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00:00:16Good evening, everybody. You're all very welcome to the show.
00:00:19Hope you enjoy what happens here over the next hour or so.
00:00:22To find out who our first guest is, let me hand you over to our MC for the evening,
00:00:26the beautiful Fred Cook.
00:00:29Tommy, our next guest is Luke Lachlan.
00:00:38How are you, Luke? How are you?
00:00:40Good now.
00:00:40How are you getting on?
00:00:41Great now. Thanks for coming on.
00:00:43Good.
00:00:45You smell great.
00:00:47It's the cheap stuff. It'll wear off after a while or so.
00:00:50It's a familiar smell. What is it?
00:00:55Zara Fashionably London.
00:00:57Takes you back, maybe, does it?
00:00:59Yeah, I thought it was like maybe Lynx Athlone or something.
00:01:06What do you do? What's your story?
00:01:09My name's Luke Lachlan.
00:01:12I play football for Westmead, but I'm currently in recovery from addiction, alcohol, cocaine and gambling.
00:01:22And I've documented my journey online the last couple of years and done a couple of podcasts and, you know,
00:01:31been able to, I think, help a few people live through my experiences.
00:01:39And, yeah, just, I suppose, speaking for people that maybe haven't got a voice.
00:01:46And I suppose I, I didn't really plan on it being like that, but it's just kind of grown and
00:01:52I've just kind of went with it.
00:01:54Where'd you grew up?
00:01:55I'm from Mullingar.
00:01:58I'm from Mullingar, just outside Mullingar.
00:02:00A small little place called Milestown is the name of the little area I'm from.
00:02:06What's the Irish for that?
00:02:08Oh, I hear you're asking the wrong guy.
00:02:10It'd be on every signpost around the village.
00:02:12It's not even a village.
00:02:13It's a road.
00:02:13Genuinely.
00:02:14There's a lake.
00:02:15That's it.
00:02:16It's a road and there's a lake in it.
00:02:18There's a road and a lake and that's it.
00:02:23So tell us about being a teenager there.
00:02:28Yeah, I suppose.
00:02:29With the drinkingness.
00:02:30How old are you?
00:02:31I'm 30.
00:02:32Okay.
00:02:33So it would have been like the 90s, is it?
00:02:37No, maybe around, I'm sober nearly five years.
00:02:42Jesus, okay.
00:02:43Yeah, so every day is a blessing type job.
00:02:48You know, very spiritual way of going about things.
00:02:52But I suppose I never actually met my real dad.
00:02:59And my mom remarried.
00:03:03My mom married her partner that she was with at the time when I was about two years of age.
00:03:08And they were together for seven years.
00:03:10And I have two brothers, Sean and Adam.
00:03:12And they got divorced.
00:03:13And now she's with her current husband, 20-something years.
00:03:17And another brother called Josh.
00:03:19But I suppose the only constant in all their relationships in my head was me.
00:03:23Like, and I probably, earlier on about my, the thing with my dad is I probably, that fear of rejection,
00:03:32abandonment, trust.
00:03:35And as a teenager, I probably found it very hard to be myself.
00:03:41Because you're always worried about what's going to happen, or is this person going to leave me, or is this
00:03:45person going to like me?
00:03:46And you're so, even at a young age, consumed about the opinions of others.
00:03:52And then, obviously, my release then, at a young age, was sport.
00:03:55I realised I was getting the kind of attention that I wanted at sport, especially from male attention.
00:04:02So, yeah, I suppose that's kind of where the darkness, say, of my addiction kind of started with those feelings
00:04:09for me.
00:04:09Like, you know, is that real, do you think, that sense of weakness, or vulnerability, or hurt?
00:04:24Is it real to connect it to the story of your dad, do you reckon?
00:04:32Do you think, are you saying that, is it just easy for me to put onto that?
00:04:36Well, I don't know, because I'm, it's obviously a, we can all kind of feel vulnerable.
00:04:44We do at times, yeah.
00:04:45No, but with that image, you know, of a little boy, and his dad is, you were two, was it?
00:04:55Yeah, maybe even a bit younger, maybe one.
00:04:57Yeah.
00:04:59I don't know, it's a very moving image.
00:05:02It's a very, it's, it's.
00:05:08It feels sad.
00:05:10And it definitely, you know, like, as a 30-year-old man, I can sit here and talk about it,
00:05:15because it does not have any bearing on me now, because I've dealt with it, and done hours and hours,
00:05:21hundreds of hours of therapy, and I've been to treatment, I've been to a treatment centre as well.
00:05:29But, like, when I was in my teens, especially, you know, I, I longed for that.
00:05:36I really did, that connection with that, that person, you know, because it'd be different if I, I only found
00:05:43out a little later in my childhood, you know, I kind of found out in passing almost.
00:05:48And then I started to question it more.
00:05:51Where's my dad?
00:05:52Yeah, and why is my name just Luke Lachlan, whereas my brothers, you know, no, they're my brothers, and they
00:06:00always will be.
00:06:01And, but I was always just Luke Lachlan, and, and I suppose, you know, even at a young age, like,
00:06:10so in my own head, you know, and I think about it, like, always thinking about, like, why me, or,
00:06:18you know, why is this happening to me, or what did I do, like, and then, you know, you're not
00:06:24good enough.
00:06:25That's the, that's the feeling, is you're not good enough.
00:06:30They're big things for a young fella to interpret, aren't they, and navigate, and be minded through, or something.
00:06:40And, like, you know, my mum, saint, genuinely, didn't have it easy when we were young.
00:06:48And, you know, even to this day, like, you know, I know she'd done the best she could.
00:06:53And, you know, as my addiction went on, I got older, and I definitely used that to manipulate her.
00:07:01When, when did it start, the, the...
00:07:03Drinking?
00:07:04Yeah, yeah.
00:07:05Um, I suppose, uh, when I was about 14, um, you know, the usual, me friends, um, we'd go to
00:07:15the canal, or whatever, and get a few cans and a nagging, and I remember the first, like, obviously I
00:07:21wasn't an alcoholic at that point.
00:07:22Like, you know, like I wasn't, but I remember the first time I drank, uh, it just, it did something
00:07:29to me.
00:07:30It gave me a confidence, it made me able to talk to girls, it, I thought I was hilarious, like,
00:07:36you know, and, do you know, the worst thing was, I was probably throwing out most of it over my
00:07:39shoulder, like, but it was that, it just made me someone else.
00:07:44And, uh, to be able to say that now, I probably was, I'm probably aware now that I was very
00:07:49uncomfortable in my own skin at a young age.
00:07:52But my first proper night out on the town, I had a lad's fake ID, and went out, that was
00:07:57grand, a few drinks, and I got into the casino, and ended up, I think winning, I think, I think
00:08:03it was like 1800 or something on blackjack.
