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more with Viator. Hello

1:11

everyone and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today

1:13

is Monday, February 5th, 2024 and I'm

1:18

the host of the show Cara Santa

1:20

Maria. And as always before we dive

1:22

into this week's episode I do want

1:24

to thank those of you who make

1:26

Talk Nerdy possible. Remember the show is

1:29

and will always be a hundred percent

1:31

free to download. I really really heavily

1:33

rely on listener support from people just

1:35

like you. If you'd like to pledge

1:37

your support on an episodic basis all

1:39

you've got to do is visit patreon.com/

1:41

talk nerdy. This week's top

1:44

patrons include Daniel Lang, David

1:46

J.E. Smith, Mary Neva, Brian

1:48

Holden, David Compton, Gabrielle F.

1:50

Jaramillo, Joe Wilkinson, Pascuali Gelati,

1:53

Riva Keith and Ulrika Hagman. Thank

1:56

you all so so much. All

1:58

right let's get into to it.

2:00

This is a really wonderful

2:02

chat. We did it a little while ago

2:04

now, but I still remember

2:06

Crystal Clear. I

2:08

love this lady, and I think

2:11

you guys will too. All right.

2:13

So I had the opportunity to

2:15

sit down, well, virtually of course,

2:18

with Tracy King. She's a writer,

2:20

producer, and consultant based in both

2:22

Birmingham and London. She has done

2:25

a ton of really interesting work

2:27

as a marketing consultant, a copywriter,

2:29

doing PR for newspapers

2:32

and magazines, writing print columns, and

2:34

other media for a bunch of

2:36

different outlets that you know about,

2:38

really covering the gamut from

2:40

science, technology, politics, medicine, film, and

2:43

even video games. She's

2:46

also an animation producer. She's

2:48

really well known

2:50

for a bunch of different pieces. Probably

2:52

one that you might know the most

2:54

is this viral piece

2:56

that she did animating Tim

2:59

Minchin's Storm, and then she

3:01

actually co-wrote and produced a

3:03

graphic novel based on that.

3:05

Just very, very cool. So

3:08

a lot of fun stuff, but she has

3:10

a new book out, and that's what we're

3:12

going to focus on in this episode. It's

3:14

called Learning to Sync, a Memoir

3:16

of Faith, Superstition, and the Courage

3:19

to Ask Questions. So without any

3:22

further ado, here she is, Tracy

3:24

King. Well,

3:27

Tracy, thank you so much for joining me

3:29

today. Thank you for having me. So

3:32

I'm really excited to talk about your

3:35

new book, Learning to Sync, a Memoir

3:37

of Faith, Superstition, and the Courage to

3:39

Ask Questions. I hate to say these

3:42

kinds of stories, because it's

3:46

your story and it's so very personal, but many

3:50

individuals who have probably read the

3:52

book Educated may have had a

3:54

little taste, or maybe individuals who

3:57

watch documentaries, about sort of

3:59

that, you know, the world. paradigm

4:01

shift that occurs for

4:04

some individuals who are raised

4:06

in very closed societies or

4:08

very closed religions to critical

4:12

thinking, to science, to this

4:15

sort of anti-pseudoscientific

4:18

world. I think that these stories are

4:20

not only fascinating,

4:23

but there's a lot of hope

4:25

contained in them. And so I'm

4:27

just so grateful for you sharing

4:30

with us because this is very, very

4:32

personal, you

4:34

putting yourself out there like this. Yeah,

4:37

I mean, it's

4:40

very difficult subject matter

4:42

because there's a lot of different

4:44

aspects to the book. And

4:46

the religion is a

4:48

background to all of it, but it's by no

4:50

means the central story. So,

4:53

for example, the book opens with me

4:55

being exorcised when I was 12.

4:59

I mean, there's no good age to be

5:01

exorcised, but 12 is

5:03

not ideal because I was

5:06

just at that point of vulnerability or

5:08

I thought I knew stuff. For

5:11

example, yes, I'd like to be

5:13

exorcised because I'm definitely possessed by demons, but

5:17

I didn't know enough to say, actually, I

5:19

have PTSD. Maybe

5:22

I should have a therapist instead. And

5:25

that, of course, was the result of

5:27

living in a very enclosed, very

5:30

poor, what in

5:32

Britain we call a council estate, which is social

5:34

housing in the 80s. And

5:38

we were sort of recruited

5:41

into a fundamentalist Christian religion.

5:43

So I was baptized as a born

5:45

again Christian when I was nine.

5:48

And as a friend said, you know, you're barely born at

5:50

nine. How can you be born again? But,

5:53

you know, when you're a kid, you

5:56

don't really question what the adults around

5:58

you are saying. religion

6:00

comes along and has all the answers

6:02

to poverty and crime and you know

6:04

all the things that we're experiencing. It's

6:08

very attractive and there are

6:10

a lot of positives to it but the

6:15

sort of you know the ultimate message of the book as

6:17

you say is one of hope and its family and love

6:19

but the sort of the

6:21

main thrust of the plot deals with

6:23

the death of my father which

6:27

I won't go into in

6:29

too much detail because spoilers

6:31

but it's kind of a

6:33

murder mystery twist so

6:36

to have a religious

6:38

background to a trauma like that he

6:40

died when I just turned 12 you

6:43

know and to be in the middle of a religion but try

6:46

to frame that as you

6:48

know something very very different to one I

6:50

now believe you know I mean this I

6:52

think when you've got a grieving child and a grieving

6:55

family dealing with a

6:57

very traumatic very public death you know there's

6:59

a lot of things that you're going to

7:01

say in the context of religion they

7:04

find certain quite angry about and

7:06

I didn't want to write an angry book because

7:09

you know I don't think that's

7:11

useful so I really wanted to focus

7:13

on the the

7:16

hope and the love and the family

7:18

and then the educational side of

7:20

things which is incredibly

7:22

important to me I stopped attending

7:24

school regularly when I was 12

7:27

I went on and off until

7:30

I was 16 but between 12 and 16 I

7:32

had a couple of months of formal schooling but

7:36

I was a really bookish

7:38

nerdy kid so I taught

7:42

myself and

7:45

without guidance you

7:47

know that went down some very odd

7:50

things so by the time I was

7:52

sort of you know 15 16

7:54

I was believing in all sorts of things you

7:56

know conspiracy theorists and you know

7:58

conspiracy theories lots

8:01

of magic and pseudoscience

8:03

because I was trying

8:06

to get out of religion but I still needed answers to

8:08

all of these big life and death questions

8:10

that I'd experienced so young. The

8:14

main one I think is why do terrible things happen

8:16

to good people? And

8:19

so, you know, it's the book really, it's

8:21

about all of those things and

8:24

then how I got out of

8:28

that simply through finding a

8:30

book in a second-hand bookstore

8:33

by Carl Sagan, the astrophysicist,

8:37

and learned that

8:39

science exists and that

8:41

critical thinking exists and that

8:43

those are two things that I'm very,

8:45

very keen on and that

8:48

changed my life and my career.

8:51

You know, not just the way

8:53

I think but the way that I learn and

8:56

the way that I respond to the world around me and

8:58

that's had an enormous impact on how I've

9:00

dealt with my history of trauma and my

9:03

history of poverty and all of those

9:05

things. So yeah, there's a lot of

9:07

things in my book and that's

9:10

only some of it. There's a

9:12

whole bunch of other things that

9:14

are very difficult subjects and I

9:17

think very timely. My

9:19

sister was taken into care by

9:21

social services because she had

9:23

what's now called school refusal but at

9:25

the time it was called school phobia

9:28

which in the 80s that kind of wasn't

9:30

studied. I mean it's still not really studied

9:34

and it was dealt with very badly

9:36

and she was taken away and instituted.

9:38

Interesting. Yeah, so I don't even think we use

9:40

those terms, I mean I could be wrong because I'm

9:42

not a school psychologist, but in clinical psych we don't

9:44

use either of those terms here in the state. So

9:47

I'm wondering is it like

9:49

a kind of like a form

9:51

of oppositional defiance disorder? No, because

9:54

she was otherwise the most obedient,

9:56

lovely, you know, well-mammified. She had

9:58

a severe and disorder.

10:00

So basically, you know, severe phobia

10:02

in school, and I mean, it's partly

10:04

because she was bullied, partly because, you

10:08

know, we were a little different, my family were a little

10:10

different in this day where we lived. And

10:14

for whatever reason,

10:17

the authorities

10:19

decided to experiment and put

10:21

her in a, I mean,

10:23

at the time, we called it a

10:26

mental institution, which

10:28

is not a good place

10:30

to put a vulnerable 11 year old girl. And

10:34

thereafter, she was sort of shoved around

10:36

from different places and eventually ended

10:38

up in a school where she did very

10:40

well. And she now had a very normal life and

10:42

a very good career. But

10:45

you know, for both of us, because we had such

10:47

disrupted educations, you know, we

10:49

have, I think, a

10:52

real sort of, you know, there's two things that can happen

10:54

when you have a bad school experience, it can either put

10:56

you off learning for life, or if

10:58

you're the sort of kid that has the sort of parents that

11:00

we had, you know, they were very interested

11:04

in our education, they weren't well educated

11:06

themselves. But we had a lot of books in our

11:08

home. And you know, my dad had been an

11:10

engineer in the in the Air Force.

