December 27, 2024 • 36 mins
In today's episode, singer/songwriter Tim Minchin discusses the poison that is social media, how he emerged from his bruising time in LA and why he urges students to look after their bodies.
In conversation with culture reporter Thomas Mitchell, he reflects also on his infamous George Pell song, and on the impending publication of his first non-fiction book, You Don't Have to Have a Dream (Advice for the Incrementally Ambitious).
We'll be back in January 2025 with plenty of exciting interviews booked in the calendar, but for now please enjoy one of our most popular episodes from the past year.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Conrad Marshall, host of Good Weekend Talks. After
a short summer break, the podcast will be back in
January with plenty of exciting interviews booked in the calendar already.
But for now, enjoy one of our most popular episodes
from 2024 and don't forget to subscribe, rate and share! Hi,
(00:24):
I'm Conrad Marshall and from the Sydney Morning Herald and
The Age. Welcome to Good Weekend Talks, a magazine for
your ears, featuring in-depth conversations with fascinating people from sport
and politics, science and culture, business and beyond. Every week,
you can download new episodes in which top journalists from
across our newsrooms talk to compelling people about the definitive
(00:46):
stories of the day. In this episode, we speak with
Tim Minchin. The Australian performer has just penned his first
non-fiction book, You Don't Have to Have a Dream. Advice
for the incrementally ambitious. Drawn from three of his iconic
graduation speeches, the book is an idiosyncratic celebration of life, art,
(01:09):
success and kindness, a rallying cry for creativity, critical thinking
and compassion. And hosting this episode, exploring an array of
Minchin's own challenges and triumphs, heartaches and epiphanies is the
Sydney Morning Herald culture writer Thomas Mitchell.
S2 (01:29):
And Good Weekend Talks welcomes Tim Minchin.
S3 (01:32):
Yeah, I feel welcomed.
S2 (01:33):
You feel welcomed. You look welcome.
S3 (01:34):
Oh, thanks. I hope you feel welcome. I'm faking welcomeness.
I actually feel really put upon. Uncomfortable? Yeah. Uncomfortable? Yeah.
Maybe I wish I wasn't here. It's the.
S2 (01:42):
Intense lighting.
S3 (01:43):
Yeah, totally. It's quite. It's quite full on. It does
feel like, you know, you might be trying to get
state secrets out of me or something.
S2 (01:49):
It's almost got a bit of, like, a 60 minutes
vibe the way it's lit or something.
S3 (01:52):
Totally. Well, trust me, I know what I've done. I've
been a bad builder or something.
S2 (01:55):
Yes, correct. We're here with dodgy tradesman Tim Minchin. Okay,
so I was I was curious. You have these different selves.
They wear many different hats. Musician, writer, comedian, actor. And
now we're kind of looking at the publication of your
first non-fiction book. You Don't Have to Have a Dream
and a live tour to kind of accompany the release.
I mean, you've always been a busy guy, but do
(02:15):
you think your relationship with work has changed? Are you
afraid of being not busy.
S3 (02:21):
And disinterested in being not busy or uninterested in being
not busy? Um, I have a very keen sense that
it's an incredible privilege to be. I don't I'm not
just checking that box to acknowledge it. I mean, I literally,
you know, I, I was heading for and would have
been happy as a sort of, you know, a guy
(02:43):
who wrote music for theatre in Perth and, you know,
maybe did some Shakespeare in the Park, you know, that
that was kind of where I was until I was
almost 30. And then, um, I ended up somewhere very different,
and I just don't. I never felt like I had
a right to be an artist. I never thought anyone
owed me a career in the arts. And so I
(03:03):
don't that hasn't gone away for me. Like I'm like, oh,
I get to make stuff I should. I kind of
owe it to myself to work eight hours a day. Like,
who gets to, like, sit on their laurels or rest
on their laurels? Why and why would you when you
love your job? That said, I've been waiting for the
burn to lower a little bit for the for the
(03:26):
gas to be turned down on the fire. That drives
me to work so much, and I feel like I
might be getting there. It's something to which I aspire
to be a bit more chill, because it does come
from a place of I need to prove myself and
it's it gets unattractive. And I've known artists and people
in their 70s and 80s who are really unchill about
(03:47):
what they've achieved. They're like chasing their biggest hits. And
I'm talking big names, you know, they just never let
go of the the kind of need to have another
hit or prove themselves, or get richer or be more acknowledged.
And I that's a real warning to me that that's
not a not a vibe.
S2 (04:04):
No, that's a losing game. I think it is funny, though,
because our relationship with work is so different these days. And,
you know, you talk about it in the book that
if you do what you love, then it never feels
like work. And that's the thing people say, and it's
very true. But of course, the reverse is true. Like
even especially in the creative industries, like labors of love
are still laborious. And, you know, I was curious, when
do you feel like you're most, like in work mode? Like,
(04:26):
when are you really like, I am grinding.
S3 (04:30):
Um, that's an interesting question. I'm not very good at grinding.
I'm good at getting very focused when I need to. Um,
I really do enjoy all the different aspects of it.
The hard thing is when hard. The laborious thing is
when you're having to promote stuff and it's just like,
(04:53):
now I'm off social media myself. It's a real pain,
but I have to generate these videos so they can
go to my assistant so they can give them to,
you know, it's like that stuff's a bore. And then
there's the pain of deciding what to do, the difficulty
of what to say no to. That's the hardest bit
of my job, which includes things like, can you please
(05:15):
do a video for my husband, who's a fan and
he's dying of cancer. And if I said yes to
all of them, I mean, they don't get they don't
all get to me because my managers just can't send
them all on the I can't handle that. I don't
do all them, but I can't do all of them. Yeah.
And the ones I do, do they hang over me.
I'm like, I've got to do that. Whether it's a
(05:37):
video for that primary school in Poland who are doing
a version of Matilda and I promised I would, you know, whatever.
S2 (05:42):
Yeah. You say yes to one and then the floodgates
open anyway.
S3 (05:45):
So that's. But I mean, my answer is I don't,
I don't feel like I grind when you're on tour
and you've done 20 shows and you just feel like
your body wants to break down, um, because you're singing
for two hours a night and it's just the adrenaline
highs and the trying to sleep and the changing cities
and the hopping on planes that that feels like work.
(06:08):
That feels not the shows. The shows always feel pretty good.
Nearly always. But the getting to the show feels like, okay,
and I have to do stuff. I have to say
to myself, this is like, you know, this is like
the ninth K and a ten K run, you know,
come on. Like, I have to talk to myself like
a sports coach. I was.
S2 (06:27):
Gonna say, how many, how many, like pep speeches have
you given yourself in the mirror somewhere in the middle
of nowhere where you're like, you can do this up.
S3 (06:33):
There, and you do lose? Yeah. And the other sort
of interesting thing about being a performer is your confidence
is always a kite, you know, that you've got on
a string. Like, I don't swagger through this career. I
have my, um, self-assuredness. And I have my self-belief. But
(06:55):
I don't swagger through this life. I'm like. It's just constant.
I say it in one of the speeches the waves
of self-loathing, self-loathing and self-doubt, self self-love and self-doubt or something.
You know, it's just that is what being an artist is.
I'm amazing. Look at all these people standing up and
clapping me. I hate myself. I don't know how people
can look at my ugly face. It's just it does
(07:17):
it to you.
S2 (07:17):
Because it's I mean, I.
S3 (07:18):
Guess that's the drug.
S2 (07:19):
That's the changing nature of of fame and the work
that you put in the grinding or the non grinding
in your case, but has brought you a very incredible
level of fame. And I know that you've spoken about your,
I guess, shifting relationship with fame. And sometimes it can
be difficult and you resent it or you crave it
as any I think creative does. Would you be sad
if you woke up tomorrow and no one knew who
(07:40):
you were?
S3 (07:41):
Yeah, I think I would, and I don't think that's
attractive either, but I just have to admit.
S2 (07:46):
But that's a conditioning, like.
S3 (07:47):
It's, um. And, I don't know, uh, just to sort
of slightly ameliorate your assessment of my past reflections on fame,
I don't think I'm very famous. I think I've done
really well to be in a place where it's comfortable, like.
