Julian Lennon

00:00I go see this dermatologist. Oh, you have a little more skin. Yeah, a little excision here because it had been bothering me a bit. And a couple of years ago, I had a bit of a cancer scare on my head. because I have a birthmark here that you don't really see. And there was a mole there. And I kept, as my hair got a little thinner, I would use a comb and it caught it one time and it opened it up. And so I kind of kept picking at it when it became a scab. And I kept picking over the course of like six months. and then I went to see this dermatologist for the first time in LA and I said yeah I've got a little bit of a you know I've been trying not to scratch it now but I'm a bit worried about it it's been like six months of me being an idiot because it just was really irritable and so she's you know cut it out and sent it off and I was at a pretty serious meeting with a whole bunch of people and And she called me up at the end of it and said, listen, I'm sorry to tell you this, but it's cancerous. You know, we've got to cut it out. We've got to get it. And, yeah, I just went completely numb at that point and freaked out because I just thought, what does this mean in the bigger picture? And, you know, I had a lot of friends that have passed from cancer, various kinds over the years. and so it really did freak me out

01:53anyway I got the all clear it was cleaned out so just anything that just looks or feels a little odd and there was something I was I'd been scratching here a bit and something here as well so she just did a little cutting and no doubt I'll hear from her in a few days once she gets the results that's scary because it was in a spot that you don't check you know it's covered in hair You don't know what's going on back there. Yeah, but it was because of the birthmark. And, you know, I just kept on the thinner hair. And so I just kept, you know, brushing it with a comb. And it caught it. And then it scabbed. And then it became itchy. And so I kept scratching it, you know, pulling it off like a kid, you know, as you do, as you just.

02:45Anyway, I'm happy to be here. in one piece for the moment. You know. I got one of those comprehensive blood panel screens for cancer recently. And then, you know, you wait a while for the results. And you're like, geez. Like, what if I'm one of those people? Yeah. I have the – I didn't have anything, but – Yeah. I have the – I have, you know, I go for a proper checkup like twice a year, You know, just on every front just to make sure I'm going to be around. Because I like living. That's good. I want to be around for a long time. That's good. For sure. Yeah. It's a weird thing because, you know, how old are you now? 61.

03:30Yeah, I'm 57. And we're getting up there, fella. I don't like to think about it. I don't think about it too much. I'm completely in denial. Absolutely. Absolutely. I refuse, you know. Because I just remember seeing my uncles, you know, on my mother's side, what they were like in their 50s alone, you know. And they'd be sitting there with a big belly in front of the TV with, you know, a couple of packets of cigarettes and drinking tea or beer and watching the TV all day. And that was their life in their 50s and 60s until they had a heart attack and died. And I went, no, I'm not doing that one. And I've just always been, not that I'm a health freak in any way, shape or form, but I certainly, you know, my regime is try to eat as healthy as you can and do a bit of power walking a couple of times a week. That's good. And that does the trick for me. Nothing wrong with that. Walking is one of the best forms of exercise. Yeah. If you can get it in every day, you'll be much healthier than if you don't. Absolutely. It's not hard to do.

04:36No, it's not. Listen to a book on tape. Go for a stroll. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's great for the body. Yeah. You don't have to fucking kill yourself. No, and I've also, in my time, dealt with a fair amount of depression as well and anxiety. I get pretty anxious still. Even coming here today, I was a bit... Really? Yeah, yeah. So I went for a nice little power walk around whatever the lake is down there. Lady Bird? The one where the bats are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lady Bird. I had no idea about the whole. Have you seen them come out? No. Oh, it's cool.

05:09I had no idea. I'd never even heard of it before. It's really cool. The biggest bad population in the world. Is that true? That's what they're saying. I don't know if that's true. I think the biggest bad population in the world is in Africa. I would say so. Or the Amazon. Yeah, I think it's a really large population, though. And it's cool to see. That's what it looks like when they come out. Yeah, no, they claim. There's signage down there. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, that says it's the biggest bat population in the world. Hmm. Maybe it's a specific kind of bat. I don't know. Google, where's the biggest?

05:45It's definitely part of it. Is this at sunset that this happens? Yes. Yeah, right at nighttime. It's really cool. It's very fun to watch. And you hear them. If you go onto the bridge, like if you walk on, you hear them. Yeah, I was there today. I didn't hear that. Yeah, you can hear me there. Okay. They're just chilling. It's weird. But they're responsible for keeping the mosquito population down. Is that one of those? Yeah. They do a great job. Those little suckers. Fantastic. They take care of the mosquitoes.

06:11Mosquitoes, yeah. I don't – what purpose do they have, really? Spreading horrible diseases and sucking in blood. That and aubergines. I don't understand the aubergines either. Well, you know, they tried to develop a genetically modified mosquito that was going to attack the other mosquitoes. Yeah. But that horror movie type shit, you know, I hear about that. I'm like, okay, and what happens then? Like whenever you start monkeying around with nature in that regard. And so nothing came of it then? I don't know what's been done with that. I don't know. It's like these people are doing these things and it can affect all of us. And you, you know, just read about it on the internet. And if it wasn't for the internet, you wouldn't even know they were doing it. It's like, are you sure this is going to be okay? in the long run? Like, what's the potential chances for mutations? Like, what happens if they carry a very unique disease that, you know, it's something you know, the scary thing is we have no idea what half of these people are up to.

07:18No, we don't. COVID being an example. Yeah, perfect example. Did you see what happened in Australia yesterday? There was a laboratory that lost track of, oh, I put it on Twitter, lost track of like a bunch of different, like, really serious diseases. How does that happen? Someone left the door open? Yeah. I went once, me and my friend Duncan, we went once to the lab in Galveston, Texas. The Center for Disease Control, I believe, the organization has this enormous bio lab down in Galveston where they take care of, like, some of the most dangerous and deadly viruses. So they have like this incredible filtration system and everybody's wearing spacesuits and they're walking and we're in there going, what are you guys doing? Hundreds of vials of deadly viruses have gone missing from a laboratory and scientists warn they could be weaponized. So what are 100 vials of Henda virus, two vials of Hanta virus, 223 vials of Lysa virus, all of which are extremely deadly for humans. And of course, I love it when the media says, you know, something along the lines of the end of that statement that could be weaponized. That's great. Now the freaks are going to go and try and find that stuff.

08:41Yeah. Well, it's, you know, we got into this mess in the first place because, and this has now been confirmed, that they were working on these viruses in this laboratory and it got released. And that these viruses had been created through gain of function research. So these goofballs are down there working on viruses, making them more infectious to humans. And you would say, well, why are they doing that? Well, surely they're doing that so they can study them and they can cure them, make sure that we don't get sick. Is that the logic? That's the logic, but they didn't have a cure for it. Lysivirus is rabies? Oh, great. Lysivirus are responsible for rabies, which is arguably the deadliest encephalotic disease known. The prototype rabies lysavirus thought to be able to infect all terrestrial mammals. Yay. Yay. God. What a good thing to just have laying around. I mean, that's like the opening of 28 Days Later, right? Yeah. Yeah. No. There's a new one.

09:45Have you seen the trailer for the new one? There's a new one. 28 years later no come on yeah yeah Cillian Murphy's back let's go yeah I'm in count me in that's the greatest oh here it is it's the greatest zombie movie of all time for sure sit here sit here what's going on sit still keep quiet

10:07and do not move from this spot 7, 6, 11, 5, 9 and 20 miles today, 4, 11, 17, 32 the day before. Boots, boots, boots, boots, moving up and down again. There's no discharge in the war. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, look at what you're doing. Really? That's what they said. I mean not with the lenses but... up and down again. There's no discharge in the wall. I was going to stop there. Okay. Jeez. I woke up relatively calm and peaceful this morning. A little bit of pre-podcast anxiety. And now you're worried about the end of the world. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Thank you. I didn't know what to expect, but now I... I'm terrified of these eggheads

11:48messing around with all these things. I really am because it seems like what we know now is that there wasn't a ton of oversight. They shipped, they sort of went with the, so the NIH funds the EcoHealth Alliance, the EcoHealth Alliance funds the Wuhan lab, the Wuhan lab, which has had many safety violations, including like I think a year before the leak. And then it gets out and then they all lie and then they all trade emails back and forth where they're talking about the lie. and they go in front of Congress and they lie. And now they're talking about giving Fauci a mass pardon, a preemptive pardon, so he doesn't get charged when the Trump moves. That's crazy. It's a whole thing. And then there's another one today where the Biden administration is keeping the emergency classification of COVID to 2029 so that they can avoid being attacked for the Emergency Use Authorization Act. it's so creepy stuff because there's there's money it's all money right there's money involved in this there's the these people that are working on viruses well the way to get funding is you have to work on viruses so whether or not they're i don't think they're evil people but i think these people this is what they studied in college this is what they went to university for and now they're studying it and what's the best way to study it you gotta you actually have to have funding you have to have a lab yeah and you start doing it and so who do you do it for well you do it for the Defense Department, because they want to work on weaponizing viruses. This is a real thing.