00:08:06And then when I'd be in work then, I'd obviously, I was at home, and I had no bills, so
00:08:10I was, I'd work, um, at this big machine, and I'd be, you know, coding or whatever it was, but
00:08:16sure, I'd be on blackjack on my phone, like, 24-7.
00:08:19And I was just obsessed, um, I just couldn't get enough of it, because I obviously thought that I could
00:08:25win that money again, um, and obviously I was way wrong, and started to go out a bit more, and
00:08:31drink a bit more, and when I went to America, gambling was illegal in New York at the time, so,
00:08:39uh, I actually went out there, in my head, I thought I was going out to play football, I was
00:08:44basically going out to stop gambling for a while,
00:08:45and she just replaced the gambling with alcohol and cocaine, and my behaviour, just a joke, basically, you know, and
00:08:52complete self-destruct, um, self-destruct mode, and not be able to hold down jobs, and, and, like, as many
00:09:00times as, you know, I tried to give it up, it just always got me, like, little did I know,
00:09:06like, every time I, every time I do it, I'm ruining my life a little bit more, and
00:09:12taking more drugs, and borrow money, and
00:09:16Was the coke, um, did the coke bring you to
00:09:23places and situations that
00:09:26were, um,
00:09:29a bit more destructive than just the drink would?
00:09:31Yeah, um, I was one of these people, I could go out,
00:09:35uh, I could go out without coke,
00:09:38but I'd always end up with it, always, but I could go out and have a few pints, and then
00:09:42sure, it'd always, you know, start getting drunker, and you'd start thinking, oh, this is a great idea now, you
00:09:46know, this'll keep me going,
00:09:48but a hundred percent, like, you're not thinking right with it, like, it took me just too far every time,
00:09:53like, I just always ended up, like,
00:09:55like, you know, in that stint, I wrote off two cars, and, you know, just every time, like, there was
00:10:05just no let up, and it always got worse, you know, and, um,
00:10:12I think it was, like, like, I want details, um, so I used to drink drive an awful lot,
00:10:17which, you know, now I've a lot of guilt and shame over, and, uh, so I took a lot of
00:10:22people's lives into my own hands, you know, um, with that, so I rode off
00:10:29one of the cars, uh, on the, on the motorway near Mullingar, and, you know, you'd think you'd learn
00:10:35your lesson there, six weeks later, so I went and got another car, and wrote another one off, worse, and,
00:10:42um,
00:10:43ended up in the hospital, nothing wrong with me, and my mother was a nurse, and she, the next morning,
00:10:48I woke up,
00:10:49and, uh, she was at the end of the bed, and all these doctors around me, and she, she actually
00:10:54stopped the doctors,
00:10:55and she said, never mind this, me, just, she said, get out, she basically said, get out of this hospital,
00:11:00you know, let that bed for someone that needs it, she was obviously disgusted with my behaviour, like,
00:11:04yeah, yeah, um, there's probably people watching now, and it's come into my head as well,
00:11:09and I just want to mention it, so that we, to figure out how you deal with it, um, so
00:11:16there are,
00:11:18say, innocent people killed, by, by drunk drivers every year,
00:11:27and, thank God nothing happened with you, you know, um, that you didn't kill anybody else,
00:11:33but how do you, how do you negotiate that thing that happened, that thank God nothing else happened,
00:11:44but how do you, how, how do you, how do you deal with it, how do you deal with that,
00:11:52yeah,
00:11:52what do you do? So, when I went to treatment, um, you know, my mom, she dropped me down,
00:11:57we probably, we hadn't talked properly now in a long time, we had a strained relationship,
00:12:02she, uh, she said to me the day before, she was like, if you don't go to this treatment centre,
00:12:07she's like, we're done, she's like, I'm after doing this for 10 years, and I have three other sons,
00:12:11and it's just getting worse, basically, and I'm just going to have to cut ties,
00:12:14and I said, in passing, I'll go for a month, and she was like, you'll go for as long as
00:12:19it takes,
00:12:21um, and I, that was something for a mom to say, wasn't it? Oh, sure had to be done,
00:12:28it was the only thing that kind of rattled me a bit, probably, you know, uh, because I always had
00:12:32her, always, regardless of what went on, she'd always have my back, always, like, and even if we
00:12:38wouldn't be talking, she'd still somehow help me get out of whatever I was African into, and I'd have
00:12:45disrespected her to the, to the highest point, you know, and landing back to the house without even
00:12:51asking, you know, without even texting, it could be welded, it could be the middle of the day, it could
00:12:55be the middle of the night, um, but the day before, just for people not from Westmeath, welded means
00:13:02like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, worse, worse, um, and
00:13:14yeah, so she said that to me, and she rang the GPA straight away, they had obviously known that I'd
00:13:20struggled a long time, because, you know, the last few months was, it was over COVID, and, uh, Jack Cooney,
00:13:25the Western manager, had been trying to help me for, for months, um, you know, and he, he was very
00:13:32good
00:13:32to me, never, only for him as well, the times, you know, like, even times I'd have went missing for
00:13:37a
00:13:37week or two, like, he'd always bring me back training, like, I remember kind of going off on a tangent,
00:13:42it was, uh, one of the mornings I never went to train, I'd been up partying, hadn't really slept
00:13:48in a few days, and he asked me, I was meant to be meeting him for breakfast, I probably hadn't
00:13:52closed my eyes in two or three days, like, you know, it was probably, and, uh, he just brought me
00:13:56for breakfast, I couldn't even make eye contact with him, and he just sat there and chatted, and
00:14:02went on as if nothing was wrong, and just brought me back to the house, and I remember, I think
00:14:06it was
00:14:06about a year later, I was actually, we were back training at Westmeath or something, and I just
00:14:11couldn't get that out of my head, how he could just, just pretend, just to make me feel a bit
00:14:17better, that's what he done, you know, um, but yeah, so he, my ma rang the GPA, uh, they got
00:14:26a
00:14:26place sorted in Coomera at High for me, and, um, just before I went in, actually, something went off
00:14:34my head to write down a few workouts, I've never thought of it, so I just got an A4 sheet,
00:14:40and I
00:14:40wrote about 50 workouts on it, and I put it in the bag, I never, I never thought that that
00:14:44piece of
00:14:45paper changed my life, basically, you know, um, and there was a woman in there, and she was a grief
00:14:50counselor, and she said to me, so she sang the meditation on Wednesday, she sang Caledonia, and I
00:14:56was there, so you'd be sitting in a room with a hundred people trying to meditate for half an hour,
00:15:01you can imagine the, oh, and I'd be like, how am I meant to get this head of mine to
00:15:05even sit still
00:15:06for a second, um, and she started singing on it, and I was like this, you know, I was like
00:15:15a bag of
00:15:15cats, basically, and straight after that meditation, she came to me, and she said, look, I just want to
00:15:22have a chat with you, so I went down to her office, or whatever room, and she goes, you're not
00:15:26really
00:15:26getting that now, this place, you're just going through the motions here, and then she said, another
00:15:32thing is, I had a son who was killed by a drink driver, and I say a prayer for him,
00:15:38that man that
00:15:39killed my son every day, because there's goodness in everyone, and sure, my jaw nearly hit the floor, so I
00:15:44went, I got up, and I just went back to the room, and I sat in the bed, and I
00:15:50just burst out crying,
00:15:52probably the first time I'd cried like that in a long time, of just, you know, I think it was
00:15:57shame, and embarrassment, and you know, what I, it was probably the first time in a long time I'd
00:16:02talk about other people, and what I had put people through, because to say when you're in addiction,
00:16:07it's not just you that's affected, it's I think there's seven other people affected by it,
00:16:12and I took out the sheet of paper, and I did one of the workouts in between the two beds,
00:16:17and it took me
00:16:17a lot longer than it should have, but I suppose then, I suppose, you know, from, from that moment,
00:16:26I think that was like, that was the moment that changed my life.