And I'm not. I don't look like Brad Pitt. I
was never going to be an A-lister, because that sort
(08:10):
of fame usually comes with aesthetic gifts. Um, but I,
I'm happy with my level of fame, and I don't
resent it, partly because I'm very lucky to have a
personality that finds if someone wants to come up and
talk to me, I just very rarely feel anything but love.
(08:30):
But I just it's I'm an extroverted, chatty pro and
I don't I don't mind, and I'm just. That's just luck, right?
Some people find it really, really hard and really invasive. Um,
but without a doubt, being important is a drug. Even
if you deep down don't think of yourself as important
(08:51):
or special, or if you're like me and you don't
really believe in free will, so you don't believe you
should be credited for anything. You just. You know, when
I walk into a room in some places, it's meaningful
to others and you can't unknow that, you know?
S2 (09:08):
Yeah.
S3 (09:10):
That said, it does make, if you think about it
too much, it could be problematic if I think about
how people are approaching me all the time. I just
don't think about it, I don't care. People can take
me as I come and I take them as they come,
and I just don't think about it.
S2 (09:24):
It can. It can kind of break your brain. And
I guess the interesting thing is that you do learn
that everything is obviously fragile. And you touched on it before, um,
what happened with Larrikins? And I was curious, you know,
the book is called You Don't Have to Have a Dream.
But people do, of course. Naturally. And I imagine if
you were to say these are some dreams I had. Like,
that is, you know, for anyone that's ever thought about
(09:46):
writing or having a career like, that's a version of
the dream, what you were doing over there, and it
fell apart and, you know, that would be so devastating.
And I guess off the back of that, you moved
home to Australia and, you know, you kind of, I guess,
come back here to pick it up and see what
things look like. And I mean, correct me if I'm wrong,
but I feel like I've watched, watched interviews with you
(10:08):
and read, read interviews with you. And it felt like
as well as being, you know, naturally devastated, there was
some anger attached to that whole thing. Oh yeah.
S3 (10:14):
Super trippy.
S2 (10:15):
And how do you how does that feeling evolve, I guess.
Where does it sit with you now? What happened there?
S3 (10:20):
Well, of course, the great thing about time passing is,
is not just that it heals wounds or the slings
and arrows less keenly felt, but it's that your understanding
of your experiences is averaged out. So your your failures
are mitigated by your successes. And you can look back
(10:41):
and go, oh, I had my ups and downs. And
in general I've been unbelievably lucky. And and so it
just it distance gives you a better view of the average. Right.
There was a lot going on at that period when
the film was shut down and stuff. Um, I, um,
I think just moving and I just. Yeah. I'm not
(11:05):
I'm not sure if I was devastated, I was, I
was definitely cross because I, I make my work with
a particular, slightly Pollyanna ish, um, deliberately Pollyanna ish view.
I'd just go, I'm going to throw myself into this.
And I'm not perfect. Like, I, I don't always make
great art, and I, I'm not the greatest writer in
(11:27):
the world, but I really go hard at trying to
make it good in my own. And I'm not really
interested in what the market wants or what producers think,
unless they've got an amazing list of credits. I'm like,
I don't know you. You don't seem like anyone who's
made a good story. I'm just going to not listen
to you. And so I didn't really suit LA, but
I still think, you know, I wonder if that movie
(11:49):
will have another chance to rise again. Um, I just
needed to get on with more work, and I got
to right upright when I got back with with my
beautiful friends and then be in it. And that was
the most amazing way to write a show, which is
about dealing with your stumbles and about how your errors,
(12:09):
like literally the final monologue of upright season one is,
you know, sometimes you make mistakes and they can be
accidentally beautiful. I mean, I literally just wrote any wisdom
I could pull out of that experience into the next thing.
And that in itself was successful and something I loved
and that did most of the work.
S2 (12:27):
Yeah, it's. Yeah, because I mean, I guess that any
type of like feeling like anger or what you could
see as a professional failure, you know, it was out
of your control. But the end goal for anyone is
to pull something out of it. Totally. And you talk
about failure a lot in the book as well. And
it's crazy to me reading this story about and I
obviously know you're aware of this, but like, you know,
Billie Eilish at 12 years old, going to see Matilda
(12:49):
and thinking of herself like as a failure because her
career hadn't matched that yet. And she's 12 and we
know how her career turned out. She's quite talented.
S3 (12:56):
Yet we don't know how it turned out.
S2 (12:57):
Oh, yeah. She's doing so far, so good. Long, long.
S3 (13:00):
Way to go. But you.
S2 (13:00):
Think? But do you think we are living in a
time where, like, ambition has morphed to the point where
because of, you know, I don't know, the crazy world
of social media that has really kind of rearranged our
brains so much that we're living in a world where ambition,
even when you're a young person, is like something that
skewers your worldview already.
S4 (13:21):
Yeah.
S3 (13:21):
I mean, I'm afraid I'm one of those people that
think social media is a genuine, genuine poison that's going
to do huge, huge damage to the generation that to.
I mean, it's it's all in the data. Anyone who's
still going, oh, is it social media that caused the
massive rise of depression in young people after 2012. Anyone who's.
I just think and I'm if two years from now
(13:43):
we have another chat and you're like, oh, you were
wrong about that. It turned out to be the water or,
you know, whatever. Um, I just think you're bonkers. I
think social media is poison on so many levels, and
that's a whole chat. But but without a doubt, one
of perhaps. Okay, so everyone's like, what is the mechanism
by which social media causes depression? And there's so much
(14:04):
I think it's just too much information in our brains
didn't evolve to have 70 different inputs, whether they're positive
or negative. It doesn't matter. We're not meant to scroll.
We're meant to anyway. So that's the kind of macro thing.
But what are the Buddhists say? What what is everyone?
Jesus Christ, everyone who's ever had any wisdom said about happiness,
which is that that if you compare yourself to others,
(14:26):
you're going to be miserable. All the Buddhists say, you know,
unhappiness is always either wanting something or aversion. It's either
desire or aversion. version. And rather than the the lesson
of my second musical Groundhog Day, which is that everything
you need to be happy is in front of you. Now, now,
obviously there's exceptions and people who are oppressed and people
who are suffering. But for most of us in Australia,
(14:48):
most of the people listening to this podcast, everything, you know,
give or take. Trauma and disease, it's available now. You
don't you don't need more to be happy. And actually
you can't. And the Buddhists say change is the only
constant in the universe. And you have to get to
at peace with change. Um, what does social media do
(15:10):
to your capacity to not compare yourself to others, to
not want to be different? What does a 15. My
son who plays guitar, he looks at some ten year old.
His algorithm throws him guitar and he just thinks he's terrible.
And it's just like, well, I can't explain to you
why it doesn't matter that that kid's got chops you
don't have. That's not what it's for. That's not what
art is. It's not. It's nothing to do with that.
(15:31):
I say in my book, you bring everything you are
into everything you do. Art is not whether you've got
the chops of a ten year old, but how do
you tell a 15 year old that? How do you
tell a 15 year old girl that having folds of
fat on her body doesn't make her a failure, compared
to every single frickin body she sees? How do you
tell a 40 year old journalist that that because they
(15:51):
haven't won the prize, or they're not on a holiday
in Fiji, or they don't feed their kids gluten free
stuff out of a burlap, burlap, burlap. What's that word
sack like? You're just constantly pummeling your brain. It's like
what advertising started doing to us. We went, oh, hold
my fucking beer. Hand me the bat and we'll do
it to ourselves.
S2 (16:12):
Yeah, we're going.
S3 (16:12):
To just brutalize ourselves.
S2 (16:14):
We have. Yeah, we have really turned it up to 11.
That whole comparison is the thief of joy. And it's like,
we're just like.
S3 (16:20):
Do we not take any lessons and can we learn nothing?
S2 (16:24):
Yeah, because it is very funny. The advertising boom like
triggered all these issues. And then we were just like, okay,
well maybe I'll just like put that in my pocket
and have it on my person and look at.
S3 (16:32):
It 100 times a day.
S2 (16:34):
And the thing I think is particularly toxic. Like I
have a very young son, too young to be on
social media, but oh, is he though? Well, we could
get him on. He's 18 months old. Come on. Soon. Soon.
But even that, I think I think like I already
have like pre anxiety about him being on it. And
the thing I think is particularly uh, I noticed it
(16:54):
a lot working in this industry where, you know, engagement
with stories is so big now. And you know what
goes on in the comments section of articles. And of course,
social media is sometimes like, makes you want to cry
and you.
