434. "I lost my brother at 16 to suicide, it shouldn't have happened" ft. Ben West

TW: Discussions of suicide.

This week, I'm joined by mental health campaigner Ben West for one of the most moving conversations we've ever had on the show. At 18, Ben lost his brother to suicide. He has taken that experience and decided to change the lives of thousands, if not millions with his 'Reasons to Stay' campaign. 

In this episode we discuss:

• Why grief changes over time 
• How to find purpose after unimaginable heartbreak
• The psychology of hope and why strangers can save lives
• What supporting someone through suicidal thoughts actually looks like
• Ben's incredible initiative, Reasons to Stay, and the millions of people it's already reached
• His two personal rules for protecting his own mental health
• Why healing isn't about 'moving on' but learning to carry what you've lost

Watch on Netflix: HERE

Preorder Ben's book: HERE 

Follow Ben: HERE 

If you need help, it is available. You are NEVER alone. Please find some further resources HERE.

Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg

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The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Before we begin today's episode, I just want to note
that this conversation includes discussions around suicide, grief, and mental health.
Please just take care while listening, and if anything has
brought up some heavy or difficult feelings today, reach out
to somebody you trust or seek support from a mental
health professional or crisis service in your area. As always,
we will have links and resources in the description. You

(00:23):
do not have to go through these hard moments alone,
so please reach out to somebody that you love. Hello everybody,
I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the Psychology of
Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments,
and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for

(00:45):
our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome
back to the podcast. It is so great to have
you here, back for another episode. Today's pisode is a
really special one because we are joined by someone whose
work has opened up some incredibly important conversations around mental health, grief, masculinity, vulnerability,

(01:11):
for if I'm being honest, an entire generation of young people. Today,
I'm joined by Ben West. You may know him through
his advocacy work following the loss of his younger brother.
Since then, he's launched his movement Reasons to Stay, to
help guide strangers through difficult times. But beyond that, beyond
the public work, Ben is also somebody who is deeply thoughtful.
He has an amazing perspective on being human, on friendship, purpose,

(01:34):
pain and hope, and we are so excited to have
him on. Ben Welcome to the Psychology of your twenties.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Thank you so much for having me here. I'm so
excited for this chat.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah, and took it. Took you a second to get here.
You were recording it on a day of a crazy
t school.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Transport into London was just no today. And it's funny
when you work in mental health, you're constantly talking about
like coping and relieving stress, and then suddenly all the
trains are stuck and you're having to practice what you
preach and try not to get frazzled by yea London transport.
I'me here.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
You came in, cool, calm and collected.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Inside, I'm like a duck. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Well, this is the thing that I found since moving
to London is I've become very angry and I have.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
To really kind things.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, just the smallest stuff. I'm like, the world is
a terrible, awful.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Players and then the weather as well, like it's it's
always it always all comes together. You've got wind, rain,
trains are late, someone's someone spills coffee on you. Yeah,
and ah, it's really difficult to try and get out
of that funk. Yeah, and then like.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
A light is flickering and you're like I just want
to lay down.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, And you know what I used to be not
to go straight in with the psychology, but I used
to be really bad at having that happen and then
immediately writing off the day and getting into a bad mood.
And it actually came up when I was going through
therapy like that, like bad days would just take over
and become bad days. And it was that it was
that experience that actually I started my first rule I

(03:02):
have with myself, which is that if it's a bad day,
you have to do something good. Right, And so it
was something we came up with in therapy, which was
like I always just had as soon as bad things happen,
I just formed the mindset that it was a bad day,
and so I have this rule way, you have to
do something good. So that's something simple like talking to
a shopkeeper in the shops, or texting a friend you've

(03:24):
spoken to in a while, or just doing something good
or being happy to see someone. And then as soon
as you've done that, you've you've taken the power away
from the bad day. So not to go straight in
with the psychology, but this is actually very relevant to
something that I It's one of my two important rules
that I live by.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Okay, well, I have two follow up questions. Okay, the
number one is what are you going to do today?

Speaker 2 (03:44):
I haven't decided yet. I feel like this is quite
a good thing to do. Yeah. No, I think I'm
going to an event later which will be really good.
So I think that will be my good thing for today.
And that's supporting an amazing charity and it's going to
be such a lovely evening. So yeah, I feel like
that will be my good thing today. But even if
it's just literally going into the shops and forcing myself

(04:06):
to get into shops and then talk actually talk to
the person to check out, it always makes the day better.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, and what's your second rule?

Speaker 2 (04:13):
My second rule is, because of the nature of my job,
and we'll get into this, I talk to a lot
of people about some really awful stuff and some My
other rule is that I'm still thinking about a conversation
two weeks later, I have to talk to someone about it,
and I don't give myself the choice because you know,
some of the conversations I have with people are fairly harrowing,

(04:33):
and usually I'm quite good at processing that. But yeah,
if I'm still talking thinking about it, I was thinking
about them two weeks later, I have to talk to
someone about that conversation, and it just takes my choice away.
So I know then I'm like, it's been two weeks.
I need to text my counselor I need to go
and book some time in and talk about this. Yeah. Yeah,
it sort of takes that opportunity to push the can

(04:53):
down the road away from me.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
I used to have this when I used to do
we are going in Oh my God. I used to
do interviews for the Australian Government on child mail treatment
and as in like calling people up and being like,
you know, tell me about what you've been through. And
I was so young. I wish I had that rule
because my rule was just like if I had a

(05:16):
bad call, I'd go and eat a Kindo bueno. Yes,
and I think that probably made.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Got into a really bad habit classic conditioning.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Oh my goodness. I was just going to say that
even now, like thinking of it. Yesterday I had a
bad day and I went and got a Kindo bueno
and I was like, you cannot go back down this.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
Road, the.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Texting counselor kind Let's say, I love, I know it's so,
can you briefly you know what, I did not even
ask you to introduce yourself.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
We've gone.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Can you briefly introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit
about who you are as a person, how people might
know you or they don't know you, who you are.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, absolutely so. My name's Ben. I am a mental
health campaigner. The fact that I'm introducing myself as a
mental health campaign is still weird because it's not something
I ever thought i'd have to do. Growing up, I
didn't know anything about mental health. No one had ever
talked to me about mental health, and the first time
it really came up in my life was when my

(06:20):
mum told me that my little brother Sam had been
diagnosed with depression. And that was the first time I'd
ever really heard what that was. I didn't really know
anything more about it, so I never spoke to Sam,
and then, very sadly, in January twenty eighteen, Sam took
his own life and died at the age of fifteen