13:21That's one of the scariest things. Fucking terrifying. I did a television show once where we talked to this guy from Russia and from former Soviet Union, where he was talking about how they had literally like giant vats of anthrax. They had enough anthrax to literally kill like every fucking human being in America and that they were working on viruses and all these deadly diseases. To be honest with you, I'm quite surprised we're still here. It's pretty shocking. With what's already happened and what the potentials are, it's staggering. Well, if you think about all the things that we've gone through where we just barely missed a total disaster, the Cuban Missile Crisis. And then there was the one time where they thought that the United States had launched a missile at Russia and they were very close to responding. It was just a glitch. and one guy, just one clear-headed person, decided not to launch. Yeah. And this is in the 60s, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is all, it's so terrifying. Yeah, we're so close all the time, really. That's why one should just try and have a happy life wherever you can. That's for sure. The problem with that is if you don't speak up,

14:36and if no one reacted to any of this COVID-19 stuff, If no one reacted to the Orwellian censorship complex that was established to try to silence people who are critical of the narrative that they were pushing, we would all be fucked. You kind of have to pay attention now, unfortunately. I don't want to. No, I agree. I want to just have fun and live my life and be with my family and my friends and enjoy myself. Of course. We all do. It's good to be aware. No question about that. But there's also this part of me that goes, yeah, but this is what the universe provides you with. The universe provides you with this very unique balance of good and evil. And the evil exists to appreciate the good and to motivate the good. No question. And there's always going to be both. It just seems like there's always going to, until we reach some enlightenment, until Jesus comes back, until the aliens land. Well, it's that thing called balance, isn't it? Yeah. Trying to do the balancing act as best as you can. Yeah. What do you do?

15:43Like, what's your balancing routine? Like, if you feel like you're getting a little sideways. I hate to say it, but it's back to getting out into the fresh air and walking. Yeah. I mean, that really does. Or even photography, you know, just being. Actually, my number one go-to is I'm a biker. I've been on motorcycles since I was like in my early teens. So to really blow the cobwebs out, it's kind of getting on the bike and just riding somewhere I've never been before. I'll just look at a map and go, that looks interesting. And I just go. That looks like so fun if I was bulletproof and made out of metal. Have you? I'm scared of motorcycles. Really? Well, it's the other people that's saying. That's exactly right. You know. Yeah. But you have to, I believe you have to have a heightened awareness to be a biker and still. Most certainly.

16:45Do you have a loud bike so people can hear it at least? Yeah. I've had a few loud ones in my day. Like a Harley? I used to have Harley. At the moment, I ride a Triumph, a couple of Triumphs. Oh, nice. One that looks like an old school but actually works. and then I thought I was never going to be one of those guys that ever kind of rode one of those 50s, no, the sort of adventure bikes. Oh, with like the saddles with the boxes? Yeah, kind of. Yeah, but relative half-faring. But when I go for a ride and these random rides, you know, I can be gone up in the mountains with no signal for three and a half, four hours, you know. And there has been an occasion or several in the past where without a signal, the bike has had problems. And it gets pretty scary when you're in the wilderness and you've got no backup plan.

17:49I had an oil leak with a brand new bike and no signal. And I was literally rolling down any hill I could just to survive, make it to whatever little village I could find in the middle of nowhere. Where were you? In France. Oh, wow. So I tend to go up in the wilds back there. So I decided also my backside after three and a half hours on one of the older style bikes is pretty painful. So I just happened to look at one of the Triumph Adventure bikes. What do they look like? Can you tell us? Is that it? So that's what my old bike looks like. That's actually my old bike with my old friend riding it. and that's the one where your ass kills after a couple of hours. But so, yeah, those are the kind of views I get. Those are in the middle of nowhere. Are these your photographs? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, these are just quickies on my phone, just the places I find myself in in the middle of nowhere. I mean, stunning, stunning, stunning places, and they're not far from where I am on the coast. and they're kind of on the border with Italy

19:12so it's pretty unique stuff. Where do you live? I officially live in Monaco Oh wow, I was just there You were? I was just there last summer Oh shit, okay It's really beautiful It's not a bad place to be It's a weird spot What's going on here? Why is everybody stacked up in apartments? It's very transient You know, people come and go for whatever reason that they do. And, I mean, most people, like myself, you know, we have a kind of summer house getaway so you can go breathe on the weekends. Isn't it kind of a tax shelter-y place too? Yeah. Oh, very much so. Yeah, yeah, no. A lot of real rich folks go there to hoard their cash. Yeah, oh, for sure. But there's a few new places around the world that offer that kind of possibility. Oh, really? Like where else?

20:06Well, Dubai's offering certain incentives now. Portugal, certain incentives. Yeah, Dubai has like no income tax, right? I've never been there personally. Is that the fact? Is that a fact? I think it is. I'm not 100% sure. I have a friend who just moved to Dubai. He's American and he's a filmmaker. And he says, I feel so safe. Yeah, well, that's one element of it. There's no crime. As long as you're not doing anything bad. He said you could leave a Rolex on the ground and someone will pick it up and turn it to the police. Yeah, I'm sure. UAE does not levy income tax on an individual. However, it levies a 5% value-added tax on the purchase of goods. That's pretty reasonable. Yeah. Levy it at each stage of the supply chain and ultimately born to the end consumer.

20:49Wow. Fairly reasonable. Yeah, yeah. So, although it's never inspired me so far anyway. Well, there's a lot of wild restrictions over there. Oh, yeah. And I like a bit of character with where I am. You know, one of the pleasures I find is, number one, I'm a biker, so I get to ride around a lot. I'm not really a beach guy. After 20 minutes, I start twitching. I need to do something. It's true. But I'm also a foodie as well. So, you know, Monaco is half an hour away from Italy. And there's actually a big crossover in the restaurants between French and Italian food. And then you have places like the island of Corsica, which is French now. It's been through the mill a few times. It was English at one point. It was Italian at one point. It's, I think, a few other nations too. And I could see it from where I was.

21:54You can actually see the outline of Corsica from the south of France and from Monaco in certain locations. and I'd seen it for 25, 30 years and had never been. And a couple of years ago I decided with a friend to hop in. I've got a little mini convertible and that's my little run around and decided to get the ferry, which is about six hours across, and drive with no bookings, no nothing, and just see if there was a hotel available and drove around the whole island in 10 days. and it was one of the most magical places I've ever, ever been to. It's like 10 countries on one island. The scenery is mind-blowing and the south of it is very much like the Caribbean, crystal clear, turquoise blue waters. But the food, again, is this combination of the best of Italian and the best of French. Wow. And just the freshest of the freshest of the fresh. and I've only been down there about two or three times because this was only a few years ago and I couldn't believe that it's

23:04and here's the other thing okay the ferry is six hours but you can get on what they call a vomit comet it's like a very short flight you know you could be there in the south of Corsica from Nice airport in 45 minutes and it's a different world It's an entirely stunning, gorgeous, different world with, again, scenery unlike I've ever seen before. Oh, wow. And for such a small island, which you can— Is it here? Oh, wow. I mean, it's just insanely, insanely beautiful. And that's Bonifacio, yeah. But they're renowned for being – they can be a bit of tough nuts. In what way? If they don't like you, if you piss them off, excuse my French, they'll blow up your house. I mean there was a report a couple of years ago that this guy's house, he was causing some trouble and they didn't want him around.

24:11And they blew up his house. He set it on fire and blew it up. I'm serious. Well, I guess if you live in a small place like that, that's really amazing. You're probably very protective of someone coming along and ruining you. They're exactly like that. I mean, if you don't. I get that. If you don't respect them. Yeah, I get that. Yeah, no. Whenever people say, like, if you go to France, they're very rude. I get it. I've gone to France. I didn't think they were rude. You know, but I get how there's some Americans, like, hopping right off the cruise ship that are just fat and stupid. There's just – I think if you're not prepared to be warm and friendly on the approach and treat them with the respect that they deserve in their own country. Treat like you're a visitor. Yeah. You're thankful to be there. Don't order them around.

25:02Don't tell them what to do. And, you know, even though, you know, they think it's quite funny that you try and speak their language. I mean, I can understand French pretty well and Italian and a few other things. But, you know, God help me if I try and speak it because they'll just they don't laugh at you, but they'll speak back to you in English. You know, right. That's the wonderful thing about English. But at least make the effort is what I'm saying. Sure. You know, show them that you're trying. You're trying. Yeah. Say mercy. Yeah. Say that. Just thank you. Alone, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't just order them around, which I've seen many people do, and it's a bit shocking. Grazie mille. Si. Grazie mille.

25:46Yeah, you've got to be able to say a few things and just let them know that you're trying. Yeah, absolutely. I try to go to Italy every year. Me and my family, we go there every year, and I love it. It's just so instantaneously. Where do you head? My favorite place is Rovello. Where is that? Rovello is on the Amalfi Coast. Okay, okay. It's just so beautiful. But I've liked Rome too. It's a little touristy. The problem with Rome is it's overcrowded and there's a lot of touristy shit going on. Rome is not my favorite. The reason why it's so appealing to me is because actually my first stepfather was Italian, Roberto Bassanini. That's pretty Italian. Oh, he was very Italian. And he was the black sheep of the family. He was the naughty boy. And he was more like an older brother to me, married to mum after dad, after John. And his family were involved in kind of hotels and restaurants from also London in the heyday of Italian restaurants. It was like the 70s. And so they had a few small hotels in different areas.

