If I Speak - 124: Are you afraid of being ordinary?

Episode Date: August 4, 2026

Trapped in the attention economy, Moya wonders if our reading habits are affecting our sense of self, and Ash offers a feminist analysis of ‘main character’ versus ‘NPC’. Plus: what to do when your politics drift away from your friends’. Get tickets for Ash at the Southbank Centre on 26 September. Get tickets for Heated: Carnival Afters at Vespers on 30 August. Send us your dilemmas: [e-mail] Music by Matt Huxley.

Take it. Take it away. Yeah, take it away from my face. Get out my face. Why, I order. Get out of here. Um, no, come closer, listeners. Come, come here. Come on. She truly is the queen of mixed messages. I, yeah, I do mix my messages. And my metaphors. I mix both. Um, I don't have any metaphors to go into now. So I'll just say, hello, welcome. to if I speak. The other day, someone asked me if I liked hearing myself or like, no, they asked me, is it weird like hearing yourself on a podcast for the first time? And I said, one, it made me realize that my voice is a lot shriller.

I think every woman feels that way. Yeah. But two, I like the sound of my own voice, not in terms of like the actual sound, but I love talking, so it's not actually that booby. What about you? I just saw a comment on one of our episodes which is like these two need to dial down the jokes because they're not funny

And at first one was that? Which episode? Tell me now. Wow, I really rode the dog. Which episode? Is it time to stop height shaming men? Wow. I mean, the thing is

We're not that funny but like you can't tell them to dial down the jokes when their entire thing is making jokes. Not every joke is a hit when you have this many jokes. A lot of them will be misses and that's okay Because once in a while you get a golden joke. Because you miss 100% of the shots you never take. Yeah.

But do you know something is that this is what made me realize that myself esteems in a good place is that I looked at it and my first thought was well I think I'm funny. I don't think I'm funny. I think I'm... I think you're funny. No, I think, well, we both would be

because neither of us are funny. I actually don't think I'm that funny but I think I can do a good a long-running word-based bit in the right circumstances. But for example, people that I think are funny to suppose, again, Annie did a speech at her book launch and it was like Jennifer Coolidge was on stage. Just the timing, the pacing, it was so fucking funny.

I'm not funny like that. I can just be self-deprecating an ad lib. I'm like the megos of humour. one of the things that I've realized is that I find goofiness a lot more funny than wit so I love a goof I love toilet as we know you love toilet love toilet but love goof

just put a bit goof eh so I think a lot of people who don't enjoy goof will not enjoy us I'm afraid we also have dad jokes yeah I think we both in the middle of our then is a dad joke and I fucking I love a dad joke when I met my

boyfriend's brother I was hooting and hollering and he was like don't do that encourages him because he makes all these dad jokes and I was like

you don't understand I genuinely find this funny I've got a friend I've got a friend who we've been like really really close friends since

I was in my first year of uni so it's a long time now and he's an incredibly ordinarily an incredibly poised kind of guy but one of the things you'll realize about him if you get to know him a bit better is that he loves a dad joke

and then he does this face after he's made a dad joke which I can only describe as a dog that's eaten some cheese and then farted sort of like I know exactly what you mean by from that description already it's sort of like yeah yeah it's it's and what I love is that it cuts so against his um persona otherwise What is, I just think that life is, life, we were an irony-pilled society. And somewhere along the way, we lost quite a nice form of sincerity, not the American form of sincerity, which is vulgar and annoying and capitalist, but a sincerity which prized the innocence of a dad joke. And I actually think we're kind of pioneers for being young women. You are. You are, will you take Bernard Jones?

I'm going to pull you back from the brink, sackage your we are. And I'm going to ask you three questions for our traditional icebreaker 73 questions minus 70. Question one, what is your favourite dad joke? Oh, no, I don't have like a favourite dad joke. It's more of a feeling. You just know when you're a dad joke is just, someone says and you go, ha ha ha, pun. Like, a dad joke is. It's a way of life, Ash.

It's me reading private eye and insisting on out loud, then regaling anyone who's around me with, listen to this bit. This is such a funny spoof of Kirstama's WhatsApp preacher. That's dad. Any time, any word ends with like an uh sound or a, uh sound. You know, so it could be, um,

sacajia, hardly know her. What I do like is anytime someone says in your endo, I do mentally go, in your endo. I do not do. It's so stupid. It just take a lot from me never to say that out loud. But I am like, in your endo. And it gives me a little laugh every time. Duty and duty.

I love that. That's more of a pure al humor though. Did you do your duty? I did my duty. That's too American for me. It requires an American accent. The innuendo. Inuendo is probably my top one.

Good. Question two. Tell me a good looking person right now. Ooh. Austin Butler. Oh. Easy. So hot. I'm panicked. So hot. Unbelievably hot. Is it the voice that does it for you? It's because he looks like an Adonis.

No, no. I'm saying, look, is the voice a component? The Elvis voice helped, but it also helped once he started growing that facial hair and you got a little bit He basically before was like skinny, blonde, moddly type. And then he's bulked up and turned into like cowboy sort of matinee. And he's he's very sexy man. Mother may I? Mother can I? And mother says absolutely not.

Get your filthy hands away from my matinee idol. Filthy little hands away. Who came to your mind when you were writing that? Okay, so ordinarily Tottenham Hotspur has traditionally not been a very good looking team, right? Especially since we lost Hungman's son, who's a very... Has he left? Has he left? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's been playing for the MLS.