(06:40):
years old and I was seventeen, and obviously, through that experience,
I very quickly realized that the significance of what my
mum had told me in September, and also free speaking
to my friends and people at school, realized like how
many people were affected by this sort of thing. And
my plan in life at that moment was to go

(07:02):
to university study engineering and then go to the Armed
Forces and fly helicopters. So that was very fad and
it's not what I'm doing, as you can tell. But
I realized very quickly that, you know, what happened to
Sam shouldn't have happened, and there were there were small
things that could have been different, and it felt like

(07:22):
I had an opportunity to change those small things for
other people and pick up the sort of batton that
Sam left behind in terms of wanting to create change
and do my best. So I'm a mental health campaign
and now I've been doing this for eight years. People
will probably if you've heard my name. You've probably heard
it in association with my project that I launched this
year called Reasons to Stay, which I'm sure we'll get

(07:43):
into more, but essentially it's a suicide prevention project, sending
letters to people thinking about suicide, giving them reasons to stay.
But you know, my work goes far beyond that. The
reason I'm dressed so smartly is I've been working policy,
so I do a lot of work with the government
around NHS and healthcare for people with mental health, and
education and mental health. So basically, mental health is what

(08:07):
I live and breathe. It's not something that I ever
thought i'd go into, but it's something, you know, It
is everything I do. And you know, every day I
think about Sam and what happened to him and my family,
and I go to work because we absolutely, I absolutely
believe that we can change the system that lets so
many people down. And that's what I'm going to do

(08:30):
for the rest of my life. That's what I've decided,
this is all I'm going to do. Wow. Yeah, which
is a huge thing to say.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
But you had such pride in your eyes when you
said that. Yeah, can you tell me a bit about Sam?
And like some of your memories about him and like
what kind of what he was like.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, Oh, Sam was wonderful. He was very funny and
sort the sort of humor he had was like he
didn't know quite whether you were allowed to laugh. It's
always just like on the edge of something really dark
and awful. He had quite a dark sense humor, but
it was just so funny. Even his friends, like at school,

(09:09):
they always said, is he was such a like class clown.
He try and make the whole class laugh. He was
very very talented in art and music, so like he
was fifteen when he was, you know, basically producing the
whole film scores on his laptop. Loved Hans Zimmer and
film and film scores and music and film. He was

(09:32):
also like he painted a lot and just the most
phenomenal painter. And one of my favorite, yeah, one of
my favorite memories back then of us is because it
was me Sam and another brother, Tom, who's my youngest brother,
and we used to just Sam would do like some
art and he'd just bring us in on right at

(09:53):
the end, like help with something, and we were absolutely terrible.
I'm so jealous of Sam's talent with art because I
kind of can't draw. I can't paint. I would love
to be able to paint, but I can't. I struggled
so much with it. He was very, very talented. But
I think the big thing with Sam that I like

(10:13):
means a lot now looking back, is he just had
he was like an emotional sponge. He just he just
absorbed all the emotion around him. He was such an
EmPATH and he cared so much about other people, and
he's that sense of like social justice of if someone
was being picked on or bullied, he would feel, he's

(10:36):
so like powerfully that that was unjust, and he'd take
a lot of that emotion on, which obviously must have
been a lot for him to take on his shoulders.
But he just he just had this really strong sense
of right and wrong, and he was felt emotions and
he felt other people's emotions really strongly, which you know

(10:56):
obviously meant that when he was struggling, he felt very
passionately about other people feeling seen as well through their struggles.
And that's sort of why I feel like I want
to do what I do now, is because when he
was struggling, he wanted other people to feel understood and
for things to be better for them, and he never

(11:17):
got the chance to sort of do this. And I
know that absolutely if Sam had survived, he would have
gone on to become a mental health campaigner. He'd probably
be sitting in this chair talking to you. He would
have done a phenomenal job. And I always say to people,
I'm like, unfortunately, you have got the second best option.
But I will do my absolute best to sort of
do what I think Sam would want to do, and

(11:37):
that is to show up to tell our story, be vulnerable,
be honest, make people feel seen, but also, you know,
push for the change that stops people getting support and
stops people getting an education. So yeah, I've tried to
be better at art and I've tried to be better music,
but I know that one talent and one one thing

(12:00):
that me and Sound absolutely share is that absolute social
justice right and wrong, empathy for people that don't deserve
to feel the way they do and not have the
support that so many people don't have nowadays.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
I feel like, does your younger brother have that as well?

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, we all do.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
I was going to say, I feel like that would
be a very strong through line from like your parents.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yeah, I definitely think so. And they've My parents have
obviously reacted in a similar way to Sam dying in
terms of like trying to change, change things and provide support,
which a lot of people do when something awful happens.
And it's nice that we're all sort of on the
same page of yeah, that was so bad that we're
going to make sure it never happens again. We're all
very aligned on that.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
I saw this interesting thing from Jack Antonoff. Do you
know who that is? Okay, he's a music producer, not important.
He said that when you're experiencing grief is when your
purpose becomes the clearest because nothing else matters. And that
kind of sounds like, what, that's what's happened to you?
You know? Through that?

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah, definitely. I think there's so many reasons why I
do what I do now, but one of them is
definitely that it hurts so much that I think pain
without a meaning is very difficult to cope with because
it feels like what is this all for? I mean,

(13:27):
and it hurts so much, it's still it's still still
a horrible, horrible thing to have gone through, and it
doesn't make it less painful, but it does make that
experience feel like it's worth something. And you know, I
get the absolute privilege of hearing from people who have
been materially changed and helped by work that I've been

(13:48):
involved in or contributed to. And I remember little seventeen
year old me sat at school with my friends trying
to work out what we were going to do to
change the world. And over time you realize that actually
changing the world and creating that much impact in reality
happens in really quiet moments with people, and if you

(14:10):
can stop one person from taking their own life, or
you get the right support to one person, the ripple
effect of that over time is absolutely enormous. And so
you know, like I remember just thinking back now to
seventeen year old me, not knowing what I was meant
to do or how I was going to turn this
awful experience into something that was good. He would not

(14:33):
believe what we've done over the last eight years. It's
been the most extraordinary, powerful, meaningful journey. And I can
say that now with a smile on my face, like
it has. My story is so sad, but it's got
to position now where it's a really happy, positive journey,

(14:55):
and that I didn't believe that was ever possible.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
So that's oh, that's so pretty. That's so pretty is
the wrong way?