00:16:31What, what skills did you learn to help you stay clean?
00:16:37I suppose sometimes, like, I still, like, get cravings from time to time, and I just try to fast
00:16:44forward five hours, and usually when I think about where I'll be, that usually helps, and lots of
00:16:51different things, I suppose, I just know the life I have now, it's, it's, it's amazing, but it's only
00:16:56for today that I have it, and I just have to win that battle every day, and I suppose the
00:17:02most,
00:17:02the most important part, obviously, exercise has been massive in my recovery, and getting to play
00:17:06for Westmead again, which is huge, like, and something I love, my job as well is great, but
00:17:12actually serving others has helped me, um, trying to do things for other people without looking
00:17:17for anything back.
00:17:19Um, what about your dad?
00:17:23Um, I, I don't have, I've never met him, I think I know his name, I, I think I know
00:17:30where he's from,
00:17:30um, but as I said, my mom was my mom and my dad.
00:17:37And you, and you know that you just have to ask your mom who is it and where is he?
00:17:39Yeah, 100%, and I, we've had conversations before, but, as I said, it's not, it's not,
00:17:47it's not, where I am now is, it's not just me now, her life as well, and I know for
00:17:53a fact
00:17:53that it wasn't easy for her, uh, I, you know, it's definitely not, it wasn't plain sailing,
00:17:59and I don't really want to go pulling up someone else's life when I'm comfortable, you know,
00:18:06so, um, she's happy, and I'm happy, yeah.
00:18:12Are you sure the whole thing just isn't about being from Westmeath?
00:18:15She's, it could be.
00:18:17It definitely could be.
00:18:20You know, people ask me, um, you know, about when I'm just getting to play for Westmeath, so.
00:18:25I mean, you're only 30 now, is it?
00:18:27So, are you, are you still talking out?
00:18:29Yeah, still, still there, yeah, it's great.
00:18:31I was dropped nine times, uh, from the Westmeath panel, and serious lack of corner forwards
00:18:38has kept me relevant, to be honest, and given me a chance, um, but, yeah, it's, look,
00:18:43playing for Westmeath, you know, it says its ups and downs, let me tell you, big time, but.
00:18:46But it's still, it's still a high standard of.
00:18:49It is a high standard, yeah, definitely, look, last year, not to be going on with football
00:18:54too much, but we lost, I think, like, nine games by a point or something, like, you know,
00:18:57and, I know winning is a habit or whatever, but, um, things can change quickly, like you
00:19:03see, and we've a good management team there this year now, so hopefully, hopefully there's,
00:19:09hopefully we're on the up.
00:19:11Thanks for coming on the show, Luke.
00:19:12Not at all, um, delighted, as I said, something completely different, and now the comfort zone,
00:19:17as they say, um.
00:19:18Thanks for talking to me for that.
00:19:20No, that's all right.
00:19:20Thanks a minute.
00:19:21Good man.
00:19:21All right.
00:19:22Good man.
00:19:47Good man.
00:19:50Good man.
00:19:50Good man.
00:19:51Good man.
00:19:51Good man.
00:19:51Good man.
00:19:52Good man.
00:19:53Good man.
00:19:54Good man.
00:19:55Very interested to meet you.
00:19:57Yeah, me too.
00:19:58Er, I, I'm not sure if your name is familiar to me or not.
00:20:03No, I don't think it is.
00:20:04So what do you do?
00:20:05We don't know each other.
00:20:06I'm a musician and a presenter.
00:20:07I'm the National Concert Hall's Discover Artist in Residence, um, means I write and present
00:20:14shows with the National Symphony Orchestra Ireland for young people and anybody to
00:20:20make classical music, orchestral music, fun, vibrant, exciting.
00:20:23I've also had a 30 year relationship with this guy over here as well.
00:20:27So I work in classical music maybe.
00:20:30It's a bit more complicated than that.
00:20:31What's that like?
00:20:33Working in classical music for, I would say 20 years.
00:20:38I moved to London in 2009.
00:20:40So I've been in the UK for like 16 years.
00:20:44And I, and even before that, I've been in conservatories for maybe nearly 30 years.
00:20:49Now what's, what's a conservatory?
00:20:50So like a, a fancy school where you learn classical music, you learn to make, I learned to make
00:20:55this instrument like behave like an extra limb so I could do whatever I want.
00:20:59It's like being an Olympic athlete, but with micro muscles.
00:21:03So the commitment to that is colossal.
00:21:06Yeah, there's a lot of perfectionism and a lot of time spent on your own.
00:21:11Does it suit spectrum people?
00:21:14I would, I put myself on the ADHD spectrum.
00:21:17I think it definitely does.
00:21:18Um, it suits, um, all sorts of weird people.
00:21:23Yeah.
00:21:24Uh, but, uh, I've, I really had a complicated relationship with for a really long time.
00:21:29I found the perfectionism and the constant self criticism because you're playing these
00:21:33masterpieces by dead white men essentially for many years, particularly when I was learning.
00:21:38Um, and I started with a big kind of chip on my shoulder that I couldn't do it or I
00:21:43wasn't
00:21:43good enough that I was accepted into these places.
00:21:45I auditioned for not all of the conservatories in the UK thinking I wouldn't get into any and
00:21:50got into all of them.
00:21:51Um, so got to choose to go to the place with the scholarship and the fancy building.
00:21:55What was the attraction of it?
