THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.86 - MONA CHALABI

Episode Date: December 3, 2018

Adam talks to data journalist Mona Chalabi about therapy, sex, Seinfeld, biological determinism, orgasms, vaginas and statistics. Thanks to Seamus Murphy-Mitchel for production support and to Matt Lamont for additional editing.Music and jingles by Adam BuxtonCONTRIBUTE TO THE ADAM & JOE CHRISTMAS PODCAST AT adam-buxton.co.ukListen to jingles and bonus episodes, watch videos and pick up some podcast merchandise on the free ADAM BUXTON APP!http://adam-buxton.co.uk/appRELATED LINKS‘FOURTH OF JULY’ BY MONA CHALABIhttps://twitter.com/monachalabi/status/882242602048860160THE VAGINA DISPATCHES EP.1 - THE VULVAhttps://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/video/2016/sep/23/vagina-dispatches-part-one-what-vulvas-look-like3 WAYS TO SPOT A BAD STATISTIChttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwwanld4T1w&pbjreload=10MONA CHALABI - DESIGNING DATA FOR MAXIMUM IMPACThttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5C5dV9XVKoILLEANA DOUGLAS - I BLAME DENNIS HOPPER PODCASThttp://illeanaspodcast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? It's Adam Buxton here.

Nice to be with you again. Hope you're bearing up. I am pleased to be out on a walk down a muddy track next to a field out in East Anglia, United Kingdom. Pleased because, well, it's always nice to commune with nature, but also because today happens to be a slightly claustrophobic day at home. Sundays in the olden times was a day of rest and reflection and prayer. But somehow it's worked out that Sundays, at least around our neck of the woods, tends to be a day of admin and tense admin-based conversations,

punctuated by monosyllabic exchanges with terse teenagers. Plus, there's the sheets to wash and the bins to prepare for collection by the agents of the South Norfolk Council. Out here in the fields, however, I'm free. We're free. I say we, I'm talking about me and my dog friend Rosie. She's up ahead and she is bouncing once again. Oh, I just scraped myself. Wow, that was pretty. Oh man, I just really scraped myself on a massive great bramble bush. What do you think, Rose? Pathetic when it compares to my injury. That is true. If you didn't listen to last week's podcast, you won't know that Rosie suffered a terrible wound on her poor tummy a few weeks back that required stitches. And she had to be kept on a leash while we were out walking.

But I'm glad to say that she has recovered remarkably fast. And the stitches were taken out this week she's off the leash and she is back out roaming I hope she's learned something from her experience she chased after a rabbit and came back with this terrible wound I don't know what happened if she was injured by some barbed wire or if the rabbit had a knife or there's no telling but i hope that she was somewhat chastened and will be a bit more reluctant to go off yipping anyway let me tell you about podcast number 86 which features a rambly conversation with data journalist mona chalabi what is a data journalist, Buckles? Well, I'm glad you asked.

Mona looks at statistics and data on a wide variety of themes and issues, from the serious and political to the personal and, some would say, more trivial. And she creates illustrations and graphics to bring that data to life in a variety of memorable and intriguing ways. Mona was born and raised in East London, but she now lives in New York, and it is there that she holds the position of data editor at The Guardian US. But she comes back to the UK now and then to appear on great, great podcasts and TV shows like Have I Got News For You and Frankie Boyle's New World Order. She's been on those.

With her good friend and fellow Guardian employee, May Ryan, Mona made a series of four short films designed to promote basic knowledge about female genitalia called The Vagina Dispatches. It was nominated for an Emmy, Rosie. What about that? Did it win? Oh, winning's for losers. Yeah, yeah. You keep telling yourself that. I will.

My conversation with Mona was recorded in London just a few weeks ago, in November 2018. And I found her to be, upon first meeting, extremely open, extremely frank.

There is much intimate and bodily language in this episode, just for your warning. And I'll stop talking like a robot now. It was a lot of fun talking with Mona. In fact, we quite quickly got into having a sort of a therapy session with Mona asking me a lot of questions as well as the other way around.

And we talked about things like having therapy sessions and where hang-ups come from, sex, quite a bit of sex chat, Seinfeld, biological determinism, orgasms, vaginas and statistics. Okay, so don't say I didn't warn you. Back at the end for a little more delicious waffle, thanks, And also a call-out for contributions to this year's Christmas Day podcast with Joe. But right now, here is myself and Mona Chalabi. Here we go. Ramble Chat, let's have a ramble chat. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that. Come on, let's chew the fat And have a ramble chat

Put on your conversation coat And find your talking hat Yes, yes, yes La, la, la, la, la, la La, la, la, la, la, la La, la, la, la, la, la, la La, la, la, la, la, la, la Did you ever live abroad? No, never have.

Yeah. There was once a time when I was on a very long list of people that might be a correspondent for The Daily Show. And the person that ended up getting the job was John Oliver. And that was the beginning of his career out there. There was no way that I was ever going to get the job because I'm not in any way qualified and as politically astute or funny as John Oliver. I don't know if that's true.

Oh, I do. That's nice of you to say, though. I appreciate it. That's so surreal, though. You must look at his career a little bit and be like, oh, that's strange. No. I mean, not for a minute. The first time I saw him on The Daily Show, I was like, oh, shit, that was the job. I didn't even go to the audition because I knew it was because I knew that I was unlikely to get it or be good at it.

Also, the upheaval. I sort of had a conversation. You'd already got kids at that point. Yeah, yeah, I had kids. Yeah. And so I had a conversation with my wife. My wife. People get upset if I don't do the stupid thing now, right?

You've got to keep it in. Keep it in. I do it sometimes. I feel like there's a therapist somewhere that's listening that knows exactly why you do that. And I want to know who that person is. I'm going to come back to that. Oh, really?

Because it's interesting that you said that. But yeah, I had a conversation with her and I was like, should I even go to this? Because in the unlikely event that I actually got this job, would we be prepared to pick up sticks and move to New York? And she said, yeah. I mean, she was cool about it and everything. But I think maybe I was just too nervous. It's a big deal. It is a big deal. I mean, to have even got the interview is a is a huge deal right oh as I say it was a long list

I don't believe that for a second I really really don't if they're going to take the time to interview you you genuinely stood a chance yeah maybe anyway I was more interested in the relocation aspect of it yeah now you said before if there was a psychologist listening to this, they might have something to say about me going, well, I'm sure that's true. But sometimes I do think like, I know some psychologists who do listen to this podcast. I don't know them well, but I know they exist. And sometimes I do think, wow, they could probably build up quite an accurate profile. And in general with podcasts, you get quite an insight into the person hosting, don't you think? Yeah, absolutely, because I think the fact that a camera's not there makes you much more relaxed in a way, you're much more inclined to kind of overshare, and yeah, they do end up knowing quite a bit about you. What do you think they'd think if they were listening? Well, I don't know.