Speaker 2 (15:02):
No, it's yeah, I know, And it's only sometimes that
you actually reflect and go When Sam died, I honestly
I didn't think anything good would ever happen to me. Again,
I don't know how to describe it except that I
just thought my life was always going to be great. Yeah,
And I just didn't think anything would be fun or

(15:23):
funny or positive. And so it's quite profound to be
able to sit here now and say this is great.
I love what I do. I feel joy almost every day,
and that that's been quite quite the journey to get there.
But it's very meaningful.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
And you know what, I'm sure somebody's listening to this
right now who's probably in the early stages of grief,
being like this is always going to be it, And
I think it's just a really nice thing to hear
somebody say that, Even people with like a bit of
anticipatory Greek as well, probably listening being like, oh, yeah,
can I actually ask you about that a little bit more?
Like I think you explained it very well, But how

(16:10):
is your grief changed? Like when you first I'm guessing
found out through your mom or through a parent, to
that first year to now, like what's been the different
things that you've learned throughout the years about loss?

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, I mean losing Exam was not only awful in
terms of the grief of losing a brother that you
didn't expect obviously, but also through how he died in suicidey.
It was incredibly traumatic for me particularly, and so actually
at the beginning, it's very difficult to determine like what

(16:47):
was grief and what was trauma trauma response? But I,
you know, I was. I was very affected at the beginning,
Like I didn't know what was up or down. I
felt like I was just stuck in this washing machine
that was constant on different cycles of all over the place.
Didn't sleep very much. I didn't eat for about four days.

(17:08):
I just was so confused and my body I was
like rejecting what had gone on. It was like, it's
so bad that you just reject what happened to the
point where like I went to school the day after Sam.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Died, did you really well? Your teachers?

Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah, they were completely completely shocked to see me.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah what about your friends, were they? Actually? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, I'm probably I'm pretty sure they just thought it
because everyone at school had been told that day. Yeah,
they probably thought like, what is this sick joke? Ben's
just honestly, I got in my car and I went
to school, and I went in and I just ran
over to my friends and I was like, hey, how's
everyone doing? Like nothing had happened, because my brain was
just like, Nope, this is not this has not happened,

(17:56):
and I'm going to do what i'd normally do and
just take myself to school. Lasked in about an hour,
and then I was exhausted.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, the adrenaline and shock just wearing.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
Yeah, but it was like that for a while and
then you slowly learn. And I think the best way
I can describe it, and I've described it to other people,
is that like it's a it's a flame. It's like
a fire, like a bonfire when when grief, you're standing
so close to it that like you you can't notice
anything but this intense heat that's coming from it. And

(18:27):
everyone says time heels. I don't know, it's not as
straightforward as that, but I do think with time you
just get distanced from the flame that fire, so that
it's still there and sometimes you notice it, but the heat,
the feeling of the intensity of that heat just feels
less and less extreme. So it's not the pain that
you that makes you notice that this happened, but it's

(18:49):
just sort of going into a room you haven't been
in too since he died, or the things would remind
you it's there. I think that's the best way I've
had to describe it. It's just the intensity of those
feelings starts to just get and less extreme with time,
and that's definitely what I felt. And then I, you know,
eventually got the courage to seek professional support, which was

(19:12):
scary but amazing, and then dealt with a lot of
the trauma that I'd not really dealt with and EMDR therapy,
which I thought was amazing, and I managed to deal
with a lot of that, and then you get a
position where you know, you actually feel like you got
to handle back on things. And because I think a
lot of the time I was maybe in the passenger seat,

(19:34):
yeah I'm not really fully in control of what was
going on, and just sort of going from moment to moment. Actually, interestingly,
not to go off on points, but one of the
funny experience of grief that I had, not funny but
unexpected a chuckle. Was hedonism, like this absolute intense need

(19:57):
for fun and like just I I started university in
like September, so a few months after Sam died, and
it was literally just like chasing fun and going out
and like trying to just basically block everything out by
having just hedonistic out there like behavior, which I think
is so interesting because at the time I thought that

(20:18):
I was doing really well because I was having fun,
and I look back and I was like, I was
actually just like chasing thrills, trying to escape like feeling
on my own or feeling low, and that was an
interesting That was an interesting observation I did not see
in the time. So many years later I was like, whoa,

(20:38):
I was really unwell when that was happening, and probably
a lot of drinking. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
And it's also that's just like the imagine being well,
you don't have to imagine you're like how old were you? Eighteen?
At fresh As Week and I know if you guys
call it that, just being like a week just being
like great, I have this gaping emotional wound and I
have a gallon of liquor. Yeah, everyone around you around
you was having a great and that looks like the
normal thing to do, but like, wow, when do you

(21:06):
think you came out of like the hedonistic like I'm
just gonna live while I'm young stage? Do you think
it was like after your first year?

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Or I think it was COVID lockdown? So what's that?
Three years? Two two and a half, three years afterwards
and when you're forced to not do that anymore? And
I was on my own in COVID, I got I
was I was in a flat that was about it's
probably not much bigger than the studio, and I had
to do ten and ten days on my own, and

(21:38):
oh that was tough? Was it?

Speaker 1 (21:40):
Just?

Speaker 2 (21:40):
Did you have? I had? I got infected.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
You got infected.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
So I was stuck and then on my own. I
remember the only person I saw in ten days was
someone pushed batteries for an Xbox controller. Through past of
the tour.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
Were you at UNI? Yeah, you were in.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
Like a like a little room and that was that
was intense. And so I felt that whole experience like
I actually was okay. I was fine. I like coped.
I was okay, but it just made you sort of
it like took you away from everything that you usually
kept to like make yourself okay. And I was very
lucky that I had support through counseling at that time

(22:22):
that I was doing virtually so I was like, you
start to go, oh, this sort of thing that I've
put myself up on it's fun. Oh it's not there anymore.
I'm actually really really not okay. So that was quite
an interesting experience for me, just being forced to stay