Oh, I'm really sorry. I know. Oh, that's a real fool. Why has it gone there? Well, he did it. He left after he won the title for us. He was adamant that he wasn't going to leave spurs until he won the title. And then...

And do you know what? He left at the right time. He left at the right time. But Jed Spence is a beautiful, beautiful man. Yeah, he is. And what I would say about Jed Spence is he's got very feline features. Very, very elegant feline features. But even when he had to wear the jaw strap because of his jaw injury,

I was like, God damn, still a sexy man even wearing a jaw strap. This England team has done quite a lot to offset the Harry Kane face. Yeah, Jude Bellingham. I don't want to talk about it because everyone says it, but like, God Almighty. I know he's 23, but wow. Crafted, crafted by the gods, that boy. He's a, is a good looking, lad. How do you have it all?

How? The thighs? The face? The tremor in your voice when he said that. He's so hot. It actually kind of hurts when he smiles. Sorry. Anyway, he's 23

So it's fine But whoof Woof Yeah I'd whistle at him Okay If you could No I'd learn to whistle

For him Okay Final question What was your last crash out about It was, I went to the exact details But it was about The transactional nature Of

Relationships around me And whether I have Built friendships or I exist in a creative space that operates more on clout than actual neutrality. That's a good crash out topic. Thank you.

I was getting really mental about it. Mine was just a straight-up work crash-out so I can't get into what it was. But basically I felt very overburdened and I had a crash-out. And one of the things that you can tell if I'm doing well mentally on the basis of how violent my language becomes.

Like my language becomes really, really violent. So if I'm feeling stressed and like embarrassed and angry at myself, I'll go around the house singing, which makes it even more sort of, you know, uncanny being like, I want to gouge out my eyes with my thumbs. Like it becomes very... I don't you do that. It becomes very visceral.

And I also, you know, if I'm, if I'm expressing that I'm annoyed about someone, like I would never ever say this to someone's face because it would be a horrible thing to say. But I think that this also becomes disconcerting for the people that I'm expressing my annoyance too. So I'd be like, I always knew, I always knew that I would be the one to take his life with my own hand. And people are like, ha ha, are you serious? But it's just, it's just the language of heightened emotion for me. Yeah, that's so, do you, is there anything else that tells? that's a tell when you're overburdened mentally. Oh yeah, a nap a lot.

That also tracks because you get tired when you make lots of decisions. I heard in a podcast. And the reason that we're so tired, we feel it's all the time as well as other pressures, is because we are constantly making micro decisions and things like social media exacerbate that. Like it's information you're constantly making. From the moment you get up,

we are making thousands more decisions that our ancestors ever did, which is why we feel so fatigued in a modern world. So you have to try and put yourself in a place where you don't have to make in as many decisions. But genuinely, I think while Naps are a tell that I'm not doing well, I actually think that they're really good for me. And I think it's part of my superpower. It's that I can be like, time to shut down. And I think Naps are actually an important part of life.

But the decision thing is a huge part of why we get fatigued. After this World Cup, we are all Spanish. But let's move on. Let's move on. We've got a middle segment and it's my one. I did put this under a big theory, but maybe we need, like you, need to go rogue and start some new categories. No, I think it's a big question more than a theory, which we've done before when we've melded like the mystery question with big. A look at how the sausage is made.

So this is a big question. And what I want to discuss with you is basically. I've made it sound pretty and special but what I'm actually asking is why does everyone want to be the fucking main character and why does everyone, why is there this real fear of being ordinary? And that's what I want to chat about today.

So I've said, is wanting to be the main character ruining your life and emptying your wallet? So in the past decade or so, I have noticed a stigma. I started this with a, there was a spectre and I was like, that's so overused, I can't do that again.

I've noticed a stigma arising. And it began, the modern iteration began with basic, the word basic. A word I use quite a lot. And then it moved to locals. Who remembers locals? Put your hands up. Okay, I can see some hands. Now it's NPCs.

But what all of these terms are like addressing or exemplifying is a disdain for the ordinary, for a life lived in an ordinary fashion. Because for those who aren't too online, although if you're listening to this, I'm sorry, you probably are quite sick. MPC stands for non-player character. And it's basically a way to call someone a background to an entity. So, you know, if you want to say, oh, someone, they don't do anything. They just like go to the shop and law bar one or whatever. They're an MPC.

They don't matter, basically. And the opposite of the MPC is the main character. And a lot of people think or have. have an insecurity and want to be the main character. Being told you have main character syndrome is almost treated like a compliment now, I'd say. It's like, oh my God, well done, I'm taking main character. And I've been guilty of this and my friends being like,

your main character, or my friends being like, you're a main character to other friends. I hear young women telling each other the main character all the time. And I think all of this hints at something, which for women particularly, and I'd like to know, know where it goes with men because men use main, they don't use main characters much, but they use MPC a lot. I think MPC is really gendered as male and then main character is

gendered as feminine in some way. But these combined. They're two sides of the same, two sides of the same coin, two cheeks are the same else, right, in these digital spaces. And the main character stuff, I think, hints at the way that women are encouraged to romanticize our lives with ourselves as main characters and everyone else as either sort of the background actor or the audience. And social media has really exacerbated this naval gazing or this way to frame ourselves. We're all stars our own feed, you know, we're all celebrities. People who are even seen as ordinary, like Molly May, have made their lives extraordinary by doing that.

