andy Lee and finding a catalyst for courage • Building a partnership that's survived decades in the spotlight • Choosing family time over career ambitions • The government mandated podcasting break explained • Why he refuses to make his parenting podcast commercial • Balancing marriage with Zoe Foster Blake's entrepreneurial drive You can subscribe to the free Mentored newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/e7C8akgj https://the-mentored-platform-pty-ltd.myklpages.com/l/WWJGc5. Join my exclusive Mentored+ community: https://mentored.com.au/become-a-member/ https://mentored.com.au/become-a-member/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hamish Blake, welcome to Straight Talk, mate.

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Thanks, Mike.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Now, this is very straight, this joint. Now, you feel like, are you okay? You're comfortable with that?

• 0:06Speaker 01

  I know, I did a really sort of a chuckle there, but that will be it for the, that's it. Now it's just straight talk.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Nothing loose?

• 0:14Speaker 00

  No, I don't think many people really know about your background. Like, you know, where'd you grow up?

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Um, I grew up in Melbourne. I'm a Melbourne boy, sort of south eastern suburbs, Glen Waverley.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  Is that a good area?

• 0:24Speaker 01

  It is now, but almost perfectly timed by the Blake family to, we got in in 1980, held on for 20 years. The house prices went sideways for 20 years, then we got out just before the boom.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  Good timing.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Now it's super popular because there's like, you know, good schools and stuff out there. And, um, but when I grew up, it was, I had a great, I, I, look, I had a great time. It was a pure kind of like suburban, um, you know, especially like, like those early years before teens. And then then I moved schools a couple of times. Like I ended up going to school, still in Melbourne, but like way down like Bayside area we moved to. So, but I had a, I had a pretty fun childhood. Now, I've been thinking about my childhood a lot lately because I'm, I'm trying to explain to my kids, like just really what boredom is and, and how it's good for you and how it makes you imagine things. And you have to, you know, just explaining to them like, we didn't have screen time.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  Not because our parents were like, you can't have screen times. Like we physically couldn't have screen time.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  Didn't exist.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  We didn't have screens and the one screen in the house we had wasn't showing shit for kids. So like, we couldn't have it. There's, we could watch the microwave. We could, like, we just didn't have screens, guys. So just trying to get the kids, now like, what did you do? I was like, well, I remember, you know, I was speaking to my little boy who's 11. I was like, remember one summer around, you know, I was about your age. Like we'd just ride bikes all the time. Like you just, you know, that was the perfect childhood. Just get home and be back by dark. But I was like, there was a building site nearby. That must have like run into financial problems or whatever, because it was just a stalled building site for months. And I was like, and they had builders sand and like clay there. And we'd just chuck lumps of clay at each other. I'm like, and that was, that was great.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  That was, that was, that was our time. We did not need complicated stuff.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  So what, what does your son say to that? That's very interesting because, you know, like today they're entertained all the time.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  All the time. And I fight against this as well, but you know, that's, this is the way of the world. But, you know, he's, he's 11 now. So I know, I know we haven't hit the, the waters are starting to get a little bit choppy, but we haven't hit the full rapids of the teenage years yet. That is a big thing for me actually as a dad is trying to just do things that are just connected to either just nature or just for the fun of, of adventure rather than being stuck inside or stuck on a screen.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Do you do this to make sure that you can try and try to help your kids develop the, the need to become creative as a result of being bored? You know, another way is go and pick up the clay and perform it, throw it at each other. I mean, that's creativity.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  That is creativity and, and we all have it in us, you know? It's also just that letting, creating the conditions for imagination. Like I think play and imagination is a huge, it's a huge part of childhood, but I think it's a huge part of life. Like it is a big part of what my professional career is, I think, kind of trying to hang on to that part of your childhood that's imaginative and, and playful and just doing things literally just for fun. You know, that when you're a kid, doing things just for the fun of it seems like a good enough goal for an activity. And then as we get older, doing things just for the fun of it, oh, it just seems, you know, it's regarded, it's frivolous. That's like, well, there's more important things to do.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  But I, I do think doing things just for the fun of it is, should be, is a high, is high on the hierarchy of importance. Like you should do things just for the fun of it. So, yeah, as a, as a, as a parent, like I, I, I think especially with little kids. And I, again, I'm, I can only really speak with any experience of what it's like to have a child up to the age of 11. Just creating the conditions for them to be imaginative. I think sometimes that's all you need. I was really guilty of it too, especially when my little boy was young. Did all the stuff like, you know, I remember buying him a Lego set that this was before.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  The Lego show.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  The Lego show came along. Um, I was gonna say, then I got Lego for free. I don't actually, I still have to buy it, but people think I get it for free. So it's.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  You don't pick a little piece up every now and then.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  I steal a lot from the show, but yeah, but, but then when people see me with a set, they're like, oh God, must be nice, you know, get free Lego. And I go, yeah, I do. And I don't, I just have to buy it from Kmart like everyone else. But I remember I bought him like, he loved Batman and I bought him this like, you know, quite complicated Batman.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, twelve year old, one for a four year old.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Like a fifteen year old, right? It was like a Batman build that split into four pieces and I loved it. So I was like, yeah, this is awesome. And he's five and I'm like, you're a very smart five year old. Like we'll sort this out together. And of course, it's just like way too much. I don't think he could even do small Lego at that stage. You're still kind of on Duplo. And I remember like, it was a great parenting lesson because I forced it a bit. He really didn't want to do it. It was getting a bit angsty. I ended up having to like spend Boxing Day on the twenty seventh of December, building it. And then I looked over and he had made out of Duplo, like ten, ten bricks stuck together. And he's zooming it around and he's like, I've made, this is the Batmobile. And I was like, yeah, of course. That's, that's what you're meant to do when you're five. Just put ten things together and it's in your head. It's in your imagination. So I,

• 5:29Speaker 01

  I love that about kids in general and, and, and my kids. And I think, um, yeah, I think it's, you know, as, as much as we can, I reckon that's the antidote to kind of, you know, that's the antidote to screen time is. And letting them have the space and the time to just imagine things and draw and just, you know, tinker around in nature.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  It's interesting you should talk about nature and, um, and I, I know you're talking about natural things, but you know, we all talk about nature and nurture as a kid. Yourself, Amish. What do you think you got from your parents in, in a natural sense?

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Good question.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  My mum was incredibly, is incredibly loving and caring. And so I think, I think in terms of the nurture and, and mum's, mum was a, you know, a literature teacher, you know, loved the, you know, I was like, you know, was trying to teach us Shakespeare and stuff when we were in year six, which we weren't interested in, but I do look back and I go, mum, the cultured side of mum had a real impact too. You know, she's, it's that funny thing of like, no six year old really cares about opera. But if it is, if you're being shown these things, it has some kind of an impact on you.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Particularly later on.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Particularly later on, you've got some, you say mum, mum had that side, it wasn't really forced down her throat. But when I think back to it, I'm like, yeah, somehow I know the Valdez Four Seasons. And I never learnt an instrument or played it, but like it was, you know, that was the kind of stuff mum, um, you know, had around. So mum was that, the intelligence side, I think mum was always very, very keen for us to, to sort of intellectually, expand ourselves as much as we could and, but was also extremely loving and, and kind. And dad, in a funny way, in a funny way, this, this is, this, this sounds a bit in the end inaccurate. I, I think I got my sense of humour from dad.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  But almost because I was trying to get a rise out of him, because he was quite, he's not, he's not serious, but he was, he was, you know, focused on what he had to do. Like dad, so dad worked, um, most of his, like, he worked with my grandpa farming. And till, until I was kind of like five or six, they had farms like on the outskirts of Melbourne, like cattle farms and, and market garden. And then dad got out of farming and he was, he was, um, doing irrigation. So putting in like big, large level like sprinkler systems and, you know, basically just digging. It was just in, in the dirt all day, like digging the hole in pipes and stuff. So dad was like, you know, he's, he's driving a yute, he's always outside loading the yute up with, you know, tools and diggers and pipes now the shed.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  And like dad had big jobs going on. And so.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  You know, and I've always just wanted to make people laugh. I don't know where that comes from, but I've just always thought that, you know, I'm always just in any situation looking for what's the funniest thing that could happen here. So I'm trying to make dad laugh. He's not in the mood, but I know it's in there somewhere.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  I'm gonna find it.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Basically just trying to like needle it out of him the whole time. And so then if I did crack him, I was like, yeah, great. This is good. I'm, I'm, I'm getting to him. And, and so it's not like he didn't want to have fun, but he was just busy doing other shit.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  But seriously with his work.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Seriously with his work. In terms of the nature nurture, I think somehow it was in my nature to maybe be wanting to, you know, like comedy was in my nature. And so it wasn't like dad nurtured it, but he was, he was like good resistance training for it.

