July 1, 2020 • 55 mins
Samara chats with the UK author, comedian, and pod icon who says “be your own version of what you think an adult should look like and sound like, and only you get to decide what that is.”
They talk the Buddhism of speaking in public, surprising lessons everyone can take from standup and improv, and tips for owning all the rooms, which, spoiler: is about the sizzle, not the composition of the sausage.
Follow Viv: @vivgroskop, vivgroskop.com/
Her latest books:
penguin.co.uk/books/111/1117056/how-to-own-the-room/9781787631120.html
penguin.co.uk/books/1118966/lift-as-you-climb/9781787633049.html
abramsandchronicle.co.uk/book/9781419742989-au-revoir-tristesse/
Her masterclass on How to Cope with Uncertainty at Work:
youtube.com/watch?v=Og7ZAdenTaI
Follow Jameela Jamil: @jameelajamilofficial
Mary Portas’ book, Work like a Woman: penguin.co.uk/books/111/1115457/work-like-a-woman/9781784163624.html
Mary Beard’s book, Women & Power: wwnorton.com/books/9781631494758
Tig Notaro’s standup:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today's quote is from Jamila Jamille on Instagram um in
a long post about the Kim Kardashian image that's really
unsettling and that a lot of people wanted her to
respond to, and she said, there's no point at screaming.
There's no point in screaming at her. The smart thing
to do is to protect yourself. You have the power.
(00:21):
You control every market. You choose what and who is trendy. Unfollowed.
The people who tell you things that hurt your self esteem,
don't let the debris of their damage spill out onto you.
Unfollow people slash brands that don't make you feel powerful
and happy and grateful for what you have. You are
(00:42):
the boss, and none of them are shipped without you.
The patriarchy. This is all in caps. The patriarchy wants
us to focus on our weight instead of power, equality
and psychological freedom. Fuck anyone who encourages this. Welcome to
(01:04):
permission to speak. The podcast about How we talk and
how we get ourselves hurt with me Samarbe. Today's guest
is viv Groskop. She is a British journalist and author
and comedian with a huge podcast in the UK called
(01:25):
How to Own the Room, where she interviews room owning
women about their secrets to you know, living as themselves
in public. As I see it, I wanted to have
her on because you know, she's really been living with
this work as much as I have, if not more
so and for longer. And her book How to Own
(01:45):
the Room, which is amazing, was followed by this year's
Lift As You Climb, which is about women and the
art of ambition and explores, as you might guess from
the title, what it is to a mass power collectively
and to help each other, to be helped, to ask
for help, to rise together. I mean, she is the
sort of mentor that you don't tell you just quietly
(02:07):
get mentored by them from afore without them knowing until
you have them on your podcast. So uh. Also, I
should say, for the careful listeners out there, you might
remember her as being the woman that I quoted at
the top of an episode a few weeks ago about
learning how to say your job title without cringing. So yes,
(02:29):
I indeed I asked her how she answers that question,
and I think that her answer is revealing. And one
more thing a few months ago now, when the pandemic
had just hit England. She answered questions for about an
hour on a YouTube show that is still up and
I'm going to link to it. It was called how
to Cope with Uncertainty at Work, and I honestly think
(02:49):
it is the single most useful resource on that subject.
And we ended up cutting our reference to it in
this conversation, but I'm including a link in the show
notes and I'm shouting out about it here because the
questions that she answered from viewers in real time and
the framework that she offered for mental health, I think
it is just what we need to stay sane and
(03:11):
to give ourselves permission during this ongoingly wild time. I
think it will make you feel better about yourself, and
I think it will make you feel better about humanity,
which honestly you can say about viv in general. Here
she is I'd love to start, actually by asking you
(03:35):
how you describe what you do to others or to yourself?
How do I describe what I do to others or
to myself? I like to ask this question. Actually, I
often asked this question of guests when I'm interviewing. Is
if you are introducing yourself to someone at a posty,
what would you say? And I always think, I really
hope no one ever asked me this question. I guess
(03:59):
I just try and say something very simple, like I'm
an author and a comedian, because those things are true,
but I'm maybe not everybody's kind of stereotypical idea of
what those things are, because I'm not really a stand
up comedian who does the circuit the whole time. I
have been, but i haven't been for a few years,
(04:20):
and that's a choice that I've made. I'm not saying
I would and never go back to that, but I'm
not doing that at the moment. I tend to do
my own comedy shows, write my own stuff, um and
dip in and out of the circuit, and then I
write lots of very different kinds of books. So I've
written five books, half of which are about performance and
(04:41):
half of which are about really random esoteric forms of
foreign literature. So yeah, authoring, comedian or writer or you know,
whatever anyone wants to call me. I'm I'm actually not
that hung up on those labels anymore. I used to be,
but I'm not, I hear you, And that's actually I
was thinking about what I was really asking when I
(05:01):
when I wrote this question, and I I'm interested in
this idea of what how do you describe what you do?
Rather than you know, sort of what's your title, because
of course, for many of us, are titles just don't contain,
you know, the multitude of like what our actual experiences
and also more to the point, what we love about
what we do. You know, because it seems like so
much of your um from from my experience as a
(05:24):
listener of your podcast and a reader of your books,
you're just so curious, like you're you're a professional curious person. Yes,
I am a professional curious person. Next time I go
to a party soon says what you do, I'm gonna say,
I am a professional curious person. I have a coach
and you got that one for fruit. That is pretty
(05:45):
much what I am. And I don't like the idea
of having to define that or change that. And I
guess originally by trade, I'm a journalist. And a journalist,
you know, from the days before the internet, you know,
a journalist is a person who is professionally curious, who's
trying to find stuff out, who's trying to find out
(06:05):
the things that people are trying not to tell you
or what's the real hidden subtext? And that is always
what's going on for me, whether it's comedy or podcasting
or how to own the room stuff. You know, when
we talk about owning it and nailing it and smashing
it all of what do we really mean? What do
those things really look like? I love asking those kind
of questions, But very often when people ask me what
(06:27):
I do, the answer I will give will depend on
what I think they're most going to be interested in,
because often the things I'm most interested in in what
I do are like the smallest part. So if you
said to me, like, what's the thing you've done in
the past year that you're most proud of? Um, I
wrote a radio play which had a big part for
myself in it because I want to do more acting
(06:51):
and that's really important to me. But that is not
the thing that I'm most known for. The thing I
would probably be most known for is having a very
successful podcast US that's had Hillary Clinton on it. But
I think you listen to it. I listened to it,
you know, high hung on every word of Hillary and Chelsea.
(07:12):
They were a great pairing. It was really interesting and
to be I think I found you through a recommendation,
and um, I was it was before this podcast launched,
and I was, I had just parked. I was listening
while I was driving, and I parked at a grocery
store and I just sat in the car and I
kept listening, and it was you and Sarah Herwitz. Oh yeah,
(07:34):
the Obama's speech, right, who's now has been a guest
on my podcast? And um, and connected us, I should say,
and I I mean, looking back now, I'm like, I
can't believe I got I'm actually, you know, talking to you.
But at the moment, I had this crazy you know,
sitting in a parking lot thinking I didn't know here
I had pitched this podcast that's about how to use
(07:56):
your voice, which is also the same thing as how
to own the room, because how to use your voice
isn't just like how to open your mouth and have
sounds come out. It's how to do that in a
way where you feel like you belong in the space
that you're in. Yeah. I had to rise to the
to the occasion, whatever the occasion is. And I thought, like, A,
You're such a genius, and I'm so I'm so thrilled
(08:17):
to discover you and like listen to the you know
backlog and be um, I realized in the moment that
I'm like the American version of the Office and didn't
even realize like I was play side version. Yeah, it's
really great. You know, this space of encouraging women and
particularly women, I think, or anyone who thinks of themselves
(08:37):
as not an alpha as in a L P H.
A UM, anyone who feels like they're held back in
some way, you know, whether it's self imposed or imposed
by society. There's a whole movement of people exploring this space.
At the moment, there's an explosion of it. And I
think it's interesting you mentioned Sarah Howitz because I really
(08:59):
think it starts you to with Michelle Obama's speaking and
many of the things that we know her for, like,
you know, when they go low, we go high. And
I lived in a house that was I raised by girls,
in a house that was built by slaves. You know,
all of those phrases which Sarah Howitz had a hand in.
She's very modest about her contribution to those speeches, and
(09:19):
she'll say, you know, I was just there in the
room when Michelle Obama came up with it. But I
think those speeches and Michelle Obama's delivery of them, and
the way they were received by people, the way they
went viral on YouTube. I think over the last ten years,
it's completely defined how people around the world think about
how we can own our voices, own our story and
(09:40):
do it in a way that is very new and
fresh and doesn't have to conform to some kind of
stereotype or something that we've seen before. And that is
hugely I think down to Michelle Obama and the mass
appeal that she has, and also down to the person
who will never come on my podcast, but I would
welcome any mo went with open arms, which is Oprah Winfrey.
(10:02):
You know, I think Oprah was the first person to
really promote that idea of women having a voice, people
being able to change their narrative and talk about personal
story rather than really really big ideas. That you know,
small ideas matter just as much as big ideas, and
so those two I think over time really changed people's
(10:25):
minds about what power looks like and what authority looks like.
Speaking of personal stories, do you remember when you thought
this is something I want to take up, This owning
the room. Um, it's stemmed really from massive failure on
my part in that I stayed away from the things
that I really wanted to do with my life for
(10:47):
a long time because I was scared of them. And
one of those things was stand up comedy and acting
and performing. And I became a writer because I was
scared of those things, and it was kind of a
second best for me. I mean at the time, I
didn't really realize that. Think as you get older, you
start to realize the lies that you're telling yourself. I
also heard you say somewhere that you that you grew
up in a you know, sort of quiet um. I
(11:07):
think you use the mousey family that I didn't. That
I did not. I did not grow up in a
showbiz family, and my parents didn't go to university and
were not urban. Let's say, you know, I grew up
in a rural community long way from London, and I
didn't know anybody who was doing the kind of things
(11:29):
that I dreamed of doing, and I was I wasn't
exactly discouraged by my parents, but somehow I got the
idea that to do these things that I dreamed of,
like performing or even writing, actually was quite a tough
gig to take on these were sort of crazy things
and you should get a proper job. Um, there's there's
(11:50):
a whole like narrative in the British class system about
getting a proper job, which I think is, you know,
since the internet has been invented at slightly been exploded,
which is very good. But growing up in the seventies
and the eighties, I got this idea that I couldn't
do lots of these crazy things. So it took me
a long time to get to stand up. And then
I started doing stand up in my mid thirties when
(12:12):
I had three children, and ended up writing a book
called I Laughed. I cried how one woman took on
stand up and almost ruined her life, which was all
about the open mic circuit, how difficult it is, how
tough it is for women, how tough it was for me,
and how tough I was on myself. And that book
(12:34):
it did okay, but it didn't do great, and I
was kind of disappointed with how it was received because
most people received this book as in, oh, who's this
crazy woman who's taken up stand up and isn't stand
up scary? Whereas for me it was much more a
story about finding your voice and doing things that you're
scared of. So I began to think a lot about
(12:55):
how can I open up that conversation, how can I
make it more relevant to other people? How can I
broaden it beyond stand up because the lessons aren't really
about stand up comedy. They're about life and they're about confidence.
