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Nigel ler welcome to my podcast thank you D it's great to be here I the it is
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um such an honor for me I was saying to you just a couple of seconds ago like you're a white whale guest for me this
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is like a dream guest and even more so I think given the the current circumstances well I it's it's a good
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day out for me CU my days now mostly staying at home so actually getting to come out and do stuff is kind of cool uh
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and uh I've you know I've watched a few of your podcasts and stuff and so it's
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yeah it's cool it's cool cool being here it still seems odd to me that anybody
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would want to cheat to me about stuff that I've done because I just think well
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I just did stuff you know so this is no but you've done um like you've done so I
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I put on Instagram that you were coming in and did anyone have any questions and
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um to be honest like 80% of it was just like well washers and just people saying
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people been people are super nice do you know what I mean it's like every time
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you um I've always had I should stop away from the microphone shouldn't I
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always been really confident in the fundamental kind of goodness of people because they just are and so people have
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been lovely like I've had some lovely messages of uh support and stuff like that the bet that son very funny the
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antix people I I found a thread just cuz I'm bored I found a thread on Reddit
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where they were debating is it him getting his Just Desserts now that he's got turbo cancer
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have you heard about turbo cancer no comes from the vaccine is he getting his just deserts now because he was one of
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the people advocating for vaccines and some people were saying yeah tot it's
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totally fair you should well it's a little bit harsh it's like so that's I
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find that hilarious apparently I've got the turbo cancer turbo cancer well that
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sounds really dramatic quite cool caner hey so um we're recording this a few
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days um before your your next birthday you've got a birthday next week no no no
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Wikipedia no no don't believe anything really July oh really yeah oh well I [ __ ] that one up completely yeah I'll
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take it I have a business well and light well I thought it was your birthday next
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week but I suppose when you had your last birthday in July like you you um were aware of the cancer then um but it
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was only fly recently so it's only been four months that I've been on this
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particular Road right uh so yeah the early part of the year was just Trucking along you know working working working
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tracking along and then you get to a m morning and it all just changes so it's only been four months so
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so 4 months ago you got told you've got between 6 months and a year to live yeah
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yeah and that was that was um that was that was a with I had the thing with the the um in the GI person
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the gastro person uh and so this was the meeting with the surgeon the next day and to be fair he was this lovely man
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like he was a really lovely man and cuz he said you've got it's it's uncurable
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like it's inoperable we can't take it out and so you know you you want to know
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that number so we just said look just tell us a number and um he went like I really don't like doing that cuz had to
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put a number on stuff and and my partner my wife is's also psychologist look
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we're psychiatrist we can handle it just just just give us a number and then he
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said there 6 to 12 months and it's like I remember start being punched in the
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brain I remember thinking could you give me another number like if you got any other ones negotiable that's your first
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offer let's let's push out but since then it's all changed since then because
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of now um you enter oncology and that's a just this winding path of lots of options so actually it's been going uh
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pretty well like on four months into chemo I've had a number of Lucky breaks
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like I'm I've got the right I've got a really good Guma type it's fast growing
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which is good because when it divides that's when it can kind of get got at uh
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I can take hpon which is um a targeted therapy uh and I can also do immunotherapy which so the combination
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of kind of chemo and these two sorts of uh other drugs are really good for me so
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now it's very optimistic now I'm looking forward to being here for a long time so
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you're living not dying yeah like I just don't like for the first few days it
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felt like I was dying you know cuz it was just shock and Trauma and all of the rest of that stuff and I remember the
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day that we got told that um like I remember going we left the place we were standing outside and I just like I
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literally had no idea what to do in that moment I thought I don't know what to do
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or where to go and so fortunately a friend was there uh and I just thought okay make a freaking decision I thought
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we can't go home I don't know why we just couldn't uh and so we went to her
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place and then um we yeah we went there and started calling people it very very grim and uh why couldn't you go home I
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just in my head it was like no can't do that yet like cuz the the kids were at
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home and I thought I like I need to get my [ __ ] together like we can't we can't
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be walking into the in the middle of this like that's so so it was just let's
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avoid that for but so that night we went to a hotel and just I ate lots of ice cream and cried and then from the next
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day it got better cuz from the next day we started to see the oncologist and um who's my new favorite guy like this
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really smart guy um and and then options start opening up and things start improving so it went
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from the bleakest of The Bleak to actually now it's going forward and it's
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been good learning because you spend your whole I spent people a long time telling people how to be resilient it's
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like okay so let's practice some of those things now yeah I um I watched a a
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Ted Talk on YouTube that you did um and one of the key messages in there was um it could always be worse yeah yeah it
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can and how how for you well the 6 to 12 months could be true that gives me till
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November you know I IM if you ask how long have I got he me about I'd say 25
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30 minutes like um no like it can always be worse and so I I do I think that um one of the
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things I've kind of always believed is that basically life is just a big bus
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and you're either going to be a passenger or you're going to drive the bus and so you have to you have to drive
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the bus you have to kind of Take Charge of the things that have happened to you um and so so kind of part of my thinking
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in those initial days was just like your job now is to make it easier on the people around you like that's that's
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something I can do and that there's a lot of things I can't control but I can
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control how I am and how I am with the people around me and that that's uh it's
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it's a really simple idea but it's pretty powerful easy see than done that
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way because you know you tend to save your your worst behavior for the people that you love the most and you'd have
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every right to be like a you know a [ __ ] pain in the ass at that particular Point well and it's not to
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say that I don't get kind of mopy and feel a bit sorry for myself during some
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of the days of um the chemo stuff but I just work really it's like wallowing
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is it's like the world of the moments in this weird space where you're everything kind of this a toxic
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masculinity right and and toughing it out is bad and but but actually sometimes tough it out and just
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hardening the [ __ ] up is the most important thing to do and it's like I if
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I really care about the people around me I can try to make their lives easier and
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when I do that when I do this act of generosity towards other people it makes me feel better whenever I whenever I
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behave like an [ __ ] or I do something that's selfish or I do something that's
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un kind it doesn't even in the moment when you feel Justified and doing it it's never made me feel good the stuff
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that makes me feel good is when you're being generous and helping the people
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around and so really early on I just decided that I'm just going to do everything I can to make it easier for
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the people around me rather than harder and it's just it just works it does make
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life easier it's it's yeah it's common sense if I ever um you see the red M and
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lose my call at a stranger or someone I know I feel bad about it for hours afterwards like it just doesn't it
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doesn't make you feel good and even sometimes you feel really justified in doing it cuz the other person wants
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being a complete dick but but it's just never worked and the only thing it's
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ever worked for me is stepping back from that thinking okay what's something kind
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I can do for this person who's being an [ __ ] right now cuz no one like no one's born an [ __ ] well there's
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that's not I think there are a small percentage of people who they literally
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are everyone else is just a bit Tangled Up and most people are doing things cuz they're even the antix people that are
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debating whether or not I deserve turber cancer those guys like they're still that's coming from a
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place of they really they think this harmful thing was done to the world and so they're trying to speak out against
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it like I understand why they're doing it I just some of I just find a bit hilarious so yeah I think the world's
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everyone's supposed to feel good about everything all the time and you're never
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supposed to just tough it out well actually sometimes that's the best thing to do like what else you going to do
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fall on the ground and and kind of whimper and that's I've done a little