27:04And so whenever I wasn't at school in London or England at that time, we'd take these little trips to Cortina or above Milan. There's a little town called Fopolo that I used to go, unknown by most tourists, locals to go skiing in the winter or Pesaro, which was on the east coast for summer holidays. So, you know, I spent a lot of time there growing up from the age of five, six, seven. She was only with him for about three or four years. But we stayed in touch, you know. I used to go and visit him all the time because he was a laugh, you know. Of course, sadly, his lifestyle killed him with a couple of heart attacks at the end of everything. That's usually how it goes when you're having a good time. Yeah, he was having too much of a good time, I'm afraid. but I miss him dearly. He certainly was, you know, one of those characters that you just, you know, you admired. When I go to Italy, it feels like almost immediately you have like a decrease in blood pressure. Yes. Like almost immediately. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the vibe of the people and the way they live is just relax. They can be a bit stressed sometimes, though, with the shouting at each other and the, you know. Yeah, but even then, it doesn't seem like shouting. Like American shouting leads to violence. Yes, this is true. I hear American shouting.

28:35I'm like, let's get the fuck out of here. Yeah, yeah, agreed. Agreed. I hear Italian shouting. What happened? Did someone in the kitchen fuck up? Like, what went wrong? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to sound pompous, but it does sound pompous. That, you know, if I have friends come over from the States or London, and, you know, I'll say, do you fancy, you know, getting some Italian tonight? and we'll get in the car and we'll be on the freeway or the motorway over there. And they'll be saying, where the F are we going? You know, I'm going, go for Italian. And there's a little town about an hour away from Monaco, tiny little medieval town called, well, we'll give it away actually, can't give it away, where I'll just go and get the best spaghetti vongole on the planet made by a grandmother who's in a kitchen, you know, 10 by 10 at the best of times, you know, with all. And it's down on the water. And it's just, you know, it's Italy for me, if you're not in the mountains, if you're by the sea, at its best. And, you know, they all get dressed up at sunset.

29:43You know, they all love to walk the promenade and, you know, in their finest attire. and sit there and watch the world go by and drink their coffee and chat. Because I lived in L.A. for I think it was about eight years, and I went back. The story of me going back actually was that I flew back to London to see a premiere of a film called Backbeat. It's about the early Beatles. I didn't know anything about it, but I had an invite, so I went to see it. And I met this guy who said, who's a line producer, film producer. And he said, you know, have you been to Monaco before? I said, no, I've never even thought about it really. And he said, do you like Grand Prix? I said, not really a Grand Prix kind of guy. He said, well, listen, if you've got nothing to do this weekend after, you know, we saw the film and the premiere, you know, why don't you come down? I've got an apartment. I've got an extra room. I know the town inside out, you know. And I was thinking, oh, what am I going to do? Go back to L.A. and be numb again. And so I literally went down to Monaco the next day.

31:05And he just showed me around. And we went to this very famous restaurant and famous corner called the Rascas Corner on the Grand Prix circuit. And it's literally where you're having a prawn cocktail and there's a car coming at you at about 180 miles an hour with just a chicken wire fence in front of your face. How far away? I mean, directly in front of you. I mean, the car could be. So this is it right here? Yeah. That's not the Rascas corner. That's the Lowe's corner. Rascas corner is a very, very famous little spot. There it is. Yeah, that's it. So you'd be behind the chicken wire fence. This is a kind of modern version of it. But that's even more protection than it used to have. And you'd have a bit of lunch there. And that was the hot spot in Monaco for years and years. There were three brothers that owned it, real troublemakers.

32:10And it was a blast. But so you had the car. So I went, all right, I'm into this. And so I spent the summer down there. And I used to have a little bungalow on Mulholland and Coldwater. And I had a caretaker there because I had a dog at the time. And I just said, hi, Tim. Pack it up. Sell the house. I'm not coming back. And I didn't go back. Did you take your dog? The dog actually died before I, yeah, sadly. It was getting on. But yes. You said, fuck it, I'm moving the mic. Yeah, that was it. Yeah, I just put everything in storage. I rented this kind of what could be seen as a Miami Vice kind of apartment. How so? On the 30th floor.

33:07it just had marble and a mirrored wall with no furniture and so I bought a couch off of the floor of a store called Habitat because it would take like six weeks to order and I had nothing and so I had I bought like a couch I bought a TV even though there was no English TV back then this is 30 years ago. And I just had a trunk to put the TV on. Occasionally you get American movies. And a mattress on the floor. And I lived like that for 10 years. Wow. And just was really stupid. Did you enjoy it? It was just stupid. Did you enjoy it? I had two. I've had two. Well, I've had three major. No, four. It's like the Spanish Inquisition. Four major incidents. Now, I mean, London back in the day used to be a great place to party and enjoy. And then I moved to New York for a few years early in my career, in my early 20s.

34:18But I almost, I think I almost died there with the partying that went on and the clubs back in that, the heyday then. And it was Celebrity Central, you know, with the likes of the Limelight with Alice Cooper and a few other fruitcakes. And then I really did feel like I was, you know, I could have gone off the rails. Yeah, yeah. Easily. I was borderline. I enjoyed it too much. And then I went out to L.A. And a friend of mine had a convertible. and we just drove across Mulholland down to Malibu and I went, this is gorgeous. What the hell am I doing? So I moved to LA. I packed up and moved. And I did exactly the same thing. I found a place to live and I just was there until I could get myself situated. I think I met you in LA. Are you serious? In 1993. That's a good possibility.

35:20That would have been mid to end of my term out there. I was doing something for MTV, and you were one of the first celebrities that I met. You, I met Rico Suave and a couple other people. Shut the front door. Yes. Yeah, because I was early in on the MTV stuff. The label I was with was pushing whatever, you know, throw me on whatever was available. I was with this woman who was an executive at MTV, and she was taking me around and showing me L.A. You know, I'd never been to L.A. before. Well, I'd been once for a martial arts competition when I was young. Here was, and she took me to this nightclub, and you were at the front door about to get in. And I was like, holy shit, does Julian Lund. Do you remember which one it was? No, I remember very little about it. Was I with some fruitcakes? I'm sure I was. I don't remember. I just remember like, oh, that's a famous guy. John Lennon's son. Crazy. Because, you know, I was coming from New York.

36:25Of course. I was 25, 26 years old. I didn't know anything. And I was like, this is so strange. It was just strange to me to be in these Hollywood parties with this MTV executive who's taking me around and showing me all this stuff. Oh, yeah. She was just kind of like introducing you like this is what it's like. Yeah. It's what everybody does. They go out. They go out to the clubs. And it was just. Yeah. Yeah, the scary thing about L.A. was that you thought it was all over by 2 o'clock, you know, because they literally pull your drinks at 1.30. But then they go to someone's house. Right. And they continue till dawn, you know. So that was dangerous too. So I was happy that I got away from that. Fortunately, I avoided all that. Yeah, you're lucky.

37:07Yeah. I mean, there was some fun to be had, no question about it. But a lot of it was kind of dark, too. Yes, I'm sure. Well, that's when you start adding cocaine to human beings, you get darkness. Oh, yeah. And a lot of Jack Daniels, too. They go hand in hand. Yes. Yeah, I avoided all that, luckily, when I moved to L.A. I'm one of those people that's like, I see where that's going. How long were you out there for? I guess 30. Well, no, not quite 30 years. 26 years. because I've been here for four. That's a stretch. Okay. Wow. Yeah, most of my life, the most I've ever lived anywhere. I lived there.

37:50But I only went to parties like a handful, a very small handful of times. It was like I was dragged to them. Yeah. The last one I was dragged to was Naomi Campbell's birthday party, which was- I'm sure that was- It was insane. Yeah. It was with Dave Chappelle. So Dave and I were at the comedy store, and Dave knows everybody. Yes. Yeah, yeah. hey man there's a party up in the hills you want to go and i was like i don't want to go to any fucking parties yeah he's like come on man i want to go alone so i said okay so me and dave we drove all the way up it was like a scene in a movie yeah because like here's me and my super famous friend and we're my porsche and we're my race car of a gt3 so we're driving up in the hills and then we have to stop at this place and then you have to get on a shuttle and then you get to the house and then you get on an elevator an outside elevator that takes you from the main house to the party house right so they had a party house on the top of this hill so we're up in this

38:50elevator with demie moore which is weird as it is yeah i'm like hi you know it's fucking weird i famous lady yeah and then we get to the top of this hill and it's just everybody famous it's lenny kravitz and all these different people and so naomi campbell there's a photograph of her on the side of the hill that's literally 50 feet tall this enormous naked photograph of her of course because it's her birthday well of course she's unbelievably beautiful still as old as she is i don't know how old she is but she looks sensational so we get to the top of this place we're hanging out it's very weird it's very weird and then dave pulls me aside he goes man i wouldn't want to be this famous i go hey man you're the most famous motherfucker here he goes really oh yeah yeah because we're a little high he goes really i go 100 you're the most famous person for sure we're just laughing like this is so crazy and then we got out of there went right back to the comedy store like oh i can't do this yeah it's just too strange the the scenes are pretty weird out there that's for sure well it's also these celebrities you know they can't hang out with regular people i think they feel too weird so i think they try to get together yeah and so we were in like that's that absolutely you're spot on a vampire yes famous people you You are absolutely spot on. They called it like, he said it was like an eyes wide shut party. I'm like, that's what it feels like. It feels like you're in a secret fraternity. Yeah, there's a few that I've left that I felt very uncomfortable being at. Like what? I mean, I couldn't tell you exactly where and when, but certainly some weird ones up in the hills.