And gradually, out of that, how To in the Room
was born and started as a book and then became
a podcast completely by accident. What was the accident, Well,
(13:18):
the accident was about two weeks before the book was
due to come out. There's this fantastic woman in the
UK called Mary Portas who just thought her book because
of the interview you guys did. Yeah, she's so great.
She's a kind of a she's known as a retail
entrepreneurial guri. So she used to have a show on
TV called Mary Queen of Shops where she would go
(13:38):
around examining stores and telling them what they were doing wrong.
She's kind of like she's kind of like the guys
on Queer Eye. Actually, you know, she's kind of like
Bobby but for shops. And she's a big phenomenon over here.
And I think there's probably lots of people in the
US know her too. But she got in touch with
(13:58):
me because I had interviewed her for other things and said,
what can I do to help you with your book?
And I went how to own the room was about
to come out, and I said, well, I could interview
for the podcast that goes alongside the book, which didn't
exist and I really just thought of and she said okay, yeah, great,
(14:19):
And as soon as she said yes, I was like, oh, okay,
I'm going to have to do this now. So once
I had her, I then got Nigella Lawson. Then I
got Professor Mary Beard, who's a historian TV historian over here.
He's very popular, and then it just grew from there.
Mary Beard is like, what a dream? Her book Women
(14:39):
in Power was a huge influence on me as well.
Oh great, I'm so glad. It's so great that these
ideas travel because sometimes in the UK we think, oh,
these are people who belong to us and no one
else knows about them. But that's great. Yeah, Women in
Powers an incredible book. Um. I mean I found her
because I'm a huge nerd around this topic obviously, but
but truly, for anyone listening it is insanely short, like
(15:02):
reading an afternoon short, and you will be armed with
an understanding of patriarchal silencing from the odyssey to Hillary
Clinton to today. Actually, this is a I have a
related question around this because I wonder if you have
noticed anything about American versus British culture when it comes
to this room owning, you know, dream, Yeah, the main
(15:26):
thing I noticed, and it's come up a few times
on how to in the room. Um, when I've because
I've interviewed probably maybe a quarter of the interviewees that
I've done out of fifty six plus are American, it
very often comes up that we don't have public speaking
as something that we do in school as a matter
(15:48):
of course. Where but the stereotype is Americans do. I
don't know if that I don't know that's always always true,
but and it seems quite a weird stereotype in some
ways because if you look at somebody like our Prime
Minister Boris Johnson, you know, he's clearly schooled in public speaking,
and he makes that a big part of what he
(16:09):
does in a big part of his appeal. But he
is from the private school system, and the private school
system over here is really the only place where you
would be taught to debate, you would be taught public
speaking formally. In the rest of the school system, you
you don't really get that, whereas people have said to me,
in the American system, you have loads of opportunities to
present in front of the class. You're expected to be
(16:30):
able to do that from a young age. I don't
know if this is true or not, but it seems
to be a stereotype that people have. Um it also
plays into the stereotype of the loud American. So the
idea that you know, Americans are confident, it's like, well,
you know two fifty million people, are you really sure
that they are all exactly the same. But there is
the idea that you know, Americans are confident. In British
(16:51):
not so much. But I've found that it's just a
lot of these stereotypes are not true. I mean, I
just interviewed the novelists Kylie Read, the author of Such
a Fun Age, and most of our conversation was about
her being an introvert and how she owns her power
in a very quiet way. And what I've always wanted
(17:12):
to do with the podcast in the book is to
explode some of these myths around the idea that you
have to be loud, you have to be brash, you
have to be charismatic, you have to own the room.
You know, what ways are there of owning the room
that are quietly strong, that are really using pauses or
(17:34):
something that we haven't seen. And you know, since I
wrote it, this idea of the type of speaking that
we don't recognize as powerful until we see it, that
has become more and more of a phenomenon with people
like Greta Tunberg, you know, sixteen year old autistic doesn't
have Asperger syndrome, she doesn't have English as her first language.
(17:54):
One of the most popular speakers in the world. Malala
one of the most popular speakers in the world. Uh,
you know, Megan, she's another kind of really interesting, quietly
confident speaker. So trying to was that those things and
Megan as in I never know watched Coroner like the
Duchess of Sussex as in Princess Princess Megan, Oh my god,
(18:17):
that reference totally last time. Okay, you got it now, yes, yes, yeah,
So there's this whole new cohort of interesting young speakers
who don't conform to this idea of well, you're American
and so you must be this way, or you're a
sixteen year old woman, so no one will want to
(18:37):
listen to you. You know, all of those things are
being exploded now and that's what's great about this moment.
Some other examples of people who come to mind when
when I think about this too is Emma Gonzalez, who
was hugely influential after that, uh, the mass killing of
high school students a few years ago, in the movement
(18:58):
that that came out of that. You know, she was eighteen,
seventeen eighteen, and you know, she took a mic and
she held silence for the amount of time that the
massacred happened, and when she spoke, she said things like
we call bs and it, you know, took the nation
by storm. And what a great example of you know,
as well as AOC obviously in the in the US,
(19:21):
and recently Killer Mike and Tamika Mallory who have given
voice to the Black Lives Matter uprising. Each of them
has reminded us leaders are people who rise to the moment.
They're not people who have been trained or who or
who have been handed a title. Yeah, ticely. I'm interested
(19:41):
in this idea too. I wanted to talk about I
could tell that you've been underlining a lot recently the
different ways that we can own the room, and I
think that's so, you know, powerful, because it's true. There
is this sort of stereotype that many of us grew
up with that the way to um, you know, stand
in front of a microphone and miss your opportunity is
to be the most as you say, alpha version of ourselves,
(20:03):
which I think is just some you know, masculine trope
that we men and women probably should be questioning, and
it doesn't necessarily sort of many of us in terms
of trying to bring some authentic version of ourselves into
those spaces. There's just a lot of ways to speak
publicly successfully. One of the things I do is try
and be very upfront about terms that I'm not comfortable with.
(20:28):
The public speaking is one of them. So I'll often
be at an event or doing a podcast or or
something like that and I'll say, you know, I hate
the expression public speaking. This is not about public speaking.
I don't know how it is in the US, but
in the UK, the term public speaking is very it
sounds very archaic. It's very off putting to a lot
(20:51):
of women, to a lot of younger people. It sounds like,
you know, people in a debating chamber at the end
of the nineteenth century all going wow, Wow, that's it's
it's just so horrific. Yeah, I think there's a new
there's going to be some new way to talk about this.
I don't know what it is yet, because it's up
(21:12):
to us to figure it out, isn't it. Which is
why I use the expression owning the room because I
wanted it to be whatever that means to you, and
whatever the room is. You know, the room might be
your kitchen where you're trying to get your kids to
do something. The room might be a digital room where
you're in your room like in your bedroom on your own,
but talking to lots of people. Or it could be
(21:33):
an auditorium with five thousand people. So I break that
down into owning the room because that was what meant
the most to me and meant I didn't have to
say public speaking. But now I think people tend to
talk a lot about communication. You know, people want to
be better communicators. I mean that also has a ring
of something a little bit kind of linked in for
(21:53):
me that I don't like. But in some ways we
have to use some of these terms so that we
can be clear what we're talking about. So I'll very happily,
you know, do an event if it's called like how
to be a better public speaker, if that's what the
event organizers want to call it. But the first thing
I will say is, please don't want to be a
(22:14):
better public speaker, because no one wants that. But then
you get into very sort of an Operah has owned
this language very well in the American context, perhaps more
so than the British where people are still wary of it.
But it's really about being more. You be more yourself,
be a better version of yourself. Authenticity. You know you
mentioned that word. That's what everybody wants. You know, everybody
(22:36):
just wants to come across as the most natural version
of themselves and they want to be the same person
as they are with their friends and their family when
they're at their best, but in a professional context. So
if you could just find a word that means that tomorrow,
then that's the word. You know, I'm working on it,
But now I mean this idea of scaling up our
(22:58):
favorite selves in a scarier and scarier contexts, you know,
I think at the heart of it, yeah, and feeling
comfortable as yourself in settings which perhaps don't feel natural
to you. That's what it's really about. Okay, we're gonna
take a quick break and be back with more and
more specifics after this. Okay, we're back with viv gross Cup.