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I've done that too but you can't do that all the time you have to stand up and
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and push on and you you definitely are so are you said yeah so the the day you found out
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you spend the night in the hotel eating the ice cream um ice because the kids are at home you've got two kids two sons
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in their 20s so so I've got a I've got five in total uh there's a girl and a
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boy and then a girl sorry a boy and a girl and a boy so it like a blended situation yeah Blended situ so the the
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two oldest are mine and then um and then Natalie and I we sort of co-parent the her her her three kids as well what are
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their ages are they a little younger uh but you so they kind of 18 uh 18 and 17 and uh 14 so we've got a great lumbering
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14y old in the house so are you rereading your books you know well it helps having been there right it's like
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and I understand boys and boys boys are the best thing about boys is you say how
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how was your day and they go good and that's it we're all done like that's the
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day wrapped up um whereas girls they talk a lot more about stuff and so when you ask them how the day is you got to
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have a chair and like just a drink of water clear the clear the afternoon so so did you guys um I mean they're all
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ages where you can sort of I suppose have adult conversations with them but did you is that what you did in the
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hotel you discussed how you were going to message it the next day or no we kind of didn't do it in the morning mostly we
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just sat in the hotel and cried and I I and um the one thing I do regret one of the newspaper articles that came out
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after I put my little video out said that I went to a hotel and ice cream and cried when I first like no no there was
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someone else with me like I seems slightly less pathetic I know it seems a slightly pathetic thing what did you do
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I went to a hotel by myself chick just sat there crying in the middle of the room eating ice cream um if I read that
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I'd be like he was definitely watching the hotel Point ice creams a distraction I know so
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so no we we kind of the next morning we kind of got our heads around the fact that
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um how we were going to talk to the kids about all this stuff and it does help that we buy shrinks so it's like you do
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have some things to fall back and it's also irritating because you do have to
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practice the things you've been preaching and sometimes those things are quite hard to practice Yeah so um
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September 5 5:32 p.m. that's when the video went live um yeah yeah why did you
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decide to do that now it's kind of the drive the bus then so you see me I Remember You See Me a while ago but
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coming on the podcast and at that point I was thinking I'm going to do this but
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I'm going to do this it wasn't the right time then basically a couple of
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journalists have been calling um asking to write something about it and I thought yeah I kind of want
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to that I want to be in control of the message and do it in the way that I want it I don't want to be talking to a print
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journalist and have to worry about how they write it and how it sounds so and that's a great thing about social media
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now you can just make a little video control the narrative yeah and say people hey so this is a thing and then
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uh but people have been super nice like it's I wish everybody I wish everyone
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that got cancer could have all these people saying these super nice things to them because people are just really you
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know just people just lovely people are nice um yeah I mean the there's thousands of comments including I saw
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one from um Sonia Yelich who's Lord's mom um saying you helped raise her kids
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you know what I'm which is awesome I'm I've been talking to lawyers I need a
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cut of the Lord thing I play a rooll there I thought that was so awesome it's like
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man I in some small maybe a large way I contributed to Lord's yeah now I mean
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this this validation it's only um I mean it's strangers on the internet um but it
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still must be incredibly humbling it says a lot about the impact you've had on society over the last 30 odd years
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yeah no it's it is really nice and and particularly particularly over the last
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little bit it it um it does it does feel really nice when people say that I B at
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there's always this thing in there that like everything I've done has been a
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part of teams and so if you're the presenter on tally they think it's your
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TV show and it's like you know there's a whole bunch of us made that stuff so
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it's like it's always that I always feel it saying that's really I'll let the
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other people know who are part of making this stuff as well CU it's like everything I've done has been part of a
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team it's like it's everything is everything's a collaborative process
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yeah and um there's a book that you've recommended called life hacks from the
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border yeah um yeah that was the post you did after the the video post announcing that you had cancer yeah so
00:14:04
Tony Tony Fernando who's a psychiatrist wrote the book it's a really good book
00:14:08
um and uh it's I kind of expected it to be sort of the usual self-helping stuff
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but Tony as well as being a psychiatrist and a really good psychiatrist he's also
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a Buddhist monk and so it's kind of he takes Buddhism and talks about how you
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can apply that to your life now and you don't to think about Buddhism as a religion and in fact that Buddha even
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really took a position on that people would say to him so what's what happens
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after you die and he went look don't worry about that just focus on now um so
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you don't it's not it's not really a religious thing it's more just a it's a
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it's a philosophy and a series of kind of ideas about how to be that make you
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kind of suffer less and make it easier to feel um to feel kind of happier and content in life so I've always been a
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sort of a closet Buddhist you know like I'm a bit Buddhist not all the way like
00:14:57
tny in the book he talks about her bdd monks will if there's ants they'll scoot
00:15:01
them all up and take them outside I had a bunch of ants on the bench yesterday I
00:15:04
just fly straight you guys just know so I don't do the whole thing and and sometimes it's we're talking about this
00:15:15
the other day my my my my son said that sometimes um he was talking about a project he had to do in class and he
00:15:22
didn't like the lecturer and so he kind of he wanted to succeed out of spite to
00:15:27
spite this guy and sometimes sp's a good little motivator you know like it's not
00:15:32
the healthiest I guess in some ways but it's like it's uh it I've done some
00:15:36
things just the thing that motivates me is out a Spite and it's like it's not a
00:15:40
very Buddhist thing to do but it works yeah yeah use your haters as your motivators there's something to it yeah
00:15:46
absolutely right um that's Proby enough about the the cancer for now we'll get
00:15:50
back to that later but there's so much um of the [ __ ] letter story imp pack so
00:15:53
um born in aadu 1967 um I I heard you say maybe on another podcast um you described today
00:16:00
as quite an interesting place to grow up what it was a [ __ ] place to grow up was
00:16:04
it why I'm always cool now but it was a [ __ ] place to grow up because it was
00:16:08
like I I was kind of growing up in the sort of late 70s and 80s so as a teenager in the 80s I went to this um
00:16:15
Whi boys which is like all boy schools in the 80s was a toxic and shitty place um didn't wasn't interested in sports at
00:16:24
all um and at at at w Boys in 19 880s if you got a Blazer which is some you know
00:16:32
a prize from the school for um for rugby or Cricket or something you way if you got one an academic Blazer people beat
00:16:40
you up because they thought you were gay like that was of that was our 1980 in omo the way that we thought you could
00:16:46
tell us someone was G is if they're smart they definitely G which you think it's like so what H
00:16:53
people stupid like that was the thing so I I yeah I hated what te BS when I went
00:16:58
there um and I just couldn't wait to get out of omaro now it's cool like now I'm
00:17:04
you should go and visit omaro now it's really cool they've got the steampunk
00:17:07
stuff going on there penguins and nice little cafes and things but yeah back in the 80s I didn't like it at all that
00:17:14
sounds similar to um to my school experience I went to Pal boy high like um mid 80s to 9090 um got called a [ __ ]
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every day yeah it was just and it wasn't any it wasn't any particular school that
00:17:28
was just what happened and no one intervened and you know we would practice haers for the these first 15
00:17:35
matches and the prefect would scream and yell at you and the weird thing is I remember them like in my memory there
00:17:41
were these [ __ ] huge Hulen gorillas screaming at us and I found an old school magazine and looked back and they
00:17:47
were just skinny little teenage boys at the time if they're older than you I
00:17:50
suppose they have a size Advantage there's nothing more more gratifying than being like for me at least being 18
00:17:56
192 going out and seeing the from the first 15 as adults now still wearing you still wearing their rugby shirt or
00:18:04
living on other Glory Days of their life I know I know I always kind of think like if you're if you're if High
00:18:10
School's amazing that's not a good sign if you don't want to peek at high school
00:18:13
yeah yeah so what what were you like as what was like as a cat I read you bought
00:18:17
yourself a typewriter at the age of 13 so you you must have had a like a creative creative side yeah like I
00:18:21
wanted to write books that was the the life plan for me was writing novels that's what I wanted to do at that point
00:18:27
um and um so yeah I was just like a I was always kind of I I like I was the only s former not made a prefect at the
00:18:37
school like they were 30 six were becoming prefects and that was a smart move like cuz I would have been a
00:18:42
disaster because um I was just all anti- establish I remember the um the governor
00:18:47
general came to a school prize giving to give and I won a prize for English and so I went to the a Bookshop and got um
00:18:54
KY Marx the first 100 years because I know my sort of boy oh that'll put the W
00:19:00
up the governor general all this Max and stuff um he just gave it to me and shook
00:19:05
my head I've still got it never read it it a stupid F I should have got why um
00:19:09
yeah were you were you just like an angry angsty teen or what that I just it's like I just didn't I didn't
00:19:18
like bollocks and I just thought this is all bollocks like I I got a detention once cuz I wasn't seen God Sav the queen
00:19:24
and the sebl I was such a snot and I remember Mr Kissle who was a lovely man he said what's the why won't you sing we
00:19:31
not singing God Save the Queen L and I went well no cuz like she lives in a palace and she's got like s stuff we
00:19:36
should sing God God Save The Starving little African kids I didn't care about
00:19:40
the starving little African kids I was just being a dick so why why were you being set to
00:19:46
fire um it just I don't know it just seemed like much more interesting to me
00:19:50
than um oh that's my little beeper to tell me to take stuff but I've already
00:19:52
taken that s dis must um I I just kind of like the idea of poking a stick into all that stuff not taking it too
00:19:59
seriously just questioning Authority yeah I just thought well why why am I singing God Save the Queen cuz I don't
00:20:04