S3 (17:06):
Bastards reported as news and just make it worse. Like
you're reporting what is said in comment sections that we
should have seen that as a bad idea.
S2 (17:15):
Well, yeah, I mean, it's just it's where life happens. Yeah,
it is where life happens, I guess. But and I
was particularly interested in this, you know, in the book
you talk about, um, that we don't listen to one another.
It's an idea that, you know, people have been saying
for a while, but especially I thought it was really
interesting that people don't say often, which you spoke about
is like self-interrogation you say, we must think critically and
not just about the ideas of others, but be hard
on your beliefs. And that's the thing I think people
(17:36):
just don't do anymore, because we really exist in these
echo chambers. And occasionally when you do drift out into
a different chamber, then it's just people like yelling at
one another. And do you worry that we are in
a time where Self-interrogation has just been completely benched in
favor of, like, validation?
S3 (17:54):
Yeah. And it's and everyone sees it happening everywhere else.
Like if you talk to any you know of, I
would consider myself a left leaning progressive, social progressive. You know, um,
I mean, I suppose I'm what? I'm a lefty, right?
But am I like, because I find the way my
(18:15):
ostensibly progressive friends act, um, kind of appalling because I
don't think it's progressive to call anyone you disagree with
a fascist or cut or or or deliberately switch off
your empathy for someone because they're a race or gender
that you see as an oppressor, not an oppressed to
(18:35):
group people. It's happening all the time. It's this thing
that people call wokeness, which is such a gross word,
and I wish we could replace it because what it is,
is performative righteousness with no so much of what goes
on in line is performing your righteousness to your own people.
(18:56):
And I know this because I did it for years,
and I didn't realize I did it until I stopped
and went, why am I posting about Trump and Brexit
and who am I? Whose mind am I trying to change?
I'm an artist. Put it in your frickin work, bro. Like,
I got off Twitter years ago because I was I
had a moment of sort of Damascene moment of realizing
that I.
S2 (19:16):
Was there, a particular thing that triggered the moment?
S3 (19:18):
I think I just, I just I guess it's my
job to think about things, and not everyone has time
to think about things. And I started going, what is this? Helping? Oh, really?
I think watching, perhaps being there, watching America get more
and more divided, the extreme ification of every viewpoint and
the means to an end ism, the idea that we
(19:39):
progressives and, you know, nationalistic, right wing, you know, populists
and all that mob, they all think, oh, it's means
to an end. You know, look, I know you shouldn't
necessarily hate people because they're white or Jewish or, you know,
but this time it's okay because we're going to get
this done. I mean, it's just mad, but but this
(20:01):
performative righteousness, it really puts people off. And it and
what I realized is no one's got an intention except
to show their friends that they are doing right. Think
not wrong. Think. I mean, these days when I talk
to my friends, I go, tell me something you disagree
with your mates on and they all have one. You
(20:21):
wouldn't know it though. You wouldn't know it, because everyone
only uses social media to show their adherence to a
set of values, that that is a representation of what
they see as their tribal identity. And I'm saying everyone
I'm using. Obviously not everyone does. But there's two problems.
One is you have there's no utility, you have no intention.
(20:44):
And I talk about this a bit in the book,
that our job as artists is to put good ideas
into the world and good ideas.
S2 (20:51):
Yeah.
S3 (20:51):
And valuable ideas and valuable ideas. The difference between a
valuable idea and a tweet that you've chucked up at
12:00 at night is, is, uh, art could be defined
as somewhere where you've put some fucking effort in. And
it's really about effort, about self-examination. Is this a good idea?
What is its utility? How can it whether it's to
entertain or to you know, I've done some really agitating things.
(21:13):
I've I've been part of massive public shaming with with
pal and stuff and stuff I reflect on now and
and we can get to that. But but the other
thing that we don't examine is not just is there
an absence of utility, but what are the possible unintended consequences?
And now we have ten years of data, 12 years
of data. And the unintended consequence is a divided nation
(21:36):
like America. And my question for Australians listening to this
is you want to follow them. And what are you doing.
You you not them, not those other people, those arseholes,
those fascists, those libtards, whatever. Not the other people. You.
What are you doing to make sure our country doesn't
follow America?
S2 (22:11):
You obviously just mentioned the pill video and the song back.
S5 (22:15):
In 73, when you were living with Jerry is the
truth that you knew, but you chose to ignore? Or
did you actively try to keep it buried?
UU (22:22):
And years later, when survivors, despite the shame and their fear,
stood up to tell their stories, you spent year after
year working hard to protect the church's assets.
S5 (22:37):
I mean, with all due.
UU (22:39):
Respect, dude, I think you're scum. And I reckon you
should come home.
S2 (22:46):
It was this kind of huge cultural moment in Australia,
broadly lauded as hilarious and important and, you know, poignant
at the time. And I was curious to get your
2024 feelings on it, because that was something that people got.
So it really, like left a mark. And I would say,
(23:08):
you know, again, broadly, people were really behind that. But
given it's clear that you've, you know, with time, had
time to think about the impact of these things. And
how do you feel about the, I guess, like the
imprint that that video left on the popular culture in Australia?
S3 (23:24):
Well, I can like I can with most things, take
two views or 5 or 7. I mean, I think
there's a role for satire and there's a role for
art in politics. Um, to in my defense, or to
my credit, I, I worked incredibly hard to make sure
(23:45):
all I talked about in that song, by the way,
people remember it as me accusing him of being an abuser. Like,
people have a massive false memory about that. The people
on the right, they're like, are you going to apologize
for Pell to Pell for calling him an abuser? I'm like,
I didn't. There was nothing to do with that. This
is before all that. I wrote it about him not
faking a sickie to not come home to face a
(24:06):
royal commission. And I had people very close to the
Royal commission, and I, I had read a lot of
data on, on how meaningful it is for people who
are victims of systemic abuse to be have an apology,
just like we apologize to indigenous people. Like, it's hard
to figure out the utility of saying sorry to. Indigenous people.
But at the time, it was unbelievably important to. People
who were there, indigenous people who were there. It was
(24:27):
very important that people came back. And yeah, I got
a sense that and I knew every flight he had
taken in the previous months, I knew he had only
seen a doctor in the Vatican. I wasn't pissing around,
and I was reflecting stuff that was already written in
the media. I was making it funny, accessible, and I
was giving abuse victims a voice. Right? And much more
(24:49):
than anything, I was raising money to fly them over
to see him. And that's what we did. And it
wasn't my idea. The charity bit. I was very lucky
to be able to help to to Steelman the opposition argument,
do I think public shaming is the right mechanism for
(25:11):
change as a rule in a post social media world?
And I think probably we should be very, very careful
with public shaming as a rule. Because how why are
you the moral arbiter? I mean, the moral certainty of
some people online. You're like, yeah, I know, you know,
they go, it's not it's not cancel culture. It's it's
holding people to account. I'm like, who are you kidding? Like,
(25:33):
maybe you're holding people accountable. Maybe you're getting it wrong.
You're a child. Like you're just part of a mob
doing moral justice through your lens, right? So I have
a problem with public shaming. Cannot be the primary mechanism
because it will just it'll come for you. I wrote
about it in my song 15 Minutes of Shame. You
(25:53):
know they'll turn on you if you stumble. It'll come
for you. Not just you straight white guy. Not just
you rich colonialists, but you, you know, non-binary. Whatever. You lesbian. Whatever.
S2 (26:04):
Yeah. In, I guess in conjunction with the book, you're
touring in conversation with Tim Minchin and like on a
flip side, in a really beautiful way, you get to go.
And just like, talk with someone else in front of people.
People who like their lives are all over the place,
from every single demographic and socioeconomic background, or people.
S3 (26:24):
Who can afford to spend 100 bucks to listen to
a pontificating buffoon on stage. Yeah, yeah.
S2 (26:29):
We'll start a kick starter for those who can't make it.
S3 (26:31):
Well, yeah, we do some things.
S2 (26:33):
Yeah, but then, I mean, I guess, like, it's almost
like you get to go out and remind yourself of, like,
what connection actually looks like. You know, you obviously two
of the world playing music. I'm not sure if music
is a part of this show. No. So it's a
very different experience for you, but like kind of a
beautiful way to be like, okay, this is actually what
it's about I think so.