(23:28):
So we were talking before the break about bringing ourselves
into scarier spaces. But I mean, you know, one size
doesn't at all, of course, and a lot of listeners
have more sort of conforming that they feel like they
have to do, or maybe they do have to do
to fit into their work culture. Yeah. Absolutely, mean some
(23:52):
of this is awkward because there are always going to
be norms of what sounds good, what looks good, and
sometimes we're not very comfortable with these norms. I was
talking on a radio program yesterday about smiling and how
important smiling is when you're on a podium or even
(24:13):
you know, on a zoom call or anything where other
people are looking at you. At the very least, a
smile in the eyes, even when you're being serious, is
so important. And when you're presenting material to people, you
need to smile at them. And people, especially women, especially
senior women, and a lot of senior men, actually resist
(24:35):
this and say, I don't want to smile. I don't
want to, you know, make nice. I don't want to
sort of lessen my power by smiling. I want to
be taken seriously. And people don't understand that just because
you smile doesn't mean you won't be taken seriously. You know,
Barack Obama, if you watch anything he does with the
sound turned off, he is smiling the whole time at
(24:58):
some point, even if it's just his eyes, even when
he's talking. He did a I think it was a
sixty second social media video the other day about Black
Lives Matter, and it was ultra serious. It couldn't have
been more serious. He absolutely has a smile in the eyes,
and it's not a smile of happy, it's a smile
of humanity and finding things like that that you can
(25:22):
try and overturn people's preconceptions of. You know, if you're
a woman who smiles, then therefore it means it means
you're a pushover. Well it doesn't. It means you're warm
and you're here for people to try and overturn some
of those things. I think is really important. That's really helpful. Yeah. Yeah,
I talk about that too, in terms of finding the
(25:42):
thing that you care about, the passion behind caring, even
if even if what you're talking about is really dark
and heavy. You know, we're up there, We're not even
up there, we're whatever speaking into a zoom. We're doing
we're we're we're grabbing the attention because there's something that
turns us on and we've got to sort of remember
that bringing that because there's so much socialized stuff that
(26:03):
many of us carry that is about like showing we
care too much would be awkward for everybody, or would
be too revealing and vulnerable for myself. So I'm just
going to kind of shut out the as you say that,
the smile in my eyes. Yeah, well, that is a
great fast track to connecting with an audience is to
expose something, something that is actually of genuine risk to you,
(26:27):
so you actually show vulnerability, you actually show authenticity something
you really care about, and to marry it with the
concerns of that audience. Mean, clearly you have to match
it to your audience. You can't just be talking about
what you care about with an audience who don't have
the same concerns. That is where what you are saying
and like meet people where they are. That's where that
(26:50):
match happens. And I think it happens as much in
your face and your body language and in your tone
as it does in your content. And really great speakers,
if you take content and look at it, it actually
doesn't have to be that good, but they lift it
with the level of emotion and commitment that they bring
to it. In fact, to reference your interview with Sarah Herowitz,
(27:12):
I remember when I was sitting in that you know,
Ralph's parking lot that the thing I went back and
listened to a second time around was when you said,
what to a speech writer, what is more important the
words or the delivery? And she said both, but the
delivery wins. Yeah, exactly. I mean you imagine a speech
(27:33):
writers saying you can raise that you know, mediocre content. Yeah,
And it's true. I think people are really accepting this
more and more that we're living in a digital age
and so much content is about the connection that you
make with people while you're on screen, and presence is
so much more important than the actual words that you're saying.
(27:55):
Because a lot of people read as in read your
body language, read your facial expression before they actually tune
into what you're saying. A lot of people are watching
video clips with the sound turned off most of the time,
especially you know, public figures, and this idea that the
speech writer is king and somehow that is going to
(28:15):
make a difference to how you're perceived. It's it's a
very old fashioned idea. I was I was at the
Conference of speech Writers in Washington, d C. Last year,
and this guy gave a presentation which was based on
artificial intelligence examining speeches, and it discovered that this was
(28:38):
like using two thousand different data methods, everything from how
much you frowned and how much she smiled to the
content to have what your hair looks like to what
the audience think of you. All of these data points
they feed it into the AI and it came out
as eleven percent of impact is on content, is on
things like passion, authenticity, try how relaxed you look, which
(29:03):
is so fascinating. And you could see from this eleven percent,
you know, all of these little speech writers faces foul
of what you're saying, that my life's work is only
going to add up to eleven percent of impact. And
that's even if it's of of my impact is only
going to go up to eleven, But it's true. And
there are loads of examples of really really great connectors
(29:27):
with people whose content is actually quite empty when you
write the words down. This is such a useful new
data point too, because there's that classic study that basically
said the same thing. Seven percent I think in that
case was content. You mean the Arabian myth, the Arabian
and the and the and the body line. But you know,
well a few things. One that is so useful to
(29:48):
remember is that these things aren't actually in competition unless
they're telling different stories, right, unless our body language and
our tone of voice is actually saying something different than
our content. But if our content is saying, you know,
I'm thrilled to be here, and everything also about us,
it's also seeming like we're thrilled to be here, then
you know these at these factors are actually a line
in this lovely way where you know, yeah, we get
(30:08):
to trust that the content is actually just being supported
by us exactly. And also I do think that that
eleven percent is really key, And why wouldn't you want
to nail that completely? Why would you want to get
you one percent out of eleven percent in your content,
but in all other areas, you know, and also without content,
(30:29):
there is no speech, So of course you need to
think about your content. But what I've found with how
to own the room and how people approach it and
what questions they have around it, is that people are
overly obsessed with their content that they always think, oh,
if I can just write the perfect thing, or I
can just get this presentation down to however many words,
(30:52):
or if I can just get this down from twenty
slides to eighteen, or you know, they think these things
are the key, and then not. The key is the
energy that you turn up with and the intent that
you have. And when you first tell people about this,
they say, well, that just sounds really lazy, especially women,
because women love to do too much work, and you know,
(31:12):
because they think that's the way to get an A.
But we are not at school anymore and it is
not the way to get an A in real life.
And so all of my work is trying to convince
people that it's more about the sizzle than the composition
of the sausage, because everyone's thinking, oh, but if my
sausage has like fat and seventh cent port and sect. No, no, no,
(31:36):
it's the sizzle that sells the sausage. I've forgotten which
company does this, if it's Apple or Google or but
there's some company where everything that is written down for
people's consumption at certain kind of event, like a conference
or a presentation, it has to be sent to them
in advance, and everybody has to agree to read it.
And then after that everybody has to leave the materials alone,
(32:00):
and everybody has to speak from the heart. And that's
exactly how it should be, because if you are disrespecting
your audience by saying what I have written down here,
or what I have learned, or these words that have
been crafted, they are so important. Also, you know, write
a book. A spoken communication is a connection with an audience.
(32:24):
It's almost a spiritual thing. I want to get very
specific about one of the points in how to Own
the Room, which you call happy high status, happy high status. Yes,
I'm so sorry, happy high status, happy high status. Well
we haven't discussed dialect work happy high status, happy high status. Yeah,
(32:49):
you can even do that, like the Southern California version
if you really want to happy. Thank you for that.
Vocal for for your own experience, for in in the
stand up, but also because as I know it is
a big section of your book. Can you talk to
us about what's happy high status means? It's very nice
(33:10):
British accent, so happy high status is a concept that
I came across that derives from improv comedy, and I
first became obsessed with it because early on, when I
was doing stand up and I was quite new and
I had my five minutes, I had a promoter come
up and say to me. At a competition where I
(33:32):
didn't go through to the next round, she came up
to me and said, you're really good and you can
do this, and you could have gone through, but you
need to play higher status. And at the time I
had no idea what she was talking about, and I
kind of asked her to explain, but she couldn't really
explain it. So I went away and kind of researched
(33:52):
more about what that means and how it would look
like on me, and I became obsessed with this idea
of status, and at the same time I was doing
a lot of stuff in improv, and in improv, one
of the hallmarks of creating a scene that's going to
be funny is about playing around with status, and characters
who are very high status get taken down a peg,
(34:16):
characters who are low status end up becoming the king. Like.
It's all very sort of basic status Playkespeare, Yeah, well,
it's pretty much like every single drama you've ever seen,
in every single bit of comedy you've ever seen, is
that you immediately see the status of all of the
different characters. So you could even think of something like friends.
You know, who are the high status characters In Friends, um,
(34:39):
I would say, you know, Joey is trying to play
really high status, but actually he's quite low status. Chandler
thinks that he's low status, but he's actually high status.
Ross is always playing high status because he knows everything.
You know. It gives people an idea of what these
things mean. And we have and amongst our friends, and
(35:01):
we're constantly up and down in the pecking order. And
I came to this idea of happy high status through
improv because one thing you can't really play an improv
or in comedy because it's not going to be funny,
is happy high status, which is really that relaxed charisma
(35:23):
of somebody like Barack Obama or Michelle Obama, George Clooney,
A lot of actors would would have this quality, and
female actors as well, because we're not allowed to use
the word actresses anymore, or they don't seem to like
it anymore. It's not a gender. I mean, look, everyone's
unemployed at the moment, so like, yeah, there's status, and
(35:45):
it's really people who are really comfortable and at ease
in their own skin. And I introduced this idea into
how to own the room to try and encourage every
person to think about what does your happy high status
look like. And it doesn't mean that you have to
become the president or you have to become CEO of
(36:07):
your company. It's not about a business card. It's about
who are you being when you're the most elevated version
of yourself, when you're not trying to lord it over
every one or show that you're in charge, but you're
also not pandering to anyone or sucking up to every anyone.
You're just being the best version of yourself that you
can be. And if you can channel that energy in
(36:28):
front of a crowd, a small crowd or a large crowd,
it's incredibly powerful because it means if somebody shouts like,
get off your rubbish, I want my money back, then
you're happy high status will just laugh and say, okay,
i'll see you afterwards. I've got ten pounds ready for
you now, and then you just move on to the
next thing. And similarly, somebody can say to you, oh
(36:50):
my god, I think you're amazing. I'm going to give
you five star review. You're not like, oh wow, yeah,
you really get me. There are other people who don't
get me Like it's you're just like, oh thanks. It's
you know, being able to take criticism and praise equally,
being able to sit with negativity and rejection and just
(37:11):
respect it and let it be in its own space.
It's not about bringing able to bring some kind of
enforced joy. It's not about like pushing anything on anyone.
But it's leaving the space open for something joyous or
something interesting or something surprising. That is that's what happy
high status is really designed for. Do you practice it?
(37:33):
Oh my god all of the time. I mean, that's
my dream in life is well, sometimes when I'm questioning
myself or i think I've behaved badly, or I'm tempted
to behave badly in reacting to something. I just think,
Viv is this happy high status? Is? Really is this
because it's really about not being petty, not being petty,
(37:53):
not accumulating resentments, not blaming other people for things. It's
not about kind of just accepting everything and um, not
caring about injustices or anything like that, and kind of
just it is a bit like when they go low,
we go high. But it's not about thinking, well, anyone
(38:17):
can just do anything. You can have your views about
what counts as injustice and what counts as things that
you won't tolerate, but it's about not being triggered by
things that are going to put you off your game.
It feels very zen. Yeah, it's totally zen. It's it's
but the idea of not grasping, Yeah, sort of letting
the winds but still having a center. Yeah, exactly. It's
(38:40):
a show biz version of Buddhism. That's the new book
speaking all packaged up for you guys. Okay, before we
take a break and find out who you brought in
for us, I would love to just touch on, um,
you know the fact that we're in a pred reck.
(39:00):
I'd love to speak for a moment about which for
listeners means goodbye, sadness or melancholy. Your latest book. Oh,
I'm very very pleased that you have mentioned this is
this is my new book. It's so I'm not and
I know that you're Look some things we know about you.
(39:23):
You have a background in French language or and or literature. Yeah. Both,
and Russian. Yeah, French and Russian. Yeah, I mean there's
such You're such a language person. I love that. I mean,
I I wonder I want to have all kinds of
questions for a different podcast about how English works for
you compared to other languages, like what what it is?