(22:42):
in my room. And then and then I left UNI. Oh, yeah,
this has not happened. This is actually now I've stepped
out of this. I'm really not very well. And then
I left and sort of started to make some real
changes in my life to sort of get back in control.
Which so actually it was like, it's quite quite a
good experience in a.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
Way, it sounds like a bit of a circuit breaker.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
It was, Yeah, in a weird way. I wouldn't recommend
it was awful, but it was like it was also needed, Yeah,
because you started doing a lot of reflection on how
I was living and what I was doing and not
really dealing with anything. And then it was like, m
this is an interesting moment of noticing all of that.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yeah, And then like another deeply traumatic moment probably where
it's like, great, so my life that I'm trying to
rebuild is going to be completely ripped abot and we'll
move on to the next thing.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, And it was very confusing as well, because I
was in the moment of all of the plans I
had in my life of what I wanted to do.
I was still sort of doing because I didn't it
was too late to change my degree or whatever. So
I was like still on that plan, but realizing more
and more that it's not really what I wanted to do.
And so there was a whole it was just very confusing,

(23:58):
very very confusing.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
Do you remember like the first time after Sam passed
away that you and your family like we're like together
and we're like laughing and we're able to like have
a bit of a glimmer.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
That's a really good question. That's a really good question.
It took a long long time to feel normal as
a family. You know, so many times you'd go and
lay the table and you'd carry like five sets of
forks and knives over or five like set places, And
that happened so many times for me, and even like

(24:35):
talking about him took a long time to feel normal.
I don't. Actually, I think it might have been Christmas, weirdly,
because that's quite a difficult time for grief when you
can sort of get a little bit of room. I
was also actually probably it was probably not so. When
I was at school when Sam died, I realized very

(24:55):
quickly that I wanted to do something positive, and so
I organized something called Walk to Talk, which was basically
this two hundred kilometer walk that me and my friends
are going to do to raise money, and we would
invite the whole school, and if people wanted to come
and walk the whole thing, they could come. If they
wanted to walk one day, they could come and walk
with us. And I basically designed it to be fun

(25:17):
and colorful and real celebration of talking and mental health
as opposed to it being like a ceremony. And that
was great, Like we had bright pink T shirts and
we were like talking about Sam every day and it
was fun and my family got involved loads. So I
think that was probably a good moment where we could
really just sort of, I don't know, sort of feel

(25:42):
like the subject of sus I'm losing Sam wasn't necessarily
this dark, awful thing that we can't go near. It's like, actually,
we're all dressing pink, having a good time, talking about
Sam and talking about something that's positive and getting around that.
So that was a really that was a nice moment.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
Where did you guys walk in London? That's two hundred.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
Colomb So we walked from where I grew up in
Kent sort of mid Kent all the way to London,
which actually isn't two hundred klometers, but we were like
it was near enough two hundred klometers. It was about
one hundred and seventy, so we were like, let's just
add thirty and round it up classic so it's two
hundred klometers over ten days in September twenty eighteen, and

(26:20):
it was just it was that was That was the
I only ever did it to raise a bit of
money and then before I went to UNI, and that
was the walk. Really, that was the event that I
went I really want to do this for the rest
of my life. Like I really saw the impact that
you can have on other people's lives by having some
of the people that came on that walk, you know,
I went to spoke to their family about their things

(26:43):
that were going on, their life for the first time ever,
you know, to be able to be the one to
make someone feel comfortable enough to have those conversations and
know how important that is. I just yeah, you can't
not help someone make that step and not want to
then keep helping other people make that step and get

(27:05):
the right support. So it was really that was the
formation for everything that came since.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
Wow, Well this is a great segue into Reasons to Stay,
which is when did you launch this project?

Speaker 2 (27:16):
January? January, four months ago, three months ago?

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Don't It's just amazing because it has touched so many
lives so quickly. Do you want to talk about it?

Speaker 2 (27:28):
I would love talking.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
About the idea behind it.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
So I've worked in this space for eight years. I've
spoken to more people that have felt suicidal or looked
after someone suicidal than I can count. I mean, so
many people. And the one thing I've realized with mental
health is that, unlike other social issues, it's very difficult
for the general public to feel like they're practically involved

(27:53):
in helping. So with climate change, you can recycle more,
you can take public transport, ride a bike, and you
can feel like you're practically involved in the solution. With
mental health. Unless you're a clinical professional or involved some
way clinically, it's very difficult for you to actually help.
And I've always thought that it would be good to

(28:13):
find a way to connect the millions and millions and
millions and billions of people around the world that care
about this issue and want to help with the millions
or billions of people that need to be cared for.
So that's that's the first point. Then the second point
is the human race has a lot of problems, right,

(28:34):
and it's difficult to feel good about us sometimes, especially
in the world. Yeah, right, But the one thing that
I think is absolutely phenomenal about us as a species
is that when there is a catastrophe, people that don't
know each other will drop everything and run to help.

(28:54):
And I think that is so remarkable and amazing. Is
this instinct to just help strangers that we all, most
of us have, which I think is just incredible, And
I think it's the most amazing thing about being human
being is that you can feel such deep empathy for
someone you don't know. We always say that about elephants
and then forget that actually we are we do the

(29:16):
same thing. And so those two things sort of came
together and I was like, well, we've got a problem
with suicide. We've got a lot of people that want
to help. How can you let strangers help in a
way that's clinically safe. And that's where Reasons to Stay
came from. So essentially, anyone in the world can write
a letter on the site that then goes to our

(29:38):
clinical moderation team. They make sure everything's safe, publish it,
and then anyone can go on and read one of
these letters and have them delivered to them. And that
was the idea, and I'd launched it this year in
January on the twenty first of January, which is the
anniversary of Sam's death, because that was my good thing
that day. That's always a bad day, So I was like,

(30:00):
you know, you need a hefty good thing to get
through that day.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
A maje in one big people will hear about this thing.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
Yeah, yeah, and so yeah, I launched that for no
reason other than I thought it was a good idea
and I had very little expectation. It was a project
that I wanted to work on in behind the scenes
and sort of just really love to grow. I thought
we'd maybe send one hundred letters that week, and we
sent thirty three thousand, and then by mid February we'd

(30:31):
sent a million. And as of now, we've sent three
point six million letters to people in one hundred and
eighty countries. In what's that just over three months it's been.
We've reached seventeen million people on social media with this project.
It's just been like beyond anything I could possibly imagine.

