The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Louis Theroux: "The Thing That Makes Me Great At Work, Makes Me Bad At Life!"

Episode Date: November 24, 2022

From his recent global TikTok fame to his BAFTA award-winning documentaries Louis Theroux has delighted audiences and grown a cult following with his distinctive brand of personality. Best know for his documentary series ‘Weird Weekends’, and ‘When Louis Met……’ Louis has explored the most controversial subjects with wide eyed curiosity and openness. In this conversation Louis discusses how his childhood and upbringing affected his career, channeling his anxiety and social awkwardness into his work of exploring the darker aspects of human psychology and behaviour. He also talks about how his work has evolved and grown, from his initial big break in America to his new series of celebrity interviews, and how he has had to balance this with his family life. Just like with his documentaries, in this episode Louis brings his trademark honesty and openness. Louis: Instagram - bit.ly/3AIepJg Twitter - http://bit.ly/3EXtCsF Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to amazon music who when they heard that we were expanding to the united states and i'd be recording a lot more over in the states they put a massive billboard in time square um for the show so thank you so much amazon music um thank you to our team and thank you to all of you

that listen to this show let's continue what makes me good at my job is also what makes me bad at life this is maybe what makes me bad at life. This is maybe more than you bargained for. Louie Thoreau! Our next guest has interviewed everyone. people. I'm just so curious about what takes someone to that place. Why people do the things that they do. The question I get asked most often is how do you not get angry with some of these people especially the ones who are sort of spewing hate. If people see like your attempt to wrestle intimacies from them that's never going to go well. I think also there's some part of me thinks maybe the other person's got it figured out and I haven't. Your former wife said there's nothing real about you.

Jimmy Savile, he also said something about insincerity being your speciality. That's good. I'm glad you brought that up. I remember it vividly. First of all... I neglected my personal life to focus on achieving professional success. The price was paid by those nearest and dearest to me. When did you get that feedback? I saw my relationships as a life support system for my kind of work self. Instead of the other way around, saying to my wife, well, this is what I do.

I did a lot of great segments just by being available at a moment's notice. I just think, oh, this isn't going well. So it became a bit of an impasse. Is it something that comes with a cost? And is it something you want to change? Louis, you're a very fascinating person. Thank you. And I've, you know, I've, as I've read through your story, I read your autobiography as well.

I was trying to understand what I needed to understand about your earliest experiences to really understand the man that you are today. The interesting personality you have and the trajectory you went and took in your life. So please enlighten me. What are the most pertinent things that I need to know about your earliest years to understand you? Oh my goodness. I could spend two hours answering that question on its own. I don't know how interesting it would be. I'll try and give you a brief answer. I like the long answers.

Do you? Yeah. Well, first of all, my parents are, my mum's British, my dad's American. They are both, in different respects, sort of free thinkers. They grew up in the 60s and they embraced aspects of the counterculture. They regarded their own parents as being, in certain respects, sort of limited and cloistered. And so my mum joined VSO, Volunteer Service Overseas, to get experience of life in Africa.

My dad joined the Peace Corps. He would have been probably enlisted to serve in Vietnam, and he didn't want to do that. So he went to teach in Africa as well, and that's where they met. So I was raised, I was born in Singapore where they were teaching. My brother was born in Uganda where they were teaching at that time, my older brother. But then they settled in London.

And so growing up, I was conscious of them as people who really encouraged us to open our minds. And maybe it was 99% positive. 1%, I think, like a lot of people, people use this term social justice warriors, right, as a taught form of judgment about overly do-gooding. Like there's an element of, I don't tend to use that term because it's been weaponized. But I suppose in a sense, my parents were kind of social justice warriors. Like they were very much encouraging me to challenge or us to challenge racism where we saw it, to challenge sexism, to be open to new experiences, not to fall into easy judgments about other cultures and other countries and other people. And I only say the 1%.

Sometimes that can be inflected with a little bit of a sense of superiority. And I talk a bit about that in my book, a slight feeling that we weren't really quite like other people. Other people were maybe not quite as smart or not quite as literary. And I strive not to endorse, whatever is in me remains in me of that I try to unpack and eradicate. But nevertheless, that's the way, looking back on it, that's something that I see and pick up on. My dad's a writer, a novelist. My mum is a, you know, after teaching, my dad became a very successful literary novelist and travel writer. My mum went on to become a radio producer and worked for the BBC World Service, which is, for those who don't know, that's the service that broadcasts all over the world. And it's a bit like Radio 4, but broadcast, you know, this tiny language.

It's an extraordinary institution. It sort of represents in some ways the best of the BBC. So I was growing up sort of aware that we were a family that loved books and loved reading. And, you know, we watched TV and listened to pop music and did the normal things. But I think underneath it all was a feeling that to really count in life, you should be a literary writer. That was without me fully maybe acknowledging it, that was underneath this thing that you should really. I think still my dad probably feels that, like he's very supportive of me and my TV making. But he's like, Lou, and my tv making but he's like lou you thought have you thought about writing another book lou you're you know you you've got time you've got

the talent you can i don't want to push you into this but lou you know you should think about writing a book that's a great idea for a book you know that kind of thing anyway so that all of that was under underlying my attitude to life then they sent me off to school, primary school. I mean, you wanted a long answer. This is maybe more than you bargained for. I suppose alongside that is the influence of friends. And, you know, I can start. And so the countervailing impulses of growing up in the 70s and 80s in South London

and being exposed to funny, creative people. And my friendship group, which who, you know, some of them had gone on to work in sort of civilian quote unquote lives as, you know, restaurateurs or, you know, music, other stuff. But saliently were Adam Buxton, Joe Cornish, and another friend, Zach Sandler, who were super creative. Adam and Joe went on to have their own TV show. And I was conscious of falling in with a little group, Amelia, of like-minded kids who were very funny, really into movies, TV.

And that was where I suppose I began to feel that there was, well, you know, I don't want to oh in hindsight it's tempting to um sort of read back read back what I do now into that but I just know that that that friendship group was very important to me and maybe counteracted some of the more because I was academic I was I was I did really well at school I feel like I just go on and on should I go should I keep going i just listen here because the other part of it was that i was um i was quite an anxious child so i would i would i worried about everything and uh i i would think about things that were on the horizon like

when i was five or six years old i I remember fixating. There were various things that came and went that really worried me, but one was the idea of Maypole dancing, which was a big... I don't know if it's still... In state primaries at that time, every May holiday, you would do Maypole dancing. What is that? It's an old English or maybe British tradition where there's a big pole. I think it's like a fertility rite.

You know, it's a touch of Wicker Man about it. You know, it's an enormous kind of mast, a pole, like maybe like a totem pole, almost like 20 feet high. And then there's ribbons around it. And as children, you would skip around it and you would sort of braid the ribbons together to form nice patterns. And I remember seeing them doing it in primary school and thinking like that looks really hard and I'm gonna have to do that next year and I don't know how I'm gonna do it and just I remember being preoccupied with how am I gonna learn how to do that I only mentioned that as an example like there were other things like just reading before I could read I remember seeing my older brother reading and think like I don't

know how you do that and just getting very worried about it. So in general, I'm someone who is, I know everyone worries, but I just feel as though that feeling of worry and anxiety was quite a strong background note. And sometimes I would control my anxiety, not consciously, but again, looking back by working hard, like by sort of, just sort of becoming almost like super focused on academic work and um and as a result i did very well in school and um you know like those people who look back and say like well i was a fuck up in school i was the opposite like i didn't always you know i would get in trouble like and sometimes i was regarded as especially when i was younger 12 13 as a disruptive element because i was also quite cheeky and sometimes tried to communicate and connect

with people via teasing right which is i don't know that's a common it's quite a british thing in a way there's certainly a big thing in my family was what's now called bants right and sometimes i try and do bants with my teacher and then it wouldn't go well and so but but in general which is confusing like regarding being regarded as a black sheep in class or a disruptive person in class and then um but then also getting in trouble they said like it's fine for you to mess about and get in trouble and then you do the homework and you're fine but you're a bad influence on the other kids I used to get, but you're a bad influence on the other kids. I used to get told that. You're a bad influence on your...