me her I'm sure she's fine but she seems okay like I don't think she needs us to
00:20:07
sing what what was what was that beeper what do you need to take ah see now I'm
00:20:11
such my life is so different that uh I have to have an app to tell me which pills to take when because my day is a
00:20:17
series of a series of pills I take um you know so there's the chemo drugs and
00:20:22
there's nauseous stuff on this heart stuff because also a scout I've got a
00:20:25
Dicky hat it's like come on cuz I start looking at everything um so I've I take
00:20:32
heart stuff now I'm a yeah I every every 3 hours 4 hours yeah do you mean it's
00:20:38
about every every every 3 hours there's a big there's a big pile in the morning
00:20:41
first thing and then there's another lot about 10:00 and then there's be another
00:20:44
lot sort of 11:30 12 and then that's more at 3 and then more and it's mostly
00:20:49
just about keeping the nausea under control because chemo gives you nausea because it's basically chemo is taking a
00:20:54
blunt like it's a cheese grer to all the fast dividing cells in your body so you
00:20:58
keep get all these weird symptoms but again I'm lucky cuz I don't get as many
00:21:03
symptoms as a lot of other people and I don't hit them as extreme so it's
00:21:07
fine you're so positive about things well I mean I suppose it's a choice
00:21:11
isn't it I suppose you you have to be but it' be I mean it' be understandable
00:21:15
and easy to have a bit of self-pity yeah and I do have that like there are there
00:21:18
are definitely times like there are days when um you I've got like the moment
00:21:22
about another 11 weeks of chemo to go and there are days when you just lie there and just go oh man this
00:21:29
um but yeah I just kind of I always think um it'll be fine and if it's if it's not
00:21:37
deal with it when you get there and so how I kind of reframe all the symptom stuff is like it's good it's interesting
00:21:45
I a special forces guy I watched a video years ago about the special forces guy saying you know if you want to improve
00:21:51
your resilience you just it's just you can do that with one word whatever happens you just say good so you're
00:21:56
feeling sick good that means it's working you know you're feeling really
00:22:00
ground down and done good that means it's really working it doesn't work all
00:22:04
the time but I try and practice that a lot cuz it's just better easier sh this
00:22:10
I mean we've only been going 20 minutes there's already been so many good
00:22:12
takeaways you just dispense it you you disp advice without even knowing it well the thing
00:22:18
is unlike look where I've been lucky is that I've got to SP basically my entire
00:22:23
life reading about stuff that helps people being kind of KNE deep and helping people for 20 something years
00:22:31
doing all these teley shows where you go out and you've got researchers that find
00:22:35
super interesting people for you to talk to and so really all I've need to do is
00:22:40
just be awake and pay attention to stuff that's happening around me you just pick
00:22:43
up these kind of useful things and most of the good stuff people thought Generations ago like thousands of years
00:22:49
ago all the good thinking has been done there's no new thinking there's just um
00:22:53
there's just the old stuff repackaged yeah so um so after after the y te experience um you go to university
00:23:01
um get a zoology and Marine Science degree yeah why well so University I I went I went to University when it was
00:23:08
free I think we paid $300 in student fees and we butched about that like why am I paying $300 I um and so I ranged
00:23:18
through a whole bunch of careers at University and uh I originally uh thought I was going to be a philosopher
00:23:24
because that was the least omaro thing I thought you could study uh but then I went to a philosophy lecture and they
00:23:30
said should you eat the bread of the plate and I me this is just stupid like I know the answer to that I find that
00:23:35
only later I discovered that actually philosophy is super interesting um but I and I I I I I was going to do
00:23:46
um the only science subject you could do at stage two without chemistry was um I
00:23:51
think zoology at that point and geology and some of those things and basically I
00:23:55
had cheated through my entire six4 and copied Don Clark's assignments in chemistry and got accredited in
00:24:01
chemistry I understood nothing about it at all still don't to this day chemistry
00:24:05
is a complete mystery to me so I wanted to ditch that um and I'd watch ja who
00:24:09
was a kid um and uh I thought I'll be a marine biologist sounds pretty awesome
00:24:14
so so yeah I peeled off and did zoology uh and then um with this idea of doing Marine Science after that I wanted to go
00:24:22
to the antartic to do a research project but because I was such an idiot I left it way too late so by the time I talked
00:24:28
to them was already too late um so yes I did zoo of Marine Science I got within two weeks of joining the police back
00:24:34
then cuz that was uh something I was kind of super interested in doing and then um changed Tac and came up to
00:24:39
ockland and psychology up here when was the music career was that in between those two the G Thornton Steam and you
00:24:46
yeah we we were a thing what was what was there well were you ukulele player no I play ukulele in the B of harmonica
00:24:52
uh and um kazoo and stuff like that we we had we knew this guy's chew who actually really was talented and he
00:25:00
played in proper bands um and we just s be fun to go busing we thought we could raise some money for beer basically um
00:25:06
and so we we set this little skiffle band up with a teachers base and ukuladies and washboards and all that
00:25:11
kind of stuff um and we went away for a weekend to twizel and I think our first gig in the twis mall we got drunk first
00:25:21
that was a bad idea cuz we couldn't do anything so we made 20 cents the next
00:25:25
day we thought okay let's do it not being drunk and see how that go goes and
00:25:28
we made enough I think to buy two and a half jugs of beer or something so we thought oh this is quite good so we just
00:25:34
did that for a fun thing for the year and um yeah that was my that was my musical career in Kevin Thornton's so
00:25:40
what how old were you when you went back to back to study and to do psychology God that must have been must be having
00:25:46
never been to University myself like you you do these years you get a degree does
00:25:50
it feel like a waste of time no cuz cuz even the zoology and Marine science stuff like at the time I thought oh I
00:25:56
did all that stuff and I'll never use it and then I had and it's like I could go
00:25:59
to the beach and say wise things about the various little creatures coming about in the in the in the in the water
00:26:05
and stuff um no but it it was very different back then because it was free and so this is where kids now have it so
00:26:12
much hter like they have to every year cost them a fortune and so they have to really think about what's the subject
00:26:19
and doing and I don't know how you can know that before you do it like I chopped and changed all over the place
00:26:24
and then you know then we decided that uh all the people that got free education to decided that it simply
00:26:29
wasn't right for people to get free education so they bought them fees and now kids come up with these massive
00:26:33
debts and end up doing courses they don't like and a whole bunch of things but what was the motivation for
00:26:38
psychology what was the Catalyst to go back and study that um I quite liked I I I like the idea of working with people
00:26:45
and I've always been sort of my sort of approach to things is that you know that whole thing about this two
00:26:51
paths diverged in the wood like if if I came to a wood and there was two paths and there was a dude there and the dude
00:26:58
said look definitely go this way it's flat it's paved there's good lighting
00:27:03
there's a little cafe up there um and comfy seats don't go down there there's
00:27:08
some [ __ ] up [ __ ] down there I would totally that I'm going that way straight
00:27:12
away like I just thought the world's an interesting place and I wanted to kind
00:27:17
of see more of that and I was interested in like why people do bad things um and
00:27:24
what are people who do bad things like and so the psychology stuff um yeah that sort of that interested me um so yeah I
00:27:32
just kind of did it cuz I thought oh that I'm I'm going to learn some interesting things if I if I do that
00:27:37
which which I did yeah yeah you did um we'll get into the TV stuff but beyond
00:27:41
the darkland one of my one of my favorite TV shows of the last 20 years never missed an episode fascinating and
00:27:47
the weird thing is I had more information about the guys that we profiled on that show than I did um any
00:27:53
psychology report that we ever wrote because we would have producers who would spend six or eight months going
00:27:58
around and Gathering all this information up about people and so it was the scuffing sound is the we
00:28:05
dog Kanye trying to dig a hole in the caret digging a hole he doesn't realize
00:28:09
we're in an apartment and this is going to make life super difficult um yeah so
00:28:15
so so yeah beyond the dark P was a and it's interesting like I when we when we
00:28:20
started to like when Philly is from Springtime first kind of met with me about the
00:28:25
show I sort of had some conditions I kind of see well we're not going to make
00:28:30
an episode about about any of these offenders unless we've got the victim's
00:28:35
families permission to do it like we go to them directly and ask them um and we're not going to do any Recreations
00:28:40
and we're not going to have blood and stuff like that and Philly's you know a
00:28:44
marvelous and ethical person and was totally on board with that so we're kind
00:28:47
of stuck to that like we would always get the permission of victim's families
00:28:51
before we made an episode and so there was something we just didn't do like mik
00:28:55
Lundy was going to be the first season but his family had burned by the media and wer interested and so I think in
00:29:01
season 4 we kind of went back to them and said okay so now you see what we do and for me I was making those things for
00:29:07
the parole board of a lot of these guys so they would have that information in front of them uh and and so second time
00:29:13
around they were okay with us doing it because they kind of knew how we did things I mean it's people's families and
00:29:19
stuff and so it's not just entertainment and another of my conditions was we're
00:29:23
never going to sell it as a DVD set in work course like it won't be for sale
00:29:26
because that's just orens crass it's like if my kid had been murdered and then it's this thing gets
00:29:33
made and they're selling it we're Co you know it's just that just seemed wrong so
00:29:38
um yeah to to Philly Philly's great um and just all that stuff was fine yeah do
00:29:44
do you still follow Bleak stuff now like at the time we're recording this the
00:29:48
jury's out on the uh ping horn trial do yeah you follow that oh yeah yeah we we
00:29:53
we we follow that um um so nalie my partner she's that also she's done a lot
00:29:59
of adult mental health stuff and has worked and um did did some time in Broadmore in the UK as well where you
00:30:05
know she talked to people who cut people's heads off and bury them in the backyard and stuff um some of that S car
00:30:11
on and so yeah now we follow po stuff because it's just it's interesting I
00:30:15
don't follow the new I try not to follow the news generally because it's just
00:30:17
generally depressing and irritating but some of that stuff pretty interesting is there part
00:30:24
of you that there you know think [ __ ] I'd love to do a show about this or document about this no because like I'm
00:30:29
really glad the dark L is done because it was just because you're making it about individual people and individual
00:30:37
families there's always that kind of pressure there that you you don't want
00:30:42
to make something that's going to make people feel kind of exploited all that
00:30:46
um kind of isn't okay so I was glad to go back from I'm I'm glad we did that
00:30:52
stuff I think we did some good stuff in there but it was good that it ended when
00:30:55
it did yeah so so in your early years as a a psychologist who like who who were your clients so my um I most I did a lot
00:31:03
of child and family stuff for most of my career really um and that was because again like I sort of I thought rather
00:31:13
than let someone choose you had to get placements and internships rather than let someone choose that for me I'm going
00:31:19
to go and find my own um and so I very cynically joined victim support before I applied for the diploma so I had some
00:31:26
stuff under my belt um as part of that a guy came along um from a stopping violence program and talked about this
00:31:33
10 we program and so when I got into the diploma and I was looking for a master's
00:31:38
project I went to see him but he was on the phone and the guy that ran the seend
00:31:43
the treatment program wasn't and we started chatting and even though this one was 10 weeks this one was like 2
00:31:49
years long um I it just sounded far more interesting and so I immediately kind of
00:31:54
peeled off into that and then through that made a lot of really other people and ended up um working in the child and
00:32:01
family area because it's just interesting and um teenagers are great like if adults are super polite but
00:32:09
teenagers tell you go [ __ ] yourself like you'll walk in I once walked into this girl I once
00:32:15
walked into I was to assist this girl she was like 11 and she' 12 or something
00:32:20
and she' tried to take like an old lady and her car so she wanted the set of
00:32:24
those two things and I walked into the room and she looked at me and she said [ __ ] man I'm not [ __ ] talking to you
00:32:29
you're the [ __ ] ugliest man in the whole [ __ ] world and I like to straight away like I
00:32:37
thought you are like a great deal and then so I just said to her you know what's interesting I used to be a
00:32:43
stunningly handsome man but it wasn't working so went to a made him M he's a
00:32:47
plastic surgeon I said can you [ __ ] me up just a little but what she did and she laughed which made her really
00:32:52
annoyed and then we just ad that for the rest of time and I like I like kids like