S3 (26:52):
And I do like my last tour. My unfunny evening
was really me talking about my thoughts, and I did
talk a little bit about Division. And I have a
song called In Defense of the fence, which is an
old Pre-twitter song, but it couldn't be more poignant.
UU (27:07):
Now we divide the world into terrorists and heroes into
normal folk and weirdos into good people and paedos into things.
S3 (27:16):
When I go on this book tour, see, you know,
if you've listened to this podcast, you've like, I think
I speak thoughtfully and clearly, but you can hear me.
I have a penchant for passion. I want to get going.
I want to get on one right, and I want
to grow up into someone who can reflect more, who
(27:39):
I actually am inside my head, which is a purveyor
of doubt. You know, I'm a I really believe more
than anything that you should examine your ideas. And the
best way to do that is take the thing you
believe and then get the opposition's argument and see how
good you can make it. That's what I referred to
the term steel man. You steel man. The opposition's argument.
(28:01):
So if you think I don't know Trump is a buffoon,
the only way to figure out whether that's a good
opinion or not is really have a look at what
people like about him and just try and see the
best in him, right? I haven't done that, but I should. Right,
I should. Um, and the other thing I want to
do is follow my advice from the sort of most
well-known speech from my book, which is define yourself by
(28:23):
what you love. Because when we live in a time
like this, where we're constantly bombarded with the pain of
the world, which is interesting to live in a time
when everyone's more aware and therefore maybe more empathic towards
people that they otherwise wouldn't have known so much about,
except maybe a two inch column on the international pages
of the paper. Sure. We thought that would be good.
(28:45):
I think what it causes is incredible friction and dissonance.
And Gen Z, statistically, they're really struggling to feel optimistic
or happy. And I want to do better at modeling
for my children and my fans and whatever. Define yourself
by what you love. There's so much beautiful stuff in
(29:06):
my life and I love art and I love friends,
and I love, you know, um, discourse and conversations. And
I like talking to people who are different from me and,
you know, and so I would like to try and
get better at talking to the positive of all this
rather than trying to unpack the problems. But, I mean,
(29:27):
there's balance there. And as a journo, that's you got
to wonder about that too.
S2 (29:31):
Yeah, of.
S3 (29:32):
Course, but that's what I want to do with my
book tour. I want to I want to mature into like,
a big hippy love machine. Perfect. But but also my
critical thinking, um, the basis of my worldview are humanist
critical thinking. Um, worldview is I'm going to keep pushing it.
(29:52):
It's still it's still the right kind of framework.
S2 (29:56):
Yeah. You can be like a kind of long haired
Anthony Robbins just touring the country.
S3 (30:00):
Oh, could I be a long haired who? Uh, I
was going to say Peter Singer. Yeah.
S2 (30:05):
Someone that like that. Um, look, you turn 50 next year.
I don't want to prematurely age you, but we've kind
of been talking about this, I guess, in terms of, like,
are you one for milestones? Like when you turned 40,
were you like, is this where I wanted to be
when you turn 50, or will you take stock or
will it just be like, happy birthday, Tim, what are
we doing today?
S3 (30:24):
I, I'm not very stock taking because, um, my expectations
for the sort of life I might have between the
years of 2004 and 2008 blew my blew it all
so completely out of the water. Like, I just never,
ever thought I would get to play 2000 seaters, let
(30:47):
alone 10,000 seaters. Or be Judas in an arena, or
have a Broadway musical or any of this. Write a
frickin book or talk to you right now. I just
everyone says that, but I just I didn't. That's not
what I thought. That wasn't my dream. Um, so I,
you know, I if I died now, apart from the
fact that I made my children sad, I mean, I
(31:10):
got nothing. I got nothing I need to do. I mean,
I'm so far past my hopes. Um. I'd like to
just become a. I'd like to become a force for
good ideas. You know, I want to keep honing that, but, um,
I've just renovated a home, which I've never done before.
That was really, really fun. And I've got this nice
(31:31):
marriage and these kids, and I'm all right.
S2 (31:34):
I loved the, like, in the part of the book
because especially given that you are talking to, you know,
in this particular speech, a group of university students who
tend to define themselves. We've all been there, myself included.
When you just like you smoke and you drink and
you don't give a fuck about anything, and there's not
a chance you would be caught dead going for a run,
and you really impress upon them the need to, like,
treat your body with respect and, you know, like play
(31:56):
a sport, do yoga, pump iron like take care of
your body. And I think, are you a runner these days?
Are you one of these people that runs a lot.
S3 (32:03):
Yeah. I'm a I'm a bit more Jimmy because it's
better for my the various pains and problems I have.
I'm a hit class guy, but I run. Today's a
running day and I'm not going to get to run.
I run, yeah, 2 or 3 times a week. I
try to run 2 or 3 times a week.
S2 (32:17):
And is it funny when you talk to these students,
do you think like, can you see the blank faces
being like, I can't believe Tim Minchin's telling me to
do a hit class right now. I know.
S3 (32:24):
Right? But that's everyone's always, you know, people always just
want a simple version of you. And when I the
couple of times I did really get in trouble with
the right wing press in Australia because of Pell and
still call Australia homophobic and stuff and, and you know,
I there's a big percentage of Australians for whom I
will just always be that, you know, and still if
(32:46):
I ever post anything online, someone will go, this guy's
not even funny. And I'm like, I haven't been a
comedian for ten years. Like, what did you think of upright?
You know, like like, but, um, uh, and part of
that is like, long hair, bloody stoner. And they're still
sorry to do that voice. It's kind of condescending, but, um,
there's still this idea that an artist is a type.
(33:09):
I'm like, oh no, I'm a massive footie fan. I
like played second grade, first grade adjacent hockey until I
was 27. I still run ten K's, you know, twice,
like I'm a I'm a jock. And I was a
sport way more than I was a muso at school.
Like I was obsessed by the sports.
S2 (33:28):
On the album Apart Together, your album, there is a
song if This plane goes down, um, and you sing
Remember Me as someone who tried to find the balance
between self-loathing and pride and legacy is a funny thing,
you know, it's something people do get hung up upon.
Do you ever give thought to how you'd like to
be remembered?
S3 (33:46):
I my position I have another song called Talk Too Much,
stayed too long and um, and it says, it says
I don't I don't give a shit how I'm remembered. Um,
because I'm a, I don't. I'm pretty logical about that stuff.
Who cares? I'll be dead. Um. And then every now
and then, I think, oh, imagine if, you know, you
(34:08):
see someone who, at 70 something gets shamed for something
they did, and you realize that they're going to go
to their grave being known as the person.
S2 (34:19):
Who the Don Burkes.
S3 (34:20):
Of the world. Yeah. That's right. Right. And, um. And
you think you don't want that, but I don't I
don't there's nothing coming out. You know, I don't have
any dark secrets. I've lived a fairly straightforward kind of life, but, uh,
do I think about legacy? I don't really, I, I
(34:41):
really like people. Um, I really like that people are
interested in my work. I want to always be getting
better at whatever it is I'm turning my hand to.
I really see that's something very much a that is
a personality attribute of mine. is that I people go,
why are you doing that? And I'm like, oh, because
I can get better at it. You know, when I
(35:02):
did my solo piano tour just gone, I'm like, I
think I want to get better at piano and singing.
I'm going to, I'm going to do, you know, 80 shows.
And so it's just progress and I want to keep
getting good. And then when I die, I don't know,
burn it, burn it, burn it all, baby.
S2 (35:17):
Burn it to the ground.
S3 (35:18):
And just sing. When I grow up in primary school
I'll be happy. That's the that's the great thing. My
legacy will be Matilda. And that's the best, best fucking thing.
S6 (35:26):
When I grow up. I will be tall enough to
reach the branches that you have to reach to climb
the trees. You get to climb when you're grown up.
And when I grow up, I want to grow up.
(35:49):
I will be smart enough to answer all the questions
that you need to know the answers.
UU (35:57):
To when you're a grown up.
S2 (36:03):
Tim Minchin, thank you for joining. Good weekend talks.
S3 (36:05):
It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
S1 (36:15):
Good Weekend Talks is brought to you by the Sydney
Morning Herald and The Age. Subscriptions power our newsrooms to
support independent journalism. Search, subscribe Sydney Morning Herald or The Age?