11:12

And my mum, you know,

11:14

she's a stay at home mum, but she liked

11:16

to write poetry and short stories. And you know,

11:19

we played board games together as a family.

11:21

It was a very imaginative, creative environment

11:24

to grow up in. And because of that, because

11:26

of that sort of love for learning, my

11:29

sister and I, we just kind of got

11:31

on with it, we just sort of said,

11:34

well, school isn't really working for us. Nobody

11:36

knows what to do with us. But we're just

11:38

we're just going to teach ourselves. Which

11:41

is, I mean, that's not a route I

11:43

recommend. But you know, I mean,

11:46

after the pandemic, there were a lot of

11:48

children who started to have problems going to

11:50

school. Yeah, I mean, talk about that being

11:52

relevant today and sort of parallels happening

11:54

today. You know, I'm super curious, because

11:57

obviously, this is a podcast that's being broadcast.

12:00

from America. I have a

12:02

pretty mixed audience across the globe, but

12:04

I would say that, you know, at

12:06

least the dominant portion of my listenership

12:09

is American. You probably know quite

12:11

well that America is a pretty

12:14

religious country. And,

12:16

you know, I grew up born and

12:19

raised in the Mormon Church. I've watched a lot

12:21

of documentaries and read a lot of books about

12:23

people who are raised in like more fundamentalist religions

12:25

or who are raised in cults.

12:27

And I don't know as much

12:29

about, you know, Birmingham in

12:32

the 80s. And so I'm

12:34

curious, was like the born-again

12:37

Christian movement mainstream?

12:39

Was this a very different thing that your

12:42

family got involved in? And what was it

12:44

like for you before you became born again?

12:46

Like were you always kind of like religious

12:48

light? Or sort of what was that transition

12:51

like when you were quite young against the

12:53

social background? So it was, I mean,

12:55

there was a bit of everything in the 80s. And

12:58

I'm going to have to blame America for

13:00

this a little bit. Yeah, yeah, no,

13:02

we'll take it. Yeah, it's fine.

13:04

The church that we got involved

13:07

with sent was an American church.

13:09

And they sent missionaries

13:11

to council estate to

13:13

recruit families in poverty.

13:17

And so it was quite

13:21

a sort of, it was

13:23

culturally exciting. So our minister and

13:25

his wife were American. They were young,

13:27

they were good looking, they were, you

13:29

know, exciting and interesting. They had all

13:32

these interesting foods. And they

13:34

had all these interesting board games. And, you know,

13:36

they talked in a way that I hadn't heard

13:38

before. And that was very attractive and

13:40

intriguing. So that was a big part of it. This

13:42

sort of, you know, the Americanness of it, I think,

13:44

was a big part of the attraction. And

13:48

then there's a bit

13:50

in my book where my mom, who

13:53

was the first to convert, so

13:55

she had really severe

13:58

agoraphobia. So she could leave

14:00

a house by herself, she couldn't do anything rather than

14:02

get on a bus. She really didn't have a life

14:05

outside of our tiny little

14:07

estate. And so

14:09

for her to do anything out of her comfort zone was

14:11

really, really unusual. And then

14:13

in the mid 80s, Billy

14:16

Graham came to town. And

14:18

so, yeah, Saffie Elizabeth, who don't

14:21

know, he was the big evangelical

14:23

preacher. And he was friends with

14:25

the Queen, the Queen of England.

14:27

So if

14:29

anybody's been watching the ground on Netflix, I

14:31

think they cover it in one of those

14:33

seasons. Yeah, he was this

14:35

incredibly charismatic figure

14:38

who came and did a big

14:40

stadium tour. He did a football

14:42

stadium tour. And he did four

14:44

nights in Birmingham. And

14:47

so my mom who hadn't yet

14:49

she'd been sort of going to

14:51

prayer meetings and talking to the

14:53

church for a couple of months, but she

14:55

hadn't yet made the steps of committing herself

14:57

to born again Christianity. And

14:59

she went, they got hired in

15:02

minibus and they went to Aston

15:04

Villa football stadium. And she

15:07

sat up in the gods, listening

15:11

to Billy Graham. And that

15:13

sermon is on YouTube, if you look for

15:15

Billy Graham, Aston Villa on YouTube, that's on.

15:18

And watching it back, and I go through this in the book,

15:21

it's almost comical to me now that that could

15:23

have worked, because it's

15:25

so far in Brumstone. And it's

15:27

almost comically melodramatic, you know, he's

15:30

talking about sin, fire,

15:32

and you know, the seriousness and lust.

15:35

But, you know, bearing in mind

15:37

that the audience was mostly very poor people, you

15:41

know, with very little hope.

15:45

I understand why his message

15:47

resonated with my mom, you know, my dad was

15:49

an alcoholic, and my mom had all this phobias,

15:51

you know, we had all this many problems, my

15:54

sister's school issues. And it was it's

15:56

almost like in that speech that Billy

15:58

Graham is speaking directly to her,

16:00

you know, because he knows, of course, poor people often have,

16:04

you know, alcohol problems and that kind of

16:06

money problems, obviously. So he speaks about these things.

16:09

And she must have been

16:11

very personally touched by that. So at

16:13

the end, what he used

16:15

to do is say, you know, anybody that wants to come down

16:17

and, you know, commit themselves to Jesus comes out

16:19

onto the football pitch. And

16:22

so she did, which for her was huge, because, you

16:24

know, she can't do crowds or in close spaces

16:26

or new things. And so she went

16:29

down to the pitch with all of

16:31

these thousands of other people and

16:33

became a born-again Christian in this

16:36

enormous kind of mass hysteria, almost.

16:38

And it must have been such

16:40

an incredible, you know, feeling environment

16:42

in anything in the stadium is

16:44

incredible. So,

16:46

you know, that was so

16:48

new and so exciting that

16:51

it was, you know, it was

16:53

the difference that made it attractive.

16:55

But there, you

16:58

know, we weren't one

17:00

of many, our church was tiny, you know, a

17:03

dozen people, you know, you could maybe

17:05

get 30 people if you were

17:07

lucky on a good day.

17:10

So it kind of didn't go down

17:13

well. I mean, before

17:15

my father died, you know, I was just going to school

17:17

normally and stuff. And it did isolate me quite a lot,

17:20

because, you know, the kids were quite worried about

17:22

that. And up until then, it

17:25

just, religion had not been a part of our

17:27

lives. You know, my parents had a secular marriage.

17:30

My mum's ethnicity is Jewish, but, you

17:32

know, not in any religious way, just culturally.

17:35

And there were some artifacts about this, some superstition

17:37

and some occasional, you know, going to shul or,

17:40

you know, occasionally going to a bar mitzvah, that

17:42

kind of thing. But really, there was

17:44

no religious belief. And so that

17:49

caused quite a big division in

17:51

my maternal family. And then

17:53

on my father's side, his parents were,

17:56

you know, I mean, kind of English all the way back to the doomsday

17:58

book, you know, that kind of button. up very

18:00

British Christianity that is state

18:04

religion. We have a formal religion, the

18:06

Church of England, it's very formal.

18:09

It's almost nothing to... You don't

18:11

show your emotions, you

18:13

don't wave your hands around, you don't sing

18:15

in tones, you don't talk about hell. It's

18:18

just go to church on Sunday, things

18:21

have been very nice, go home, almost

18:23

a formality. So

18:25

there was a real clash there with

18:28

families and with friends. I think we

18:30

became very isolated as a result of

18:32

that. And of course, the more isolated

18:34

you become, the more you rely on

18:36

your church and the more you rely

18:38

on your beliefs. And

18:41

then of course, I stopped going to school, so

18:44

it's just my mum and

18:46

I are at home all day

18:48

together. And that's not a great environment

18:50

when you're throwing a really

18:52

extreme religion into the mix. So

18:55

of course, when I start to show the

18:57

symptoms of severe mental health problems, because

19:00

my father had been killed, demons, you're

19:04

possessed by demons. And then once you're

19:07

the exercise kid, you

19:10

might as well just paint something

19:12

on your forehead saying, don't be my friend.

19:16

I used to walk around the playground reading

19:19

my new testaments. That's not what that is.