What communication is in English? But specifically for this book
(39:45):
that just came out, which is about libyant this idea
of well being that isn't the same as this American
concept of as you call it. I have this great
quote of viewers that says, um, libyan this sort of
French concept U quote so much sexier and more exciting
than the merely mouthed goody goody group esque well being.
(40:07):
And it's about the good life. Yeah, you don't get
the French making candles called my vagina smells like this?
What a missed opportunity. That's a bit more subtle. I
wonder what you're thinking about right now in terms of
this feeling of the good life and squaring it with
you know, obviously the sort of um house arrest that
we're all in. Yeah, this has been a really strange
(40:28):
experience because this book, it's called Ava Tristes Lessons in
Happiness from French Literature, and it's a kind of love
letter to ourselves as readers. So what are the books
that we connect with from the classics, whether it's Proust
or Francois Sagon or Camu If you know those people,
(40:48):
this is a chance to revisit them if you've wanted
to discover them but never quite known how This is
a kind of idiot's guide. Um, I am the idiot.
But the it was really on years ago, Like I've
been writing this book for years and it's a companion
piece to my book about Russian writers, which is called
the Anna karenin Effects Life Lessons from Russian Literature. Um,
(41:10):
it was really examining, you know, what lessons can we
take from other cultures about what makes us happy, about
what makes us fall in love, about what makes us
feel good in our bodies? What is memory? What are
the philosophies that were carrying through our lives? And how
are the French so good at that? Are they really
(41:32):
that good at that? Why do we think that, you know,
why do I think I would be a better, sexier,
better looking woman and have lots of lovers if I
was French? Why do I think that? It's examining all
of that? And when I knew that the book was
going to be coming out now, my heart sank because
I just thought, you know, how can I be celebrating
(41:52):
this kind of joydevivuh and this wonderful sort of French
romantic take on life at this horrible, all really difficult
and uncertain time. But the way that it has been
embraced by people and the way people have received it
has just been extraordinary, because people have said, do you
know what? This is exactly what I need to read now?
Is what Flobert was saying about Madame Bovary in the
(42:15):
nineteenth century. People in the UK saying, you know, I'm
not going to be able to get to France for
at least another six months because we're in lockdown, So
I really want to read about French poetry. It's ended
up being something that is quite comforting and reassuring to
people at a time when globalization has kind of come
under question. What I'm trying to do in the book
(42:36):
is say, you know, what are the things that bring
us closer together? What are the ideas that we all share,
and what is it that we all have in our
hearts that is the same. And so I've kind of
feel really attached to this book that it has worked
for this moment after all, rather than feeling completely irrelevant,
which is every writer's idea of a nightmare. We're going
(42:59):
to take a break and find out who you brought
in for us? Okay, VILV, I mean I love that
you're here. Who have you brought in for us? I
have brought into the room? Tig Nataro? I love it? Yes?
(43:24):
How did you decide on Tig? She is a force
of nature. So for people who don't know who Tick
Nataro is, she is a stand up comedian who shot
to fame when she went on stage the same day
that she had had a cancer diagnosis, and she got
on stage and said, I haven't prepared anything tonight. This
(43:49):
is what I want to talk about, and it was
recorded by Louis c k, who was later to become
controversial for many reasons. Problem that close reasons, so ignore
that part of the story, but I wanted to explain.
But he then he was recording this because she wasn't
recording it for herself. He was recording this improvised set
(44:13):
that was off the back of her concier diagnosis, and
he released it on his social media channels and it
went viral. So she had before then, you know, being
a very successful stand up comedian on the circuit. She
had a fantastic reputation, but this sent her global, so
I think probably the year after that, I saw her
(44:35):
in Edinburgh at the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time,
and I then saw her later on a big show
in London. And she is just the most phenomenal live performer.
She appears to improvise absolutely everything that she does. Of
course she doesn't, because no professional stand up is really improvising.
(44:56):
They really have got mastery of what they're doing. As
she us plays a room like a genius, and it
all seems as if it's just coming from this place
of totally childish playfulness. But at the same time it's
very intelligent and quirky and just everything about her is
(45:17):
just joyous. And then I've watched her career. Uh you know,
she was in this fantastic film I absolutely love and
I really recommend to listeners of this podcast called in
a World Do you Know? Of course, and we're to
talk about tick. Natara plays a sound engineer in a
(45:40):
World which is all about the voice over industry. Tig
is also a member and early investor in this very
special women's coworking space in Hollywood that my podcast producer,
Cat and I actually met each other in and first
started talking about this podcast, So it is a particularly
sweet choice for us personally. And I take Okay, here's
(46:01):
the clip when I was first dating my wife and
I told her I'm originally from Mississippi, and thank you
one person. We are an hour less than an hour
from Mississippi, and I get one woo. How dare you? So?
(46:21):
When I told my wife when we were dating that
I was originally from Mississippi, she said, when I think
of people from Mississippi, I picture them barefoot. And I said,
thank you. But my family is actually civilized. They have jobs,
they live indoors, they wear shoes. I love her right.
(46:48):
That's also that's a whole set up for a story
where when she when the when the wife finally meets
the family, they have all happened to have just taken
off their shoes. Of course. I mean, she's so good.
You can hear, even from that very short clip that
she is all about using pauses and she listens harder
to an audience than I've ever seen anybody listen. And
(47:11):
that is one of the hallmarks of really great speaking
and great performance is are you listening to them and
how they're responding as hard as you're trying for them,
because you need to actually listen to them more than
you need to think about yourself, because you're not there
for yourself, you're there for them. So she's you can
hear her kind of like milking every single millisecond of
(47:35):
pause and of reaction and being ready to go with
it if she needs to. This idea of trusting that
you can be actually actually present, actually they're actually in
the middle of your thoughts is so scary. But I mean,
and it's improv I mean, that's why people who aren't
necessarily going to become performers in their life do improv
This idea of being able to live in the moment
(47:56):
and have the fear of uh, I might have to
pivot and turn that fear into an opportunity. I will.
I will inevitably pivot because I'm getting information. I'm a human,
I'm getting information. The question is do I acknowledge it
or don't I? Yeah. And that's the one thing that
people are really terrified of in the context of performance
(48:18):
or presenting of any kind, is is something going to
happen that I didn't plan? And generally something is always
going to happen that you didn't plan, so you have
to plan for the lack of plan. It makes me
think of something I've heard you discuss, which is the
idea of the social editor. Oh yeah, I value about
(48:38):
social editor. Good would you? Yes? Social editor is an
idea that also comes from stand up comedy and improv
a bit like happy high status, happy high status, happy
high status. Oh my god, your access is because I
(48:59):
watched the Lawfornians on us and now that's right, that's rights.
Can you do it here? By the way, By the way,
we don't take the four or five to the one
or one anymore. You take the four or five. Yeah,
So social editor is the thing that kicks in in
our lives and in our censoring of ourselves when we're
(49:24):
about seven or eight years old. So before seven or
eight years old, we will very happily turn to our
parents and say, in a loud voice, why is that
woman so fat? You know, everybody who's had a child
will know this. You know, children tell child the truth
about things, and they don't understand social nicety. You know,
(49:45):
they have to be schooled in it. And you know,
very intelligent children pick up on this. Very young children
who are a little bit more rebellious take a while
to understand it. But once we get to age seven
or eight, the social editor is really in control. So
we know the things that we're not allowed to say,
that are rude, that are uncomfortable. As social editor is
(50:06):
also kind of about, you know, not committing crimes. It's
about like not thinking, oh, it's totally okay to go
out naked, which you know, when you're a child, you
think it's totally okay to go out naked, but you know,
then you get to a certain age and you want
to cover up. So the important thing for public speaking
and finding your voice is learning to know when there's
(50:29):
too much social editor in your life, so you're censoring
yourself from saying things that might be useful or confronting
or provocative but in a good way, and not holding
yourself back and censoring yourself. But I'm very careful in
the way that I talk about this, because obviously we
don't want people just going into any space and saying, well,
(50:52):
I hate you and you're terrible, and you know, social
editor is not about just spilling everything that's in your gut,
but it's a about questioning, especially for women. You know,
Am I not saying that because I don't want people
to think I'm nice? Am I not saying that because
I don't want people to think that I'm a bit
(51:13):
or that I'm bossy? You know? Social editor tells us
a lot of things to do with gender, class, race,
about what sort of person we should be. And some
of them are useful because they stop us from walking
around naked and murdering people, which is good. But some
of them are bad because they make women think, um,
I mustn't have gray hair because it's going to make
(51:33):
me look old, or I mustn't speak up in this
meeting because I'm going to sound strident. It's all of
those stereotypes. It's it's about sort of navigating the difference
between I'm going to respect the social editor and get
on as best I can in this society as a
good citizen, but I'm not going to let myself be
squashed by stereotypes. But I love about this too, and
(51:57):
we should end on this note. But what I love
about this too is that it actually connects all the
other all the other major points that you're talking about,
because the idea that a kid doesn't have the editor yet,
but also that a kid inevitably has happy high status.
What we're saying is that's a lot of the stuff
that we've picked up that's gotten in our way. The
(52:17):
bad version of the editor is stopping us from having
happy high status exactly exactly. It's about being I don't
know how to say this, but like an adult version
of your best self as a child, if that's possible.
I love it. I love it. And actually I had
(52:38):
a Tony Morrison quote from one of your newsletters which
I now really really want to end this on if
if people will forgive me for quoting you know, Tony
Morrison with this one of her really for bos and
stunning things. I know what you're gonna say, and it's
very apt for this. Yeah, there is nothing she says,
believe me, more satisfying, more gratifying than true adulthood. The
(53:02):
adulthood that is the span of life before you, the
process of becoming one, is not inevitable. Its achievement is
a difficult, beauty and intensely hard one, glory which commercial
forces and cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive
you of. Yeah, be your own version of what you
(53:24):
think and adults should look like and sound like, and
only you get to decide what that is. I have chills.
Thank you, Thank you, v the Taro tribute all round,
take it all off. Thanks to You're so welcome. Thank
(53:49):
you to Viv Grosgow for joining me. You can find
out more about her in the show notes or on
our website Permission to Speak pot dot com. I have
started doing I G Lives every Thursday, so join me
tomorrow at Permission to Speak pod on Instagram. It's Q
and A style, so feel free to ask me anything
on the spot. I dare you or I should say
(54:10):
if you were more of a you know, ruminate over
it type. Please send me d M s at Permission
to Speak pod on Instagram or submit through the website
and let me know what is going on with your
voice for our upcoming mail bag episode. If you've been
sitting on a question or you know I'm not sure
what you're really asking, d m me do it. The
(54:32):
messier the better I will help you if I can.