I worry. I mean, I tend to go to the worst explanations in any situation. Do you have a real therapist? No, I don't actually. And it's something I've often thought about. You know, I grew up in the 70s with lots of wrongheaded preconceptions about the world. Well, saying tut-tut-tut is really stupid as well, whatever, if you don't want a therapist. But I feel like, I don't know,

you saying that you had a long-headed conception, is there still a bit of shame about the idea of getting a therapist? Not shame, but just a sense of wanting to sort things out for myself. You know? Yeah. A kind of Bear Grylls determination to solve problems. Yeah. Because partly it's fun analysing what's going on in your head, right,

and your motivations. And there are lots of things that you can sort out because, you know, like cognitive behavioural therapy, that's really just like doing a podcast. Yeah. What do you think? I don't know. I'm being glib. But unpacking the ways and the reasons that we do things and the bad routines that we get into and trying to figure out why we're doing them.

You know, that's a big part of changing your behavior, isn't it? And I do try and do that. I'm not saying I'm like brilliant and couldn't benefit from some therapy. But if you enjoy that process of unpacking, then you'd probably love going to a therapist. But if you find a really, really good therapist, then you're kind of unpacking it with them. And yeah, like exploring. I don't know. I tried CBT and I didn't like it because you get loads of homework. So it's like, for example, right, let's say you identify a negative thought pattern. So in certain situations, you always think, I can't do this.

Then you keep a thought diary. And each time you have the negative thought, you notice where you are and you weigh out the evidence for and against that negative thought. So like, is it really true that I can't do this thing? It was just a lot of work. I can't really be bothered. And this really weird thing, the woman every single week had a new plaster on her foot, just like a really perfect plaster on the top of her foot. And I saw her for months and I just remember thinking like, what's under that that plaster i'd be like crying and talking about some personal problem but i wasn't really in my tears because in the back of my head i was just thinking about

her foot right and you never asked no you can't ask about her foot come on why not no that's really weird that's not too personal there's a way of doing it without, like, you don't say, what's wrong with your freak foot? That would be the wrong way to do it. But I know exactly what they're going to say. If you ask about their foot, they're going to say, why does my foot interest you so much? And I'd just be like, it's just really interesting.

Maybe that's what puts me off that kind of thing. Do you remember anything that you put in your CBT diary? Yeah, I just remember just remember like it was helpful in terms of understanding well we're really getting into it here this is this is a bit of an overshare but anyway let's just go for it like i felt like i had all of these different thoughts that were quite unhelpful but actually they're not really different they all stem from the same thing which is this quite dark thought which is like just that I think deep down I'm probably not a nice person and yeah and that manifests itself in all kinds

of different ways like I think if I'm in a relationship with a really nice person I think oh good like that's not a good idea and it was just interesting to realize that everything stems from that one thing but then it's such a huge thing to confront that i didn't really understand how to unpick it because it's not really based on anything it's just like a feeling do you know what i mean i do know exactly what you mean yeah i have that feeling too a lot yeah but i put it down to well i don't know i put part of it down to the these seismic societal shifts and a sense that everyone is judging each other, you know, quite harshly. But didn't you ever have it as a kid? No, not really.

I mean, I didn't have a sense that I was basically a bit of a rotter. Yeah, that's exactly how I feel, yeah. Yeah, and no, I had other hang-ups. What were they? Oh, man. I mean, very banal things like being too small and being too chubby or whatever it was. You know, all the things that a lot of people have. Yeah. It's quite sad, isn't it?

Sometimes when you go back and you think of the little moments that triggered certain things that have stayed with you right through your life. moments that triggered certain things that have stayed with you right through your life. And I suppose that's part of the reason why now as a society, we're focusing on microaggressions and things like that, to quite a tedious degree, sometimes I would say. But the reason for it is that really, it doesn't take much sometimes to trigger a lot of unhelpful feelings in a person. For me, it's a time when this girl that I thought was so beautiful, Feelings in a person. For me, it's a time when this girl that I thought was so beautiful was sat in a tent with me and my friend Anthony, who is this very handsome guy,

and we were just talking about sort of attractiveness. We must have been about 11 or very young, you know. We got round to, like, who's attractive? What do we, you know, are we handsome? And I had it in my head that, yeah, I'm pretty handsome handsome isn't it amazing how kids are actually quite confident before it's taken out of them yeah it's yeah anyway sorry because you get it from your parents they just love you so much and they're like oh my god you're so beautiful and you know to them you are just perfect yeah and so you take that on and you think yeah I am pretty great aren't i yeah look at me god i'm handsome i feel sorry for people who don't look like me and then then we are sat in this tent uh on a kind

of camping expedition with the school and she says to my friend anthony yeah you're very good looking yeah and then she says to me you'd be good looking if you lost a bit of weight what a monster she's a monster she wasn't she was really i mean she's a nice she was nice but yeah i guess she could have been a little more sensitive and i was just i was crushed completely you know i was all right i got over it but it always stayed with me and i always that is a very key core memory yeah because i definitely sort of worried like oh dear i i need to lose a bit of weight and all that sort of stuff so sad yeah it's weird isn't it i have a memory that's like weirdly similar as well i remember being in the we were all sitting in the field and natasha i won't say her last name was sitting we were all sitting in a circle and natasha was like let's

go around the circle saying who's pretty and who's attractive. Which I still don't even understand what the hell she was even talking about. Like what the distinction is, I guess, between the two. But I think one is about the opposite sex being interested in you and the other one is about you being inherently beautiful. Yeah, conforming to some sort of advertising ideal of beauty as opposed to just being a sexy person. Maybe. Yes. Who knows? We were young. We were probably like 13. So she goes around down the circle it was an all-girls school as well so lots of emotional scarring from that i'm sure and she went around and she was like all right shanie you're pretty

uh deborah you're attractive all like going around the circle and she got to me and she was like i don't know i don't think either really i'm not really sure And I was like Neither? Throw me a bone here So yeah Natasha See I actually don't think She was very nice But she probably had Plenty of issues of her own

That's the thing is like What did we do to other people? I know I know I definitely was hurtful And unpleasant to people You know Yeah

And you dismiss your own Acts like that Because you think Oh well No one's gonna bother about what i say but i think you don't dismiss them i think part of the reason why i deep down i think i'm not very nice is probably because i remember some of those acts uh-huh i remember like going off into different groups in music group and being like you can't come without music group like that's so mean and you knew it was mean at the time oh yeah yeah yeah no i i know what you mean i've definitely done stuff like that i mean surely

everyone is like that though aren't we all just trying to manage those mean impulses and some people are better at covering it up than others? Maybe. But don't you also remember those, like, truly gentle souls in school? Like, my sister is one of those people. My sister is just never, ever mean to anyone. And I think also just having her beside me growing up, she's so morally pure. I can't expect... She's just such a good person that I feel like the dark one a little bit compared to her.