00:32:55
that like I like working with kind of families and kids where they're just super upfront and the tell stuff and
00:33:00
also there's just such a ton of Hopey because you know they're just kids were you were you um were you
00:33:06
polarizing like did did some of your peers sort of frown upon you like um yeah I think cuz you're quite unorthodox
00:33:12
he yeah yeah and I've I've had a tenous relationship with my professional body um cuz I think like I
00:33:21
think there's lots of really great psychologist doing amazing stuff but I think we're way too careful as a
00:33:24
profession and I think that we are a bit we sort of we turn on ourselves a little
00:33:29
bit too much um and so you know I there were I I yeah I know there were psychologist that didn't
00:33:37
think that what I was doing was a good thing but my my thing is always um if you're doing something and you
00:33:45
don't and you feel like you can't or shouldn't talk about it to other
00:33:49
professionals then it's wrong and so I've always been really open about kind
00:33:52
of the stuff I did and also I was always working in teams of people so it was never just me doing stuff you're work in
00:33:57
this collaborative team we're all making decisions together um but yeah like I
00:34:01
know there are some psychologists that don't I don't give a I don't care give
00:34:06
[ __ ] I get the feeling you don't that Ted Talk I was talking about that's on
00:34:09
YouTube you tell a story in there about a kid that's um doing um play therapy or
00:34:14
sand therapy whatever it's called and you you basically um uh get through to
00:34:18
him by teaching him how to trick the psychologist yeah um I was thinking yeah a lot of your peers must would be like
00:34:23
oh that's not the correct way to do it but it's effective it is and a lot of
00:34:27
them would like there lots of really good psychologists doing really good work I just think they we're too worried
00:34:32
about what other psychologists will think of the stuff that we do and so there's lots of people really creative
00:34:36
and good stuff me my thing was always I don't like my obligation is not your
00:34:40
sensibilities my obligation is this he's this kid in the room and my job is to
00:34:44
find out what's going on and so I'll do whatever I need to do within the Realms
00:34:48
of what's you know ethical and responsible um to help this kid to talk about stuff and I don't care if some up
00:34:54
top I I once offered to do a talk at the site confence and I was going to call it um why we
00:35:00
need to pack a less and fat more but they they they said they wouldn't let me
00:35:05
do it unless I change the title I said well I'm not changing the title so I didn't do it but I do think it's that
00:35:09
it's like we don't do everyone's just far too freaking careful and worried
00:35:14
about stuff you know everyone's worried about getting canceled from what I can see canel just
00:35:18
means people say mean [ __ ] about you on the internet well who gives a [ __ ] like
00:35:21
you know it's like cancel me I'm fine with that um it just mean you go oh typ
00:35:27
ity typ it it's so true so so um from kids you move on to um like like just the worst of the
00:35:35
worst like violent offenders sex offenders murderers um when when you're working with terrible people like that
00:35:42
like what sort of impact does it have on your mental health like how how do you switch off outside of the other thing is
00:35:47
most of them weren't terrible people like your job when you're doing that
00:35:50
stuff is you have to you can't you have to find a way to connect and build a
00:35:54
relationship with this other person because you're saying to this other human being hey don't do those bad
00:35:58
things anymore like try these other things instead no one is going to listen to that or think about that if you if
00:36:05
you're an [ __ ] or if you're angry at them or you're Haring them or making
00:36:09
them feel bad you got to find a way to connect with the actual kind of person inside of all of that and so there's
00:36:14
their behaviors and then there's the person there are very I can't think of a
00:36:19
single offender that I work with that I didn't find something to like about because they're just they're just people
00:36:25
and we kind of have this idea that they vastly different to us no they're not
00:36:29
they're us they're just us you know it's just some of most of us are lucky and
00:36:33
that as sexual fantasies aren't about things are illegal or if they are about
00:36:37
things are illegal we don't actually do them um some people uh get caught up in
00:36:41
all kinds of things and you know our prisons aren't full of people who are innately bad they're full of people who
00:36:47
have alcohol and drug habits who grew up in poverty who didn't get kind of enough
00:36:52
education who grew up on trauma and all that kind of stuff and all the you know people go oh it's all woke apologist
00:36:57
nonsense is just like botocks you go into these places and sit down with someone ask them about their life story
00:37:02
and then tell me that you think that they're just innately a bad person if you grow up being beaten and abused and
00:37:10
hungry and cold and scared you're not going to think the world's a lovely
00:37:14
place and I should be nice to other people you're going to think the world doesn't give a [ __ ] about me so why
00:37:18
should I give a [ __ ] about other people so you have to find stuff to kind of connect and like about those people and
00:37:24
and it's a it's a really good life skill because um not many of us have to do
00:37:28
that we often you know we we meet a whole bunch of people and you don't always have to find things to like but
00:37:35
it always looks better if you do [ __ ] you're a good bastard aren't you like I
00:37:40
mean you could you could you could you know no you are because you could I I got some friends that are like ex cops
00:37:45
and they a lot of them ended up like quite cynical like have an ability toly the worst in almost everyone but seems
00:37:51
like you can you you've got this ability to I don't know maybe it's a compassion
00:37:55
streak or something to that there is a little bit of good in everyone well I think I'm just fundamentally I'm a
00:38:01
pragmatist and so I I want to do whatever works I'm fundamentally kind of lazy and a pregn and so I don't want to
00:38:08
have to do [ __ ] if there's no point of doing it like I want to the fastest
00:38:11
route to something happening um and it is through this thing I totally get why cops get like that like I think if I'd
00:38:17
spent my career in the police I'm pretty sure I would have been like that too
00:38:20
because their job is to basically catch people and lock them up like they're not
00:38:26
doing therapy the job wasn't Conn although you know you read people like um uh TR Hood's book that's just this is
00:38:34
oh yeah masking monsters and one of the Chuck's a really smart guy um and it's a
00:38:40
fantastic book like if you want a really good book to show you what criminal profiling is like in the real world was
00:38:47
like you will not I read the whole thing in like one go it was fantastic I had him um he was in that chair a couple
00:38:53
months ago and he he he sort of echoed what you were saying about this a bit of good in everyone but he said the the
00:38:59
exception to that role in his experience was Malcolm Raya yeah yeah some people you look at them and for whatever reason
00:39:06
there're just cold dead eyes and and you know you can come up with whatever theories you want from that but it's the
00:39:13
smart thing is to take people like that just put them in a place where they can't get out and be with other people
00:39:17
because if they are they'll hurt them um so I absolutely think there are people
00:39:21
like that um but but you know even people like Chuck one of the things I like about his book and he he did have
00:39:28
compassion and he did have that ability to kind of reach out and deal with people and you look at the best cops the
00:39:32
best cops aren't marcho arrogant pushing people around they're like calming
00:39:36
everything down treating people with respect d d d that stuff gets you a long way yeah that's great yeah there's a
00:39:43
quote from Michelle Obama that I I love I use it all the time um I've learned
00:39:47
it's harder to hate up close sounds like you'd agree with that yeah yeah it's
00:39:50
like every time this is the thing about the internet right everyone goes and I I don't know why anyone goes
00:39:58
on Facebook to engage in a conversation because it's like I think this politically oh you're a dick no you're a
00:40:04
dick you're a dick and it just goes backwards and forwards and backwards and
00:40:07
forwards um no one ever changes their mind on the internet about any of that kind of stuff but when you get two
00:40:14
people together they do we did this I don't think we ever it was for a show but we didn't put this B on we got
00:40:19
people from the furtherest ends of the political continum that we could get and we interviewed them first about their
00:40:25
views about other people in the world and stuff and then we um brought them together to make a pizza like it was
00:40:30
just schaly tally stuff but I remember this one guy like he was on the dial had been for 3 years and then this other
00:40:35
person was really high up in the ACT party and they both talked about unemployed people D D D D D D and then
00:40:42
we brought them together to make a pizza and we did so you you think this about them and you think this about them why
00:40:46
don't you have a ched about that and you can't be it's just much harder to be
00:40:50
mean to people in the same room and so what happens is we discover that actually people do have far more in
00:40:56
common than they're not it's like we spent uh 10 days in Parliament a couple
00:41:01
of years ago doing a docko about basically what a politicians do all day um you know they worked really hard and
00:41:08
and we sat in select committees and it's boring it never makes a tally but it was
00:41:12
all of them working together to try to do sensible things so I think you know most most people
00:41:20
their intentions are good that doesn't mean that the stuff they do is always
00:41:24
good but their intentions are usually good you speaking of um yeah like internet trolls and stuff you used to be
00:41:31
active on Twitter and then you you you stopped you stopped why why did you what was the I suddenly realized I'd never go
00:41:38
on Twitter and feel anything but angry you know and it's like and was it debating with strangers people that you
00:41:44
oh yeah and I got this weird thing with Simon Bridges oh yeah what was that there was some beef there right it was a
00:41:49
weird thing he he called you a lefty or something yeah well he he said either you know the governor's done nothing
00:41:54
about housing and I just tweeted and back cuz people do well dude like you had N9 years you you know they didn't
00:42:01
just it wasn't perfect um and then he came back with something and I came back
00:42:04
with something and that went on for like two days and then um then Natalie said what are you what are you doing I mean
00:42:10
what do you mean she said you're just angry yell guy on Twitter with Simon Bridges and I thought oh yeah like what
00:42:16
the how did that happen so I just I did I did used to do a thing though where cuz I quite liked I quite like when
00:42:23
people kind of troll you a little bit and um there was this one dude who you know why is n lat such a big star and so
00:42:30
I was staying in Denon at my mom's place and I remember I spent 45 minutes trying
00:42:34
to explain how a star has formed in 160 character you know swirling dust circles
00:42:42
gravity and then the whole thing ignites and that's how it becomes a star and he
00:42:44
went back you're a dck and then I I was just going back being relentlessly good humored and nice
00:42:51
to him and eventually he just look can you just stop now you just leave me alone I'm sorry was my good humor
00:42:57
getting in the way of your trolling and then again at my mom's place I made up
00:43:02
an account called Nigel trolling Nigel where um I think I only did it once but I trolled myself uh and you're a dick oh
00:43:10
no then CU then I could win the argument so but it was too hard to log out and log back in so I gave that up oh my God
00:43:17
that seems so time and tensive um when when did you become a big star when was the moment that you thought oh I'm I'm
00:43:24
um I'm kind of famous now well was it was it start with a book dealer was it a
00:43:29
TV show no it was it's I was kind of um it probably after the I think the parenting show was probably when the the
00:43:38
Poli that when we' got some quite big audiences for back in the day for that
00:43:44
um and it was just it was a very strange thing because I'm from omaro and so I
00:43:49
didn't I I I didn't know anyone on the media or Telly or anything like that so
00:43:53
that whole world is pretty weird and it just it just kind gradually happens and then it's like you suddenly it's like oh
00:44:01
like I'm part of this kind of people but you know to be fear it's TV in New
00:44:07
Zealand right and I remember going to oh it was some TV Awards thing before I stopped going CU I missed the good ones
00:44:13
back in the 90s they were awesome from all accounts it's fighting and drugs and
00:44:18
Scandal now it's justone being nice to each other um but there were all these
00:44:22
sort of tally people um some of the nbook people were sort of getting the photos in front of the thing and sort of
00:44:28
and I just remember thinking settle down like if you're on tally and and people
00:44:34
know you and New Zealand it's like being in a community newspaper in Sydney you
00:44:38
know what I mean like it's not like you're not you're big fish in a very
00:44:41
small pond yeah you are and it's like and it's not taking anything away from
00:44:44
it but it's like it's that part of the whole thing is meaningless and frivolous
00:44:49
and silly what it does though um is that it gets you access to people and it gives you more influence and so for a
00:44:57
time when I was doing T stuff and clinical stuff it worked really well because a social worker could say the
00:45:03
same thing to family for ages and then they just wouldn't listen they go do you
00:45:06
want to see that guy from a tell he'd come and see you oh yeah so I would come
00:45:09
and see them say the same things as a social worker and then they would just start to listen and do those things and
00:45:14
it's just because of the star power yeah it's just because of the thing eyes on
00:45:17
the tell he must know what he's talking about that's awesome um but speak of
00:45:22
those TV Awards it must be like gratifying um you're knowing that you're
00:45:26
there because you've done some done some like good work that adds values to people life people's life rather than
00:45:30
just sitting there reading an auto queue with the day's current affairs on yeah I
00:45:35
well what I liked about doco making is it's kind of like um you get to work with a team of people and um I always
00:45:42
work with like just great people and like some of the best years in Telly that I had um it was a couple of years
00:45:48
where it was just you know my friend Mitchell um and and be and gab and we the four of us were just tole around the
00:45:56
place can Telly and then you meet you know all these talented guys dominant all these people who are really super
00:46:02
talented um and you and you get to go around and do that and what I like is I I do like that collaborative process and
00:46:11
I've never liked the idea of anyone being special in any way and so I never bought into that you're the presenter so
00:46:17
you get the best stuff thing I think that's [ __ ] I think if you're the
00:46:19
presenter you know the least amount and you've got the least amount of expertise
00:46:24
of anyone here dops soundies directors you know they all have to know and do a whole bunch of stuff I just have to make
00:46:33
words come out on my face like that's literally all I have to do and so so we
00:46:37
we always had teams where we we like everyone Weighing on ideas and no idea was sacred and we started from the
00:46:44
position that you know the blank page you fill the blank page with something ugly and stupid and then we're all just
00:46:49
going to kick it and kick it and kick it until it becomes kind of better and I really I like I like that process so the
00:46:55
my first job always when I'm working with new people was just to convince him
00:46:58
I do any of that presenter stuff like please don't do that Gabe though was an
00:47:02
ask I work with Gabe and Gabe's a Gabe would what he would do because he knew
00:47:07
that I hated that and so if if we were with someone if we were i' be doing n
00:47:13
right the chat before the interview and Gabe would come to mic me up with my little microphone stuff what he would do
00:47:18
is he would kneel down in front of me and keep his eyes down like that so excuse me Mr L I know you don't like me
00:47:22
interrupting when you're talking to people um I do apologize for that but would it be all right if I was to mic
00:47:27
you up and I know that I don't want to make you cross said Gabe don't freaking
00:47:30
do that because they don't and once we were filming in a park um and it had been raining so we had an easy up on the
00:47:36
center of the park and we' rra for the day and all these houses around some kids were watching us cuz of the lights
00:47:41
and stuff out there and um I was walking out to the car thinking oh that's weird
00:47:45
like why is it not raining on me and it is raining else Gabe was following me through the park with an umbrella over
00:47:50
me him and the pouring rain making me look like a total wanker oh my God that's amazing that's like
00:48:00
Peak C liberity status having an umbrella holder um so uh I God I don't even know if you won any TV Awards or
00:48:07
not but I'm assuming you would have no no i i l every time um um um um Jeremy um um Wells um cor
00:48:19
cor ke my brain ke my brain is that is that a thing yeah it really is a thing like I'm just like half the time I can't
00:48:25
rate anything at all at the moment um but uh yeah I've been at a couple and so one one of is Jeremy corber with
00:48:35
Jeremy corber one so I thought right you're my nemesis from now on um it's a nice Nemesis a comedian is a
00:48:41
nemesis quite that's a good name as that um and then there was one a couple of
00:48:46
years ago I think where I went and um for some reason I was in the same category as Sam Neil and Sam Neil was
00:48:52
about five people back in the line to kind of get on I thought I'll just be friendly I'll just go up and you know
00:48:59
and so I went up to Sam Neil and I thought he's in the same category surely he and I said look mate
00:49:06
if I get up there and I win I'm going to [ __ ] talk you I'm going to [ __ ] talk
00:49:09
your work I'm going to [ __ ] talk your show I'm just warning you and he sort of
00:49:12
looked at me he went sorry who are you oh my god weird look okay I'm just gonna wow what an amazing story Amazing
00:49:25
Story um oh okay so no TV Awards but the Queen's birthday honors is was that
00:49:29
special that must have been gratifying humbling yeah it was but it's also it's
00:49:33
very strange to get things like that um what what have you got an O an ozm what does that mean an officer of the New
00:49:40
Zealand order of I think that's what it means um yeah like it was it was uh it
00:49:47
was it was Strang it was nice because I got to go to government I mean the nice thing about it is I got to go to
00:49:52
government house with my mom uh and uh you know with my kids because they were a lot younger then uh and so that was
00:49:58
all kind of nice and um you know met the governor general and the carpets have you ever been to govern house carpets
00:50:05
are awesome are they why everyone was going man these carpets are awesome you just wanted to take your shoes off and
00:50:11
just run around your socks like they were these really soft deep carpets that's the thing I remember the most
00:50:15
it's like where' you get your carpets from these are great but that's did you take your shoes
00:50:21
off no no um yes so um so so you recently got married he so your wife um Nal Flyn yeah
00:50:29
six well about seven months ago so our anniversary is November yeah yeah so second marriage your first one was
00:50:35
really long like almost 30 years yeah almost 29 years yeah yeah how how how's
00:50:40
that is that are you guys on okay terms uh it was a complicated situation let's
00:50:46
just say that okay uh so my My Hope of how that played out wasn't how it played
00:50:53
out which is you know that's just how things are but um yeah now I'm with uh
00:50:59
this uh amazing person and um like just super happy I think I kind of see it on the video but I think it's true it's
00:51:07
like I think if if you're really lucky in life you meet like your person and
00:51:12
like there's just and you have the sense that of all of the people in the world
00:51:15
like you are the person and so she kind of is that for me and so it's been um
00:51:20
that's been that's been really lovely and yeah there's there's a line in that
00:51:24
in that video where you talking about Natalie and um I I don't know how many minutes in it
00:51:28
was but um it made me start crying just the line was um I think she makes me feel safe yeah she beautiful beautiful
00:51:36
line she she makes me feel um safe and and particularly over the last four months it's been like it's
00:51:44
really nice to have someone that you can lean on like that and you know and she is um like she comes from a family of
00:51:52
super smart people who her her father was Jim Flyn who was this world-renowned Economist her brother's a Oxford math
00:51:59
professor um basically in that house I'm like a chimpanzee like there's everyone
00:52:03
else in the house and then there's the chimpanzee and I I can fix laptops and
00:52:07
plug things in but that's pretty much it um uh but yeah but but she's she's what
00:52:13
I really love about her is that she doesn't judge and she's absolutely kind
00:52:18
of fearless like most people are a bit judgy about some things but she's a bit
00:52:21
like me she's worked with um all kinds of people in all kinds of places and so
00:52:26
just doesn't do that and she's like compassionate to the point that you feel it's say no you don't have
00:52:33
like she was really worried about rayan after the Olympics about how she was doing you
00:52:38
know which just but like really worried about it um and I keep we got enough to worry about I'm sure rean will be fine
00:52:45
um but no it's it's it's it's it is really lovely having kind of found found
00:52:51
something like that so now that's the motivation for me it's like I I there's
00:52:55
nothing I want to do or know where that I want to go I just kind of want to be with her and we want to get old and we
00:53:03
go to an old age home and complain about the people around us oh those Ryman homes look so good
00:53:09
don't they I know looks like Cony for Senor I know I know I know um how did how did you guys make you you working on
00:53:16
an app parent land yeah so we we' known each other for a while um through work
00:53:21
yeah and so I'd uh I we were kind of I initially met her because she wrote this
00:53:25
book called mothering um which is a really evidence-based look at the about babies and what they need she loves
00:53:33
babies loves the babies like we when we walk past someone with a baby I have to hold her hand really tight cuz I say
00:53:39
it's not your baby you can't and once we're Wellington airport and there was
00:53:43
this mom had these two little twin babies on a rack and Natalie was going up and chatting to her and I could see
00:53:47
the mom was getting a little bit anxious cuz she You Could See n I'm going to
00:53:51
take one of them maybe the closest one get that one um yeah so we we sort of um I'd meet
00:53:59
because her publisher asked me to read the book because i' didn't meet it
00:54:04
before then and so I did I thought it was amazing book full of really good stuff um and uh then we met and I
00:54:10
thought oh you're like real smart and funny uh um I need to get you working on
00:54:14
the app so that's kind of how we initially uh met what's it like when two
00:54:19
psychologists have an argument well we don't actually argue no no like we most
00:54:23
of the time we don't um but if we do it's like other people we just use words
00:54:28
and say things sometimes that you know you don't necessar mean but we don't um
00:54:33
we don't kind of have arguments like we sometimes we have this stuff that happens and we talk about it
00:54:39
but it's not like uh I can't imagine having an argument yeah okay like a
00:54:43
robust discussion rather yeah I validate your feelings yeah neither of us if any if if
00:54:52
anyone ever said that the other one I think we'd have them just taken away and
00:54:55
seen to um yeah in that that video on Instagram you um you mentioned that you've been
00:55:01
through some trauma um you say this is the biggest biggest trauma but there has been others anything you want to share
00:55:07
or oh stuff I talked about the T talk like when I was you know 14-year-old doing CPR on a dead guy that was pretty
00:55:12
Grim yeah what were the circumstances of that like an elderly an old elderly guy
00:55:16
with fake false teeth yeah so I was a little St John cette back in omaro and um well another thing that you get like
00:55:24
get anyways chemo runny nose there you are a little bit of information there um uh yeah I was a little St John cette and
00:55:31
I was at this BL Place who was an ambulance officer in omaro and he got this call and it was just around the
00:55:36
corner so I kind of went and um ended up doing CPR on the Dead Guy and it turns out um it's not like the resusitation
00:55:43
dummy where it's all clean and rubbery it's just it's rubbery and if you make
00:55:50
The Beginner's mistake which I did of taking out the false teeth mouth loses
00:55:54
all structure it's just this big sort of blubbery covered hole um and you're
00:55:58
blowing and it's wheezing and gurgling and all that so so so I so I had um I
00:56:04
had definitely had some sort of stuff from that but one of the things like people talk about post-traumatic stress
00:56:09
disorder which we all know about which is kind of that's the bad side of drawing but you can have post-traumatic
00:56:13
growth like for most people for the majority of people you go through something traumatic um and you get
00:56:19
stronger as a result of it and so for me that was super useful because that was my yard stuck about is this bad it's
00:56:25
like well old Dead Guy vomiting your mouth that's worse than us you know so most things
00:56:30
actually seemed easy in comparison and the other things are just weird things like I remember um when we
00:56:37
did the did the beyond the darklands thing I part of it is you sometimes see some of the evidence books and things
00:56:46
and when we were doing the Michael Choy episode um who was killed by all those kids Bailey BJ kuruki and a bunch of
00:56:53
other kids yeah m p delivery guy yeah um I remember this I still remember this photo in the evidence book of this in
00:57:00
the kitchen and it was just a rubbish bin with a pizza box and some drink bottles in it and that was the stuff
00:57:05
they taken from the go and I just remember sitting there looking at it thinking like they killed him for
00:57:10
basically pizza and freaking change and so that that kind of image is always stay with me and some of the
00:57:18
conversations that you I had with family about what it was like for them losing people that that that that kind of stuff
00:57:25
too but mostly what happens is um you have to decide early on you have to be able to kind of put that stuff
00:57:33
down and if you can't then you can't do that and so you know I'm really good at
00:57:39
being when I'm in something I can be in it and I can just put it down and and
00:57:43
and go home how can how can any one of us um be you're more resilient like there's a great joke at the beginning of
00:57:50
that video where you talk about trigger warnings or something that only bomb disposal
00:57:57
it's it's a great L but it does feel like everything has a a trigger warning
00:58:00
now it's like when do we all become so fragile and useless that we can't talk
00:58:05
about things I was at a stopping violence conference right it's a it's a
00:58:09
Family Violence conference about Family Violence and one of the people got up and said just a trigger warning I'm
00:58:18
going to talk about violence and uh that may be triggering for people and upsetting and I'm sitting there thinking
00:58:24
it's a [ __ ] family VI conference like I got up from mine I said I'm not giving
00:58:29
you a trigger warning if you are at this conference and you're triggered by the
