Adulting - #100 Everything I've Learnt From The Podcast

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

Hey Podulters! We made it to 100 episodes, I can't quite believe it. That's over 6018 minutes (I could be wrong here, but I tried to add it up), and so so close to 4 million downloads. To celebrate this, I thought I would do a solo episode about what I've learnt doing this podcast over the past three years. It took me a few goes (APOLOGIES FOR THE DELAY), but hopefully this one sort of encapsulates just how transformative this podcast has been for me. I am sure there are a million things I have forgotten to mention, but 100 episodes is a lot! Thank you all so much for listening, thank you to all of my guests, and thank you as well to Acast, I hope you enjoy mwah xxx Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fandu Casino Daily Jackpots. Guaranteed to hit by 11 p.m. with your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Daily Jackpots. A chance to win with every spin and a guaranteed winner by 11 p.m. every day. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario.

Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded. Or 11 p.m. Eastern. Restrictions apply. See full terms at canada.casino.fandu.com. Please play responsibly. Hello, and welcome to the 100th episode of Adulting. Firstly, in a very unadult move, I need to apologize for that, but it's late. I've tried to record this about four times. And instead of doing what other people do, okay, like getting a really special bucket list guest on for the 100th episode or, you know, like compiling all of the best bits over the years,

I really thought that I was going to be able to do some spectacular soliloquy about everything that I've learned in the three years of doing this podcast rather than the three things that I wish I'd been taught in school. But first of all, it's late because, well, I thought that I was becoming much more of a responsible adult at 27. But what with the world opening up, last week, I took a spontaneous week off work, which being freelance is something that you're very lucky to be able to do but it's also a bit of a what's the word not on catch 22 what's the phrase I'm thinking of whatever it's it's it's the off whatever the opposite of a blessing in disguise it's that because you kind of think right I'm just going to take a week off no one's going to tell me off I can do whatever I want and then the following week you think oh

my god I have got so much stuff to do. So that's why I'm coming to you. Literally never put a podcast up on this day, I don't think. And I hope you'll forgive me. And I hope that it just shows that, you know, no matter how hard we try, sometimes we're actually really shit at adulting. But, yeah, I decided to do it on my own. I don't know how you feel about that. I don't know if you would prefer to have someone else on.

I'm not that good at maths. I'm not even going to pretend I'm good at using a calculator, but I've attempted to calculate. And I think there's been 6,018 minutes of the podcast in total, not including this one. So if that is enough of me talking, I completely understand if you want to switch it off. If not, settle in.

And we're just going to have a little chit-chat about life and what I've learned. As I said, I've been doing the podcast for three years, longer than that actually. I started it, I looked this up, on the 14th of March 2018. And I moved to London on the 14th of October. So that's October, November, December, January, February, March, seven months, six months. I'm really bad at maths. Six months. One sec. Let me do that again. October to November, December, January, February, March, five months. Oh my God. Okay. Whatever. Ignore it. It was an exact amount of month because it was on the 14th that I moved to London. It was on the 14th that I released the first trailer of the podcast. I sound better at maths than I normally am. Anyway, it's killing me. It's killing me. Let us move on. And it was

eight days after my 24th birthday. And I started the podcast in a moment of real limbo. If you remember the first episode, it's kind of what I was talking about. And I feel like I remember thinking 23 when I was young, I sound so mature and so old. And I look back now and I literally am like, oh my God, was I a baby. And I'm sure that you feel this at regular intervals as your life goes on. But at 27, I feel like my younger self's big sister. I feel exponentially older than the years that have passed. And maybe that happens. Maybe as you get older with each year, you sort of get exponentially wiser. But at the same time I also feel totally like totally naive and not very wise that just shows how unwise and naive I was at

23 anyway rambling um and in this time it's kind of like it's such an I guess it's such a formative chunk of my life um doing this podcast and it's interesting to feel like I'm still doing it and then it's managed to grow with me and that you guys have stayed to listen. And it was really interesting. I sort of wrote out every guest that I've had on, which took me bloody ages. And I can't believe just how many conversations I've actually had and sort of the ways in which those conversations have caused me to pivot or change the direction or change the way that I lived my life. For instance, I remember one of the first ones I guess really, really impacted me was the conversation I had with Venetia Falconer about sustainable fashion. And from that podcast forward, I think I started a bit before that,

but basically from that podcast forward, I've sort of made a pledge to not really buy fast fashion. I have a slip up every now and then. I fall into Zara, the website somehow randomly loads on my phone. And sometimes I order stuff, sometimes I don't. Very, very rarely now, I really, really don't buy fast fashion. But to think that it was sort of that conversation was such a turning point for me. I don't know. I just, I really love that. And there's been so many instances of that on this podcast. I feel like that's just the most tangible one. And it's hard sometimes to remember what you've learned in the minutiae of your life, because it's sort of hard to remember the pinnacle bits of you that have changed over the years. It's easy to