19:22

Yeah, you're that kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm

19:26

curious for you, obviously, we talked

19:29

a little bit about the background,

19:31

the milieu, the zeitgeist of

19:33

your upbringing. But for

19:35

you personally, and I know this is almost,

19:38

I really think this is almost an impossible question to

19:40

answer. But of course, you had to dig deep when

19:42

you wrote this memoir, because I personally

19:45

think that it's very hard to

19:47

empathize with our past selves. Like,

19:49

we can't unknow the biases

19:52

that we have now, right? Sort

19:54

of like you've you've broken out of

19:56

the bubble now. And so you have to

19:58

almost try and put yourself back. into

20:00

the perspective that you had when you were young.

20:03

But when you were a child, were

20:05

you just taking what you were fed? Did

20:07

you buy into all of this hook, line,

20:09

and sink? Can

20:12

you even remember what it was

20:14

like to shift perspective so

20:16

much as a child? Yeah.

20:18

I was a really

20:21

precocious child in

20:24

good ways, as well as really annoying ones.

20:28

I was very book smart,

20:30

and I was very showbiz, all

20:34

dancing. I'd like to

20:36

entertain people. It

20:40

was very hard to tell me what to

20:42

do. We were really well-behaved kids, but

20:46

outside of manners

20:48

and not getting involved with the wrong

20:50

kids and that stuff. I

20:52

really knew my own mind. It's

20:56

difficult, isn't it? When you're nine, which is when

20:58

I was baptized, I don't think

21:00

you can say any nine-year-old knows their own

21:03

mind. But if you ask any nine-year-old, they

21:05

know their own mind. I

21:09

remember absolutely believing it all.

21:12

I remember because it's such a fear-based

21:14

religion, I think I was more driven

21:17

by the fear of going to hell,

21:19

or the fear of Jesus judging me.

21:22

I really, really believe

21:24

that stuff, which I don't think

21:26

is a good thing to put into a kid's head. Yeah,

21:30

kids are more susceptible to that kind of magical

21:32

thinking. So to revisit that as an adult, it's

21:38

difficult because I've gone through so many different belief systems.

21:44

It's difficult. I fell in love with

21:46

Jesus. He was this kind of,

21:48

this nonsense of a cliche

21:50

of gold, bearded, golden-haired,

21:53

beautiful man who's surrounded by

21:56

life. What little

21:58

girl is going to fall in love? with that. And

22:01

then, like any relationship, you know, some of

22:03

them get in the distance, but when I

22:05

was 15 or so, I fell out of

22:08

love with Jesus. And,

22:11

and sort of went, actually, I'm not that into

22:13

this anymore. You know, there was no big revelation

22:16

like there was getting into it. And

22:19

it's very hard to put myself into that mindset because

22:21

it was sort of, you know, I mean,

22:24

I think I was looking for something

22:26

to believe in, for sure. I'd realized

22:29

that religion wasn't it.

22:32

But because I subsequently

22:35

became a rationalist and a

22:38

critical thinker, you know, sometimes for a

22:40

living, it is very hard

22:42

to put myself back into that place

22:44

where, you know, do you remember

22:46

believing something that somebody told you

22:48

without there being any evidence for it? Don't

22:51

you know, can I remember? And

22:53

I mean, that's the crux of my book. You

22:55

know, that's what the twist comes in because one

22:58

of the things that frustrates me is in

23:00

order to successfully debunk something in

23:02

order to persuade somebody,

23:04

you know, to find their

23:06

conspiracy theorists that, you know,

23:09

they're wrong. You have to

23:11

understand why they need to

23:13

believe it. And

23:15

because I have believed all of these things, you know,

23:17

I used to believe that aliens blunt the pyramids and

23:19

all of this stuff, you know, faces on Mars, all

23:21

of that, all of that kind

23:23

of nonsense. And so in

23:26

writing this book, I really had

23:28

to analyze why I needed to

23:30

believe those things. And actually, you

23:32

know, this isn't the case for

23:34

everybody. But oftentimes, there is a really

23:36

good reason that

23:39

people don't want to address. So, you

23:41

know, in my case, I was redirecting

23:44

my trauma

23:46

into belief systems because it

23:48

helps explain the world, because you know, the

23:50

world was so messed up for me. But

23:53

if it turns out aliens did it, or

23:55

the government is keeping this from me, oh,

23:57

okay, that makes sense. That explains why I

23:59

feel feels so alienated all the

24:01

time. But I don't feel like I

24:04

fit in anywhere. And actually, it's

24:06

because I had a whole word of trauma. I

24:09

was curious, how much of that sort of pseudoscientific

24:12

belief structure that you were

24:14

really, really grappling with when you were

24:17

young, what combination is it of you going

24:19

out on your own to try and find

24:21

answers beyond your religion

24:23

and really just creating

24:25

your own sense making of the world? And how much

24:28

of that was said by your mother or by

24:30

your religious

24:32

community? None

24:34

of it came from my mom, really. OK.

24:36

Yeah. OK. So my mom is very

24:39

much a very vulnerable person. She's

24:43

very interested in things. She

24:46

likes to have conversations. So when she

24:49

got involved with the church, I became very

24:52

active in we

24:54

would just sit together and talk about the

24:56

Bible and we talk about Jesus. And I would

24:58

kind of make things up and she would believe

25:00

them. So there's an example of my book where

25:02

we were writing Christmas cards one year. And

25:05

I got writing Christmas long

25:07

hand. With you,

25:10

I think it was 12. It's

25:12

exhausting. And she said

25:14

I would just put X on it. And I said, oh,

25:16

no, we can't put X. Because if you put X, you're

25:18

erasing Christ's name. Right,

25:20

yeah. That's a thing, right?

25:22

That's actually a thing that some Christians think.

25:25

I was totally told that when I was

25:28

young. Yeah. But I said, Charles, I'll come

25:30

up with this independently. And she went, oh,

25:32

yeah, that's a really good point. No, it

25:34

isn't. It isn't a really good point. But

25:37

because she endorsed this place, that

25:39

just became common. It's

25:42

so those concerns. And so it's slightly the

25:44

other way around. And

25:46

then with the later stuff, it

25:48

was just me and my library card.

25:51

So I would just, when I was 15, 16, I

25:54

would just get all these books out of

25:56

the library on all sorts of conspiracy theories and

25:58

so on. And I'd read it. them and I,

26:00

you know, because I've had no education, I thought if it

26:02

was in a book, it must be true. Very

26:05

dangerous thing to think. And

26:08

because a lot of those books are pseudoscience, they

26:10

make you feel clever. And you

26:13

know, to a kid who was clever,

26:15

but had no, you know, no education,

26:17

and no real framework for that,

26:19

and no critical thinking, you know, I

26:21

thought, Oh, I'm clever now. I know

26:24

stuff. Well, of course, the thing that

26:26

I love for Carl Sagan is, it

26:28

actually, you need to think

26:30

the opposite way. You know, you need

26:32

to have humility about your knowledge and

26:34

your thinking. And that's, yeah, so

26:36

it kind of, once

26:39

we're outside of the influence of the church, we

26:41

moved to the big city and was just the

26:43

influence, we're outside of the direct influence, I was

26:46

completely self directing. Yeah,

26:48

so there weren't, you know, there

26:50

weren't external influences, and there wasn't

26:53

any internet then. Thank

26:55

goodness. Oh, right. Right. So actually, you know,

26:57

if you'd said, I

27:03

mean, a lot of those conspiracy theory books were really popular in

27:05

1990, 1991. So you would occasionally

27:10

find people who were reading those kind of books. But

27:13

to really be into it, to really believe

27:15

it's actually very hard to find anybody

27:18

else. And I'm grateful for

27:20

that. It goes, I don't

27:22

think it would have gone well if I managed

27:25

to find a buddy. Sort

27:29

of a pseudoscience church, your own

27:31

sort of community. Yeah, you know,

27:33

I'm, I'm, I'm curious,

27:36

like, when you're, let's say, looking around

27:38

libraries, because that's what we're talking about,

27:40

right? Or maybe comic bookstores, I don't know. But like,

27:42

this is definitely, like you said, before the

27:45

internet had, had wide access,

27:47

what kinds of like, were there certain sections

27:49

that you were attracted to? Like, how is

27:51

it that these are the books that you

27:53

found long before you found, for

27:56

example, the demon haunted world? Yeah,

27:59

so they're used to See, this

28:01

is actually a money thing, interestingly.