So even the ordinary becomes this show, this live stream, this way of getting, um, quick. The banal itself becomes something that can take you into, make you into start. And the second part of this toxic little cocktail is consumption, right? So instead of working on the internal and taking the time to form like a real unique personality, that's almost organic in the way you're doing it. Like you're not doing it because you want to for X, Y, Z. You're doing it because you're like, okay, I want to live a really good, interesting life, which could mean working the same job, you know, averagedly paid job and having my head down and just having a family,

all the things that we see is like typical and not worrying about this outside world. And that is the interesting life. Instead, we're looking at the external where we're stuck in this odd place, I think, where people want to simultaneously stand out and fit in. So it's, and all of it is done and mediated through. hyperconsumption where people buy goods and experiences to indicate originality. Except the goods and experiences are all the fucking same because it's a checklist of things that are denoting a life lived interestingly and it's often fed to people online.

So, you know, go to Bali, ride horses in Kazakhstan. Why is everyone right now riding horses in Kazakhstan? I know at least three different people who've gone off to ride horses in Kazakhstan. Where has this come from? Go to this festival. Eat this viral food. Mr. Boots. And this is a part of like an era of self-optimization improvement. There's this idea of like taking this course or reading this book and buying this thing, all of it together

makes us a better person. And I think we confuse personal growth with consumption and that being ordinary is a bad life. And I think neoliberalism has influenced this because it's made everything competitive marketplace from dating to secure resources. So if you stand out, you you were more likely to succeed, but you also have to fit in and conform to certain things so that you're giving off the right signals. And I guess I'm asking how do we unpick this need to be extraordinary, but extraordinarily but extraordinarily filtered through consumption. Thoughts, feelings.

I'm sure you have a slightly more polished take. No, no, no, no. I think I was like, oh, what a good big question she has asked. And this could go into so many different directions. All right, so the first thing is that I actually think that this isn't quite neoliberalism. It's this sort of like, you know, post-neoliberalism, social media saturated, social panopticon kind of age that we're in, which I think is just like slightly distinct, right? This is all post-financial crisis rather than pre-financial crisis. And I think that that's important because you're looking at the sort of complete stalling of social mobility.

and personal progression through conventional forms of labour and you have the totalising impact of an intentional economy, right, that we're all locked into because we all use various forms of social media or mass communication app. You know, attention has become central to what is driving, technological innovation. It's all sort of attention traps are what's being designed. You become both a product and a sort of, you know, it's your attention that's being harvested, but then also you are generating the content, which is the bait for the attention trap. So that's become really

important. You know, we all have cameras that we are looking at and into and using multiple times a day. we're consuming more visual media than ever. It doesn't surprise me that how being enmeshed in this attentional economy gets internalised as a system of values where it is good to be a main character because the main character is the person who draws the attention. And I think that you're right to pick up on the story, sort of gendered element. So main character is everyone's looking at you, like the plot

revolves around you. And for men, it's NPCs, because what's it mean to be an NPC? It means you're a loser. It means you've got nothing to offer. You're not making anything of yourself, and you're stuck in the matrix. And so what's interesting to me is the way in which fiction is the sort of foundational logic of both of these things. A main character is somebody in a film or a novel or a TV show. An NPC is in a video game. So it's a model for thinking about human relations which comes from fiction.

It comes from something which is not real. And we've internalised that and we've adopted that as a way of thinking about other people. I mean, on this thing about the sort of, the way in which people sort of mistake fiction for real life, I saw this video which came up on Instagram, which was a woman interviewing a guy who'd sort of swallowed a bit of manosphere stuff. And he was saying, you know, men have got to be protectors.

Men have got to be the protectors because, you know, there's danger everywhere. So it's important for men to be protectors. And she was like, well, what kind of danger? What kind of danger? And he was like, oh, you know, like the Joker. and she was like, huh? And it was like, you know, the Joker,

like Heath Ledger's Batman. Heath Ledger's Joker from Batman because anyone's one bad day away from being the Joker. So anyone could become the Joker. And it was like, that's fiction. Like, you've drawn this theory for life and how life works from an actor playing a character from comic books.

So I think that this speaks to like a way in which this attention economy has produced quite frankly a stunted and childish view of the world and how people work. Obviously fiction can be very, very rich and complex, but, you know, the sort of boiling down into like being the main character or like the Joker or NPCs is like, great, you've, you've stalled your intellectual and social development at around 12 years old. Let's talk about that bit more because I think the literary crisis, has might actually be the key to unlocking this.

And I'm thinking about this because I was reading. First of all, my agent is always like literary books are tanking. She said the market for literary books is dire right now. And I'm hearing this from so many different people in publishing. And it makes me, obviously, I'm like, is that true? Because it always seems like there's a big release. She's like, yeah, there's one like big A list release, one or two and everything else, just goes,

whoop, whereas obviously commercial fiction and slop fantasy, as I like to call it, because it is slop, sorry, guys,

a lot of the shit that we're reading is slop. I've had a go at the court of Rosen fucking farts and it's slop. And I have read

a lot of slop in my life. Louise Bagshaw is fucking Pulitzer level compared to this slop. It's real nonsense stuff. And there's been a movement, an anti-intellectual movement, which I think you can probably talk about a lot more depth than I have, but it's a quite obvious shift. When I'm on things like Substack,

for example, a platform that is about writing, supposedly, it isn't at all. But the pieces that I see blow up on there, every time underneath it's this list, this is amazing, this is so good, I'll read it and I'm like, this is either chat GPT or it's one of the worst most, naval gazing, you know, just like classic, a blog that I wouldn't even written at 15. And I've written a lot of navel gazing stuff, but it's just so poorly executed. It's just someone being like, and I felt very bad. Just someone really like showing whole. It's just showing whole.