• 9:04Speaker 00

  But did you get a rise out of him? I mean, like you got him to react, to laugh.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Going to react. And so, and it's that funny thing. Like, I think it's not unusual for comedians or people in the comedy world. If you boil it down, like we're all trying to get attention, really. Like, it is a bit of an attention economy.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  Now it is.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  It is. And, and I, but I think comedy was, has always had that aspect. I think if people got really honest, most, you know, anyone there is like, oh yeah, there's someone in their life they're trying to get the attention of. And it was probably my dad. I mean, and probably there's still a little part of me that's that little boy trying to get his dad's attention.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  I mean, you, you guys have been extraordinarily successful over a long period of time. So, you know, you, and success can be measured lots of different ways. But for me, one of the really important ways of measuring success is being able to evolve perhaps, or stay relevant anyway, and have different types of shows over a long period of time. And you guys have been extraordinarily good at that. What role does curiosity play? Because curiosity to me is really important.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  As a businessman, I'm a business guy. I'm not, I'm not funny. You're funny.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think the exactly the same thing though, because you're being led by what interests you. And I, and I think when you do it with the reverse, that's when trouble starts. Because I think.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  That's very kind of you to say like, we've evolved and adapted. But it would be wrong, I think it would be wrong for people to hear that to be like, ah, we saw a trend coming and we moved to it. Cause I don't think that ever works because then you're following what you are assuming to be other people's interests and hoping you match them. And you can't lose, you lose connection with your inner voice.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  And there's nothing unique either.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're not curious anymore. You're just trying to do the best job fitting in. And, and so for, for Rando and I together, and then, and then even separately, the, the one thing we've always brought ourselves on is going, there's no guarantees in any of this. There was never a guarantee when we started, like it just, you just don't have any guarantees, like you, you, you're putting things out there and hoping it connects with an audience. And if it does, that's great. And if it doesn't, well, I'd still rather have put it out there and try it anyway than not. But there's just no guarantee. The only thing you can control, like if you look at it from that perspective, like the one controllable you can control is, is this interesting to us? Like, is this interesting and are we curious about this?

• 11:19Speaker 01

  And curiosity is such a good word for it. Cause you're like, you're being led by what you think is either funny, interesting, or just a fun way to spend your day. And in the pursuit of, you know, an interesting problem to solve, like a lot of TV shows and, and even with the podcasts we do and, and separate stuff. I'd say you could classify all those things as interesting problems to solve, like something like Lego Masters. If I look at an episode, I go, all right, what's this episode about? How can we solve the presenting of this? Like, how can we solve communicating this to the audience in the funnest, most interesting way? Like, that's kind of how my brain would think about my job in that regard.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  And same with the podcast with Andy, like every week we get together on the Hamish and Andy podcast and go, what's the, what's the funnest? Thing we could do, what's the thing that would excite us the most that, that we think would also bring our audience along for the ride? Because we know if we're excited and we're passionate, that's the best bet we've got. Like that, I, we do think that's the best way to kind of connect with your audience. So, long way of answering that question, but curiosity is huge because it's your inner voice. Like that's your gut, your gut is your curiosity. And if you're being led by that, I kind of think you can't go wrong because. If something hits, it's gonna be the best kind of content because it's authentically what you're interested in. And if it doesn't hit, you're kind of still being true to yourself.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  So that's fine too.

• 12:48Speaker 00

  You know, it's funny, I was just, when you were talking to me then, I was thinking about my brother. My brother's a lot younger than me. And when Lego came in, there was a thing called Meccano.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  Meccano sets when I was a kid.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  I'm contractually not allowed to play with it.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Because they were sort of a competitor.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know why Lego's worried about Meccano.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  No, no, a hundred percent.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  And I'm not just saying this because I'm a Lego boy. It's so shit.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  Because they had the big bolts on them.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Tin sheets.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  I know. I had one as a kid.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  I did too, because, you know, a well meaning auntie had given me a crane or something made out of Meccano. I was like, oh my God, this is like, when you look at Lego, and again, I'm not being paid to say this, but I think we can all agree, the engineering of Lego is like quite amazing.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  It's brilliant.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  These things click together, they stick. If you want to get really deep in it, that little circle on top's called a stud. And the gap on the bottom of a Lego brick is called the anti-stud. And the pressure with which they connect is called the clutch power of the brick. It's actually quite scientific. Anyway, they stick together. It's easy. You go over to Meccano, you literally have to put mini bolts and washers.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  I know, you're screwing on. And a lot of people wouldn't even know what it was. And I remember when then Lego came out, my brother's six years younger, then when Lego came out, one of the things I noticed about my brother is he was very good at the detail. Like he would sit for, like a little five year old kid or whatever, six year old. He would sit there for hours and I was like 10 or 11, I'd be looking, what the fuck are you doing? And, uh, and he would, five, six hours, he'd do it all day long. And, um, but what's interesting about that is my brother and I now would do business together. And my brother's a lawyer and he does all our legal stuff.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  The detail guy.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then I look at you and Andy Lego.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  Is, are you the creative and he's the detail guy? Or is sometimes, because that's how you might be presented, or sometimes is actually the reverse in real life?

• 14:35Speaker 01

  I'd say as we've got older, we've probably got better at the other guy's discipline. Do you know what I mean?

• 14:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  The reason I do the show at Anna's because I think he's so funny. He makes me laugh so much. So it's not true to go, I'm creative and he's not, because when he brings things, I, you know, I love it. Like we just make each other love. That's the, that's the lottery we've won is we found this other person that we just kind of have like a telepathy with and. We're just so aligned on what we think is funny and and a good adventure too. I think from the moment we met, like.

• 15:11Speaker 00

  Do you remember that moment?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. And it was at Melbourne Uni.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  What were you doing?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  I took a year off and moved with my mum to Sydney in the year two thousand. So I came up for the Olympics. I went to Sydney and I was like, oh, this this should be fun. So I took a year off and and but Andy went straight to uni.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  To watch the Olympics or to compete in the Olympics?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a little bit late to get selection. I rolled up as a wild card, couldn't get. I was like, maybe I could do shooting. Um, no, I was just bumming around Sydney, just trying to sneak into beach volleyball and stuff. And it was, it was, it was a great fun time. Um, but Andy had gone straight to uni. Then I moved back to Melbourne to go to uni. He'd gone straight to uni and one of my mates from high school had become friends with him. Got called Pete and Pete's like, oh, mate, I reckon you've got to meet this guy, Andy. Like, he actually reminds me a lot of you. I reckon you guys get on. And so we really owe Pete a lot because, yeah, me and Andy met and immediately we're like best friends and probably cut Pete out a bit and Pete had to go off and find some other people. But so apologies, Nolsey.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, no, then we were like, you know, we we were thick as thieves. And it, and it, I think it was just sort of a sense of adventure that we had with each other. Because we've, we we still talk, Andy and I, in fact, the other day had a deep and meaningful about this. Like, we still are interested in, like, why does this thing we do work? What, like, how do we feel about? We do a lot of analyzing and like, great, it's full of gratitude, like grateful analyzing. Cause we we know how lucky we are to have each other. But one of the things we often talk about is we've probably got a pretty similar risk appetite as well. Like, we like to have a go at some big things.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Like, and when, especially when we're in our teens and twenties, like, that's exactly what you should be doing in your teens and twenties. We like this idea of going with just having a crack at things. And it made it so much easier, though, to have a mate doing it. Like, I think one of the things Andy gave me, especially in my twenties, that I'm way more grateful for for any of the kind of like, um, normal markers of success, like any of the financial rewards or, you know. Career longevity. One of the best gifts I reckon Andy gave me was at that time in my life is you're sort of just finding your feet coming out of your teenage years into your twenties. He was a catalyst for courage. I think like you meet a best friend and then you're like, all right,

• 17:40Speaker 01

  let's do it together. And I am so grateful for that too, because you know, when you get a bit further down the track and a little bit of grey in your beard, all you want to do is tell people in their twenties, just take massive risks. Who cares? Like just pedal as hard as you can.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  To the extent you can be reckless?