28:03

So, obviously, you know, I

28:05

couldn't buy new

28:07

books and I couldn't buy

28:10

books that were kind

28:12

of, I don't know,

28:14

books that were true, you know, actual science books

28:16

because they were expensive. So

28:19

I could only either get library books

28:21

or budget books. And

28:23

at the time, budget bookstores would

28:26

just sell books that were

28:28

not necessarily mainstream

28:30

publishers, certainly weren't

28:33

mainstream authors or

28:35

peer reviewed or in any

28:37

way past any kind of

28:40

fact-checking, you know. So you could be

28:42

a complete crank and get, you know,

28:45

a publisher book and a discount bookstore

28:47

would sell it. So

28:51

it skewed heavily towards what I'm gonna call

28:53

new age, I guess, you know, sort of

28:55

a lot of the mysticism

28:58

stuff, a lot of the pseudoscience

29:00

stuff. So I

29:02

just kind of bought books because that's all

29:04

I could afford. Alongside

29:07

that, there were, those

29:09

bookshops also used to sell classic

29:11

literature for one pound. So

29:15

I read this huge amount of

29:17

classics, you know, Dickens and Hardy,

29:19

all of that stuff. You

29:22

know, I was really warm and peace. And

29:24

at the same time I was reading that there

29:27

were, the aliens left a face on Mars as

29:29

a message to, you know, I thought, right. Very

29:33

unusual. I built

29:35

myself, but yeah, it basically came down to, if

29:37

you didn't have money, you didn't have access to the

29:40

good stuff, the stuff that had been checked by people who

29:43

know what they're talking about or

29:45

a bookseller who could recommend things. You know, these

29:47

were just books that would sell stuff for a

29:49

pound on pound 50. And

29:52

I didn't know any better. I didn't know that

29:54

there was a difference in quality or a difference

29:56

between science and pseudoscience. only

30:00

thanks to the fortunes of a

30:03

second hand bookstore that has this Sagan

30:05

book, I think, I spent, it

30:07

was £2, I think. And I

30:09

bought it, it's called The Demon-Haunted World.

30:12

And the cover

30:14

was black, it's a very American

30:17

design. And the subtitle

30:19

is Science as a Candle in the Dark.

30:21

And so it's a globe on the front,

30:23

and it's all sort of, you know, the

30:25

background is black. And I've never heard of

30:27

Carl Sagan. And I thought that it was

30:29

more aliens conspiracy.

30:31

Right. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah. Interesting.

30:34

And it was cheap. Yeah.

30:38

And I thought what I've

30:40

been into was science. And I think the section

30:42

in that bookstore was, it was

30:44

like, it was a wooden barrel. And it just got

30:46

like five or six books and pop in a little

30:49

science named Science. And I thought

30:51

I was into science, I was actually into pseudoscience.

30:53

And so it was things like, you know, the

30:55

science of Star Trek, you know, those kind of

30:57

books, books that people buy someone for Christmas present,

30:59

and they, you know, they end up in a

31:01

second hand bookstore. And then to see

31:03

Sagan one sitting on top. So I just,

31:05

you know, I found out purely by accident,

31:08

what I'd been doing wrong. And it

31:12

was, I mean, I don't mean in a revelation,

31:14

it wasn't like, you know, it's not like when you

31:16

find religion and you read the Bible, and the light

31:19

bulb goes off because you have a spiritual collection. It

31:22

was just simply here's a toolkit of how

31:24

things can be tested. Here

31:27

are some things historically, that people

31:29

have claimed. And here's how the

31:31

testing went. And in that book,

31:33

Sagan directly addresses some of

31:35

the conspiracy theory aliens stuff that

31:37

I've been reading, and explains

31:39

how cherry picking works, you know, how, how

31:42

you can use data

31:44

to show anything that you want. If

31:47

you get confirmation by all of the good

31:49

at helping us understand that

31:51

and all of these things that

31:53

you know, he talked about astrology,

31:56

and bomb statements and all of this

31:58

stuff. And I just want to add, Oh,

32:01

okay. It's as simple as

32:03

that wasn't this big sort of light bulb

32:06

revelation. I just went, I've

32:08

just learned that learning itself is

32:10

a process. You don't just read

32:12

a fact in a book and go, I know that now. That's

32:16

not it. Actually, it's

32:18

a process and science is a process

32:20

and you're allowed to be dissatisfied, but

32:23

it's also okay to not get answers.

32:26

Because I've spent my life until then

32:28

looking for answers, the big answers to

32:31

the big questions like the universe and

32:33

everything. I

32:35

just sort of realized, oh, actually, it's okay to

32:37

go, well, that's a big question.

32:40

We don't know yet. Here are the people that are looking into

32:42

it. Here's what the evidence is so far. Can

32:45

you be satisfied with not knowing? Is it

32:47

okay to say, oh, I was wrong about that? Yes.

32:50

In fact, it's essential to say, oh, I was

32:52

wrong about that. So that's what I learned from

32:55

that. And then of course, that becomes a depivital

32:57

moment in my book that sort of just comes in because I

33:00

started researching my father's death, which is

33:02

a very complex, difficult thing.

33:06

There were five young boys on our estate, neighbors of

33:08

ours were arrested for murder. And there

33:10

was a trial which collapsed and a

33:12

whole conspiracy theory around it. And

33:14

that was 35 years ago and I never

33:17

really thought about it in

33:20

critical terms because you don't go back

33:22

to your trauma in critical terms. Speaking

33:24

back to what I was saying about the reasons that

33:27

people need to believe things. Of

33:29

course, you don't go in your head

33:31

and think about why, what you believe about someone's

33:33

from a particular time, why you believe it. But

33:36

when you're writing a memoir about it, especially if

33:38

you're somebody like me who, you know, I

33:41

need facts and evidence, I started to

33:43

investigate and I got the police report

33:46

eventually and started

33:49

to interview people and

33:52

discovered a big twist

33:54

in the past. So I ended up

33:56

applying all the critical thinking that

33:58

it forms the basis of my career

34:00

and personal culture.

34:03

I applied that to the most important event

34:06

in my own life story and

34:08

discovered I was wrong. You

34:11

know, gosh, so many questions

34:14

are popping up for me. There's so many different directions

34:16

we can go and at

34:19

the risk of like taking linearity out

34:21

of the conversation, kind of fast forwarding a

34:23

little bit. I'm super

34:25

curious. Obviously, so

34:27

much of your, I guess

34:30

we could call it like enlightenment,

34:33

came from that veil being lifted,

34:35

that sort of understanding that science

34:37

is a method and that, you

34:39

know, that there are tools

34:42

that we can use to sort

34:44

of test whether or not our

34:46

previously held notions, our pseudoscientific notions

34:48

hold water. But I'm also

34:50

super curious how much was mental

34:52

health treatment central

34:55

to this growth and

34:57

this ability to develop

35:00

self-confidence, to develop a sense

35:02

of scientific, maybe,

35:05

confidence in your

35:08

in your adult development? Because

35:11

clearly you were struggling with

35:13

some really intense trauma and

35:15

really facing that head-on and working

35:17

on it had to have been significant,

35:22

right? Yeah, I mean, I've had therapy

35:24

on and off, you know,

35:27

for the last sort of 30 years. I mean, there's a

35:29

lot of strands for that one, of course, you know,

35:31

kind of adds the money because, you know, for the

35:33

first sort of 25, 30 years

35:36

of my life, I didn't have any. And

35:38

if you grow up in extreme poverty,

35:40

as we did, my parents didn't

35:43

work a lot of the time. My dad was unemployed

35:46

often, so you know, so we're on benefits. So, you

35:48

know, we had a lot of poverty. And

35:50

you're playing catch up for

35:52

the rest of your life, really, you know, because

35:54

you're not going to inherit anything, you don't have

35:57

savings, and nobody's taught you money management. And therapy

35:59

is six billion. So there's

36:01

that aspect of things which was a

36:03

huge challenge. So I've

36:05

done a lot of

36:07

self-therapy over the years, which let me find a

36:10

few blind allies, but was also very

36:12

useful. The other issue of course is that a

36:14

lot of therapy is... There's

36:17

a lot of pseudoscience in therapy, so I ended

36:19

up with a lot of bad

36:21

therapists because

36:25

of the regulation issues. So

36:27

it might be somebody who doesn't have any

36:29

kind of degree in

36:32

psychology, it's like a therapy, they're setting themselves

36:34

up as a counsellor, advertising their services, and

36:36

of course they're the cheapest, and you don't

36:38

know the difference when you're 21, and

36:42

you go, I'm all out, they're just sitting there going, I'm

36:44

sorry to hear that. And

36:46

so I took a few

36:48

steps backwards there, but

36:52

I think the main issue with any therapy

36:54

that I had, of course, was

36:56

talking about my dad's death and all of

36:58

the trauma around that, and

37:00

I had the story wrong. What

37:03

happened to my daddy is not what happened to my dad. So it

37:06

wasn't until I researched for my book

37:08

and I actually learned the truth

37:10

that I could properly engage with

37:12

therapy, and I'd be very, very

37:14

fortunate. Firstly, that I

37:17

can afford quality therapy now,

37:19

but also to have found

37:21

just incredible therapists who

37:23

have helped me navigate through this revelation

37:27

of 35 years of carrying

37:29

an injustice that was

37:32

misguided, and a very

37:34

warped sense of right and

37:36

wrong and goodies and baddies, and all that

37:38

getting fixed on its head. To

37:44

apply critical thinking to the

37:46

therapeutic process, that's

37:50

not something I'd ever needed to do before,

37:52

because I didn't know I was wrong about

37:54

why I had mental health problems. Yeah,

37:57

I mean, obviously, it was unbelievable.

38:00

difficult writing this book. It was very,

38:02

very hard. Just writing a memory card

38:04

anyway, but writing one way and find

38:06

out so many very related things. I

38:11

needed a lot of help. I needed a lot

38:13

of mental health support. I'm very lucky. I've got

38:15

an amazing partner and amazing family and friends, but

38:17

I needed professional help. But to

38:19

do that in a way where I was

38:21

also trying to think critically about all

38:23

of the therapy I've previously had, some

38:25

of it had actually harmed me, some

38:28

of it was just useless. So yeah,

38:30

it's a real mixed one. I certainly

38:32

wouldn't have got through my life

38:35

without therapy, that's for sure. But

38:38

I wish I'd known more about how to

38:41

be critical about therapy before

38:44

I'd had some of it or before I'd believed some of

38:46

what was being told to me. Yeah,

38:49

it's such a tough thing. I

38:51

think sometimes we think about how

38:53

there's medicine and then there's woo.

38:56

But then with therapy, oftentimes it's

38:58

on a spectrum within therapy and

39:00

maybe recontextualizing culturally

39:03

that there's legitimate psychotherapy and then

39:05

there's woo. So there's the

39:07

bad stuff, the religiously oriented stuff or

39:09

the new

39:12

agey stuff is right there with

39:14

potions and snake oil and

39:16

non-legitimate medicine. But we often

39:18

think of there being sort

39:20

of a legitimate and illegitimate

39:22

side of medicine and that

39:24

therapy just is on a spectrum,

39:26

which is I think can be detrimental

39:28

for those who are first

39:31

entering into the mental health arena. Yeah, I'm

39:34

very good at decoupling the

39:36

woo from the useful stuff,

39:40

mainly because I'm knowledgeable about

39:42

these things, partly because

39:45

it's my job. But a lot of

39:49

the stuff that people are attracted to

39:51

that is not evidence-based. Again, there are

39:53

very good reasons why that's helpful to

39:55

them. And so I

39:57

would always say that there'd be... some

40:00

therapeutic practice and I say, well that's not evidence based,

40:02

it's nonsense ultimately. Oh, but

40:05

it really worked for me. And you can't

40:07

say to somebody, well you're

40:09

wrong, you didn't. Cause they're not wrong, it did

40:11

work for them in a birthday conference. What,

40:13

you know, and you, and they're not really

40:16

in the head space for you to sit down and

40:18

say, let's talk about why it worked for you. You

40:20

know, what things are there that are

40:22

evidence based that might work better because it worked

40:24

for them. And I don't want to take that

40:26

away from anybody because that might be how somebody

40:28

gets through their day. So

40:31

I'm very good at decoupling those things. So

40:33

for example, I find yoga very beneficial,

40:35

the stretching is, and the mindfulness, the

40:37

quietest, very beneficial to me. But it

40:39

comes with a bunch of stuff that

40:42

I don't believe. Yeah.

40:46

I used to have a yoga instructor that did atheist

40:48

yoga and I loved it. Yeah. And

40:51

so, you know, so to be honest, and actually it's a bit

40:53

of a trend now, I've noticed in London that there is

40:55

that sort of secular yoga because I think a lot

40:57

of people are like, I like the stretching and that's

40:59

beneficial. But actually that's what works. And so

41:01

if, you know, the stretching works and we know

41:03

that that works, there's good evidence for that.

41:05

But if you put in all

41:08

the other stuff and then tell

41:10

people it's working because of that, you

41:13

know, I have an issue with that. But then, you know, for

41:15

me, I used to get really wound up by it,

41:17

but now I just sort of mentally decouple it.

41:20

I just, you know, so if I did go through yoga session

41:22

and there is somebody being very zen about stuff, but

41:26

telling me to ask the universe for things

41:28

or whatever, I just ignore

41:30

it. You know, I'd love to sit there

41:32

and lecture them on why the universe almost

41:34

certainly doesn't work that way and why it's

41:36

arrogant to think it doesn't. I've ultimately unhelpful

41:38

because you're going to be in for a

41:40

big disappointment when you realize that you can't

41:42

control things and that's why you need to

41:44

work on the things you can control. But

41:47

that doesn't help either. You know, you don't, people don't

41:50

easily, you know, you can't easily

41:52

reason somebody out of something that's

41:54

helping them. And so I don't, because I

41:56

don't want to be a dick. So, you know,

41:58

so, but I... I

42:02

love, you know, the point, sorry

42:06

to interject, I just, I get so excited when we talk

42:08

about these things because I think that a lot of people

42:10

listening to the show, I can't

42:12

speak for all of them, but there may be a portion

42:14

of individuals listening because of the nature of my show, have

42:18

had their own mini version

42:22

of your story. And obviously, it's

42:24

not the same story. Everybody's story is unique,

42:27

but a moment where they left their church or

42:29

a moment where they left the woo or a

42:32

moment where they started to think more critically about

42:34

the world and have those experiences. And

42:36

I can't speak for others.

42:38

I can speak for myself and for some of

42:40

my friends, but many of us went through a

42:42

time when we first left whatever,

42:45

like when I left the Mormon Church, for

42:48

example, where I was like angsty and I

42:50

became very firebrand in my atheism. And I

42:52

was very exactly like you said, like I'd

42:54

love to just tell people why they're wrong,

42:56

or I'd love to, like I was mad

42:58

and I wanted the world to understand why

43:00

I was mad. And then, you know,

43:03

things softened and I started to realize not

43:05

only that that was ineffective, but it also

43:07

wasn't very compassionate or kind. And

43:11

it's fascinating to me how many

43:13

people go through

43:15

a very similar

43:18

transformation. It reminds me a lot of

43:21

when I first quit smoking cigarettes. And

43:23

I was like, so right.

43:25

Like I was like, so angry

43:28

about like, how could you smoke a

43:30

cigarette so disgusting? Like that was me

43:32

like a week ago. I have no

43:34

right to be fair. Yeah,

43:37

absolutely. And, you

43:39

know, I mean, the thing that

43:41

I focus on is, you know, individuals

43:43

are not they're not my business. If people

43:46

want to have a conversation, if an individual wants to have

43:48

a conversation, that's great. They're open to a

43:50

nice debate conspiracy theory. So a thing

43:52

that used to happen a lot is

43:54

the, for example, 911 conspiracy theories, they

43:56

come along. People,

44:00

trying to engage with them on a

44:02

factual basis and say, yeah, don't feel

44:04

can't melt steel, things. Well, it can,

44:06

here's the science that shows it can.

44:09

And I know very quickly, don't

44:11

do that, because you don't

44:13

get know if that person is actually

44:15

interested in challenging what they believe. Ask

44:17

them what evidence would it take to

44:19

change your mind? And

44:21

nine times out of 10, those people would

44:23

say, there's no evidence you could give me that

44:25

would change my mind. And then you just walk away.

44:28

You just walk away. Yeah, it's a faith

44:30

thing. Yeah, and they need that.

44:32

So you do it for whatever reason. Because I feel

44:34

disenfranchised. Or whatever the reason

44:36

is, you aren't going

44:39

to tackle that underlying reason. You can't just throw

44:41

facts at them. It's not going to work. That's

44:43

not why they're in this. So

44:45

I learned not to do that quite quickly. But

44:48

also, I think individuals,

44:51

because I've been through this myself and I've had all those beliefs,

44:54

I know why I had those beliefs. And

44:58

I don't think it's fair for people to

45:00

start being mean to them or challenging them

45:02

or making themselves true, because they're not stupid.