She's probably secretly stomping on chicks not she's not she's all her time volunteering for migrants now she's just a good person it sounds as if she's really trying to make up for some pretty bad stuff maybe maybe also the other thing is from a practical point view, the most important thing is how you treat people in the real world. Yes. Yeah. I don't think that hell is necessarily, if it exists, full of people who just had bad thoughts. I think it's full of people who did bad things. Maybe Mother Teresa, like in her head, was just like so mean.

I would say. Sure. Yeah. Teresa like in her head was just like so mean I would say sure yeah she would probably be walking down Oxford Street and her mother Teresa head going for fuck's sake will you hurry up I'm trying to get she's German I don't know why she sounds German I just want to get to the fucking tube why can't you fucking wheelie bag why can't you just pick up the fucking bag and just move? Jesus, don't you know how to fucking walk? That's what she'd be thinking. That's a perfect Mother Teresa.

That's exactly what she'd be like. Was she Italian? Who knows? It doesn't matter. She defies nationalities, doesn't she? Some other potentially offensive accent that I could do. Hey, you need to move much faster in the street. Come on, I want you to be speedy with your feet. I could do. I need to travel faster. How can you walk so slowly?

I'm very important. You are a walking disaster. So you're based in New York now. I have been for three, four years. Five years now. Five years. Yeah, long time. How does it feel coming back to London these days?

It's really weird. Like the first day or two that I'm back I feel foreign here which is so weird because obviously it's the place I was like born and raised even though I also lived in France for three years and in Jordan for about a year so I've spent a lot of my adult life kind of being gone at this point where did you grow up in East London yeah yeah and your folks are from where are from like do you mean I mean like originally originally yeah they're both Iraq they weren't born in the uk no they're iraqis yeah yeah so the first couple days i feel a bit weirdly foreign and then it feels

familiar i i don't know i really don't know how i feel about the uk or about my britishness anymore it's really strange it's hard to describe i know that the people that matter most to me are overwhelmingly still here so i have close friends in York but like they're just different friendships than a lot of the friendships I have back home it makes me feel like my life over there is very selfish like I should be here I should be here you feel that you're missing out on all the fun animosity that everyone's dealing with in the UK opposite I feel like I'm missing out on all of the difficulty of real life and I should be confronting it instead of going off and being in New York and having this fun career. You know, like my mum's getting old. I should be here. It's so selfish to be over there. You're following your path and exploring the world and you've got a great

opportunity to go out there and do what you want to do and you're doing it really well. And I don't think you can feel bad about that but it's so individualistic yeah you do think about that sort of stuff a lot yeah yeah I know I I do too it's it's weird how the world's turned out and we're all so focused on ourselves yeah like even relationship advice people are always like well if it's not good you've got to get out which again this is so complicated isn't it because people have to judge what's good and what's not good, you've got to get out. Which, again, this is so complicated, isn't it? Because people have to judge what's good and what's not good for them. Like, I was on a date with this guy and he was saying that it's quite awkward because he's living with two roommates who used to date and they're not dating anymore.

And I said, why did they break up? And he was like, oh, well, to be fair, she'd been sick for like a couple of months and it just got really boring for him. And I was just like, jeez. Wow, he came out and said it. Yeah. I don't know. Most of there was just thinking i know i'm sure there was more to it than that but i was just like oh i don't know if i want to go on another date with you i didn't yeah anyway you just want to go out with

people who think that sort of thing but know not to say exactly the mother teresas of the world anyway i suppose that's what seinfeldeld was about, wasn't it? Was stripping away all those layers that we accumulate to disguise the fact that we are, in a lot of ways, crappy human beings. Yeah. You know. And it was funny to actually, and cathartic, to see people actually admitting to those behaviours and all those things.

Have you ever seen Seinfeld? I haven't really watched very much of it. Americans are obsessed. They reference it like every third conversation. It was a big deal. I mean, it still is. I haven't seen it for years. Yeah.

But I certainly, when it came out, I did think, wow, this feels interesting and different. And they were just talking about things that no one else was talking about. And, you know, they're responsible for a lot of phraseology and things in the culture now that originated on that show. I think the whole concept of re-gifting and things like that. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, wow.

You know, they would identify these things in a stand-up comedian way and then assign little bits of humorous jargon to them that eventually got taken up and just used by the mainstream. And they had an episode about peeing in the shower. It's one of those things that always sticks with me whenever I pee in the shower. What happens in the Seinfeld episode where he pees in the shower. I think I'm right in remembering that George Costanza, whenever they had to depict some piece of absolutely revolting antisocial behaviour, it would be George Costanza, this kind of nebbish character and the thing that would be guilty of it. And the others would pour scorn on him, Elaine and Seinfeld himself. I mean,

I usually would relate to George Costanza in the show. I did most of the same things that he would do. But I do remember thinking, like, what's the big deal? Yeah. You're showering it away. Like, there's lots of other disgusting things on your body. That's why you're taking a shower is to clean yourself. And then you, listen, I never would do it now.

And if I come around to your place, Mona, and take a shower, there's no way I'm going to do it. Right? This is something I would do in the privacy of my own home with a high-powered hose to ensure that everything was absolutely sanitary afterwards. Once I was on the radio and I admitted to sharing a toothbrush with my wife. Oh, wow. And people went fucking nuts i bet i think that's very very intimate but it might be because my mom's such a germaphobe that she made me think

that i would die if i ever did that i don't do it anymore because i was so traumatized by the wave of societal contempt that this provoked but i couldn't and to this day don't really still understand it you know i kiss my wife yeah intimate relations with my wife on an unusually regular basis yeah and what's the difference well you're supposed to get like 80 million germs from a 10 second kiss or something as a statistic i read i don't see why it's any different with a you know you share a toothbrush what are you thinking you don't look convinced i'm thinking that i don't see why it's any different with a, you know, you share a toothbrush. What are you thinking? You don't look convinced.

I'm thinking that, I don't know, but I'm really, really uptight when it comes to germs. So I think I'm just not the right person. But then, yeah, you're right, I still kiss people. I should probably cut that out if I really care about germs, shouldn't I? It's the thing that occurred to me the first time I ever had a French kiss. Really, was that this is an unhygienic thing that I'm doing right now. Yeah. Especially when you're a kid, you're such a mess anyway.