00:58:33
fact that we're talking about Family Violence you're either stupid because
00:58:37
you hadn't worked out that's what family violence is or you're messed up and you
00:58:41
need to go and talk to someone like that's how mad the world has got I don't
00:58:45
give trigger warnings for anything because I have the belief that we can talk about things and actually sometimes
00:58:50
you get upset and that's that's okay so part of it I think is not buying into
00:58:54
all of that nonsense um but I think a large part of resilience is I I think there are some really
00:59:00
simple ideas it's about you know it is about being intentional and driving the
00:59:03
bus like we all get to choose our response and so things happen to us and they can be upsetting and traumatic and
00:59:09
bad but even in the depths of that you still get to choose how you respond to those things and that's not just some
00:59:16
wery sort of idea people like Victor Frankle the Jewish psychiatrist who survived four camps during the war he
00:59:22
talked about the last fundamental human Freedom as to choose their responsib given situation you get to choose that
00:59:28
um then it's about you know the old stoic idea about for me anyway my single
00:59:34
biggest Stress Management goto is just focus on the things that you can control it's a really simple idea but it really
00:59:42
works and so I could get lost in all of the cancer stuff but I can't control any
00:59:47
of that um what I can control is am I sleeping what stuff am I eating do I meditate am I doing a little bit of
00:59:54
exercise like where is my mind that these are these are things that I can control and so it's easy to become
01:00:00
swamped with things but if you think okay what can I control right now maybe all you can control is how you're
01:00:05
sitting and how you're breathing um that day outside of the standing outside of
01:00:11
the um surgeon's office when I just felt completely lost I thought okay well I can make a decision like that's
01:00:20
something I can make a decision about where I'm going to go to now um and then
01:00:26
for me the last thing is like it's always about team it's about building up
01:00:29
the people around you it's about seeing that your job is to make the peoples
01:00:34
around your you to make their lives kind of better in some way and and it's that
01:00:39
idea of kind of building people up um is the stuff that's useful because that's
01:00:45
when you need people like we've got a really great group of friends um and they've been super kind and super
01:00:52
helpful and so it's the team around you that that made us so I think there are
01:00:55
some things that people can do um and it doesn't make it any easier like things
01:01:01
are things are hard there's no magical if you do these three amazing things everything will be easy and simple
01:01:07
because it won't um it's just that uh it can be harder it can be it can be less
01:01:13
hard and so doing some of those things I think makes it easy to kind of chug through yeah oh thanks for sharing that
01:01:19
so many good takeaways there and by the way um Frankle who you mentioned um yeah
01:01:23
uh man search for meing is one of my one of my favorite books of I keep buying a copy and then I'll give
01:01:28
it to someone else and have to replace it it's fantastic um so you want to talk about
01:01:34
the cancer for a bit yeah so yeah I feel like it's been a running thread through
01:01:38
this so um yeah so you're feeling unwell for how long like a sore throat right no
01:01:43
so about four four about four or five weeks maybe maybe six weeks maybe a bit more I would eat eat stuff and feel full
01:01:51
really quickly and almost sort of get like a painful sort of pushy feeling at the back of my right I at the time and I
01:01:57
started to lose a bit of weight now at the time I thought a it's peptic Ula um
01:02:02
so I thought I was on the pipic Ula diet this is great CU I lost about 6 kgs and
01:02:07
this is awesome like I want to get this fixed but I'm just going to wait till a
01:02:10
little bit more I'm almost at the goal way yeah it's like it's my new fat diet it's like
01:02:17
it turns out on the gastric cancer diet which is not as good as a piples time but a long
01:02:22
shot I thought I can't really face it if you want to lose weight and eat lots of
01:02:26
chocolate and drink fizzy drinks go on the gastric cancer diet you may die but you're definitely going to lose weight
01:02:33
um so so I I those kind of symptoms and um I've got so I did kind of think my
01:02:41
tendenc is to put most things off but I just thought a feels like something so I
01:02:45
went to my GP as a great GP sent me to the gastro person and then off off it rolled from
01:02:50
there and then um so when so yeah so you have the night in the hotel your phone who who did you phone by the way who did
01:02:56
you phone that night um oh I can this is one thing I want to say the one of the first people that I phoned was our
01:03:03
insurance guy one of the things I've learned from this is that and I'm telling this to everyone and I'm really
01:03:08
glad I remember this um insurance insurance insurance and I know that for a lot of people insurance is a luxury
01:03:16
and they can't get it but for some people you could get it but they don't
01:03:20
you need life insurance and you need to look at how your life insurance is structured because there's money you get
01:03:24
when you die but also you can get payments for if you're permanently disabled or if you get a terrible
01:03:30
diagnosis um you need health insurance uh and you need income protection the health insurance stuff that there's
01:03:39
there's no place I think in our health system where that inequity is more clear
01:03:44
than an oncology because the difference between living and dying and oncology is
01:03:48
money and if you have money then you can get the drugs a lot of people can't get
01:03:53
and it gives you the options yeah yeah and now the one thing I wish I'd done
01:03:57
differently is that uh in my health I have health insurance which has been just a god scen um but what I didn't do
01:04:06
is take the extra cancer cover because you don't CU most people don't know
01:04:09
anything about oncology they don't think about the fact that one and three people
01:04:12
are going to get cancer they don't know uh which drugs are funded and non-funded
01:04:17
it's only after you get it you go oh so I wish I'd ticked the extra cancer cover
01:04:23
up to 300,000 box if I took that that would have been great is there a box below that for Turbo
01:04:29
cancer not yet there will be soon though um yeah what so you get the diagnosis then when when does the chemo start is
01:04:37
it like the same week is it well this is again where health insurance is such a it just shows the difference basically
01:04:43
within 10 days of being diagnosed I was doing chemo and so they put a little thing in called porter cath um which is
01:04:50
like a little a little a little device in here like a little tap yeah it's just
01:04:54
under the skin and and uh so they can inject the drug straight into your kind of heart and you don't have to worry
01:05:00
about veins and stuff like that um I got that done I had scans I got that done uh
01:05:04
and within 10 days I was sitting there as they were pumping all the stuff and going oh Yep this is an unexpected event
01:05:11
we were you um like shutting how were you pre chemotherapy were you shutting bricks just the fear of the unknown
01:05:16
really the thing that I was having panic attacks about was the this was the porath I don't know why but this thing
01:05:22
really freaked me out and so when we kind of got on there on the day um and the guy was talking about said look
01:05:28
usually I'm pretty good about this stuff but I'm losing my [ __ ] can you give me
01:05:31
as much my desam and fendol as you can as quickly as you can and that stuff is freaking awesome if I was a billionaire
01:05:38
I'd have a raging addiction but I would pay a really good entist to manager I
01:05:44
think people like the people that the celebrities that die from the stuff they just have shanky just get it if you're
01:05:49
going to get addicted to these things and I can see why you would cuz they are awesome um really wait what what what
01:05:56
like in what way just like a nice warm feeling yeah it's like you go from being
01:05:59
it's just the best thing um you go from being I was really honestly actually
01:06:03
having a panic attack like I don't know why but it just really freaked me out
01:06:07
and so you're like panicking panicking panicking panicking and they put F on you get
01:06:11
Penny ah F super race oh this is awesome hey we should do this like every week you guys are cool I'm going to come back
01:06:18
here I'm going to take this out at home and go a sorry fell out again we need to
01:06:23
do another one is is that what Jackson was taking to sleep yeah it's it's
01:06:28
incredibly dangerous and it was dangerous when fentel was kind of entering the market here and kids were
01:06:32
starting to use it like people don't know how dangerous it is um but when you're getting these procedures done
01:06:37
they give you the you melan and Fel and it is a tiny little cocktail of stuff and what's been the biggest sort of
01:06:43
surprises about chemotherapy I suppose prior to this all you sort of knew as what you've seen on your movies and yeah
01:06:50
yeah I it's it's um I think the F the first time was really stressful cuz new
01:06:56
and also what they're looking at is do you have reactions to the drugs so I was
01:07:00
thinking just don't have a reaction CU I want this drug like I don't want even if
01:07:04
you do though one of the things I've learned about oncology is that it's this
01:07:07
it's like this big winding path and if it's blocked one way they can just go
01:07:11
another way so there's lots of different things that people can do and the other
01:07:15
thing I've learned about cancer is that everyone's cancer journey is different
01:07:18
like they just are and so one person's story really isn't relevant to any
01:07:22
person at all it's like you know my broken leg your broken leg same thing with cancer because it's so genetic
01:07:29
genetic stuff is so important now um and the targeting stuff is so important that
01:07:35
it's making comparisons or hearing people's stories or all of those timelines it's just not relevant there's
01:07:42
just you and there the road that you're on is is there anything you could have
01:07:46
done differently to avoid it no no not lifestyle factors or anything no it's
01:07:51
just your DNA sometimes just goes all right and then it just goes off on the crazy path and so I didn't drink a lot
01:07:58
like um one of things I you know one of the things I just such a bum man like one of my biggest regrets is that um so
01:08:05
I didn't drink for a long time uh and recently probably in the last couple years I've discovered cocktails I never
01:08:11
had cocktails because I would think I'm not paying $22 for freaking something
01:08:15
called a pelican shock tail with mango and egg yut that's ridiculous what sort
01:08:21
of an idiot would buy that and then we were out once and I got a cocktail I me this is the best thing I think that's
01:08:27
ever happened to me um this is so nice and so I really like cocktails but I'm
01:08:33
just never drinking alcohol ever again like it's a group one carcinogen um and
01:08:37
it would seem pretty freaking stupid to be to get this have all these magical treatments work and then Chuck a
01:08:44
carcinogen in on top so unfortunately for me cocktails are out the windows and that's a shame because I think
01:08:49
Margaritas are one of the great achievements of the human race oh a spicy margarita with a salty unbeatable
01:08:56
well have you had a coconut Margarita no we want a m one just amazing it's basically it's it's they make it with
01:09:03
the a margarita but you just check in some I think it's coconut cream or something like
01:09:07
that really nice so so like as as alcohol like a a cause for yeah it's a like a c like all this [ __ ] the
01:09:16
alcohol industry gives you about that's you know one or two drinks a day is good
01:09:20
for you no it's not on balance it's bad for everything and I'm not saying you
01:09:24
know you shouldn't drink cuz I used to and and enjoyed it and all the rest of
01:09:28
stuff but it's like just be aware it's like having a cigarette like it's a
01:09:31
carcinogen and it's not one drink isn't going to kill you but the more you drink
01:09:35
the more you increase the likelihood of these things going wrong Well it Well I mean it's a poison isn't it it it it
01:09:42
pretty much is I remember we when we did the alcohol documentary we we interviewed Jeffrey Palmer who was scary
01:09:46
to interview because you know how you sit down to do an interview and there's
01:09:49
always faffing about as you're fixing stuff he was like he sat down and right
01:09:53
let's go so ah we could be's just going to f about with the lights a little bit and Gabe's going
01:10:00
to do some of these things and batteries always need changeing yeah yeah um but he said that uh one of the biggest
01:10:07
regrets of his political career was liberalizing the alcohol laws and he said that if you're trying to bring
01:10:12
alcohol into the country now we wouldn't we wouldn't have it and it is kind of
01:10:16
weird that we freak out about cannabis and MDMA and mushrooms and all these things alcohol was by far more harmful
01:10:23
than any of those things you know but for some reason those classes of chemicals those are very bad yeah it
01:10:29
lead to the corruption of society uh but alcohol that's fun M so um yes so so the
01:10:35
original oncologist that you saw that tells you 6 months to 12 months or sujan oh yeah on on your
01:10:41
insistence so you sort of like P on the basis of him not actually having all the
01:10:44
information he he had an initial scan that did look like they' been spread to
01:10:48
kind of Li possibly spread to livers and Lung and things like that so he had on that on on on what he had in front of
01:10:53
him um he made the call that we asked him to make yeah but it's looking a lot
01:10:58
better now did that did annoy you when the The Herald article came out after you did the video and the the headline
01:11:04
seemed very sort of clickbaity it said Nigel lad dead in 6 to 12 months or something dramatic I know I had to ring
01:11:10
people had to ring my because go that's that's not nothing's changed nothing has
