WEBVTT 00:00:03.100 --> 00:00:07.517 - On a difficult topic, you dedicated the book to your mom and dad. 00:00:07.600 --> 00:00:13.377 And in particular, you wrote, "To my father, who died while I was finishing the 00:00:13.460 --> 00:00:18.517 book." What have you learned about life from your dad? 00:00:18.600 --> 00:00:24.760 - To show up. To be present. To go to work every day. To love 00:00:26.420 --> 00:00:32.700 creative things. He was a lawyer, but he was also a jazz musician, 00:00:33.680 --> 00:00:39.420 and he did both to the best of his abilities. To value family as 00:00:40.920 --> 00:00:45.080 more important than either of those things. He was a present guy, 00:00:47.120 --> 00:00:50.957 I think. And, you know, he loved books, always loved books, always loved films, 00:00:51.040 --> 00:00:58.040 loved music. He wasn't into video games, but liked that we were doing weird things. 00:00:58.980 --> 00:01:00.317 - Was he proud of you? 00:01:00.400 --> 00:01:07.400 - Yeah, I think so. I hope so. He was, for a lawyer... 00:01:07.860 --> 00:01:13.857 He really venerated at some level, giving "the man" the 00:01:13.940 --> 00:01:18.060 finger. Like, whenever life goes crazy— 00:01:18.260 --> 00:01:22.037 he was always on the side of the underdog and the ridiculous. And I 00:01:22.120 --> 00:01:25.977 think that, you know, he always wanted to answer 00:01:26.060 --> 00:01:29.897 people back, always give the silly comment. I certainly have taken 00:01:29.980 --> 00:01:33.660 that from him, to my detriment probably, but it makes life more fun. 00:01:33.780 --> 00:01:37.617 He always would just say the obnoxious thing and just didn't give a fuck. 00:01:37.700 --> 00:01:42.037 And that was, I think that was probably quite inspiring. 00:01:42.120 --> 00:01:44.157 - So you have a bit of that in you? 00:01:44.240 --> 00:01:50.377 - Unfortunately so, yes. Not good at shutting up, not good at toeing the line. 00:01:50.460 --> 00:01:54.077 - I think I speak for most of human civilization that 00:01:54.160 --> 00:01:58.057 fortunately you have that as part of who you 00:01:58.140 --> 00:02:01.040 are, because it comes through your stories. 00:02:01.580 --> 00:02:06.877 - I think it made school difficult. They sent me to this very formal school— 00:02:06.960 --> 00:02:10.477 that was like, it might as well have been set in the 1870s, in the 00:02:10.560 --> 00:02:14.417 1990s. And, but then, I always got in trouble 00:02:14.500 --> 00:02:18.437 just for... not doing anything that wrong, just answering teachers back 00:02:18.520 --> 00:02:22.297 all of the time. I couldn't be quiet. 00:02:22.380 --> 00:02:27.120 - How often do you think about mortality? Are you personally afraid of death? 00:02:29.260 --> 00:02:36.260 - Well, my father passed away in May, so a lot more since then, obviously. I mean, I 00:02:40.180 --> 00:02:42.180 think about it a lot. Am I afraid of it? 00:02:43.380 --> 00:02:48.320 I don't know. Some days intensely and some days not at all. I would love to stay 00:02:49.500 --> 00:02:53.297 alive long enough to see my kids properly grow up and settled, of 00:02:53.380 --> 00:02:57.157 course, for them. Aside from that, some days I 00:02:57.240 --> 00:03:01.057 feel, you know, spiritually connected to the universe and not afraid of 00:03:01.140 --> 00:03:03.640 death at all. And other days I feel like a sort of 00:03:04.720 --> 00:03:08.617 random piece of good luck who's gonna get struck down by 00:03:08.700 --> 00:03:12.857 an angry fate and turn to nothingness, and that terrifies me. 00:03:12.940 --> 00:03:14.992 - What do you think about the nothingness? I mean, 00:03:15.075 --> 00:03:16.497 that- that in itself is terrifying. 00:03:16.580 --> 00:03:20.240 - Yeah, that is terrifying. I mean, I tend to, 00:03:21.580 --> 00:03:28.004 I tend to, you know, I've spent long periods of my life tormented by 00:03:28.087 --> 00:03:32.937 that stuff. The last few years, I tend to believe there is a purpose and a 00:03:33.020 --> 00:03:36.810 point to life, and that we have some kind of 00:03:37.420 --> 00:03:41.317 spiritual or soul-based existence. I'm not quite sure if it matters if there 00:03:41.400 --> 00:03:44.477 is a God or not, we should probably live our lives the same way either way. 00:03:44.560 --> 00:03:48.137 But I tend to think that, you know, there is a metaphysical 00:03:48.220 --> 00:03:52.037 purpose to life and part of the, that