You're doing it in a way that just feels sloppy all round, right? Right. It felt like a revolution the first time it happened. But my first kiss was a French kiss. Was it? Yeah. Flipping heck, Tucker. This was East London. Right.

You went all in. Whoa, how old? I think I was 15, which I remember being very much behind the curve. But I was very much behind the curve on everything. I had sex for the first time when I was like 24. Oh, yeah? Yeah, it's very old. Well, older than average.

It's very old. But that's good, though. I think, honestly... It's a big deal. Yeah, and I also think I hadn't met anyone before that person I wanted to have sex with. It was just like the simple truth of it. And even now I don't meet that many people that I'm not inclined to have sex with. You don't want to be having sex at any age.

No, you don't want to be. I mean, the older the better. Do you think? Definitely. On every conceivable level. Really? Yes. But then I definitely was quite like, you you know when you're 23 and you're

in a room with people and you're a virgin that's like very uncomfortable it is but that's so pathetic surely i mean people must have got the message by now that it doesn't matter and that that's the kind of peer pressure that you really should be able to brush off that's easier said than done of course especially because you almost have to out yourself, right? Like the assumption is that everyone there has had sex. So either you nod along, in which case you feel like you're being deceitful and God, it's weird, I'm like kind of lying.

Or you suddenly break the conversation up to be like, I'm a virgin. I never really understood what was so appalling. Like, I'm a virgin. What's the worst that's going to happen? People are going to point and go, ha-ha, you're a virgin. So what? No, because I think people think it points to,

it's just like anything that's remotely sexually deviant, and by deviant I just mean deviates from the norm, that it's telling of something, right? So do you have an emotional trauma? Is that why you're a virgin? Is it that you have a tiny penis? There's all kinds of possible... No.

Maybe, Adam, we haven't got to that part of the podcast yet where i whip out my tiny penis but yeah i think people wonder what it's really about yes i know what you mean and there are often um old kind of evolutionary reasons for these sort of taboos and anxieties aren't they like everyone's going to point at you and indicate that you are less able to reproduce and you are less viable sexually. But, I don't know, I always thought that that was one of the humiliations I could deal with. Oh, really? So how old were you?

I was about 17, I think. And it was... I could have waited a bit longer oh do you think? really? was the other person a virgin? no, she was quite a bit older I think quite a few men who have told me

that their first experience was with a woman one guy that I was dating said it was when he was 14, it was with the babysitter who was like 20 or something and i was like that's not right he was 14 she was 20 i think so i don't know i can be okay i don't want to be too judgmental and say that's not right but my god is that's not right i can't really take it back it's just i know i well he's underage. Excuse me. That's my babysitter. Oh, well, God, your babysitter. Let's hope she's up to no good. No, let's hope she's not up to no good.

She says she's just finished seducing my two sons and that there was nothing wrong with it. They were delighted. No, I mean, it's obviously, yes, it's illegal. There's that. Is it statutory rape if it's the, yes, it's illegal. There's that. Is it statutory rape if it's the other way around? I don't know. Isn't that messed up that we don't even know? Yeah.

But anyway, sorry, back to you. How old was she then? Oh, she was at least six or seven years older than I was. Whoa. How did you meet? She was a friend of one of the people that I was on holiday with. But wasn't that even more uncomfortable because you knew that she was so experienced? Well, I suppose the guy that I slept with for the first time was more experienced than I was.

And you're just kind of aware of it and you think, let's just get on with it anyway. Yeah, I don't know. I just, I was, I think, attracted to the fact that she was more experienced. But afterwards it was, yeah, afterwards it was bad because I didn't do a great job. And it was over very quickly. And then I was very embarrassed. And I think she took my embarrassment to be standoffishness. You know what I mean? And then she got quite angry.

She was like, you can't treat people like this. And basically I was just so mortified. I didn't know what to say. But she was like, why't treat people like this yeah basically i was just so mortified i didn't know what to say but she was like why are you being more friendly and i was just thinking because i'm so embarrassed and i just want to be somewhere else this is a really really weird question but it's something i think about all the time in that moment would statistics have helped you if you knew before you had sex with her that 99% of men, the first time that they have sexual intercourse, like penetrative sex,

they come within a minute, would you have felt more empowered to be like, I don't know? Or did she not know it was your first time? I think she did know. And that's, actually, that did occur to me. I did think like, you know that this is my first time.

Give me a break a little bit. I think she did anyway i'm not sure no i think it would have cheered me up info in that respect i think in a lot of ways in the modern world we're bombarded by too much information but when it comes to sex when it comes to just things that we are all going to experience. Yeah. Whether it's, you know, interacting with members of the opposite sex or the same sex or whoever you're attracted to in that way. Or, you know, relationships, just admin, dealing with money, things like this that you're generally expected to pick up from your parents or your friends. I think there should be more formal information about it when you're at school, you know. Definitely the relationship stuff. It's really bad that so much of sex ed,

the emphasis is just on the actual biology of it. Exactly. And not just that. It's mostly about avoiding STIs and how a baby is made like you know i just think so much of the emphasis on the woman's body is just what you're learning about a woman's body when you're a kid is just like the reproductive aspects of it like i bet you know how to like label a diagram with fallopian tubes to say where the fallopian tubes are right oh really yeah well i could do the fallopian tubes but like the outer bit is really confusing to loads of people so a there's that part of like not really understanding your bodies but as you say also understanding all of the relationship part of it and how do you communicate with someone that's the stuff you

really need to learn it really is and it's pretty all right so it varies hugely from person to person but there are certain pretty basic principles that are going to serve you well yeah say what you feel yeah no one ever said that to me just say what you're feeling and like if a person responds really badly to it then maybe that's not a person that you should necessarily be with i don't know say what you feel don't be too clingy how about that no one ever told me that but weren't you just clingy with the wrong people? Would you describe yourself as clingy with your wife now? If she's being weird, yeah. I mean, I get clingy.

That's the thing. If you feel insecure at any point, then you get clingy, which is the last thing you should be doing. If a person's making you feel insecure, they probably just need a bit more space. Some of the time, you know. They certainly don't need you to go, do you love me? That means that you're the second type of baby. Have you heard about the baby experiment?

I'm obsessed with the baby experiment because I think it's so revelatory of all kinds of aspects of relationships. And I will fully disclose that I haven't actually read the book where this is properly explained. This is the way that a friend described it to me. And this is the way that I've described it to other people, which I find enormously helpful. So every single thing that I say is going to be inaccurate. I love it. It's my kind of fact.