00:21:57So that happened around what, 18 or 19 or something?
00:21:59Yeah.
00:21:59So what happened when you were seven or eight that you said, that's what I want to do?
00:22:05Are you my therapist?
00:22:07Well, I'm very cheap.
00:22:09Um, do you know what I mean?
00:22:11Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:22:12Okay.
00:22:12Well, I mean, what happened when I was 10, my brother died to suicide.
00:22:16So that felt like for me, uh, uh, kind of an earthquake moment in my life and my little
00:22:2210 year old brain understood at that point, not through any fault of family or parents,
00:22:26but just the way kids are that if you'd be brilliant, then people will love you.
00:22:30He was very clever, very smart, very musical, all these things.
00:22:32And there was a big, uh, funeral, a big audience, Tommy.
00:22:36And I saw that big audience at this funeral and I thought, okay, I have to be brilliant.
00:22:40My little 10 year old did anyway, thought, okay, you just got to do everything really deadly.
00:22:45So I, I learned trad music.
00:22:46I learned classical.
00:22:47I tried to do really good at school.
00:22:49I was head girl.
00:22:49They did all those things.
00:22:51And there's a very clear line in classical music, particularly of it's like a conveyor belt.
00:22:55You do all your grades, you go to do a degree.
00:22:58Then you do a master's.
00:22:59Then you do the competitions and you blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:23:01And it was only about six years ago, I'm 39 now, where I kind of stepped off the conveyor belt
00:23:06and realized I wasn't happy, perpetually burnt out, exhausted, not creatively fulfilled.
00:23:14So.
00:23:15Well, um, were there any other kids, where did you grow up?
00:23:20Dublin.
00:23:20Were there any other kids in your circle who were into classical music at that age?
00:23:28Oh my God.
00:23:28No.
00:23:29Uh, well then I went to the academy.
00:23:32So I, I started at cultists and at the academy the same year, around age 10 as well.
00:23:37So lots of big changes.
00:23:38Yeah.
00:23:38So I was in school and there was nobody.
00:23:41No, not in school.
00:23:42I was, I definitely didn't fit in for many reasons in school, but I found these deep friendships
00:23:48in with other little music nerds, with my trad, trad pals or my classical pals.
00:23:53So that's where the connection was.
00:23:55Other people that kind of got it, that there's a thing that you don't need words for and you
00:24:01can connect and play for hours and not.
00:24:03Yeah.
00:24:04Not to talk about it.
00:24:06Yeah.
00:24:07Yeah.
00:24:07Mentioned about not fitting in, in loads of different ways.
00:24:11Yeah.
00:24:11What did you mean by that?
00:24:12Well, I think the more I learned to be in my own skin, the more I realize how weird I
00:24:18am, which is fun.
00:24:20And maybe I'm understanding things that didn't quite work in like the mid 2000s in a secondary
00:24:26school in Ireland.
00:24:27And that I was gay.
00:24:29That was, you know, you think how far we've come in Ireland now, but like the word gay
00:24:34was like, like meaning shit or bad or crap.
00:24:39Yeah.
00:24:39Yeah.
00:24:40I think on learning recently, I've got ADHD, which explains the fizz in my brain a little
00:24:46bit and maybe why things I found hard that other people didn't.
00:24:50So it made me feel like I was a bit weird or a bit stupid.
00:24:52But actually it's just my brain works in a different way, which is now the superpower
00:24:56that I have to be able to do the work that I do now.
00:24:58Yeah.
00:24:59It took a long time.
00:25:01I kind of was kind of meandering in and out all the way through to university and then
00:25:04was like, Oh, you're just queer.
00:25:06So I'm with a trans person now, married to a trans person.
00:25:11And it just, that's just, it's, it's so obvious to me now.
00:25:15And I look back at poor little me who's writing in journals about trying to figure it
00:25:19all out.
00:25:19So what's obvious to you?
00:25:22That I'm just not a heterosexual human being.
00:25:25And I lived in a heterosexual world, particularly Dublin at that time.
00:25:28Yeah.
00:25:30And that just, it's so obvious now.
00:25:31It's like, it's almost, not boring, but it's a, it's, there's a clarity to like, well,
00:25:37that's clear.
00:25:39And your spouse.
00:25:42Spouse.
00:25:42Yeah.
00:25:43Are you, are you militant with language?
00:25:45No.
00:25:46I fuck up all the time, but it's about the intention, isn't it?
00:25:49Okay.
00:25:49Your partner or whatever.
00:25:51Is it trans?
00:25:55It is non-binary.
00:25:56So I would say trans, oh, I don't have to do the semantics lesson.
00:25:59Like I would say trans within an umbrella.
00:26:01So Brogan is non-binary.
00:26:02So they use they, them pronouns.
00:26:04Yeah.
00:26:06And I'm just, I'm, I'm very curious.
00:26:10Yeah.
00:26:10Um, was, had an operation or?
00:26:15No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:26:17Just have changed their name and their pronoun and living more in a, in a mask presenting way,
00:26:22but.
00:26:23Presenting as, I'm very confused.
00:26:25Well, Brogan's just a.
00:26:27Brogan.
00:26:27Yeah.
00:26:27Brogan is a, they're like, I'm just like a weird little blue alien.
00:26:31They're like, sit right in the middle.
00:26:32They don't feel particularly male or particularly female.
00:26:35They just feel like Brogan.
00:26:36So if I said, so, so is it strange if I say to you, well, is Brogan a man or
00:26:40a woman?
00:26:41Is that a, is that a.
00:26:42Well, if you were my nephews, we'd say both.
00:26:45They'd say, is, is Brogan, is you a boy or a girl?
00:26:48And Brogan will say, kind of a bit of both.
00:26:51Bit of half and half.
00:26:53And it depends what, like if you go to indigenous cultures all over the world,
00:26:56people will be like, got you.
00:26:57Totally.
00:26:58Two spirit.
00:26:58Obvious.
00:26:59But in our, in our culture to be somewhere other than binary is weird and confusing.
00:27:05And also interesting.
00:27:06Yeah.
00:27:07Yeah.
00:27:07That's a good.
00:27:08So it's something that refuses to be pinned down.
00:27:11Yeah.
00:27:12Yeah.
00:27:12So there's no, so it's kind of like, no, you're not getting your handy little definition
00:27:15and you're not, I'm not making it easy for you to imagine somebody who was born a man
00:27:22but now presents as a woman.
00:27:23No, no, this is just, it's much more.
00:27:26It's I am me.
00:27:27A challenge.
00:27:28Wow.
00:27:28Yeah.
00:27:29I asked my nephew once what you want to be when you grow up, which is a stupid question
00:27:32to ask a kid.
00:27:32And he said, myself.