I was like, that's not true at all. If anything, my friends were just as naughty and were leading me astray, but nevertheless, because I could go home and then become sort of organised and focus on my work, I got, for a brief period, I got labelled as the troublemaker anyway going through school I sort of the load stars for my sort of sense of who I was and how I would progress in life such as it is I mean I was never that tactical but as I went as I went through school

I thought well I'm pretty good academically I guess I'll just do well in exams and stuff and then see what happens. And meanwhile, with my friends, we'd be seeing movies. I got into rap music in the late 80s and sort of would dress like a hip hop nerd. I was smoking quite a lot of weed, but still studying. This was sort of, again, age 16 age 16 17 but it never really interfered with my with my work i went on to oxford and then having done well at oxford um left university and and at that point was like well what happens now that was when it felt like okay now i've no longer really got a clear path does that make sense yeah you know i think if you if you are if you're academic if you find academic work not easy but

you find that you do well at it because it's not easy but you apply yourself and you do well then sometimes life can be a weird um bump in the road like real life. It's something like, well, where are the exams? Because I know I can do those. What do I do now? So for a while I thought maybe I would be like a professor or an academic or something, but then something in me told me that wasn't quite right. So then the rest of life is another story,

but I hope that sort of answers your questions about those different, those different sources of, of, of, of how I, you know, my whatever it's personality and interests. One of the things that really stood out to me in that answer was your, your early relationship with work. You said you used to work hard to kind of suppress or kind of distract yourself from the anxiety of life. Is that accurate? Well, what it is, is, well, I worried about things in general. And, you know, one of those worries was homework or doing well in school. Another worry was getting on with my peer group. But insofar as I could control those sources of anxiety,

work is actually relatively straightforward. In terms of how do I attempt to relate to people better? Well, that's kind of hard. It's like mysterious. But how do I do well? These assignments are being given. better well that's that's kind of hard it's like mysterious but how do i do well these assignments are being given um then you just sit down and do them um until you get it right and and you know a lot of these things are aren't are subconscious like i'm not thinking like oh how can i control

my anxiety but i would just find that i i if exams were coming up, I'd get super anxious. And I don't mean to pathologize it. Like I've never been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. I'm just slightly worry prone. And as it happens, I've become less worry prone as I've grown up. going on you know in my family life who knows um in you know my parents marriage wasn't always happy they subsequently divorced there were other things that probably were going on that were stressful but for whatever reason i found that all without almost without meaning to i i would i took my studies uh very seriously i have to sort of slightly check myself when I say this because I do I'm also aware that I've looked back at some of my reports having kind of got quite attached to this narrative of myself as sort of super swats right super studious and I've looked at some of my old report cards and some of them are are especially when i'm six or seven sort of say um you know louis is a pleasure to have in class but i sometimes it would be nice if he would let other

pupils speak he he enjoys the sound of his own voice kind of thing which is very apropos for this podcast probably you know and like so so i i had a sort of rambunctious side and almost in social settings. My mum tells a story, it's actually in my book, but of how when I was about five or six, I would come home, I'd be really sad. I'd be like, I don't know. I don't think I don't like school anymore.

And she'd sort of think, well, Louis is obviously not getting on well at school. I need to talk to his teacher. And she went into class and talked to the teachers and said you understand louis very sensitive he's a very sensitive young man as i said would have been maybe five or six seven years old and the teachers were like really yes he's a very sensitive like you just be mindful that you know things you can say might hurt his feelings something like that and they were like struggling to recognize her description of me and then on the way out of class she passed the classroom we could see through one of the glass

windows in the door and I was running along the desktops or doing a dance on top of the desk in other words like it was almost like in the setting itself I was a wild child and and just running amok but also I had like this doubling like then I go home and be kind of be worrying about small which I think is probably still true of me in some ways that I have a um I have that sort of disruptive trickster impulse alongside a certain um a certain sensitivity is that a defense mechanism or a a way to I don't know, survive in a social setting? silly. But the fact is, is who knows? Like, I just know that, you know, things like your sense of humour or your inclination to be cheeky, that's just always been in me, you know?

You know, I'm slightly wary of attempting to sort of unpick where that comes from because I just know that's always been in me. The relationship with work, I think even for myself, I learned my relationship with work at a very young age. And I've, I think I developed quite an unhealthy relationship with work at the expense of other things that matter in life. Yeah, me too. I think I can relate to that. And that's what I was trying to understand is like, when did you, where did your relationship with work come from? On one hand, I was guessing maybe it's from his father who was very you know insistent on being an intellectual is a is success louis or is it from the distraction of from anxiety and from the social thing where you could be

successful at exams because you were good at that so you double down i think it was all of the above like my dad's got most my parents have work ethics that border on the sort of being over the top. My dad would, you know, he's a, as I say, he's a writer. And at the weekends, like he didn't really take weekends off. Like certainly Saturdays he would often be writing and Sunday mornings he was often writing. And he's an extraordinary, I wanted to give both my parents a shout out see I'm my parents were um were basically first generation university educated came from very much not at the high table of life and and so for my dad to to sort of become a wealthy literary writer is kind of an amazing thing that he did.

You know, in the world of, it's one thing to be a popular novelist. That's hard anyway. To be a novelist or travel writer who's extremely successful, sold hundreds of thousands or millions of books just uh without any leg up in life is an amazing thing and um uh i wonder if i've ever told him that i hope i have anyway he'll listen to this probably because he follows my he follows my uh career with interest so some of that i would have taken on board just through osmosis of seeing that. Likewise, my mum being super studious, going to Oxford, she grew up in Tooting, you know, and her sense of self- educated at a state school and then through her own hard work and the support of her teachers going to Oxford, you know, in the 60s as a woman, that was extremely unusual.

So that was in the air. But in the end, and my older brother, who was very studious. And the other thing just to reflect on is that I saw my brother as the more brilliant child like he was the way I saw it at the time was more effortlessly brilliant like sort of child prodigy material you know and I thought I was just kind of a sort of irrelevant bit of afterbirth that you know trailed around after him and so when I noticed that I was getting fairly good results when I was sort of 11, 12, it didn't feel particularly impressive. Like it felt like, well, I guess I can do well if I work hard. It's not like I'm kind of brilliant like my older brother.

But I think when I, you again in hindsight I think mainly what I see is is a sense that I just felt like this was something I had to do it wasn't a choice and I even later on when I was at university I sometimes used to worry that I wonder if I'm missing out you know people say it's the best years of your life and you should be hanging you should be just going wild having fun I did a you know some of that but I was also conscious of like maybe I'm missing out by working by studying too hard that's what I read into your story of university was that I wrote I actually wrote in my notes worked his ass off at Oxford on the point of affection this is also something i probably

didn't learn from my parents if i'm honest i still call my parents by their first names um did they encourage you to do that yes yeah i just didn't i didn't learn affection and actually you know even growing up at 10 years old when one of my friends turned to me and went you're my best friend my body like because the the idea that's I was someone's best friend made me cringe and I had this I think I had this like emotional intimacy affection issue growing up although I think being a best friend is something you show but don't say yeah it's a bit creepy you're my best friend I remember feeling stressed when a friend said that to me and thinking because then you feel like you say, you're my best friend.

And then it feels a bit inauthentic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. You're like, do it. Don't say it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I love you.

It didn't feel necessary to say. Then steady on. Yeah, exactly. But what did you learn about affection at a young age? I feel really lucky that my parents, I feel as though they were, you know, they worked hard. Like I had a working mum. My dad was, as I say, had a huge drive to be successful.

But I always felt like the love that they had for me was just taken as read. Like I never questioned it. Do you know what i mean in a way that felt positive and even though you know i think there's a tendency or a temptation nowadays to look back and and be thinking about things that could have been otherwise and i think you know parts of that therapy culture are really valid but there's also a sense in which you can focus on negative stuff. And I'm not sure at a certain point how healthy or helpful it is. And so for me, I never kind of questioned the love, the love that they had for me.

And it was never the case that i felt i was kind of um seeking their approval like i remember friends at school saying well my my parents say if i do well in common entrance they're going to get me a watch and i remember thinking that's quite weird you know or my parents never i never felt like they needed to be, that I was in any sense doing, like working hard for them. And if they took an interest, that was kind of a bonus, but I didn't rush to show them like, I got all A's or, you know, I was, I came first in all the exams or whatever. I wouldn't really talk to them about it. Like that was just something that I did for me. What about emotional expression?

I think that's something that we learn, how to say like, I love you and to hug and to be, to touch. Because you said bants. Yeah, like I've, humour is really important. I say such a kind of, that's so dead, it's cringe. I mean, I have my kids' voices in my head, but humour is a very important way of communicating.

Humour is really, I often think in terms of how I see life, that's why I'm worrying I sound a bit humourless, but anyway, how I see life is like, humour is like the missing dimension in terms of, it's almost almost it can't really be expressed but we shared a sense of humor as a family and so we would make each other laugh and so teasing was important like little um just not taking yourself too seriously my parents I would say like I respected them I would have I see how my kids behave towards me and I'm that classic thing of like god if I did that to my parents that would not have gone well it's not that I think of them being especially strict I didn't feel they were at the time but I wouldn't have dared to I don't feel they were at the time, but I wouldn't have dared to, I don't know, like, there was a sense of them having boundaries that I would respect and observe.