And if you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe,
rate and comment wherever you get your podcasts. This episode
(36:36):
of Good Weekend Talks is produced by Kai Wong. Editing
from Konrad Marshall. Tom McKendrick is head of audio and
Katrina Strickland is the editor of Good Weekend.
Hi, I'm Conrad Marshall, host of Good Weekend Talks. After
a short summer break, the podcast will be back in
January with plenty of exciting interviews booked in the calendar already.
But for now, enjoy one of our most popular episodes
from 2024 and don't forget to subscribe, rate and share! Hi,
(00:24):
I'm Conrad Marshall and from the Sydney Morning Herald and
The Age. Welcome to Good Weekend Talks, a magazine for
your ears, featuring in-depth conversations with fascinating people from sport
and politics, science and culture, business and beyond. Every week,
you can download new episodes in which top journalists from
across our newsrooms talk to compelling people about the definitive
(00:46):
stories of the day. In this episode, we speak with
Tim Minchin. The Australian performer has just penned his first
non-fiction book, You Don't Have to Have a Dream. Advice
for the incrementally ambitious. Drawn from three of his iconic
graduation speeches, the book is an idiosyncratic celebration of life, art,
(01:09):
success and kindness, a rallying cry for creativity, critical thinking
and compassion. And hosting this episode, exploring an array of
Minchin's own challenges and triumphs, heartaches and epiphanies is the
Sydney Morning Herald culture writer Thomas Mitchell.
S2 (01:29):
And Good Weekend Talks welcomes Tim Minchin.
S3 (01:32):
Yeah, I feel welcomed.
S2 (01:33):
You feel welcomed. You look welcome.
S3 (01:34):
Oh, thanks. I hope you feel welcome. I'm faking welcomeness.
I actually feel really put upon. Uncomfortable? Yeah. Uncomfortable? Yeah.
Maybe I wish I wasn't here. It's the.
S2 (01:42):
Intense lighting.
S3 (01:43):
Yeah, totally. It's quite. It's quite full on. It does
feel like, you know, you might be trying to get
state secrets out of me or something.
S2 (01:49):
It's almost got a bit of, like, a 60 minutes
vibe the way it's lit or something.
S3 (01:52):
Totally. Well, trust me, I know what I've done. I've
been a bad builder or something.
S2 (01:55):
Yes, correct. We're here with dodgy tradesman Tim Minchin. Okay,
so I was I was curious. You have these different selves.
They wear many different hats. Musician, writer, comedian, actor. And
now we're kind of looking at the publication of your
first non-fiction book. You Don't Have to Have a Dream
and a live tour to kind of accompany the release.
I mean, you've always been a busy guy, but do
(02:15):
you think your relationship with work has changed? Are you
afraid of being not busy.
S3 (02:21):
And disinterested in being not busy or uninterested in being
not busy? Um, I have a very keen sense that
it's an incredible privilege to be. I don't I'm not
just checking that box to acknowledge it. I mean, I literally,
you know, I, I was heading for and would have
been happy as a sort of, you know, a guy
(02:43):
who wrote music for theatre in Perth and, you know,
maybe did some Shakespeare in the Park, you know, that
that was kind of where I was until I was
almost 30. And then, um, I ended up somewhere very different,
and I just don't. I never felt like I had
a right to be an artist. I never thought anyone
owed me a career in the arts. And so I
(03:03):
don't that hasn't gone away for me. Like I'm like, oh,
I get to make stuff I should. I kind of
owe it to myself to work eight hours a day. Like,
who gets to, like, sit on their laurels or rest
on their laurels? Why and why would you when you
love your job? That said, I've been waiting for the
burn to lower a little bit for the for the
(03:26):
gas to be turned down on the fire. That drives
me to work so much, and I feel like I
might be getting there. It's something to which I aspire
to be a bit more chill, because it does come
from a place of I need to prove myself and
it's it gets unattractive. And I've known artists and people
in their 70s and 80s who are really unchill about
(03:47):
what they've achieved. They're like chasing their biggest hits. And
I'm talking big names, you know, they just never let
go of the the kind of need to have another
hit or prove themselves, or get richer or be more acknowledged.
And I that's a real warning to me that that's
not a not a vibe.
S2 (04:04):
No, that's a losing game. I think it is funny, though,
because our relationship with work is so different these days. And,
you know, you talk about it in the book that
if you do what you love, then it never feels
like work. And that's the thing people say, and it's
very true. But of course, the reverse is true. Like
even especially in the creative industries, like labors of love
are still laborious. And, you know, I was curious, when
do you feel like you're most, like in work mode? Like,
(04:26):
when are you really like, I am grinding.
S3 (04:30):
Um, that's an interesting question. I'm not very good at grinding.
I'm good at getting very focused when I need to. Um,
I really do enjoy all the different aspects of it.
The hard thing is when hard. The laborious thing is
when you're having to promote stuff and it's just like,
(04:53):
now I'm off social media myself. It's a real pain,
but I have to generate these videos so they can
go to my assistant so they can give them to,
you know, it's like that stuff's a bore. And then
there's the pain of deciding what to do, the difficulty
of what to say no to. That's the hardest bit
of my job, which includes things like, can you please
(05:15):
do a video for my husband, who's a fan and
he's dying of cancer. And if I said yes to
all of them, I mean, they don't get they don't
all get to me because my managers just can't send
them all on the I can't handle that. I don't
do all them, but I can't do all of them. Yeah.
And the ones I do, do they hang over me.
I'm like, I've got to do that. Whether it's a
(05:37):
video for that primary school in Poland who are doing
a version of Matilda and I promised I would, you know, whatever.
S2 (05:42):
Yeah. You say yes to one and then the floodgates
open anyway.
S3 (05:45):
So that's. But I mean, my answer is I don't,
I don't feel like I grind when you're on tour
and you've done 20 shows and you just feel like
your body wants to break down, um, because you're singing
for two hours a night and it's just the adrenaline
highs and the trying to sleep and the changing cities
and the hopping on planes that that feels like work.
(06:08):
That feels not the shows. The shows always feel pretty good.
Nearly always. But the getting to the show feels like, okay,
and I have to do stuff. I have to say
to myself, this is like, you know, this is like
the ninth K and a ten K run, you know,
come on. Like, I have to talk to myself like
a sports coach. I was.
S2 (06:27):
Gonna say, how many, how many, like pep speeches have
you given yourself in the mirror somewhere in the middle
of nowhere where you're like, you can do this up.
S3 (06:33):
There, and you do lose? Yeah. And the other sort
of interesting thing about being a performer is your confidence
is always a kite, you know, that you've got on
a string. Like, I don't swagger through this career. I
have my, um, self-assuredness. And I have my self-belief. But
(06:55):
I don't swagger through this life. I'm like. It's just constant.
I say it in one of the speeches the waves
of self-loathing, self-loathing and self-doubt, self self-love and self-doubt or something.
You know, it's just that is what being an artist is.
I'm amazing. Look at all these people standing up and
clapping me. I hate myself. I don't know how people
can look at my ugly face. It's just it does
(07:17):
it to you.
S2 (07:17):
Because it's I mean, I.
S3 (07:18):
Guess that's the drug.
S2 (07:19):
That's the changing nature of of fame and the work
that you put in the grinding or the non grinding
in your case, but has brought you a very incredible
level of fame. And I know that you've spoken about your,
I guess, shifting relationship with fame. And sometimes it can
be difficult and you resent it or you crave it
as any I think creative does. Would you be sad
if you woke up tomorrow and no one knew who
(07:40):
you were?
S3 (07:41):
Yeah, I think I would, and I don't think that's
attractive either, but I just have to admit.
S2 (07:46):
But that's a conditioning, like.
S3 (07:47):
It's, um. And, I don't know, uh, just to sort
of slightly ameliorate your assessment of my past reflections on fame,
I don't think I'm very famous. I think I've done
really well to be in a place where it's comfortable, like.
And I'm not. I don't look like Brad Pitt. I
was never going to be an A-lister, because that sort
(08:10):
of fame usually comes with aesthetic gifts. Um, but I,
I'm happy with my level of fame, and I don't
resent it, partly because I'm very lucky to have a
personality that finds if someone wants to come up and
talk to me, I just very rarely feel anything but love.
(08:30):
But I just it's I'm an extroverted, chatty pro and
I don't I don't mind, and I'm just. That's just luck, right?
