Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at Me.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
So I went to David Sadaris last night. If you
don't know David Sadaris, he is, I mean, where have
you been?
Speaker 1 (00:17):
What do you read?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
He is just it's kind of hard to describe him.
He's he's an irreverent American slash British but American writer,
radio contributor, all round humorist. He's just he's he's an
extraordinary writer, like a New York Times bestseller however many
(00:38):
gazillion times over, and he writes these personal essays that
are kind of irreverent, observational, little vignettes on life. And
there's something that is just brilliantly funny about David Sadaras.
So I was really really excited to go and see
him last night Auklands town Hall, and he was reading
(00:59):
some of his work and kind of reading some of
his diary entries. But this really interesting thing happened when
I was there. He was he was talking a little
bit about his process. And anyone who knows David Sadaris
knows that his stories sort of they come across as
effortlessly easy. They're just like the stories that you would
tell around a dinner table, or you would talk about
(01:20):
your weekend away or something like that. And anyway, he
was talking about his process, and he explained that when
he's touring the world and he's reading his pieces, often
what he does is he goes and he reads a
piece that he's written, and he considers the audience reaction.
He listens to the audience laughter, and then as soon
as he's finished performing, and as soon as he's finished
all of his book signings and things, he goes back
(01:41):
to his hotel room and he writes the piece again,
or rewrites the piece again, or edits the piece again.
And he said that sometimes he'll do it twenty times.
So he'll read the same piece, and as he's reading
it to an audience, he'll wait for their reactions and
he'll write little notes on his papers, and they'll go
back to his hotel room and he'll edit it. He'll
(02:03):
change a word here, or he'll change the structure of
a scene.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
It's there.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And the thing that I just found really amazing about
that is when you read his stories, you get no
sense that it's been agonized over. You get no sense
that it's something that has been like excruciatingly difficult, but
it's one of those things that shows you kind of
genius takes work like he's really had to, He's really
had to work at his craft to shape the stories
(02:30):
into the brilliant little vignettes and essays that they are.
So Yeah, it was an amazing evening. And you know,
he was a full crowd at the Auckland town Hall
last night, which comes as no great surprise but a
real privilege to be there for David Sadaris. And I
love it when you you know, you have a writer
like that or an artist that you love, and you
get a bit of an insight into their creative process
and it surprises you and you realize that actually, you know,
(02:54):
he's almost the sort of writer you could think, well,
well I could write a story like that. How hard
can it really be? And then you realize, actually, it's yeah,
it's genius, that's how hard it is. Anyway, pleasure to
be there tonight. If you are looking for a good
new read before midday today, we're going to recommend a
new book from Elis Feeni. Speaking of New York Times
best sellers, She's been a best seller who even many
(03:16):
times over as well. So she's got a brand new read.
I'm going to recommend you right now though it is
eleven minutes past eleven, Jack, time to catch up with
klindical psychologist Doogle Sutherland from Umbrella Wellbeing more than a.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Doogle Sure, Jack, Hey, jealous of you going to see
David Sedaris last night. That would have been a great experience.
I love I love his I love his box. Yeah,
hilariously funny, aren't they.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
They're so funny. They're so funny and so but he
does it. He's I reckon he's the all time master
of the tangent. That's what I reckon he is. You know,
he like he starts out a story on one subject,
goes off on a wild tangent, and the tangent might
last five thousand words, and then brings it back round
again at the end, and it's just it's just brilliantly clever. Yeah,
(04:03):
he's an incredibly clever man.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
I'm amazed about how he one person can have so
many hilarious things that have happened their lives.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
It was a really good thing last night. Someone asked him,
because he took questions from the audience, someone said to him,
do you think that you have an interesting life, like
an abnormally interesting life, or do you think that your
life is And he said, no, No, it's just that
I look for the kind of the funny.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
He's like an observational comedian. He looks for the funny
things in everyday life and is able to kind of
shake them in a way that is really relatable but
also just so funny. Yeah, but he loves sorry.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Apparently, he loves people telling him dirty jokes when they're
when they're lining up for their books signed. If you
can tell them the worst terrible joke you can you
can think of, he loves it.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Well, he actually shared some of those last night, so
I won't be repeating them on here right now. No, no, exactly. Yeah, yeah,
but it was that funny thing, you know, because when
I read his books, I'm always like, oh, it just
seems so it's so easy, so the story that the
storytelling is so relaxed, and yet it's actually taken, you
know how, even many iterations to get each piece into
(05:08):
that form, which I just I think it's Yeah, I
think it's wonderful. Hey, anyway, you have spired a very
interesting survey it's come across your desk looking at a
kind of global mental health crisis and how it's impacting workplaces.