kind of look at the whole picture, but it's harder when you zoom in. So I was trying to think about, you know, the kind of overarching topics that this podcast kind of tackles. And I was trying to break them off into categories, but they might not be that succinct or really that all-encompassing but I thought that we kind of talk about love and relationships and I feel like love and relationships are sort of the ones that I am drawn to on podcasts love sex relationships and I feel like judging by the listener numbers and sort of like the way that the listens come in in that first sort of release of the podcast generally if the podcast is to do with love sexual relationships the listens are quite high and I think that's quite a human nature thing we're fascinated by it and no matter how many times we talk about it it's still such an enigma so that's kind of a really

big one work and money has been a huge one I think that through this podcast I've again made massive changes in the way that I look at finances, especially the gendered aspects of finances. That episode I did with Caroline Hughes, How to Get Your Shit Together was really formative for me. When I spoke to Karl Paner Fitzpatrick, Millennial Money Matters, that was a very early on one. And then career, I feel like the episode with Louise Troen when we spoke about success was again one of my most listened to episodes and it's just changing the narrative a little bit I guess that coming and having these conversations with these people who perhaps have just an ever so small paradigm shift opinion on the way that you think of things

it can actually make you change tack in such a massive way. So I'm so grateful to all of the guests. But anyway, sorry. So love and relationships, work and money. Then we have society and culture, which I guess is sort of the softer sides of some of the harsher things that we talk about. You know, the way that the world works, maybe looking at things like the conversation that I had with Rutger Beckmann very recently. And then I talk about politics and philosophy as the next one, which is maybe,

I mean, maybe society and culture does encompass those things like the patriarchy and institutionalized racism and sexism and ableism and all of the isms that, you know, actually really have been a focal point for adulting throughout the years and trying to get into spaces of conversation that aren't always, you know, put to the forefront of the mainstream media. Interestingly, in the time that I've been doing this podcast, especially in the last

year or since the pandemic, I feel like we have sort of seen a real shift in the way that media, especially, is trying to take, cynically or not, a more balanced approach to the interviews, the conversations, the people that are put forward. And so adulting to me is starting to feel less different as a platform and more norm, which is really good. That's kind of like what we were aiming for, but that's been a huge shift as well. I remember thinking

in the very early stages of when I was having these conversations, it really was me looking out to the world and thinking, God, there's so much I need to learn. I feel so ignorant and I feel embarrassed that I don't know about this stuff. And I really want to learn. And I really want to engage with people who have different lived experiences from me and understand this bigger whole wide world that bit better than I did before. And along that journey, I mean, it's opening a Pandora's box because it's that classic thing of like you realize what you don't know and I've kind of come to a point now where I'm sort of at a standstill where I sort of don't want to say anything at all because I know how much I don't know and on every single topic that is infinitely vast and I'm terrified to say the wrong thing or to, I don't know, come to a

conclusion without feeling like it's fully fleshed out. But I think it's a good place to be and I think it's a moment of like growing pains and I'm feeling growing pains in all of my work. I'm feeling it with the podcast. I'm feeling it with my Instagram and I'm feeling it personally a little bit but I guess not as much so I'm gonna go I'm rambling again I'm gonna go and talk about like what I feel like I've learned in the podcast and the first one I'm going to start with this love and relationships um again on a personal level this podcast has sort of been with me since I started my relation with Matt Matt and I started going out in October 2017 and the podcast started in March 2018. And I think actually it was Matt's kind of push

to help me realize it that really did make me start doing it because it was quite terrifying. And Matt and I now are in a really settled place that we live together. And our relationship suddenly feels very adult. And like we're at this age 27 which kind of seems again slightly more see this is where I get stuck because I say I feel so much more mature than I

did when I was 23 but when I say 27 I think god that's you know that's really getting on but then I think about how I act and what I do and what I'm like and I feel just as young as ever but it's only like in comparison to my younger self that I feel wiser. But I've learned a lot about love, I think, in the past three years. And a lot of what I've learned about love has been learning about myself. And a lot of that has been through the podcast. One of the most notable episodes for me was probably the episode that I did with Laura Mucha. And we spoke about why do we fall in love? And she spoke about attachment theory and attachment styles, and also about the kind of different stages of love, how we have lust,

and then we have commitment love, and we have sort of platonic love. And love is intangible, enigmatic, completely unfathomable, but also totally simple and safe. And love should feel like home. Love should feel like comfort. Love shouldn't feel like anxiety and worry and insecurity. And I guess that that was something that I had to unlearn from sort of movies and books and the way that we romanticize this kind of quite toxic love, even though toxic has become such an overused word, where I thought that, you know, love was literally butterflies and rainbows like it was in middle school, which it really was when you're sort of like 14, 15, you know, that kind of razor sharp tingling feeling if someone touched your hand,

you'd be like, oh, and butterflies in your tummy. And that still is love. But I think as you get older you start to realize that love is really about sort of commitment companionship um total trust and feeling like you have a sort of teammate I'm talking about like not heteronormative actually I'm talking about romantic love between two people um but I've also obviously learned about other kinds of love I spoke with Rosie Wilby about polyamory which again I, I found a really eye-opening episode. And I think I'm a romantically monogamous person. This is something I tried to explore with Rosie Wilby, but I did realize that my friends are so fundamental