Also, they slightly cheated because we went to boarding school, me and my brother, age 13. So those difficult teenage years of sort of 13 to 18 or 13 to 17, they were part-timing it. And if mum and dad, if you're listening, I'm sorry, but that's what it is, right? I mean, it was a weekly boarding and they got me in the holidays, but other than that, they were getting me half of Saturday and Sunday. So I've got kids who are teenagers and, you know, that's where like a lot of the conflict kicks in. So when I look back at how I related to my parents, there were times when it felt like they didn't get me or they were being too hard on me or the mixed messages

because they were sort of on one hand being free spirited and saying like, if you want to smoke some spliff louie like that's fine just be careful you don't get caught like kind of thing or other times you'd be like how dare you you're going out there you know what are you doing like it was like well which part of the are we being are you being counter-cultural kind of dudes or are you going to be like victorian parents like which is it but in general um I kind of I kind of got it I kind of got I got I kind of got that um you know that it was about there was a foundation of love and approval that wasn't you know it was unconditional and and and

I think if I had anything to sort of and I just sort of reflect reflect things that in hindsight could have been different. It's the feeling that because they were work-focused and also because their relationship was complicated, sometimes it felt like me and my brother and I were slightly a side effect. Like we weren't, again, I could spin that as a positive actually. Like there was a sort of a level of us being autonomous. You know, we had whatever the opposite of helicopter parents is. We slightly had that.

Like they were like, okay, cool, you know, you do you. And I think, again, that can be i kind of quite grateful in some ways for that but um you know they had their own thing going on it reminds me of something tim grover said which i've repeated a few times he says he used to train michael jordan and uh kobe bryant and he was i spoke to him on this podcast when we did the la run and he said that sometimes an event that happens in our life or something that happens can create our brilliance. It can be responsible in the case of that kind of void of independence your parents create. Create someone

that works and that goes and gets stuff and that's able to travel and be an island. But it also can create our dark side. Like the same event creates our brilliance, but also our dark side. So my question to you is from that particular experience of having that independence and feeling a bit like you were a side thing in their lives what was then the the dark side i can see the upside i guess the upside for me it felt like the upside you were saying is the independence yeah yeah that's right yeah yeah that being the space to grow and become your own person and not feel that you're especially kicking against anything but licensed to follow your own interests i think that's all positive i think um uh what is that that look i think in general what you know i've said this and probably someone else said it as well, that what you think may be your disability is also your superpower.

Exactly. And I think that, you know, in terms of relationship building in my private life, like it's a running joke between me and my wife, like that she's extremely sort of emotionally acute and that I'm slightly the opposite, which is kind of weird when you think about my job job which hinges on supposedly being sort of maybe emotionally or psychologically perceptive but it's almost as though but i see in my mum as well like my mum having worked at the bbc went into um therapy became a relationship counselor and it's funny because um my mum also finds it difficult sometimes to fully inhabit her emotions, if it doesn't sound an odd thing to say. And I don't know, I'm going to probably regret saying that, but let's make it about me. And I think with me, I think, yeah, I don't always find intimacy easy. Like it's, so I sort of, I experience like a lot of the times my work is a license to be intimate without consequences, like to get to a bit like what you're doing now. Like you talk to people, someone in a prison, you know,

who's been sentenced to 10 life sentences. He's like, okay, how does that feel? So what's life like? And then kind of getting, whatever happens to me, all the work I've done in some sense is about attempting to peel layers back and see inside someone's psyche and then get on a plane and fly off and go home and live my normal life, almost at a less intimate plane of existence.

And so clearly, you know, and the other joke i've made over the years is like what makes me good at my job is also what makes me bad at life so so for me it's i think and i think you if you ask my friends they might say you know be like oh yeah you know louis a good. I hope they would say that. But they also might say, like, he's a little bit absent. Like, he's a little bit – I don't feel I'm an especially attentive or present friend. And, you know, I'm not – you know, some people are really gifted at friendship. Oh, God. They, like, really – they're there and they think about it

and they make arrangements. And I don't make make really i'm not very good at social arrangements all these sort of boring things that are the qualities that are really the stuff of life like um just getting together reaching out are you okay how's it's been a while since i saw you i wanted to let's meet up let's which in general this is a cross generalization but i think women are slightly better at than men and i think that's been one of the many gifts my wife has given me is actually involving me in life like in a just a normal sort of neurotypical way whereas my tendency would be to sort of disappear into my slightly incel-like shell, you know, of kind of in a metaphorical shed of kind of counting. The joke in making my book is like, you know, separating my

collection of screws and nails into their different jars. You know what I mean? Like that for me is like that, you know, a lot of guys would be like, yeah, that sounds like heaven to have two hours to organize my shed, you know, and not realize that you're missing out on the tapestry of life. So I plead guilty to whatever that is. Maybe that's just being a man. I can, I can relate to, it's funny, I was having this conversation yesterday with my friends where they're all saying, yeah, Steve doesn't like to socialize. You know, I, I would rather sit upstairs for seven days on my own working than like someone said to me this you meet all these wonderful people on this podcast and you and it's

such a wasted opportunity that you don't text me hey let's go for a coffee yeah and it's just outside of my nature my nature is to sit alone on my laptop and work yeah and so again my girlfriend my partner is the opposite yeah so she's dragging me in. I think it's quite a common dynamic. You know, not bragging, two nights ago, I was a GQ Man of the Year. Thank you. Applause. Thank you. I was one of the honorees.

And so there was a banquet, like a posh dinner catered by Heston Blumenthal. And, you know, Stormzy was going to be there, Mo Salah, Leah Williamson, the footballer. I didn't get an invite. So it's not just men now, it turns out. Extraordinary list of, like, Andrew Garfield, an extraordinary list of incredible people.

And it wasn't even an awards bank. It wasn't even like the BAFTAs, like, where you sit and sit through the speeches. And then at half past 10, when you're starving, hungry, and quite tired, you sit down and eat your food. This was like a banquet banquet where you just sit around and have a delicious meal. And then a few people pop up and say a few words between starter and the main course. So it was, and it wasn't even that, it was like maybe a couple hundred people, like quite small as these things go but the point is is before on the evening of I was like I don't want to go and I said I knew I had to go but I said to Nancy my wife I was like I am not feeling this

she's like what is it I said I just I can't you know I don't know I just feel really anxious and she's like but you're not even giving a speech are you you know because sometimes it's that like what if we win and i have to give a speech or or you're worrying about whether you're going to win it's like i knew i was an honoree and i knew i wasn't going to say any i wasn't going to have to give a speech and it was just the idea of of having to talk to people like oh and in a relatively high wattage setting. So you think like, I don't want to be wandering around like a blithering idiot. So there's a sort of little stress that sits alongside that. But there was no real reason on paper why I shouldn't have been thinking,

well, this is going to be amazing. This is going to be a night I'll remember my whole life, you know. And I attempted to adjust my mindset, know using kind of paul mckenna like or yuri geller like you know just visualize think about what this is this is going to be no one's expecting anything of you this is a chance to sit down with some amazing people and have fun but nevertheless for the first kind of hour i was there just thinking i kept just sighing and that's like what's the matter so I think that's just for whatever I think that's in me it's probably in a lot of a lot of people and um you just deal with it but you know why why should that be the case I don't really know why is it something that comes with a cost

and is it something you want to change if you're being really honest. If I could dial down, I think sometimes, I think I have changed it actually is the first thing to say, because there were times in my life where I said no to things just because I thought that's going to be a bit like, you know, I did the maypole dancing in the end and it went fine. I did learn, this will surprise you, but I did learn how to read. And, you know, despite all the anxiety I had about doing that. And so, and then as life went on, I think there were times when I said no to things, opportunities, which probably just because the idea, I was asked to go on David Letterman's chat show when it was on CBS. This would have been in around 2001 and i said no because i thought that's just going to make me anxious and looking back on it i probably wish i'd done that

why would that make you anxious i find the chat show experience not especially i mean i've done it a few times and as life goes on it seems seems, you know, the idea of public speaking or, you know, when I first got into TV, it was like, why am I doing this? This is not me. Like, this is not what I was cut out for. This is not something that I aspire to do. And it sounds really, you know, the whole notion of it feels intimidating and just a bad fit. And nevertheless, I knew that, you know, just briefly, like I was working in magazines as a way of sort of avoiding comparison with my dad. Not directly, but I suppose that was in my mind was like, I want to write and be creative, but I know I'll never write books. You know, I didn't feel like I wrote, when I wrote, it didn't feel especially as though it came as easily as it should. You you know it's hard when your dad like i relate to people with famous parents like you know people like you know jacob dylan yeah who's bob dylan's son i don't

know why i reached for that comparison but jacob dylan that track one headlight do you remember that one no okay for people who know they know you know it's a great track was a huge international hit but his dad's bob dylan that's a painful maybe not painful but that's an extraordinary legacy to be born into and in a related way like i was conscious of my dad his name as a writer really meant something and that it was um that if i was to attempt to write something it was going to be a case of very likely kind of falling short, at least in my own mind. But the idea of writing in television was less, I felt, wouldn't invite the same comparisons. Plus, I used to watch TV and I liked TV and there was something about the democratic

kind of nature of television, the fact that everyone watches TV. I thought, well, that's a way of working in a medium that will connect with people. And so it was in the mid-90s. TV was in a kind of mini golden age. The Simpsons was on. Seinfeld was on. Friends was just about to come on. There were all these amazing TV shows.