(30:54):
And I guess it goes to show that instinct of
millions of people want to help was absolutely true and
it just it worked.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
Oh my god, that gave me chills. That is the coolest,
coolest story I've probably ever heard on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Amazing, being pretty incredible to see unfold in front of me,
and every moment, particularly in those early days where it
was so intense, you know, all the milestones just felt massive. Yeah,
first one hundred thousand was huge, and then it was
a million, and then as most people that if you
know me, will know me for a video I posted

(31:34):
when I when I first heard that it had helped
someone and my reaction to what that meant to me
when I found out that someone had, you know, very
literally survived because they've written a letter, read a letter
or other you know, all those moments just were just
it was I feel every day I watched it climb

(31:57):
to just enormous numbers, and it was just pinching myself constantly.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
What are you going to do it?

Speaker 2 (32:02):
For?

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Ten million?

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Party walk? That was the right end ten million. And
you know what what's absolutely mad is that will I
was going to say it will happen this year.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
I think it will happen.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
It happens soon very so it's you know, it's which
is extraordinary, but it's also just such a nice reminder that,
like it's so bad, well this is what's happening.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Yeah, but at the.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
End of the day, like there are always reasons to stay,
but there are always reasons to feel positive about the world.
And it does you don't have to feel suicidal to
benefit from reasons to stay. The site. I go on there,
you read a letter, and you feel better about yourself
and the world and this human race that we all

(32:47):
were a part of. You just you cannot go on
that website and not feel better about the state of
the world and who you are and your part in it.
And I just think that's so wonderful, just because you know,
I have I do have this just love of people
and what we can do for each other. And it
just is such an amazing And I had no idea
this is going to be like this. I really genuinely

(33:09):
put you know, I put thought into it, but I
didn't put this much thought into it. And to see
what it's become and see how much it means to people, Oh,
it's been very, very very special. Yeah, we've got to
do we ten million, Well we'll come back for ten million.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
Someone we need to the population of the world needs
to give you a huge thank you.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Oh thank you.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Let's segue. I imagine. And we were talking about this
before we were recording, that sometimes it's hard to talk
about mental health all the time, and that you're probably
you know, you're very much the mental health guy online.
You know you've done this incredible thing. You're not going
to give that up for anything. But in your personal
life as well, I'm sure a lot of people are like, oh,

(33:57):
this is Ben Ben. If I have a problem, I
can go to Ben. Strangers probably think that what's is
that hard?

Speaker 2 (34:03):
Sometimes yeah, it's extremely hard. It's extremely extremely hard because
also I'm in this because I care so much, so
it's very difficult not to feel like you have to
always talk about it and that I'm going to do
this for the rest of my life. But it's also

(34:24):
really important for me to know when his work and
when it's not. And with social media, especially recently, it's
been very, very difficult to step away from that and
have me because at the end of the day, I'm ben.
For most of my life, I haven't talked about this,
and I have a whole personality that it's built on
not having to talk about mental health every day. And

(34:46):
I think sometimes he needs to and laugh. And you know,
there is lots of positive and fun moments in this journey.
There are also lots of incredibly devastating, sad, hard work
hours and bad things that happen. And I don't think
it's healthy for anyone to be, you know, experiencing that

(35:07):
all the time, you know, you know, when Reasons this
Day went viral, I got fifty thousand messages in one day,
and it's just like on a level that you it's
just not normal would be And most of those were
incredibly sensitive information about what someone was going through, you know,

(35:27):
when I was scrolling through, almost all of them were
This is why this matters to me, which is obviously
incredible and so lovely that people feel like they can
share it. But that just reading that volume of really
sometimes quite harrowing stories like it takes a toll. And
so yeah, it's it's important for me to do this work.

(35:49):
I love it. I'm never not going to do it.
But it's also as I've done this more and more,
you've got to work out how you do things that
are not this and even And it's funny because I've
I also run, and I made the decisions start like
running to raise money for mental health, right, and so
I've done like marathons and ultra marathons to like talk

(36:10):
about this, and I've realized, you know, I've realized after
this year, is I don't want to do that. I
don't think I want to keep running separate for mental
health and not raise money and sort of just literally
just do it for fun for me, because I think
I was pouring too much of myself into this. So
it's a it's a balancing act. But sometimes you are
desperate for it no offense to this podcast. Sometimes it's

(36:31):
desperate for a podcast that's not mental health. Yeah, so
ask me about like I don't know what what's my
other what's what would be my mastermind?

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Oh, we've got questions for you, but I've got some
fun ones.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Oh I'm sure. I'm sure, but you know what I mean.
And she must be the same with you. Sometimes where
it's like, obviously it's hugely important, but sometimes it's important
to just remember that it's like one part of me. Yeah,
and I also have my own mental health, which sometimes.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
That's the that's the hard part. I think when people
think of you as this person who has it all
sorted out since you're talking about it openly, and it's
like I'm still really trying to figure it out myself.
I get that a lot when I like and it
was interesting, like it's it is not a regular problem
to have. No, it's not too many people trust me. Yeah,

(37:22):
you know, you know, I just I'm doing too good
a job at helping people. But it is like I
definitely have a similar experience where sometimes I've got to
not talk about psychology and it's hard to Like, sometimes
friends will come to you and be like and you
want to be there for them, and that sometimes means
being less present online so that you have the the
resources to show up.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
It really matters. Yeah, for sure, for sure, and it's
it's just about trying to protect yourself at the end
of the Yeah, we're a difficult topic and this goes
for And I'm very lucky obviously that I've been doing
this a long time. So I know a lot of
people that work in a similar area, and not just
mental health campaigning, but sort of loads of different areas

(38:03):
of social issues which are all difficult to experience, right
and to work in. So I've sort of learned a
lot from them and we support each other, right because
no one can talk about bad things all the time,
which actually, in fairness, is one of the reasons that
I wanted to start reasons to stay because in my
work you talk a lot about bad things. I do

(38:26):
a lot of policy work. I do a lot of
work with data and with mental health in parliament, and
it's never You're never talking about it because things are
going well. That's very good, right, And I think for me,
I'm not like that. I'm quite I'm always been a
glass half full fun. I like fun, I like optimism,

(38:48):
and so I reason State came about because I was
desperate to do something fun and positive and like something
that's a good thing to talk about, and reasons today
is such a good thing to talk about, Like I
that was part of it as well, which is that
I needed a way of doing something that was positive
rather than what it was before, which was constantly talking

(39:10):
about you know, for a long time I was working
on a campaign that was trying to improve negligence laws.
I'm like, negligence is never a conversation that is ever positive,
Like no positive thing ever leads to a negligence conversation. Yeah,
So it's like that's basically sums up sort of what
the conversations I was having. They were always about death

(39:33):
and failure and negligence. And you're like, that is not
that is not particularly upbeat. No, it's very very important.
But you need you need the balance.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Yeah, and now you found it. I do, and probably
like one of the reasons why you like you as
an optimistic person, Like this can only come from the
brain of an optimistic person, do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, it's a good point.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
So it's kind of like you feel like you found
the way. That just shows how many people were hungering
for somebody to be like, can we talk about mental
health in a way that isn't. It's hard, right, it's
to find a positive spin, and not that we should,
but just in a way that's it's proactive and positive
and meaningful.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Positive without being invalidating as well, because you can be
positive about this but come across like you're just quite
making fun of someone or belittling something. But this is
positive in a way of like, it's really awesome that
we can do something for each other. And you know what,
if you go on there and write a letter, you'll

(40:36):
feel good about yourself and you'll feel like you're part
of the thing, and it'll be It's just everything about
it is just phenomenally positive from every perspective, and that's
awesome to be part of.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
It's just hope, Like that's literally I'm like I was
trying to think. I was like, it's not optimistic, it's
just hopeful.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Well, that's that is at the end of the day.
That is the reason to stay, right, the reason to
state only exists when there's hope, and when there's no hope,
then there's no reason to stay. So all we're trying
to do in that moment is give someone something, some little,
tiny little spark of hope to get them through that moment,
and that, for a lot of people is what that

(41:11):
letter represents. And I just think that, you know, I
know that in the three and a half million people
that've read a letter, I know that so many of
them really feel connected to that person that's written a letter.
And it's almost like, and I knew this when I
was designing, Actually there's something I wanted people to feel.
It's almost like somewhere there is your letter writer. They're real,

(41:35):
they're out there, and it's like you've got this guardian angel,
this person that you don't know and will never meet,
that's just sort of cheering you on. And I just
think there's something quite beautiful in that being a reason
to stay when everything else in your life is absolutely
chaos and you've got no hope. You've got that person
who's written you a letter because they care, and if

(41:58):
you have no other reason to stay, they can be
that reason. I think that that is a very very
very powerful thing to give someone that maybe has nothing,
what does or feels like they have nothing.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
And also just the sense of like, oh, somebody cares
about me, like somebody is thinking about me, and that's
like so beautiful. Okay, let's finish.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Up with a couple of questions.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
So we're going to talk about your book in a second, okay,
but firstly, let's talk about some other things that you
are beyond mental health. Yeah, so I've got some rapid
fire questions here we go before we're going to finish
with two final questions. We'll let you have your water.
We've been depriving you of it.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
Feel like I need to prepare for these, Well, you do.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
They're very important. Okay, are you ready? A favorite song
at the moment.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
Or anything by Noah Kahn? What's the new Album's? Absolutely
fantastic view between villagers? That was the old album, wasn't it?
But that is probably my favorite? And it's also the
tune I put over my huge viral reel, so almost
fit feels like a very he was fitting song for that.
Did he see the real No?

Speaker 1 (43:05):
I don't think so maybe secretly, I feel like he
secretly did.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
Please And also he does amazing work for mental health,
so I find a way of clabbing him. Yeah, yeah,
he's awesome. He's an album.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
If I get his number of sener to you do?

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah? Maybe he used a ten million celebrations.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
I love how we're putting it out.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
Yeah, yeah, few two villages. Great subway order, subway order,
Mabel Marinara, cheese and.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Toasted, cheese and toasted.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
What kind of bread hearty Italian?

Speaker 1 (43:34):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (43:35):
Classic, the beste So you lettuce, pickles, plipinos and then
weirdly not rancher. Why is it left me? It's the
sort of spicy male thing. Weird. Once you're in with
your selection, you can't really change, can you know? I

(43:57):
was very sauty sandwich.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Yeah, I was thinking that. I was like, it's square
a spicy sandwiches as well.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
It's quite difficult to eat off your or not. Yeah, no, no, no, interesting.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Okay, who's your favor This is a real hard question.
Who's your favorite?

Speaker 2 (44:12):
Neppo Baby Wow Baby. Roman Camp he's pick up the
mental health topic. I know we're trying to get away
from mental health, but he does do amazing work.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
I don't know who that is.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Roman Camp in the UK Capital Breakfast used to be
Capital Breakfast. He does Vota phone adverts.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
Oh okay, well I'm not from the UK, so I
need to do my research.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Roman Camp in the UK and internationally. His dad was
Martin Kemp, who's in a band.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
Of course I know who that is. Yeah, what's the bed.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
The band put me on? I have no idea, no
offense to Mark and Camp.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
I'm going to go to Terence. It's okay, I'll wikipedia
favorite royal family member.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
Oh, Prince William Yeah strong again, like big up the
mental health.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
My friend met him and he was him and Princess Kate.
Princess Kate is that her name? Pro Yes, she's a
princess yea. And she was like, that's like every I
feel like Australians come to the UK and they're like,
so I need to meet a royal.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Lovely. They do some amazing work And actually I work
quite closely with the Kensingto Palace team, and like obviously
he's very committed to like mental health.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
He really is that a really good job on like
a very serious level.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
Yeah. And actually when I've met him previously talking about
some of the stuff that we're doing, he's always he's
always quite in a good way, quite like it gives
you challenge about stuff that you can do. So it's
like it's not just briefed to know a little bit
enough to get through a conversation. He like really knows
his stuff. Which I've always thought was a good sign

(45:48):
if someone actually cares rather than just sort of repeating
what he was told. Yeah, I really really really knows
this stuff when it comes to mental health.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
And that's a good lesson for like people like us
as well to be like, okay, when we like engage
other people, like all the people that we work with
higher up as well, like, how do we engage them? Like,
it's actually good to push back a little bit something, But.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
If challenge is always a good thing with the right
tone coming alongside and helping trying to understand what you
could do more of. Yeah, but yeah, he's always been
good for that.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
I love that you are a close perhaps close friend
of Prince William. So now I can talk it off
mindless Prince William. Yeah, and Roman Camp.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
If they're free for the ten million, let's.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
Get them on a round table. Come on, first.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
Job, first job, bar in a bar, in a pub? Yeah,
in a pub.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
What was the pub called?