Some people find it really, really hard and really invasive. Um,
but without a doubt, being important is a drug. Even
if you deep down don't think of yourself as important
(08:51):
or special, or if you're like me and you don't
really believe in free will, so you don't believe you
should be credited for anything. You just. You know, when
I walk into a room in some places, it's meaningful
to others and you can't unknow that, you know?
S2 (09:08):
Yeah.
S3 (09:10):
That said, it does make, if you think about it
too much, it could be problematic if I think about
how people are approaching me all the time. I just
don't think about it, I don't care. People can take
me as I come and I take them as they come,
and I just don't think about it.
S2 (09:24):
It can. It can kind of break your brain. And
I guess the interesting thing is that you do learn
that everything is obviously fragile. And you touched on it before, um,
what happened with Larrikins? And I was curious, you know,
the book is called You Don't Have to Have a Dream.
But people do, of course. Naturally. And I imagine if
you were to say these are some dreams I had. Like,
that is, you know, for anyone that's ever thought about
(09:46):
writing or having a career like, that's a version of
the dream, what you were doing over there, and it
fell apart and, you know, that would be so devastating.
And I guess off the back of that, you moved
home to Australia and, you know, you kind of, I guess,
come back here to pick it up and see what
things look like. And I mean, correct me if I'm wrong,
but I feel like I've watched, watched interviews with you
(10:08):
and read, read interviews with you. And it felt like
as well as being, you know, naturally devastated, there was
some anger attached to that whole thing. Oh yeah.
S3 (10:14):
Super trippy.
S2 (10:15):
And how do you how does that feeling evolve, I guess.
Where does it sit with you now? What happened there?
S3 (10:20):
Well, of course, the great thing about time passing is,
is not just that it heals wounds or the slings
and arrows less keenly felt, but it's that your understanding
of your experiences is averaged out. So your your failures
are mitigated by your successes. And you can look back
(10:41):
and go, oh, I had my ups and downs. And
in general I've been unbelievably lucky. And and so it
just it distance gives you a better view of the average. Right.
There was a lot going on at that period when
the film was shut down and stuff. Um, I, um,
I think just moving and I just. Yeah. I'm not
(11:05):
I'm not sure if I was devastated, I was, I
was definitely cross because I, I make my work with
a particular, slightly Pollyanna ish, um, deliberately Pollyanna ish view.
I'd just go, I'm going to throw myself into this.
And I'm not perfect. Like, I, I don't always make
great art, and I, I'm not the greatest writer in
(11:27):
the world, but I really go hard at trying to
make it good in my own. And I'm not really
interested in what the market wants or what producers think,
unless they've got an amazing list of credits. I'm like,
I don't know you. You don't seem like anyone who's
made a good story. I'm just going to not listen
to you. And so I didn't really suit LA, but
I still think, you know, I wonder if that movie
(11:49):
will have another chance to rise again. Um, I just
needed to get on with more work, and I got
to right upright when I got back with with my
beautiful friends and then be in it. And that was
the most amazing way to write a show, which is
about dealing with your stumbles and about how your errors,
(12:09):
like literally the final monologue of upright season one is,
you know, sometimes you make mistakes and they can be
accidentally beautiful. I mean, I literally just wrote any wisdom
I could pull out of that experience into the next thing.
And that in itself was successful and something I loved
and that did most of the work.
S2 (12:27):
Yeah, it's. Yeah, because I mean, I guess that any
type of like feeling like anger or what you could
see as a professional failure, you know, it was out
of your control. But the end goal for anyone is
to pull something out of it. Totally. And you talk
about failure a lot in the book as well. And
it's crazy to me reading this story about and I
obviously know you're aware of this, but like, you know,
Billie Eilish at 12 years old, going to see Matilda
(12:49):
and thinking of herself like as a failure because her
career hadn't matched that yet. And she's 12 and we
know how her career turned out. She's quite talented.
S3 (12:56):
Yet we don't know how it turned out.
S2 (12:57):
Oh, yeah. She's doing so far, so good. Long, long.
S3 (13:00):
Way to go. But you.
S2 (13:00):
Think? But do you think we are living in a
time where, like, ambition has morphed to the point where
because of, you know, I don't know, the crazy world
of social media that has really kind of rearranged our
brains so much that we're living in a world where ambition,
even when you're a young person, is like something that
skewers your worldview already.
S4 (13:21):
Yeah.
S3 (13:21):
I mean, I'm afraid I'm one of those people that
think social media is a genuine, genuine poison that's going
to do huge, huge damage to the generation that to.
I mean, it's it's all in the data. Anyone who's
still going, oh, is it social media that caused the
massive rise of depression in young people after 2012. Anyone who's.
I just think and I'm if two years from now
(13:43):
we have another chat and you're like, oh, you were
wrong about that. It turned out to be the water or,
you know, whatever. Um, I just think you're bonkers. I
think social media is poison on so many levels, and
that's a whole chat. But but without a doubt, one
of perhaps. Okay, so everyone's like, what is the mechanism
by which social media causes depression? And there's so much
(14:04):
I think it's just too much information in our brains
didn't evolve to have 70 different inputs, whether they're positive
or negative. It doesn't matter. We're not meant to scroll.
We're meant to anyway. So that's the kind of macro thing.
But what are the Buddhists say? What what is everyone?
Jesus Christ, everyone who's ever had any wisdom said about happiness,
which is that that if you compare yourself to others,
(14:26):
you're going to be miserable. All the Buddhists say, you know,
unhappiness is always either wanting something or aversion. It's either
desire or aversion. version. And rather than the the lesson
of my second musical Groundhog Day, which is that everything
you need to be happy is in front of you. Now, now,
obviously there's exceptions and people who are oppressed and people
who are suffering. But for most of us in Australia,
(14:48):
most of the people listening to this podcast, everything, you know,
give or take. Trauma and disease, it's available now. You
don't you don't need more to be happy. And actually
you can't. And the Buddhists say change is the only
constant in the universe. And you have to get to
at peace with change. Um, what does social media do
(15:10):
to your capacity to not compare yourself to others, to
not want to be different? What does a 15. My
son who plays guitar, he looks at some ten year old.
His algorithm throws him guitar and he just thinks he's terrible.
And it's just like, well, I can't explain to you
why it doesn't matter that that kid's got chops you
don't have. That's not what it's for. That's not what
art is. It's not. It's nothing to do with that.
(15:31):
I say in my book, you bring everything you are
into everything you do. Art is not whether you've got
the chops of a ten year old, but how do
you tell a 15 year old that? How do you
tell a 15 year old girl that having folds of
fat on her body doesn't make her a failure, compared
to every single frickin body she sees? How do you
tell a 40 year old journalist that that because they
(15:51):
haven't won the prize, or they're not on a holiday
in Fiji, or they don't feed their kids gluten free
stuff out of a burlap, burlap, burlap. What's that word
sack like? You're just constantly pummeling your brain. It's like
what advertising started doing to us. We went, oh, hold
my fucking beer. Hand me the bat and we'll do
it to ourselves.
S2 (16:12):
Yeah, we're going.
S3 (16:12):
To just brutalize ourselves.
S2 (16:14):
We have. Yeah, we have really turned it up to 11.
That whole comparison is the thief of joy. And it's like,
we're just like.
S3 (16:20):
Do we not take any lessons and can we learn nothing?
S2 (16:24):
Yeah, because it is very funny. The advertising boom like
triggered all these issues. And then we were just like, okay,
well maybe I'll just like put that in my pocket
and have it on my person and look at.
S3 (16:32):
It 100 times a day.
S2 (16:34):
And the thing I think is particularly toxic. Like I
have a very young son, too young to be on
social media, but oh, is he though? Well, we could
get him on. He's 18 months old. Come on. Soon. Soon.
But even that, I think I think like I already
have like pre anxiety about him being on it. And
the thing I think is particularly uh, I noticed it
(16:54):
a lot working in this industry where, you know, engagement
with stories is so big now. And you know what
goes on in the comments section of articles. And of course,
social media is sometimes like, makes you want to cry
and you.
S3 (17:06):
Bastards reported as news and just make it worse. Like
you're reporting what is said in comment sections that we
should have seen that as a bad idea.