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Not massive personal risks, like not massive careless risks, but but put yourself out there.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Sorry, risk embarrassment.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Risk, um, risk getting it wrong, risk, you know, humiliation. If you want to have a business idea, if you want to have a, if you want to get up on stage or you want to, you know, release an album or you want to decide to be a dancer or whatever it is you want to do, that's when you should do it in your twenties, because you've got the, the, the agility to bounce back and, and it's always gonna, any failure is gonna be great.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  Like leaning into being vulnerable there.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  Who gives a fuck?

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, because, but, but also come unfortunately, well, for me anyway, it comes along at a time in your life where you, you looking at the big wide world and you, you, I definitely was um, at risk of, of going, you know, just waiting until things seemed right or like, okay, I've got this.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  You would, that was yours, that was.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  I reckon I would have at that age, waited a lot longer, thinking I was, you know, that, that fallacy of thinking that, oh, just wait until a few more things fall into place. And, you know, suddenly a few years have gone by and you actually haven't done the thing that scares you. And I think by meeting Ando and having someone by your side, you can gee each other up into doing the thing that scares you. And it's always the best thing to like, oh, you know, have this conversation even when the kids, as they're little, like this, the feeling that we all want in life is almost always on the other side of fear and the thing that scares you. And we know that feeling. We love that feeling when we get there and we always like, oh, that's it. I'm never, you know, I'm not going to be scared anymore. And of course, we always,

• 19:33Speaker 01

  it's a, it's a permanent process of trying to face those fears all the time to remember to keep pushing through them.

• 19:39Speaker 00

  I think it's how, how our brain has evolved. It gets a way of survival.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  When you say that the two of you, um, you feel better having two of you, um, to do something. Is that because you feel better if both fail and you can sort of say to each other, like, let's say you're going to do something that's going to fail.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  You're not alone. Yeah.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's about not being alone. And you said something really interesting a moment ago. You use the word courage and I love the word, but also fear. Courage sort of sits somewhere between being completely fearful. In other words, you know, stone dead, you won't do anything, nothing. And at the other end of the spectrum is reckless, where you, you don't give a fuck, you do everything and you don't give a shit about the outcomes. And you don't care if it hurts anyone either. That, that's reckless. Courage sort of sits somewhere in the middle of that.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think you can be courageous without being scared because.

• 20:27Speaker 00

  That's great. I love hearing that.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Courage, courage is the overcoming of fear. Courage is being scared and doing it anyway. Courage isn't the absence of fear because that is, well, you could be a psychopath, you know, you could just be like, oh, I don't.

• 20:38Speaker 00

  Assuming you're normal.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, assuming you're normal, like you, so you have to be scared for the opportunity to be courageous. Like, that's the gift of fear, I suppose, if you want to frame it in that sense. You go, great, I'm scared. So now I've got a chance to, to do something with it and to see if I can overcome that fear.

• 20:57Speaker 00

  And finding someone who has the same mindset, was like minded, in a better way of putting it, like minded, that's pretty powerful. Did you recognize that at the time? Did you feel there's power in this?

• 21:08Speaker 01

  I think for a second, because I just got to uni too. I, I think for a second I was like, oh, this is great. This is what uni was meant to be. You met me to all these great people. And then I just expected to meet heaps more like Andy. Cause it was like day one, I think we met. And then I went, oh, actually, hang on a sec. Maybe this is, he's just one of one and we'll stick together. So, you know, we're really, really lucky that we have that like mindedness, but simultaneously, we're extremely different people too. So I think that's the, that's the, that's the beauty of it. We have so much that we have a Venn diagram overlap on, and then we have a heap that we don't. And that's what makes it, that's great. We don't want two Hamish's and we don't want two Andys.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  That wouldn't work.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Doesn't work. So. That's the alchemy, you know, that's, that's one and one equals three is somehow we've got, we've got that, we've got that enough in common that we completely understand each other and then enough not in common that we are our own kind of unique people. So I think this was, this, this began because we're talking about like, you know, the details guy and the creative guy. Ando is extremely gifted at,

• 22:18Speaker 01

  at, at, at detail. I mean, he's, he's, we have a segment on the show that makes fun of how detailed our entity is. It's called upset Andy, just because he loves everything to be neat, organized, like.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  But is that for real? That's for real?

• 22:30Speaker 01

  That's for, yeah.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  I know, I go, is it more just taking the piss?

• 22:33Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  That's for real.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Probably an undiagnosed something, but it's like, but we're all, it's awkward fun. But you know, he has a drawer at home that's like, you know, batteries and like he has like everything labeled and it's.

• 22:46Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Whereas my house is just piles and complete chaos. So I do, I mean, that's probably a little snapshot of our brains too. Like my brain is quite chaotic, chaotic. He's isn't, but I also think a big part of our relationship is we love the other guys. We'd love the other guy for their brain. So I think he likes what comes out of my chaotic brain. And I know I get so much benefit from his, um, from the way he does things. And I think that's an important part of a partnership. I think you have to love the other person's brain rather than go, oh mate, why are you so anal? Be more like me. It would be terrible if he was more like me. And at the same time, I don't think he's sitting there being like, hey mate, be more.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  You've got to be more structured in this stuff. I think, you know, thankfully he's, he's always kind of making space for me to just be like, yeah, that's the way home does things, but we know we'll get a result at the end. He'll spit something out and that will be good for the show and.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  Did you, did you always have that empathy between each other? I mean, or did it take time to do it?

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Did take time. It probably did take time. I reckon, I reckon, um, especially early days, like when you're in your twenties and you're doing, like we're doing a national radio show and. There's no rule book for any of that stuff. Like you do learn by doing. And we're lucky to have good people around us too, that we, we made communication a really big part of our team. So we did do a lot of checking in with each other and, and because it's funny, you're, you're growing as well at the same time. So it's not like you come to the table as complete humans. We, we came to each other as growing boys. Like we're like twenty two. So you're growing with each other and you've got to keep checking in with each other as you're growing up together to, to

• 24:33Speaker 01

  keep it working. We always sort of joke that our partnership was, we're like, it's a nuclear reactor. We have to notice cracks before someone else does. Like if we don't notice the cracks, it could be catastrophic. And we're also aware of like, it's this, it was a very, it's a very strange thing that we ended up doing with our lives because we're like, we've commercialized a friendship. Like we, we're mates, but now we're mates for our job. Like now that's what we do.

• 25:00Speaker 00

  Well, you build a brand with two names in it.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's us. Like, it's not like we, it's not characters. It's like, it's us. So you like, you feel it really, you feel it. Cause you're like, shit, if this, people don't like the show, they don't like us. So it's kind of, you're hanging a lot on it. So that takes a little bit of time to get your head around, um.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  But talking to each other, is it, is it like for real? Like do you sit down? Do you have a cadence? Like you sort of sit down and say, well, once a month, we're gonna sit down and see where we're at.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  I've never been good at formalizing it. I think we, it just has, we've learned to do it organically, you know? Even, I mean, honestly, yesterday we, we had a similar chat and we were just, just, you know, we were into the year now, starting our podcast. We're seeing how we're going, like, you know, and, and a lot of the time, especially at the, you know, at the moment, because I feel like we're in a great part of our lives. You know, it's just, it's a lot of the times, it's just a real gratitude to just be like, this is, this is great. Like, we're really lucky. Lucky to have the team we've got, um.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  You say that, you verbalize that.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  To, to each other. And, and we've been asked this before too, I think. I think the thing that we're, one of the other lotteries we won was we didn't just find a person that makes us laugh and didn't just find a person that makes um the, the performance side of things really easy. We also found a person who thinks we have the same definition of what good is.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  In terms of values.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, in terms of values, but I think as well as to what we do professionally.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Alright.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  But actually, yeah, in terms of values too, like we, we, we wanna have a team around us that's having a good time. We wanna look after people. We want this to be enjoyable for everyone. We want people to feel, whether it's our audience or our, or our team around us, I think we want people to, I think we wanna stand for what the good in life is. And like I said before, like the just for fun element, the, the, the laughter and the, and the connection you can get to people in the same room as you, but also listening by simply having a great time.

• 27:08Speaker 00

  But is that a luxury that you can deal in now because you, you're so successful and you know, you can, you know, you make good money, et cetera, got good coin, you've, you know, accumulated? Or is that something that you guys had from the very beginning?

• 27:22Speaker 01

  I know it's easy to say it was there from the very beginning, but I do think it has been. I think it's been a core tenet of ours to go, we, like, if you were like, what does this show stand for? Even back in early radio days, I think we would have honestly said this before any, this is before a paycheck landed. Like, we stand for people have, the people we engage with having fun. We always, and we're always at our happiest, I reckon, when it's like listeners or other people in the show coming up with funny things and we're like, it's making us laugh. Because I'll be like, I think that's what we've always stood for, the connection that humans can feel with each other when sort of silliness is in the air. And, and that's, that's, I think that's just what's always floated our

• 28:07Speaker 01

  boat. Um, you know, the first radio show we did for many years, we did it for, we were like, we'll work for free. We did Monday nights.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  Really?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. The, our first, our actual first contract with, this was with um Aus Stereo back in the day. So this was on Fox FM in Melbourne, like, and it wasn't national at that stage. We wanted to do the drive show because we'd always loved drive radio because I don't know, it's kind of similar these days too, but like breakfast shows are about like breaking news and gossip and like headlines, which has just never been our bag. And the drive show felt like you could be silly. It's like escapism. You can just talk about dumb stuff and, and make people laugh. And we're like, that's what we want to do. We want to do something that's escapism. So we went to them and we're like, you know, they kind of were happy to, I was like, we're kind of happy to give you guys the show.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  But they, they offered us Monday to Thursday and they're like, we can't afford to pay you guys five days a week, which I've never heard of before or whatever. Like they know sort of just hedging their bets, maybe wanted to do music. But the reason they gave us was like, well, we can't afford, we can't afford five days a week for the show. And we went, all right, well, we'll do Fridays for free because we don't want to do a Monday to Thursday show because then all our listeners on Friday will just not have a show to listen to and they'll go somewhere else. And so yeah, for the first year, we did Fridays for free. We got them back in subsequent years. We did, we did make them pay for Fridays.

• 29:33Speaker 00

  I think Osterio over time has probably paid their way.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Got them to back pay Fridays. But so I can honestly say hand on heart, like that was our, it was never our mission to, you know, we'd never got into this to make money. The money is an extremely happy side effect, but I've never, it's just, so of course you're appreciative and cognizant of like how lucky you are to be in a position to make money out of this thing. But it's absolutely never a driver.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  So you're, you're the, it's sort of like a

• 30:06Speaker 00

  a straight guy and a not so straight guy.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Sometimes, and I guess, I guess that I can understand why people

• 30:13Speaker 01

  do say that because it's like, it's, it's, I don't know, there's a thing where that's kind of like one of the rules people know about duos. Like, you know, you go Laurel and Hardy or you're a straight guy, I'm a straight guy. I've never thought of Annie and I like that. I just think we have different, I, I actually think we're great at playing like bass and treble and flipping, you know, I just think, I think, I just feel like it's two different vibrations that kind of work with each other.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  That sounds very scientific.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I started off going music and then I switched to physics, but I just think.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  You think physics are related, so it's okay.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, there we go. There's mum's influence again. She, I wouldn't know about bass and treble if it wasn't for mum. But do you know what I mean? I'd never have gone like, um, I've never thought like, okay, Andy's in the suit and I'm the clown. Um, we just, it, it does feel like a dance. Like honestly, I, I, I'll go, I'll stick with physics because that is actually what I was studying at uni. I just think we know exactly in any given moment how to counterbalance.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  Which character you need to be.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  How to counterbalance each other to keep the center of gravity in the same spot. So we can move all over the place and the center kind of the show stays on track.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  And what most people don't probably realize about you, because you know, like you have, sometimes you play loose and you're probably more reputationally that, that person. Let's, and, and you.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Totally. And I'm, and I'm, that is the way I am.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  But what's interesting, you just said, um, you talked about physics and the way you explained that was very logical and very structured.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  And you, and the way you talked about Lego.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  I'm a bit, I am a bit of a science nerd.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I can see that. Like, and Lego is very structured and, and, and is about.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Structured creativity.

• 31:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, lateral and, and vertical strengths and, you know, engineered nearly. Well, it is engineered. I'm not saying nearly. It is engineered. It's brilliantly engineered. Um, most people probably don't know that about you. I mean, they don't get that about you.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  They're just listening to you for a bit of a giggle.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I am, I, I suppose I've got a, you know, like anyone, you've got a lot of different sides to the, um, to the twelve sided dice or however many sides you've got. The, but I am, I, I was doing maths and physics at uni. I, I, I, I was doing pure maths for a little while, not quite full Adam Spencer level, but, um.

• 32:27Speaker 00

  He is a freak, Adam, but.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  He's very good. So I can't, I'm not quite in his echelon, but, and, and because I did maths at school and I, I found it like a just always my, I've got a bit of a mathsy brain. So I didn't find it difficult. And then I got to uni thinking like, oh, this is great. Like I was really good at maths at school. And then I got to university and when you roll into pure advanced mathematics at Melbourne University, that's when you go, okay, these kids are smart. I think I might not be in the right place. Yeah. I was sort of thinking I'd breeze in a couple of times a week, miss a few lectures here and there. These guys are really serious about maths. So I squeaked through and then I dropped it. I dropped it down a bit.

• 33:06Speaker 00

  But do you still feel as though that that style of thinking is one of your strengths?

• 33:12Speaker 01

  I do. I do. Because I think going back to looking at. Creativity in comedy is a bit of a puzzle and a puzzle with many solutions. I think there is a mathematical um overlap to the way you can look at creativity.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  Nearly an algorithm to get to the end.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  It is, it is. And and it's kind of about pattern recognition. Like, I remember in, you know, for anyone that enjoys maths, like you can see numbers move and and kind of, you know, the way you look at it, you can go, okay, well, I know that this slips under that denominator and this cancels that out. You can kind of see the equation moving before your eyes. That's the way maths works when you get good at it. Or like at a certain level. And that's the way my, your brain kind of, you can, you can see as you kind of get into it, whether you're doing um like, whether you're presenting, whether you're kind of like freestyling a bit of um, like whether we're doing stuff on the podcast, your brain's always like running the algorithm as fast as it can for what are the possible outcomes here?

• 34:11Speaker 01

  And what what could lead off onto something else? And what what could branch into another chain of thoughts? I think there is an overlap. Like, I think, I think, I think speed of thought is a fun thing to exercise too. Like, I think that's um, that's something.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  As an intellectual exercise, because most people watching that, most people just watching your outcome, they're not getting what you do, what you've put into that to get to that point, you know, like, and you are freestyling and for a period of time, your brain's working.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  And I love that.

• 34:41Speaker 00

  How important is it for you to deconstruct it like you do with Lego?

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  And then reconstruct it. So there's a problem. I'm going to pull it out into its various parts.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  And then I'm going to put it all back together and hopefully you don't have any pieces left over. And there's your outcome.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Totally. And I think that's the fun of it. That's what I love.

• 34:56Speaker 00

  That's what you do, is it?

• 34:56Speaker 01

  That's what I love about what we get to do. You get infinite combinations, basically. I mean, there's a thing in Lego which I think, I'm going to get this wrong, but if you take six bricks, like two by four bricks, which is like eight studs on the top. I think there is three million combinations. You can put those together in just those six bricks. And so you, you know, for a Lego set that has hundreds of bricks in it, it it'd have to be in the trillions.

• 35:29Speaker 00

  Of combinations.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Of combinations.

• 35:30Speaker 00

  Of possibilities.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Not all of them look like a pirate ship. There's a a couple that that look aesthetically pleasing, but, you know, you've got a, you've got unlimited combinations and that's.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  But none of them are wrong.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  None of them are wrong. Well.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Well, no, and there's none that are wrong. Some would be more interesting than others.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. But that's different.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Not all of them would work as a set.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  But I think that's the fun of going, okay, well, what can we put together that would be appealing? So, you know, the sitting down with Andy, looking at a show, looking at a podcast, or, or doing my own TV show, or whatever you have to do creatively, the fun is sitting down and going, okay, right now we have nothing, and later on, we're going to have something. And at some point in between then, we're gonna, it's gonna come.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  And that's your fun.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 36:17Speaker 00

  That's your fun.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  That's my fun. So somewhere in there, a spark is gonna happen. And then from the tiniest spark, we're gonna fan those flames, and then we're gonna, that's gonna grow into something. And I love, one of the things I find most satisfying about our job is like, we get to the end of the year, and particularly with the podcast with, with, with Ando, like, we get to go on these,

• 36:37Speaker 01

  you know, awesome adventures, like either physically going on an adventure, or just creatively going on a wild journey for something. And I love looking back at where it started. Because so often, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's like one word or one sentence, that because we're in that environment where we're like, what, what else, what could happen, what could possibly come of this? And you, and you, but you have the experience of knowing what feels like a good idea, what feels like a bit of a shit idea, like, does that feel like it has a rich vein of gold under it, or is it this feel like just dry ground? You know, you're using all of those instincts to, to, to end up on a

• 37:19Speaker 01

  great adventure. Like, we did this thing at the end of the year, and some of the fellows in here can tell from their T-shirts, they're podcast listeners. But we did a, um, we did a.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  He's a fanboy, total fanboy, Adam.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Well, Adam, I mean, you remember Berg Boys from last year?

• 37:34Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  So.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  The end of the year, the last show of the year was a surprise show that we did from Miljura. Where we robbed an accounting firm.

• 37:50Speaker 00

  They knew about it.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  The boss knew, but no one else knew.

• 37:53Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Are you familiar with the film from the nineties, I think, was Sneakers with Robert Redford?

• 37:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  So this is what I mean about a very random idea. Way earlier last year, like around about April, I happened to be flicking through TV and Sneakers was on. And I was like, oh, I remember this film. I loved this film. The plot line of Sneakers was, it was a bunch of like ex hackers, like CIA people that now, is it called red hat teams or black hat teams? Black hat, yeah. So before that term existed, you know, they go to banks and they go, we'll break in. They need the boss's approval. You know, the chairman of the board goes, sure, break into our bank, see if you can get in, tell us where our vulnerabilities are. You know, so the opening scene is like they've robbed a bank, they give this guy a check for $20 million. So you think it's a, you know, you think it's a robbery film, but they're actually good guys. And then the, you know, the chairman's like, all right, we got to fix this, whatever. And then they go off on their adventures.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Now, I was like, I don't know if this exists as a job where you can just break into places, you can burglar people. But I was like, we should do our own sneakers, right? So we start chatting on the show. So then we go, if you are the boss of a business, like you have to be the boss, you can't, and it has to be your business. You can't just make us rob your mate's motorbike shop or your enemy's motorbike shop. Like, write in, tell us, like, what do you want us to do? So we get thousands of entries from people going, yeah, like, you know, I'm an optometrist, could you see how many glasses you can steal, whatever? So we're sifting through them all, but we're like, well, we're not going to talk about this because we don't want to tip anyone off. But this lovely guy, Rob, wrote in, he was like, look, I listen to the show with my son every week.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  You know, he's 18. I've got an accounting firm in Miljura. There's about 20 people that work here. We have a company Suzuki Swift. Do you reckon you could break in and steal the company car? And we're like, love this. So didn't talk about it all year. We had heaps of off air meetings that we were like recording how we're gonna rob in. And we came with this plan to like fake a gas leak and we, you know, made up a gas truck and we like got a fake one eight hundred number, whatever. Like a lot of effort was put into this is how we're gonna get in. This is how we get the keys. But anyway, it was so funny.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  Were you in disguise?

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, we wore like hazkens. The plan was get there at five in the morning, tape up the building. And then the first people that arrive assuming they had the keys to go, hey, there's been a gas leak. You know, you can call this number. Can you let us in and we'll, we'll check it out. It actually worked unbelievably well. Like I was there the whole time going, guys, I don't know what's gonna happen, but I promise you it's not gonna go the way we planned. But it kind of actually did. Got in, I got through reception. First drawer I opened almost Suzuki keys. I was like, oh my God, this is unbelievable. Ran out the back, stole the car, hooting and hollering. And then crazy people like, hang on, where did those gas guys go? They haven't seen them for ages. So it's had so much fun doing that, but it, you know, and there were legends. Then we went back to, you know, gave the car back, met everyone at the, at the office.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  But to us was like, this is one of, this is to us like almost the podcast in its finest form. You know, it's listeners getting involved. This, this, this, this guy who is the head of an accounting firm in Murea, like, love that he's like, I'm up for this. This just, just seems like fun.

• 41:00Speaker 00

  It, it seems to me that you like for, to get as many people in to enjoy what you're gonna enjoy. You, you want the, the, everybody to have fun at this.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  It's just always funnier because.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  Is it funnier for everybody or funnier to you? Or is it because you wanna share this fun?

• 41:16Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think it's infectious too. I think there's a part of it, you love it because you're like, we all have it in us. Like we all, like I was saying before, like we all wanna play. And I love that you, that it can be.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  You know, we've, and I've always said, like, we do not want people standing there watching us on the roller coaster. I would much rather we take everyone on the roller coaster and we're all on it together. It's just infectious. It's just more fun if everyone's on board.

• 41:43Speaker 00

  I don't reckon most of us change. We still got the boy in us.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  But we do, we do. Cause I mean, I'm sure you, you know, I think it's commonly understood. It's like, we don't, we just, you know, we're a tree. We just grow more layers on the outside.

• 41:55Speaker 00

  We think we grow up, but we don't.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  We don't. We just, we have the same core.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  I'm still the boy. I mean, I'm, I'm still the same kid that I've always, always had been. You know, you know, there's not too many guys like you and Andy, like together for a long time. I mean, I look at, there's a younger version of you today. That's the, the inspired unemployed boys. I mean, they're very similar to you two guys.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  And I love those boys.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  They're great. They're awesome. And, uh, but they're a much younger version. So they haven't actually stood the test of time yet, but like over time, I mean, they've gone through lots of ups and downs.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  And they have, but I, and I think, um, I sometimes, I do sometimes correct people when they're like, they're the next Jamie Shannon. Cause I'm like, they're so not in a good way.

• 42:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Like they're, they've got a great thing that they've discovered themselves. But one thing I love about those guys too, is and I really admire about them is their risk appetite. You know, their willingness to put themselves out there is what has earned them their very deserved rewards.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  And, and following.

• 42:50Speaker 00

  I agree with that.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  It's so, that's really infectious to watch the honesty with, with the way they put themselves out there. And it's those boys, plus I love that they've got all their mates around them too. There's like the supporting cast.

• 43:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  And I, I just think they're great. They're, they're actually really good humans at heart too, which I think you can feel. But again, they have a real just for fun element too. They love it. They love their, their, their, there's like, they're, they're a great example, I think of going, this is what, this is, this is the fun you can have if you're willing to as much as you can, like put ego aside and, and, you know, embrace the silliness in life and, and go on an adventure and, and, and that's what I mean by, you know, taking a big swing.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  The two of us are very close, similar to you and Andy. I mean, would you say that, and I don't want to be a bit weird, but you love Andy?

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, get weird. I love Andy.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're loving him to death.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  And of course I do, because he's just like. Yeah, thousand percent, of course.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  You know, and I love a lot of my mates, but it's a, it's a really, well, of all my mates. I don't want any mates looking at this going, God, have I made the cut? You know, I love you, I love you, I like you, Darren.

• 44:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I get that.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  So you feel, you feel a love for your mates, but for Annie, it's a really special kind of love because it's also a love forged by fire. Cause you've been in places that only the other guy would understand.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  Experiences. And so the two of you must be sitting back at the moment and looking at other long-term partnerships like Colin and Jackie at the moment, like you must be reflecting on that sort of situation and think, fuck, like.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Totally. I mean, that's, that's on a partnership level too. That's sad because you're like, no one ever wants it to end. Like it's really fun doing things with, when you find that special person, it's really fun doing things with that person.

• 44:48Speaker 00

  Does that galvanize you into being that, that, that event?

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 44:51Speaker 00

  Watching that from afar, does that galvanize you to, to sit back and be a bit more grateful about what you got? And does it make, give you a little reminder, let's, let's make sure we don't go down that path and end up that way, no matter what?

• 45:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wouldn't say it's that event particularly, but you, you always are aware that, hey, we're going to have extra pressures on us because we, our relationship's in the open and, um, and, and that carries with it every single day. Like when you're on radio, every day you're on air, you're, you don't know what you're going to say every day. No, no one does because there's too much talking. It would be physically impossible to script a radio show. There's too much talking. So you never know what you're going to say. So it's a huge trust exercise with the person you're on air with and it's, you know, it's the dance and, and anyone in radio knows this dance, whether it's two people, four people, five people, you're like all, every day trying

• 45:45Speaker 01

  to create something out of nothing with each other and, and you're taking tons and tons of risks, thousands of times a day to just see how it goes.

• 45:52Speaker 00

  With each other.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  With each other because you throw on something out there about the other person, about yourself, and you're always seeing how each other responds. And so.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  You know, anyone that does that dance is, is it has to be really skilled at it. And like, you know, obviously Colin and Jackie, they've been around for twenty four, twenty four years, I think it was. It's like unbelievably skilled and experienced people. So.

• 46:16Speaker 00

  And successful.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Crazy successful because of their skill, because of their, their talent as broadcasters. And so you know, you're in this game and but you also know, looking ahead, there, the road is littered with, you know, eventually most people, it comes to an end, like every good band and every, you know, there's that's so, you know, you're so aware that partnerships come to an end. So it's not like Anna and I have looked at the Colin Jack situation in particular, but we're always aware that like, well, we don't want this to end. And that's why we check in. We're like, are you still having fun? Are you still having fun? And we've always checked in along our career because we, there have been times we've done full time radio.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  There've been times we've done full time radio and full time television and that was just wild. Then we've done a little bit of radio and full time TV and we've always ebbed and flowed. But all those changes, I would say, have happened because preemptively we've gone, hey, before it gets too much, before this burns us out, I can feel it coming, not now, but maybe in a year. How would you feel about, you know, would we step back from the drive show? Could we do something different? And that's probably one of the things I'm most grateful for too. We've always, I reckon so far preempted a load that would break us and, and stayed ahead of that.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  Each one of you.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, you know, and I've had kids and Anna doesn't have kids or doesn't have kids yet too. So we've known there's different life pressures coming too. And so once the kids came along and I said, Tana, look. There's a, we've had a great time now of being super ambitious and, and, you know, and we can, we could have, we could afford to just kind of like prioritize TV and whatever we wanted to do, I think. But now with kids and, and it was awesome with this. And I said, I'm just not, I said, you know what? I think I've, I've known, I know enough people that are further down the road that look back and go, man, I can't believe I didn't go on a family holiday because I had a big deal at work going on or any of that.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  And I said, I, I'm, I've, I know enough to know that I will regret if I don't prioritize the kids, especially being in the extremely fortunate position that I can do this. I can be not busy. I can afford to be not busy and I can afford to be there and around the kids and make time and space to just do pickups, drop offs, take them out of school and go on adventures. And I'm going to do that. And he was great. He was like, all right, let's, let's adapt and, and we can shift our life.

• 48:53Speaker 00

  Cause I, cause I, I was going to ask you, you know, you're married to Zoe and um, you're, she's, she has her own business. How important is it that she's not, how important has it been for you, I should say, not generally speaking, but how important is it for you that she has her own purpose in life? And uh, outside of your joint purpose being your family, but how important has that been to make these things work?

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 49:16Speaker 00

  In your case.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  So how important is it for me that Zoe has her own, well, well, it's, it's important for me because Zoe needs that. If she didn't want to run a business, I would not be saying.

• 49:29Speaker 00

  Hey, go and get a business.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Go get a business. It's important to me. It's, it's important to me because it's important to her.

• 49:33Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  So my, you know, Zoe's an extremely driven, like unbelievably, she's a polymath. She's an all, like, I keep.

• 49:43Speaker 00

  She's good at everything.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  Saying to her all the time, hey, I think the reason you might be feeling like pretty stressed, like pretty overloaded is you have like three full-time jobs, like running, you know, being a founder of skincare company and coming up with new lines and new, um, you know, cool new products and doing package redesigns and launching new, you know, variants and like.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Having this company that has, you know, forty, fifty people and is successful. It's like, that's a full time job. Writing books, that is also a full time job. Being a mum, that's also a full time job. You have three full time jobs, but and you're trying to kind of do them all at once. And they don't, a lot of the jobs don't know about each other. So.

• 50:27Speaker 00

  Or care about each other.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Or care, so it's going to create like.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  Kids don't care about all that.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  There's going to be some tectonic plates that hit each other here. And so Zoe, but that's just always been Zoe's way. She's unbo, like from a young age, like she's just been like. She has a restless mind in the best possible way because she.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  Like a force of nature.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  She is a force of nature. So I love that about her because that's who she is. So that's why it's important for me to um make space for that and support her in the best ways I can. Sometimes that just means just getting out of the way, um which I do so, which I do lovingly. And um and then other times that means being the person that that she can, that being a rock that she can confide in and lean on when she, when she needs that.

• 51:12Speaker 00

  So do you notice any change then in regard, in regards to your relationship with Andy? Like when that happens, so you know, you meet him when you first meet her. And then you start going out with her and spending more time with her and maybe less time with him, perhaps, I don't know. Um and then he knows you're going to get married and then along come the kids. Um how, how do you guys manage that process? Do you, is it an open conversation? Hey mate, I'm married, I've got kids.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  No, no, I think we've actually always been pretty good at that side of things because even from um. Yeah, no, there was no point where I had to kick Andy out of the bed to be like, I'm sorry, mate.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  Move over.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Sorry, mate, we probably can't do this anymore. Um I, I actually think we were pretty well set up for that even from radio days. Cause we, we started doing, like the show was national and we were twenty five, I reckon, maybe twenty six. Like we were pretty young and the, the show was national and it was successful, like it was in its heyday. And.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  That was a lot. Like that was, you know, you're traveling every week. You're in different capital cities and doing crazy things with the radio show. And I think from that pressure cooker, we also learnt in the early days that like, okay, we need to kind of cultivate our own lives outside of each other.

• 52:25Speaker 00

  Like an agreement, like an unsaid agreement, so to speak.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  It's just mentally, we understood that like, hey, we're probably not going to see each other this weekend.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  For two reasons, A, we've already seen each other for about a hundred hours this week. But also, so I'm good. Love seeing you, but I do have other people I need to see. And same with Ando, but we also realised too, we have to live our own lives because then when we get back together to the radio show, we need to have something to talk about.

• 52:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, some new experiences.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  We need some new experiences. We can't start every story and have the other guy go, yeah, I was there.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  So we, we actually got pretty good by necessity at having our own lives early, early doors.

• 53:04Speaker 00

  Does your experience being married and having children, does that then inspire you? Did that then inspire you to have, you know, that you have a podcast about dads being dads?

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  Because it seems like you nearly turn um the curiosity into a show which turns into a business. Like in other words, I'm interested in this, this thing. I wouldn't mind finding out more about it from other dads.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  So therefore I might make a show about it.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 53:33Speaker 00

  And that show becomes part of your inventory.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, we never, to be a business, we did have a sponsor to pay Tim who had to quit his job to edit the show. But doing that show, How Are The Dads Dad? That was a, I actually, you know, because we both have experience being at podcast networks, the podcast network we do, the Haven Shiny Podcast, they were like, please give us this show so we could, and, and, and especially for season one, I was like.

• 53:58Speaker 00

  They asked you or you put it to them?

• 53:59Speaker 01

  No, they asked me.

• 54:00Speaker 00

  Oh, right.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Because they were like, oh, you're doing another, yeah, please do it with us. Like, are you doing a show? And I said, with the greatest love and respect, it's more important that I just do this in a little apartment in Bondi with my mate Tim. And we don't do, it's not sponsored because I think I would, I would hate for it to feel, because it was really from the heart. Like that show, How Are The Dads Dad? We've done three seasons and we are coming back to it.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  It it's so from the heart. I was like, I would just, I think this whole thing falls apart if it feels like it was for CommBank or whatever.

• 54:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Um, even though I think audiences understand, like at some point you do have to pay the bills and you have to pay people that have, you know, can't just do this for fun. Uh, that was a really important one. And I, and so how the dad's dad, I, I love doing. And it was a bit of a scary, that was a bit of a leap for me to like purely curiosity led, but without the safety blanket of comedy, because I, I also sort of made the decision earlier. I was like, I think this has to be a not a funny show. And that was really scary for me to do.

• 55:09Speaker 00

  But it's not meant to be funny.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Not meant to be funny. I mean, I'm, I'm not, I don't stop recording if someone makes a joke.

• 55:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  But I was like, I think it'll lose its meaning to if, if, if people come to the show thinking we have to find funny things about being, there's plenty of that. And there's like great, millions of hours of great stand up on parenting. But I was like, I don't think, I don't want to do that for this. I think there's a deeper thing at play. I think men really do want to talk about being dads and, and the fact that when you're, that anyone that's a younger dad or any dad is trying to do it different than their dad did it. And sometimes you have, you're, you're borrowing from your father's playbook. But other times, and I'd include myself in this with all due respect to my old man, I'm not borrowing from his playbook.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  I feel like this whole thing started because I was like, I, I feel like a lot of the ways that I'm a dad. If I really dig down on it, some of my core philosophies are just like things I overheard someone say at a barbecue. And I'm like, oh, that's a cool thing to do.

• 56:10Speaker 00

  I'll try that.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  I might do that. And I was like, I think we're doing that a lot as dads because there's not tons of resources necessarily for dads these days. There are good resources, but not, we're not flooded. Um, and I was like, I, I think I, I would like to listen to this show where you're. Essentially just stealing the wisdom of other men that I think are good dads. And we're, we're sharing it and you're, you're picking up some of those, picking up some of those tips and philosophies and overarching ideas. And I also just think I'd never get sick of hearing examples of good dads ever. I could just hear it all day.

• 56:45Speaker 00

  It's funny, you said something interesting. I mean, I borrowed from my dad's playbook, but that was just be dad, go out and earn as much money as you can. Work as hard as you can. It doesn't really matter what happens to the kids at home. It doesn't matter if they see you, they don't see you, if you don't turn up or you do turn up. And that playbook piece might be, today might be the wrong way to go about it. Unless you had the perfect dad, you know, the playbook piece. Cause I mean, I just employed the playbook. I mean, I'm a lot older than you and I just took something out of something that happened in the sixties. You know, and today the world's different. Kids want more things. Kids expect something, not don't expect, but kids.

• 57:22Speaker 00

  Well, there's more opportunity for us to share every moment with them. And I think what you're doing is a great job. Like, you know, like you said, you don't, you can manage your life around spending more time with the kids.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:32Speaker 00

  Which is probably what your dad didn't do because he was so busy putting irrigation pipes in and leaving at seven o'clock in the morning or six thirty in the morning to get to someone by seven AM because he's a tradie. And he got home late night, he's probably stuffed. And probably the reason you're trying to get a rise out of it, mate, dad, you're just always thinking about work.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  And, and that's that balance that I reckon a lot of guys have these days, you know, people with young, young or youngish kids.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  You're at the same time, I think, going, I can, I understand why dad had to do what he did. So I'm not, there's no resentment there. There's a, there's a.

• 58:07Speaker 00

  Oh, no resentment, no.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  He was a man doing the best he could with what he had and, and I understand his decisions. But at the same time, I'm not going to do that. So when you make that choice to go, well, I'm not going to be like that. You go, all right, so what am I gonna be? And that's that, I think, especially when you're new to fatherhood, they have that feeling of going, um, all right, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna write my own playbook here and, and, and where I'm gonna get that information from.

• 58:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, for, for me, that's a pretty cool position to be in. I mean, do you actually sit down with Zoe and say to her, look how lucky we are that we can actually do this, you know, we're gonna write our own playbook?

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And, and, and it's scary and you make a lot of mistakes and

• 58:50Speaker 00

  That part's okay.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  That's fine. That's probably one of the greatest, you know, in terms of gratitude, like, you know, the fact that you get to kind of try again and your kids just generally are so forgiving, especially when they're little.

• 59:04Speaker 00

  And they don't remember anyway.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Thank God. Well, yeah, they don't, there's that old saying of

• 59:08Speaker 00

  Unless it's systemic, but like, you know.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  There is that old saying of they don't remember anything you say, they just remember how they felt.

• 59:14Speaker 00

  And what they saw you do.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  And what they saw you do. And so, and, and that, that's, that's a huge part of it too. And, and I do believe what they, you need to be there for them to see.

• 59:25Speaker 00

  For them to see what you do. No, a hundred percent, as opposed to them just saying, oh, dad just goes to work all the time.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I know that's a reality for a lot of dads and there's zero judgment there. And there's a lot of,

• 59:36Speaker 01

  you know, and that's, that's a lot of people's reality. So it's certainly not saying you've got to be in your kids' face 24/7, of course not, because they also, you know, for the moms and dads that are out there like working hard and, and that's more and more the reality these days, like things, things are harder and harder.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  Kids do see that and there's a huge, I think there's a huge benefit to that. They're like, this is what it takes to be an adult. Um, this is what it takes to do this for you guys. And then there's the other bits where you are there and how do you, how do you manage those and what do you stand for and what are your pillars when you're there?

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  So you've just kicked off your podcast again for 2026, as it starts in March or something.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:12Speaker 00

  But you have quite a long break. I love this part. I mean, I love this part.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Thank God someone loves it because I, it's tough, but it is the government mandated podcasting break.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  Can you just go through that? Because this, this government mandate, this is like, what do you have, three months? What, what's the deal?