Larry Sanders was another one. Did you want to connect with people? You studied history at Oxford, and as someone that appears to be a bit of an introvert by nature, from what you said about your experiences... I have a duality where I'm partly shy and introverted, and then partly outgoing and an extrovert. So with your writing, and with the TV writing,

and with the magazine writing, I know you did a stint at Spy and was it Metro in Boston? Metro in San Jose, California. Was your objective and the thing that you found fulfillment in your work from, was that connecting with people? Or was it just... I think I connected with people, not to sound oxymoronic or whatever it is, no tautologistologist by connecting with people

like in other words like i always find i do my best connecting sounds a bit face to face i mean maybe at one level but in the end i think i was just trying to do good work and get approval like maybe more than connection like just trying to sort of get an a at work do you know what i mean like so i would feel good and think like oh i got 10 out of 10 on my article or on my piece of writing my film review and then if people said to me that was really good that was like getting you know like you got a good review or whatever you know people say like you you did a good job then it it was maybe a way of um it's just a little it's just a little uh spurt of whatever that is like just kind of pleasure you know your worthiness feeling worth you know i don't want i i think i've got a healthy relatively healthy sense of self-esteem but nevertheless i i think i i i whether i require it i enjoy

you know getting i got i've got a series out at the moment this isn't my attempt to segue into the promotional portion of this interview but nevertheless here we are i got a um i've got a series out at the moment on iplayer called lou Interviews. And we had one that went out a few days ago where I interviewed Bear Grylls, an alumnus of this very podcast. I listened to your interview with him, by the way, in preparation. And when it went out, for whatever reason, I think because I thought it was a good show and I hoped it would get a good reception. I was on, i thought i'm going to go on twitter and see what people were saying and it was surprisingly quiet and then i felt a bit like um okay now i'm gonna i'll try at louis through i'll try hashtag bear grill i tried

a few different search terms and then i suddenly i had a vision of my, you know, you get a vision of yourself like, oh, I've become that grubby guy. Kind of like, it's sort of sad. It's like trying to fish for approval in the vast swamp of the Twitterverse, right? Casting my line and nothing much is coming back. And I thought, well, and then one that came back i looked at it it said just watched louis through his interview with bear grills wow it was hella boring and i

was like i just caught a boot and then i was like well that's what you get and by the way it isn't boring no it's not boring but the point I was trying to get to was, then a couple of days later, I got a review, great review in the Times. Just sort of pointing out all the things about it that I knew to be really, really good. It was sort of the perfect review, you know, rave, saying like, this is fresh, it's new, it's different, it's fun, it's entertaining, it's revealing.

And I felt really good. And one of them was like, because before that, the first three episodes, I hadn't really checked Twitter. I thought, I'm not that guy anymore. I don't really care. I make the shows, and I know they're good. And the ones that aren't so good, I know.

None of these is a clunker. They're all solid. And then I suddenly thought, oh, I went back to, I regressed into being the needy, sort of, the needy, insecure person, the needy, insecure person, which is, you know, and that guy is always there, by the way, I think a lot of people could probably relate to that, which doesn't, it doesn't mean, you know, which, which is, which is fine, by the way, but I suppose, to your point, all, you know, in all the kind of work, in the work I do,

it's not like, is it an urge to connect? Like it's an urge to do good work. And then it's nice for that to be recognized. And as much as I, I could, I'd like to pretend that I don't really care whether people like it or not. I do care actually. Do you know what's funny is my team are very honest with me and we're in the car the other day and I believe it was Hollylly holly and my team who might be upstairs now and i said um we were talking about your louis coming on the podcast i said oh he's got the new series out where he interviews people i turned to i think it was holly it might be someone else so sorry if it's someone else um i turned to them and said how is it because they'd seen it before me and they went

it's actually really good oh nice that's what they said to me and they would be and they would be so honest with me they went it's actually really good and Oh, nice. That's what they said to me. And they would be so honest with me. They went, it's actually really good. And then they explained why it was good. Because here's my thing. Like, that actually, like, isn't it? It's actually. It's actually really good. But see, because I'm a very glass half empty kind of guy,

with respect to praise. Yeah. So what I'm hearing there is it's actually. Surprising. Yeah, because I'm hearing, is it's actually surprising yeah i mean like because i mean is that a surprisingly in which case why would that be surprising i can i think i can assert why it would be surprising um i think that the generation holly's in they don't watch um shows like that on bb, typically. BBC Two.

BBC Two, sorry, on the BBC, should I say, yeah. But that's what I got from it, is her generation who are like 22, 23, who spend a lot of time on like TikTok and Instagram and these other platforms. I think it was, I was actually quite surprised. Well, that's fine. And I think that's probably true. And also I think in my world,

if I'm going to talk about stuff, you know, there's a troll in all of us, right? And in general, it's more enjoyable to talk about stuff and dunk on stuff because it's shit, right? I know that sounds horrible and I'm slightly oversimplifying. I think you're right. There's a little part, especially in the journalistic or in the media village, it's like, did you see it?

Yeah, yeah, that was rubbish, wasn't it? And there's a sort of reassuring feeling of like, yeah, let's all give it a kicking. So when you acknowledge that something's good, you're sort of saying like,

I'm going to grudgingly acknowledge that that was good. I think you're correct. You know, that's a bit of that. Yeah. I think pretty much everything,

especially when, because we probably consider ourselves working in the media industry. Sure. So for the team to go, it's actually really good. And then she went on to explain to me. Most things aren't that good. They're not. I mean, most things are fine, but most things are like only about as good as they need to be. Do you know what I mean?

Especially in the interview format, like how many other ways can you create an interview format that is original and inspiring? And that's also what I got from her was like she was talking to me about the way the format was constructed yeah i think we pushed things forward a little bit like it's not a paradigm shift like we haven't completely flipped the script as they used to say in hip-hop circles but it is you know we worked on the grammar we tried to do things a little differently. So we created a, for want of a better term, format, you know, that allowed for elements of actuality, just being silly, having fun, or being in live settings where the unexpected could happen,

but also bits of conversation that would be going to places that were quite deep. So yeah, thank you for that. And thank you for passing that on. TV. I read when you were 18, I think maybe 16, if someone had said to you that you would end up in TV, you would have been sort of perplexed at how that would have, the steps that it would have taken to get you there.

That's definitely true. You're in San Jose, I believe at the time. Is that where Spy was, the magazine? No. Was that Boston? Just to rewind. And I also want to mention one other thing, which is because we talked a little bit about studying and I feel as though whatever that is,

that work ethic has stood me in good stead. But I don't feel that that's, I often think there's, you know, a very understandable sort of misconception about the level of importance of academic work, you know, that whole stay in school kids. And, you know, we were talking, I think, off mic about Mr. Beast, the YouTuber, and, you know, the media landscape we're in now, it would just, it's just simply not correct to say that, oh, the path lies through academic work, right? And I was talking to my cousin, Justin Theroux, oddly enough, he says

Theroux, who's an actor, he's a director, a writer, he wrote Tropic Thunder, Iron Man 2, he's been, he's also like high profile Hollywood actor. I interviewed him for my podcast, I'm not trying to plug, that would be weird to plug one podcast on another podcast. But he, and he was like someone who struggled in the academic setting. Like he had ADHD. He flunked out of a school. He went to another school

where they recognized his special needs. But the point is that I sort of think so many, I think there's a tendency to undervalue those parts of life um of life that that lead to success that that exists i mean maybe you maybe i'm sort of out of line here because it sounds like you are all over this but those parts of like the parts of life that help me become whoever i am part of its academic part of it was almost inimical to academic success. It was the part that was free-spirited and naughty and that was bunking off school and seeing movies

or getting me in trouble and whatever that is. And it's hard to really bottle it and know quite what it is. You know, there's something that I struggle sometimes with over-discipline, right? Or a sense of like doing well in controlled settings. But actually, it's that you need the yin and the yang of both. And when I went out and did stuff that was successful on TV, like working, doing my first segments at a show called TV Nation, having been hired by Michael Moore when I was 23, partly like a work ethic, you know, doing preparation and being, you know, turning up on time, as they say, is like 90%

of the battle, but actually then being just sort of allowing those creative juices sort of to, you know, whatever that mysterious quality of humor and connectivity, just being silly and disruptive, those are really valuable. They say, don't they? They say conformity is great to succeed in school, but it's not great to succeed in life. Maybe that's what it is. You kind of need to be, to unconform once you get out. You sort of do. And I think, and I want to come back to your question, but i do think that that's also you know three four years ago i started a company and there's a part of me that's overly um so overly conventional you know and and as a result seeks out unconvention in my work and that's positive you know because it means that i love spending

time with people who feel like they give free reign to the darkest weirdest impulses that I think to an extent we all share but keep repressed you know whatever those happen to be people involved in sex work or or people involved in religious cults or hate groups and and that's all my stock in trade is talking to those people because I feel as though I kind of get it like I understand that though that's part of the full compliment, as horrible as it might sound to say. We all have unacknowledged and secret impulses that we have sort of civilized and kept and repressed into, you know, we've inhibited them into our souls so that we can function

and not be sent to prison or whatever i'll be cancelled but um for me like i i sort of i do it to a fault to the point where i worked at the bbc in-house in bbc studios just because i sort of liked the idea of the structure like i'm a company man going to the factory and you know building my tv programs but not owning them. And because I just thought, you know, and I like going to the can, I used to love working at TV centre, because it felt like going to the factory and then eating at the TV centre canteen, you know, it just felt, felt like comfortable. You know, my, my granddad worked at the London Water Board, his whole life, he had one job that he started when he was 18. And when he was, whatever, 65.