purpose is to, you know, 00:03:52.120 --> 00:03:55.957 search for the purpose. But at other points you know, if you 00:03:56.040 --> 00:03:59.590 read too much science, you get wrapped up in the nothingness of it all. 00:03:59.780 --> 00:04:03.577 - Also, there's a component to your brain. When talking about 00:04:03.660 --> 00:04:07.500 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, you said that you have been, by 00:04:07.620 --> 00:04:11.020 fortune, struck with a bit of a capacity for the 00:04:11.180 --> 00:04:14.820 grandiosity of feeling. So you feel the world deeply, sometimes 00:04:14.940 --> 00:04:18.697 romantic, sometimes overly romantic. You've said, I like this 00:04:18.780 --> 00:04:24.670 line, "Feelings may destroy you, but they're the best thing we have." So that 00:04:25.160 --> 00:04:31.817 ability to feel the world, is that a gift or a curse for you? What do you think? 00:04:31.900 --> 00:04:34.832 - That's a really interesting question because it's obviously both. 00:04:34.915 --> 00:04:35.737 At times it's both, 00:04:35.820 --> 00:04:39.577 or at times it's one or the other. When things are going well, when you feel 00:04:39.660 --> 00:04:43.800 alive, when you feel like you're connected to things, when you're seeing 00:04:45.280 --> 00:04:49.037 beauty in people and joy in experiences, of course it's 00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:52.977 it's wonderful. When you're feeling like, you know, bereft and 00:04:53.060 --> 00:04:56.977 set adrift by the world and that you can't connect to it in some way and you're lost 00:04:57.060 --> 00:04:58.080 and abandoned by 00:04:59.740 --> 00:05:03.757 God or consciousness or fate or whatever it is, it's awful. You know, when I feel 00:05:03.840 --> 00:05:04.673 like 00:05:06.060 --> 00:05:09.150 a dreadful hack, which is most of the time, you know, it's terrible. 00:05:09.233 --> 00:05:10.067 You'd rather not 00:05:10.240 --> 00:05:12.884 be doing this rubbish. And then sometimes you're working creatively and it feels 00:05:12.967 --> 00:05:14.097 good and you feel like you're doing 00:05:14.180 --> 00:05:18.457 the right thing and it feels fantastic, but that's not very often. 00:05:18.540 --> 00:05:20.917 - Do you think it's possible to have one without the other? 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:25.920 - No. No, of course not. When I think about growing up to the extent that 00:05:26.020 --> 00:05:28.160 I am capable of growing up 00:05:29.340 --> 00:05:32.560 it is about accepting the bad with the good from any situation 00:05:33.200 --> 00:05:38.760 or any aspect of myself. You know, going, "Okay, it's not perfect. I'm not perfect." 00:05:39.700 --> 00:05:43.117 - You said you often feel like a hack. Is that that 00:05:43.200 --> 00:05:49.517 self-critical part of your brain, is that a feature or a bug? 00:05:49.600 --> 00:05:53.435 - That's an, I think it's that new thing that we're gonna lean into, 00:05:53.518 --> 00:05:57.897 the bug feature. It's both, isn't it? I mean, it cannot lead... That 00:05:57.980 --> 00:06:01.917 self-critical brain, I think lots of people suffer from it, and I think 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:04.845 the internet is designed to induce, if you didn't have it before, 00:06:04.929 --> 00:06:09.920 you will have it after being online. It clearly can become a bug 00:06:10.740 --> 00:06:14.657 but it also can give you drive and a lack of complacency, 00:06:14.740 --> 00:06:16.340 so it can also become a feature. 00:06:17.380 --> 00:06:20.517 - I had a pretty intense argument with Paul Conti, who's a 00:06:20.600 --> 00:06:27.600 legendary psychiatrist, student of the mind, about this. He worked with many 00:06:28.020 --> 00:06:31.597 famous creative people and he thinks that that negative 00:06:31.680 --> 00:06:34.780 voice is not at all needed for creative 00:06:35.060 --> 00:06:38.900 genius. And I thought, "I know awfully a lot of 00:06:39.460 --> 00:06:41.697 creative people that have that voice." 