Thank you to Sophie Lichterman and the team at I
Heart Radio and all of you. We are recording this
podcast at various locations around Los Angeles on land that
is the historic gathering place for the Tonguba indigenous tribe,
and you can visit U S d A C dot
us to learn more about honoring native land. Permission to
(54:56):
Speak is a production of I Heart Radio and Double
Vision executive produced by Katherine Burke Canton and Mark Canton.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, listen on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your favorite shows. H
Today's quote is from Jamila Jamille on Instagram um in
a long post about the Kim Kardashian image that's really
unsettling and that a lot of people wanted her to
respond to, and she said, there's no point at screaming.
There's no point in screaming at her. The smart thing
to do is to protect yourself. You have the power.
(00:21):
You control every market. You choose what and who is trendy. Unfollowed.
The people who tell you things that hurt your self esteem,
don't let the debris of their damage spill out onto you.
Unfollow people slash brands that don't make you feel powerful
and happy and grateful for what you have. You are
(00:42):
the boss, and none of them are shipped without you.
The patriarchy. This is all in caps. The patriarchy wants
us to focus on our weight instead of power, equality
and psychological freedom. Fuck anyone who encourages this. Welcome to
(01:04):
permission to speak. The podcast about How we talk and
how we get ourselves hurt with me Samarbe. Today's guest
is viv Groskop. She is a British journalist and author
and comedian with a huge podcast in the UK called
(01:25):
How to Own the Room, where she interviews room owning
women about their secrets to you know, living as themselves
in public. As I see it, I wanted to have
her on because you know, she's really been living with
this work as much as I have, if not more
so and for longer. And her book How to Own
(01:45):
the Room, which is amazing, was followed by this year's
Lift As You Climb, which is about women and the
art of ambition and explores, as you might guess from
the title, what it is to a mass power collectively
and to help each other, to be helped, to ask
for help, to rise together. I mean, she is the
sort of mentor that you don't tell you just quietly
(02:07):
get mentored by them from afore without them knowing until
you have them on your podcast. So uh. Also, I
should say, for the careful listeners out there, you might
remember her as being the woman that I quoted at
the top of an episode a few weeks ago about
learning how to say your job title without cringing. So yes,
(02:29):
I indeed I asked her how she answers that question,
and I think that her answer is revealing. And one
more thing a few months ago now, when the pandemic
had just hit England. She answered questions for about an
hour on a YouTube show that is still up and
I'm going to link to it. It was called how
to Cope with Uncertainty at Work, and I honestly think
(02:49):
it is the single most useful resource on that subject.
And we ended up cutting our reference to it in
this conversation, but I'm including a link in the show
notes and I'm shouting out about it here because the
questions that she answered from viewers in real time and
the framework that she offered for mental health, I think
it is just what we need to stay sane and
(03:11):
to give ourselves permission during this ongoingly wild time. I
think it will make you feel better about yourself, and
I think it will make you feel better about humanity,
which honestly you can say about viv in general. Here
she is I'd love to start, actually by asking you
(03:35):
how you describe what you do to others or to yourself?
How do I describe what I do to others or
to myself? I like to ask this question. Actually, I
often asked this question of guests when I'm interviewing. Is
if you are introducing yourself to someone at a posty,
what would you say? And I always think, I really
hope no one ever asked me this question. I guess
(03:59):
I just try and say something very simple, like I'm
an author and a comedian, because those things are true,
but I'm maybe not everybody's kind of stereotypical idea of
what those things are, because I'm not really a stand
up comedian who does the circuit the whole time. I
have been, but i haven't been for a few years,
(04:20):
and that's a choice that I've made. I'm not saying
I would and never go back to that, but I'm
not doing that at the moment. I tend to do
my own comedy shows, write my own stuff, um and
dip in and out of the circuit, and then I
write lots of very different kinds of books. So I've
written five books, half of which are about performance and
(04:41):
half of which are about really random esoteric forms of
foreign literature. So yeah, authoring, comedian or writer or you know,
whatever anyone wants to call me. I'm I'm actually not
that hung up on those labels anymore. I used to be,
but I'm not, I hear you, And that's actually I
was thinking about what I was really asking when I
(05:01):
when I wrote this question, and I I'm interested in
this idea of what how do you describe what you do?
Rather than you know, sort of what's your title, because
of course, for many of us, are titles just don't contain,
you know, the multitude of like what our actual experiences
and also more to the point, what we love about
what we do. You know, because it seems like so
much of your um from from my experience as a
(05:24):
listener of your podcast and a reader of your books,
you're just so curious, like you're you're a professional curious person. Yes,
I am a professional curious person. Next time I go
to a party soon says what you do, I'm gonna say,
I am a professional curious person. I have a coach
and you got that one for fruit. That is pretty
(05:45):
much what I am. And I don't like the idea
of having to define that or change that. And I
guess originally by trade, I'm a journalist. And a journalist,
you know, from the days before the internet, you know,
a journalist is a person who is professionally curious, who's
trying to find stuff out, who's trying to find out
(06:05):
the things that people are trying not to tell you
or what's the real hidden subtext? And that is always
what's going on for me, whether it's comedy or podcasting
or how to own the room stuff. You know, when
we talk about owning it and nailing it and smashing
it all of what do we really mean? What do
those things really look like? I love asking those kind
of questions, But very often when people ask me what
(06:27):
I do, the answer I will give will depend on
what I think they're most going to be interested in,
because often the things I'm most interested in in what
I do are like the smallest part. So if you
said to me, like, what's the thing you've done in
the past year that you're most proud of? Um, I
wrote a radio play which had a big part for
myself in it because I want to do more acting
(06:51):
and that's really important to me. But that is not
the thing that I'm most known for. The thing I
would probably be most known for is having a very
successful podcast US that's had Hillary Clinton on it. But
I think you listen to it. I listened to it,
you know, high hung on every word of Hillary and Chelsea.
(07:12):
They were a great pairing. It was really interesting and
to be I think I found you through a recommendation,
and um, I was it was before this podcast launched,
and I was, I had just parked. I was listening
while I was driving, and I parked at a grocery
store and I just sat in the car and I
kept listening, and it was you and Sarah Herwitz. Oh yeah,
(07:34):
the Obama's speech, right, who's now has been a guest
on my podcast? And um, and connected us, I should say,
and I I mean, looking back now, I'm like, I
can't believe I got I'm actually, you know, talking to you.
But at the moment, I had this crazy you know,
sitting in a parking lot thinking I didn't know here
I had pitched this podcast that's about how to use
(07:56):
your voice, which is also the same thing as how
to own the room, because how to use your voice
isn't just like how to open your mouth and have
sounds come out. It's how to do that in a
way where you feel like you belong in the space
that you're in. Yeah. I had to rise to the
to the occasion, whatever the occasion is. And I thought, like, A,
You're such a genius, and I'm so I'm so thrilled
(08:17):
to discover you and like listen to the you know
backlog and be um, I realized in the moment that
I'm like the American version of the Office and didn't
even realize like I was play side version. Yeah, it's
really great. You know, this space of encouraging women and
particularly women, I think, or anyone who thinks of themselves
(08:37):
as not an alpha as in a L P H.
A UM, anyone who feels like they're held back in
some way, you know, whether it's self imposed or imposed
by society. There's a whole movement of people exploring this space.
At the moment, there's an explosion of it. And I
think it's interesting you mentioned Sarah Howitz because I really
(08:59):
think it starts you to with Michelle Obama's speaking and
many of the things that we know her for, like,
you know, when they go low, we go high. And
I lived in a house that was I raised by girls,
in a house that was built by slaves. You know,
all of those phrases which Sarah Howitz had a hand in.
She's very modest about her contribution to those speeches, and
(09:19):
she'll say, you know, I was just there in the
room when Michelle Obama came up with it. But I
think those speeches and Michelle Obama's delivery of them, and
the way they were received by people, the way they
went viral on YouTube. I think over the last ten years,
it's completely defined how people around the world think about
how we can own our voices, own our story and
(09:40):
do it in a way that is very new and
fresh and doesn't have to conform to some kind of
stereotype or something that we've seen before. And that is
hugely I think down to Michelle Obama and the mass
appeal that she has, and also down to the person
who will never come on my podcast, but I would
welcome any mo went with open arms, which is Oprah Winfrey.
(10:02):
You know, I think Oprah was the first person to
really promote that idea of women having a voice, people
being able to change their narrative and talk about personal
story rather than really really big ideas. That you know,
small ideas matter just as much as big ideas, and
so those two I think over time really changed people's
(10:25):
minds about what power looks like and what authority looks like.
Speaking of personal stories, do you remember when you thought
this is something I want to take up, This owning
the room. Um, it's stemmed really from massive failure on
my part in that I stayed away from the things
that I really wanted to do with my life for
(10:47):
a long time because I was scared of them. And
one of those things was stand up comedy and acting
and performing. And I became a writer because I was
scared of those things, and it was kind of a
second best for me. I mean at the time, I
didn't really realize that. Think as you get older, you
start to realize the lies that you're telling yourself. I
also heard you say somewhere that you that you grew
up in a you know, sort of quiet um. I
(11:07):
think you use the mousey family that I didn't. That
I did not. I did not grow up in a
showbiz family, and my parents didn't go to university and
were not urban. Let's say, you know, I grew up
in a rural community long way from London, and I
didn't know anybody who was doing the kind of things
(11:29):
that I dreamed of doing, and I was I wasn't
exactly discouraged by my parents, but somehow I got the
idea that to do these things that I dreamed of,
like performing or even writing, actually was quite a tough
gig to take on these were sort of crazy things
and you should get a proper job. Um, there's there's
(11:50):
a whole like narrative in the British class system about
getting a proper job, which I think is, you know,
since the internet has been invented at slightly been exploded,
which is very good. But growing up in the seventies
and the eighties, I got this idea that I couldn't
do lots of these crazy things. So it took me
a long time to get to stand up. And then
I started doing stand up in my mid thirties when
(12:12):
I had three children, and ended up writing a book
called I Laughed. I cried how one woman took on
stand up and almost ruined her life, which was all
about the open mic circuit, how difficult it is, how
tough it is for women, how tough it was for me,
and how tough I was on myself. And that book
(12:34):
it did okay, but it didn't do great, and I
was kind of disappointed with how it was received because
most people received this book as in, oh, who's this
crazy woman who's taken up stand up and isn't stand
up scary? Whereas for me it was much more a
story about finding your voice and doing things that you're
scared of. So I began to think a lot about
(12:55):
how can I open up that conversation, how can I
make it more relevant to other people? How can I
broaden it beyond stand up because the lessons aren't really
about stand up comedy. They're about life and they're about confidence.