And showing whole, everyone mistakes it for some great piece. Whereas there's a book that came out recently by an influencer called Amelia Goldsmith. It's called things I wrote on my notes app or something like that. and I read an interview with her in The Times. I wrote about this on my substack. And it was so depressing because she comes off so stupid. I'm sorry to be a cow, but I'm going to be a cow. She comes off really stupid.

She comes off very smart in terms of marketing, but she comes off not just depressed and anxious. Her whole thing is like, I'm self-aware and I'm growing, but I have this, you know, I'm totally, when you read you're like, you hate your life, you hate your job, but you also love it. You're so addicted to the validation. You can't escape.

She admits in the thing, like she's written this book. And she's like, but I don't read books. The last book she read was over it. She reads one book a year. Colleen Hoover was the last one she read. She couldn't remember what it was or what it was about. She says at the end, isn't it funny that I'm an author, but I don't read? And it's like, no, it's not funny.

It's the publishing industry picking up an influence. And now she's a Sunday Times bestseller with this. They quote the book in the Times thing, which is like an absolute dissection of her. And usually the Times loves a white blonde lady writing about dating. And the book is just platitudes. It's like, why instead of trying to love someone else, do you not love yourself? Like, it's the same things like Florence Given. And that's now a Sunday Times bestseller.

And I read the reviews for this book. And I read the reviews on Amazon for another book that I recently met that I thought was fantastic, really good, challenging, very good book. And the other book, people are like, ah, you know, this character's dislikable. And this book, people are like, it's amazing. It's the thing I needed to read most. It's just five-star reviews down the board. Because people want to be comfortable and they want to have these very simplistic views. of the world and the stupid way in which they think about the world. Sorry, I'm just going to say it.

The basic stupid way they think about the world validated. And I don't think that's about being ordinary. It's like this idea of mini Goldsmith's like, I'm extraordinary. Like my life is singular and unique and special because I'm sad all the time about dating and people are like so relatable. But relatable is yeah, it's, it's there's a literary crisis going on. And I do think this feeds into this idea of like being main character. But at the same time, the things that are the markings that the signifiers of being a main character

are not things that make you rich or interesting just on your own terms not even to anyone else they are things like the consumption the you know I've got

I blog it about every facet of my life and that makes me interesting I mean I think that there is this you know I do feel that gender gender is such a fucking cage but I think that the way in which I think feminism has become this like diminished withered thing

which has become interpreted and adopted as well anything I do as a woman or even worse. Anything I do as a girl is good and legitimate because I think that we've gone from while the personal as a political and it's a site of politics into well women write about themselves like women just write about themselves. And the way in which, sort of self-centeredness and an inability or a discomfort with trying to grapple with the world has become

feminized. I just think it's like, well, that's disappointing. That's really disappointing. When I think about my favourite authors, and it's interesting to me that Hillary Mantell is like absolutely my favorite author. She doesn't write from the perspective of a woman, right? The Hilt Ball-Four trilogy is from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell. The place of greater safety novel about the French Revolution is Dantan, Demelon, and Robespierre. And I just think, like, yes, you can, like, you can be a woman and be fucking interested in the world. And you can be interested in interiority. Like, these are books which are hugely rich with interiority. And that's why I like them. You know, it's not, and this is the man's world of politics which exists outside in the

grand conversations. The inner life of these figures is absolutely, you know, rich and detailed and textured. You know, I think that's, that's for me what makes her a great writer, but she doesn't get pulled into, well, in order to write a rich and detailed and textured in her life, it kind of has to be about me. It kind of has to be about me. Like, I'm actually sick of. auto fiction. I'm just stick of auto fiction. The other funny thing is like most first books are auto fiction in some way. I now know this not just from myself but from everyone else I've met who's written a first book and they're like yeah this person is just me. And then after that they start breaking it down like you read Sally Rooney's books and you look at Sally Rooney's

your life like oh this is like your bit that's for me that's from you but that's fiction. And I think a good author. The girl's got to stop going to Trinity. But I think a good author is someone who takes a shard of themselves. And, you know, so no means all authors, but can take a shard of themselves, a character trait and then they blow it up, blow it up, blow it up, and then they add something else and something else and something else until that character doesn't resemble them anymore. But they are writing from a first instance of known something that grounds them, but then they turn it into something else completely.

And there are some authors who can completely make up characters and did it, but a lot of people I know would do it more that way because it's it's a process of like taking and deconstructing you get better at it as you go. But I think I think even the language that we use about like this idea of being ordinary, the fear of being ordinary and the fiction, the mediums in which people are drawing films says a lot. So like women, a lot of women read slop books though. A lot of men are playing video games. And I think that's quite telling that where they're drawing their frameworks for how they worry about a non-ordinary, like an ordinary life or leading a background life.

It's like the men are talking about NPCs and the women talking about main characters. I do think though there is also a thing, and this is, I think, fundamentally neoliberal. And I know that there are people on the right who would agree with me when I say this. And I don't think this is an inherently right-wing thing, is that I do think we've shifted

from a culture of what can I contribute to what can I get. So what it means to be a main character is sort of the getting of attention. Like what does it mean to not be an NPC or to be a high value male? It's what can you get in terms of respect, money, status and all the rest of it. Whereas for me, when you go, all right, what's it, what is the life that is well lived? If you define it purely in terms of the getting, I think that it makes you just unbearable as a person, but also like a shrivelled husk of a human. Like I think we come into our humanity through what it is we can contribute.