45:04

They have very good reasons. For

45:08

me, it's about institutions. It's about what

45:11

the government is doing. So for example, in

45:14

this country, the NHS used to spend

45:17

a lot of money on homey, obviously. Millions

45:20

and millions and millions of pounds. Our

45:24

Mao King, previously Prince Charles,

45:26

he's really big into this. And

45:28

so a lot of it was driven by him. So

45:32

there was a skeptic group in

45:34

the UK who basically challenged the

45:36

government. Bursary side skeptics. Yeah, yeah,

45:39

incredible people. Yes, we've had Marsh

45:41

on the show before. Amazing. Well,

45:43

yeah, he just basically said, right,

45:45

on an individual basis, we get what people want

45:48

to use homeopathy. And they're being sold it by

45:50

people who they've got no reason to disbelieve. You

45:53

know, that's not how you tackle it. You can't

45:55

tackle it individually. You need to say to the government, here

45:57

is the evidence. Please go and have a debate in

45:59

Parliament. Stop funding the sun and

46:02

I'm a successful They could it be

46:04

funded and. In as so you the

46:06

it so you know when I say for example. The

46:08

government reminded them from the lie

46:10

detector tests and. I

46:12

really would like. To Texas pseudoscience

46:15

at At is dangerous citizens

46:17

and submitting things like the

46:19

humming on prisoners who are

46:21

for really for domestic violence

46:23

since the having a do

46:25

lie detector tests to figure

46:27

out. Whether or not the sys

46:29

to release the fall into this

46:31

can inflict I'm on the surface

46:34

me because well in a subsequent

46:36

statistics in this country are. Really

46:39

ready? For. The folks

46:41

and. If you're going

46:43

to let somebody out of prison

46:45

to has a conviction for domestic

46:48

violence, You. Notice of does

46:50

a risk to the life of. A

46:52

Any woman that I be. Some people just. Can't

46:56

be on the basis of a lie

46:58

detector test that's not okay. I'm gonna

47:00

some. That's the sort of thing that

47:02

I go for the right right? This

47:05

is. The

47:08

definition was in a private companies doing

47:10

something face no evidence by still in

47:12

under a person market think it's absolutely

47:14

chock full of that. Us.

47:17

Here and there is a big difference

47:19

I think between and maybe it's not

47:21

a completely fair sort of categorization. Of

47:24

course, as human beings, we love to

47:26

put things into buckets and categorize them

47:28

even when those are arbitrary. But this

47:30

idea that there are sort of like

47:33

his victims of pseudoscience and their perpetrators

47:35

of pseudoscience. and yes, the line gets

47:37

very, very blurred. But they're. Almost

47:40

any time I see somebody who's an

47:42

individual, Person who's partaking and maybe.

47:44

Even spreading the sort of

47:46

gospel of pseudoscience very often

47:49

there is an intentional. Campaign.

47:51

There are individuals behind.

47:53

that with power or with money

47:56

or with influence who are pushing

47:58

certain types of agendas whether

48:00

it be to make money, whether it

48:02

be to maintain power and control. And

48:04

I think we often don't bother looking at

48:06

that and we just blame the victims. Yes,

48:09

absolutely that. And I'm

48:12

very, very sympathetic. Like I say,

48:14

because I have had those beliefs and

48:16

because I have anxiety and

48:19

pittsburgh and all of those things and I know how

48:21

attractive those things could be. And also because oftentimes

48:23

there's some reason available or permanent. I mean,

48:25

if you go to a homeopath, you're getting

48:27

an hour with a really sympathetic person who'll

48:29

give you a cup of tea and you

48:31

can tell them all of your problems and

48:33

your life history and they'll listen and they'll

48:35

sympathize. Or you can

48:38

spend six minutes with your GP and

48:40

you have the most stressor time trying to

48:42

even get an appointment. Sometimes it takes months.

48:44

The NHS is so underfunded and overstretched and

48:47

you feel like they're not properly listening to

48:50

you and you go away feeling like you've achieved

48:52

nothing and you haven't got anything useful,

48:55

you know, just keep an eye on it or it's

48:57

probably stress or, you know, well, I'll write you a

48:59

referral letter, but it's the way for you to use

49:02

three years. You know, like

49:04

an hour with somebody

49:06

between sympathy goes a long,

49:08

long, long way and you will feel

49:11

better after that. I would feel better after

49:13

that. Like recently I accidentally had

49:15

reflexology. I didn't mean to. I

49:18

wasn't. I

49:20

do that a lot because I love

49:22

me a good Chinese foot massage. Exactly. Yeah.

49:26

Yeah. It was like twice my reflexology. I

49:28

went for a massage with a new therapist and

49:31

she did reflexology. And if it wasn't

49:33

the best foot massage I've ever had in

49:35

my life and I felt like a million dollars.

49:38

Don't ask, please. Yes. And

49:41

it was because it feels really nice

49:43

to have somebody put on your feet. It feels

49:45

amazing because there's muscles in there and you stand

49:47

there on them all day. And I was like,

49:50

oh, I wish, you know, I just, I

49:52

just wish that I could just go to her and

49:55

say, you know, just do, just do the lovely poking. I don't

49:58

need. Yeah. Don't tell me how it's

50:00

connected to my. I'm sure she believes

50:02

that and maybe her passion is,

50:04

you know, maybe that's a driver

50:06

of why she does what she does.

50:08

But it's still so

50:10

amazing, regardless. And

50:13

also, you know, a lot of these

50:15

things, I mean, we talk a lot about placebo,

50:17

you know, and which I

50:19

think can be overrated as an explanation. I

50:22

agree. I don't think, yeah, I mean, I

50:24

think, and also I think everybody has anxiety

50:26

now since the pandemic. Because we just share

50:29

a plug here, thinking I'm going to die.

50:31

There's an invisible enemy. I

50:33

think nobody knows what's going on. I don't know who to

50:36

trust. I'm terrified for

50:38

myself, my loved ones, you know,

50:40

society in general. We're in a

50:42

dystopian act. Right. So there's a lot

50:44

of residual trauma and anxiety.

50:47

And so you want things, you're going

50:49

to seek out things that lower your blood pressure,

50:52

you know, that make you feel mindful,

50:54

that take you out of your head, that

50:56

make your, you know, because you said, all

50:58

the time. I mean, if I say, unclench

51:00

your jaw, everybody that's listening, right, I was

51:02

going to realize their jaws, but, you know,

51:05

it's a 24 hour thing that we're living with all

51:07

of this tension and anxiety. And those

51:09

kind of therapeutic interventions,

51:11

whether it's, you know, the homey and patsy sits

51:14

and listens, or, you know, the

51:16

reflexologist who's rubbing his feet, they

51:18

did feel good. They feel really

51:20

amazing. And it's an anxiety relief

51:23

thing, which

51:26

is why that stuff's on the rise. Yeah,

51:30

in a particular way, they work. It's just not the way

51:32

that they're being claimed to work. Yeah. And,

51:35

you know, it does wind me up because of course,

51:38

you know, I have no problem. I'm

51:40

fine with whatever people want to believe.

51:43

I have an issue with when people expect

51:45

me to believe it or if they are

51:47

taking or funded. Yeah, exactly. Then,

51:50

of course, the extreme end of the day is people

51:52

die because of this stuff. And

51:55

so very obviously, you can't just ignore it and go, well,

51:57

it's fine. Because some of it feels nice. Well, you know,

51:59

you're If you need actual medicine

52:01

and you're just taking alternative medicine, that's not

52:04

going to go well. So

52:06

it's serious and it's important,

52:10

but it's also fulfilling a societal

52:12

need, a lot of

52:14

the stuff that isn't being addressed anywhere else.

52:18

We have to understand that this stuff

52:20

doesn't go away whilst in this country,

52:22

if you've got a mental health problem,

52:24

the NHS tries their best, but the funding

52:26

isn't there. It's

52:30

really not very much healthy, it wasn't maybe

52:32

a prescription. Wipe

52:34

three years on the way to this therapy. And

52:37

I've had NHS therapy and it wasn't great therapy. It

52:40

was very much just sitting and chatting, so

52:43

it wasn't. I like evidence-based

52:45

therapy and I like read practises. So

52:48

if somebody's got an alternative or

52:50

very little money, what

52:52

are they supposed to do? Just suck it up. Right.

52:56

Yeah, I mean, it's

52:58

a, like you said, an

53:01

institutional, it's a systemic problem. And

53:03

very often, like we do with

53:05

most of these institutional systemic problems,

53:07

especially that are related to poverty,

53:09

is we blame the victim or

53:12

we criminalise the victim or we do

53:14

all of these other things, which is

53:16

heartbreaking. And I think it is important

53:18

for you, as you did

53:20

in your book, as we're doing on this show, to

53:23

sort of peel back that curtain and to show it

53:25

for what it is. You know, I'm curious because I've

53:27

kept you for so long as it is and I've

53:29

got a few questions left. I'm

53:32

curious, sort of fast forwarding to now,

53:34

and I think some people might

53:36

be able to gather, but I

53:39

would love to hear it explicitly from you.

53:41

Like, how do you kind of consider your

53:44

positioning now, your viewpoints? Are you

53:46

a secular humanist? Do you identify as an

53:49

atheist? Or are you just more of like

53:51

a, you know, evidence-based scientific, kind of

53:53

scientific sceptic thinker? Like, labels

53:55

categories can be kind of complex,

53:57

but, you know, how do you see yourself? I

54:00

don't go down the labels and

54:02

identity route now. Mainly because I've

54:05

learned not to. I

54:07

did that hard, you know, when I

54:09

came out of Christianity, I

54:11

found the word agnostic, you know,

54:13

by a hug's leg. I was very

54:15

excited by that. And then

54:18

I found atheism, and then hard

54:20

atheism, and then anti-theism, and

54:23

then, you know, skepticism

54:26

and organized skepticism and rationalism.

54:28

And then there were lots of ushoots of

54:30

all of that stuff. And

54:33

they had organizations and movements, and a

54:35

lot of incredible people. I made lifelong

54:37

friends, people who are like me and

54:39

think like me. And that was

54:41

very important. But

54:45

there's a rigidity of thinking that

54:47

I'm uncomfortable with. Not

54:50

that I'm open to, there might be

54:53

aliens on Mars hiding from this. It's

54:55

not that. But that if

54:58

you worry too much about your

55:00

identity, you just, you know, you can

55:02

become really preoccupied with that. It could

55:04

be a distraction from what you're actually

55:06

trying to do. And it could become dogmatic.

55:08

Yeah, I was so dogmatic. I mean, I still

55:10

am. A little bit. But

55:14

I was when I was five years old,

55:16

you know, I mean, it's about the

55:18

difference between Barbie and, you know, my

55:21

little pony. That's

55:23

just me. I

55:26

made an animation about 10 years ago

55:29

with a guy called Tim Minchin. It's called

55:31

Storm, and it's about a dinner party that

55:33

he has with a young woman called

55:35

Storm. And she's a true believer in all sorts

55:37

of things. And so, you

55:40

know, it's a big strawman argument. And

55:42

it's basically his big strawman argument against, you know,

55:44

all of the things I used to be. You

55:46

know, I used to be the girl's storm. And

55:50

it's a very, very funny, the 10

55:53

minute big pony. It's very funny. And

55:56

it's a very angry polemic. It

56:00

was very popular. I think it was like six million views on

56:02

YouTube now. It took us about three years to make it. I

56:07

love it. It changed my career, it changed my life.

56:10

But when I watch it back now,

56:12

it's an incredible distillation of

56:14

all of the sort of annoyance

56:16

that I felt at people just

56:18

spouting stuff that they

56:20

didn't have all the facts about. And Tim

56:23

wrote it the most incredible

56:25

way. It's so funny and

56:27

clever. It really skewers these

56:29

kind of annoying ways

56:32

of thinking where you

56:34

can't know anything. That

56:36

kind of thinking where it's

56:39

just not useful and you're not going to

56:41

get anywhere in life. We wouldn't get anywhere

56:43

in society if you walk around thinking like that.

56:47

But I think it's really interesting looking back on

56:49

that now. For

56:52

me, that kind of in those 10 minutes that

56:54

summed up all of the sort

56:56

of the anger and the label

56:58

side of things that I need.

57:01

And in making that animation, I could then just

57:03

sort of say, right, I've done that. I've put

57:05

it out there. This is my world in the

57:07

10 minute beat poem. And

57:10

now I just sort of, I don't

57:12

need any labels. And I kind of

57:14

say, yeah, I mean, you know, I can, there

57:17

are labels for the way that I think of it.

57:19

Critical thinking is always going to be a

57:21

label that I applied to the way that I think and the way

57:23

that I work. Because

57:25

that's the process. Or,

57:28

you know, Carl Seidman called it a baloney

57:30

detection toolkit. And that's very, very, mainly because

57:32

it saves you a lot of money. You

57:34

know, you can figure out what you've got.

57:37

So, you know, ultimately, everybody needs it simply

57:39

for that. But

57:41

in terms of kind of the other kinds

57:43

of labels, you know, I've been a rationalist,

57:46

a skeptic, an atheist, an antithesis, all of

57:48

this stuff. And I am still all of those things. But

57:50

they're not formal, you know, in

57:52

the same way that, you know, I'm originally

57:55

from Birmingham, and people from Birmingham are

57:57

called Brumist. And I am a Brumist. I've

58:00

lived in London for 15 years, and so

58:02

I'm a Londoner as well, in

58:05

the same way. I'm English and I'm

58:07

British and I'm European. All

58:09

of those things are all true at once, and

58:12

no one of them is more important than the

58:14

other. So I think I'm

58:16

getting older and I'm a

58:18

lot more chill now. I feel like

58:20

I don't want to back myself into

58:22

things, pigeonholes because some

58:26

of it is, it

58:29

can put people off and I'd rather

58:31

go and make an animation

58:34

or write something, where I

58:37

say, these are the facts and

58:39

here's the culture around it. Then say

58:41

to somebody, I always get sick, listen

58:44

to me because I know everything because that's just not true.

58:46

The main lesson in my book is, I've

58:48

been wrong about a lot of things. I'm

58:51

very happy to be wrong about things and I'll be

58:54

wrong about things in the future. The brilliant thing about

58:56

science is that it is challenging all the time, and

58:58

things that we were sure about 20 years ago. Now,

59:02

we know it's either

59:04

different or subtly,

59:08

not quite what we thought, that's the point, that's

59:10

the process. That's also true of all

59:12

the labels and the identity stuff, but useful

59:15

for finding communities, useful for knowing what to

59:17

Google. I think when I

59:19

found the skeptic community,

59:22

I think it

59:24

originally Googled philosophy. Then

59:28

from there, I think I Googled

59:30

critical thinking, and then eventually found

59:33

skeptic points and that kind of stuff. They're

59:36

useful for getting on a little path, but

59:38

I think it can be a bit dangerous,

59:41

especially if you've been a believer in

59:44

a younger age to try and find a

59:46

flag. You don't want to be in a new

59:48

cult. I think

59:50

also there becomes a synecdoche that can happen. We've

59:53

seen in skeptic community where you've got

59:56

your Lawrence Krauss and your Richard Dawkins, and

59:58

now it's like that's what people identify. with it and

1:00:00

it's like no I'm not that. And

1:00:03

I've seen this happen a lot in the skeptic

1:00:05

community where it's like it's got the same old

1:00:07

white man problem that most all communities across

1:00:10

the globe have. And so it's all people.

1:00:14

Yeah, I mean. It's all people are all

1:00:16

very flawed. Yeah, I think

1:00:19

just also these are

1:00:21

all necessary phases of

1:00:23

progress. It was necessary at the time

1:00:29

and I'm glad I got involved with that

1:00:31

stuff. And I, you know, like I said,

1:00:33

I've made lifelong friends out of it. And

1:00:36

the work that's been done by

1:00:38

those people is very, very important.

1:00:40

It's all necessary because, you know,

1:00:43

like astrology is back now, for example. Astrology

1:00:46

went away for ages in part because of

1:00:48

the work of people like Carl Sagan, you

1:00:50

know, to point out here's how it works.

1:00:52

And, you know, that's a bit daft, isn't

1:00:54

it? Because just

1:00:57

the passage of time, you know, the teenagers who were into that

1:00:59

in the 60s and the 70s, they

1:01:01

just grew up and grew out of it. And

1:01:03

then it became that uncool thing that your

1:01:05

mom was into, you know, and then

1:01:07

another generation and another generation. And then

1:01:10

suddenly it's all this is interesting. So

1:01:12

it will pass again. But because that

1:01:14

stuff comes back, people have to

1:01:16

come along and then debug it again. And

1:01:18

it's cyclical. And every time, you know, each time

1:01:21

it comes back in a new formula with

1:01:23

social media, now is a great driver of

1:01:25

things like astrology. And again,

1:01:27

it's, you know, it's serving a purpose for people who

1:01:30

feel a need for that sort of control. And

1:01:32

I completely understand why. Because

1:01:35

I was that person myself.

1:01:38

And so, you know, someone else will come

1:01:40

along for every TikTok video about astrology, there's

1:01:42

another TikTok video saying it doesn't work.

1:01:44

It's Barnard statements, you know, here are

1:01:46

the facts, here's the history. And

1:01:48

so that would eventually spread and it will go away again. And

1:01:50

then in 30 years, it will come back. But

1:01:53

you know, I'm all right with that. I

1:01:55

don't worry too much about that stuff, because

1:01:57

I think, you know, what There

1:02:00

are. People. Who resurrect?

1:02:02

Quite awesome for financial done to.

1:02:05

Resurrect own stuff is fast a

1:02:07

suitable people he is quite easy

1:02:09

can buy together like. Rise.

1:02:12

Makes you know I'm curious here In the last couple

1:02:14

of minutes that we have, I would love to ask

1:02:16

you the same question that I ask all the

1:02:18

guests on the shelves. Of not always been

1:02:21

great about doing it and because I

1:02:23

was run over time but I'm just

1:02:25

your perspective is really I think interesting

1:02:27

and important to. Me: So a bit before

1:02:29

I dive into the my kind of closing questions,

1:02:31

is there anything we didn't cover is only thing

1:02:33

that we wanted to make sure that we had

1:02:36

that I can have a. Passover.

1:02:39

Know that with it. Okay,

1:02:41

great grow Grace. Self: I'm curious Tracy: you

1:02:43

know when you eat this is a

1:02:45

big picture Question. But.