You know, to some extent, those were the times. But that temperament is slightly in me. The whole time when he left, they gave him some box of cutlery. You know, that was the, you know, he worked here for 47 years. Here's your silverware in a walnut case. It was in a pride of place. Like, not pride of place. It wasn't on the mantelpiece but you used to we used to look at it that's what grandpa got when he worked at the

metropolitan water board for 47 years you know you sort of reverence it like and it was only used for special occasions and and there's a little bit of that in me and so when i finally went outside the bbc and set up a company three or four years ago i'm sure most of your listeners probably have their own many of them not most but many of them will have their own companies or will be fully cognizant of what it takes to make it in the sort of the world of free market and entrepreneurship. But for me, that was just absolutely not my lane. And it was my wife who pushed me to do it. And so that was a case of me needing to break out of whatever I was doing and say, do you know what?

Whatever you think that is, risky or mysterious or, you know, a bit spivvy, you know, like just a little bit of judgment. Like, oh, I don't want to be one of the yuppie guys. Like, we just had an IPO. I've just got my first Maserati. Like that, because I'm antagonizing, you know, I'm completely, that whole mindset, I feel like I'm alienating maybe some of your listeners.

That's not my mindset. Like, I'm just like, I almost valorize the opposite of that, you know, to probably an extent that's sort of faintly unhealthy. Like, I don't want to be the guy. I don't want a flash car. I don't want to flash Like, I don't want to be the guy. I don't want a flash car. I don't want to flash clothes. I don't want anything. I want to be anti-flash, right? Like my watch, you can see this. My wife was saying to me last night,

you know, maybe time for a new watch. This is a Casio, whatever that one is. It's a F91W. These cost like 10 pounds, 15 pounds. You can get them at Argos. Have you ever seen that watch before? I have. I was listening to a program about Andrew Tate on the way here,

a podcast. You know who Andrew Tate is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, Andrew Tate feels like he's that guy reduced to its quintessence where he's like, one of his catchphrases was, people say, why have you got a green Bugatti? Do you know this meme? And what does he say to them?

He says, well, he says- He says, I say to them, what color is your Bugatti? Right? That's him in a nutshell. He's like unapologetically troll-like, ostentatious displays of wealth and arrogance, right? So I'm the anti-tate. You can put that on my, you put that on right? So I'm the anti-Tate. You can put that on my,

you put that on my gravestone, the anti-Tate. So I'm like, I don't give a fuck about your Bugatti. I think it's embarrassing that you have one. No offense. No, I don't. I don't have a car. But you know, fine. You know, and that's kind of a joke.

My point really is that that's something I need to keep an eye on, you know? Because actually ostentatious, because actually ostentatious, almost like ostentatious humility is its own poison. Like, like, why are you so wedded to the idea of having a shit watch? By the way, it's not a shit watch. It's completely reliable. And I've never had it. The only thing that goes on it is the strap. So I've got one that's got a, you can replace the strap. After about five years, the strap goes. I've got two of these.

I'm not bragging. I've got one. I've got my spare one in case I can't find this one. Anyway, last time my wife said, it might be time for a new watch. I've got to embrace, I'm trying to lean into being the guy that isn't showing off about what a not show off he is. You think I've lost the thread.

I haven't. The point I'm getting to is that, so I needed to start a company and not, because it's oddly infantilizing after a while. Like there's nothing cool about making like hundreds of hours of TV and not owning any of it, right? That's just me being a little bit of a chump. And partly that's, you know, there's a quid pro quo, I suppose, like, well, you don't get stressed, you turn up, you're making things for a

public broadcaster, you're getting a decent salary, for sure. But people would say like, why, you know, everyone else? So who do you work for? It's like, well, I'm BBC, I'm on contract, I work from contract to contract three years at a time. Like, really? You don't have your own company? Like, no, why not like you know because everyone else does like jamie oliver or hugh fernley whittingstall or or you know whoever you care to mention any presenter bear grills bear grills of any longevity um would would be making their own shows you know it's it is it's a no-brainer and i was like i guess i just i'm fine doing my i'm a

creature of habit you know that was sort of what i've just saw if i don't want to mess around with it and then having done it three or four years ago like yeah i probably should have should have done it a bit earlier but it's so so it's that thing of um the point which is now landing on the point sounds a bit banal was that you can sort of get in, being a creature of habit, sort of embracing whatever that, you know, your own sense of self as risk averse and conventional. Sometimes, you know, I needed to challenge myself in order to discover that there was a world out there that was sort of more creative, more lucrative, more fun, more adventurous. That's happened a few times in your life where you've kind of taken a leap into the unknown which is actually quite surprising having you know described yourself as a creature of comfort even habit have habits yeah um what

i don't mean to habit like i'm trying to like tell you what i did say habit maybe of comfort as well although but habit is really what i meant yeah creature of habit because i because i was reading about when you made the transition from being a writer to a tv presenter and i i remember writing some quotes about how um how there was one about feeling like an imposter a little bit to some degree and getting on that plane to go and interview these christians when once michael moore had sort of um put you front and center in the documentary and thinking, what the fuck am I doing here? Yeah, that was, I remember it vividly. It's extraordinary as you go through life, so much disappears, but there are times when you realize you're at this momentous moment.

I suppose often it's high stress moments, which is really revealing, isn't it? Because actually risk avoidance, you know, that almost like, God, my mind's whizzing now, but that Benthamite idea, like the greatest happiness, you know, in philosophy, there then if you unpack that, like, well, what is happiness? Actually, how do you measure it and how do you measure, is it happiness in the moment? Is it happiness as it's recollected over time? Is it a happiness that, you know, you can,

that will spread to other people or, you know, it will exist for 100 years? And so actually there's a sense of fear and discomfort that will subsequently lead to sense of of of triumph or self-satisfaction you know is it happiness is it i don't know like that feels such a such a blunt instrument for attempting to measure reality and um and general, fear, which you would equate with unhappiness, can very often be what ends up creating the conditions for real achievement. And I remember sitting on this plane, having been given a job by Michael Moore as a presenter on TV Nation. It was a network TV show on NBC.

There were then three networks in america i was 23 i i was as i say awkward in every apparent way disqualified for being a correspondent on a network tv show i was in i was having i was in the union like you know as probably still the case, but definitely then these TV shows were unionized to an extent in America further than they would be in the UK. So I was in the Writers Guild of America as a result of being hired, and so they were required to fly me business class. Like, I don't think I'd ever been in business class. And somehow that contributed to my imposter syndrome, my sense that

I shouldn't really be here. I remember sitting there thinking like, this is all kinds of wrong. Like, I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know why they think I'm qualified to do this. And nevertheless, this is what's happening. And it was a segment that was about, you know, TV Nation was a kind of satiricalical fact-based comedy show where you went out and slightly made fun of people with to prove a political point or to sort of make some sort of social point so i was interviewing religious cults about when the end of the world was going to happen so it was sort of like slightly cheeky um irreverent take on religious fanaticism or religious weirdness. So you guys are like, I wanted to know, so when will the world end? Is it on a Tuesday? How can I get prepared? And I

was sort of in a wide eyed way. Oh no, like, will there be, you know, and are the spaceships going to land? And what will the aliens look like? But I was just incredibly conscious of thinking like, why have I been given this huge, it felt like a big slab of pressure and sort of licensed to fail very publicly and very embarrassingly. And I also knew I wasn't, you know, but I'm also wasn't so disconnected from reality

that I didn't think like, well, it's a huge opportunity. And my girlfriend at the time was very supportive and was like, you know, you can do this, Louis. Like, you're really good with people. And, you know, don't worry. Like, you've got this. You can handle it. Were you trying to talk yourself out of it?

I was. It wasn't like I ever thought, I won't do it. Like, there's no question of like, I'm going to do it. Like I have to do it, but I sort of didn't want to do it. Does that make sense? Has that been typical of your life where you know you've got to do it, but it feels kind of painful and anxious as you approach the challenge, even like with starting your own company?