Like this is how I really feel. Like I genuinely believe it. And I think it's something which takes us out of ourselves into community and into connection. And I do think that you cannot derive purpose from what can I get. I think you can only really derive purpose from what can I do and what can I contribute. And I think that that's totally missing from all this stuff. And that's why there is such an emptiness to all of it. The emptiness to the conspicuous consumption.

The emptiness to the viral experiences or the Mista Boots or the fucking new Bugatti or like this and that pair of trainers. It's because it's like you have no purpose. You have no purpose because you have not identified what it is you can contribute. And the thing about contributions is that, of course, there are contributions which are singular, right? Like I think if you develop an MRI vaccine, it's pretty singular. But there are also contributions which are ordinary.

Like I'm really proud of loving well. Like I wake up in the morning, I feel full of love for my husband, I feel full of love for my husband, feel full of love for my friends. And I go, loving you guys, not just being loved about you. but loving you makes me feel like a person, makes me feel like a human. Like it puts me in touch with why I'm here. Like I'm here to love you guys. I'm here to be a part of this social community.

You know, there's obviously the huge sense of purpose and mission and meaning people derive from having kids. Like they go, I'm on this earth so you can live a happy life. I was on this earth to bring you into it and so that you can flourish. And I think that if you focus, on what is it that I can contribute, you actually see the extraordinary and everything. Like you see the extraordinary in like these very fundamental

and universal things about human experience, love, cooperation, mutual aid, community, et cetera, et cetera. And you lose your fear of ordinariness. And I think something else that happens when you follow a checklist of consumerist experiences, or consumption full stop that has been laid out for you by the internet world, whether that's recommendations from influences,

whether that's travel things. Instead of thinking about whether I really want to do this, is you end up racking up all these experiences that haven't touched the sides. So I'm not saying don't take recommendations. Like I go to countries, for example, that fucking loads of people go to, I'm not in the far off corners of the end of the world doing like these rare experiences.

But do you know why? Because I don't want to. And I wouldn't get anything from it. Whereas, like, I went to Marseille recently. Half of South London's always in Marseille. I really like Marseille. I actually like Nice more, even though it's really racist. Which is a contrary opinion from me.

But if I was... It's less way more racist than the south of France, but I do prefer it. Food's better. Sorry. Yeah. Well, Marseille's foods was incredible. But it's these things of, like, think... When I choose a trip, again, I'm not the model for this stuff,

but I do try and think about what am I actually thinking and feeling and what do I actually want to get from there? and that's how I choose. I call it a gut thing. So there was a point in time where I was trying to choose a trip and I kept thinking about this one destination and I was like,

something just kept putting me off, but I was like, but it's so cool. Like everyone's going there. I think it was Georgia or something like that. And I just didn't want to go. So why would I go to this thing? I know people who've gone and done

like six months traveling around the world and hated every minute of it because they didn't actually really want to go in their gut, but they think it makes them boring if they don't. And I think there is a difference there between getting out of your comments, which is something that I believe is good, but just doing things because it's either on trend or you're told this is what will make you an interesting person. There is a difference

and you can feel it in your bones. I talked about this in the episode where we did clubbing. I think a lot of people are ending up in places that they don't enjoy and that they don't get a good experience from and they can't even form bonds at because they're going just because they've been told to by an app or by, you know, online. and etc. Which is why you'll end up on the wrong dance floor and you'll be like, oh, I'm miserable. And the vibe is terrible. Because you don't want to be there and you're not actually bonding with other people and

you hate it. When I go somewhere where I don't like, I'm fucking drag. I'm a drag. So I need to stop going to things that I'm not actually going to get something from. When I'm away and I'm doing something and I'm in a place where I'm really getting something out of it, I will challenge myself and do some things that might make me a bit nervous like a certain hike or going and asking in my very bad French or Italian for something or going up a, you know, to a farm place where no one can speak the language and we have

to just sort of communicate through hands. But that's a bit scary and out of my comfort zone, but I get so much from it and I get like this huge feeling of joy and excitement with connecting with these other people and other things. When I'm somewhere I fundamentally don't want to be and I know I've got there through forces that are external to me and I've succumbed to the idea of this will make me an interesting, this is optimizing, this is doing this. Then there's a feeling in my stomach of like unease. I know it's grubby and I know it's not really adding anything to my life. And I'm not adding any other people's lives. I think if I can like come back to this question of like normies. Yes. Because in a way we are now under a government of the normies for the normies.

Andy Burnham zeroing in on normies. And I think that there is like a political question here. I was talking to my partner about this because we were talking about extinction rebellion and the way in which he put it was really well which is extinction rebellion and just stop oil and I think you could also talk about Palestine action in a similar frame as well was composed of people

who looked at the material facts of something that was going on the climate crisis or the genocide and it radicalised them. And in being radicalised, they took on forms of action, which were obviously, you know, highly disruptive and, you know, meant that there was a huge cost that they had to pay by going to prison. The criminal justice consequences were huge.