00:27:35And it's a bit like that with Brogan.
00:27:36It's just Brogan is Brogan.
00:27:38Are you easy to live with?
00:27:41Hmm.
00:27:42I'm getting better.
00:27:44I think I'm, I'm constantly on a quest to be a kinder, nicer human.
00:27:50Are you hypersensitive?
00:27:52Brogan is.
00:27:54I don't think I am.
00:27:55No.
00:27:57Probably in bits.
00:27:58If you tell me I did that wrong, I'd still, that's post-conservatory trauma is still there.
00:28:02Do you get angry?
00:28:04Like what's your, in terms of emotional regulation, where does the ADHD thing, where do you suffer in that?
00:28:20Do I get angry?
00:28:21I don't really get angry.
00:28:23I get overwhelmed.
00:28:24I can get to a point.
00:28:25And this is, I think, why we ended up changing our whole lives.
00:28:28I can get to a point where I can't make any decisions anymore.
00:28:31Like decision fatigue.
00:28:33And that's what, that was one of the reasons Brogan had been chronically ill for a couple of years.
00:28:37We'd had some failed IVF.
00:28:39It was like a, a mountain of things that boiled up to a point where every month or six weeks
00:28:44I was getting burnt out.
00:28:45Which I understood just as, oh, that's burnout, because that's what, we're in this grind economy and that's what I
00:28:50was doing.
00:28:51But probably now, understanding my brain a bit more, it was just overstimulation and needing to find a slower pace.
00:28:57And in terms of the IVF, who is, who was trying to have the baby?
00:29:05This guy.
00:29:06With Brogan's eggs was the plan.
00:29:08This guy.
00:29:09Yeah.
00:29:10That's fantastic.
00:29:11With your partner's eggs.
00:29:14Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:29:14And my magic brother had donated, but it all was a disaster and went to shit.
00:29:19Brogan got really unwell.
00:29:23It didn't work.
00:29:24We did two rounds.
00:29:25It was awful.
00:29:25They got, they had chronic chest infections, misdiagnosed asthma.
00:29:30Terrible two years of them being prone on a sofa.
00:29:34And us trying to do IVF and get eggs out of their poor broken body.
00:29:39And it just was an awful experience and didn't work well.
00:29:43So we shelved it, went to Costa Rica and Nicaragua for six weeks and realised we needed to do everything
00:29:50a bit differently.
00:29:51So it's still the plan.
00:29:53Not that plan, but a sperm donor.
00:29:56Oh, you've got enough kids.
00:29:57I wouldn't ask you.
00:29:58It'd be an ADHD nightmare, to answer this in.
00:30:00We'd be guaranteeing the child a spectrum life.
00:30:04There are blessings, Tommy, as you know.
00:30:06I'm in the market, I suppose, for a donor and we'll try again.
00:30:10We're building our little house now in Suffolk and when that's done we'll try again to fill it with some
00:30:16babies somehow.
00:30:17So the idea of being pregnant and giving birth and all that is what to you?
00:30:22My mother speaks very beautifully and positively about pregnancy and breastfeeding so I think I grew up with that.
00:30:28A lovely, even though she had a terrible experience, she lost a baby before me and, you know, it wasn't
00:30:35plain sailing.
00:30:35But there's a lovely energy around it to me and it's just something, I just think we have like a
00:30:42split second on this planet.
00:30:44And that I have this capacity to create human life just feels like an incredible thing that I want to
00:30:50try and do.
00:30:50So you're using Brogan's eggs?
00:30:54No, that's all out the window.
00:30:55No, but you had been.
00:30:57And who was, where was the sperm coming from then?
00:30:59My brother had donated.
00:31:01Do the maths, you can do it, it's not incest.
00:31:03There's sperm.
00:31:04Yeah.
00:31:06So your brother's sperm.
00:31:07It would be like my brother and my partner's baby but I was the oven.
00:31:11But it didn't work out.
00:31:12That has to be an easier way.
00:31:13Yeah, it's beautiful because you'd have genetic grandparents.
00:31:16What would you have?
00:31:17Genetic grandparents on both sides.
00:31:20So the child, what I squeezed out.
00:31:22Yeah.
00:31:23The parents.
00:31:24Yeah.
00:31:25The grandparents would be, Brogan's parents would be the grandparents and my parents would be the grandparents.
00:31:30It's like the only magic way that two women could do it.
00:31:33Okay, wow.
00:31:34But it's in the bin anyway and it's a bit complicated.
00:31:37Your dad's your uncle.
00:31:39Couldn't bring it up in Dublin, could I?
00:31:41Well there are probably places where it's not unusual.
00:31:45Yeah, but it's very, anyway, that plan's in the bin anyway.
00:31:49Wow.
00:31:50But what a gorgeous human my brother is to have donated at all.
00:31:53Yeah.
00:31:53But we have to go, we're thinking like you know some sort of hippie stone circle.
00:31:57In some way some man will just appear and donate.
00:32:02I'd say so.
00:32:03We've tried.
00:32:04I'm only 39.
00:32:06So tell me about the instrument and.
00:32:12Yeah.
00:32:13It's a funny, complicated relationship now I suppose.
00:32:16I've played it for nearly 30 years.
00:32:21And I love it.
00:32:24And I also have had such, it's been, it's associated with stress as well.
00:32:29And that high performance thing.
00:32:35I got to a point before Covid where I was on trial for an orchestra.
00:32:39And I got a phone call to do Rhapsody in Blue.
00:32:43Which would have been the thing that would win the job.
00:32:45You'd get, you'd get the job.
00:32:46And I turned it down instinctively saying,
00:32:48Oh, I'm working with special needs kids in Derby that week.
00:32:51Sorry.
00:32:51And then I had to have a talk to myself.
00:32:53I'm like, what did you just do?
00:32:55That's the chance to get the job.
00:32:56The thing, the most coveted thing that any, certainly orchestral musician wants.
00:33:01And I had instinctively turned it down.
00:33:03And then I sat with myself for a while and was like,
00:33:05You don't want a job.
00:33:06You want to do other stuff.
00:33:08So I'm now more, we're friends again, I think,
00:33:11because I don't do it all the time.
00:33:12Yeah.
00:33:12I, I do this presenting and this creative stuff.
00:33:15So I'm becoming friends with this and I'm, and I'm gently learning trad.
00:33:19I grew up playing for the flute and the whistle.
00:33:21Yeah.
00:33:21And there was such freedom roar in sessions.
00:33:25And then when I went to London, I just didn't have the bravery to,
00:33:28to join sessions.
00:33:29So I didn't play for 15 years, but I'm slowly, quietly at home,
00:33:33trying to knock a few jigs and reels out of this now instead.