And gradually, out of that, how To in the Room
was born and started as a book and then became
a podcast completely by accident. What was the accident, Well,
(13:18):
the accident was about two weeks before the book was
due to come out. There's this fantastic woman in the
UK called Mary Portas who just thought her book because
of the interview you guys did. Yeah, she's so great.
She's a kind of a she's known as a retail
entrepreneurial guri. So she used to have a show on
TV called Mary Queen of Shops where she would go
(13:38):
around examining stores and telling them what they were doing wrong.
She's kind of like she's kind of like the guys
on Queer Eye. Actually, you know, she's kind of like
Bobby but for shops. And she's a big phenomenon over here.
And I think there's probably lots of people in the
US know her too. But she got in touch with
(13:58):
me because I had interviewed her for other things and said,
what can I do to help you with your book?
And I went how to own the room was about
to come out, and I said, well, I could interview
for the podcast that goes alongside the book, which didn't
exist and I really just thought of and she said okay, yeah, great,
(14:19):
And as soon as she said yes, I was like, oh, okay,
I'm going to have to do this now. So once
I had her, I then got Nigella Lawson. Then I
got Professor Mary Beard, who's a historian TV historian over here.
He's very popular, and then it just grew from there.
Mary Beard is like, what a dream? Her book Women
(14:39):
in Power was a huge influence on me as well.
Oh great, I'm so glad. It's so great that these
ideas travel because sometimes in the UK we think, oh,
these are people who belong to us and no one
else knows about them. But that's great. Yeah, Women in
Powers an incredible book. Um. I mean I found her
because I'm a huge nerd around this topic obviously, but
but truly, for anyone listening it is insanely short, like
(15:02):
reading an afternoon short, and you will be armed with
an understanding of patriarchal silencing from the odyssey to Hillary
Clinton to today. Actually, this is a I have a
related question around this because I wonder if you have
noticed anything about American versus British culture when it comes
to this room owning, you know, dream, Yeah, the main
(15:26):
thing I noticed, and it's come up a few times
on how to in the room. Um, when I've because
I've interviewed probably maybe a quarter of the interviewees that
I've done out of fifty six plus are American, it
very often comes up that we don't have public speaking
as something that we do in school as a matter
(15:48):
of course. Where but the stereotype is Americans do. I
don't know if that I don't know that's always always true,
but and it seems quite a weird stereotype in some
ways because if you look at somebody like our Prime
Minister Boris Johnson, you know, he's clearly schooled in public speaking,
and he makes that a big part of what he
(16:09):
does in a big part of his appeal. But he
is from the private school system, and the private school
system over here is really the only place where you
would be taught to debate, you would be taught public
speaking formally. In the rest of the school system, you
you don't really get that, whereas people have said to me,
in the American system, you have loads of opportunities to
present in front of the class. You're expected to be
(16:30):
able to do that from a young age. I don't
know if this is true or not, but it seems
to be a stereotype that people have. Um it also
plays into the stereotype of the loud American. So the
idea that you know, Americans are confident, it's like, well,
you know two fifty million people, are you really sure
that they are all exactly the same. But there is
the idea that you know, Americans are confident. In British
(16:51):
not so much. But I've found that it's just a
lot of these stereotypes are not true. I mean, I
just interviewed the novelists Kylie Read, the author of Such
a Fun Age, and most of our conversation was about
her being an introvert and how she owns her power
in a very quiet way. And what I've always wanted
(17:12):
to do with the podcast in the book is to
explode some of these myths around the idea that you
have to be loud, you have to be brash, you
have to be charismatic, you have to own the room.
You know, what ways are there of owning the room
that are quietly strong, that are really using pauses or
(17:34):
something that we haven't seen. And you know, since I
wrote it, this idea of the type of speaking that
we don't recognize as powerful until we see it, that
has become more and more of a phenomenon with people
like Greta Tunberg, you know, sixteen year old autistic doesn't
have Asperger syndrome, she doesn't have English as her first language.
(17:54):
One of the most popular speakers in the world. Malala
one of the most popular speakers in the world. Uh,
you know, Megan, she's another kind of really interesting, quietly
confident speaker. So trying to was that those things and
Megan as in I never know watched Coroner like the
Duchess of Sussex as in Princess Princess Megan, Oh my god,
(18:17):
that reference totally last time. Okay, you got it now, yes, yes, yeah,
So there's this whole new cohort of interesting young speakers
who don't conform to this idea of well, you're American
and so you must be this way, or you're a
sixteen year old woman, so no one will want to
(18:37):
listen to you. You know, all of those things are
being exploded now and that's what's great about this moment.
Some other examples of people who come to mind when
when I think about this too is Emma Gonzalez, who
was hugely influential after that, uh, the mass killing of
high school students a few years ago, in the movement
(18:58):
that that came out of that. You know, she was eighteen,
seventeen eighteen, and you know, she took a mic and
she held silence for the amount of time that the
massacred happened, and when she spoke, she said things like
we call bs and it, you know, took the nation
by storm. And what a great example of you know,
as well as AOC obviously in the in the US,
(19:21):
and recently Killer Mike and Tamika Mallory who have given
voice to the Black Lives Matter uprising. Each of them
has reminded us leaders are people who rise to the moment.
They're not people who have been trained or who or
who have been handed a title. Yeah, ticely. I'm interested
(19:41):
in this idea too. I wanted to talk about I
could tell that you've been underlining a lot recently the
different ways that we can own the room, and I
think that's so, you know, powerful, because it's true. There
is this sort of stereotype that many of us grew
up with that the way to um, you know, stand
in front of a microphone and miss your opportunity is
to be the most as you say, alpha version of ourselves,
(20:03):
which I think is just some you know, masculine trope
that we men and women probably should be questioning, and
it doesn't necessarily sort of many of us in terms
of trying to bring some authentic version of ourselves into
those spaces. There's just a lot of ways to speak
publicly successfully. One of the things I do is try
and be very upfront about terms that I'm not comfortable with.
(20:28):
The public speaking is one of them. So I'll often
be at an event or doing a podcast or or
something like that and I'll say, you know, I hate
the expression public speaking. This is not about public speaking.
I don't know how it is in the US, but
in the UK, the term public speaking is very it
sounds very archaic. It's very off putting to a lot
(20:51):
of women, to a lot of younger people. It sounds like,
you know, people in a debating chamber at the end
of the nineteenth century all going wow, Wow, that's it's
it's just so horrific. Yeah, I think there's a new
there's going to be some new way to talk about this.
I don't know what it is yet, because it's up
(21:12):
to us to figure it out, isn't it. Which is
why I use the expression owning the room because I
wanted it to be whatever that means to you, and
whatever the room is. You know, the room might be
your kitchen where you're trying to get your kids to
do something. The room might be a digital room where
you're in your room like in your bedroom on your own,
but talking to lots of people. Or it could be
(21:33):
an auditorium with five thousand people. So I break that
down into owning the room because that was what meant
the most to me and meant I didn't have to
say public speaking. But now I think people tend to
talk a lot about communication. You know, people want to
be better communicators. I mean that also has a ring
of something a little bit kind of linked in for
(21:53):
me that I don't like. But in some ways we
have to use some of these terms so that we
can be clear what we're talking about. So I'll very happily,
you know, do an event if it's called like how
to be a better public speaker, if that's what the
event organizers want to call it. But the first thing
I will say is, please don't want to be a
(22:14):
better public speaker, because no one wants that. But then
you get into very sort of an Operah has owned
this language very well in the American context, perhaps more
so than the British where people are still wary of it.
But it's really about being more. You be more yourself,
be a better version of yourself. Authenticity. You know you
mentioned that word. That's what everybody wants. You know, everybody
(22:36):
just wants to come across as the most natural version
of themselves and they want to be the same person
as they are with their friends and their family when
they're at their best, but in a professional context. So
if you could just find a word that means that tomorrow,
then that's the word. You know, I'm working on it,
But now I mean this idea of scaling up our
(22:58):
favorite selves in a scarier and scarier contexts, you know,
I think at the heart of it, yeah, and feeling
comfortable as yourself in settings which perhaps don't feel natural
to you. That's what it's really about. Okay, we're gonna
take a quick break and be back with more and
more specifics after this. Okay, we're back with viv gross Cup.
(23:28):
So we were talking before the break about bringing ourselves
into scarier spaces. But I mean, you know, one size
doesn't at all, of course, and a lot of listeners
have more sort of conforming that they feel like they
have to do, or maybe they do have to do
to fit into their work culture. Yeah. Absolutely, mean some
(23:52):
of this is awkward because there are always going to
be norms of what sounds good, what looks good, and
sometimes we're not very comfortable with these norms. I was
talking on a radio program yesterday about smiling and how
important smiling is when you're on a podium or even
(24:13):
you know, on a zoom call or anything where other
people are looking at you. At the very least, a
smile in the eyes, even when you're being serious, is
so important. And when you're presenting material to people, you
need to smile at them. And people, especially women, especially
senior women, and a lot of senior men, actually resist
(24:35):
this and say, I don't want to smile. I don't
want to, you know, make nice. I don't want to
sort of lessen my power by smiling. I want to
be taken seriously. And people don't understand that just because
you smile doesn't mean you won't be taken seriously. You know,
Barack Obama, if you watch anything he does with the
sound turned off, he is smiling the whole time at
(24:58):
some point, even if it's just his eyes, even when
he's talking. He did a I think it was a
sixty second social media video the other day about Black
Lives Matter, and it was ultra serious. It couldn't have
been more serious. He absolutely has a smile in the eyes,
and it's not a smile of happy, it's a smile
of humanity and finding things like that that you can
(25:22):
try and overturn people's preconceptions of. You know, if you're
a woman who smiles, then therefore it means it means
you're a pushover. Well it doesn't. It means you're warm
and you're here for people to try and overturn some
of those things. I think is really important. That's really helpful. Yeah. Yeah,
I talk about that too, in terms of finding the
(25:42):
thing that you care about, the passion behind caring, even
if even if what you're talking about is really dark
and heavy. You know, we're up there, We're not even
up there, we're whatever speaking into a zoom. We're doing
we're we're we're grabbing the attention because there's something that
turns us on and we've got to sort of remember
that bringing that because there's so much socialized stuff that
(26:03):
many of us carry that is about like showing we
care too much would be awkward for everybody, or would
be too revealing and vulnerable for myself. So I'm just
going to kind of shut out the as you say that,
the smile in my eyes. Yeah, well, that is a
great fast track to connecting with an audience is to
expose something, something that is actually of genuine risk to you,
(26:27):
so you actually show vulnerability, you actually show authenticity something
you really care about, and to marry it with the
concerns of that audience. Mean, clearly you have to match
it to your audience. You can't just be talking about
what you care about with an audience who don't have
the same concerns. That is where what you are saying
and like meet people where they are. That's where that
(26:50):
match happens. And I think it happens as much in
your face and your body language and in your tone
as it does in your content. And really great speakers,
if you take content and look at it, it actually
doesn't have to be that good, but they lift it
with the level of emotion and commitment that they bring
to it. In fact, to reference your interview with Sarah Herowitz,
(27:12):
I remember when I was sitting in that you know,
Ralph's parking lot that the thing I went back and
listened to a second time around was when you said,
what to a speech writer, what is more important the
words or the delivery? And she said both, but the
delivery wins. Yeah, exactly. I mean you imagine a speech
(27:33):
writers saying you can raise that you know, mediocre content. Yeah,
And it's true. I think people are really accepting this
more and more that we're living in a digital age
and so much content is about the connection that you
make with people while you're on screen, and presence is
so much more important than the actual words that you're saying.