In the 1970s, these scientists did tests to understand attachment theory. So the way that humans relate to one another. And what they did is they took these babies into a room with like one-way glass with their mothers. Babies are playing quite happily with their mothers and the mothers leave the rooms. And this is like one baby, one mother at a time. So baby and mother playing in the room, mother leaves.

All the babies react in the exact same way, which is they start crying. Their mum's gone, they're really upset. When the mums come back into the room, all of the babies behave in one of three ways. And when they followed up with the babies years and years later once they were adults they found that they still had the exact same attachment style when it came to responding to other people in their lives other important people baby response number one is the mum comes back into the room and they're like phew mum's back and they go back to playing and that's secure attachment style you're just just fine. Once the stimulus of pain is gone, you can resume kind of normal behavior, I guess, or quote unquote normal.

Second baby response is what you just described. So mums come back into the room and they're like, you must never, ever leave me again. And they just cling on to their mothers and can't resume play. Interestingly, I have found that a lot of the men that I date are that. So I wonder if there's also a gendered aspect to some of this baby response number three which is 1000% me and is a huge problem is mum comes back into the room and it's amazing to me that even babies do this because I can only imagine adults behaving in this way mums come back into the room and the babies are like and like won't look at the mothers turn the other way because they're like, you hurt me.

Right. I'm not happy with you. Who the fuck have you been? Yeah, and I'm going to let you know that I'm not happy with you because you let me down. And that's also not a healthy response because people are going to let you down and you have to recover from that and forgive them and move forward. I'm baby number three, you're baby number two, Adam.

Yeah, sort of what we were saying earlier, that sometimes it just comes down to these very basic things that happened uh when you were little or even like part of our emotional chemistry yeah it might be in there already yeah a bit of nature a bit of nurture yeah so so you were talking before about um vaginas and i watched uh one of your vagina no did you really watch it i watched it on the train okay which episode god you watched it thanks it's really good this is a series that you made with a filmmaker in new

york called may ryan yeah she's a very good friend of mine she's wonderful uh we continue to work together and while we were both at the guardian in the us we went out to lunch and i said i really want to make something about vaginas i was saying to her i don't even have the vocabulary for certain parts of my body and that's really problematic and she pointed to this groove like above her lip and she was like but I don't know what this thing is called who cares and then we had a big conversation about how like first of all I think it's called the philtrum right is that what it's called sounds good to me yeah anyway but like it doesn't influence your like day-to-day life in the same way anyway we just ended up going down this huge path of researching this stuff and learned so much stuff about our bodies that we had no idea about whatsoever. And in a way,

it's a real shame that the series was only four parts. I think we could have made a lot more episodes. So what did you watch? Episode one? I watched The Vulva. The Vulva. There you go. That's a classic one. I love vulvas. What did you learn? Did you learn did you learn anything i was surprised by the bit about labiaplasty and how many women feel that they want to change the way that what are we talking about yeah the labia the lips the outer the inner lips so the outer lips and there's the inner lip okay and a lot of women are uncomfortable that their inner lips hang lower than their outer lips all right and part of the

problem is i had no idea about this a lot of porn stars get labiaplasty so there's this notion that like women's bodies are supposed to be super tucked which some women's are i guess but yeah like that's not the normal anatomy of a lot of women and so they feel like their bodies are really freakish so labiaplasty is massively on the rise it's a huge form of plastic surgery and one of the things it's frustrating how like you go on this journey and we learn about this after episode one had already come out and I wish we'd known at the time so you went to go and interview this woman who does what's it called she does pelvic floor therapy so she's treating women who have had a lot of trauma to their vaginas and vulvas it might be childbirth it might be sexual assault it's all kinds of

things she said to me a lot of the patients that she sees have had labiaplasty surgery and their vaginas have more or less completely closed up because of scar tissue. Now, these women that are like getting their bodies changed for aesthetic reasons don't realise that a possible side effect could be as enormous as that. Would they still go for it? Yeah, yeah. It's disastrous. And, you know, the woman, the surgeon who we spoke to was like, I would describe myself

as a feminist. I think women should be able woman, the surgeon who we spoke to was like, I would describe myself as a feminist. I think women should be able to change whatever about themselves that they don't like. And I subscribe to that to a certain extent, right? I think if you want to have your boobs done, if you want to have your vag done, whatever you want to have done, sure. Except I think it's really worth interrogating the reasons why you want to have it done and really weighing up the side effects of these surgeries. And if one of the side effects is losing the ability to have sexual intercourse that's a big deal right or being

unable to give birth like without i mean i was about to say being able to give birth pain-free no one gives birth pain-free but you know like those are really important considerations yeah of course yeah well porn's not great for modeling your behavior and your ideals, I don't think. I mean, this is probably grotesquely simplistic, but porn seems to me, the way that people look in porn or the idea that men want the youngest looking type of partner possible. And that's just a sort of evolutionary impulse to go for a young fit mate who is going to probably get pregnant. And so that's why men tend to go for younger women, perhaps. So you've got all these men who may be like deep down are compelled to go for younger looking women. That's why you get that look and you get everything sort of shaved and everything, maybe the labiaplasty, all those things that are perhaps associated with older women with more dangly parts. I'm trying to I'm tiptoeing around the

terminology here but um so you end up with that situation of this quite unnatural ideal especially for women the thing that's interesting is i do think that porn gets a lot of flack but actually film and tv also backs up a lot of those assumptions too whenever you see like two leading characters on film again i this is so lame but sometimes I'll like google the ages of those respective actors and very often there's a seven eight nine year age gap between the male and female leads so that's also reinforcing this idea that men only go for younger women and what's really fascinating is I love data that isn't data that's about survey data where people give you responses, but it's behavioral data that's been collected. So if you look at websites like OkCupid, they're logging each person's interaction with people of different ages and people of different sexes. So what you find are

two really interesting things. One, and this is just talking about heterosexual people, women, as they get older, look at older men. So if you're 25, you tend to look at 25-year-old men. If you're 30, you tend to look at 30-year-old men. men as men age they just get stuck at the early 20s so men who are in their 30s are still looking at women in their early 20s men who are in their 50s are still looking at women in their early 20s which i find really dark and depressing but isn't that though that biological determinism that evolutionary impulse to go for a younger, fitter mate. I think it depends on how you're going to interpret it. For me, I actually feel like it's not biology. I also think that society is telling men that actually they probably could do that if they wanted to.