40:25I just went, no, this just doesn't feel good. There's something about the act of going up into the hills. Like you're going to the lair, the dragon's lair. Well, one of the things was the fact that, well, I mean, now you've got Ubers all over the place. But, yeah, back in my day, there was no taxis around either. So you'd get trapped. Oh. And then you'd figure, well, I'm here anyway. You know. Yeah. Might as well have another drink. And that's what would happen more often than not. But, yeah, so it's, yeah, kind of better not to. Definitely better not to, but maybe go a couple times. Yeah. Go and check it out. You don't want to do that. Go and see what that's all about. Yeah. Many people have lost their time. It's messy, though.

41:16Oh, yeah. They've lost their time to those places. It's very messy. It becomes a part of your life and your lifestyle. It's deeply unhealthy, both. it's physically unhealthy but it's also like spiritually unhealthy yeah it's a weird way to spend your time been there, done that, thank you very much you look fine, you got through it I did, I did get through it don't you think it's good to just know though? oh yeah I think if you don't know you can't you can't talk about it you can't understand that weird journey that you go through I think you have to do certain things sometimes just to realize what it's all about.

42:00It's that balancing. It's the light and the dark. L.A. is so particularly odd, too, because everyone's chasing this very specific goal of notoriety. It's success, but success is quantified by notoriety. The more famous you are, the more popular, the bigger your song is. Even now, all you've got to have is a bloody iPhone or whatever. TikTok. To earn an account, and that's it. Very strange. Yeah, really, really odd. I can't quite get to grips with all of that, to be honest with you. I don't think anybody can. And I think it's essentially being captured by a form of technology that has leveraged our desire for this attention, our desire for this notoriety. But it's also being known for nothing. Right. Yeah, that's the scary thing. And having this element of what seems to be the latest generation of this privilege. Right. You know. Right. Where they believe that, you know, everything is owed to them.

43:12Right. Entitled. Entitled, yeah. And I find that shocking, you know. Well, that comes along with the quest, right? If the quest is just notoriety, like if you're an artist and you happen to get famous because everybody loves your music or loves your photography or loves your books or whatever it is, that's a different sort of a relationship because people love you for what you've made, what you've produced. Yeah, there's a purpose to it. Yeah. And I love people like that because I'm fascinated by people that are able to create things that resonate with everybody or resonate with an enormous amount of people. It's fascinating to be around them and to kind of just – I know a lot of famous people now and I know some of them are just fantastic people. They're just really interesting people. You have very interesting people on your show. That's for sure. I mean that's what intrigued me from Professor Brian Cox. Love that guy. I'm an absolute fan of. He's amazing. Such a nice guy. Lovely guy. Mind-blowing. Mind-blowing.

44:12Too much information for my good. It's so funny. I was talking about him with a friend of mine the other day, and my friend wasn't aware of him. And I had just done a podcast with him. And I'd gone to the club from the podcast. I'm like, oh, my God, I have the greatest podcast. This guy blew my mind. I've had him on several times, and he's always amazing. And my friend looks at the photo. He goes, what does he look like? He's like, is that guy in a fucking band or something? I go, yeah, he was in a band. He's like, no way. He's in a successful band. He's an actual brilliant scientist who was in a successful band. Yeah, yeah, mind-boggling. I mean, it doesn't comprehend. Because he looks like a rock star. He does. He does. Yeah, he's not changed his look since the beginning. And he's such a great science communicator. Well, that's the thing. See, I love science, but I get lost in it sometimes. But he is probably the closest I'll ever get to really trying to have an insight into what it's all about, you know, as best as he can describe it. He's really good at explaining to people that don't have the proper understanding of all the terminology and all the ways they discover it.

45:23He can lay it out for the layperson. Yeah, which is why he's so fascinating, which is why everybody should know him. Yeah. His show is wonderful, too. Have you ever seen his show? They do a live performance. No, I have not. Enormous screens, and they show you history of the universe and stellar nurseries and all this wild stuff. It's really incredible stuff. No, fantastic. Yeah. Fantastic stuff. Yeah, I've been very fortunate in that way, that I've had a chance to talk to so many extraordinary people. And it's great, but it makes talking to boring people almost painful. Like you're just holding your breath. I don't know which category I'm in. You're not in the boring kind. No. No. Well, I can be. I think we all can be, I guess, at some stage. Well, just the fact that you're willing to do what you've done just to take these trips and just move to a place. I think that's great.

46:18I think people need more of that in their life. I think you could see the world from your neighborhood and from where you live and get a really distorted sense of this experience, this very unique experience of these bizarre thinking creatures interacting with each other on this isolated planet that's hurling through the universe. And you could think that you kind of understand the experience until you go to other places. Well, I see you're a big fan of Bourdain as well. Yeah. And I loved his show. I still watch them all the time. He was the best. Because it's just what he discovered and how he entrenched himself with the people that he went to meet and the conversations and the food. That's my cup of tea right there. I think how can you not want to do that, learn and love that experience? Well, he had such an infectious passion for different cultures and their food and the art of food. He was the first guy that made me consider that cooking is actually an art form. I kind of knew it, but I didn't think of it. I kind of just said, oh, delicious food, awesome. Oh, this guy's a really great chef, awesome. And then I watched his first show, No Reservations, like, oh, okay, duh. It's art. It's art that you eat. Oh, yeah, yeah.

47:37Oh, that's why they're all weird and they all have tattoos and fucking weird earrings. Yeah. Okay, they're artists. Okay, that makes so much sense. And I was like, oh, you ignorant fuck. You had never put it in that category. I just decided, no, that's just food. But no, there's an art to food. It's another level. Yeah, like the place you were talking about, Linguini with clams. Linguini vangole, which is my favorite dish of all time. Spaghetti vangole. When it's done, right? I promise that if you ever come back to Monty, as we call it, I'll drive you. Oh, I'll go. We'll go for spaghetti vangole and hope the dear grandmother is still alive. It also makes me angry because when I eat pasta and pizza over in Italy, I don't feel like shit. And then I come to America and I eat the same supposed things. I can eat a frigging salad here and put on weight. I don't know what's going on. I'm serious, though.

48:34Yeah, it's seed oils. Absolutely. Seed oils in the salad dressing and sugar. Yep, all of that. All of that. Yeah, I agree. It's a much healthier lifestyle over there without question. Oh, yeah, the food hasn't been violated. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. It's generally organic. You can eat pizza every day and pasta every day. And also, I think the other real big thing here is the portion control as well. Yeah, we're gluttons. I mean, you can have one plate full of food here and it'll serve four people in Europe. Yeah. Literally. Oh, yeah. That's a fact. I think, you know, I was poor when I was young. And I think because of that, I'm even more of a glutton because I just want more food.

49:18I want all the food. Yeah, yeah. And then I work out a lot. So I'm always hungry. Yeah. So then I have a real over eating. But yeah, I mean, the only thing that keeps me from being fat is my exercise routine and discipline. Because if I was just giving in to my whims, I'd be 500 pounds. Yeah, yeah. For sure. I just love food. Yeah. It's, you know, especially when you go to a different culture. No. You know? If you go to somewhere, like you can go to Thailand and eat authentic Thai food in Thailand, it's like, oh, man. Oh, yeah. There's something special about it. And it's great when you've got friends who have that same appreciation that, you know, while you're eating lunch, you're talking about dinner. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

50:00That's how excited you are about food. And it's also, it just realigns your priorities. Like, what really are you trying to get out of life? You're trying to get out of life memorable experiences with people you care about. Those are, like, the best moments in life. No question. No question about it. Yeah. Yeah, I long for that. Yeah. Because also I go in these very long working time periods and I don't get to see a lot of friends quite often. And so I really try and work out and look at my schedule these days and go, I'm taking some time out here for a couple of days. I want to see my friends. I want to say hello. I want to share some time and stories and food with them. So it's become a key thing to have that included in running around like a headless chicken all the time. Is that what inspired your photography? Because this book is really excellent. Your photography is great. Thank you. It was a dear friend, Timothy White, who's a celebrity photographer.