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Oh that's the Milkhouse.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
The Milkhouse. See, I thought it was going to be
like His Lord's Head or something. Have some weird names
around here.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
They do. We love a weird name, I know.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
And and the amount of them that are called like
the Queen's something.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Yeah, the Queen's head. Yeah, yeah, there's there's some what's.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
The w Yeah, the Queen's Queen's I don't know. Well
you well, I wasn't. I'm about to say where you lived,
so I'm not going to do that. But I always
found that place funny. Yes, what's your biggest advice?

Speaker 2 (47:08):
Oh, slow walkers? You know, and which is ironic because
I was really late to this.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Okay, but pet peeve, what's advice? Like, what's something that
you do that you're like, I shouldn't do that? Oh?

Speaker 2 (47:21):
From me personally, that's a really good question. Oh. I
love coke zero. You know everyone tells you that it's
coke zero worse than normal coke. I have tons of
coke sero, you know that. I just get through it.
How much do you so your kind is my coke cerroo?

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Well, my coke zero is also my coke. I'm not
gonna lie. I've yeah. My doctor was like you got
to stop. Really, she was like, it's bad for you,
really bad.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
For I know. That's I found myself on forums, not
forums like midnight going. Is coke zero better than normal coke?
Or is it is it the sugar that's bad or
is it aspartame or something? And all these artificial sweetness
look away. You could be and coffee. To be fair,
I have a lot of coffee, which I know is

(48:13):
not very good for you.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
I think coffee is not the worst vice.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
No, a nice little nice bit. I think sometimes they
got both because I do a lot of coffee meetings.
Do you know when people like coffee? I stack my coffees.
So what happens is then you've got like five people
you're meeting in the morning, and you have every coffee,
and I need to be better at going I'm just
gonna have hot chocolate. Actually, zero it up on the rocks, please,

(48:40):
or hot chocolate. That's a great idea, but sometimes you
feel like this shouldn't be the case. But sometimes you
feel that you can't order hot chocolate because it's charged.
If I'm meeting like a really, look at me, I'm
dressed like this, because imagine why I walked up and
I was like, whatever, hot chocolate, marshmallows, please double marsh.
I'm not sure that's great for my credibility.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
I think it's honestly better because you're like, I'm confident
enough that I'm gonna like, look, how I represent my
ideals right now?

Speaker 2 (49:03):
True? Because I'm a black Americano guy as well. So
that is a big shift.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
That's a big cost.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
You couldn't get further from a Black Americano.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
Maybe a mocer get me somewhere in the middle.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
Give it a go, Give it a go.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Then, Okay, two more questions. You already said, because pet
people is the next question.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
So slow walkers, yeah, I'm the same. Yeah, and people
that walk in groups on small papers. I live in London, right,
We've got very small pavements in some of these places,
and it is people walk very slowly in lines.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
I don't know why they do that. I have to
really hold it in I do.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
It's my I can get my girlfriends the same. Yeah,
when we're together walking and that happens.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
It's have you gone by down Regions Canal recently?

Speaker 2 (49:46):
So pavements there are only one person wired and you've
got three people walking, yeah, holding hands and I've got
somewhere to go. Yeah, and they don't they just yeah,
you enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
Favorite Tivish favorite TV show. Oh you know what I
loved MythBusters random one, but that was so good. That
is my childhood Adam Savage.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
And the other one, Yeah, I know he is he
still alive?

Speaker 2 (50:18):
No, you know it was No, they're both, they're both alive.
It was Grant who died. Oh god, from the you know,
there was the two and then there was the three.
I was very sad. He was quite young. Actually, I
think it was maybe last year.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
Do you know they weren't friends.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
I know they didn't get on.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
They didn't get on.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
I would never know.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
No, they were so good. What was your favorite myth?

Speaker 2 (50:38):
Favorite myth? There was one about a bullet curving that
was quite good when you tried it like that, that
was quite good. I mean, all the explosions are great. God,
it's a really good question. It's been a long time
since I've watched any of them.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
Mine was another bullet one was like getting shot underwater.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
Oh, that was good.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
Watching this episode get rated R now.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
Was great. And then you can't go wrong with a
bit of SpongeBob.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
That's I did not think you were going to say that.
I thought you were maybe like a Parks in Red
Brooklyn nine nine guy.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
No, neither, I've not watched either of those shows. I'm
actually very good for TV. My girlfriend's big, like her
family is very big on films and TV shows, And
I'm sorry I get outed every time they're like, oh,
if he's not seen that, you should definitely have seen that.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
When somebody's like you haven't seen Parks and Recreation, no,
and you're like, no, that was about.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
To be me.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
So okay, let's talk about your book.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
My book.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
Look what he has right here.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
So awesome to see in real life.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
What's it called for the people who aren't watching?

Speaker 2 (51:48):
This is called Reasons Too. It's based on reasons to Stay.
But this is going to be filled with letters from
real people for not just moments where you might need
a reason to stay. But I just love the idea
of people writing about grief and anxiety and overthinking and depression,
and like, I really want this book to be there
for any moment when whatever you're going through, you can

(52:10):
open it and there'll be a letter from a real person,
just like with Reasons to Stay, but about a moment
in your in your life. Wow, and this one is
currently I was going to be empty.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
I was going to say, can you read us one?

Speaker 2 (52:21):
This is my inspiration to actually get the work done.
And but yeah, no, this is this is sort of
it's lovely to be able to actually see this, but
we are. These pages are eventually going to be filled
with real people's letters. I just think that's gonna be
so beautiful, Like just whatever you're going through, Open it

(52:42):
to a page and someone's written you a letter about
the thing that you're going through. How beautiful, And it
just gets to the heart of what Reasons Today is about.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Are you going to write them all?

Speaker 2 (52:51):
No, these will be other people. There'll be people that
have submitted to Reasons to Stay. So we're taking basically
the best letters from all these different topics and putting
them in here. So no, I am not writing I
think I'm the less I write in this, I think
the better. I really want this to be exactly with
like with Reasons to Stay, where it's strangers supporting strangers,
and all of them will be real people, and so

(53:13):
there will be there will be a situation where you know,
I'll have I don't know how many letters we're choosing yet,
one hundred, one hundred and fifty real people that have
really spent time writing. Oh how special The less I
write in here the better because I just want to
sort of curate this with people's words. Yeah, and also,

(53:34):
and it's going to be anonymous as well, so you know,
you've again, like reasons to say, You've got these people
out there in the world that have sat there and
written this because they care.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
Also in the in the age of AI got a
physical book with advice from real people, and.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
We're you know, very it's very difficult because you know,
and this is a really good point actually, because a
lot of people that have written that is on Reason's
Stay have been AI. I don't know, maybe I should
not mention this, but it's funny because AI has learned
now what the perfect letter is for reasons to Stay.