Yeah, I think so. Like there's times when you know i suppose that's where the work ethic part fits in or whatever like that part of if if you commit to doing something like i'm very i hate to let people down like if i commit to doing something um or turning up on time or i still struggle with that part like especially as you're in the when you're in the public eye or you're in demand and people write and ask for things i still you know will you come to our school and give a talk or i do i i'm a very agreeable in that sort of technical sense i'm very inclined to agree to do things and that can get you in trouble because you find you're over I find I over agree and make unrealistic commitments like oh that'll be fine and then

I'll do that and then I'll do that and then you look at it and you're like there's just no way on earth I can do all of these things so I try and ring fence my commitment levels but that's not easy so but in a positive way um that sense of feeling like I need to show up, having agreed to do it, having been offered an opportunity, even though it might sound enormously stressful. I think there's maybe a world in which I never got into TV. I don't know quite what I did end up doing. The thing that it makes me reflect

on is the extent to which we're conditioned and groomed into behaviors that can be healthy or unhealthy or positive or not positive. And I think that's the part of the libertarian ethos that I have a huge, well, among others that I have a huge issue with, is like, oh, just let people be themselves. People need help to fulfill their potential, right? That idea that, oh, you know, you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Like, I, with all the advantages I had of like, a first rate private education, supportive parents, even I like didn't see myself as someone who would have various kinds of success. I didn't feel that that was in me for whatever reason. But along the way, people, Michael Moore,

people at the BBC who then commissioned me to do my own series off the back of TV Nation when I got commissioned to do Weird Weekends, my wife, Nancy, other people along the way have sort of seen things in me that I didn't see in myself. Even this interview series going out at the moment, I never, it sounds awful, I never aspired to have like a TV interview series. Like it was something that would be mentioned from time to time. And I would say like, that's not really me. You know, I i like going out like my my comfort like my happy

place really is in terms of tv like oh go and be in a prison for two weeks and film the inmates or go to a mental hospital or go to a um a brothel like i made a film about a brothel and just hang out there for two or three weeks and just be a full that that to me is it sounds awful but that's that's like pure bliss like work-wise but the idea of oh we'll have a formal sit down interview and you'll talk to someone famous who probably only has a couple of hours for you and then we'll piece it all together and do shoot I never thought like that's really something I want to do but Patrick Holland who was then in charge of BBC Two, had listened to my podcast and said, like, I really think this would work.

Not this exactly, but there's a TV show that takes aspects of this that could exist that would, you know, involve you talking to people. And I remember you would think, like, oh, that would, that must have been exciting. Like someone saying, like, I want to do it it this tv format involves partly chat show partly documentary i just thought i didn't think like that's something i'll never do i did think like i just felt very blank about it and that's horrible like people are going to listen to this and throw up in their cars but i just thought that sounds sort of stressful i'm not sure if i really want to do that. But I made myself, the point is I made myself do it because I had a team around me who I knew expected me to do it. And at some level, I had enough sense to recognise that it

was an opportunity. These people that have seen things in you that you maybe couldn't at the time have seen in yourself or seen roles for you that you maybe at the time couldn't have seen for yourself, Michael Moore, Nancy, and then people at the BBC that you in yourself or seen roles for you that you maybe at the time couldn't have seen for yourself michael moore nancy and then people at the bbc that you mentioned are you aware of what they're seeing in you now in hindsight what they saw yeah i think so and i think in with with a bit of time i've been able to appreciate um that i know it sounds sort of glib and maybe even false modest, but to appreciate that I have something to offer. What is that?

Well. It makes people feel uncomfortable when you're asking these questions. No, no, I'm fine with it. Like, cause I feel as though I can analyze it with the benefit of 25 years of doing it. I think it's something to do with like a little bit of intelligence a little bit of humor a little bit of un sort of unsought awkwardness like i think that's part of it like just being a little bit awkward a little bit of um sort of authenticity

or whatever that is, like just sort of feeling like, I think maybe that same thing of not really fully chasing it or fully sort of needing it, oddly enough is almost the, you know, it's like to go through the door, you have to not want to go through the door too much. I don't know if that's even,

that's definitely not a saying and it doesn't actually make any sense, but whatever sense you can make of that contradictory statement if you want it too much i think that there's there's then you need to step back and think about quite it's almost like then you're not ready um grasshopper is that the grasshopper is that what they're saying karate kid yeah i think if i can talk if i can call you a grasshopper steve no um you know it's like it's that feeling of uh you know at the end of the day um that's more important things in life and um i don't want to overdo i actually got lost in my metaphor a bit but i think in the end it's like those different qualities of of of it's that complement of qualities and then just luck but i think in the end it's like those different qualities of of of it's that

complement of qualities and then just luck but i don't think luck really is a quality but alongside i'm now at the position where having done my job for long enough it's put me in a slight i think there's loads of people who could be uh whoever i am like occupy that cultural place that I'm in. But, you know, and partly I've earned my place here and partly I've been really lucky. But I think, you know, when you said something earlier, it also made me think of another quality, which is to do with, which is a negative thing, which is that, you know, that idea like when you were told,

you know, when I was told that, oh, you know, Patrick, you know, is quite keen to do some sort of talk format or some interview thing where you're on TV. And I just think like, well, I'm not really sure. I think one of my, because it goes back to what you were asking earlier about what is the downside of these various qualities. Like I do think there's a term anhedonic. Have you ever heard that term it just means i think it's a clinical term but it sort of it sort of means averse to pleasure or lacking in pleasure like there's a part of me again um i think my wife has helped me with is that i i kind of sense that

i'm not always connected to pleasure does that sound weird like i i you know sometimes i i sort of drift through life and and i have to sort of stop and remind myself i think because i sort of i i tend to see downsides and i'm working on that and i really do like i i sort of need to it's really odd like i've won three BAFTAs not bragging uh it just came up and i and i mentioned it's a fact and um and when you win a BAFTA you've got a lot of awards up there i'm not seeing a BAFTA maybe those are just i presented to someone else some of them ones a camera i'm not sure that camera is an award or you can do a cutaway of that later you know it's odd like i my main thing on winning each time i won a bafta my first thought has been oh shit now i have to give an acceptance speech

right and have to get up there and um you know in hindsight like the pleasure you get a little pleasure over the subsequent years when you can bring it up again and again as i like to do but actually it's really odd like i most of the time when i get good news sometimes i don't even i can't notice the good news does that sound really weird no that makes sense i don't have that make thank you for saying i think you're being polite yeah i'm not someone who i'm not someone who um is who automatically feels connected to the good things that happen to them. How does one remain happy if they have that kind of default, oh my God, where am I going to put this third BAFTA that I've won?

Well, it sounds awful, but you just sort of follow your routine, you know? And actually, I am a happy person. And I, you know, I take pleasure in the simple things in life. You know, I like doing stuff with, you know, stuff with the family or, you know, really, I really am. It's going to sound terrible. I've made a simple place. I like watching Match of the Day at the weekend. Like, you say, yeah, okay, lots of people like doing that.

What's that? But that for me is one of the small things in the week where I'm like, I know I'm going to be happy for the next 45 minutes or hour. You know what I mean? Or on a Saturday night, I listen to Loose Ends on Radio 4. And often I'll be cooking and and that's a small thing and I get a little a little tiny little boost out of I'm now I'm going to enjoy I'm usually I enjoy listening to it this little thing I I mean I I'm not if someone says like you're going to go on holiday to the Bahamas know, I'm trying to imagine what a really big happy thing

would be. I would normally experience that as stress and anxiety. I think that's quite normal, though holidays are stressful, aren't they? Maybe you've got your priorities in order, in fact, because you don't seem to be compelled or derive your happiness from like the big wanky stuff, from like the Lamborghini, the Bugatti like the lamborghini the bugatti the bafta yeah what color's your bugatti the gq man of the year stuff you seem to derive it from the the simple intrinsically fulfilling things like you know cooking listening to a thing that's intellectually stimulating so maybe we're all maybe everyone else is a weirdo and you're actually incredibly normal don't know i think there's more of us out there than you might think, but maybe not. We're all trapped in our own brains. There's no way of measuring. I do think that, you know, I mentioned that when I saw that I got a nice review in the Times, that gave me like, as I said, I do care about the work. I mean, work is a big source of pleasure, like in the sense of either being on location

and being aware of it going well and getting into an almost like a mindset in an interview of feeling like, yeah, this is all good. Like I feel connected. I feel, because it's a high stress, in a way, I'm sure you have a little bit, if you have an interview with someone,

you feel like you've been trying to book it for a while. The moment comes, you're like, the next two hours are really important you want it to go smoothly you want it to feel like a revealing encounter you you want to be probing and insightful and attentive and immersed and not distracted but also thinking ahead and and all of that's going on and then it starts and then you feel like oh it's going okay and then afterwards you're like that was a good one and then in the edit you're putting it together and you're piecing things in like that all of those the simple pleasures of of craft you know like it's really and it is simple like it's no great mystery but that that's that's a big part of um of how i connect with uh well my own happiness how do you connect with people so