51:06And he'd done my second and third album. And we were doing a charity single called Lucy. which was about Lucy Voden, who was the Lucy in the Skyward Diamond that I grew up with, who died from lupus. And then I became the ambassador for the Lupus Foundation of America. And we were doing a single to raise money called Lucy. And we were doing another great artist called James Scott Cook. and we were doing a photo shoot and he'd sent me some pictures and I started screwing around with his pictures and he said to me, and you actually don't do that with another photographer's work. He said, what the fuck are you doing with my pictures? I said, where did you learn how to do this? I said, well, I didn't. I'm intuitively inspired to play around with stuff. I'm still a big kid. And he said, well, do you have any other, do you have other photos? Do you actually have photos yourself that you've taken and worked on? I said, well, I've got bits and bobs, but nothing.

52:22So he and I sat down and looked through all the photos I had, and I think there was maybe 1,000 at that time, which isn't much at all. I'm now over 120,000 photos. It's mind-boggling. that's why this was difficult but yeah so he said Jules why don't you do something with this stuff and I said what? what am I going to do? he said listen you should do an exhibition you've got some really beautiful things here and I said listen I'll do it if you mentor me through the whole process which he did And I was probably more petrified at the first exhibition that I did, which was in New York at the old CBGB's, which turned into the Morrison Hotel Gallery. And that was in 2010, I think. And I was more petrified the three days leading up to that than I was ever going on stage. Well, probably my first ever stage performance, which I did in Dallas at a rehearsal space that was down here for the first ever tour. Now, again, the anxiety.

53:47It's the unknown. I don't know what, the worry of what people are going to think because not just being you but John Lennon's son, being the second John, so to speak, was always an issue for me. You know, it's feeling like you have to doubly prove yourself. So, and literally an hour or two before the opening as well, there was the most horrendous storm and downpour in New York. And I thought, well, that's it. Nobody's coming. but to my utter delight I had reviews from fine art photography magazines etc etc that gave me nothing but praise and I was shocked absolutely shocked so I just continued doing that I'm now over I think 42 exhibitions

54:47worldwide and I just finished my biggest one in Venice at a museum over the last three months. And the book, in fact, I had approached other publications before but been pretty much turned down by everybody. And then out of the blue earlier this year, this company out of Berlin called Tenoise said, listen, do you want to do a photography book? And I said, hell yeah. And they said, why haven't you done one before? I said, because nobody gave me the opportunity. Excuse my French. Do you think that's because you're John Lennon's son? Like there's a burden that is very unique to you. Listen, I certainly recognize that there's walls up without question. What is that like? Like what are the walls? Like do you think it's just they dismiss you? Something's going on. I mean, I've discussed this with Rebecca, who you met my manager, and a few other people.

55:50You know, there's occasions where I'll be totally blanked. Like with the last album I came out with, Jude, which took, you know, between five and 30 years to write and record. It was old songs and new songs that I wanted to balance the sound. And it was at a time when I'd gone through a lot of changes myself, and I had decided to finally be Julian. I'd been John Charles Julian Lennon all my life, but everybody had always known me as Julian. Even mum and dad called me Julian. So I'm like, you know, I want to be me finally. So by deed poll in 2020, I said, right, I'm going to be Julian now and the album's going to be called Jude. And the reason I called it Jude was it was finally not only an acceptance, but actually, what's the terminology? I'm actually taking ownership should I say of the name Jude and what that represented for all these years to other people and to me so anyway the album was a biggie for me calling the album Jude for starters inciting hopefully positive things But the weird thing was, you know, I put this whole band together and I wanted to, as a starter, to go on all the TV shows that I'd always ever wanted to appear on. for instance

57:44in England like Jules Holland later with Jules Holland which is the only live music show that I've watched all my life literally there's Graham Norton and I'd done their radio shows which is really really weird and we got on like a house on fire and I performed live and that all went down well and then it was kind of like, see you on the real show. Producers turned me down. And, you know, and same with a lot of the late night American shows. Got just didn't, they weren't interested. And, you know, I had, you know, I'd done the name change. I'd been away for 10 years. I'd called the album Jude. You know, there was a lot to talk about, you know. Yeah.

58:40And a great deal more than I'm presenting right now that – anyway, I was turned down and still – and that still happens to me, which saddens me. Because just when you feel like you want to open up, you know, and answer any question you can throw at me, I, you know, I've not been allowed to not. That's what it's felt like that I've not been allowed to speak my piece, whatever that is, you know, on whatever subject matter. It's weird. It's like the gatekeeper aspect of it is weird, but it's also weird. Like, why not? Like what would be the hesitance? I don't understand. It's the idea of the son of a great man, you know, and there's this weird – we have a dismissal and I'm very guilty of it myself. The son of a great man, I would assume, like, that guy's fucked. Yeah, yeah. He's fucked. It's like the burden is too high. Your dad was John Lennon. Yeah, yeah. Like he's iconic. Well, and I think with a lot of people, they don't want anybody to interfere with that. Mm. You know? I mean, how dare the sun come along and even try and be better in any way, shape or form or be as good as or whatever. Or whatever.

60:02Yeah, you're immediately dismissed. Which is why, you know, to a certain degree, photography really appealed to me. Number one, because the reality is I prefer it behind the camera. I don't mind being a goofball once in a while doing in front of the camera things but I'm not really comfortable there but behind the camera and you know travelling is what I have a foundation called the White Feather Foundation and we try to help people all over the world and it started I know that you have interest in indigenous cultures and I don't know if you know the backstory to this to the white feather foundation at all okay so here we go okay um i was on tour with probably my most at least outside of america most well-known song it was a number one and top 10 in countries all over the world except for america um and it was called saltwater and saltwater is about environmental and humanitarian issues and i was number one in

61:14australia i was doing all kinds of shows i was doing promo and and tour as well and i found myself in uh adelaide and i got this call from the hotel management saying uh excuse me mr lennon but there's uh an aboriginal tribe down here with tv crews who want to say hi and i thought it was like an on-the-road prank. I said, yeah, sure. Sure, why would they be coming to see me? And they called back and they said, no, no, no, no, this is serious. Can you come down, please? And so I think TV crews, Aboriginal tribe, what's this about? And so I kind of get doled up a little bit because I don't know what the TV shows are or cameras are. So I go down, and in the lobby, there's a little platform and about 30 people, half of them indigenous, TV crews, a bunch of other stuff. And I honestly have no idea what it's about. And this woman, who was the elder of this particular tribe called the Moaning People, walked up to me and presented me with a male swan's white feather, which is about yay big, and said, you know, can you help us? You have a voice. Can you help us? And I just kind of went, well, you know, do I just continue being the rock and roller or do I step up to the plate?

62:53Whatever that means. and so what specifically did they want help with well I'll tell you initially you know I didn't know what their problems were I imagined that it would be the same as most other indigenous tribes around the world that have had issues you know and they said you know can you help us and I said I'll do it for the children so I guess what I was saying is the next generation I can you know try and anyway so I that this woman was called Irish she was the eldest she's since passed in the last year or so but I spent 10 years

63:42making a documentary with the best friend Kim Kindersley who initiated this whole thing and we made a documentary called whale dreamers uh independent we had no money really behind it no sponsorship uh we won about eight international independent film awards which was great um and but the backstory to this is that um is that dad had said to me uh and i couldn't tell you when or where, just was one of those times that we were together. He just said that, you know, if something ever happens to me, that I'll let you know that, that, to let you know that I'm okay, or that we're all going to be okay, we'll be in the form of a white feather. Whoa. So, when that woman presented me with a white feather the goosebumps came on heavy I get them now every time I talk about the story I'm getting them right now so yeah there she is there's Iris and there's Bunna who's one of the other guys that is so crazy I still have that

65:00in the original envelope that she gave it to me and it's It's in a very special place at home. I mean, you can talk all about coincidences. No, listen. For me, I'm sorry, that was undeniable, regardless of where my faith or spirituality or religion was. To me, that was, this is real. This is as real as it gets. It's funny because people love to dismiss these things. like oh hogwash oh it's just coincidence oh it could have been a variety of different things but the reality is mathematically like what are the odds just what are the odds that you would be contacted by an indigenous tribe and they would bring you the very thing that your father said he would provide you as proof yeah and i was in australia number one at the time with salt water the most environmental humanitarian song I've ever written and performed. Right. Yeah, so I said, yeah, I'll do what I can. So we did make the film. And then with the advent of, of course, the internet, I thought, okay, we'll put a website together to sell the film. And I also said to my business manager, I said, if we make anything on this, I said, I want everything to go back to the moaning people. And he said, the only way that that can happen is if you have a foundation.

66:45So initially, the foundation was just a vehicle just to pass money along. but I started the White Feather Foundation to have again a vehicle to sell the film and then slowly but surely I would start getting these emails from people over the years you know over time say well you know can you help us and I'm going well I'm not really a foundation I'm just I did this project and I thought that was it anyway there were a few other There was lots of emails, and I finally said, well, you know, all right, this is a platform. Let me see if I can. Okay, what am I interested in? What can I do? What, you know, there's plenty of other charities out there. There's plenty of other people doing other things.