00:33:35What are you going to play?
00:33:36I'm going to play a thing that I, cause I'm also a workshop leader.
00:33:40I'll play like, this is a bit of a introduction to me thing.
00:33:44So I'll play a bit of Mozart and then a bit of trad.
00:33:46Would you be comfortable singing a drone for me?
00:33:49If I, if I play you and that.
00:33:50You know, I can't sing like, it's a medical.
00:33:54I'll fucking try, but I really don't give me a note.
00:34:08That's there.
00:34:11He's got it.
00:34:13I'll help you out in the middle of it.
00:34:14What do you want me to do?
00:34:15Do that all the time?
00:34:16No.
00:34:17I'll tell you what to do.
00:34:18Don't worry.
00:34:19So we're going to, this is what I do.
00:34:21Tommy, this is what I do in a care home, Tommy.
00:34:23No.
00:34:24All right, Mr. Tiernan.
00:34:28Do you know why I do this?
00:34:29It's because I love playing with other people
00:34:31and I find a solo one line instrument is a bit sad.
00:34:34So I'll ask you to join me and if it's shite,
00:34:36we can all laugh at you and not at me.
00:34:38Anyway.
00:34:39What exactly do you want me to do?
00:34:40I'm going to tell you in the moment.
00:34:41You just chill out.
00:34:42It's not possible.
00:34:45And you're going to point at me and I'm to do what?
00:34:47Am I to do that kind of nursing home noise?
00:34:51Take a breath out.
00:34:52I've got you, Tommy.
00:34:53You've got me?
00:34:54Okay.
00:34:54All right, here we go.
00:34:55God help us.
00:35:23Let's do this.
00:35:35PIANO PLAYS
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00:38:01we can all but it's only about people who can hear me so
00:38:06but then there's a connection yeah it's lovely also your vagus nerve when we sing is stimulated
00:38:12so there's like a rest and digest calm feeling i love getting people to join because it feels
00:38:19better in your body i think um where can people experience your work i suppose both with the
00:38:26workshop stuff and the your own playing the national concert hall is the main thing i am
00:38:32artist in residence there for a discover there's also going to be an amazing discover center that's
00:38:37been built by the end of 26 a big develop redevelopment at the concert hall but the first
00:38:42thing that's happening is this discover center so we're going to have more and more stuff happening
00:38:47there it's going to be like a massive cultural center for people to come i i do stuff with the
00:38:52national civil new orchestra ireland every couple of months um check out the nsoi and
00:38:59i'll be there there's usually a massive poster of my face on the console as well much to my father's
00:39:04embarrassment good enough for him yeah jesse thank you very much for coming on the show and talking to
00:39:26me welcome back to the third half everybody freddie who's next tommy our next guest is mark little
00:39:39the pleasure great to meet you now how are you now so the last i heard of you uh
00:39:53was that you had set up a was it a news business company or something like that
00:40:02yes so i have my first parish of rte for here for about that's a very sexy barry white voice
00:40:07you
00:40:08have tempered by much uh yeah what did you what did you do in rte with news so i was
00:40:15the first
00:40:15washington correspondent i was a prime time anchor with miriam mccallaghan with that voice with his
00:40:20voice um and i remember gabe burn actually first time i met gabe burn at a late show he turned
00:40:25to me
00:40:25only words he said to me were do you smoke i did at the time yeah i could hear it
00:40:29so it's my
00:40:30great voice well that was what i did with the voice and then i went on to form a company
00:40:35called
00:40:35storyful back in 2009 and that was trying to make sense of all the social media noise verify
00:40:40what people should listen to and pay attention to work for twitter i had a second startup with my
00:40:46friend on your care and we sold out to spotify so i walked the earth as a sort of a
00:40:50startup
00:40:50tech entrepreneur and finished that up last year and now i've been looking an awful lot of trying to
00:40:56listen a lot more and try to work out what's going to happen next because things are happening so fast
00:41:01i think i feel like we're all like wiley coyote we've gone off the edge of a cliff and we
00:41:06don't
00:41:07quite know yet that technology is about to change every aspect of what's could you talk me through the
00:41:13different phases of your work so when you landed here in rte um what did you do like and and
00:41:23and
00:41:24and how did you do it so back then this was in the days of charlie i this was in
00:41:30the days before the
00:41:31celtic tiger so that was at the turning point and so i was very much sort of taken by the
00:41:37idea that we
00:41:38were telling stories about in ireland at that time which was really in flux the idea of being able
00:41:43to tell that story so i would be lucky enough to report on the ceasefire in belfast to be on
00:41:49the
00:41:49streets at midnight the night of the ceasefire and to be listening to people who weren't celebrating
00:41:54you know former republican prisoners yeah and to be given the privilege of telling that story and of
00:42:01as you listen you realize it's a completely different story than the one you expected
00:42:06and then having that obligation then to pass on some piece of information some
00:42:10image that might change someone's mind that was a tremendous sense of if i'm honest and also being
00:42:16egotistical a little bit yeah power and the idea of spending the rest of your life doing that
00:42:26when did that become quite unattractive so i was heading off to a place called ramadi in 2007 and it
00:42:33was to go
00:42:34and visit a combat outpost marines and it was the most dangerous place on the planet at that time
00:42:39i was traveling on a thursday i went skiing with my mates the previous weekend and i broke my leg
00:42:44so i was brought back from italy on the catering side of the plane spent three four weeks feeling
00:42:49very sorry for myself and something happened at that moment i had a sense of my own mortality
00:42:56i had a sense that if i was going to go to this place iraq that could have been a
00:43:01door through
00:43:01which there was no return okay i had many friends who were already setting their sights was very
00:43:06close with i had lost a few people that i knew and i knew that was going to be the
00:43:10the door i walked
00:43:11through and with this ski accident here i was inside of a ski slope in italy lying up in the
00:43:17blizzard
00:43:17thinking about my death and that was the first time that ever happened i never felt in any way
00:43:22mortal before that moment and that changed everything that just how old were you then
00:43:26i was 38 at that stage i think yeah 38 and that drove me to jump into a business uh
00:43:34where on the
00:43:34first day i had no idea what i was doing i was writing business plans with permanent marker and a
00:43:39white
00:43:39board completely unprepared can you tell me about that that the transition and what the idea was and
00:43:44what you did just before you got the idea like how was the whole time like there was a it
00:43:48was a week
00:43:49i remember there was a protest in iran the green revolution people going against this uh i'm a
00:43:53dinner jazz election and there was twitter was everywhere the entire thing was told through social
00:43:58media and i was at home in dublin the following week when i'm a wedding uh in the west of
00:44:03ireland and
00:44:03we go over to the bar and all the people under 25 or 30 are telling us michael jackson just
00:44:08died
00:44:08and we were on dancing on the floor with my mom remember before he was officially confirmed dead
00:44:15by the los angeles times and i thought to myself wow everybody in the world now can tell a story
00:44:20but who do you listen to to give you the reality and that was the mission statement for storyful