But it also did more than that, which is this way of being radicalized, in a sort of disembended, disembodied way, right? Like a lot of it is through what is it that I'm seeing through my screen. It put them at odds or made them unable to relate to normies anymore because they were in so deep to it. And I think that there's, I don't want this to be taken the wrong way because I'm not saying that, well, you were wrong to be radicalised

by the things that you were seeing. like I'm not saying it was an irrational thing at all, but I'm interested in the consequence of then becoming so defined by it and that being so central to your sense of what needs to be done and your sense of right and wrong, your feeling that inaction or inadequate action is in itself immoral, is that it means that you can't relate to normies yourself. You might actually feel a bit like you're just people who are in denial about the truth of what's going on.

You know, you're too comfortable being comfortable and there's something about that which is kind of wrong. But it also means that normies can't relate to you because it's sort of like, well, you're a bit, you're a bit of a zealot. And I'm just, I'm just interested in that as like, I guess a political, feature a political problem to contend with, which is you can put yourself in touch with the reality of the world in such a way where you are unable to connect with the average person anymore. And I think that's superiority, is it not? Like, we'd probably call that a superiority complex in some ways. Or like Messiah mixed with superiority where you believe that you're the savior or your

group is the saviors and you're going to come and save people. But it's not something you talk about a lot is like working with each other. That's not working with that's top down, even if people think that it's bottom up. But I suppose it's an interesting thing which is like I do, you know, I've obviously seen elements of that like in various, you know, various movements. I think that's true. But like if Roger Hallam were on if I speak, which is itself a hilarious thing to think about. Roger Hallam would be like, you you guys are in denou. You're in such denial about what is going to happen. Then you say I've got a superiority complex.

You're pathologising me when you're the one that's in denial. And would he be wrong? He might not be, yeah, but this is the thing. It's like, is contempt ever a way to build a coalition? Well, or if it's not a political movement, to build relationships full stop. Contempt is one of the fundamental things that break down relationships.

You can't be in buzzword community or you can't be in... I think if you have contempt for someone, you have basic disrespect for them. Or contempt for people, you have basic disrespect for them. You can dislike people without disrespecting them. There's people I dislike who I kind of respect, you know?

I'm like, I respect that person. I don't like them. I don't really want to be around them, but I respect them. And that probably means we can work together. That probably means we could do some stuff if we needed to. Whereas contempt, you can have contempt for someone that you profess to love or like. And when you have contempt for the way they live their lives or their choices, and I know this because I sometimes suffer from the superiority complex and the contempt that creeps in, you have to think about what is this contempt coming from? How is this working for you? And it comes from a place of insecurity. It comes from a place of rage and resentment.

And none of those things are useful for building a true, like if we're talking on the individual level about the interesting life or the extraordinary life, something I've been considering a lot recently is like, again, what my life in the next few years, what I want it to look like. And my therapist must be working in some way because as we discussed, I want to move from this idea of getting my advice. validation from, you know, online, public profile, all those things, and trying to cultivate a life that is more, quote, unquote, ordinary in lots of ways. And I wouldn't say exactly what

that makes what that consists of to me, because it's kind of offensive in some ways to people, because they don't like being called ordinary. But to me, I'm like, if I lived an ordinary life, that would be a very peaceful, good way to live. And that doesn't mean I wouldn't write books or be in media and all this other stuff. But there's certain levels you don't have to reach when you are not searching for the same validation, the same attention. I'm not there yet, but that's the way I want to be. Like, that has completely changed, shifted my focus. I used to want to be famous.

I don't want to be famous. I want something else. And I think with that has become a real reckoning in how I see other people and, like, the contempt I've had for certain people and their choices and how narrow that is. Like, Roger Hallam can have contempt for everyone. Remember when he walked in that room and he was like, you're all cunts or whatever he said. You're all a bunch of fucking cunts. You were a bunch of fucking cunts.

Did it work? Did it work? You might think that. Does it work? Does it get you closer to your ultimate goal? I would say no. I think we need to move on to dilemmas because I thought that was a wonderful place to end on

because I do you think that contempt was at the heart of what you were saying about normies, NPCs, main characters, etc. So this is, I'm in big trouble. And if you're in big trouble, email us if I speak out. at Navaramedia.com. That's if I speak at navaramedia.com. I'm going to read this one out so you can go first. You can also read it out, but wait, wait, event.

We have an event on the 20th. Well, I don't. Ash has an event on the 20th. I'm doing a lecture at the South Bank about the future of relationships. If you heard the episode last week, you will know what it's about. So get your tickets. It'll be nice. Link in the description.

There you go. I've got a club event on the 30th August at in South London, Carnival afters. link in description. We're now going to start regularly promoing our events, I've decided. Moyer's going to drag me kicking and screaming into it. We're going to do this. Okay, we want people to turn up. It's a hard market right now. Okay.