to me and my life. And in the pandemic, 100%, the thing that I sort of struggled with the most actually was missing my friends. I was very good at catching up with my mom. I spoke to her sort of every day on FaceTime and I did really miss her, but she felt sort of ever present. And I was lucky to live with Matt. So our relationship sort of evolved and developed in a really lovely way in the lockdown but when it came to my friendships I suddenly had this pang of longing and missing and realized that god my friendships are so important and when I was growing up I really sort of was more obsessed with having boyfriends I really looked for that sort of like one partner to give me everything

and I would give them everything in exchange and sort of hope that if I could devote myself to this male figure in my life, then I would feel whole because I guess I think part of that is, you know, again, going back to sort of like the way that we're taught about princesses and princes going to come and save you and really hoping that, you know, romantic relationship would be the catch-all that I needed to getting to this point now where I'm in a really, really happy relationship and probably the most settled I've ever felt and realizing that it's my friends who have carried me through sort of years of difficult times and breakups and worries and stresses. And it's my friends who are always there for me. um I mean I'd come to this

conclusion I think towards the end of university about how important my friends were more than like more than any other time it was sort of when it really clicked but in the pandemic again it solidified it for me about how much um I just love my girlfriends and how they they mean so much to me so that's sort of a love story to my girlfriends. But yeah, I guess what I've learned about love is that love, you can find it sort of anywhere and you can find it. Some people need it spread amongst lots of people. Some people have it in their friendships. Some people's best friends are their family. I think, again, it's just about deconstructing the ideas that we've been taught from such a young age and fitting them together in a way that suits you and your

lifestyle and your life and the things that you do. And everyone sort of has bigger or smaller circles depending on what the way that you are in your personality. And there's nothing wrong with having 50 friends and there's nothing wrong with having five friends and there's nothing wrong with your best friend being your dog and your mom. And I think that love is, it's about the places that you find it, not about the people that you find it in. I wanted that to be a really powerful quote, but I don't know if it was. And relationships with friends as well is something which I've also really, really come to think about a lot. And I spoke about it very recently in an episode with Michelle Allman about boundaries.

And that's something that I've been implementing, not only, you know, channeling lots of love into my friendships, but also realizing when I need to pull back. Sometimes friendships don't serve you. Sometimes relationships don't serve you. And sometimes it feels as though it's going to be such a failure to not be able to keep up friendships maybe that you've had for years or a relationship that's been going on for a really long time. And I think that the idea of like sort of toxic friendships or toxic people is really redundant and sort of very flattening. But I do think sometimes two people can come together and it can create a sort of toxic environment. But it

isn't to say that those two individuals are on their own, you know, bad people. I just think sometimes we fit in and out with certain characters and we grow and we evolve and we change. And sometimes that means you get closer and sometimes it means you spread apart. And sometimes it means that you do part ways and that all of this is a part of life's ever ebbing and flowing nature. And again, that there's nothing wrong with that. I guess the process for me of doing the podcast has been a lot of unlearning, unlearning old ideas, archaic ideas around love and friendship

and what it means to be important and fulfilled, especially as a woman, and learning a new vocabulary and a new way of thinking um which i know i spoke about very recently with moya lathian mclean as well this way of thinking and matt haig and shona virtue and i spoken about it in both our episodes i think this sort of the way that we attack um problems the way that we sort of try to solve them can be adjusted if we just think about them

slightly differently even the phrase attack I guess is kind of a bit aggressive and I know that I spoke about it with Florence Given as well about friendships and attachment and boundaries and Africa Brooke and I spoke about boundaries I'm just thinking the list of people so yeah it has it has been really like sort of a massive learning curve for me and I have to say like so much of it really is down to these conversations and I don't know how I know how podcasts that I listen to impact me um but I also know that being the person sort of sat there with with the other person getting this information for the first time it's so exciting and I genuinely do come away and sort of hold every conversation really

close to me. I can remember bits and bobs from everything. And I really hope that along the however many episodes you've listened to, how many minutes you've plundered through, there have been bits that you've managed to take away. And so the next thing I spoke about was work and money. And I said briefly about that episode with Louise Troen, but that really was sort of one of the most widely shared episodes. And I completely understand why, because I think it currently, especially, I mean, I just think it's getting more and more heightened. And I know it's because of social media and it's sharing and the way that we sort of communicate is very much through, we want to champion ourselves. We want to champion when things are going well, but it feels like things are getting younger and younger. And as

we see sort of the dissemination of, on a very small scale, the sort of the dissemination of the mainstream career being lauded as much, you know, there are new jobs being invented all the time. Being a podcaster wasn't a job when I was at school and neither was being an influencer. And there are constantly new creative industries that are popping up that, you know, might be very lucrative for time. People who are TikTokers, people who are YouTubers, etc. And those people who are entrepreneurs and creators and extremely intelligent and innovative are smashing it, for want of a better word, at a very young age. And I think that success kind of perhaps we would have expected to achieve it later on in life. When I was younger, I used to imagine, you know, maybe I'd write a book when I