Because the thing is, we've talked about wellbeing in the
workplace for many years now, but even though for many
(05:28):
people last year was an especially stressful year, certainly when
it comes to kind of economic conditions, a lot of
workplaces have been pulling back a bit on wellbeing measures.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
A yeah, they have. It's ironic in a way, isn't it,
Because I think everybody kind of universally acknowledges that, you know,
we want to refund on twenty twenty four and don't
want to go through that again. And it was terrible
for you know, people losing their jobs or worrying about
losing their jobs. And yet at the same time, lots
of organizations and an effort to save money sorts, oh,
(06:01):
we'll cut back on the what can we do without?
What are the what do we see as the as
the nice and nice to hand, And so they cut
back on And I'm veering away from using the term
well being nowadays because I think it's becoming a bit tainted.
But if you think about it, they're veering away from
pushing away a little bit from providing support for people's
(06:26):
mental health. I think if we can put it that bluntly,
and that's and I think that's exactly the opposite thing
that they should be doing, which links back into that
survey that I that I spied. It came out just
before Christmas, so one of those ones that you know,
I kind of read it and went, oh, I tuck
that away and come back to it. But it was
it was from Deloitte's in the UK, and they looked
(06:48):
at stays, particularly looking at the financial sector, and they
found that, you know, high rates of burnout in the
financial sector, and they priced that at a cost of
about ten thousand dollars per person per year. And you
think about that in terms of, you know, if we
thinking about productivity, you know, we're thinking about making sure
(07:10):
that we are really wanting to get our economy growing,
then you think about the cost of ten thousand dollars
per person per year across our economy. It's staggering. Really.
I think it has a real effect on how much
we produce as a country.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Well, this is the thing. It's easy from an employer's perspective,
right to think, well, you know, support for mental health
and stuff is a nice to have, but actually, if
your work, like you know, so many businesses say that
people is our number one is a number one asset, right,
but if your people are not in a good place,
it ends up costing the business. It effects a business's
(07:47):
bottom line.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Absolutely. And if you think about some of those, if
you delve into some of those symptoms of burnout, things
like you know, the core symptoms of burnout are exhaustion,
making mistakes at work, in poorer work performance. It's just,
you know, it's obvious how that would have an impact
on productivity. And that's you know that I'm talking sort of.
(08:13):
I guess that's particularly around you know, white collar workers.
To coin a horrible term, but but but people who
are in you know, stereotypically blue blue collar jobs. If
you're exhausted and tired and not concentrating, you know, a
slip up there and through your mental well being, a
slip up there could have quite catastrophic consequences for you
(08:36):
or people around you. You know, you inadvertently put your
hand in the mincing machine because you're a bit tired
and distracted, and so it's it's you know, there's some
real costs there. I think that that if only we
sort of if we took off the label of well
being and just looked at it in terms of human performance,
that then maybe that's that maybe people would go, oh, actually,
(08:58):
maybe we should be investing in this if if we
really think people are our number one you know, assets,
want to make sure that asset is finally tuned and
working just as well as it really can be, if
we really want to get our productivity levels up.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Yeah, yeah too, right, So what would be your advice
THENTO businesses and employers who maybe have been pulling back
a little bit on some of the mental health and
even though you have the term well being support.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah, look, I think it is. Firstly, there's that I
think change, change how you think about it, and you know,
be persuaded by the evidence. There's truckloads of evidence now
that that. In fact, I think world health organizations said
that globally, twelve billion working days a year are lost
(09:48):
due to depression and anxiety and that's a cost of
well over a trillion dollars. Now that's globally. But if
you stop thinking about it as well being and thinking
about it as mental health or human performance, however, best
you want to think about it, but but think about
it through the lens of well sorry, through the lens
(10:09):
of productivity. I think that might quite dramatically change what
you do. And for people in businesses, the staff, it
may be that just in this economic time, you have
to adopt a bit of a pragmatic approach and maybe
you sort of turn down the volume on the term
well being and talk about mental health and how well
(10:31):
you can perform if you are at your peak, and
that may have perhaps more purchase when you are asking
for things from your employer. And I think to it
at a meta level. You know that I know the
government's really keen to get you know, New Zealand, you know,
productivity up this year and this is going to be
(10:51):
the year when we really have an economic turnaround. And
I think they would do really well to look at
these as well and think, actually, what can we do
to support the people of New Zealand to enhance their
mental performance, enhance their their mental health atwork, because we
know that that's probably going to be a key to
getting the economy going again. So I think it can
(11:13):
happen both at an individual level and an organizational level,
and then at a political national level as well.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Very good, Thank you, Dougal, appreciate your time. As per
that is Doogle Sutherland. He's a clinical psychologist with Umbrella
Well Being. Before midday, we're going to listen to some
new music from Young Franco. Young Franco is a Brisbane
based DJ who kind of mixes up all DISCOI tracks
with new artists and has lots of collaborators. It's really
(11:41):
kind of summary, dancy light music, so looking forward to
playing some of that.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News talks 'B from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio