Best of 2019

Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, miniature mouse to the armchair expert, best of 2019 show. Yes, and we should say our best of year one was in February, because that was our anniversary. Oh, okay. But now we're making it just a yearly regular calendar year best of.

Okay, so not the fiscal calendar or the school calendar. Exactly. Okay, so what does that mean? There'll be some some best of that were already on the best up?

I don't think so. All of them are from 2019. Right. And maybe there's a couple overlap.

I can't remember. Who knows? The bottom line is it has been a phenomenal year for us. Yes.

So much love and thanks to everyone that listens to the show. We love you. I mean, really, really, really, we love you. Yeah, so grateful.

No, but we're all incredibly, incredibly lucky. Wobby Wobbe Wobbe-Wob, Monica and I that you guys listen. Yes. We're eternally grateful.

We've had so much fun going on in the road this year. We've had so many fun shows and it was so wonderful meeting. You know, ultimately, what do we mean? Wobby Wobbe, 50,000 armchairries.

More than that. Yeah, about that. Somewhere in that range. Wow.

Just the most beautiful group of people we feel so grateful and honored that you guys like what we're talking about and relate to it and it makes us feel more connected, and less alone, to have you guys enjoying the same stuff we are. And we hope you love 2019 and we hope that you'll stick around for 2020. Yeah. Monica, any dream guests for 2020?

Next year, Mindy Kaling should come on. Donald Glover should come on. Yep. Yep.

Who else? A lot of people. Obama should come on. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. Michelle should come on. Separately. Barack and Michelle separately and together.

Yes. Couples one and a singles one. Exactly. It will be like couples therapy where you first talk to each person individually and then bring them in.

That's right. Wobby Wobbe, you have a dream guest? Uh, Tom York, I think. Oh.

Okay. Do you even know who that is Monica? No. Go ahead.

Did I get it? Yep. That's right. Yeah.

Got it. Some really good solo stuff too. And then mine, Brad Pitt, Channing, Tatum. Yeah.

Yeah, boys. What are you doing? Oh, here's a couple more. It's just fun ones.

Um, Will Smith. I just, people I follow on Instagram that I want to talk to, Shaquille O'Neal, with love too. Will Smith, all these people who provide me so much joy scanning through my Instagram. Yeah.

We want everyone to come on. We want everyone. Everyone you're invited. We love you so much.

Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Merry Christmas. All the other salutations.

Mm-hmm. He's an on channel. He's an on channel. He's an on channel.

He's an on channel. He's an on channel. He's an on channel. He's an on channel.

One of my favorite chapters of yours is on dyslexia because I am dyslexic. I had grown up with the knowledge that, oh yeah, you're twice as likely to go to jail if you're, or be imprisoned if you're dyslexic. But, and then you revealed you're also twice as likely to be a CEO. Can I, is that, did I get it roughly right?

It's not the numbers. I mean, you're, you're conceptually that is correct. I think I'm wrong. You see the more disowned roots.

I know. It's a curve. It's like dyslexics are overloaded at the tails of the curve. Like, more of them in prison.

More of them super high achievers. Whereas non dyslexics are a normal bell curve with most of the people in the middle. And I found that to be very comforting and wonderful as a dyslexic. And in that story, you articulate, you give, you know, I'm so happy that you're here because you talk about this stuff all the time.

You are getting it probably a little wrong. So I'm so glad we're going to get all the answers this time. But I think what I interpreted that point was is struggles and coping mechanisms and having to strengthen other aspects can be of great value in your life. Yeah.

My friend David Epstein, who wrote this brilliant book called range uses the phrase in his book strategic difficulty. And David and Goliath, I talk about desirable difficulty. And they're both these similar notions of if it's too hard, it's a problem. If you have too many problems, you can't get ahead.

And if you have no problems, it's a problem. Right. What you want is something that in the course of being challenged the right amount, you're forced to be resourceful. You will learn things in a more profound way.

You will investigate your own strengths and weaknesses more aggressively. There's all kinds of good things that happen from. And I feel like the reason that's such an important point is that a lot of people think that what preparation for excellence is the removal of difficulty. Right.

I want to give you the very, very, very best endowed overly resourced environment imaginable. No obstacles. Right. You don't want that.

You want to have something that you have to wrestle with. And I was like, I don't ever want to be a dishonest or cheat or lie. You know what I mean? And I wanted to be independent so I never had to rely on a man because that was my father and that was what men looked like.

And the other issue was that my brother died when he was nine and swore to me like on our last night, you know, that he was coming back. And he's like, I will never leave you with these crazy people referring to my parents. He was the oldest and I was the youngest. So we were bookends.

Six of you. Yeah. And so he was like my first crush. And Monica, he went hiking in the Grand Tetons in Jackson Hole, right?

Yeah. And then he fell off a cliff. Oh, cool. That was pretty brutal.

And until I met this psychiatrist who I actually interviewed on my Netflix show for an episode on like early education and adolescent brain development, he explained to me that like, you know, when something like that happens when you're nine years old, you get stuck, you're stunted from that age because you have to wrap yourself up so you don't feel the pain. My father fell apart. My mother fell apart. Everyone just retreated into their own corners.

And until somebody said, you as a nine year old, you digested that as rejection. He rejected you. He went off and found another family. Well, he cared about something more than you.

He valued this trip weirdly more than you. And he wasn't careful. He wasn't carefully told me he was going to come back and he lied to me. So in my nine year old head, that was, oh, you can never trust men.

They will always lie to you. Even though I was like, it's so obvious, but yet until you do that work and like kind of talk to someone who's a professional and studies that, I didn't realize I was acting like a nine year old with regard to any men. So back to what we were talking about at the beginning, how men are fucking scared of me. I'm fucking scared of that.

Yeah. You know. 100%. Which is obviously like class A, whatever, you know, typical textbook behavior, but it helps to hear it from someone that has nothing to do with your life.

Because I think, you know, for me, I never wanted to go to therapy and really dig it up because I thought I was too smart. I'm like, that's not, I know my brother died. I know my problems, but whatever, it's working. I'm strong.

You know, I've got my shit together. I've got a career. I've got everything I wanted in my life, my friends, my family, blah, blah, blah. You know, to hit 40 and all of a sudden go, what the fuck is going on?

Why am I acting like this? But it was so worthwhile to like actually have a professional that you're paying. Yeah. You know what I mean?

I like that exchange. I want somebody to get money for it. Yeah, 100%. And I was, you know, a very sensitive, continued to be a very sensitive person.

And I look back at that though. And my goal was so to be liked. It's amazing how these people who are not kind to me, but I so desperately wanted them to like me. I'm almost like a dog returning to its vomit.

It's, you know, the kind of sense like, you shit on me, but I'm going to make it my goal for you to like me. And so I became all things to whoever anybody wanted. Right. It's amazing how like I even told this one girl, this is so awful, but she had this tragic thing.

Someone died very close to her. And this is when I was near the school. I went so bad for her to like me. I told her my sister had died.

Oh, wow. Oh, boy. That's really raw. And by the way, she could care less.

But I had to live for the rest of my television experience with her thinking I had a dead sister petriating this. And it's like, I'm just like the depth of that brokenness of wanting her, this popular girl to like me and her having, they how unbelievably selfish and narcissistic that is to do that to somebody, but just coming from a place of like, like me, please, if you like me, then they'll like me. It'll be a domino effect. I have found myself over the years, not even because you and I are friends, but because I recognize I feel like where it's coming from.

I've always felt very defensive of you because you, you seem to trigger people. Yeah. You trigger people and it drives me bonkers. It really drives me bonkers.

I think because in sobriety, our main focus is really kind of isolating. What are our fears? Because our fears are basically driving the ship and until you understand what you're afraid of, you're not going to understand what course you're on. Right.

So when you see someone that's mad at you, to me, it seems so obvious. Oh, there's something about her that when they look at her, they feel less than, which is their issue and a sad issue, a terribly sad issue for that person. But there've been a couple of things over the years where I'm like, you guys are so mad. She said this conscious, uncoupling that became a firestorm.

Right. Yeah. And I remember thinking, why is everyone's what is going on? That's not even you didn't make up conscious.

No, it had been coined, I think in the 70s and it's such a beautiful concept, right? It's like, you know, you're staring down the barrel of a divorce, your worst outcome possible, especially, you know, I, my parents were married till my dad died. I'm all my best friends. I've been friends with from elementary school, middle school.

I'm all their parents were married. They all married like college or high school person. They're all still married. You know, I just didn't come from a world where there was a lot of divorce.

And as I looked around and sort of knew that we were, this was happening, I thought, you know, I'm going to try to collect a little data around how children have been impacted by divorce. And again, sorry to overuse the word would be intentional about avoiding those common pitfalls. Like what are the common themes here that we see? And the most common wounds that I heard from children of divorce was, you know, my parents couldn't be in the same room and couldn't be friends.

And it took three years. It took 18 years. It took, you know, God forbid the death of a close family member for them to sit at the same table. And I just thought like, I wonder if there's a way to circumvent that and just go directly to the point where we're friends and we remember what we loved about each other and constantly acknowledge that we created these two incredible human beings together and art.

We co-mingled our DNA. We're family. That's it. So we can pretend we're not and hate each other and, you know, drop a kid at the end of the driveway and not come in or like, let's try to reinvent this for ourselves.

And so I think at the time, honestly, I was in a lot of pain. It was so difficult. It felt like such a failure to me. And it was so hard and I was so worried about my kids.

So then there was this whole other layer of like a world turning on us about saying essentially, we're just want to be nice to each other and try to stay. We're going to do this without a ton of wreckage. No wreckage. And it was brutal because I already felt like I had no skin on, you know.

But as happens to me in my life and I like my pattern recognition, I can see that I think the whole point of being here is to try to optimize yourself as much as possible. Like be as accountable for your shit as possible. Like stretch yourself, grow. Do the uncomfortable thing like in the name of something bigger and more beneficial for your family or your community.

And sometimes I've said things and it's been too early in the culture or whatever. Right. Yeah. And that's okay.

Like, you know, of course, sometimes I've gotten my feelings hurt, but then I always think, you know, I really feel like I do things from a place of being in integrity, not that I don't make mistakes, but I try to align my words and my actions as closely as possible. Yeah. But I think at the end of the day, when you really believe in what you're doing, it doesn't resonate in a way that like breaks you apart, you know, because you believe in what you're doing. My wife loved you guys because that loves and they're not past tense, but she I so I respect you so much because I needed this right now.

Yeah. I needed that. Someone like you. Yeah.

We share this in common that like my identity is very much her and I, especially publicly. Right. And your identity is very much you empath. Oh, yeah.

So you have the one layer of just heartbreak of losing your best friend and your wife and your partner. That's that's identity shattering. Right. And then you have you're a thing.

Right. You guys are one thing. Imagine what your identity is without half of you. Right.

And that's got to be terribly frightening. Well, and I googled it. You did. And it says you adapt, you get smarter.

She used to tease me. She told me from the cradle from 18 years old. I had it to she's 51. Yeah.

I don't. It's all those little tiny. It's all those little orders shit at a restaurant. Yeah.

Because I'm like, I'm not old, but I want to turn on my cell phone and make everybody's gonna look at me especially the girls go fucking dogs. He had another look he's blind or he wants to be seen that's why he's got a light on. You know how we get, you know, yeah. And I don't know.

And then I'm afraid to say to Jillian, Jillian, what are you eating? So what I've been doing is listening to my brother David or someone at the table. What do you want? I go, you go first and then I'd like fuck, I'm so lost.

Yeah. But it's like I depended on her for so much. Yeah. That she you're probably not even fully aware of it until it's gone.

Like I'm saying, no, you're probably just when you're around people, especially like you're strong and then all of a sudden you're all alone or you wake up and you go two minutes about realize that she's gone. And then you feel like shit. You feel guilty, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Oh shit. This morning I got out right the alarm went off that I sat on my freaking phones and then I'm like get a shower. I know like a coffee at Starbucks last night.

Everything's okay. I'm thinking of thinking of all of a sudden I'm like fuck you here. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Because you know, it's what a terrible shit. What a the Bible says in that the last enemy that shall be whipped is death. I'm on that fucking team when he does that. I want to be right there because it is freaking hard.

I had a dream. I have visions and I'm she's in heaven and she looks up. My God big daddy's gonna love here. Look at all the animals.

Like look around the corner. Where are they? And then she's watering the garden looks exactly the same. Watering and I used to sneak up on her boot and she would try to sneak up on me.

I'm like, that you can't do that. She tried all almost every day. And so I went, boo, and she turned around and laughed. She goes, big daddy, what took you so long and started crying.

So what I've said and when I'm developing is wait till you see dog without death. I swear to God, I'm wearing a seatbelt, cups of sugar. I love it. And I'm not gonna jump in front of a train, but I'm afraid of died no more.

And I a lot of reasons I didn't go after certain people or go through them doors is that not the fear of death. But what if I leave her alone, right? And she finds another man and he's better to her than me. And she marries it.

Puck that off. I ain't no more. I'm not afraid to die. And it's you know, the fear is gone.

E-Haul, if it happens, it happens. Is it house down there, but I'm not staying long ago? The work you're doing that brought you to my attention is very tasty. So I kind of want to say right now kind of what your work is and then I want to go back and figure out how we got there.

Well, what I mentioned in my to talk was that in my role in my clinical practice, when I started this clinic in this neighborhood in San Francisco, what I quickly discovered was that there was an exposure that dramatically increased my patients risk of long-term health problems and that we're talking about in very high doses, right? We're talking about triple the risk of heart disease, triple the risk of lung cancer and a 20 year difference in life expectancy. And so if this were some packaging chemical or some BPA. Exactly.

It would be like, hold off the shelves in a minute. Like, and by the way, it's not only harmful, but it's something that two thirds of our population is exposed to, but it turns out that it's not packaging chemical. It's childhood adversity, which we would in general, the lay person would just say trauma. Yeah, is that what we're talking about?

That's right. That's part of the reason why I use the word adversity rather than trauma is because I think that for a lot of people, it's so common that they almost kind of don't think about it as trauma. Right. Right.

So first, let me say that this research, the science of this came from a huge study from the CDC, right? We trust them. And yes, and Kaiser Permanente, these are like big, well respected healthcare institutions. And they did this study in 17,500 people, and they asked them about 10 categories of childhood adversity.

And these include physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, physical or emotional neglect, or growing up in a household where parent was mentally ill, substance dependent, incarcerated, where there was parental separation or divorce, or domestic violence. Girl, I got like seven of those. You just click through those. I don't think I've any.

God bless you. That's why you drink so readily and with ease and without any pathology. Yeah, that's true. I mean, that's really what's going on here.

Yeah. Adverse childhood experiences. Yeah, he's just ... I want people to like me.

Yeah. Something I still haven't really worked on. It was important. He was imparting this lesson to me and ...

Like have boundaries. Exactly. Exactly. Because I was feeling guilty that, oh I said, those people wait and I didn't give them enough.

You know, so a couple of nights later, I came back to the bar and this was fairly empty. And it was my last night of shooting this movie and I went out with one of the actresses and these two PAs. A guy in a girl. And of course, like I go to the bar, get my two shots and these guys, I just remember the feeling of ...

I just found some new age, but I had this weird energy, the dark energy. And they said, what happened to you the other night? I said, what do you mean? And you guys removed into some like fancy area, like this is all fucking bar, bro.

And I said, oh, of course I'm, you know, of course I'm, so, and they played right into my vulnerability, which was, I'm just like you, I grew up in a town like this. And I said, I'm so sorry, let's do a shot together. And they were like, all right man. And they must have sensed that that was my weakness because they kept coming over to our table and oh, you guys know the big shot.

And I'm Mr. Holly went, I'm like, no, no, no. So at the end of the night, this is only we were there for a couple hours and I was a little buzzed and we were leaving and the guys, said it was two in the morning in Birmingham. And they said, do you wanna go to a casino?

We're going to a casino and I, and thank God the actress said no, I wanna go home and the PA said, yeah, we'll go. And I was eager to go because I love playing blackjack and I hadn't been there, I hadn't been to the Detroit. Casino's, I thought two in the morning kind of drunk with strangers when we got to go. Yeah, yeah.

So we're going to, I'm headed to the PA's car and they said, they're all com townies for the second. Sure, that's right. The townies said why don't we all take the same car? The PA's like, no, no, no, I said, and they said, oh, you think we're gonna do something in the hallway?

And I said, yeah guys, come on, we're all gonna say, no, no, okay, no, which is crazy. Okay, no, good question. No, I'm like, where's my money? I don't wanna pick up up, you know.

I don't wanna pick up up. I'm just gonna be getting shot out of it but I'm waiting. So I run out to the car, I got my money and they stop at their condo. They said we're gonna make a stop, I forget why.

And as we were going in, I remember they made a big deal I'd take your shoes off, go in quiet, they had a roommate that was sleeping, took my shoes off. They took out a bong and they passed it to me. They lit it and I said, oh no, you know, I'm okay. I went up my wits about me because I'm playing blackjack and they said, are you fucking kidding bro?

And now you're not gonna smoke with this bro, come on. So there I go. Everything's like a huge test. You're failing a test.

Yeah, I knew you were a piece of shit. Yeah, I'm confirmed, yeah. So of course I take a big hit of this and the second it hits my mouth, I know the taste was kind of chemically kind of clear tasting. That's where I can describe it.

And I just ripped this crazy and I mind, I just remember the feeling of like immediately losing control of my, not the point of my shit, but like, I wish, I wish. I wish, I wish. I wish, I wish. You didn't say you did it.

I thought you were gonna step one, get my fist. You can fact check that, I didn't even find out I did it. My mind wasn't working. I was the strangest thing.

Anything was angel dust? Well, I've since told the story to people in his one guy who took it on private security and he thought a PCP. Yeah, that's the same thing. Yeah, yeah.

And yeah, so I'm panicking. And the PAs didn't smoke. Well, the girl did. Okay.

And she, like this. Oh boy. It looks like a demented, like some cartoon character, you know, like a test man, you know, like, like, right in the simply kind of like, right in the middle over the top. And I'm not thinking myself, am I, do I look like this?

You know, I feel like that. Yeah. And the guy didn't, he had him drinking, and saying, or nor is he saying, like, then I passed the bonk back to the two towns and they were studying me kind of like, and looking at each other like conspiratorially, like, is it working kind of? And I said, are you going to smoke?

But I probably came out like this, we'll make it a dream. And they said, no, no, bro, we're straight. Are you cool? Is everything okay?

Oh, right. And you're probably having a hard time navigating what's now paranoia and what's really happening. Totally. Yeah.

Cause you're probably your spidey sense circle bonkers that they gave you something that they're not doing. Yes. But you're also going, maybe I'm being paranoid. There's a part of me that is, I'm like hoping.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's just the drug. And then he said, and he keeps getting worse.

And they say, let's go get Sean. I said, I said, okay, I thought you were sleeping. One of them stood up to go get the roommate. And I stood up.

And the remaining town, he started doing these karate kicks at my face. Like, it was like in Boogie Nights, you know, where that crystal meth scene where he was saying things like, whoa, whoa, bro, you go sit down, calm down, karate kicks on my face. And the roommate came out fully dressed, wasn't sleeping. And he said, oh yeah, you're right.

That is the guy. Let me go get my camera. Oh, yeah. This is a horror story.

But I didn't know. I didn't know. Yeah, you wanted to punchline. So now I'm fully panicking.

And this is before everyone had cameras with them, mercifully. This is like 13 years ago. This is 2007. It was two days before 12 years ago.

July, July, second. Now that I remember. Aaron Wiggly's birthday. Oh, really?

And he was there. He could have rescued you. Oh my God. You would have loved to have.

He would have needed him. He would have come in like a whirling nervous. He's not after. Yeah.

So we, I convinced them to too to drive me back. And they were guilty the whole time. And saying things like, what about the, you know, you can't do it. What about that movie you do?

Strange, we'll do it. We get the car on the back seat with the two PAs, the girls next to me. The two guys are driving there in front and they kind of whispering back and forth and they're texting somebody. And they're saying things like, I think I can hear snippets like, yeah, we go, we're coming up.

We're coming up. And they would lean back to me and say, all right, bro, we're going to make one more stop. And that'll be it. Okay.

Justin? They started saying like, can you strange wilderness? Yeah. They started saying like, oh, we make another movie.

You want to be a movie for TMZ or YouTube? Oh my God. Yeah. And I'm panicking.

And the girl, it senses that I'm panicking. She was probably clearly like, yeah. And she, I remember this is the worst part. What are you guys doing?

He's freaking out. Don't do this. What are you doing? And they said, fuck up.

We don't do this thing. We got it. We got it. We got it.

And she leaned back to me and she goes, okay, Justin. They're going to take you home. Everything's going to be fine. You know, and now she's the girl.

As is the silent other P.A. who they're in the kidnapping movie, they're the ones who were like, guys, we're not really doing this. Are we coming? Right.

Because they were locals. I didn't really know that. I've been working with them for two weeks and I like them. But yeah, I didn't really know them.

And sure. So now I think I'm going to die. So, I'm going to die. Beautiful.

I'm just going to die. I'm going to die. Oh, fuck. I thought about giving them, but this was also my body at this point.

The idea of taking out my phone and dialing numbers is an impossible feature. So I'm just like, I don't know. So I started like freaking out punching the seat in front of me. And the worst part was they said they tried to modify me.

They were like, okay, Justin, calm down. It's going to be okay. And sure enough. I knew the town well enough to know they had been going in the wrong direction.

And then they reverse course and they started going back to the towns and suites. And I was somewhat relieved. I remember thinking, okay, thank God. They were fucking with me.

They were scared. they slow down and here we go and they kept going. And I said, what are you doing? It was back there.

It's okay. We're just going to make one more stop. There's that. They want to be calm.

And that was the scariest part. Yeah. So then I saw a red light coming up and there's no one. It's three in the morning.

Yeah. No one on the road. So I'm coming up to this red light and I think, OK, I'm going to get out and I'll just run to the, but I, and they go right through the red light. Oh, they blew the blue, the red lights, the blue, the red lights, the blue, the red lights, they turned the corner and they're going about 35.

I, I opened the door and I jump out of a fucking movie car with a fall guy. I was like, I'm going to land on your feet unless you're spider. So I rolled and of course I rolled under the car and they ran over my leg. I'm like, I'm totally over my leg and I roll more.

Oh, my God. And I just remember, yeah, it should have been what the fuck, but I just remember thinking it was one of the happiest moments of my life that right. I remember right after I got run over, I stood up and my leg was like, it just bent twisted. And, and I remember looking down.

My first thought was I looked down at my jeans and this is a weird thought for me because I care about as little about fashion as you can. And I remember looking down and seeing blood just pulling like seeping out of the sides of my leg onto my jeans and thinking, oh, I love those jeans. I grew in these jeans, which is so weird. I have an attachment to it.

But also filled with the being a lot, you know, free free and that swing. And they did they just kept fucking motoring, right? Well, I don't want to deal with having run you over. Well, I don't know that at this point and I had seen a car coming, headlights coming and I'm probably toward it flag it down and weirdly was a cab.

And I got in the cab and I locked the door and I said, take it at the town and sweets. You know, right? And I remember the cab driver. I got to get these pants in cold water and cold water.

I got to say. And the guy, it was like, what is going on? I'm not being racist. I don't remember.

But what is happening with the get out of my cat. He didn't want me in there. And I can only, I must have had the craziest energy. You know, PCP broke leg.

I'm in captive. You're like the woman leaving our room with your child. And then the PAs came up, he wasn't moving. And the PAs came up and I'm panicking.

I'm thinking, what if they come out from you now? And they did. The two PAs came up and start banging on the window. They were freaking, especially the girl with PCP in her system.

He was freaking out. And I remember she kept saying, and this is just what she said. She said, I'm repeating. I thought we told him, we started out with him.

And the guy was freaking out. And he was freaking out. And I'm picturing the driver telling the story. His point of view.

Oh, I love the side of the server person. Yeah, so these dudes want to stop and get Tony dogs. If I can just jump out of the car. I'm talking about the cab driver.

Oh, I'm talking about the sober PA. These dudes want to stop and get a couple of chilidogs. If I can long bolts out of the moving car. Everything was innocent.

How much money do you have money for a dog? They're worried about you. Do you need money for a game? Do you want us to spot you for black?

They're like. Yes, but they actually, it was all in my head. So I saw they let them out. Yes, yes.

They said you can go. Yes, yeah, then they probably wanted to run. Yeah. They have some hair prints in here.

Yes, and now he's her. And I'm gonna talk about jail. Yeah. They must have freaked out.

So I made my way back to. Oh, really quick. Why get out of the cab. He wasn't driving.

He wasn't going anywhere. No, and I saw. I got the sense by the react. They were.

They seemed safe at that point. Okay. And I was so close to the hotel, he was moving. So I had no real choice.

Right. So I go back. Oh boy, I mean my way to a doctor. I don't want Brooklynans.

Hey, she said a Brooklynans go to the hospital. So yeah, and then do you go to the hospital? I don't. Okay, good.

I went to a doctor. Oh, you did. Okay. I don't know why I said I was thinking about something else.

I went to a doctor and he x-rayed it in no broken bones, which is crazy. That's right. But such bad nerve damage that to this day, and I never dealt with it because a couple days later I went through a breakup. So I was dealing with like this shame.

Sure. You've embarrassed this woman. Yeah. You're supposed to be responsible and taking care of my shit.

But also for me, it was for me, it was out of nowhere that I, in the wake of this thing, when I was supposed to be healing the leg, I was just dealing with the emotional. Sure. And I remember the funny little like, then I had to do one of those BAPL, those Mac commercials afterwards, like a week after. And my leg was like swollen out to here to the point where they had to get special jeans for me.

Oh wow. Big calf guy jeans. Yes. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

I mean, I suppose there's some, and you have a Masters in Psychology, maybe you could help me. I assume there's some kind of catharsis in watching someone else go up in flames for something that you yourself have done. I think there's so many different things that are at play in our online world. There's the online disinhibition effect.

So where people, because they're hiding behind a screen or behind anonymity, find it easier to take on different personas. We saw that in the beginning of that with Remember Second Life. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So I mean, that was kind of the beginning. I think of this idea of an avatar as a sort of, okay, let me both be this person, but also be someone else. Be some different curated version of who I want to be.

For sure. Right? Some projected versions. Right.

In and of itself has a layer of shame connected to it, right? Because there's that idea of whoever I am really am is not good enough. For sure. Yeah.

So I think that's at play. I think we have people constantly, I mean, just the chasm between our real lives and curated selves online is very challenging. And I think that's where there's so much mental health issues coming in. I had this young boy, say to me last week, which was he'd written an essay and I've just been turning it over in my mind ever since I read it, where he was talking about actually with physical violence that when you don't have an adult to say to you, everything's going to be okay.

You're alone in your pain and your experience. When you may lash out at someone else doing the exact same thing for the very reason so that you're not alone. Oh, sure. Which was amazing to me.

I had never really thought about it from that way. I mean, I really, okay, hurt people, hurt people, hurt people, you know, all those things. And misery loves company. It really does.