actually i wanted to ask you this for my own sort of learning you've done this for multiple decades you've sat with people from every corner of the world you have all of these different experiences and some of them are a little bit you know in the nicest sense a little bit out there i'm glad i landed with a pc word yeah a little bit out there wonder what the non-PC word but you have it was funny when I asked you about the qualities you have I think you absolutely nailed it

and all of those make you incredibly disarming that almost like lack of intense seriousness makes you a really disarming individual how do you connect with people? how intentional is your approach to connecting with them? in your new interview series but also just generally some of it is stuff that you know i didn't i just sort of came by by accident probably most of it which is a thing you know natural curiosity which i think

you have a feeling of um of just just wanting to know what why people do the things that they do right and and and sort of getting out of your own way a bit you know in the sense because the question i get asked most often is like well how do you not get angry with some of these people especially the ones who are sort of spewing hate or coming out with stuff that's really objectionable and I find it a slightly confusing question because I think that's so it's so far from what's in my head most of the time I'm genuinely thinking like why if it is someone like say a neo-nazi or someone involved in religious intolerance I'm just so curious about what takes someone to that place what what's in their mind but to actually berate them to give them a hard time or even be particularly journalistically confrontational

that's not that's not my default mode that's so interesting because i just think in life generally those who like seek to even in our personal relationships and romantic relationships those that seek to understand tend to build bridges but if you seek to like as you say berate yeah I get told off on this podcast a lot on like Twitter and in the press like because I don't berate people like when I had Matt Hancock here I asked him the questions I really wanted to know but I didn't I didn't come to berate him no he would have gone yeah the wall would have gone up had I done that. There's other ways of, and some people use a confrontational approach and that's fine.

And then I think in general, you know, there's many ways of doing interviews. And I think probably, you know, I haven't interviewed many politicians and it's probably related to that. The feeling that they have their, they tend to have their guard up. They tend to be, follow a strategy of attempting to be as risk averse,

headline averse as possible. And it's like, those aren't the people. I'm interested in people who are genuinely attempt, who feel that they've got something figured out or are involved in a world or a lifestyle or just some situation that is either self-sabotaging or filled with angst. So in the end, I see it as I'm not trying to get one over on people. I'm not trying to, honestly, most interviews I see as a potential win-win. You know what I mean?

Like, I sort of think like, well, there's no reason why you shouldn't tell me the truth. And you're involved in something that you're relatively open about. And I'll just assume that that's probably the case. Now, obviously, you're briefed. You've done as much research as you can but um i think if you feel as though you're coming from a position of um sort of shared inquiry then that's contagious um i think also i sort of tend to think i think there's some part of me thinks maybe the other person's got it figured out and i haven't right a level of humility so that when they say stuff I'm genuinely thinking like well I guess maybe

or may or they say something bonkers I'm like well that isn't right but I enjoy bumping up against that and I don't go in there thinking I'm gonna I'm gonna get this person like I'm gonna get one over on them I sort of feel as though, you know, you come in and you just sort of try and just see what's going on. You know, if people see like your attempt to wrestle intimacies from them, that's never going to go well. You just create the space and the sense of understanding and allow them to sort of walk through that. Everything you've just described there, that creating the space to like understand them,

the humility, which is ultimately creates that safety, which allows them to open up, are the exact things that I know my partner wants from me in all of our interactions. So because you've got that skill in your work, I'm here assuming that you also have that at home. Is that correct? you've got that skill in your work i'm here assuming that you also have that at home is that correct um i think i could work better on it like i'm very aware that the skill set i often think about the skills that i have in my work of being supposedly a good listener and an empathetic and present person i i slightly fail at you know kind of think a very probably normal way in my relationship. Like I have a very happy marriage and probably you should check that with Nancy. We did.

Because I'm aware I'm slightly reviewing my own restaurant, if I can use that metaphor. And but, yeah, on Goodreads, I gave my book a five out of five and and you know i'm giving my marriage five out of five uh so i think i think i could do i think i could i could improve in your autobiography on page 157 are you serious yes gotta get through this my life in strange times in television do you know what i'm gonna say get it on audiobook for an extra chapter about jimmy saville that's true speaking of page 157 and jimmy jimmy saville on that page your former wife seeing as we're talking about relationships from reviewing them etc she said there's nothing real about you yeah and to the point of jimmy saville

he also said something which was to the same vein about insincerity being your speciality yeah that's good i'm glad you brought that up it's quite uh telling to a ringing piece of uh self-exposure where, yeah, my wife and Jimmy Savile both make the same critique of my interpersonal qualities, finding me lacking in basically authenticity, lacking in sincerity. There's nothing real about it. Well, the first thing is when a relationship is ending,

you seize whatever you can to hurt the other person i think it's i think when someone you really love and you think really loves you i mean i it was my girlfriend at the time although we were married and that's a whole other complicated but but yeah when that relationship was ending i think there's a feeling of betrayal isn't there it's like i thought we were we were together forever and i trusted that that would be the case and and here we are clearly you don't feel the same way and and so i'm in the position of in her eyes being a kind of traitor an inentic, somebody who didn't deliver on what was promised. Although it wasn't promised, but what seemed to be implicit. I think, yeah, I remember where we were,

like when the Jimmy Savile, the first documentary I made about Jimmy Savile, when he was alive, when Louis met Jimmy, not available on the iPlayer, but it's on the internet, you can find it. And I remember when we promoted it before, I think it was when we promoted it, and he agreed to do an interview to promote it. And part of that was a profile interview in The Guardian. And he was interviewed at King's Cross in one of the hotel there,

in one of the hotel rooms. And the guy from The Guardian came down. I don't even know why. I don't even know why it came up. But I made a joke and he said, Ah, insincerity, your speciality. Gosh, you're asking me to get inside the mind of jimmy saville to think about what he meant when he criticized me i think he thought that um i think that journalistic role where um well i think part i think you know what it is is like

the best construct there's two constructions I can put on that. One is just that in journalism, you're sort of required to inhabit this place of intimacy, like actually like, hey, let's do this and let's do that. And then afterwards, you sort of disconnect. And sometimes that can feel jarring. I don't think actually that's what he meant though. Like I think maybe in some cases there's a part of journalism that can feel slightly sort of transactional where you're like, let's bro down on location and have fun. And yet if you looked at it dispassionately, it's slightly cynical and calculating. It's like, well, you're doing this for a TV programme. And so there's a part that I slightly feel a little bit uncomfortable. I think really what he was talking about there was a sense of humor. He was calling out my sense of humor, which is an aspect of it, which sometimes involves almost self-parody, like an element of where you say something

almost as a way of sort of parodying or satirizing your own. This isn't going to make any sense, but you satirize your own worst impulses. The best example I can give is when I said to, when I was with Neil and Christine Hamilton, right, I did a program and they were accused of sexual assault while I filmed with them. And then I, and then it became a media circus and I carried on filming. And then they did a deal with the Mail on Sunday to sell their story. And I was interviewing them during all of this. And I said to Christine, how much did the Mail on Sunday pay for you for the interview? I was just curious, because I knew probably they got 10 or 15 or

20,000 pounds. And I was just curious. And Christine said, I'm not going to tell you. And I said to Christine, Christine, this is me. I'm not a journalist journalist I'm a friend like you can tell me and a lot of people gave me shit for it right like that what I said but in my mind like that was a funny thing to say because quite obviously I am a journalist and whether I'm a friend or not is actually not established I'm not clearly not a friend but I'm not also clearly a friend right so that was kind of a funny remark because i was being nakedly insincere which is fun like sometimes to me what's funny is saying like not like so saying the wrong thing saying the thing that's sort of brazen as a way of of just sort of identifying the hypocrisy and having fun with it.

So I tend to think that I think that's what Jimmy Savile meant, was that sometimes I would say things that were kind of definitively either untrue or quite clearly being said because they were not clearly true. Anyway, that's the way you ask that question. And when you ask a question about Jimmy Savile, I'm going to give you a long answer because it's easy to be misconstrued. But I think that's what he meant. I think I'm in general, like fairly, a fairly straight up person. But I also think that the tendency to believe your own bullshit, to drink your own Kool-Aid is almost universal, almost a precondition of life,

right? You know, Nietzsche, the German philosopher, who I try not to quote too much because it makes me sound pretentious, but he has a couple of really good quotes on this where one is, for the true deceiver, you know, for the most effective deceiver, first he must believe his own deceptions. I'm mangling that quotation. But the idea that in order to con someone, you sort of have to believe. The most effective con artist is the one who believes their own con, you know. Or a seducer. They say that about Casanova, you know,

one of the most notorious womanizers in human history. And they say that he actually, for each time he seduced someone, he fell in love with them. You know, maybe it's true for sales in general. Like you really got to, if you believe in that. And so I'm fully aware that for me to say like I'm an authentic human being and that my journalism relies on a kind of true connection i'm i you know there's a little part of me thinks like i think i believe that um i'm pretty sure i i know i do believe that but i'm not my own best reference on whether or not that's really the case i neglected my personal life to focus on achieving some sort of professional

success the price of my lack of emotional mouse was paid by those nearest and dearest to me I neglected my personal life to focus on achieving some sort of professional success. The price of my lack of emotional mouse was paid by those nearest and dearest to me. When did you get that feedback? Because I remember the times in my life where I've got that feedback from friends, family, romantic partners. And at first, sometimes we sometimes argue against it. We go, oh, fuck off. And then we walk away and we go, this is true.