Cool. Dilemma. All right. Good morning and happy Monday special ones. This comes out on a Tuesday, so I don't know if this was a happy Monday. They must have sent it on a Monday. Yeah. I'm writing to you with a long term and growing frustration I've been experiencing with my best friend,

25F. The context is we at uni and bonded instantly. We lived together for four years and I, 24F, thought we had a once in a lifetime friendship. Over the past eight months, I have experienced the joy of developing my political consciousness. I'm still in that developmental stage, i don't have a label for myself, but I'm basically a queer intersectional feminist, anti-capitalist and environmentalist. There's a lot of labels for someone who hasn't got any labels. Yeah, that's very funny. My political opinions haven't changed, but due to this development, I'm much better. at articulating them. My friend and I have always had disagreements on politics, i.e. who we might

vote for, but largely agree on the big important things, i.e. human rights. That being said, I found it difficult to talk to her about my experience as a Scottish voter living under a Westminster government. I basically had to take that conversation off the table a couple of years ago. More recently, we've been struggling to have political conversations due to our differing approaches. In the past year, she has, won, defended Margaret Thatcher, and suggested that the criticism she receives as largely due to her being a woman, which might be true in part, but takes away from the fact that people dislike her for very valid reasons. There's also a Scottish-slash-English difference of experience for us here. Two, express support for the Conservative Party more generally,

specifically citing their economic policies. I really want to meet this young Kemi Baddok. Three, criticised Zach Polanski for switching from the Lib Dems to the Greens, which was an attempt to dissuade me from voting Scottish Greens in the Scottish Parliamentary elections. Anyways, I'm only now realising how different our approaches slash politics are, and I'm not sure how to proceed. She can be very condescending when we talk politics. She has a political job, which also makes this difficult, and I can't help but feel that the condescension is connected to my being Scottish, as she doesn't talk to her English pals in the same way. I don't know if what I'm realising is that we're just not as close as we once were,

and the episode on forgiveness made me realise that it's okay, but I still feel very conflicted. Is this a valid reason to demote our friendship from besties to good friends? Is this just what a growing, maturing friendship looks like? Thank you ever so much for your words of wisdom. Yours truly a confused special one. P.S. Obligatory fan girl moment. It's not obligatory. You are free not to fan girl, but we do like to hear it. I love the show.

I love prescribing episodes to my friend's boyfriend and family. It's so refreshing to listen to co-host who can disagree in a respectful, constructive way. Thanks for what you're doing. My thoughts are, if you want to disagree in respectful, constructive way with your friend. You will bring up these issues in a respectful, constructive way with your friend rather than sitting on them

and becoming resentful. And special when I say this is somebody who is guilty of that regularly myself. What you've done here is create a laundry list of wrongs, which, oh yeah, a little bit annoying, right? They're annoying things. But the real problem is you feel condescended to

and you also have now looking for reasons why this person is condescending. So you're attaching it to your national identity. You know, I'm Scottish. She's English. That's the reason she's being condescending to me. It might be, but it probably isn't. One thing I have found around, I love the Scots,

you guys do have the old chip on the shoulder when it comes to the English because you simultaneously see haters, which is so fair. And but also resent that we dominate everything. Again, understandable and fair. but I doubt that the condescension from your friend is coming from her being Scottish. She might have contempt for you and you might be picking up on that,

but you need to talk to her about that contempt to where it comes from. A friend the other day told me that something I said was really pompous. And I just was like, fuck, that was really pompous. I had to apologise immediately. And she thought it was connected to something that it was not connected to at all. So when you don't have the answers, you fill in the gaps, you need, first of all, to go get the answers. And you need to bring up in a way which is like, hey,

Look, the way you've been speaking to me about certain things doesn't make me feel good. Or rather, it makes me feel X, Y, Z. I wanted to bring this up with you because I want us to be able to talk about this and be able to have respective conflict. That conflict might not go well, but you will only find out if you bring it to her in the manner you would wish it to be brought to you. It is like dating. You must be the friend you want to see. And if they respond in the same way, you can continue that friendship. You can stay friends.

If they don't, you have your answer. But right now, I think you're hurt and your resentment and anger about the way this fibre souring is now being attached to you things. You're making a perfection in your head about what it might be and reasons because you haven't actually got concrete reasons because you haven't talked to her. You haven't understood where she's coming from or what she's thinking, feeling about things. I suspect she might feel a bit condescended to as well from the way that you're discussing your political and awakening.

When I was like 20, well, I was like 19, whatever, I had a big political awakening and I was really fucking annoying. And my family was so cheesied off with me for ages because I just went around preaching to them. And that is not the way to recruit people to your cause. It just makes them drill their heels in. Drill? Dig their heels and even more. I like drill your heels in because there's even more like, er. Yeah, I was nailed to the floor, you know.

And it is very much proving that just lecturing people about things does not change hearts and minds at all. So you have to also think about how are you coming across to this person? How are you discussing these issues with this person? You might think you're presenting yourself one way. I know people who are like, oh, but I said it like this, this, and we'll be like, no, you actually said it like,

you're a rabbi dog and talk to us like this. And they're like, oh my God, I never realized. I can be like that as well. I'll say something. And people be like, I felt like you're doing this. And I was like, what are you talking about? I was being the softest, smallest being in the world. And they're like, you came across crazy boots.

woman, you have to like really reflect on how you're presenting. And I mean like properly look at it. Don't just be like, she's done this and this. I think right now you're attaching lots of different reasons to this fundamental breakdown when I suspect it's that you two have not actually got the respectful and the ability to have a respectful conflict yet. So you're just burying things and you're both resenting each other. It's leaching into your interactions, mainly in places where you disagree like politics. You are both sensing it. And that's driving you further apart. And if you don't address it, you will just have a friendship breakup.

And I suspect that's what you're sort of asking permission for at the end, which is like, can I just drift apart from this person? Is that fine? But I think you'd feel a lot better if you actually talked about it. You don't have to be besties or have this hierarchy of friends. But any friendship breakup I've had where we've actually like discussed things and it's just been chill to demote each other, as you say, has not, it's not been a problem later on the line.