was 50. And now I think, God, I can't believe I haven't read a book now that I'm 27. What if I never write a book before I'm 30? Will I be a failure? And that sort of linear progression of career that we expect to happen straight after university, it's ironic that we subscribe to it because again, like the kind of ethos of this podcast is, you know, when will I feel like an adult? When will I feel like I have all of my ducks in a row? And we're asking those questions because we feel uncertain. And yet we're confused that we sort of haven't arrived yet, even though every day we're tackling with this idea that we haven't arrived. And so I think that that episode with Louise Tren was really lovely to listen to. Louise is so successful and she's done so many different things and she's going on to do like,

she's now working in another job. I don't know if she's spoken about it, so I won't say about it. But I found it a really comforting episode and I loved redefining what success meant. And if you haven't listened, I would go and listen to it. But we sort of spoke about how success is always looked at in a monetary way or, you know, what jobs you have. We meet someone or someone goes on a date. We say, what do you do?

What do they do? What's their job? Where do they work? And really sort of like the markers of success shouldn't be on such arbitrary things because, I mean, given this situation we've just been in now with the pandemic, swathes of people will be without work or might be in jobs that they would never have chosen before. And it just really isn't significant of who they are or, you know, the successes that they might have had, whether that's, you know, personal successes within their friendships, or maybe

they wake up every day and do an amazing meditation and say a mantra and they just feel full of love and joy every day. I mean, I can't think of a bigger success than that, than feeling sort of contented and being able to weather the storm, I guess, because another thing that's sort of an unachievable goal is to always strive to be happy and always be positive and always be content. You can never always be content. As the old adage goes, you can't have the highs without the lows. And I think I've learned more than ever this year that the lows are always going to come. It's just how do we get through them. And I wonder if perhaps after this, we might all be better or worse at weathering the proverbial storm. I'm not sure. But I think that,

I mean, perhaps, I hate having to keep going back to COVID, but I think it's just been such a prescient time. I wonder if we will see us being able to reframe success as something different from just how much money you have in your bank and what career you do and perhaps look at it with kinder eyes in a better way. Again, this is kind of lending itself to Rutgers um sort of take on life and I love his work and the way that he thinks and uh his book again you shape your realist as you all know so think about it a million times was so instrumental in my thinking um I also really enjoyed speaking to Caroline Hughes which I mentioned about how to shit your gut together, how to get your shit together. And really thinking about sort of something to save earlier on,

why it's so important that we talk about money, look at money, think about what we want for our future and not kind of bury our heads in the sand like an ostrich, which is what I used to do. My approach to money used to be. And genuinely, my approach to money and the way that I spend, the way that I save, the way that I try to invest in stocks and shares and my pension has been literally completely governed by the conversation. So again, it was Karl Panofix to Patrick, was carl panna fixed patrick um emily montgomery um just trying to find who else i spoke to about this emily belle um so many so many episodes um about money uh patricia bright talking about success and money and an agenda to ask you towards it and that was something that uh i was always sort of, I used to play up to, especially when I started the podcast, I'd play up to this idea of,

oh, I'm just a silly blonde girl. You know, I know nothing really about money and finances, but my boyfriend does blah, blah, blah. And I really like sort of played into that. I kind of saw it as a strength and it was funny and I thought it would endear people to me. And now I think, oh God, that was such a waste of your time because it's actually, it's very cool to be able to sort of sit up and go, yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah, I know about that. And that's really interesting. That's what I do.

And I find it so much more fruitful and enjoyable to embrace the fact that I know things. Whereas I really, really didn't when I was younger. When I first started this podcast, I sort of, I kind of, actually that's a lie. When I started the podcast, I was coming away from that. I was already starting to get really fed up of this gendered adoption that I had of my identity that I was trying to be you know a really placid endearing funny sweet not that smart girl and that's kind of the identity that I'd adopted when I was at school I always used to act like I was stupid like I didn't know anything I sort of guess, sort of weaponized that as an identity in order to

one, protect me and two, get on with life. But that doesn't make you get on. I mean, I don't think it does. I mean, maybe it did at some point, but I really don't think that that's that saying. I remember someone said to me, never let anyone else dim your light so that they can shine or whatever the saying is. And it sort of is that. And I'm glad I think that that's changing for younger women. I'm not 100% sure, but I hope so. And I mean, I think that that kind of shrugging, finally shrugging that off is when my career really started to take form and take shape. That's where the podcast was born from me sort of wanting to go, actually, I've got something to say and I'm really interested to learn and I'm not afraid of asking these questions

and and that really did take make my career take a turn and get me to where I am today which is sort of straddling this new space where I'm going into comedy and I'm sort of writing a bit and I'm really interested in in doing more radio and more sort of writing a bit and I'm really interested in, in doing more radio and more sort of presenting and interviewing, but what form that's going to take, I'm not sure. And I'm sort of at a junction where adulting feels like, um, you know, am I in this new limbo? I am sort of, I guess I'm in, I've, I've sort of went through a, I think for these past three years, I've kind of been, I felt like I've been few years I've kind of been I felt like I've been progressing growing

and again like I said before I'm in like a growing pains moment at the minute where I'm suddenly having another bit of an identity crisis I want to kind of

shed my skin again and kind of be reborn God how many metaphors analogies and similes am I going to use

in this podcast I hope it's fun to listen to maybe I should accent for a bit if you're getting bored shake, shake it up. If you're falling asleep, wakey, wakey, lemon shaky. That's not a phrase, but I made it up. When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening.