Well, that's the thing is that these perhaps historical evolutionary impulses are then backed up by society's values or reinforced in that way, in a way that, you know know we're not cave people anymore yeah we don't need to be a slave to these impulses a lot of the time we can't just explain away our worst impulses by saying well that is my caveman duty to do this is how i think i am caveman i also don't even know if it's a caveman impulse i honestly think it's probably mostly societal like so okay i wrote this piece saying that women shouldn't really date older men, which is something that I still sort of stand by and I'm trying to live by in my own personal life. And one of the things that I wrote in this piece

is lots of people say, well, you know, the period in which a woman can conceive a child is different to the period in which a man can, right? You hear of all of these people like Mick Jagger, who are in their 50s and are getting people pregnant. But actually what's really fascinating is if you unpick that, if you look at the science, most of science has only studied the concept of reproduction by focusing on women's bodies. That's partly because it was male scientists who didn't want their wangs to be under the microscope. They're like, no, no, no, we're all fine. It's all about women's bodies. So almost all of the research that we have about the fertility periods in our lives is based on understanding women. Now, the few studies that have looked at men find exactly

the same thing about the period in which men can conceive healthy children. I mean, quote unquote healthy. And when you hear about all of these older men that are getting people pregnant, it's people who are considerably younger than them that are offsetting their aging sperm. So I try not to worry too much about this idea of getting pregnant and thinking about this biological clock. Because my plan is, if I get to 40, hopefully I'll find a nice young 30-year-old man to offset my old eggs. And it will all be okay.

Yeah. Long spiel, sorry. No, no, no. It's interesting. But the thing, though, isn't it, is to be free from those preconceptions that society imposes. Yeah. Rather than to say you should never go out with an older man.

Because there are times when you can have a completely respectful, caring, loving relationship between two people who are different ages. I agree, except society has shaped all kinds of other consequences right so as a woman who dates men there's already probably going to be a bit of a power imbalance in terms of like if i want to go on maternity leave and they're going to get a little bit further ahead in their careers while i'm at home looking after a kid for a bit and so one of the reasons why i don't want to date an older man is because I feel like once you have kids, your life does massively change, right? I'm talking to a tester. And so why give a man those extra bonus years of freedom when they're already getting all of these other perks in the workplace?

It just doesn't seem right. I would love to have a few extra years that are kid free if I could have it. Why am I going to give that to someone else? Ideally, I just want to date someone who's the same age as me. I don't think that's how you think about it, though, when you get to that stage. There's a lot of negotiation that has to be done, you know, to address exactly what you're talking about. And I think most couples do. And I think the couples that don't get into trouble if they don't, because it is unfair. And so you do have to have those difficult conversations about, all right, well, look, what are you going to be doing while I'm at home looking after them? And how's this going to work?

Because it's not sustainable if you're just going to expect me to be here while you can carry on doing whatever the fuck you want. But those conversations do happen. They have to happen. I know. But like, no matter what, if there's an age gap there that period of your life without kids that was more responsibility free that was like more individualistic that was like the man just got a few extra years of that I don't know I know I'm so black and white about these things and it's actually really problematic and in theory I guess I would actually date an older guy if I really really liked him but it bothers me I mean Mick Jagger if he turns up and he's going oh Mona you I love your I think you've made statistics so accessible I love it

I'm just doing an impression of Phil Cornwell doing an impression of Mick Jagger. That is actually a really good impression. I recently read a paper. I don't know why I was reading it. An academic paper? Yeah, by Diana Fleischman, PhD, an evolutionary psychologist, based in the University of Portsmouth, apparently. But she is, I believe, American. The perspective of this evolutionary

psychologist was that again there are evolutionary historical biological reasons for an orgasm being easier for a man to achieve than for a woman and so like here's one thing that I've heard that apparently when a woman orgasms she's more likely to get pregnant and so I don's one thing that i've heard that apparently when a woman orgasms she's more likely to get pregnant and so i don't know if that's true but apparently and so maybe what she's saying then is when women don't want to get pregnant it's good if they don't orgasm as frequently right because then they're less likely to be getting pregnant all the time yeah i think the orgasm obviously is just a an incentive for people to continue that behavior frequently. So for a man, it's like, oh, monkey man want to like that feeling.

Monkey man want to have that feeling again. With anybody, it doesn't really matter. Anyone who likes monkey man, that's fine. Anyone who likes monkey man, that's fine. And so that's evolution saying, you know, you've got to maximise your chances of reproducing. I just don't buy any evolutionary. Do you not?

I really, really don't. Because I think it can just be such a cop-out. I agree with you that it can if you dismiss everything else. Yeah. But I think you have to pay attention to that as a factor, surely. Don't you think? I think it's that when I hear evolutionary things, I just assume that people are going to come up with a caveman. I'm so...

Joy, I think it is, as a vegetarian, I'm so bored of people saying, but it's what we've always done. And I always associate it with a kind of lazy form of reason-making, and that's not necessarily always the case. So, yeah, you're right. I think I just get a bit defensive about it I know I know what you mean it's too easy for people to fall back on one argument or the other yeah justify their perspective yeah and the truth is we don't really know like what do we know about cave women's orgasms well I know a thing or two I don't even know what that means um it's interesting though isn't it i mean it's fascinating the the sad thing is that these conversations become so quickly politicized

and divisive and used by people to back up their crazy theories about what people should and shouldn't be allowed yeah yeah but you know investigating it and reading about it thinking about it i think it's fascinating yeah have you got any colloquialisms that you're fond of because i noticed that you use pretty much exclusively formal terminology in the um vagina dispatches yeah we did that quite purposefully because we just felt that there's a lot of euphemisms that aren't particularly helpful yeah but it's weird actually for me now i still sort of say well i say vagina even when i'm referring to my vulva which is bad but i don't really have any cute names for it no i remember growing up they were just horrible names it was axe wound rats which one rats why rats i don't know we just used to call it the rat beef curtains yeah fish taco which is at least

descriptive beef cans is not descriptive i think i don't can be yeah go on what else you got if you haven't had the labiaplasty the wizard sleeve yeah that's not nice is it is it not no it's romantic no it fuses sexiness with lord of the rings that's true and that's what every man is really after at the end of the day i'm very excited to hear what your vagina jingle is gonna be sometimes when i'm making love to youying in bed looking into your eyes There's a very special thing you do That always takes me by surprise

You do a fanny fart They call it the wind of love There's no aroma cause it blows from the heart You're my chief of the queef It's been said before about your work that you've fused these fields that don't seem to have much in common or previously weren't considered natural bedfellows, i.e. data analysis and art, really.

I didn't really feel like I had to choose. I haven't been doing it for very long. I've been doing it for about three years. And it came out of a frustration of sitting in an office where I felt like I didn't really like the way that numbers were being communicated. I feel like once they're kind of embedded in a chart, right, people just don't question it.