I certainly don't want to excuse any kind of online harassment or bullying behavior, but that in some ways it's a coping mechanism for some people. Yes. You know, and that's where we kind of have to step back. There is no three prong easy solution.

This is like the human condition. You don't need to never have me again, but we also need to stop having like a massive brick of me at the center of every single plate that we ever put in front of us. We don't need to stop flying, but we do need to like change how we fly. I had this really, really moving experience happen about two weeks ago.

I was in Brussels as giving a reading from this book. And at the end, there was a signing and a couple came up to me. They opened to the page where I normally signed the title page and it was filled with their handwriting and it's like, what's this? And they said, well, we're getting married in a couple months and we decided tonight that we need to have some kind of plan because we don't have a plan.

We're just going to like keep doing what we've always done because that's what people do. You do today what you did yesterday more or less. And their plan was eat vegetarian unless serve meat at a friend's house. Eat vegan two days a week, have no more than two kids and drive no more than 1500 kilometers a year.

And then instead of just having me sign up, they'd written a line that said, witness. They wanted me to sign up. Oh, that's cool. And I found it really charming and it was fun to get an insight into who they are.

It feels very European too. And then I realized, holy shit, like I was the guy on the stage. I'm the guy signing the book and I don't have a plan and I went home to my hotel that night and took a piece of hotel station and I wrote out a plan because I realized I'm that schmuck who says, yeah, I'm going to try to fly less, which means nothing. I'm going to be safe.

I just live like you live for like, I'm going to try to drive less. It means nothing. Nothing. It's like pure narcissism.

Everyone, you know, along these seven seasons has been like probably just putting a bunch of like really positive energy at you, I guess. Yes. And then there's a big turn where I assume a lot of people are putting some negative energy out for it. This is where it pays off that I spent my entire time with Game of Thrones.

Never believing anything that anyone ever said. Never taking anything that anyone said at any real value. Yeah. Really just like my negative voice shouting far louder than anyone saying anything nice because I was always in the back of my mind.

I was like, oh, great, we're successful now. We won't be tomorrow. Every chance that we won't be tomorrow. So for that, I'm based level away.

I don't Google myself. I don't really. As long as I don't hear. And now, regardless, people have very sweetly said lovely things.

I've got a lot of fan theories and I've got a lot of like the vibe of my way. Right. I've been doing it never. I'm sure.

But I definitely the worst thing that anyone said, and this was painfully close to the show, I was at my mum's house, which is in the countryside in Oxfordshire, and I went to wait trays to get some food. And it was the day after episode five, right? We had to sit with six episodes, wasn't it? Yes.

Which was, I had never seen what that looked like until I watched it. Obviously, because I don't need any done. The green screen stuff. And I was in wait chose.

And this woman looked at me and went, well, you're brave to be outside. Oh my God. And I was literally like, ow, yay. Oh my God.

I started welling up in the shop. I was like, oh, that I didn't need that. Thanks, honey. Okay, bye bye now.

I'm going to, I don't need any food. I'm just going to leave. But that was it. That was the beginning, middle, end of my bad experiences with regards to that.

The earliest thing I remember my life, the earliest, like I'm talking about the most vivid memory. And I was there, I was three years old. And I was there, the guy came. He didn't like, what am I gonna get to?

He walked in and he showed the gun. I didn't know what it was. Probably sat me down in front of the TV, walked my mom into one of the, like, the dean of the living room. And they stayed in there.

And I was still watching TV. He came out. He asked me if I had to eat the bathroom, tip me to the bathroom, sat me right back in front of the TV. And I was in golfing, whatever was going on on the TV.

A whole day, probably some hours ago. And he left out and walked out and said, the keys on the picture of the zebra. And I didn't pay him no attention. I'm just, you know, watch TV.

And then I remember asking him, like, what my mom, I want to see my mom. And she was like, no, she's sleeping nowhere. And I was like, cool. And when he left, I guess after my show went off, I got up and went in there and some of my mom was like, she was handcuffed to a chair and with a mouth taped up and a legs tied up.