Officers finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery and international intrigue. So who really is he? I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. So work and money, we've kind of spoken about that. Another thing, actually, do you know what the most fundamental thing I guess I learned? And maybe I was, again, naive and ignorant not to know this, but that work and money in the world are often counterintuitively mutually exclusive. Most of the work, or perhaps better word, most of the labor being done in the world is completely unpaid um and most of the money sits with people who do very little and work money i guess i can't believe i haven't said the buzzword of the podcast but it's about privilege you know access to work comes from privilege access to money comes from privilege and and

nepotism and having doors open for you and gone to the right school having the right accent the right skin color etc um and you know this kind of comes into society and culture, which is sort of our next topic. But I think fundamentally, I've learned who I am on a systemic level through this podcast. Ironically, I do feel like I know who I am more on a personal level, but I'm still sort of ever growing and changing. And because of those things that I spoke about before, because learning about boundaries, understanding about love, understanding my love languages, understanding what I need and what I can change. I guess maybe something that I didn't really speak about with love and relationships, which I sort of think is important, is your relationship with yourself. And as a teenager, I'm sure we've spoken about this in one of the

episodes, but I can't think which. As a teenager, sort of everything is happening to you. It feels like the world is happening at you. You know, your emotions are heightened. You're going through hormonal changes and you're experiencing everything for the first time and everything feels so big and so huge and everything is, why me and why is this happening to me? And that's totally normal. And up until the age of 25, your brain is not fully developed yet. You know, we've spoken about this again on the podcast, but until you're 25, your brain isn't really viewed as an adult brain, even though we say you're an adult at 18. So for all of those years, there isn't really that much time when you're being self-introspective. Maybe there is. I started kind of a journey of self-introspection the year before I started the podcast. I really

started to interrogate who I was. What were my bad points? Which were the parts of me where I was at fault? When was it me that was causing this issue? When was I the problem? And those are difficult questions to ask, but they're really, really pertinent and important that you do at some point. And I'm sure that all of you have sat down sometimes and thought, fuck, maybe it's me. And it's honestly the best question you can ask yourself because luckily the only thing you can change is you and your behavior. So actually if it is you, it's kind of like an easier problem to solve than if it's somebody else, but that's when boundaries come into play so that relationship with myself has probably been the biggest growth throughout these three years both feeling more self-assured and like I know absolutely nothing more confident and more

imposter syndrome all at the same time it's a big hodgepodge of hypocrisies and insecurities and confusion but I feel like I'm moving forwards and maybe going sideways and backwards sometimes. But incrementally, there is forward movement and growth in that sense. And actually, I think Jessica Oli and I spoke about stuff like that in her episode as well. So, talking about society and culture, there's so many things that could be covered under this umbrella but uh one actually that i think a topic that i'd have covered a few times which i think is very interesting is is alcohol and i've been posting a lot about drinking on instagram and the world is opening up and alcohol is very vocal especially in the uk um for how we socialize and how we have

fun and the culture of drinking is something that is famously very British. And those episodes around alcohol with Africa Book, Kuchenga, Catherine Gray, again, really made me assess and kind of question, you know, am I just having fun or am I really kind of leaning on alcohol like a crutch? When do I take a separation from alcohol? You know, what, why do I need it? Do I always need it? And as much as I might be holding an Aperol Spritz slash beer slash wine in any given moment on Instagram, I really do have quite a conscious relationship with alcohol. And again, that is because of those conversations with those incredible women who sort of gave me the guidance and I guess the permission to say, look, even if you don't feel like you've got issues with alcohol, even if you think you drink once a month, it's always okay to examine it and there's no shame.

And I think a lot of this podcast is about expunging shame. And even the shame that you feel within yourself, again, talking to Africa, we spoke about this with sexuality as well, which was really important. But the idea that we sort of feel ashamed of our own bodies privately in our own private space is, again, it's that unlearning of this conditioning that society has plunged us or plunged upon us. We need to start using phrases that are actually phrases. But beyond that, not just society and culture talking about that, but fitness culture has been a massive conversation that I've spoken about with Shona Virtue um and I think that I've spoken about fitness addiction again more recently with Moya Lothian-McLean um Sophie Butler and I spoke about exercising and being disabled and sort of the attitude towards that Becky Amoy-Young from anti-diet culture and I spoke about you you know, fatness and diets and exercise. I know that I'm taking the culture word very literally here, but I was just thinking about how these cultures are kind of places that I occupy and how sometimes the

really obvious ones are the ones that we don't talk about. And then on a sort of more systemic and I guess more harsh level, the conversations that I have had about racism, I on my own could never have spoken about institutional racism. I could have spoken about whiteness, but I didn't really learn about my whiteness until this podcast. I mean, I had learned about it through Reni Adelogis' blog when I first read it. And then I read her book subsequently, which I'm not sure I read it. I think I read that before the podcast started. And I had become initiated into my white privilege. And I had started to learn about white supremacy and I had started to understand the violence of whiteness as sort of a concept, but speaking to people