They're like, oh, this is like perfect information and I just have to kind of consume it. Whereas the reality of data and statistics is much more messy than that like very often there's a lot of uncertainty and imprecision around it so I started to create these hand-drawn graphics and yeah I just find it really really rewarding and I and I still strive to make every single illustration informative in some way so you walk away with like some understanding of something that you didn't have before but I don't really

think i don't really know if it's art or journalism i don't know it's just something that i do yeah no you don't have to choose obviously i'm just i was just curious because i thought you know i went to art school oh did you there was someone doing what you do at art school yeah everyone would be thinking nice you've nailed it you found your thing and it works really well and it is art but it's a really nice twist on what a lot of fine artists might do because it does incorporate this area that is traditionally seen as being more functional and functionality lazily considered the enemy of art you know yeah my tutors used say, they used to be suspicious of work I would make that was funny because humour and comedy doesn't go with art.

Yeah. You know what I mean? The stuff that you do would definitely, no one would have batted an eyelid. They would have gone, yeah, this is art. This is really a nice way of incorporating things that are in the modern world. Data especially works with art

because it's so much down to personal interpretation. Absolutely, yeah. Because statistics online are often the stuff of clickbait. Yeah. Because people like statistics. There's something comforting about them. Yeah. I also think some of it is people wanting to be like the clever one down the pub.

Like people like statistics partly in order to be able to impart them to someone else to win an argument and that's not necessarily a good thing but I think that's also part of the reason why people like them yeah where do you find your stuff where do you go looking for it all kinds of different places so there's like you know the normal national data set so like I go to the the census I'll go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics but actually one of my favorite places to look for data sounds so geeky, but it's true, is academic studies, because academics are constantly publishing this fascinating stuff that more often than not, will just get a kind of dry write up in the news. And I think that's kind of doing a disservice to some of their research, because very often, the real meat is in like the appendix at the back where there's these fascinating figures and charts revealing all kinds of aspects of who we are or who we were

and they're the things that are really really fascinating to me so for example right just before I came here I was trying to look up statistics on disability discrimination in the workplace so I'm curious about I'm curious about that and again it was an academic study some economists sent off fake resumes, fake CVs. One set of the CVs, the people said they had a spinal cord injury, which in no way affected their ability to work. And everything else was identical. Like, you know, it was a controlled test and all of this stuff.

And they were measuring disability discrimination. I think that's fascinating. And I think that's the kind of research that should be in the public sphere that hasn't been communicated very well. Have you got favourite bits of stuff that you've picked up that just blow your mind that you like to tell people i know some of my favorite illustrations like i did one on rectal bleeding that was a pie chart did you see that one i did see that yeah so strong it was a pie chart and it was uh mainly flesh colored and in the a kind of pair of buttocks and then between the legs was the red area to denote the rectal bleeding.

How come you ended up doing that? Oh, I guess it's obvious. A little bit of bum bleeding. And then you start looking for the numbers. It's pretty shocking, isn't it, the first time you get a bit of rectal bleeding? Oh, it's very upsetting it's very upsetting oh i wasn't expecting that that's no good and generally you're not gonna die are you well i still think maybe i might every single time i've gone to go and like talk to someone about they're always like oh it's fine and i'm like is it fine

it's one of those things, though. It's like a cough. You know, in a movie, if a character coughs, see ya. Oh, it's true. But generally, a cough is not the end of the story. Yeah, people don't ever cough in movies, do they? Only if they're going to die soon. Yeah.

God. I don't have any good numbers to reel off off the top of my head. Luckily, I've got some. Oh, okay. I'm Oh, I'm ready. I'm ready. This is not very good stuff. I got these from some not reputable sites. Uh-oh.

I mean, I'm making them sound worse than they are. You know, just as I say, statistics are the stuff of a lot of kind of clickbaity type places. But some of these are quite good. 60% of people can't get through a 10-minute conversation without lying. Uh-huh. I guess that just reminds you that lying in some form is just a regular part of communication. If indeed that's true.

You reckon? Doesn't it all depend on the context, who that conversation is with? Do you think you've lied so far in this conversation? Probably. Really? I mean, not like... Not a bigot? Not deliberately deceitfully.

Yeah, I guess it depends how you define lying. Sometimes you withhold aspects of the truth to make yourself look better. Do you know what I lie about sometimes? I was saying this to my best friend last night. Whenever someone compliments something that I'm wearing, like someone said this jumper was nice the other day, and I was like, it was only £30, and it was £35. It's a really fucking stupid lie.

But I'm worried that if I say £35, the other person's going to think she's moneyed. So I said, £30? That's a bad lie. Anyway, that was the last lie I told. Really nice jumper, though. Thanks. £35. I almost did it again.

I would have paid maybe £37 or £38 for that. 2% of American voters thought Mitt Romney's first name was Mittens. Oh. That's nice. I can understand that. What is Mitt short for? Mitchell. What is Mitt?

I'm very curious now. It must be Mitchell, mustn't it? Unless he was christened Mitt. You know, maybe his dad liked baseball. It's just Mitt. That's all there is to it. That's not really a real name, is it? Mittens would have been better. It would have. Now we know. Okay. Between 43% and 54% of pilots, i.e. airline pilots, have admitted to falling asleep while flying. I've heard that one before, yeah. They're allowed, though.

I mean, that's what autopilot's for, isn't it? Yeah. And don't they always have two of them up there as well? So one of them can have a nap. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fine. We're fine with that. Yeah.

Left-handed people earn 10% less than their right-handed peers. I'm left-handed. I'm right-handed. And I know that I definitely earn less than Piers Morgan. So I think that this is probably true. You're right-handed, are you? I'm right-handed. Privileged.

Again, the whole left-handed, right-handed thing was something I didn't really ever understand. When I was at school, I think we'd only just come out of the era in which children who were left-handed were reconditioned in order to be right-handed. I think it probably still happens in some parts of the world. Oh, definitely. Yeah, I'm sure. You know, the whole idea of left-handedness,

that's where the word sinister comes from. It means left. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they were thought to be creepy people the lefties you have a 1 in 11 million chance of dying in a plane crash you are more likely to become president 1 in 10 million chance win an oscar 1 in 11 and a half wait wait you do not have a one in 10 million chance of becoming president the population of the u.s is 320 million people the adult population is probably like 270

million and there's one president and even over the course of your lifetime if there's been no no no doesn't it narrow down to like who eligible? You've got to be a naturalised American citizen. Huh. And maybe that cuts a whole load of people out. I'm sceptical of all of these numbers, Adam. You should always be sceptical with numbers. You should, yeah. But that's nice, though, isn't it?