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was getting ready to go to the podcast a few months ago, walking out the door. And the kid's like, where are you going? I was like, guys, I'm podcasting. They're like, you've done that for ages. I was like, I mean, well, sneaks up on you guys. It's been eight weeks. And then Zo goes, 12, mate. I was like, has it been 12? It has been 12. Again, with the work-life balance, we kind of just sat down at the start of podcasting and went, and you know this about podcasting, it's like you make your own rules. You could be like, hey, guys, we're gonna do a season of the show and it's eight weeks. And everyone goes, all right. Or you could do a season and it's 100 episodes. And everyone goes, all right. You just kind of make your own rules. So we thought it felt about right to do 40 weeks

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  a year. And then, um, it did, I mean, it did over time evolve into, um, I guess we'd like rather just say, hey, we want 12 weeks off. Um, it's become known as the government mandated podcasting break, which is, um, it's really, it's, it's, it's difficult for us, but that's, I don't know if you know this or not, but the government, to avoid podcaster burnout, which is one of the government's big priorities, um, they, yeah, they, they make us take.

• 1:01:35Speaker 00

  Most people don't know that.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Most people don't know that.

• 1:01:37Speaker 00

  Audience, audience.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  But we spend most of the break fighting the bastards that so far just blocked.

• 1:01:45Speaker 00

  Mandate you.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Just blocked it every road, but we'll never stop the fight. And, um, who knows? Maybe we'll see a future where that break could come down to 10 weeks or.

• 1:01:54Speaker 00

  Cause you're just waiting, you just can't wait to get.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Okay, where we're just at home rehearsing, um, just making sure, lining up our pencils and our pads, like just getting really ready, doing mic checks, charging out the batteries, just for the cameras, just.

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  Practicing in front of the mirror.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  Ready to go, ready to go. But then that 12 weeks, that does fly by and then you're back into it for 40 relentless weeks a year.

• 1:02:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. What's interesting about that too, you know, is, um, in, in terms of the way you think, you mentioned something interesting there. You just, you, you said, okay, well, that's what we want to do for our work-life balance, call it that. Um, but what we'll do is we'll turn this into an algorithm. We'll talk about a season, 40 week season. Um, and we need, we'll take 12 weeks off, but that 12 weeks, we'll actually allocate something around that. We call it the, you know, the government mandated period. Um, and the whole thing. You know, like, most people are looking to go, oh, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good. Um, and but all you've done is you delivered some logic. It's mathematical.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, and it makes it.

• 1:02:53Speaker 00

  It's logical.

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  I I do think it makes the show better because we, you know, it's kind of like it was a good reset. I actually think.

• 1:03:01Speaker 00

  It's good for you, yes.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  I really like that twelve week holiday. Yeah.

• 1:03:06Speaker 00

  But do you think people are hanging out saying, oh, fuck, I'm missing out on the show. I wanted to come back?

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  I think we've pushed it to the limit. We do get people towards the end being like, hey, guys.

• 1:03:14Speaker 00

  So the footy season is starting.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  Do your fucking show. It's fifty minutes a week.

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, when you start.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Get back on and do the show. But it does. It does work for us for, for, for, you know, recharging. We also kind of knock off. You know, you can wrap up other TV projects at the end of the year. It does. It creates a little bit of.

• 1:03:29Speaker 00

  It's not like you're doing nothing, but yeah.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  Again, it is that thing that we sort of to to actually peel the curtain back a little bit. It's that making sure you've got that it never becomes a burden. I would hate, especially for our podcast, ever feel like it doesn't. Our podcast is one thousand percent our favorite part of the week. We are like busting to get in there.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  We deliberately cap the shows at about forty five, fifty minutes because as podcast listeners ourselves, we're like, I know I've had comedy shows that I really enjoy, but I haven't listened to for a few weeks. And then I look at the, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm thirty episodes behind. And I just mentally, I'm like, eh, it's too, like, you know, it's too many.

• 1:04:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  We've always tried to keep it that amount, just so it feels like everyone can still be up to date with it. So it is a bit of a chance for people to kind of get through the backlog towards the end of the year. And our main goal is to never, ever, ever have the podcast feel like, um, it's it's thin. Like, every episode is always jam packed. We have too much. We record too much stuff for an episode. That's fine. That's kind of the way we like it because we're so excited to be in there. We've, we've had the podcast and people come and go, well, just do two eps a week. And I'm like, yeah, but then if it's, if we had two, like just enough episodes, it just isn't the same energy as one jam packed one. So that's the way we like it.

• 1:04:56Speaker 00

  I just love this, this, the way you guys, you structure everything and, and I have to say like, um, this has been a lot of fun to me. By the way, I'm just finding out how you think. Cause the bit, the most exciting days of my week is when I'm doing my podcasts and I get to meet people like you and I get to find it, learn how people think. It's crazy.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  I, I agree. There is an energy to that too, isn't there? Uh, when talking about how are the dads dad? Sometimes we record three of those in a day. Like I know you do a fair few of these in a day too. Do you get tired from it or do you get energized?

• 1:05:28Speaker 00

  I get tired after.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  Like when I get home, I'm, I'm like, I'm, I'm gone. But like during the process, I'm okay. I don't know whether it's because there's a lot of coffee in between.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  Nah, I think it's funny because when we did how the dad's dad, I was like, I was expecting to be cooked. But I was like buzzing afterwards. And I think it has something to do with when you're curious and you're in like mentally engaged. I don't know. You're just in the right place. I think it's a good indicator that you're in the right spot, that your brain's energized by it.

• 1:05:54Speaker 00

  I should come on your dad's, uh, dad's dad, because I've got four sons and I've got, uh, five grandkids. So I'm granddadding as well. And it's a completely different process to being a dad. How am I feel? I love it. But, uh, it's a, and the kids have all got different characteristics and personalities, et cetera, the grandkids that is. And, um, and I just, yeah, it's, it's an amazing experience for me.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Do you reckon, what do you reckon you had doing differently as a granddad than you did as a dad?

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  Much more present.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, interesting.

• 1:06:23Speaker 00

  And doing silly things like, like on Sunday, um, I had Billy come over and he's two. And we laid down on the bunk bed. I've, you know, I've got bunk beds and everything for all the grandkids.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Which is beautiful. Not every grandpa does that.

• 1:06:35Speaker 00

  And I'm laying on the bunk bed with him and it's, he loves this. It's so silly, but he wants to go, I've got a table tennis. We got two orange table tennis balls. He holds me and goes, get two orange table tennis balls. And we would just lay on the bed, on the bottom bank bunk. And he wants me to throw the ball, my one up and he, and then hit the, the, the top bunk and it bounces down. He laughs his head off and he does exactly the same. And I thought. This is entertaining. I could have sat there for hours doing it so easily entertained and just laughing and giggling. And my life's fairly complex in terms of my business world. And, uh, and I thought, how nice is this? Like, it's therapy.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  It's therapy.

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  It's the best.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  Mate, it makes me get a little bit teary because I think that's, that's the point of life. You know, it's the, it's the, it's actually the connections, like it's in the little moments. I think it's easy to think that it's the trips to Disneyland or.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  No, it's not.

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 1:07:26Speaker 00

  They're nightmares, by the way.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:07:28Speaker 00

  I lost one kid at Disneyland. I lost him for two and a half hours.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  So you had five, did you? Oh no, you got him back.

• 1:07:32Speaker 00

  I got him back. That's quick. Very good.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Sorry to, sorry to hear that. I'm, you know, we're meant to be going to L A Disneyland.

• 1:07:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, L A Disneyland.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we're going next year. I'll have, keep a lookout for it.

• 1:07:44Speaker 00

  Mate, it's mental there, by the way.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  If I see a kid that looks like you, who'd be about twenty five.

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  Maybe about, maybe even a bit older. Just say, I know your dad.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  Mate, come with me. I know where your dad is.

• 1:07:54Speaker 00

  Come on, take you home.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  Still got your passport?

• 1:07:56Speaker 00

  Good to see him.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Mate, thank you.

• 1:07:57Speaker 00

  That was awesome. That was awesome. So good.