(54:11):
So what's really interesting is you can tell it's from
AI because it's all the same, so that Tajubut has
learned through lots and lots of thousands of people asking
it this, it gives you the same letter. So although
it sounds good, I know that that line is the
same in about five thousand of them, like there's a lot.

(54:32):
So it's and one thing, you know, the reason people
turn to AI is because it's a difficult task. It's
really really hard to know what to say to someone,
and that is the point, Like it should feel hard,
it should feel really difficult, because in order to write
a good letter to someone, you have to connect with

(54:52):
something in you that feels that the only way you
can answer the question of why should you not die
is understanding what you like about life, and there's something
really difficult and special in that question. So yeah, it's
actually a really good point of like, if you're using AI,

(55:13):
that defeats the point for you and for them, because
it's not about you know, reasons to stay is not
about the words that are written. It's about the person
that's written them and why and if you know, with AI,
it's just words. But with a letter that's written by
real human being, actually the words matter less than the

(55:35):
fact that you've spent the time doing it. So yeah,
no AI.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
In the book.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yeah, there are there are places in the world for
AI letters to people in this space. It's just not
that it's not it. So yeah, it's we're we're getting
very good at working out.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
Which one day I know the feeling I get people, yeah,
I want it, but I can always tell when like
you're like you.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Can that's not a real perose. So this will be
real people. Yeah, and the reasons say we'll always be
real people.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
Well, we'll leave a link in the description to pre
order something that people should know. Preorders of books are
the most important.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
That's so important because they basically drive who stocks you exactly. Yeah,
so actually it's really important to pre order.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
Don't wait for it to come out, although you can
if you would like, but you probably should pre order it.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
You can. It's a bit of a wake because we've
got to compile them.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
That would would be a nice surprise, your reason to
stay Yeah, because your book will arrive.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
There we go.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Okay, final question. Yes, we asked us of every single guest,
what is one piece of advice you have for people
in their twenties that has nothing to do with what
we spoke about today. Wow.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
Oh that's such a good point. I think we have
spoken about it. But I just I am such an
advocate for running, for running that sounds so lame, No,
because I would be listening to this like three years
ago and I'd be like, that is just terrible advice.

(57:09):
I read a book, an amazing book called Born to Run.
If you are if you wanted to get into running
but haven't quite or you've never really enjoyed running. Read
that book. I don't earn anything from saying.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Who wrote it.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Christopher McDougall. He's a running journalist in America, and he
basically he's obsessed with the idea that there's a there's
lots of tribes around the world that can run ultramarathons,
and there's one called the mispronounced this the tarot Taro
who Mura Tarooma in New Mexico. They basically they run

(57:45):
one hundred miles for fun, right, And he basically goes
there and they wear to They do these races in
disused car tires, sandals made from old car tire right.
So it's basically like we've got these like two hundred
pounds foam shoes here and we'd struggled like five k

(58:07):
and they're literally doing it in tires. And the whole
book it's not all about them. It's basically about how
the human being evolved and our evolution and how we
used to. We are built the way we are. Our
Achilles is the size it is because we are designed
to run and be able to recover aerobically on the run.

(58:29):
And it's an amazing book because basically, and this sounds
a bit like I'm some weird runner now, it basically
makes you realize actually running to us is a little
bit like flying to a bird, and it's like we're
so it's so genetically wired into us to be able
to do it. So I loved it. I read that
book and then I decided to sign up for an
ultra marathon and I literally running for me now is everything.

(58:54):
And what's amazing as well is that you will if
you do it, and you've just go up and put
your trainers on and get out of the door, you
will see yourself improve, which I think is fantastic in itself,
but you will. Also it's an amazing thing, which is
that it's always just as hard for everyone, Like whether
you've never run before, if you run as hard as

(59:15):
you can, that's always as hard. You might run faster,
but it's always feels as hard. And I don't think
there's anything really in life where everyone has the universal
experience of how hard it is. You might do different things,
but everyone feels the same. I think that's quite special.
So you're not racing anyone, you're only ever improving yourself.
It's one of the best things I ever started doing.

(59:37):
I loved that book Run you Don't hurt yourself. Yeah,
just get out the door and even if you have
to walk and run and walk and run and just
think it's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
Yeah, such great advice.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
And I would never have imagined i'd say that to someone.
This is the thing.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
I think when people get into running, they're like, oh
my god, I'm so boring, and then you start doing
it and you're.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
Like, yeah, but yeah, I get it. I think it's
because not to go on if we're wrapping up. But
I think it's because at school running was always a punishment,
like if you talk, if you were talking back to
the classical conditioning, if you're talking like you'd be told
to run around the field or like there was always
a bad thing. And then there was an amazing moment

(01:00:17):
where losing Sam, I just went, I'm going to just
go for a run to get out of the house.
And then I just never stopped doing it. I just
love it. It's the only time that in public transport. Weirdly,
it's the only time my brain's ever quiet. My brain's
really quiet on the bus. Love it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
I never thought about that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
Yeah, it's where I do my best, like thinking on
the bus, I've had reasons to stay. Came on a bus. Wow,
that was a bus journey.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
I feel like that used to be the shower, but
now we listen to music in the shower.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Yeah, showers just music now Yeah, and getting ready very
getting ready, very like stress for bus. There we go
to ride the super Loop around London.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
Just the super Loop. I'm not going to do that,
so I don't want to be on any more public
transport in the city every again. I might have to.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
I think all the chieves are broken. I think I'm
going to be on the bus back.

Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
Oh dang, well, thanks for coming on, Thank you for
having me. Yeah, thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Thanks for sharing. We're going to leave links in the
description to everything Reasons to Say the book. You can
see what bends up to. He's doing some really cool
stuff always, which is so cool being best buddies with
Prince William, So I expect a selfie on there from

(01:01:28):
him soon. But yeah, thank you again. If you have
made it this far, leave a little white heart emoji
down below, just so that we know that you've listened
all the way to the end and that you enjoyed
this episode. As always, we also have full episodes on
Netflix if you want to go and watch this talk
or future conversations that we have. I'll also leave links

(01:01:50):
in the description down below. There's always a bunch of
stuff to go and explore and go in too further
down there. So until next time, be safe, be kind,
be gentle to yourself. We will talk a very sotain
m hm.