00:06:41.780 --> 00:06:48.377 - I'd rather not have it, but I certainly have lived with it this far. There's a 00:06:48.460 --> 00:06:52.137 danger that negativity... For me, that 00:06:52.220 --> 00:06:56.037 negativity and consciousness become the same thing, you know? Sometimes I 00:06:56.120 --> 00:07:00.100 have to fight to not just be perpetually negative, 00:07:00.200 --> 00:07:03.824 and that can be part of the human struggle for lots of people and certainly has been 00:07:03.908 --> 00:07:07.900 for me. I think if you're trying to do, you know, good 00:07:08.040 --> 00:07:11.957 stuff and you're reflective, inevitably, and, you know, 00:07:12.040 --> 00:07:15.867 you live in this world of constant, constant criticisms by the 00:07:15.950 --> 00:07:19.747 internet. Of course, you know, everyone who ever puts something on the internet, 00:07:19.830 --> 00:07:23.327 be it a picture of themselves or any kind of work they've made or whatever it 00:07:23.410 --> 00:07:27.087 is, is going to get 50 good comments and one bad comment. Remember the bad 00:07:27.170 --> 00:07:30.857 comment. So that, and that, that becomes fuel for the negative voice. I don't know 00:07:30.940 --> 00:07:33.703 anyone that's strong enough not to. You know, we all, you know, 00:07:33.786 --> 00:07:37.037 at some level you should just measure that stuff in weight, not in quality. 00:07:37.120 --> 00:07:39.647 But of course we just focus on the quality. 00:07:39.730 --> 00:07:41.714 - And I do think in general, as you get older, 00:07:41.797 --> 00:07:43.587 that's the real challenge for people. You 00:07:43.670 --> 00:07:47.467 can see the different trajectories people choose to take. But it's 00:07:47.550 --> 00:07:51.360 easy to slip into cynicism and negativity, into this, 00:07:51.570 --> 00:07:55.450 Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, 00:07:55.550 --> 00:07:59.407 nihilistic kind of worldview. I think the heroic action to 00:07:59.490 --> 00:08:04.053 take with time is to become more optimistic, to see more good. 00:08:04.136 --> 00:08:05.057 I think that- - I agree. 00:08:05.140 --> 00:08:11.490 - There's probably a hero's journey of being extremely self-critical at first, 00:08:12.330 --> 00:08:17.690 for the first, maybe half of your life or two-thirds, and then, 00:08:18.570 --> 00:08:22.447 while maintaining some self-critical aspects just so you stay 00:08:22.530 --> 00:08:26.327 humble, start to see the good in everything around 00:08:26.410 --> 00:08:30.207 you, in other people, in the world, and even maybe every once in a 00:08:30.290 --> 00:08:33.080 while on a weekend, in yourself. 00:08:33.470 --> 00:08:36.710 - I hope so. I mean, that's what I've been, I could not be more 00:08:36.810 --> 00:08:38.487 cynical. I think you put that beautifully. 00:08:38.570 --> 00:08:42.407 - Yeah. - I could not be more cynical than I was as a child. You know, I 00:08:42.490 --> 00:08:46.960 could not see goodness anywhere. I couldn't see, you know, I don't think 00:08:48.690 --> 00:08:52.487 late 1970s to early 1990s England was a great, 00:08:52.570 --> 00:08:55.987 was a place of great, you know, optimism and naiveté. It was 00:08:56.070 --> 00:08:59.947 brutal. And I was brutal, I was brutal within it. And I 00:09:00.030 --> 00:09:04.010 think I've become much more naive, 00:09:04.250 --> 00:09:07.427 and tried to become more innocent in some ways, and always try to 00:09:07.510 --> 00:09:11.890 see the flawed good in people. You know, I've tried to, or I've 00:09:12.950 --> 00:09:15.505 had to force myself to be like that because, you know, 00:09:15.588 --> 00:09:19.810 the other way is not fun, it's not nice. It's not nice to not be nice. 00:09:20.830 --> 00:09:24.327 - As a brief aside, you had a wonderful conversation with Ryan 00:09:24.410 --> 00:09:28.147 McCaffrey at LA Comic-Con. I've been a big fan of 00:09:28.230 --> 00:09:32.040 his for a long time. He writes amazing stuff at IGN and he has a great 00:09:32.130 --> 00:09:34.700 podcast. Everybody should go listen to it. I really enjoyed it. 00:09:34.783 --> 00:09:35.667 Plus I get to attend a 00:09:35.750 --> 00:09:39.567 Comic-Con and just be there in the audience. And like we were saying offline, 00:09:39.650 --> 00:09:43.607 the LA Comic-Con, it's the first Comic-Con I've been to, there's just all kinds of 00:09:43.690 --> 00:09:46.887 real genuine nerds, good-hearted- - Oh, it's fascinating. Yeah, brilliant. 00:09:46.970 --> 00:09:49.730 - It's just so much kindness and goodness 00:09:50.550 --> 00:09:54.267 and just simple joy in being a fan of a thing was there. 00:09:54.350 --> 00:09:55.647 - Yeah, which is what those things are all about. 00:09:55.730 --> 00:09:59.380 - Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about some of the greatest books of all time.