67:35But what can I do? What's most important to me? Indigenous tribes were the first. So the moaning people, and then, in fact, in the film itself, in Whale Dreamers, Kim, my friend and director, had already done a segment of a film where he grouped 80 of the elders of the world's indigenous tribes, 80 from around the world, around a fire and just filmed them to talk about their plight and what they had in common. and the fact that their cultures and land were being taken away from them, being destroyed, etc., etc. So that became one of the first orders of the day, protect the Murning, protect indigenous tribes around the world, try to buy back their lands and protect their cultures and their people and try and support them in whatever way we can, which is what we continue to do. And I was in Kenya going to different schools and health clinics, mostly girls' schools. I set up a scholarship in my mum's name, the Cynthia Lennon Scholarship for Girls. And so we send them to college and universities where they go to learn how to protect their people and their families and cultures. And so we support, you know, we build health clinics and dormitories and we do it because, I mean, the stories that I heard from these girls about having to walk to and from schools that took three to six hours and they'd be exhausted by the time they got to home or to school. and that they, in order to get ahead, they had to pass certain exams. But they had the threat pretty much every day of being either raped or murdered. And they would literally stay in their own schools, sleep in the classrooms

69:53and convert them to dormitories at night so that they felt protected. I mean, when they went home, they were doing three hours of chores every night before they could do any homework and then go to sleep. and then walk to school again. So you'd hear these incredible stories that you just realize how lucky you are. And so we try to help, again, the indigenous. We do help with health and education as far as young kids, young girls across Africa, Kenya and Ethiopia. and also my last trip was to Colombia, to South America, to visit the Koji tribe, who were these insane people that chewed the cocoa leaves. Oh. But they used to be fishermen years ago before the Spanish arrived in the 1600s and chased them off into the Sierra Nevada mountains. Is it cocoa leaves or cat? Yeah, it's cocoa leaves. Cocoa leaves. Yeah. Yeah, and they chew it and mix it with spit. Oh, boy. Yeah, they're all off their heads, really.

71:06But they still have this beautiful culture. And I was only there for a few days, and we were up in the mountains with them. And there's another group, there's an NGO, another group called the Amazon Conservation Team, who the White Feather Foundation worked with. And we went down there and was able to buy back some of their land. And we did a couple of ceremonies with them, which were very, very beautiful. But one of the most, probably one of the happiest moments of my life, and I've only mentioned this once or twice, was that we came back down from the mountains. And we came to the sea where we were staying in huts. And the Koji tribe came down with us. It lit a fire on the beach. The sun was just going down. And there was no phones, no computers, no nothing. And we were just sitting on the beach. And the fire's between myself and the Koji tribe. And the sun's just going down and the waves are right in front. And it's just very beautiful. Nobody on the beach. Old, beautiful, beaten-up tree trunks that have washed up on the shore. and just a little haze from the water and the sand being blown. And there was a peace that I can't explain. I looked over at them and through the fire, you know, the flames of the fire,

72:44and we just smiled. There was no words. it was just some level of peace that had been found just living in that moment that present moment and then the sun going down and then because there's no street lights or anything else around you saw every star in the sky possible and so with that transition hanging out with this one of the oldest tribes in South America with the fire, with the sea, with the sky and the stars. There was, I can't even describe it. It was one of the most loving and most peaceful moments of my entire life. Wow. The simplicity of it. It was actually the simplicity of it all.

73:36And just the human heart and the appreciation for the world that we live in. It's like, well, that's partly why I do what I do, you know, even with the photography is capturing those moments, those once in a lifetime moments. And the other thing was, is that how I started doing photography is when I was on the road a lot, you do these real long haul flights, you know, to America or to Asia or wherever. And back in the day, you only had one movie on a projector. That was it. You know, you didn't have TV screens or the iPhones or anything to watch anything, you know. So once the movie was done and you'd have a bit, you know, a bit of food or whatever, that was it. Most people would go to sleep. I would always be twitching, of course. So I'd be looking out the window and staring at the clouds. and and i would i i realized that you know what i was seeing was literally just moments and they would never be again they would be gone fleeting that's it whatever that cloud that light that shade that shadow the color the beauty of that the enormity of it as well was so i started taking pictures of clouds and i just thought that at these moments while everybody else was asleep on the plane i'd be sitting there looking out either thinking about everything that was on my mind in the world yeah or i'd be thinking of i'd i'd be thinking of nothing at all and i'd just be at peace and again like that moment in in columbia just uh absorbing everything that i found to be beautiful that was surrounded me you know so so clouds were my thing at first uh that was my moment to either get away or think about everything you know but mostly that kind of element of freedom and space and just am I the anyone seeing this? Everybody else is asleep.

75:50Everyone's distracted. Yeah. So I started taking pictures of clouds. And then I knew a few rock and rollers, so I started taking pictures of those too. And then one thing led to another because I'd go on these trips to Ethiopia with great organizations like Charity Water. and again Kenya and South America and a number of other places. I just would take a camera with me because for the, and I have to confess, and I've said this a few times, I have the worst memory of anybody I know. Absolute terrible. Absolutely terrible. And so in a way, this was taking a camera with me was to catalog what was going on. And it was only when I got back home, I put them on the screen and I go, oh, that's quite a nice picture. Oh, that's not so bad. What if I just did this, that and the other? And so I started making collections of my journeys, which eventually became my website and my photography.

77:00I've never done a paid gig as such and I've never used nothing that wasn't natural light or present light. So I've never set anything up. I've always tried to, again, get that moment, whatever it was. And then, you know, I had the opportunity. I know I've gone in a bit of a roundabout circle, but, you know, the publishers came to me earlier this year saying, do you want to do a book? and I'm thinking, well, yes, and how do I do this? And because a lot of people don't know I'm a photographer in any way, shape, or form, I thought, okay, can I make it a retrospective? Can I make it all the stuff that I'm interested in? You know, because often as a photographer or even a musician, you get, oh, what is your favorite thing? What do you take pictures of? What are your songs about? They're about everything. Why do they, you know, that's, you know, the idea of being pigeonholed in any way, shape or form horrifies me. Me too. So this was a way for me to show my work. And it was a bit of a nightmare too, because I had decided with the onset of this exhibition I'd been offered in Venice

78:21at this museum alongside Helmut Newton, no less, why don't I try and marry the two so I have the book come out the same time as the exhibition now that meant working on the book like an absolute fruitcake madman on crack I mean we were doing nine to twelve hours a day virtually because they were he was based in the the the guy who I was working with from the publishers was based in Berlin and I was where I was so this would be virtual back and forth trying to figure out what makes a photography book great um it was some it was something else we did it in a couple of weeks it was insane and the hardest job of it all was uh because I used to shoot anywhere between 150 and 100 pictures for a collection. I was never one of those that had like a limited edition of four or ten pictures. You know, again, this was just a catalogue of the work of what I'd seen and the charity stuff. But then I had to, you know, in those moments, I had to learn how to make a collection of 50 pictures, five pictures.

79:44I'm going, well, how the hell do I do that? How am I going to do that? So it's being able to tell the same story of 50 pictures in five pictures. The problem is you know about the other 90 pictures. Well, of course. And as I keep saying, they're all my babies. So, you know, what it makes you realize is, okay, what's the truth? What's the really, really, really important message I'm trying to get across here? What am I trying to say? What am I trying to express here? You know, because half the time I just feel like a, you know, a messenger, really. I'm just capturing something and I'm sharing it. And the reason I say that is because once I started getting into this, a lot of the earlier emails I had were from disabled people or people that didn't have money that couldn't travel around the world. And they would say, well, you're bringing this to us. you know by taking these photos you're showing us your journey and where you've been and these indigenous tribes and this and that i'm going that's pretty that's really quite special that's really you know really quite special because you're taking on another role um because i try not to i've in whatever profession i've done whether it's documentary work or books or children's books or music i never try and shove things down people's throats i just present things and you take what you want from them so the idea was to put a book together that just showed the

81:25world as i'd seen it through those journeys that i've been on um and what happened was that when we got the go-ahead for this exhibition which was only earlier this year I was thinking how am I going to do that and that was going to I decided to make that a retrospective too but how do I then chop that many pictures down to that of this exhibition again I funnily enough the book became my guideline so what I'd learned in the editing process of putting the book together, I now looked to that and the book to see how I could present the work on the, in a larger scale in a museum and which was bonkers, you know, and this, this all happened this year. So it's like, okay, all right. I, you know, I'm going for the ride whether I, you know, I obviously want it, but, but, you know, when it all hits you at once, It's quite something else. It's been a full-on busy, busy year. And there's been music involved too and other documentary film projects, which you'll probably hear about next year. So it's probably been, weirdly, one of my busiest years. It seems like you're enjoying yourself, though. I'm alive. you know that's i think that's for me that's you know people say how are you i'm alive um and i i have always gone with things that have been presented to me organically uh anytime i've ever fought that or or or been pushed into situations never generally never works out i think for everybody that's yeah yeah So I feel fortunate in that these things have come along and I've been in the right headspace, thankfully, to go, yes, I want to do this.