00:44:27that kind of began the journey that became that first company and the idea was that
00:44:35it's almost like i get the sense of it's like looking at twitter and kind of going
00:44:40there needs to be a way of getting good information onto this platform yeah so we would say for
00:44:45example we saw one day two tanks coming down a road outside a place called aleppo and we saw the
00:44:52tank getting blown up and we also found out that we also had a video on youtube of the guy
00:44:57who fired
00:44:57the weapon the rocket propelled grenade and so we could piece together the two things by looking at
00:45:03the sunlight on the minaret see what time of day it might be to match the times find a bit
00:45:08more about
00:45:09the youtube account that had the the guy with the rpg and the youtube account the people on the tank
00:45:14and i'd never seen it like this this was like war from two sides in the very same split screen
00:45:21and here i was realizing that it changed everything about the way that we witnessed the world and
00:45:28it was all being made up at the time from a tiny office by the liffey uh we'd be on
00:45:33to people in california
00:45:34telling them the reality as it was unfolding and then before i know it we had every news
00:45:40organization in the world we're using us as their sort of primary verification service
00:45:45to the point where you know you essentially could find the video that defined the story
00:45:51clear it up verify it and then pass it on to people who could put it on air with total
00:45:56confidence
00:45:58can you tell me a bit more about them what happened to story for what happened to that organization
00:46:03so we got to a point where as a business we came to the attention of rupert murdoch and we
00:46:07were bought
00:46:07by rupert murdoch so i went to new york and lived there and worked for murdoch inside a very strange
00:46:13couple
00:46:13years which was exactly like succession was it exciting uh working for murdoch it was like being
00:46:20on a rocket ship like it was it was really was high potency stuff but it was vicious it was
00:46:26tough
00:46:27i remember sitting in a meeting once in newscorp where a person was walking the door to conduct
00:46:32the meeting and i was told well she's just been fired she doesn't know it but we all do so
00:46:36there was
00:46:36certain sense of you're at the height of this sort of macho yeah testosterone yeah i know kill or be
00:46:43killed type thing oh yeah but with that i suddenly looked at my next 10 years and went shit i
00:46:49have
00:46:49to keep this pace up and do all of this and keep ahead of everybody else in this competitive environment
00:46:54it was like swimming with sharks so yeah for me the the thing to do was to go back and
00:46:58then i
00:46:58went back to ireland so then tell me so you're working for murdoch and then what happened so then
00:47:07i basically get a contacted by twitter and they were hiring someone they had their media department
00:47:11in europe so the job was in dublin so it happened that the international headquarters for twitter is
00:47:16in dublin okay so i came back and and got a job there and but it was a tough time
00:47:21because that was the
00:47:21looking back in it now that's the time when twitter went from being
00:47:25really open collaborative you found your authentic weird community to connect with
00:47:30new people new ideas and the algorithm comes in at about 2015 that's about the time that i join
00:47:37and that's when they start pushing the stuff that they're sitting on your shoulder watching
00:47:42it was a really tough time for twitter as well the algorithm seems like a good idea because
00:47:47well it's sorting out the news from the noise like on twitter i think on youtube at that time there
00:47:52was
00:47:52500 hours of youtube video uploaded every single minute so the curators like the storyful people
00:47:59could only handle so much and the algorithm was there to sort out and break up what you should
00:48:03see based on your personal interests so it started as a good thing helping you from going from sucking on
00:48:09this fire hose of content to working on what you really wanted to see or what needed to see
00:48:14but then it started taking over because the advertising the advertising is there to make you feel
00:48:21like these all this content now has to make you feel happy sad outraged because that's the way you buy
00:48:27things from people who advertise online and that's when social media made that dramatic jump from being
00:48:34a place of openness and collaboration to just being driven uh by the need to sell you things revenue
00:48:42total no that was all about that and as a consequence in twitter every decision became about
00:48:48money and i suddenly realized i was kind of working for an empire everything's been tabloid as well
00:48:53every even on ordinary newspaper websites it's all about how can we get your attention as opposed to
00:49:02before you'd buy a newspaper and you'd had the thing bought yeah and then you'd kind of leaf through it
00:49:08going well not so much or yeah i'll read this or whatever but now it's just it's so
00:49:15it just cheapens everything so you've had enough for twitter then what so then i have this idea
00:49:22well if this algorithm is screwing everybody up can we reverse it could we actually build an app that
00:49:28would allow tommy to come along and say i really want you know trad music and comedy or whatever
00:49:34politics and i want exactly what i want and i'm going to be intent naked women cooking cooking or naked
00:49:40women cooking no no no no no no no it's naked women cooking roast potatoes not even a roast beef
00:49:48no roast potatoes um and they're all very kind and old women okay so it's not an arousal thing
00:49:56it's more just safety
00:50:02see why i can't get over it's just the potatoes that's the thing because spuds and old women
00:50:06represent safety to me okay that's right anyway so reversing the algorithm so i would have actually
00:50:12that would be a great one to build in fact go and see if we could do that now for
00:50:15you and i'll
00:50:15send it to you later on this is what we made earlier yeah um so yeah we wanted this idea
00:50:19to
00:50:19get this new at the time this new ai they were called transformers these are magical new inventions
00:50:25that have now become what we have with open ai to basically allow you to pick what you wanted to
00:50:29see be conscious be intentional if you wanted to see you know more nudie girls doing roast potatoes
00:50:36you could see that but you could also it's really important because this will get sliced older
00:50:41very old got it
00:50:45let's go on record could you look at the camera and just say that i want to emphasize this
00:50:50i would like a website where i could go to where there are four or five very elderly naked kind
00:50:58women cooking roast potatoes this is going to be a netflix series by the way very soon you know that
00:51:05naked and satisfied
00:51:08we went on anyway we decided to try to build this myself and anya care was my business partner
00:51:13and along the lines we found actually that we could use this artificial intelligence
00:51:18for the negative purpose to find a really really seriously bad content that was out there
00:51:22and so we start working with spotify to look into their hours-long podcasts to see where we could
00:51:29see something that was truly dangerous and our algorithms with a bunch of small team of journalists
00:51:34who are native to those languages who could tell the kind of music that isis might use to recruit
00:51:41young people on spotify playlists that was the kind of level that we could get into and the algorithm
00:51:47was starting to come and say to us oh we found this this is what you're looking for right and
00:51:51say
00:51:51yeah i also found this over here and so this golden feedback loop with the algorithm we could
00:51:57start to build out a picture your issue then is not with algorithms in themselves it's what they're