and being given the privilege of being given stories, which even now, actually, I kind of, I'm kind of reticent to say, you to say I'm grateful for them talking to me because I think it wasn't an exchange. I don't deserve that education, but I hope that they felt everyone who did share with me very honest and frank and often quite harrowing stories. I hope they felt that that was something that they wanted to share um because again it's sort of like i've that dunning or drunning kruger effect which we talk about a lot where you sort of start to initiate your learning in whatever sort of area and then you learn about it and you learn about it and you feel pretty confident you feel do you know i i feel like i know quite a lot about this and then you learn one more thing you go sh fucking hell, there is a world out there that I just do not know.

And I guess that I've, I feel that a bit now talking about certain issues. I feel like I want to step back and, I was about to say do the reading, but that phrase literally means nothing anymore. I want to learn more, shut up. And I hope that the podcast, I mean, I say that while I'm doing a freaking solo

episode but again I don't want to I don't want to hang around on racism too much because it's not my place as a white person to talk about it but um as the podcast goes it has been a really a really fundamental structure like a kind of backbone of conversation that has has you know has showed up um and been a huge part of the conversation throughout the three years I've been doing this podcast. So I also spoke about sort of like the culture of fashion with Venetia and we spoke about that. I also recently spoke to Aja Barber about that.

Sustainability, I spoke with Alice Aidey about that as well, sort of talking about her environmentalism and also her activism. And activism, again, has been a really huge thread in this podcast and it's interesting because that has led to people sort of perhaps popping that label onto me where I don't feel like I'm a true I don't feel like I'm an activist I feel like I am someone asking questions and hopefully implementing some of the things that I've learned into my day-to-day life. But the label of activist is much too great for me to bear. But I would say that a huge swathe of these people on this podcast could be put into the activism bracket. And it's so interesting because when I first started this

podcast, that was never sort of my intention, I guess, to have these conversations, which can be quite weighty, can be quite moral in certain instances, and often quite politicized. When I first started it, it was meant to be sort of this fun podcast about episodes, I was talking about these issues because I sort of am that default white hat, cis, able-bodied, neurotypical, privately educated, posh person. And me finding out what it means to be an adult is actually sort of means absolutely fuck all if I'm not finding out what the world looks like

to everyone around me. And that was sort of, that was almost immediate. It was within like the first couple of episodes, not only because people were sort of like, what is this another white posh woman doing? It just, my scope of understanding was so small. And that's also why I was struggling to, you know, live my life as an adult, a fully functioning person because I just I was really naive and ignorant um I think that society and culture sort of underpins literally every conversation um that I've had ranging everything from one of my the earliest ones with Anita Mitra who's the gynae geek um talking about please don't shave your vagina and about how,

you know, as a society, we're sort of undereducated on the female anatomy and the right words. It's your vulva that you shave and not your vagina, which is the whole conversations that I had with Henry Fraser about disability and how ill-equipped the world is for those people who aren't able-bodied. Kojo Apiegi, who was from Shelter Charity, and he spoke about homelessness and how actually, you know, homelessness isn't just the people that we see on the street. There are people working in offices, sleeping in their cars, there are people sofa surfing. And I mean, after this pandemic, there will be hundreds of thousands of people whose home situation has been uprooted and who've had to move back in with their parents maybe that's you or you know found themselves unable to pay rent

or being evicted and and homelessness I mean shelter is a charity that I've kind of worked with quite a lot over the years but but again that kind of fundamental shift of understanding of um I guess taking the culpability away from the individual and really starting to look at the society that we live in, the government that we're under, kind of leads back into Rutger Brechtman's ethos as well. But that's sort of underpinned, you know, so many of these conversations that I've had on the podcast. Again, with Campbell Canningford, we just spoke about being trans and, you know, gender and why gender, again, is a social construct. And, you know, like, I don't know, because I wasn't thinking

about children then, not that I'm really thinking about children now, but I guess five years ago, gender reveal to me, if someone had a gender reveal party, I sort of would be like, oh, that's interesting. Whereas now I would be like, that's weird. You're revealing the sex with baby. Like, that's not something I would choose to do. And that is because of having conversations about social constructs, about things that are created. And to quote a book that I'm sure we've all read in Homosapiens, you know, Yuval Noah Harari talks about how we literally created all of these things. We created law, we created human rights, we created gender, society. All of it is a figment of our imagination that has been implanted there for so many years. It has evolved to become fats when actually it's not fats. And I guess, um, a lot of these

conversations we have is, is tapping into that and, and, you know, sort of like myth busting, like the conversation that I have with Dr. Josh Woolrich about fat, um, about fat bodies, about dieting, um, about health and, you know, health shaming.aming um i also spoke with scotty or just one of my favorite episodes um i think it's called fat common and faggy um again like sort of reclaiming language understanding the importance of language scotty also sort of talks about gender and how they don't like being called a man um sexuality gender a huge conversations that I found the podcast, another one. Again, I spoke about that with Sophie Hagen, another one that we also talked, spoke about fatness as well. And there's just, these aren't necessarily my sort of lived experiences, but