83:39When you started shooting, did you take classes in the technical aspects of photography? No, I don't have a clue. So what kind of cameras are you using? How did you learn how to use them? I didn't. I didn't same with music I play by ear not a clue how to read or write music really? yeah I tell you this is one of my fears and I'll come back to this but because I'm not a practicing musician well I haven't been for years anyway because of all the other work that I do so But if I'm not on the road and I'm not practicing and I've got a terrible memory, I forget. And so, you know, I've been cornered a few times and people say, come on, pick up the guitar or play the piano, give the song.

84:37I couldn't. Wow. I couldn't even if you gave me a million bucks tomorrow. I couldn't do it. My memory just doesn't work that way. And so if – and this is why my manager and I, Rebecca, we keep having chats about going on the road. I said, listen, if we're going to do this, then this is a lot of work for me. This is – I have to relearn how to play my own songs and my lyrics. And I kid you not. Wow. But you also have to relearn self-taught. Yeah. Yeah. So what would you do? Have you done that in the past where you had to relearn? Yeah. The last tour I did with the album, everything changes. How do you scale it? How do you get going? You just have to get in the room. So you just get in the room and start fucking around with the guitar?

85:32Get in the room with the guys. The band that you put together, generally I'll have one or two friends in the band. And I have generally played rhythm guitar. or a bit of piano for a couple of songs. But I have to relearn everything. I mean, it's... And then lyrics. How long does it take to relearn how to play? Well, we were actually setting up, as I said, to do a bunch of TV shows to promote the album. And I was quite surprised about how quickly, because the band was so good. I walked into the room. They had the songs down already. and I just went, oh fuck, shit, I'm screwed. So that means, again, I have to step up to the plate. And it was just a question of being in there every day, remembering, learning the chords, going over it, over it, over it again. And of course, all this stuff that we were going to perform was all new material because when I write a song,

86:40if I've written the basics of a song in an hour or two, and it's all there and then written the lyrics and then produced it, recorded it and it's done. That's the one and only couple of times that I'll have ever played it. So it's almost a new song to me every time I come back to it. It's a real weird one. So for the photography, I just took along basically a really good quality automatic camera that took the shots. Did you know what you were buying or did you just go buy one? Did someone help you? No, I'd ask a few friends like Timothy White. I'd say, you know, what could I use if I'm running around? And so I took their advice and I started with a very simple camera that was autofocus and all compact and I didn't have to change lenses And that's one I did for a trip around the South China Seas on a boat trip. I just took this one camera in my backpack and hoped for the best. And I had a show here at Leica in L.A. because it was a Leica camera, which was about 50 images of the trip that I did. so but I think where my strength lies in photography is weirdly not on the technical side obviously but capturing that moment I tell you the one thing about the woman that's on the cover of the book so that's she is now the uh princess of monaco charlene that originally charlene whitstock and i'd met her a couple of times and i'd met prince albert a couple of times

88:39and i got this call literally the day before they were getting married from a mutual friend saying, Charlene loves your photography. She wants you to come and shoot the show. What? Yeah, she wants you to come down to where she is getting ready for the civil wedding tomorrow, and she wants you to take pictures. Wow. I mean, you want to talk about anxiety and crapping yourself? um so i excuse me i arrive at the hotel where she and all the maids of honors are i'm sitting sitting in the lobby and uh i've got a backpack and one one camera and i've tried to dress myself up a little bit i don't know what's going to happen i had to go through several layers of security road blocks and all this to get there, which was nerve-wracking to say the least anyway. And then the likes of Patrick de Marchellier, one of the best photographers in the world, walks in with the suitcase trolleys, those ones at the hotel that aren't the big ones on wheels with all his equipment on, three or four trolleys. And there's, I've got a backpack. anyway I go upstairs I'm placed in front of her in a room probably about similar to this size and she's

90:19sitting there completely blanked out in front of the mirror with the hairdresser the hairdresser's assistant and their assistant the makeup artist the makeup artist assistant is that you? yeah that's me oh wow so I'm in the book a few times That'll be a questionnaire at one point. That'll be a quiz at one point. How many times am I in the book? I don't even know myself, to be honest. But so I sit next to her and you've got all these people, 20 people in a room this size doing things, trying to get her ready 10 minutes before she's getting married. And they put me on this little poof next to her. I'm sitting next to her and she's and I'm saying. Are you OK? hey, should I just take pictures? She said, Jules, I'm not sure what to do. I don't know what to do.

91:18I'm going, what do you mean? You don't know what to do about the marriage or me taking pictures? Right, right. She said, no, no, Jules, the photos. I said, listen, this is historic. this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to record what's going to happen to you you know and exciting for me too to be a part of that as a photographer and so I said listen I'll keep out the way I'm a fly on the wall you know I won't be anywhere on and I was thinking how am I going to do this how do I do this and so I just start I just let people get on and I'm taking pictures and I get a um a message from Vogue Vogue.com who want a photo from me the moment she's married and I'm thinking ah okay um I'll just keep snapping away at whatever I do and I watch the civil wedding and then I get get on my bike go home and I start putting things up on the screen and I'm looking at pictures going I've got fuck all, I've got shit this looks like crap to me and this happens to me every time every fucking time and I'm looking at the pictures going they look terrible they really really look terrible

92:46blurred and this and that badly positioned I'm cursing myself and the one thing that I remember that she said to me is that, look, whatever you do, don't let any picture have me drinking or smoking in it. And I went, oh, okay. And the one thing that Vogue said to me is we want to see her smiling. And the one picture where she was smiling and she had champagne in her hand and she had a cigarette. And I'm going, fuck's sake. so okay i was not a photoshop kind of guy but i managed to get rid of the cigarette and i'm thinking okay how do i get deal with the champagne shit and then the one thing occurred to me i i thought okay i'll do it um i'll i'll desaturate it not black and white but it'll have an there'll be elements of tones i'll make it you know so you can't see that it's champagne and I did that and I cropped it in a certain way and I went that's it why didn't I think of this before you know 1930s 40s 50s Princess Grace black and white old school so then I turned every picture I had black and white well desaturated version similar to black and white of the whole collection I had of her and cropped it in a way that it was like 1950s magazines.

94:25You know, it's just certain angles and a different look and a different feel. Was she okay with the champagne being in the photo? Well, it didn't look like champagne. It just looked like fizzy water. And because on the side there had been bottles of fizzy water and still water. So I went, that's cool. She had to give me the okay to do that. When we decided that should be the cover of this book, I had to get her approval. I mean, I already had approval for having her pictures in a collection or a box set, but not on the front cover of a book that may do well. Have you ever been to Disneyland? Yeah. Oh, God. Do you know all the pictures of Walt Disney have his cigarette photoshopped out of his hand? No, I did not know that. In every picture, you see him like this. Is that so? Yeah. See if you can find some of those pictures because it's really interesting. Once you know that they photoshopped it, there's a guy that we've had as a tour there. Shout out to Flander. Awesome guy who works there.

95:32And he gave us this sort of history of Walt Disney. Okay. Walt Disney died of lung cancer. Right. Which you would think it would be probably a good thing to have the cigarette so people could know, oh, that poor guy. That's what killed him. But instead, they've decided to whitewash it and Photoshop. So all of his photographs. That's too funny. Look at his fingers are always in a position where he would have a cigarette. All of them. That's so funny. And so those real moments of him having a cigarette are lost forever. Whose idea was it to get rid of the cigarettes? Disneyland. You know, Disneyland did not want. After the fact. Yeah. I mean, let's see. There's a person. It says there.

96:16It says, The action is seemingly innocuous at first, but it's apparently a murky tribute to Walt Disney's smoking habits, with the company sidestepping around the reason as to why the icon pointed that way, writes HuffPost. It's been long speculated about. The anonymous employee was informed by a lead that this strange gesture from the cast members at Disney Park is actually based on Walt's old smoking habit. So people do that two-finger gesture to each other? Yeah. That's crazy. Alleged began training employees to do the same thing. Part tribute to the great band, part rewriting history. So they tried to pretend that that thing that he was doing, like Tom Hanks when he played him, he did that thing with his finger. But it's all bullshit. It was a cigarette smoker. Like a constant cigarette smoker. Oh, yeah. I was one of those. Is there any photos of him with a cigarette? You're talking about it in 2014. No, that's me. That's funny.

97:05well that's when I found out about it that's when Flander gave us a tour they stopped doing it right around then oh I gotcha I gotcha bitch I got them all to stop doing it cause it's fucking stupid like the guy smoked cigarettes yeah smoking cigarettes is bad for you he died from smoking cigarettes you should probably let people know you're doing a disservice to the whole world and also it's you know it's a part of history in the fact that so many people were unaware of the dangers of smoking cigarettes all day. And it's so insanely addictive. I used to be an insane smoker. Yeah. How'd you quit? Cold turkey. Wow.

97:47Yeah, I'd be one of those guys that would wake up at four in the morning and light up a cigarette and then go back to sleep. Wow. Wow. Or I'd take about two or three packs out with me every evening. Really? Oh, yeah, because I knew half of the people would nick half of my cigarettes. So I wanted to have backup. Oh, boy. Now, when the whole no smoking law came in, you know, Italy was one of the first. Really? And Ireland. Yeah, I think it was California that initiated it. And then Europe took it on board. And it was actually Italy and Ireland. And I was in both of those places, and it was extremely weird to go into any, especially in Italy, and island in the pubs, and for it to be a smoke-free environment. And that was just so weird because it was part of the norm back in the day that you'd be in a cloud of stinky cigarette smoke in any of those locations. Our norm at comedy clubs. Yeah. I would go home from comedy clubs every night smelling like cigarettes always. For sure.