I think I've had that feedback in my relationships more or less um consistently uh and and until maybe four or five six years ago like i think again i feel like i'm reviewing my own book. And now, folks, I am happy and healthy and well-adjusted. And I've arrived at a spiritual place of tranquility. But I am conscious that all through my 20s and 30s, I saw my relationships as a, I think the other phrase I use is like, I saw my relationships as a life support system for my kind of work self.

Do you know what I mean? Amen, I can relate. Instead of the other way around, you know? And so I would say like, well, I would take off. When I went to work for Michael Moore, it was even back in the 90s it was a source of friction in the relationship that like without much warning because i became the fill-in guy who when other people couldn't do segments or because they were they found weren't available weren't stressed about it i'd be like let's get louis to do it i did a lot of great segments just by being available at a

moment's notice to fly somewhere and never thought really, which I don't know that it was the wrong thing to do at that time. We didn't have kids. And so I'd be like, okay, I'm off for three or four days. But as it went on, and then as I had kids, and I was still doing the same thing, sort of saying to my wife, well, this is what I do. There's a chapter in my book called This Is What I Do. You know, you knew when we married that we would be, that I was a sort of globetrotting TV documentary maker. And she said, yeah, what did I do when we met? I was a TV director as well, and I've changed what I do, and you need to change what you do.

Like, I don't mean to sound like she was being horrible about it, but her attitude was like, people make, you need to make an adjustment to accommodate the fact that we now have two small children. How did you receive that? At first. I think I received that as well not not well like it didn't make me angry but i was somewhat inflexible because my attitude

was look i was because i went you know my parents had my dad traveled a lot for work. My mom was a full-time TV producer and we had people at home, au pairs, who made sure that when we got home, someone was there and would make us a meal. And so I was like, well, we just need to get help. She said, I don't want us to get help. I said, you can do whatever you want to do. You can carry on working five days a week, six days. You can travel as well if you want. We just need to get help. And she's like, I want one of us to be here. And I want, for some of that, I want it to be you.

I don't know. Does that sound? You sound like me. Really? Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, well, I said, I guess I don't see it that way. So it became a bit of an impasse for a while

and then well then we had another child and and she said well now we've got a baby and two small children and you've agreed to make sure you only work in the uk and i was like

did i agree to that she said yes and i couldn't remember it but i was like well she's probably right and um did you make rules i read that you made some rules we had a rule that i wouldn't go away for more than two weeks and um and actually for most of the time it was between sort of a week and 10 or 12 days are you flexible now i don't want to make my wife sound like i know there's some people i hear that go like well you know louis was obviously bringing back the bigger wage and and so he should have been i i honestly think my wife was right about most of that i feel the same way about my partner and it's almost identical that it took me to find the right person to compromise my inflexibility, where they made the case to me that quality time and this relationship was actually an equal priority, let's say, to the work. And with the right person, I was finally willing to bend. And I was finally willing to, you know, so but I think it takes the right person yeah for me it does anyway yeah the right person the right relationship the right life stage yeah i also say that these interviews i'm doing part of

that is an agreement that we made well even an agreement a kind of agreement i made with myself in lockdown and being around my kids are now 16 14 and 8 you know it turns out older children in many respects need more management need more need more parental presence in their lives than younger children. And so I said, well, maybe a way for me to travel less and not be taking off for, you know, two or three months a year, because you aggregate those two week trips or 10, and they add up to maybe a quarter or a third of the year. And now I can i can my schedule is much more i said if i do these interviews and we make tv shows in the uk and that there's a more controllable schedule and i can be around more nancy helped me set up the company she's working more i'm home more and so it's actually

like it turns out conforming to those expectations of family involvement is really positive. Like it can actually be a creative boon, you know, it's not the enemy necessarily. It can be, it can make you a more rounded person that ends up being beneficial. That's exactly what I used to think it was. I used to think it was the enemy of my professional success, but I've come to learn that it's a friend it's the yeah it serves it um you mentioned anxiety throughout this conversation now sometimes when people talk about anxiety they talk about it as in um like like an emotion they kind of it's a flippant word to describe a situation where you're thinking a little bit much but then there's what people would describe as

sort of real anxiety that kind of crippling like oh you know that we've all felt that it's like insane and shakable sort of deep nervousness about a situation and worry. Which one are you referring to? I think the first one, I don't think I've ever had a panic attack, for example. I don't think I've ever had a feeling of kind of being incapacitated i mean i've had moments where i've had stage fright or moment you know that that thing where due to you just get even recently like there's been moments where you just get this sort of tremulous feeling of nerves and your voice starts to shake have you ever had that where you've been in a situation where, or sometimes it's just,

sometimes it's to do with your inner, you get into an argument with someone and you get really upset and your voice goes a bit like this, like it doesn't, you know, and it was just kind of horrible. Or sometimes it's just where you feel like you're, like I've been once or twice in situations where I just think, oh, this isn't going well.

And then your confidence goes. I mean, I don't know if that's quite, that's sort of nerves, which is slightly different from anxiety. Anxiety, like where, but the anxiety I mainly mean is just a kind of sense of foreboding, a pervasive feeling of worry about something that's going to happen. Because one of the things we talk a lot about on this podcast is about mental health and about how that affects people that are in high profile, high stress

positions. What's your, you know, mental health is a topic that kind of emerged in cultural relevance about maybe a decade ago now. But when I was a kid, I didn't understand it. I didn't know what that was. And I, to be honest, I think the stigma was very much my belief. It was kind of like people are, some people are crazy. What's your journey been like with your own mental health? I feel really lucky to have, broadly speaking, good mental health. I also think what you're saying is exactly right. And I think that there's a kind of, there's a continuity, a blurring that exists so that, I think mental health as opposed to mental illness is a good way of thinking about it. Because actually, we should all be striving towards being our best selves. We should all be managing our anxiety. I think a lot of men especially fail even to recognize

when their mental health may not be as good as it could be. And at the extreme end, you've got incapacitating mental illness that requires a set of interventions, possibly medication, even sort of residential rehab settings. But for the rest of us, it's keeping an eye on on how you're doing and and no you know sometimes i notice my emotions from the outside like i i noticed that my voice is raised i'm like wow i'm angry you know like or or and even when i'm sad i or grumpy or whatever it is i'm not the first really to see it.

Or my wife will say, like, are you in a bad place? I think we've been guilty of failing to see mental health as a holistic condition. Like, in other words, that your support network needs to be in place. You need social interaction. These are really basic, but you need social interaction. You need exposure to things outside of work you also need endorsement and approval in work and all of these things need to be sort of pulling in the same direction there

may be people in your life who are undermining you and you may need support from people to nudge you in the right direction but you know not to sound really bland about it i feel as though i've um you know through sort of my wife's perceptiveness and her ability to sort of see how how you sort of involved me in life a bit more that that's um that's kept me in a good place we have a closing tradition on this podcast which um which is the previous guest writes a question for the next guest okay and the previous guest you don't get to know who the previous guest was but the previous guest has written a question um for you not knowing it was for you and they said what is your opinion on hallucinogens hallucinogens um i my opinion is i think um you know if you're if you feel like you're if you're of age like 18 plus i don't know how your

younger listeners are you know maybe even maybe slightly older um and you feel like you've got solid mental health, I think it's not a bad avenue to go down. It's not something I've massively dabbled in. I've noticed, I don't know about you, in my social settings, it seems to be mushroom oil is something that's increasingly being used uh and i think actually in you know you know and i think we're all aware of the slight there's a dissonance between our levels of acceptance of alcohol and then the sort of relative unacceptance of things like whether it's marijuana or mushrooms and

mushroom oil like i'd like to see that leveled out like i'd like to see as it is in california and elsewhere i'd like to see cannabis legalized and um i think mushroom oil without giving too much away could be really positive from what i understand louis thank you so much for your time today. Pleasure. I've learned so much from you for so many reasons. Pleasure. And your new documentary on the BBC Two

and on iPlayer, Louis Through Interviews, is incredible. The people you're interviewing. Six of them out there. They're out right now. They're incredible. And you're interviewing some incredible people that are being very vulnerable and open with you.

But thank you for the inspiration as well. You're someone that I've watched for decades. Thanks, Steve. And that's given me a life full of enjoyments. And thank you for coming and doing this. Pleasure. Bye.