About flying. Are you a nervous flyer? No, not really. Are you? Not after reading this. I'm more likely to be killed by a meteorite or live to a hundred you've got a one in three chance of living to a hundred apparently no i don't want to no no no no do you want to no it wouldn't be that great would it really

uh would it i don't know do you think you've got the genes to make it to 100? My granddad made it to 100. Everyone else in my family looks very, like, sickly, though. So probably not. I don't know. Do you have the genes, do you reckon? My dad was 92. That's very solid. That's pretty solid, isn't it? But I'm not sure on my mum's side if it's as good.

So I don't know. I was talking about this with someone the other day i've kind of resigned myself to three score years and ten i'll be happy if i make it yeah you know you can with like the 23andme test you know there's the health component to it now as well me neither me neither i think it's really fucked up. Really fucked up. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to know what sex the baby is before it comes out. No. I don't want to know how long I'm going to live.

I don't want to know what percentage Arab I am versus what percentage anything else. Oh, yeah. I think that's really weird too. Yeah, yeah. I don't get why people are so excited about that. I think, honestly, I know this is quite a controversial thing to say, I think it's white people who are looking for something a bit more exciting than their whiteness. Yeah and also I suppose that there is a positive aspect to that to remind people who are perhaps, you know, on the racist side that we're all a mix of all sorts of people. No but see, I don't actually think that helps. I think those racist people are then like, but I can't be racist because

I'm actually five percent black and it's like, no still can in fact be racist right yeah yeah it's like a really extreme version of I've got a black friend now it's like I've got a black great great great great great grandfather so I can still say this horrific thing uh-huh yeah yeah well that's the sad way of looking at it I suppose that's the way i look at everything adam is it are you i think i am a bit yeah were you a warrior when you oh god my very very first memory is making you know those folding paintings where you fold the paper in half you paint on one side and then you open up and it's like a butterfly yes yes yes i was about to say we went to a shit primary school like a rorschach test yeah and i just remember opening up and being like this is not good enough this is just like not gonna cut it that's my first memory so i think

i'm quite pessimistic about everything you random chance i know and looking at all the other kids around the table and being like that's better well that's worse than mine but it's still shit that's better like yeah a warrior a warrior mate come on you've got a great sweater you've got a great career you are what's the phrase that i really don't enjoy no smashing it oh you are smashing it do you ever watch i'm a celebrity get me out of here well you don't have to now but me and my family still watch it and that is the phrase du jour i mean i know smashing it's been around for a while has it yeah okay but it's one of those things that starts out a bit ironic like calling someone a

legend yeah and then it just everyone just uses it and then it's like oh fuck off smashing it wait this is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional. I love browsing your videos and pics, and I don't want to say yes it looks very professional I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop and I'd like to access your members area and

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Continue. Monkey Man. Rosie. Rosie, come on back here. Rosie! Yeah, oh yes. Instant, obedient reaction. Come here and give me a hug. How are you?

How are you feeling? How's your tummy your tummy it's healed so fast hasn't it all right off you go don't go too far glad that rosie's enjoying her freedom of movement again so yes mona chalabi there really good to meet her i've put links to some of her work including an episode of the vagina dispatches in the description of this podcast if you'd like to check those out she was good fun and actually what you didn't hear on the podcast was that she came armed with a load of sweet treats one of the very few guests I don't expect the podcast guests to come armed with presents. Their presence is all the present I need at present. What? But anyway, Mona came with a couple of my favourite things in the world. Revels and a small tower of caramel waffles. So thanks, Mona. Hope to see you again soon. Oh, man, it is

Leicester blowy. OK, so it's that time of year again. I don't know if you've noticed. And I am seeing Joe Cornish this week to record our traditional Christmas podcast, which will be out all being well on Christmas day. I don't like to stick too firmly to release dates. You may have noticed if you're a regular podcat, because things just have a habit of getting in the way and making certain release dates difficult. But I will do everything within my power to ensure that the christmas podcast is up on christmas morning so as ever we would love it if you sent us a few anecdotes and interesting slash funny bits and pieces that we may read out on the day we only read out a few so don't be upset if you send stuff in and it doesn't get read out but if you do want to

contribute you can do so in the form of a comment beneath the latest post which is called contribute to the adam and joe christmas day podcast on my blog adam-buxton.co.uk link in the description of this podcast your comment slash message will not be posted. Joe and I are just going to read through them and save our favorites for the podcast. Deadline for contributions is midnight on the 5th of December, Wednesday, which is just a few days away. So I apologize for not giving you more warning. But you know, admin, I'm blaming admin. thanks sorry thanks sorry before i go here's a quick podcast recommendation for you it's called i blame dennis hopper and it's hosted by the actor iliana douglas she's a really good actor but she turns out to be kind of a big film aficionado and historian,

I'm quoting now from the blurb. And it features exclusive interviews, discussion and topical commentary from one of the industry's most respected artists, which is how she describes herself or whoever wrote the blurb. But I would with that anyway she's really good and she talks to all sorts of really interesting people i guess she's got some great friends and connections that she's accumulated over the years in the industry and she talks to the director ioni sky the actor uh she talks to john landis there's two of those part one and two i'm gonna haven't heard that one gonna listen to that there's a good one with curtis armstrong if you googled him you would definitely know his face, especially if you grew up in the 80s. And he was he was Booger in Revenge of the Nerds. And he was also in Risky Business. He was Tom Cruise's co-star, really, in that film. He was excellent. And he turns out to be a very interesting and engaging guy. I'd give that one a listen. I really enjoyed that one. And who else?

Griffin Dunn. She talks to Michael McKean. Loads of really good people. Anyway, so there you go. I Blame Dennis Hopper, it's called, hosted by Ileana Douglas. All right, that's it for this week, folks. I've got to get on with my Christmas prep now

for my meeting with joe i've got to think about what i'm going to get him how am i going to beat silly sausage that's the question thank you very much indeed to seamus murphy mitchell for his indispensable production support and wise counsel as ever and thank you very much indeed to matt lamont for edit whizbottery on this episode thanks to acast for hosting this and other great podcasts and helping me find my sponsors etc much appreciated and thanks to you for listening right to the end i mean you are the best of the best there's a lot of flakes around these days. A lot of people who say that they're on board, but are they really? No. They're on board for 10 minutes before they

get distracted by something shiny and off they go. But you're not like that. I don't know why you're not like that, but you're not. And I'm glad. Until next time do be careful do be brothers and do be sisters and do be questioning. I and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when my bum's up. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when my bum's up. Like and subscribe.

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