01:11:14
changed um so yeah like that was a bit that was a bit click B uh and it's part
01:11:19
of the whole why I'm you know I want to kind of try to manage the narrative more
01:11:23
but I you know I mean it's part of the nature of it that that happens and often
01:11:27
I feel sorry for the journalists because the journalists don't write the heading
01:11:30
the journalist will write the article and then some subor will come on and put a clickbaity hitting on and often I
01:11:35
think it drives them crazy oh it would if if you're a journalist that manages
01:11:39
to win someone over and write a story about them and then they get shat on by whoever writes the heat line yeah um yes
01:11:45
so how are things looking now so the tumor the the the treatment's working the tumor shrink 60% which is massive is
01:11:51
it going to is it going to keep on shrinking is that the Hope yeah so so basically in the initial initially I had
01:11:58
a lymph node here with cancer activity in it and some lymph nodes between my lungs with cancer activity in it lymph
01:12:04
nodes around the stomach with cancer activity in them nodules in the peritoneum which is kind of the
01:12:09
outlining of the stomach with cancer activity and the tumor itself so after uh after um the first kind of three
01:12:17
months which is four rounds all the cancer activities gone from this lymph node all the activity gone from here the
01:12:23
activity all of the lymph nodes around the stomach all of that's gone there's
01:12:27
only one nodle left now in the pisum and that's got um that's that's been reduced
01:12:32
down to about 45% of what it was uh and the stomach lining has has the stomach tumor is thinner uh and the activity has
01:12:40
gone down by 60% so it's like incredible Molly I know the the pet scans are like
01:12:46
one of the things about getting these results is it's like it's just tender
01:12:49
hooks you know you're just thinking and the first one was really important because the first one showed how I was
01:12:55
responding to chemotherapy and so it turns out um pretty damn well um and I'm
01:13:00
just really glad that there are people sitting in rooms working this stuff out and I hope they have no work life
01:13:07
balance I hope they ignore their families and neglect theirselves the health and everything else and just keep
01:13:13
working um because they're doing some amazing stuff ecology is changing so quickly and this is the thing like every
01:13:20
6 months that you you're around new stuff is coming along um so yeah like actually actually doing real well so now
01:13:28
I feel a lot of the time when I'm feeling sick and I've got another you know 11 weeks of that um it's because of
01:13:33
the Gema and so I do have to just keep thinking this is good it means it's working this is good it means it's
01:13:37
working another 11 weeks of that what what do you mean so I've got another um
01:13:42
I'm halfway through the the first of the next four rounds I've got four four four
01:13:46
more rounds to gra counting one that man and so sort of by the beginning of November the um I'll be done with the
01:13:51
worst of the chemo stuff and then it's just the other thing to the imun and hopefully the hauma which don't have all
01:13:57
the side effects of chemotherapy well you I mean you you know the man sitting in front of me now you look remarkably
01:14:03
healthy yeah like I feel when I'm not having chos the really bad chemo side effects I actually feel much better than
01:14:10
I did before so I don't have the same symptoms that I did before um and all that kind of stuff and that's part of
01:14:15
the problem is that now I just get bored because when you get to a few good days
01:14:19
I instantly get bored because I'm just sitting around um but it's hard to kind
01:14:23
of commit to doing anything too much because you know there are going to be weeks where you don't feel good um but
01:14:29
you know I get to hang out with Nelly a lot and we see friends a lot and that's
01:14:33
kind of nice like I people come over and you have coffee and chat in the afternoon and that's not something I did
01:14:37
before um so there's lots of you know there are lots of good things about it
01:14:40
really my hair doesn't grow random but it hasn't fallen out it hasn't fallen
01:14:45
out which is good I'm pleased about that um but it doesn't grow like got a
01:14:48
haircut just the other day and that was the first one of four months and i' usually get them on every every 6 weeks
01:14:54
so the turbo cans is definitely bad for barers barers going man terrible what's
01:15:00
happening with the haircuts everyone's got the turbo cancer from the vaccines
01:15:02
and the hair doesn't grow yeah um I had this uh woman on the the podcast earlier
01:15:07
this year called Tracy Hickman who um was very sick with cancer and she chose to um die on on a certain date and um
01:15:14
everything went exactly as she as she had hoped which is just wonderful um yeah have have you thought about that
01:15:21
like if you got really sick or unwell would you I think um what what you don't want to be is a
01:15:26
burden to the people around you but like basically I I I'm not uh no I wouldn't do that like I'm I'm
01:15:34
here and I'm going to stay here and I'm doing whatever the hell I can no matter
01:15:39
how sick it makes me because um you know cuz like I want to be every second of that I
01:15:46
can get with Natalie is like that's a one for me so I'm I can't imagine ever
01:15:51
getting to the point and it's different for everyone and people can make their
01:15:54
own decisions I think that's all good um it's just not going to be me I'm going
01:15:58
to be like kicking away kicking away kicking away I happy to hear that [ __ ] you love Natalie oh my God yeah yeah
01:16:05
yeah I really do like really do um and we had a we got married we had this really lovely wedding uh and so it was
01:16:12
kind of weird that it was six months almost 6 months the day that I sort of got married that we got this diagnosis
01:16:18
so yeah I really do like it's like um and we kind of meet at just the right time in our lives because if we'd met
01:16:25
earlier I don't know that it kind of would work out like I was kind of quiet
01:16:28
nerdy and she was like a super you know popular party person that's all about
01:16:32
that timing isn't it yeah yeah and so it's like it's the right time and now
01:16:35
we've got at least five kids who are all awesome and we we've got you know the
01:16:41
plan is to get old and gray together well already gray just to get older um hey I put on Instagram that you're
01:16:48
coming over there's a bunch of questions here um Nigel spoke again as I said at
01:16:53
the beginning most of them were like just people just saying yeah how much love they've got for you and the value
01:16:58
you've brought to their life uh [ __ ] spoke at my work a few years ago one thing that stood out and changed my life
01:17:05
was how to allocate time and has detailed exercise and working out how much of your time Lear to spend on must
01:17:10
do things like sleeping eating cleaning yeah and then what time is left for the things you want to do um I'd like to
01:17:15
know has his perspective changed since the cancer diagnosis yeah well no uh in the sense that I still believe all of
01:17:22
those things I just believe them and live them a lot more now um and so um yeah yeah I I like time now is
01:17:31
I really think about that and I I'll think about that cuz cuz for me like it's not unless some wonder drug comes
01:17:38
like it's not curable it's going to be manage and maintain it and keep going um
01:17:43
and so I really think about how I'm I me the nice thing about having cancer is
01:17:46
you can do whatever the [ __ ] you want like I can say I'm tired going for a nap
01:17:50
now and just get up and leave the room it's like people come over can we come
01:17:54
and visit no or should we leave no you shouldn't leave you have to stay because I've got
01:17:59
cancer I want to talk to people um so so there that but I do think like you know
01:18:06
I I when I eventually get back into it there's just some things I won't do so
01:18:10
like I a lot of my time before this was I travel a lot you have to go away the night before and time away for a few
01:18:17
days um we've kind of decided that I'm really not going to do that very much at
01:18:20
all and if I do go away we'll both go away together and go and hang out in the
01:18:23
place and do the thing and so so I do think a lot more about that and and it's
01:18:27
it is that idea that like we don't think about dying we're all we're all dying
01:18:31
some of us are just closer to it than others and um some of us it'll be by accident some of some of us It Be by
01:18:37
Illness but um you do really have to think about okay if that happened to me like if and lots of people think man I'm
01:18:44
glad I'm not him and that's a good thing I'm glad it's not you too I wouldn't
01:18:48
wish this on anyone um but you should think but what if it was me if it was me do I have my legal [ __ ] in order do I
01:18:56
have insurance like will my family be all right what are the protections I've
01:19:00
got in place for them um and who am I spending time with and how am I doing it like so I would do a lot of kind of
01:19:05
after dinner speaking um and you go along you have dinner do you speech and stay the night um now I'm I'm I'm not
01:19:12
going to stay for the night I'm going to go along I'm going to do my thing and
01:19:15
then I'm going to high tell it out there and go home and be with family because
01:19:18
that's kind of that's practicing what I preach so yeah I think about it but I I
01:19:22
really think about it now yeah someone said um are there any uh lessons he's
01:19:26
learned um from the diagnosis that was he realized earlier in life um no no actually they haven't been really what
01:19:35
what's been interesting is you know cuz I do talk a lot about kind of resilience
01:19:39
and all that sort of stuff um but I've never like really been tested and there's something about when
01:19:46
a guy says you'll be dead in maybe in 6 months M no don't be with me that's my
01:19:51
little app saying take some stuff no got cancer I don't have to it should do it
01:19:55
doesn't make sense yeah you need a break no no no I'm good um but yeah so so um
01:20:02
and I complet G my brain what the hell was I saying then something um oh like lessons since the diagnosis that no so I
01:20:09
haven't I haven't changed anything that I thought but I've like I've really had
01:20:12
to really kind of double down and focus on how I apply it and see if those things do actually work and it turns out
01:20:19
when you're facing like some super big stuff like you could die um it works like it does work it's the that's the
01:20:26
the thing that's got me through is um just having those basic principles that
01:20:30
when I don't know what to do I fall back on those things I feel terrible what am
01:20:34
I going to do do something nice for someone else I feel I feel lost and depressed and hopeless what what can you
01:20:39
control right now I can't control the future but I can Pat the dog okay let's
01:20:43
do that yeah it seems like you're very optimistic now but there must have been
01:20:47
like a period of there where where you were sort of staring death in the face um any big surprises about confronting
01:20:52
death um see no I'm not scared to die at all like I don't what I don't want the
01:20:57
thing that frightens me the thing I don't like thinking about is is is leaving natal alone but I'm not scared
01:21:04
of dying because it's like I'm not I'm not a deeply kind of spiritual person
01:21:07
like a little bit of wooo is all right like I meditate a little bit of woo woo on top of that that's good but um I'm
01:21:13
not a deeply spiritual person so it's like I go to sleep every night and I sleep for 8 hours a night and I don't I
01:21:18
wasn't I don't remember it I wasn't here for the first you know 17 something
01:21:23
billion years of the this and I'm not feeling traumatized about that so I know
01:21:28
that actually for me I've got the easy part I'm either living and getting
01:21:32
better and going on for a long time or it takes a turn and it goes bad and I die if that happens it'll be the people
01:21:38
around me that have to carry that because the process of dying itself that doesn't frighten me the idea of being
01:21:43
dead it doesn't frighten me I don't think I'm going to get up there and you
01:21:47
know someone's going to cast me down probably the antix will be up there do you do you yeah what do you think
01:21:54
happens when you die do you think there's an afterlife or anything I'm just a really pragmatic biological no I
01:21:59
think that we're biological beings we're made of bits of stars from you know the
01:22:03
Big Bang 17 billion years ago and what happens is you know you come from it you go back to that and so now I don't think
01:22:09
that I don't have this idea that there'll be some you know it'd be cool
01:22:12
if it was you know like if a there nice idea um I just don't actually don't
01:22:18
actually believe it yeah I'm I'm much the same the Steven Hawking Theory we're
01:22:23
like a computer and you geted and that's it happens every night like you go to
01:22:27
sleep and you're not thinking that was terrible no you're just asleep and if
01:22:32
you don't remember your dreams then there there's a whole period of where
01:22:35
essentially you didn't exist in your own Consciousness for that period of time
01:22:39
and so the idea that that could extend longer it's like well that won't be that
01:22:43
I won't have to be the the that the the that will be born by the people around
01:22:49
me and the people that care about me and that's the but that I don't like why um
01:22:53
why is your big concerned about leaving Natalie uh cuz cuz just the whole little
01:22:59
just ha I hate the idea of her being alone when she won't be she's got lots
01:23:03
of friends and stuff but I don't like the idea of of not being there of her missing me and not being able to help
01:23:09
and all of that so that's the that's the that's the one bit of all of this that
01:23:13
is the that's the intolerably painful part of it for me um yeah and any fomo no I've I've I've that's what it
01:23:25
would be ar if I was in your your your shoes that's what it would be for me it'
01:23:29
be the you know F about yeah the stuff that I'm not going to get to see there
01:23:33
there's all of that like there there's fear the there is all of that um but