(27:55):
Because a lot of people read as in read your
body language, read your facial expression before they actually tune
into what you're saying. A lot of people are watching
video clips with the sound turned off most of the time,
especially you know, public figures, and this idea that the
speech writer is king and somehow that is going to
(28:15):
make a difference to how you're perceived. It's it's a
very old fashioned idea. I was I was at the
Conference of speech Writers in Washington, d C. Last year,
and this guy gave a presentation which was based on
artificial intelligence examining speeches, and it discovered that this was
(28:38):
like using two thousand different data methods, everything from how
much you frowned and how much she smiled to the
content to have what your hair looks like to what
the audience think of you. All of these data points
they feed it into the AI and it came out
as eleven percent of impact is on content, is on
things like passion, authenticity, try how relaxed you look, which
(29:03):
is so fascinating. And you could see from this eleven percent,
you know, all of these little speech writers faces foul
of what you're saying, that my life's work is only
going to add up to eleven percent of impact. And
that's even if it's of of my impact is only
going to go up to eleven, But it's true. And
there are loads of examples of really really great connectors
(29:27):
with people whose content is actually quite empty when you
write the words down. This is such a useful new
data point too, because there's that classic study that basically
said the same thing. Seven percent I think in that
case was content. You mean the Arabian myth, the Arabian
and the and the and the body line. But you know,
well a few things. One that is so useful to
(29:48):
remember is that these things aren't actually in competition unless
they're telling different stories, right, unless our body language and
our tone of voice is actually saying something different than
our content. But if our content is saying, you know,
I'm thrilled to be here, and everything also about us,
it's also seeming like we're thrilled to be here, then
you know these at these factors are actually a line
in this lovely way where you know, yeah, we get
(30:08):
to trust that the content is actually just being supported
by us exactly. And also I do think that that
eleven percent is really key, And why wouldn't you want
to nail that completely? Why would you want to get
you one percent out of eleven percent in your content,
but in all other areas, you know, and also without content,
(30:29):
there is no speech, So of course you need to
think about your content. But what I've found with how
to own the room and how people approach it and
what questions they have around it, is that people are
overly obsessed with their content that they always think, oh,
if I can just write the perfect thing, or I
can just get this presentation down to however many words,
(30:52):
or if I can just get this down from twenty
slides to eighteen, or you know, they think these things
are the key, and then not. The key is the
energy that you turn up with and the intent that
you have. And when you first tell people about this,
they say, well, that just sounds really lazy, especially women,
because women love to do too much work, and you know,
(31:12):
because they think that's the way to get an A.
But we are not at school anymore and it is
not the way to get an A in real life.
And so all of my work is trying to convince
people that it's more about the sizzle than the composition
of the sausage, because everyone's thinking, oh, but if my
sausage has like fat and seventh cent port and sect. No, no, no,
(31:36):
it's the sizzle that sells the sausage. I've forgotten which
company does this, if it's Apple or Google or but
there's some company where everything that is written down for
people's consumption at certain kind of event, like a conference
or a presentation, it has to be sent to them
in advance, and everybody has to agree to read it.
And then after that everybody has to leave the materials alone,
(32:00):
and everybody has to speak from the heart. And that's
exactly how it should be, because if you are disrespecting
your audience by saying what I have written down here,
or what I have learned, or these words that have
been crafted, they are so important. Also, you know, write
a book. A spoken communication is a connection with an audience.
(32:24):
It's almost a spiritual thing. I want to get very
specific about one of the points in how to Own
the Room, which you call happy high status, happy high status. Yes,
I'm so sorry, happy high status, happy high status. Well
we haven't discussed dialect work happy high status, happy high status. Yeah,
(32:49):
you can even do that, like the Southern California version
if you really want to happy. Thank you for that.
Vocal for for your own experience, for in in the
stand up, but also because as I know it is
a big section of your book. Can you talk to
us about what's happy high status means? It's very nice
(33:10):
British accent, so happy high status is a concept that
I came across that derives from improv comedy, and I
first became obsessed with it because early on, when I
was doing stand up and I was quite new and
I had my five minutes, I had a promoter come
up and say to me. At a competition where I
(33:32):
didn't go through to the next round, she came up
to me and said, you're really good and you can
do this, and you could have gone through, but you
need to play higher status. And at the time I
had no idea what she was talking about, and I
kind of asked her to explain, but she couldn't really
explain it. So I went away and kind of researched
(33:52):
more about what that means and how it would look
like on me, and I became obsessed with this idea
of status, and at the same time I was doing
a lot of stuff in improv, and in improv, one
of the hallmarks of creating a scene that's going to
be funny is about playing around with status, and characters
who are very high status get taken down a peg,
(34:16):
characters who are low status end up becoming the king. Like.
It's all very sort of basic status Playkespeare, Yeah, well,
it's pretty much like every single drama you've ever seen,
in every single bit of comedy you've ever seen, is
that you immediately see the status of all of the
different characters. So you could even think of something like friends.
You know, who are the high status characters In Friends, um,
(34:39):
I would say, you know, Joey is trying to play
really high status, but actually he's quite low status. Chandler
thinks that he's low status, but he's actually high status.
Ross is always playing high status because he knows everything.
You know. It gives people an idea of what these
things mean. And we have and amongst our friends, and
(35:01):
we're constantly up and down in the pecking order. And
I came to this idea of happy high status through
improv because one thing you can't really play an improv
or in comedy because it's not going to be funny,
is happy high status, which is really that relaxed charisma
(35:23):
of somebody like Barack Obama or Michelle Obama, George Clooney,
A lot of actors would would have this quality, and
female actors as well, because we're not allowed to use
the word actresses anymore, or they don't seem to like
it anymore. It's not a gender. I mean, look, everyone's
unemployed at the moment, so like, yeah, there's status, and
(35:45):
it's really people who are really comfortable and at ease
in their own skin. And I introduced this idea into
how to own the room to try and encourage every
person to think about what does your happy high status
look like. And it doesn't mean that you have to
become the president or you have to become CEO of
(36:07):
your company. It's not about a business card. It's about
who are you being when you're the most elevated version
of yourself, when you're not trying to lord it over
every one or show that you're in charge, but you're
also not pandering to anyone or sucking up to every anyone.
You're just being the best version of yourself that you
can be. And if you can channel that energy in
(36:28):
front of a crowd, a small crowd or a large crowd,
it's incredibly powerful because it means if somebody shouts like,
get off your rubbish, I want my money back, then
you're happy high status will just laugh and say, okay,
i'll see you afterwards. I've got ten pounds ready for
you now, and then you just move on to the
next thing. And similarly, somebody can say to you, oh
(36:50):
my god, I think you're amazing. I'm going to give
you five star review. You're not like, oh wow, yeah,
you really get me. There are other people who don't
get me Like it's you're just like, oh thanks. It's
you know, being able to take criticism and praise equally,
being able to sit with negativity and rejection and just
(37:11):
respect it and let it be in its own space.
It's not about bringing able to bring some kind of
enforced joy. It's not about like pushing anything on anyone.
But it's leaving the space open for something joyous or
something interesting or something surprising. That is that's what happy
high status is really designed for. Do you practice it?
(37:33):
Oh my god all of the time. I mean, that's
my dream in life is well, sometimes when I'm questioning
myself or i think I've behaved badly, or I'm tempted
to behave badly in reacting to something. I just think,
Viv is this happy high status? Is? Really is this
because it's really about not being petty, not being petty,
(37:53):
not accumulating resentments, not blaming other people for things. It's
not about kind of just accepting everything and um, not
caring about injustices or anything like that, and kind of
just it is a bit like when they go low,
we go high. But it's not about thinking, well, anyone
(38:17):
can just do anything. You can have your views about
what counts as injustice and what counts as things that
you won't tolerate, but it's about not being triggered by
things that are going to put you off your game.
It feels very zen. Yeah, it's totally zen. It's it's
but the idea of not grasping, Yeah, sort of letting
the winds but still having a center. Yeah, exactly. It's
(38:40):
a show biz version of Buddhism. That's the new book
speaking all packaged up for you guys. Okay, before we
take a break and find out who you brought in
for us, I would love to just touch on, um,
you know the fact that we're in a pred reck.
(39:00):
I'd love to speak for a moment about which for
listeners means goodbye, sadness or melancholy. Your latest book. Oh,
I'm very very pleased that you have mentioned this is
this is my new book. It's so I'm not and
I know that you're Look some things we know about you.
(39:23):
You have a background in French language or and or literature. Yeah. Both,
and Russian. Yeah, French and Russian. Yeah, I mean there's
such You're such a language person. I love that. I mean,
I I wonder I want to have all kinds of
questions for a different podcast about how English works for
you compared to other languages, like what what it is?
What communication is in English? But specifically for this book
(39:45):
that just came out, which is about libyant this idea
of well being that isn't the same as this American
concept of as you call it. I have this great
quote of viewers that says, um, libyan this sort of
French concept U quote so much sexier and more exciting
than the merely mouthed goody goody group esque well being.
(40:07):
And it's about the good life. Yeah, you don't get
the French making candles called my vagina smells like this?