S2 (17:15):
Well, yeah, I mean, it's just it's where life happens. Yeah,
it is where life happens, I guess. But and I
was particularly interested in this, you know, in the book
you talk about, um, that we don't listen to one another.
It's an idea that, you know, people have been saying
for a while, but especially I thought it was really
interesting that people don't say often, which you spoke about
is like self-interrogation you say, we must think critically and
not just about the ideas of others, but be hard
on your beliefs. And that's the thing I think people
(17:36):
just don't do anymore, because we really exist in these
echo chambers. And occasionally when you do drift out into
a different chamber, then it's just people like yelling at
one another. And do you worry that we are in
a time where Self-interrogation has just been completely benched in
favor of, like, validation?
S3 (17:54):
Yeah. And it's and everyone sees it happening everywhere else.
Like if you talk to any you know of, I
would consider myself a left leaning progressive, social progressive. You know, um,
I mean, I suppose I'm what? I'm a lefty, right?
But am I like, because I find the way my
(18:15):
ostensibly progressive friends act, um, kind of appalling because I
don't think it's progressive to call anyone you disagree with
a fascist or cut or or or deliberately switch off
your empathy for someone because they're a race or gender
that you see as an oppressor, not an oppressed to
(18:35):
group people. It's happening all the time. It's this thing
that people call wokeness, which is such a gross word,
and I wish we could replace it because what it is,
is performative righteousness with no so much of what goes
on in line is performing your righteousness to your own people.
(18:56):
And I know this because I did it for years,
and I didn't realize I did it until I stopped
and went, why am I posting about Trump and Brexit
and who am I? Whose mind am I trying to change?
I'm an artist. Put it in your frickin work, bro. Like,
I got off Twitter years ago because I was I
had a moment of sort of Damascene moment of realizing
that I.
S2 (19:16):
Was there, a particular thing that triggered the moment?
S3 (19:18):
I think I just, I just I guess it's my
job to think about things, and not everyone has time
to think about things. And I started going, what is this? Helping? Oh, really?
I think watching, perhaps being there, watching America get more
and more divided, the extreme ification of every viewpoint and
the means to an end ism, the idea that we
(19:39):
progressives and, you know, nationalistic, right wing, you know, populists
and all that mob, they all think, oh, it's means
to an end. You know, look, I know you shouldn't
necessarily hate people because they're white or Jewish or, you know,
but this time it's okay because we're going to get
this done. I mean, it's just mad, but but this
(20:01):
performative righteousness, it really puts people off. And it and
what I realized is no one's got an intention except
to show their friends that they are doing right. Think
not wrong. Think. I mean, these days when I talk
to my friends, I go, tell me something you disagree
with your mates on and they all have one. You
(20:21):
wouldn't know it though. You wouldn't know it, because everyone
only uses social media to show their adherence to a
set of values, that that is a representation of what
they see as their tribal identity. And I'm saying everyone
I'm using. Obviously not everyone does. But there's two problems.
One is you have there's no utility, you have no intention.
(20:44):
And I talk about this a bit in the book,
that our job as artists is to put good ideas
into the world and good ideas.
S2 (20:51):
Yeah.
S3 (20:51):
And valuable ideas and valuable ideas. The difference between a
valuable idea and a tweet that you've chucked up at
12:00 at night is, is, uh, art could be defined
as somewhere where you've put some fucking effort in. And
it's really about effort, about self-examination. Is this a good idea?
What is its utility? How can it whether it's to
entertain or to you know, I've done some really agitating things.
(21:13):
I've I've been part of massive public shaming with with
pal and stuff and stuff I reflect on now and
and we can get to that. But but the other
thing that we don't examine is not just is there
an absence of utility, but what are the possible unintended consequences?
And now we have ten years of data, 12 years
of data. And the unintended consequence is a divided nation
(21:36):
like America. And my question for Australians listening to this
is you want to follow them. And what are you doing.
You you not them, not those other people, those arseholes,
those fascists, those libtards, whatever. Not the other people. You.
What are you doing to make sure our country doesn't
follow America?
S2 (22:11):
You obviously just mentioned the pill video and the song back.
S5 (22:15):
In 73, when you were living with Jerry is the
truth that you knew, but you chose to ignore? Or
did you actively try to keep it buried?
UU (22:22):
And years later, when survivors, despite the shame and their fear,
stood up to tell their stories, you spent year after
year working hard to protect the church's assets.
S5 (22:37):
I mean, with all due.
UU (22:39):
Respect, dude, I think you're scum. And I reckon you
should come home.
S2 (22:46):
It was this kind of huge cultural moment in Australia,
broadly lauded as hilarious and important and, you know, poignant
at the time. And I was curious to get your
2024 feelings on it, because that was something that people got.
So it really, like left a mark. And I would say,
(23:08):
you know, again, broadly, people were really behind that. But
given it's clear that you've, you know, with time, had
time to think about the impact of these things. And
how do you feel about the, I guess, like the
imprint that that video left on the popular culture in Australia?
S3 (23:24):
Well, I can like I can with most things, take
two views or 5 or 7. I mean, I think
there's a role for satire and there's a role for
art in politics. Um, to in my defense, or to
my credit, I, I worked incredibly hard to make sure
(23:45):
all I talked about in that song, by the way,
people remember it as me accusing him of being an abuser. Like,
people have a massive false memory about that. The people
on the right, they're like, are you going to apologize
for Pell to Pell for calling him an abuser? I'm like,
I didn't. There was nothing to do with that. This
is before all that. I wrote it about him not
faking a sickie to not come home to face a
(24:06):
royal commission. And I had people very close to the
Royal commission, and I, I had read a lot of
data on, on how meaningful it is for people who
are victims of systemic abuse to be have an apology,
just like we apologize to indigenous people. Like, it's hard
to figure out the utility of saying sorry to. Indigenous people.
But at the time, it was unbelievably important to. People
who were there, indigenous people who were there. It was
(24:27):
very important that people came back. And yeah, I got
a sense that and I knew every flight he had
taken in the previous months, I knew he had only
seen a doctor in the Vatican. I wasn't pissing around,
and I was reflecting stuff that was already written in
the media. I was making it funny, accessible, and I
was giving abuse victims a voice. Right? And much more
(24:49):
than anything, I was raising money to fly them over
to see him. And that's what we did. And it
wasn't my idea. The charity bit. I was very lucky
to be able to help to to Steelman the opposition argument,
do I think public shaming is the right mechanism for
(25:11):
change as a rule in a post social media world?
And I think probably we should be very, very careful
with public shaming as a rule. Because how why are
you the moral arbiter? I mean, the moral certainty of
some people online. You're like, yeah, I know, you know,
they go, it's not it's not cancel culture. It's it's
holding people to account. I'm like, who are you kidding? Like,
(25:33):
maybe you're holding people accountable. Maybe you're getting it wrong.
You're a child. Like you're just part of a mob
doing moral justice through your lens, right? So I have
a problem with public shaming. Cannot be the primary mechanism
because it will just it'll come for you. I wrote
about it in my song 15 Minutes of Shame. You
(25:53):
know they'll turn on you if you stumble. It'll come
for you. Not just you straight white guy. Not just
you rich colonialists, but you, you know, non-binary. Whatever. You lesbian. Whatever.
S2 (26:04):
Yeah. In, I guess in conjunction with the book, you're
touring in conversation with Tim Minchin and like on a
flip side, in a really beautiful way, you get to go.
And just like, talk with someone else in front of people.
People who like their lives are all over the place,
from every single demographic and socioeconomic background, or people.
S3 (26:24):
Who can afford to spend 100 bucks to listen to
a pontificating buffoon on stage. Yeah, yeah.
S2 (26:29):
We'll start a kick starter for those who can't make it.
S3 (26:31):
Well, yeah, we do some things.
S2 (26:33):
Yeah, but then, I mean, I guess, like, it's almost
like you get to go out and remind yourself of, like,
what connection actually looks like. You know, you obviously two
of the world playing music. I'm not sure if music
is a part of this show. No. So it's a
very different experience for you, but like kind of a
beautiful way to be like, okay, this is actually what
it's about I think so.
S3 (26:52):
And I do like my last tour. My unfunny evening
was really me talking about my thoughts, and I did
talk a little bit about Division. And I have a
song called In Defense of the fence, which is an
old Pre-twitter song, but it couldn't be more poignant.