01:23:38
again like I'm I don't lucky right word but like you know all of the kids are
01:23:43
pretty much older and people and in their life and that's the thing about like if if if you're a parent if you're
01:23:50
lucky you don't get to see how it ends for your kids and so that's something
01:23:54
everyone has to kind of deal with my dad died um 20 something years ago and U yeah
01:24:00
Bell cancer right yeah it was Bell cancer and so we just had you know my oldest was just a little guy then and
01:24:06
um and my my second one I've been born he was just like a tiny little baby and
01:24:12
so Dad missed all of this stuff since then that he would have enjoyed and all his time M but it's like that's the way
01:24:20
that things kind of sometimes happen um someone has to go first it's like that's
01:24:25
how it goes yeah yeah um do do you have like a backet list or anything like that
01:24:31
I mean time time's like running out for all of us but um I suppose a diagnosis
01:24:35
like this crystallizes things a bit I've been where I've been really fortunate in
01:24:39
life is that pretty much everything that I've wanted to do I've done so like when
01:24:44
I was little I wanted to publish a book I did that and many times many times and
01:24:48
wanted to go to the Antarctic and I did that and that's a pretty miraculous thing so and I've you know my oldest is
01:24:53
really into traveling to adventurous and strange places and so um I've been to
01:24:58
some pretty amazing I've you know traveling through Iran and um we went to this thing called
01:25:05
B castle and it always involves walking up some massive bloody Hill and um like 600 steps then walking way up into the
01:25:15
back of Beyond of these mountains in Iran and then you but you come to this bit where you come through this little
01:25:20
cutting and it's like a scene from Lord of the Rings this abandoned castle ped on The Cliff face
01:25:25
and so I've done all of that I've jumped out of planes tell's mean I've got to do
01:25:30
I've jumped out of planes I've got just so there's nothing there's nothing I
01:25:36
have on my buet list my list now is just about time with people that I care about
01:25:39
I I don't think a I wish I'd gone to there because I don't you know I mean
01:25:42
there are places in the world I haven't been to but it's like I don't I don't
01:25:45
feel that you know I can go or not go it doesn't really doesn't Google Images um what about regrets any regrets
01:25:52
um yeah I mean I think most people I think most people do like I wish I'd known
01:25:57
earlier in life I wish I worked out earlier in life that actually you just you and just relax into that like I was
01:26:05
I've always been quite I was quite shy as a kid uh and as an adolescent I was
01:26:10
more of a kind of an introvert and stuff and so I've always kind of oh I wish I and you can never know
01:26:18
this CU that's part of the process but I wish I'd kind of known like you're just
01:26:21
you and that's enough like it's fine just relax with that that would have
01:26:24
made things a lot easier I think a lot of that just comes with um AJ you sort of grow onto yourself yeah just realize
01:26:30
what's important well you have to because like oh [ __ ] I'm not changing
01:26:32
like it's just this like oh [ __ ] yeah um and yeah so I think you do I think you
01:26:38
do but it'd be it'd be nice if I could have known that earlier but no one does
01:26:41
cuz that's what you work out I wish I'd there are times I think I'd done been
01:26:45
more doing work like I missed my Dad's 60th because I was working we took these ades off into on
01:26:52
these 10day Wilderness programs I was doing one of those it's that kind of stuff like I think some my prioritizing
01:26:58
has been a bit wrong yeah um but you know no yeah like AR yeah a few but too few to mention yeah it's
01:27:08
like there's no point cuz like everyone messes things up and of course there are
01:27:12
things I could go back and do them differently but all of the I just think it all leads to kind of where you are
01:27:17
there's nothing there's nothing I'd go back and undo because that's led to
01:27:21
where I am now and actually apart from pretty happy with Yeah well yeah and yeah [ __ ] up it's The Human
01:27:30
Experience isn't it it really is it's like that's where you learn the mist and
01:27:33
it's where I've always learn to M like you [ __ ] things up you make mistakes you
01:27:36
get things wrong um so oh that was that wasn't pretty smart what about Legacy is
01:27:40
Legacy something you've given much thought to or anything no cuz it's like
01:27:43
I don't care we did no you know what like no I don't know I feel like it's an ego thing like
01:27:51
just no one wants to be forgotten right yeah I'm comfortable with the fact that
01:27:55
I'll be completely forgotten it's like in a 100 years like no one's going to
01:27:58
know who any of us were like there's the Shakespeare and those sorts of people
01:28:02
will know who they were but for the rest of us no one's going to know um it's a
01:28:06
funny thing isn't it even like the most famous person in the world say Taylor SW
01:28:09
500 years from now no one's going to know and like David Boe you know it's
01:28:13
like David Boe like who died of cancer it's like even if you're David Bowie you
01:28:19
die even Bowie dies if Bowie dies we're all there's no hope for any of us cuz if
01:28:24
anyone was going to not it' be him but yeah no one gets out alive no um are you
01:28:29
proud of yourself um I'm I'm proud of things that I've done and I'm proud of things I've
01:28:35
done and I'm also conscious of the fact that I'm it's always tempered with the idea
01:28:42
that these are things I've done with other people and it's not false humility
01:28:45
or modesty or anything like that it's just the freaking truth like everything
01:28:48
I've ever done that's been of any Worth or good at all has been done with other
01:28:54
people it's not all just me and so because you write the book and your name's on the front and you present the
01:28:59
TV show and say you're the face that people see there is that tendency for people to see it as being your thing but
01:29:06
I'm I'm hugely aware that it's not like it's I've I've worked a lot with this
01:29:11
guy Mitchell Haws and aan Conor who's um Mitch's a director and A's a producer
01:29:17
and like they just freaking Geniuses and they're amazingly good at what they do
01:29:20
and so my success in TV was off the back of everyone I do think and radar said to
01:29:27
radar said this once that you know he said don't [ __ ] this up because if we do
01:29:31
the only one that doesn't work again as me you know presenters get xed everyone
01:29:35
else keeps going yeah but this has been great this has been so much fun so this has been like 90 minutes is is this um
01:29:43
exhausting for you or has this been cathartic is it just no it's not exhausting all like it's a weird thing
01:29:48
to sit around and talk about yourself because I don't generally like I because
01:29:52
I just don't um yeah I I know that I listen to every podcast I could find about you and it's um there's very very
01:29:59
few out there um so I was um just incredibly grateful when you said you do it well no it's like P it is like people
01:30:07
are all these lovely people have been consumed and so I do want to kind of let people know that I'm doing all right and
01:30:12
I do appreciate the um really appreciate the nice things that people have seen um
01:30:19
yes it's an outpouring of Love yeah it's really nice and it it you know it does
01:30:24
make me think everybody that gets cancer should get this from everyone because it's really nice so it's it's about just
01:30:31
letting people know that actually I'm doing all right and um and I do think there are I kind of have some ideas of
01:30:37
some some I had a Booky idea this morning about some big ideas and principles of
01:30:43
things that kind of work and sharing those with people because I think none of them are mine they're all been around
01:30:48
for a long time but I just think there are things so it's been like it's it's
01:30:52
interesting and it's and it's fun um and it's it's like it's the one time you
01:30:56
can talk about yourself and it's like ah this that's the purpose of it like if I
01:31:00
don't this is not going to work it makes it a difficult podcast I noticed you um
01:31:05
um getting emotional there like has they have you become more emotional with the
01:31:10
diagnosis like with I suppose like tears of gratitude yeah like I it was I it's
01:31:15
really been lovely like the stuff that people have said um and you do I think you do become I remember d d would
01:31:25
talked about this like he would he found himself crying over song lyrics and like
01:31:29
I I I found myself doing that like I was watching vep I forget what something weirdly for
01:31:38
vep because nothing nice ever happens in V something nice happened and I got quite tearful over that and um and what
01:31:45
in V you know the show with um Julie L dord she's the vice president sitcom it's really great um and all the
01:31:52
characters are terrible people just apart from Gary who's lovely all the material um but there was something in
01:31:58
that that sort of made me uh a bit sort of tearful so you do you do kind of I do
01:32:03
feel more that stuff I mean I'm always been like I'm I don't have an issue with kind of crying and
01:32:09
getting upset about stuff and getting getting Rey over things because I think that's all that's all good and it's part
01:32:13
of life um but you certainly I think the chemo process and the cancer process and
01:32:19
re-evaluating things and thinking about your life and how much time you've got
01:32:22
and how much more you want and you know being exhausted and being happy and all of that just see that was a chemo
01:32:30
thought that started as an idea that started as a well-rounded idea and halfway through it I completely lost it
01:32:37
and I thought keep keep talking it'll come back and then it didn't I thought no
01:32:42
it's just going to Trail off now and that's exactly what it did yeah [ __ ] is
01:32:46
is there anything that we um we haven't discussed today that you you wanted to
01:32:50
no I think just make sure everyone out there that you um health insurance if you can afford it if you can afford it
01:32:57
income protection if you can afford it and life it feels like a luxury or it feels like something that's a waste of
01:33:03
money and it is until you need it and one in three people get freaking cancered I'm not saying it to be doomy
01:33:10
and gloomy I'm just saying get your Affairs in order and as much as you're
01:33:14
able to and the circumstances that you've got make sure all that practical stuff is sorted out like that's the most
01:33:20
if we if I hadn't done some of the things i' done it would have been a million times harder and I feel again
01:33:26
this is the iniquity of the health system that there are a lot of people who have got freaking a million times
01:33:32
harder than me because they're dealing with not only the cancel and the treatment stuff but not being able to
01:33:37
get access to some of those other drugs and um just how do I pay the bills and that was my first thought was like [ __ ]
01:33:44
how how do I pay the bills I had no idea what we were at with insurance stuff and
01:33:48
so um I rang my guy Andy straight away he was literally my first call that's that's Bleak isn't it really but
01:33:57
it's a reality I guess um yeah God selfless eh totally selfless um there was a a friend of mine Fraser grw you
01:34:05
you met him in um May 2023 uh he's doing a thing called the 10,000 dreams project
01:34:10
was going around filming filming a bunch of people about their dreams can you remember what you said to him in May
01:34:14
2023 no um your dream then was uh to make the world a fearer place oh yeah would it still be the same now uh yeah
01:34:23
it would be clearly I didn't achieve that did I doesn't feel like that that's
01:34:26
gone so well I have to get a more achievable one um uh no I mean I think I think it's really easy to get lost in
01:34:33
the fact the world's [ __ ] and everyone's crazy and I think that since the pandemic people are sort of there's
01:34:40
an element of people that are kind of angry like there's an angry component to
01:34:44
that whole antia anti iPhone quite disturbing and a bit sad because they feel obviously put upon um but actually
01:34:54
if you look at the statistics the world is a gentler place than it's ever been
01:34:58
there are there are less Wars you're less likely to die by violence you're
01:35:02
less likely to be the victim of a violent crime um all of these things are true it just doesn't feel true it feels
01:35:07
like the world's just going to hell because we got Trump and we got people yelling stuff and crazy things are
01:35:13
happening all over the place but actually it's not the world's actually pretty nice and and when people are
01:35:20
having trouble people help them and so I kind of I just think we just need to kind of stay focused on the fact that
01:35:28
we're far from perfect and things are still pretty messed up but we're getting
01:35:32
better we're doing our best we're chugging along you know climate change
01:35:36
oh yeah that's a thing but someone someone will work it out some right that's what I'm Bing on as well smart
01:35:43
people do it the smart people do it that's what every time I go this have some fancy scan I always say to people
01:35:48
do scan man I'm so glad that people like you were sitting around and inventing
01:35:54
machines and training the rest of us we've just been watching Netflix and eating chips and you guys have been
01:35:59
building these amazing machines and training yourself I'm glad that you're
01:36:02
not like lazy like the rest of us and it's true there are people just coming
01:36:06
up with Solutions we'll solve it it's we not going to end oh I love that oh Nigel L thank you
01:36:13
so much you are an absolute National Treasure um can we do let's do a followup like 2
01:36:21
or 3 years from now yeah absolutely we'll do a follow 2 three years from now
01:36:24
yeah that' be good be good I'm sure we' learned some more things 2 or 3 years
01:36:27
from now um I look I look forward to that yeah oh I appreciate you so much and on behalf of um everyone in New
01:36:33
Zealand thank you so much oh thank you D it's been fun I've enjoyed it [Music]
01:36:51
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