we're all part of society. We're all a human being. And yet, if you don't fit into this really small subsection of categories, then you are othered and treated as other. And even if you don't, so say you do like me, where you're fitting into those privileged things, you might not even realize how you're perpetuating that othering feeling. And so I guess that's been sort of the underlying message of the podcast. It's about society and culture. It's about who we are, how we fit into society

and how we impact the lives of others or don't and what that says about us and what's important to us and and how to live more fruitfully and how to make it sort of better for each other better for ourselves um and it's an endless journey of questioning again Sarah Pascoe was another really interesting episode that I loved on this, talking about, you know, sex workers and sex and our understanding of female sexuality, which again has been another like big threat through the podcast. And that's really because when I was growing up, I didn't have that knowledge. And whilst I came to the podcast three years ago with a curiosity for a lot of these things, I remember writing a really long list. I wish I had my diary, but of like topics I wanted to talk about. And it was things like, I want to

understand politics better. I want to know female sexuality. I want to know why, you know, why does this happen and why is the world like that? And I know that that question, those questions can be asked millions and millions of times over and you won't necessarily feel like you have an answer. But with every question, you got sort of narrow to to a conclusion which isn't the same as an answer but I I think it's sort of just as helpful um so yeah the society and culture element of the podcast I guess is it could sort of be seen as like overarching um and then the politics and philosophy which I think I think is again it sort of falls under that umbrella but I've learned so much about politics, especially my episode with Femi Oluwole,

my episode with Grace Campbell, obviously, who's now one of my BFFs, and we've gone on to do lots of stuff together. But she and her family, her episode with her mum, Fiona Miller, have really kind of spent my mind that I will never send my children to private school, which is kind of a huge life decision to make. And again, that's come from the back of these conversations and it just it's sort

of I don't know thinking about it now it's just showed me that we it's okay to be curious and it's kind of okay to be naive and a lot in almost every single one of the conversations I have on the podcast I don't know what I'm talking about and I and I kind of made that decision quite early on that that was okay and I wasn't going to act like, um, I did know. And that's had like really fruitful results. I guess, I guess that's one of the biggest things that I've learned to be honest. And I'm going to, oh God, I've rambled for ages and I hope that it's been enjoyable and I wanted it to be funny as well. Should I try and make it funny now? I don't know. It's a bit late. It's been a bit serious. I've just, if you want to see me being funny, you can come and watch me do comedy, but this

is just not a funny episode. Okay. I'm sorry about that. And now to end on a really serious note, this is going to be, okay. So what I've learned in the last three years about life is that life is ever changing. I actually listened the other day to another podcast, Frank Cotton's podcast, Happy Place, with Billy Piper. And Billy Piper spoke about something which I've always,

I was always speaking about this podcast as well, but there's this idea that you kind of can't always have everything in a row. So some people say there's three categories, some people say there's five. But imagine you sort of have like your career, your family, maybe your romantic relationship, your friends friends and if you have kids your kids and you can kind of never have all of those things going well at once and I literally watch this happen in tandem with me so I say I've got three things I've got my work my friends and family and my relationship with Matt that's sort of like my three pillars of identity, I guess.

And I guess one of them as well is sort of like exercising and socializing. They basically all sort of work in tandem. I never really have all of them in a row. So like if my work is going really well and Matt and I are really happy, the likelihood is I haven't seen my friend that I was supposed to see and I haven't gone out for like a few weeks. If I'm going out like I did last week, every night of the week, I do can't, my work sort of falls behind and you know, I might be having fun with that, but I'm, I really feel like, oh my God. And I sort of realized that what life is about, it's not, you're never going to have those three ducks in a row. It's just sort of about learning how to grab one back once it falls out of place. So you can let yourself, have I said up and flow too many times? We're going to say of place so you can let yourself have I said ebb and flow too many times we're gonna say again you can let yourself ebb and flow

you can go with it and it's sort of it's again what I said at the beginning that idea of not expecting there to be no issues but learning that when the issues come that you can deal with them and I am getting better at sort of doing damage control it's not damage control it's just it's just nothing is linear and nothing works out in the way that you think it will in the beginning. And adulting for me and my career has been one of the, not one of the only things, but one of the things that's really worked and it's really stuck. And I've never really had that before. And I've had, there's been so many ideas that I came up with before and after this podcast that I thought were going to be,

you know, sort of the landmark in my career, the milestone, the thing that I did that sort of changed it forever. The thing that people refer to me as the pivotal moment. And actually, it's like throwing shit at a wall and this is what stuck. This is what worked and I love it and it's worked so well for me. And I'm sure maybe I'll have another evolution of this kind of thing. But behind every sort of successful moment or every great day or every perfect date or every ideal holiday, there are millions and millions of shit days and bad ideas and rejection and insecurity and arguments and falling out. And, you know, it's irrespective of whether or not Instagram exists, we've always had this thing where it's really hard to see that everyone struggles with everything.

I mean, we talk about privilege so much in this podcast and it's so fundamental to remember it. But irrespective of who you are and where where you're from whatever there's obviously going to be massive uh differences in how you experience your life but there are certain things which just will never move smoothly no matter who you are and that that is always going to be that there will always be moments in your life where you just feel like everything's against you and the world's against you. And then there'll be a day the next week where you think, oh my God, I can't believe I'm so lucky to be alive. And that you feel like you're going to cry because you're so happy. And it's remembering that those things have happened before and that they will

happen again. And it's the joy of the knowledge that they will happen again. I don't know why I'm trying to be a philosopher in this, but it's just something that I've been thinking about more and more um and I guess it comes with experience and time it's the more times you go through it the more times you know that it will be okay in the end or that it will happen again you will have that sunny day you know you will have that perfect moment with someone you will barely laugh which is my favorite favorite thing. And my favorite thing in the world is when you're with a group of your friends and you're laughing so hard that you stop making the sound. And I had that the other day in the pub when you just can't breathe. I think that's one of my happiest moments. And I just have to remember that it doesn't happen that often anymore. I feel

like at school, we were doing it every single lunchtime and just absolutely wetting yourself. And it doesn't happen as much as an adult. I don't feel like I'm belly laughing my way through the day. But when it does happen, I think, oh my God, what sweet, sweet, sweet joy this is. And if that can happen to me again, once a month, every three months, every six months for the rest of my life, then at least I know that, you know, that belly laugh is coming again. What a long ramble. I do want to say thank you. I'm going to read out every guest that I've ever had on because I wrote them down so I thought might as well. So I'm going to say thank you to Olive Forbat, my mum, Anita Meacher, Grace Beverley, Kalpana Fitzpatrick, Lucy Vine, Shona Virtue, Henry Fraser, Charlie Cotts, Koji Apieje, Sophia M. Coutts, Doris and Valerie,

Jessica Oli, Rhiannon Lambert, Livia Petter, Campbell Cunningford, Alice Living, Venetia Falconer, Jasmine Sawyers, Faye Williams, Dr. Josh Warish, Faye Ridings, Scotty, Sophie Holmes, Africa Brooke, Amy Thompson, Alexia Inge, Sophie Hagen, No White Saviors, Jessica Foskew, Alice Aidey, Jamie Windis, Elizabeth Inyomi, Jess Phillips, Caroline Hughes, Anjali Marto, Grace Campbell, Alex Gwyther, Emily Montgomery, Mona Shalaby, Laura Mucha, Jordan Schwarzenberg, Scarlett Curtis, Dr. Hazel Wallace, Hope McNulty, Femi Oluwole, Sarah Pascoe, Banhas, Scotty again, Thank you. Isha Dolan, Liv Little, Charlie Brinkhuskus, Lou Norco, Matt Malloy, Adrian Herbert, Adam Pugh, Africa Daily Clark, Candice Braithwaite, Daisy Buchanan, Iona Gamble, Olivia Graham, Atejul, Florence Gibbon, Fiona Miller, Shantae Joseph, Sarah O'Brien, Natalie Lee, Ash Sarkar, Alistair

Campbell, Dawn O'Porter, Varni Kaur, Jamie Windust again, Patricia Bright, Hayley Nauman, Remy Sade, Maxine Williams, Travis Alabanza, Dr. Emily Forber, Emily Clarkson, Shona Virtue again, Michaela Loach, Asia Barber, Nadia Whittam, my dad, Matt Haig, Moira Lodi McLean, Michelle Elman, Vikesh Shukla, Rutger Brechtman. Whoa. And now I'm reading through that list. I just want to say thank you so much because genuinely, oh my God, I'm thinking about this episode. I'm like, Michaela Loach's episode. I fucking love that. Haylene Arman was such a pleasure to speak to. Alistair Campbell, Ash Sarkar, Shanti Joseph. I mean, I just feelley Nauman was such a pleasure to speak to. Alistair Campbell, Ash Sarkar, Shanti Joseph. I mean, I just feel absolutely honored. Atejul. I just, all of these conversations, I just feel I'm absolutely so grateful to have been able to have had them.

I'm just looking at that list again. And I can, when I see all the names like that, I can remember the episode. I can remember how I felt, how they made me feel. It's very, very frequently I walk away from an episode sort of like, hi, I feel so enlightened and so lucky to be able to listen to these people and that they shared it with me. It's such a joyous thing. Like having a platform and having a podcast is one thing, but getting people to sort of share that with you

and be a part of it, it's kind of like, it's one of the loveliest things people can do for you. And obviously, you know, it's people, something I'm just being, this is too much. I knew it was going to get sloppy, but it had honestly, like the people I've met and the things that I've spoken about and the things that I've learned, even if you guys think it's shit, I've had a great, I've had a great time. And, you know, I mean maybe maybe that's all that matters I'm joking that's very neoliberalist of me you guys matter we all matter community connection let's start a revolution I'm joking okay okay I'm gonna go now

okay love you okay bye When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery, and international intrigue. So who really is he?

I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.