UU (27:07):
Now we divide the world into terrorists and heroes into
normal folk and weirdos into good people and paedos into things.
S3 (27:16):
When I go on this book tour, see, you know,
if you've listened to this podcast, you've like, I think
I speak thoughtfully and clearly, but you can hear me.
I have a penchant for passion. I want to get going.
I want to get on one right, and I want
to grow up into someone who can reflect more, who
(27:39):
I actually am inside my head, which is a purveyor
of doubt. You know, I'm a I really believe more
than anything that you should examine your ideas. And the
best way to do that is take the thing you
believe and then get the opposition's argument and see how
good you can make it. That's what I referred to
the term steel man. You steel man. The opposition's argument.
(28:01):
So if you think I don't know Trump is a buffoon,
the only way to figure out whether that's a good
opinion or not is really have a look at what
people like about him and just try and see the
best in him, right? I haven't done that, but I should. Right,
I should. Um, and the other thing I want to
do is follow my advice from the sort of most
well-known speech from my book, which is define yourself by
(28:23):
what you love. Because when we live in a time
like this, where we're constantly bombarded with the pain of
the world, which is interesting to live in a time
when everyone's more aware and therefore maybe more empathic towards
people that they otherwise wouldn't have known so much about,
except maybe a two inch column on the international pages
of the paper. Sure. We thought that would be good.
(28:45):
I think what it causes is incredible friction and dissonance.
And Gen Z, statistically, they're really struggling to feel optimistic
or happy. And I want to do better at modeling
for my children and my fans and whatever. Define yourself
by what you love. There's so much beautiful stuff in
(29:06):
my life and I love art and I love friends,
and I love, you know, um, discourse and conversations. And
I like talking to people who are different from me and,
you know, and so I would like to try and
get better at talking to the positive of all this
rather than trying to unpack the problems. But, I mean,
(29:27):
there's balance there. And as a journo, that's you got
to wonder about that too.
S2 (29:31):
Yeah, of.
S3 (29:32):
Course, but that's what I want to do with my
book tour. I want to I want to mature into like,
a big hippy love machine. Perfect. But but also my
critical thinking, um, the basis of my worldview are humanist
critical thinking. Um, worldview is I'm going to keep pushing it.
(29:52):
It's still it's still the right kind of framework.
S2 (29:56):
Yeah. You can be like a kind of long haired
Anthony Robbins just touring the country.
S3 (30:00):
Oh, could I be a long haired who? Uh, I
was going to say Peter Singer. Yeah.
S2 (30:05):
Someone that like that. Um, look, you turn 50 next year.
I don't want to prematurely age you, but we've kind
of been talking about this, I guess, in terms of, like,
are you one for milestones? Like when you turned 40,
were you like, is this where I wanted to be
when you turn 50, or will you take stock or
will it just be like, happy birthday, Tim, what are
we doing today?
S3 (30:24):
I, I'm not very stock taking because, um, my expectations
for the sort of life I might have between the
years of 2004 and 2008 blew my blew it all
so completely out of the water. Like, I just never,
ever thought I would get to play 2000 seaters, let
(30:47):
alone 10,000 seaters. Or be Judas in an arena, or
have a Broadway musical or any of this. Write a
frickin book or talk to you right now. I just
everyone says that, but I just I didn't. That's not
what I thought. That wasn't my dream. Um, so I,
you know, I if I died now, apart from the
fact that I made my children sad, I mean, I
(31:10):
got nothing. I got nothing I need to do. I mean,
I'm so far past my hopes. Um. I'd like to
just become a. I'd like to become a force for
good ideas. You know, I want to keep honing that, but, um,
I've just renovated a home, which I've never done before.
That was really, really fun. And I've got this nice
(31:31):
marriage and these kids, and I'm all right.
S2 (31:34):
I loved the, like, in the part of the book
because especially given that you are talking to, you know,
in this particular speech, a group of university students who
tend to define themselves. We've all been there, myself included.
When you just like you smoke and you drink and
you don't give a fuck about anything, and there's not
a chance you would be caught dead going for a run,
and you really impress upon them the need to, like,
treat your body with respect and, you know, like play
(31:56):
a sport, do yoga, pump iron like take care of
your body. And I think, are you a runner these days?
Are you one of these people that runs a lot.
S3 (32:03):
Yeah. I'm a I'm a bit more Jimmy because it's
better for my the various pains and problems I have.
I'm a hit class guy, but I run. Today's a
running day and I'm not going to get to run.
I run, yeah, 2 or 3 times a week. I
try to run 2 or 3 times a week.
S2 (32:17):
And is it funny when you talk to these students,
do you think like, can you see the blank faces
being like, I can't believe Tim Minchin's telling me to
do a hit class right now. I know.
S3 (32:24):
Right? But that's everyone's always, you know, people always just
want a simple version of you. And when I the
couple of times I did really get in trouble with
the right wing press in Australia because of Pell and
still call Australia homophobic and stuff and, and you know,
I there's a big percentage of Australians for whom I
will just always be that, you know, and still if
(32:46):
I ever post anything online, someone will go, this guy's
not even funny. And I'm like, I haven't been a
comedian for ten years. Like, what did you think of upright?
You know, like like, but, um, uh, and part of
that is like, long hair, bloody stoner. And they're still
sorry to do that voice. It's kind of condescending, but, um,
there's still this idea that an artist is a type.
(33:09):
I'm like, oh no, I'm a massive footie fan. I
like played second grade, first grade adjacent hockey until I
was 27. I still run ten K's, you know, twice,
like I'm a I'm a jock. And I was a
sport way more than I was a muso at school.
Like I was obsessed by the sports.
S2 (33:28):
On the album Apart Together, your album, there is a
song if This plane goes down, um, and you sing
Remember Me as someone who tried to find the balance
between self-loathing and pride and legacy is a funny thing,
you know, it's something people do get hung up upon.
Do you ever give thought to how you'd like to
be remembered?
S3 (33:46):
I my position I have another song called Talk Too Much,
stayed too long and um, and it says, it says
I don't I don't give a shit how I'm remembered. Um,
because I'm a, I don't. I'm pretty logical about that stuff.
Who cares? I'll be dead. Um. And then every now
and then, I think, oh, imagine if, you know, you
(34:08):
see someone who, at 70 something gets shamed for something
they did, and you realize that they're going to go
to their grave being known as the person.
S2 (34:19):
Who the Don Burkes.
S3 (34:20):
Of the world. Yeah. That's right. Right. And, um. And
you think you don't want that, but I don't I
don't there's nothing coming out. You know, I don't have
any dark secrets. I've lived a fairly straightforward kind of life, but, uh,
do I think about legacy? I don't really, I, I
(34:41):
really like people. Um, I really like that people are
interested in my work. I want to always be getting
better at whatever it is I'm turning my hand to.
I really see that's something very much a that is
a personality attribute of mine. is that I people go,
why are you doing that? And I'm like, oh, because
I can get better at it. You know, when I
(35:02):
did my solo piano tour just gone, I'm like, I
think I want to get better at piano and singing.
I'm going to, I'm going to do, you know, 80 shows.
And so it's just progress and I want to keep
getting good. And then when I die, I don't know,
burn it, burn it, burn it all, baby.
S2 (35:17):
Burn it to the ground.
S3 (35:18):
And just sing. When I grow up in primary school
I'll be happy. That's the that's the great thing. My
legacy will be Matilda. And that's the best, best fucking thing.
S6 (35:26):
When I grow up. I will be tall enough to
reach the branches that you have to reach to climb
the trees. You get to climb when you're grown up.
And when I grow up, I want to grow up.
(35:49):
I will be smart enough to answer all the questions
that you need to know the answers.
UU (35:57):
To when you're a grown up.
S2 (36:03):
Tim Minchin, thank you for joining. Good weekend talks.
S3 (36:05):
It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
S1 (36:15):
Good Weekend Talks is brought to you by the Sydney
Morning Herald and The Age. Subscriptions power our newsrooms to
support independent journalism. Search, subscribe Sydney Morning Herald or The Age?
And if you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe,
rate and comment wherever you get your podcasts. This episode
(36:36):
of Good Weekend Talks is produced by Kai Wong. Editing
from Konrad Marshall. Tom McKendrick is head of audio and
Katrina Strickland is the editor of Good Weekend.
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