1:02:47

I want you to insert however feels right

1:02:49

to use that when you think about the

1:02:52

future and this could be personnel or it

1:02:54

could be not impersonal. it could beats as

1:02:56

individual or it could be kind of global

1:02:58

or even cause max. First,

1:03:01

what is the thing that keeps you up

1:03:03

the most at night? Where are you? Findings

1:03:05

Difficulty with maybe pessimism or even cynicism?

1:03:07

You know the thing that is worrying

1:03:09

you the most and then on the

1:03:11

flip side of that kind of the

1:03:13

follow up is where are you find

1:03:15

to your hope in your optimism? What

1:03:18

Are you Kind of genuinely an authentically

1:03:20

looking forward to. Com

1:03:22

um In the thing that keeps

1:03:24

me up at night, it's possibly

1:03:26

his advice exists as adults are,

1:03:28

I didn't get the actual a

1:03:30

idea how get at on Cd

1:03:32

which which is a big impact

1:03:34

on us Intrusive thoughts. On in a

1:03:37

match and some of our parliament sinking

1:03:39

in A because of what happens my

1:03:41

dad and because we never see the

1:03:43

areas I grew. Up In means a

1:03:45

lot of violence in the long con you

1:03:47

know often palms it's just absurd. Part of

1:03:50

some have been hotly she simple as that

1:03:52

of instead of global. Times things the

1:03:54

I worry about. I

1:03:56

worry about education more than anything

1:03:58

on because he is. An

1:04:02

authentic married for formal education on

1:04:04

it's the single most important thing

1:04:06

you know without education with anything

1:04:08

with a progress. Wouldn't have helped

1:04:10

com and. It in

1:04:12

educational standards. Are. Becoming

1:04:16

difficult to my pain and. One

1:04:19

of the things that is slipping in this

1:04:21

country and how he is in America. Is

1:04:24

the kind of ensues? yeah some

1:04:26

for linux is a bit of

1:04:29

seventy intellectuals and some kind of

1:04:31

balance in i'll answer birth and

1:04:33

seen a lot combat anti science

1:04:36

on the side and that manifests

1:04:38

and things like anti vaccine sensor

1:04:40

and it out on of it

1:04:43

being a bit postmodern about his

1:04:45

saxon. See that cannabis. Indica

1:04:47

as I'm. Not. Such advances. Said

1:04:50

that. Kind of. Worries

1:04:52

me of. That they

1:04:55

sit side. Of the I'm very. Optimistic

1:04:57

person on his fat

1:04:59

sauces outside of people.

1:05:02

doing the work ruining side of

1:05:05

the good fight. For

1:05:07

trying to prove that. That

1:05:09

is somebody. Like made dinner with my background

1:05:12

and a platform Some in a society

1:05:14

thinks our society tell my story and

1:05:16

center in. Oh right, my book can

1:05:18

have it published. In

1:05:21

Or That gives me hope. So at peace with the

1:05:23

pessimism. The. It's

1:05:25

not like everybody's just. Stepping up

1:05:27

there innocent during our them analysts. Are my?

1:05:29

haven't fallen to the case at all. And.

1:05:32

Saw think there will always be.

1:05:35

Hope because they're always in

1:05:37

of. People who are prepared to listen.

1:05:40

To other things humans, hours in a

1:05:43

which with Bionic those that's enough. That's

1:05:45

why it's really important for me to

1:05:47

tell a story that has a by

1:05:49

Susan something grants some very well saying.

1:05:51

This doesn't work that doesn't Love? How about

1:05:54

you know your book? Why? As I can

1:05:56

looks like a pretty would make that I

1:05:58

say for me to hear people. stories,

1:06:00

you know, at the moment, the

1:06:02

world is really story driven. That's, you

1:06:04

know, that's the good thing about social media is

1:06:07

it's in many ways, it's democratizing,

1:06:09

it's a storytelling platform. And we're

1:06:12

hearing stories and perspectives that I've

1:06:14

never heard before. And that's so

1:06:17

enlightening and so interesting. And I

1:06:19

think that that's generated a lot

1:06:21

of empathy, like young people know

1:06:23

this, they've got so much more

1:06:25

empathy, and care, and just awareness

1:06:27

than we have at

1:06:30

that age. So, you know, yeah,

1:06:32

that stuff that gives me hope,

1:06:34

I think is that I think

1:06:36

people are young people are kind

1:06:39

and curious, and they

1:06:41

are listening to stories.

1:06:45

Yeah. And you know, I think

1:06:47

that there is something hopeful

1:06:50

about your story as somebody who

1:06:53

was really in it, and now

1:06:56

has this beautiful perspective. I

1:06:59

worry sometimes about sort of the

1:07:01

Fox News generation, the individuals who

1:07:03

maybe are just now getting

1:07:05

in it. And when I say

1:07:07

in it, like, you know, that are starting to

1:07:09

kind of hook line and sink or have a

1:07:11

belief system based on propaganda based on a

1:07:14

kind of closed world, where they're

1:07:16

hearing the same rhetoric over and

1:07:18

over that is antithetical to, you

1:07:21

know, evidence based thinking, it gives

1:07:24

me hope when I can see these

1:07:27

kinds of stories of people who

1:07:29

were in it. And then they

1:07:31

realize that there is another way to

1:07:33

see another way to think and they

1:07:36

sort of stumble upon evidence based thinking

1:07:38

and science. And I do

1:07:41

sometimes worry about the

1:07:43

generation of like boomers or

1:07:45

even young people who are sort of falling

1:07:47

victim to like the authoritarian

1:07:50

like Trump rhetoric that is

1:07:52

being spread about that there's

1:07:56

a way out like there are

1:07:58

alternatives there are. there

1:08:01

are paths that we can take that

1:08:03

are evidence-based, that are scientific, that are

1:08:06

thoughtful and deep

1:08:08

and humanistic. And

1:08:11

I think stories like yours, I

1:08:13

have to hold on to hope from them because

1:08:15

sometimes I can get kind of

1:08:17

cynical and pessimistic when I look around the

1:08:20

world that I live in now compared to, I don't

1:08:23

know, how I grew up, especially

1:08:25

here in the States. But I think all over

1:08:28

the globe we're seeing kind of... Yeah, I mean

1:08:30

I think we've been here before, you know,

1:08:32

we'll be here again. It always

1:08:35

gets better, it's just that, you know,

1:08:37

it differs in how long it takes.

1:08:39

I mean, politically in this country, economically,

1:08:42

we are very similar to how we were in the 1980s. A lot

1:08:44

of the senior child poverty

1:08:46

levels are through the

1:08:48

roof and, you

1:08:50

know, I've seen this before. I lived through it before.

1:08:54

It got better in the 90s, it will

1:08:56

get better, it's just that a lot of

1:08:58

people suffer in the meantime. And

1:09:01

so what we need to do is

1:09:03

recognize that and try and accelerate the

1:09:05

getting better process, you know, as much

1:09:07

as we can. And that has to

1:09:09

be evidence-based because otherwise it simply doesn't

1:09:12

work. It won't work exactly! Like

1:09:15

that's the one thing we're in. The

1:09:17

one constant is, you have to follow

1:09:19

the evidence because otherwise it just doesn't

1:09:22

work. And so, which is

1:09:24

why it always wins out in the end, you know, we're not

1:09:26

gonna, you know, I mean, we might

1:09:28

need a new enlightenment at some point in the

1:09:30

future, but you know, that will happen and that's

1:09:32

fine. You

1:09:35

know, people will always progress,

1:09:38

even if we regress a little bit, we will

1:09:40

always progress because ultimately the point of

1:09:43

evidence is it's the stuff that works. And,

1:09:45

you know, if medicine

1:09:48

is a very good example of that, you

1:09:51

know, you could tell people things that don't

1:09:53

work only for a certain amount of time.

1:09:56

And then everybody will look around and go, oh, you do

1:09:58

realize everybody's dying? I'll just stop, you

1:10:00

know, so it kind of figures

1:10:03

itself out in the end. But yes, I

1:10:06

don't like the process of going through it.

1:10:08

It does feel very much like the 80s again.

1:10:10

And it is depressing or

1:10:12

frustrating to me. But, you

1:10:14

know, I know the work that was done to get us

1:10:16

out of that. And that work is being done again now.

1:10:18

So, you know, I am

1:10:21

cheesy, but I do honestly believe ultimately

1:10:23

everything will be alright. Here,

1:10:26

here. Well, everybody, the book is Learning

1:10:28

to Think, a memoir of faith superstition

1:10:30

and the courage to ask questions

1:10:33

by Tracy King. Tracy, thank you so much

1:10:35

for spending some time with us today. Thank

1:10:37

you for having me. Absolutely.

1:10:39

And everybody listening, thank you for coming back

1:10:41

week after week. I'm really looking forward to

1:10:43

the next time we all get together.