00:52:06being used for is that right yeah and this is where we get into the the two different futures that
00:52:11we face right on the one hand the algorithm itself this now artificial intelligence itself has the
00:52:17capacity to be augmenting us intelligence you know think about nurses being able to help out more
00:52:24directly in the health service or the ability to run the trial and error on the new drug much quicker
00:52:29than in the past or the ability to make sure that we can actually have more environmentally friendly
00:52:34food production the ai has the capacity to do all of that but meanwhile the big capitalist corporations
00:52:41in silicon valley are using it to trap people in chatbots um so keep them coming back to the chatbot
00:52:51every day so we do have these two alternative realities of ai as a potential for human flourishing
00:52:57for the augmentation of human intelligence but over here the people making the money from it and making
00:53:03the big investments have a very narrow application of the technology there's a difference between
00:53:08augmenting our intelligence and expanding our lives and doing us harm though isn't there yeah so there's
00:53:15no limits for example on safety or guard rails we we don't know how these uh these ai are being
00:53:22trained
00:53:23they're being controlled in the background by a small group of engineers i mean the number of people who
00:53:28know what's going on inside the black box where all the data goes and all the the system prompts as
00:53:34they call them maybe a couple hundred people in the world know what's going on inside that and and
00:53:39that's essentially where we have the problem because if a tiny elite are controlling how this all works and
00:53:45keeping it to themselves then there's no way we get that brighter future of flourishing because it's all in
00:53:52the hands of a tiny group in silicon valley and social media was a warning because what the people
00:53:59in silicon valley are telling us is trust us and i think what i'm starting to detect is an awful
00:54:04lot
00:54:04of people feeling like no it's time to be intentional it's time to see what's going on in the world
00:54:10with
00:54:10technology right now as both a positive and a negative and to feel we have some lever to push us
00:54:17toward a positive outcome now that could be leaving the social media platform that you hate
00:54:22to find a group or a newsletter or a podcast or somebody who's creating some goodness in the world
00:54:29and follow them and support them for me it's i'm starting to see that kind of movement within the
00:54:36younger generation the people who are native yeah yeah to social media who are starting to move with their
00:54:42feet they're starting to seek out real world experiences they appreciate the digital part of
00:54:48their life but they're not letting it dominate and so what i'm seeing right now is is the beginnings of
00:54:53what i feel is kind of a digital civil rights push that feels now real in the lives of these
00:55:00younger
00:55:00people and i'd like to think that those who are older who still have some sense of optimism because i
00:55:08see
00:55:09my kids i see them deciding to take polaroid photographs instead of taking their cameras out
00:55:14they usually did and posting on instagram more records lps were sold in ireland last year i think
00:55:20than since the last century right people coming and investing in a certain nostalgia for a heritage that
00:55:27has no baggage for it the rise of this incredible cultural wave ireland's going through right now
00:55:32this is coming from people that were born into an environment where digital was everything
00:55:39so our our agency is intention yeah and that's our lifeboat that's how we go from the flood of
00:55:45as they call it slop is the term to a human internet that may be much smaller may resemble a
00:55:52lot more like
00:55:53villages around a bigger community and that's already happening and i think people if if you ask them
00:55:58they'll say well my whatsapp my chat my chat groups are where i get all my information um and i
00:56:04no longer
00:56:05have the vertical trust of looking up to the priest or the bank or the journalist i trust the people
00:56:10around me that i've got in my circles and it's a really interesting decentralization of power back to
00:56:15people with intention but also to trust the feeling that you get when you're being fed an endless loop of
00:56:26kind of weaker and weaker content to trust the body when it kind of goes i don't feel good yeah
00:56:34after
00:56:34this you know um you know by stripping it away sometimes in the silence like i spent a lot of
00:56:40my
00:56:40time not listening you know i pitched things i was the storyteller jazz hands guy and this last year you
00:56:46know sitting with school teachers recently thinking about the burden on them or you know talking to all my
00:56:53friends my kids friends and listening and being curious you know i think that's been for me in the
00:56:59advanced stage of my career my life uh this year has been something different um yeah it's been been
00:57:06something special just to sit down and not try to pitch anything to anybody or sell something in a
00:57:11corporation but just sit with the knowledge that things are changing be open to the surprise of
00:57:16listening and what might happen rather than trying to put a shape on it yeah totally yeah also silence
00:57:22like that just inspiration idea like i'm always taken by sam beckett you know he'd follow his
00:57:27dial up into the mountains and the um iambic pentameter of the the shed this silence between the
00:57:33footsteps um there's something beautiful about that i think as you get later in life i think you
00:57:38start to appreciate that when you see it around you and start to emerge uh almost by osmosis from this
00:57:45next generation so what's this space i think are you thinking about the roast potatoes no you just
00:58:03spoiled it i was creating a bit of silence there for everybody to enjoy but you big pervert you come
00:58:09in
00:58:09and you ruined it mark it's been a pleasure thank you very much thank you come on cheers and now
00:58:18ladies
00:58:18and gentlemen all the way from california and scotland it's a band called doug performing have at it
00:58:26which is the title track from their latest album one two
00:58:36i'm gonna wash my hands of this world i'm gonna join the band of the birds and i will scrub
00:58:46until they bleed
00:58:47and my blood will stain the earth when i wash my hands of this world won't you lend me a
00:58:57dollar for the fair
00:58:59i know heaven is a long way from here and all my money has been spent on katerine and beer
00:59:08won't you lend me a dollar for the fair
00:59:31and i'm gonna scrub myself up before i go where are you going i'm gonna take this elevator to the
00:59:39final
00:59:39floor and everyone will see who's died well god damn that man was a catch i'm gonna scrub myself up
00:59:47before i go
00:59:48where i go see my will's been signed sealed and written what's it say it's just three simple words
00:59:58how about it to my love i leave behind these breadcrumbs and dimes cause my will's been written sealed and
01:00:07signed
01:00:28well one day i'm sure you'll come and join us too and i promise dear there's plenty here to do
01:00:37see the bars they never close and the guards they're all on yokes well one day i'm sure you'll come
01:00:44and join us too
01:00:47there's a never-ending party in the sky
01:01:00in the sky
01:01:24and i'm gonna wash my hands of this world
01:01:28i'm gonna join the band of the birds
01:01:32and i will scrub until they bleed and my brother stained the earth
01:01:37when i wash my hands of this world
01:01:50and i will set in the sky
01:01:59and it's not something that is
01:01:59i don't know
01:01:59i don't know
01:02:03at all
01:02:10you
01:02:11you
01:02:11you
01:02:11you
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