What a missed opportunity. That's a bit more subtle. I
wonder what you're thinking about right now in terms of
this feeling of the good life and squaring it with
you know, obviously the sort of um house arrest that
we're all in. Yeah, this has been a really strange
(40:28):
experience because this book, it's called Ava Tristes Lessons in
Happiness from French Literature, and it's a kind of love
letter to ourselves as readers. So what are the books
that we connect with from the classics, whether it's Proust
or Francois Sagon or Camu If you know those people,
(40:48):
this is a chance to revisit them if you've wanted
to discover them but never quite known how This is
a kind of idiot's guide. Um, I am the idiot.
But the it was really on years ago, Like I've
been writing this book for years and it's a companion
piece to my book about Russian writers, which is called
the Anna karenin Effects Life Lessons from Russian Literature. Um,
(41:10):
it was really examining, you know, what lessons can we
take from other cultures about what makes us happy, about
what makes us fall in love, about what makes us
feel good in our bodies? What is memory? What are
the philosophies that were carrying through our lives? And how
are the French so good at that? Are they really
(41:32):
that good at that? Why do we think that, you know,
why do I think I would be a better, sexier,
better looking woman and have lots of lovers if I
was French? Why do I think that? It's examining all
of that? And when I knew that the book was
going to be coming out now, my heart sank because
I just thought, you know, how can I be celebrating
(41:52):
this kind of joydevivuh and this wonderful sort of French
romantic take on life at this horrible, all really difficult
and uncertain time. But the way that it has been
embraced by people and the way people have received it
has just been extraordinary, because people have said, do you
know what? This is exactly what I need to read now?
Is what Flobert was saying about Madame Bovary in the
(42:15):
nineteenth century. People in the UK saying, you know, I'm
not going to be able to get to France for
at least another six months because we're in lockdown, So
I really want to read about French poetry. It's ended
up being something that is quite comforting and reassuring to
people at a time when globalization has kind of come
under question. What I'm trying to do in the book
(42:36):
is say, you know, what are the things that bring
us closer together? What are the ideas that we all share,
and what is it that we all have in our
hearts that is the same. And so I've kind of
feel really attached to this book that it has worked
for this moment after all, rather than feeling completely irrelevant,
which is every writer's idea of a nightmare. We're going
(42:59):
to take a break and find out who you brought
in for us? Okay, VILV, I mean I love that
you're here. Who have you brought in for us? I
have brought into the room? Tig Nataro? I love it? Yes?
(43:24):
How did you decide on Tig? She is a force
of nature. So for people who don't know who Tick
Nataro is, she is a stand up comedian who shot
to fame when she went on stage the same day
that she had had a cancer diagnosis, and she got
on stage and said, I haven't prepared anything tonight. This
(43:49):
is what I want to talk about, and it was
recorded by Louis c k, who was later to become
controversial for many reasons. Problem that close reasons, so ignore
that part of the story, but I wanted to explain.
But he then he was recording this because she wasn't
recording it for herself. He was recording this improvised set
(44:13):
that was off the back of her concier diagnosis, and
he released it on his social media channels and it
went viral. So she had before then, you know, being
a very successful stand up comedian on the circuit. She
had a fantastic reputation, but this sent her global, so
I think probably the year after that, I saw her
(44:35):
in Edinburgh at the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time,
and I then saw her later on a big show
in London. And she is just the most phenomenal live performer.
She appears to improvise absolutely everything that she does. Of
course she doesn't, because no professional stand up is really improvising.
(44:56):
They really have got mastery of what they're doing. As
she us plays a room like a genius, and it
all seems as if it's just coming from this place
of totally childish playfulness. But at the same time it's
very intelligent and quirky and just everything about her is
(45:17):
just joyous. And then I've watched her career. Uh you know,
she was in this fantastic film I absolutely love and
I really recommend to listeners of this podcast called in
a World Do you Know? Of course, and we're to
talk about tick. Natara plays a sound engineer in a
(45:40):
World which is all about the voice over industry. Tig
is also a member and early investor in this very
special women's coworking space in Hollywood that my podcast producer,
Cat and I actually met each other in and first
started talking about this podcast, So it is a particularly
sweet choice for us personally. And I take Okay, here's
(46:01):
the clip when I was first dating my wife and
I told her I'm originally from Mississippi, and thank you
one person. We are an hour less than an hour
from Mississippi, and I get one woo. How dare you? So?
(46:21):
When I told my wife when we were dating that
I was originally from Mississippi, she said, when I think
of people from Mississippi, I picture them barefoot. And I said,
thank you. But my family is actually civilized. They have jobs,
they live indoors, they wear shoes. I love her right.
(46:48):
That's also that's a whole set up for a story
where when she when the when the wife finally meets
the family, they have all happened to have just taken
off their shoes. Of course. I mean, she's so good.
You can hear, even from that very short clip that
she is all about using pauses and she listens harder
to an audience than I've ever seen anybody listen. And
(47:11):
that is one of the hallmarks of really great speaking
and great performance is are you listening to them and
how they're responding as hard as you're trying for them,
because you need to actually listen to them more than
you need to think about yourself, because you're not there
for yourself, you're there for them. So she's you can
hear her kind of like milking every single millisecond of
(47:35):
pause and of reaction and being ready to go with
it if she needs to. This idea of trusting that
you can be actually actually present, actually they're actually in
the middle of your thoughts is so scary. But I mean,
and it's improv I mean, that's why people who aren't
necessarily going to become performers in their life do improv
This idea of being able to live in the moment
(47:56):
and have the fear of uh, I might have to
pivot and turn that fear into an opportunity. I will.
I will inevitably pivot because I'm getting information. I'm a human,
I'm getting information. The question is do I acknowledge it
or don't I? Yeah. And that's the one thing that
people are really terrified of in the context of performance
(48:18):
or presenting of any kind, is is something going to
happen that I didn't plan? And generally something is always
going to happen that you didn't plan, so you have
to plan for the lack of plan. It makes me
think of something I've heard you discuss, which is the
idea of the social editor. Oh yeah, I value about
(48:38):
social editor. Good would you? Yes? Social editor is an
idea that also comes from stand up comedy and improv
a bit like happy high status, happy high status, happy
high status. Oh my god, your access is because I
(48:59):
watched the Lawfornians on us and now that's right, that's rights.
Can you do it here? By the way, By the way,
we don't take the four or five to the one
or one anymore. You take the four or five. Yeah,
So social editor is the thing that kicks in in
our lives and in our censoring of ourselves when we're
(49:24):
about seven or eight years old. So before seven or
eight years old, we will very happily turn to our
parents and say, in a loud voice, why is that
woman so fat? You know, everybody who's had a child
will know this. You know, children tell child the truth
about things, and they don't understand social nicety. You know,
(49:45):
they have to be schooled in it. And you know,
very intelligent children pick up on this. Very young children
who are a little bit more rebellious take a while
to understand it. But once we get to age seven
or eight, the social editor is really in control. So
we know the things that we're not allowed to say,
that are rude, that are uncomfortable. As social editor is
(50:06):
also kind of about, you know, not committing crimes. It's
about like not thinking, oh, it's totally okay to go
out naked, which you know, when you're a child, you
think it's totally okay to go out naked, but you know,
then you get to a certain age and you want
to cover up. So the important thing for public speaking
and finding your voice is learning to know when there's
(50:29):
too much social editor in your life, so you're censoring
yourself from saying things that might be useful or confronting
or provocative but in a good way, and not holding
yourself back and censoring yourself. But I'm very careful in
the way that I talk about this, because obviously we
don't want people just going into any space and saying, well,
(50:52):
I hate you and you're terrible, and you know, social
editor is not about just spilling everything that's in your gut,
but it's a about questioning, especially for women. You know,
Am I not saying that because I don't want people
to think I'm nice? Am I not saying that because
I don't want people to think that I'm a bit
(51:13):
or that I'm bossy? You know? Social editor tells us
a lot of things to do with gender, class, race,
about what sort of person we should be. And some
of them are useful because they stop us from walking
around naked and murdering people, which is good. But some
of them are bad because they make women think, um,
I mustn't have gray hair because it's going to make
(51:33):
me look old, or I mustn't speak up in this
meeting because I'm going to sound strident. It's all of
those stereotypes. It's it's about sort of navigating the difference
between I'm going to respect the social editor and get
on as best I can in this society as a
good citizen, but I'm not going to let myself be
squashed by stereotypes. But I love about this too, and
(51:57):
we should end on this note. But what I love
about this too is that it actually connects all the
other all the other major points that you're talking about,
because the idea that a kid doesn't have the editor yet,
but also that a kid inevitably has happy high status.
What we're saying is that's a lot of the stuff
that we've picked up that's gotten in our way. The
(52:17):
bad version of the editor is stopping us from having
happy high status exactly exactly. It's about being I don't
know how to say this, but like an adult version
of your best self as a child, if that's possible.
I love it. I love it. And actually I had
(52:38):
a Tony Morrison quote from one of your newsletters which
I now really really want to end this on if
if people will forgive me for quoting you know, Tony
Morrison with this one of her really for bos and
stunning things. I know what you're gonna say, and it's
very apt for this. Yeah, there is nothing she says,
believe me, more satisfying, more gratifying than true adulthood. The
(53:02):
adulthood that is the span of life before you, the
process of becoming one, is not inevitable. Its achievement is
a difficult, beauty and intensely hard one, glory which commercial
forces and cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive
you of. Yeah, be your own version of what you
(53:24):
think and adults should look like and sound like, and
only you get to decide what that is. I have chills.
Thank you, Thank you, v the Taro tribute all round,
take it all off. Thanks to You're so welcome. Thank
(53:49):
you to Viv Grosgow for joining me. You can find
out more about her in the show notes or on
our website Permission to Speak pot dot com. I have
started doing I G Lives every Thursday, so join me
tomorrow at Permission to Speak pod on Instagram. It's Q
and A style, so feel free to ask me anything
on the spot. I dare you or I should say
(54:10):
if you were more of a you know, ruminate over
it type. Please send me d M s at Permission
to Speak pod on Instagram or submit through the website
and let me know what is going on with your
voice for our upcoming mail bag episode. If you've been
sitting on a question or you know I'm not sure
what you're really asking, d m me do it. The
(54:32):
messier the better I will help you if I can.
Thank you to Sophie Lichterman and the team at I
Heart Radio and all of you. We are recording this
podcast at various locations around Los Angeles on land that
is the historic gathering place for the Tonguba indigenous tribe,
and you can visit U S d A C dot
us to learn more about honoring native land. Permission to
(54:56):
Speak is a production of I Heart Radio and Double
Vision executive produced by Katherine Burke Canton and Mark Canton.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, listen on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your favorite shows. H
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Intentionally Disturbing
Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.