We bump each other. We wave. It's all fine. It's chill. That's people move in different ways. You're close to your mother-up. Friendship breaks up to what we haven't tried to repair, which I've discussed before.

That's when it sticks with you for years afterwards. I think there's a lot of wisdom in there. So I suppose the things that would add to that one, it's really common to go, when we were at uni, we were really close friends, and now we're not at uni together, and I am confronted by all the things that we don't have in common and all of our differences

and I'm finding that difficult. And I do just think that that is a part of growing up. Like that is just a part of adulthood. And while for me, those things weren't political because at uni I was very much drawn to people

the same politics as me, it was when we were no longer at uni and in that sort of crucible of heightened and intensified contact and you have so much in common because you're living life in the same way, that those differences which are much more about, I guess, social values and sort of like interpersonal styles of communication

and ways of being, that I felt like, oh, I thought this was a once-in-a-lifetime friendship when we had this thing that was holding us together and then when we've got to think about our friendship existing in the world, it feels that we don't have enough in common. So I don't think that means you're a bad person and I don't think it means she's a bad person.

I think that's something which happens in life. But to address the politics of it specifically, something which has changed for me as I've gotten older is that as I've become more secure in my politics, I really enjoy talking to people who I disagree with. Like, I actively enjoy it. I don't just do it because I'm like, this is the right thing to do.

I derive a kind of pleasure from it. There's a playfulness, there's a sparring, there's a sharpening of my own game and a sharpening of my own points. The reason why I co-host Navarra Live on a Monday with Michael Walker is because actually our politics are quite different on a whole bunch of things. He's obviously Social Democrat. I'm obviously a communist. We tend to frame issues in different ways, think different things about, you know, what's politically possible. But that's where the fun is. and it's not that I'm hunkering down every Monday night for this debate

where I feel that my ego is at stake, even though we're doing a program where thousands of people are watching, I every Monday go, it's time to play. Like, it's time to dance. It's time to do this thing, which feels very alive and makes me feel active and intellectually, you know, alert. and that's a reflection of my confidence. So I think that where you are right now at the age of 24

and where you might be in 10 years, I think you could feel very differently about these conversations. Like I think that it is a danger to make a virtue out of sameness. And I actually think that it ends up being worse for your politics rather than better. And I suppose the final thing I'd say is that

I think that it's, it really stood out to me. that you said, I don't have a label for myself, but I'm basically a queer, intersectional, feminist, anti-capitalist, because what that suggests to me is that you're having an identity politics moment, by which I mean,

politics has become an increasingly intrinsic part of your identity and you're viewing your identity through an increasingly politicised lens. So I'm not denying that your friend might be condescending. And I'm also not, you know, discounting the possibility that your friend has some sort of undigested Englishness to reckon with. But the person who's written in is you and the person who is very quick to attach all sorts of labels to people, their political identity and how that's shaping their interactions is you. So I would I would question whether that's serving you well

or whether that's actually inhibiting curiosity and being able to reckon with things as they are. I think that political concepts obviously can be hugely helpful as scaffolding rather than a lens Yeah. And also, I don't want to downplay how annoying it is when an English person doesn't know anything about what it's like to live under Westminster in a devolved government. Because it's fucking annoying. My Scottish boyfriend talks to me about it all the time. So I get it, but I agree with everything that sort of Asher said and we've said in that I think the problem is bigger than these individual annoyances between you guys. And you sound like a very self-reflective. empathetic person as well. So I think you'll be just fine.

It's also just being 24 and 25, not to get on my pompousness. But the aging, the aging does add things where you're like, I don't actually care about this thing anymore. And I do really, like this is what's important to me politically. The same values, the same feelings. But like, this quibble I have with this person

doesn't matter to me because I'm working on this thing over here, which is way more important. You get older and you realize that you actually care about the politics more and the person or less. Yeah, yeah, so much. It's very liberating. It's great because you, the wheat from the chaff, man, the wheat from the chaff. Anyway, you sound very fun.

And it is funny that your friend is a young conservative. But they're coming back. I told you, everyone who's like the conservatives are dead. They ain't dead. They're not dead and they're going to come back. Guys, be wise. Like, this is the oldest political party in what? The world?

They ain't never dead and reformer now imploding. My husband fancies Kemi Badenock a little bit What? Redacted name What? She is so ashy Her braids are always dusty I think it was when

I don't know This is giving soft You know like the bad wig soft life Yeah yeah yeah This is giving like White people always love it when they see Black people with bad braids And like your braids look amazing

It's always when they look the worst You know what? It was the PMQs where I think she said something very contemptuous of Kirstama and he was like, good God. But he feels the same way about Pripatel and Manera Merza. I'm rocked. I don't really say I'm rocked. That's very... So added a new interesting dimension to redacted name that I had not expected about very... Hard-Ly and women.

Yeah, when, you know, for his birthday, I have to reenact one of Priti Patel's speeches at the White Cliffs of Dovet. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. That was obviously a joke. Oh, that's very funny. To be fair, my partner really fancies MIA, but she's not quite as problematic.

No, there's levels to this game. There's levels to this game. There's definitely something about crazy ladies of color. Yeah, I know. I was going to say, you love brown, megal, maniac. Not Cammy Badnaut, though.

Oh my God. Okay, fine. Whatever. If he likes theugs, he likes the hugs. I've got to go now. I'm actually late for a meeting. Yeah, we just go.

Right, special ones. Bye. Bye.