98:59The whole audience would be smoking. And as a smoker, you don't think – you're not conscious of how other people – how you stink as well. Right. Which, you know, because it was funny. When I quit cold turkey, I did it. I did it because I didn't want anybody to tell me I couldn't smoke. I was such a brat. That's why you quit cold turkey? I quit cold turkey because I wanted to tell myself I couldn't smoke, not for you to tell me I couldn't smoke. How rough was it? That's what brought me down into a depression for a couple of years. Oh, yeah, because I started smoking at the age of probably 11 or 12 as part of my local gang that I used to be in as a kid. that's what you did you know you nicked ciggies from your parents and you found the back of the school and that was part of the initiation you know the part of growing up so and I loved it

100:07because for me when I became noticed as as a musician I again with my anxiety and I was a very shy kid very very shy kid still can be at times depending on how i feel that day but um um i would uh yeah i would the cigarette for me was my best friend you know i'd go to a bar and i'd be able to i'd be the you know not the cool guy at the bar but certainly that would be my way of not having to interact with people right you know i'd just sit there and you know be a rocker and smoke my ciggy and down my Jack Daniels. And it was like, leave me the fuck alone, you know, unless I, you know, wanted, wanted to talk. So that was the groove back then. And then when I gave that up, you know, instantly it was like, what do I do? How do I fill in that void? Well, I actually had to speak to people. Is that what caused the depression? Well, no, no, no.

101:15It was actually – I feel it was definitely a chemical thing because, again, I was smoking a couple of packs a day. I loved smoking. And the weird thing – Did you consider going back just to alleviate the depression? I was actually – a business manager friend of mine at the time said – saw me at one stage and said, Jules, pick up a fucking cigarette, please. Seriously. And he said, you're going to die the way you're going. Wow. Pick up a cigarette because you're going to die without it. Yeah. That was literally his sentiment. Wow. And it was a few years where it was very, very dark, and it was the cigarettes. That's crazy. Did you try patches or gum? Yeah, I did all of that stuff. Did it help? Not really. I loved that deep inhale. It's the delivery method. It's different than anything else. And the thing was, I would still challenge most good singing friends of mine that I could hold my breath or do lengths in a swimming pool underwater and hold my breath better than anybody else, which I was able to. And it's because I was such a deep, deep smoker. when I inhaled I really really inhaled so it was like lung exercises literally literally and I you know I went I remember going for my certain yeah seriously I consider myself a shallow breather now

102:55in comparison except for when I go on these kind of power walks you know wow trying to trying to get it all in anymore but yeah I know I bought a little apparatus which I've I still haven't I've been procrastinating about it, but it's an exercise, Ed. Yeah, I have one of those. Yeah, to expand. It's an O2 trainer. Yeah, there you go. So I haven't done it yet. You put like little lenses on it or little wheels. Well, you just change the inhalation volume. Yeah, it's less. Back and forth. Less of an opening. So you just train to get. My friend Boss Rooten created one. Very good. I mean, I know that they work. I just haven't gotten around to it. But, you know, that's. Well, just breathing exercises alone are great. Yeah.

103:39You can achieve some very bizarre altered states of consciousness through breathing exercises. Well, when I was, I mean, you know, the COVID experience was very, very different for very many people. And where I was in Monaco and France, you weren't allowed to leave your house without written paperwork to the police that you were going out for one hour. And you could only go within one kilometer unless you were going to get groceries where you could only go out for a limited amount of time. If you didn't have the paperwork with you, you'd be fined. And so I, you know, I started doing using quite a few apps to calm myself and take on deep breath and deep focus because I felt trapped, especially as someone who loved walking, who loved biking, who loved exploring all of that stuff. and I couldn't move. And here's the really annoying thing, was that where I was was quite close to the sea, a couple of hundred yards away. But as I said, I could only be in a one-kilometer circle from where I was, but half of that was in the sea. and and so i could walk left and right to try and get 5k in back and forth you know at least 5k to try and get a good walk in but you weren't allowed on the beach which was the most to sit there and contemplate and breathe and just you know try and relax one of the healthiest things you can do yeah you couldn't you weren't allowed to do that everyone lost their fucking mind and it was really strange in california they were arresting people the coast guard was arresting people for surfing like i know it's insane i remember going on my first power walk along a peninsula that's about 15 minutes out of monica and somewhere i go every once in a while and it was a really quite blustery day and it's right along the coastline rocks high winds the whole thing and i'm walking a little power walking along thinking i'm finally free i'm finally free good

106:18anyway so along the path ahead of me about a quarter of a mile i see a number of bobbing heads okay and i wasn't wearing a mask you had to wear a mask even when you're up power walking on your own because of science of course genius well yeah let's not get into that but um yeah and um so over the ridge they come and and i noticed that one of the person at the front is wearing a police hat oh great and so okay oh shit so i'm trying to scramble putting my mask on and he's taking out going for a run with a bunch of trainers trainees you know um about eight eight other people from the police force they're all gunned up and truncheoned and everything else and the guy's going off on me in french saying wear your fucking mask and i'm going and i'm and he says to me oh yeah i understand a little bit a good amount of french I can speak a little bit, but he said, who are you with? And I'm looking around. There's nobody for half a mile anywhere near me. And he's asking me, who am I with? And I'm thinking, what's that about? This is the weirdest scenario. I'm in the middle of nowhere on a rocky peninsula. And he's asking me who I'm with. And there's nobody. and, you know, to put my mask back on, otherwise I'd be in trouble. And it was just the most surreal,

108:03peculiar circumstance to be, you know. Well, you could have never imagined it before the pandemic. You could have never imagined a scenario where people would be that illogical. Wearing a mask outside, illogical. Not being able to go to the beach, illogical. I still love the fact that you see people sitting on their own in cars today wearing a mask. Oh, yeah. Well, if you go to Los Angeles, my friend just went to a party and he sent me a photograph. He's like, I'm at a Hollywood party. Everyone's wearing a fucking mask. These people are in a cult. Like it's very it. First of all, if you haven't read the house, the 500 page synopsis on what all went wrong with covid is that everyone should read it. Just understand that the whole six feet distance, all that stuff is all made up. It's all bullshit. Masks don't work. They don't work unless you have like a face fitting mask. And even that you're getting oxygen in the particle, like viral particles in the oxygen are smaller than vape particles. Right. Like if you vape with one of those things on, then put it out and then or you take a big deep breath, put the mask on. The vape will come right through the fucking mask. So will the virus. Like this is not real. You're pretending. And it's forced compliance, illogical forced compliance, which was very disturbing. It was very disturbing for me to see how many people were reinforcing that too, how many people were yelling at other people. It gave people a wonderful opportunity to be assholes where they could yell at people for not having a mask on. But outside? Like really?

109:47No, the logic. It was out the window. But it was also really fascinating to watch human nature. The human nature of, first of all, that people really do enjoy controlling people. They really do enjoy telling people what the rules are and punishing people who disobey the rules, even if they don't make any sense. And then also watching people comply, knowing it's illogical and being upset at everyone that points out that it's illogical, that it doesn't make any sense. Like, you're the enemy because you're not going along with it. You're making it harder for us. We have to get through this. Like, is this real? Yeah, yeah. Strange. Yeah. No. Yeah. Stay away from everybody. That's the only solution. Or go to a place. Well, I came here. They didn't embrace any of that. Like, I was in Los Angeles, which is like the most compliant place.

110:40everybody was all in all in on the the public narrative that was being expressed in the mainstream media all in on you know everybody who denies it is an anti-science person and you're anti this and enter that and just get that vaccine and just get on board with this beautiful little thing we're going to do we're going to get through this together as long as everyone complies and if you don't comply and if your neighbors aren't complying here's a number you can call people started ratting out their neighbors it was like a it was a program that they the mayor of los angeles ran like normally snitches get stitches but this way snitches get rewards like they're giving him money giving people money to rat out their neighbors for having parties yeah it's beyond messed up oh so strange and it doesn't seem real like my friend people are eager as well oh yeah that club eager so happy they're part of it my friend hassan um found a pair of pants that he It was in his apartment, and he pulled out a mask out of the pocket. It's like, fuck, when was the last time I wore these? There's a mask. And when you see a mask, and you realize, like, I had a mask that was in my truck that was in, like, one of the back little compartments on the side. It just happened to be sitting there. And I was cleaning the truck. I'm like, look at this fucking stupid thing. This was just two years ago. Yeah. You had to have these things. You wanted to get on a plane.

112:02Seems like a bad dream. It does. It's like Disney in the fucking cigarettes. Are they going to Photoshop out all these people's masks in the future? It's all a bit surreal. I mean. So strange. It really is. It's all a bit odd. I still don't get it. I don't get any of it. You shouldn't. Hopefully these viruses. No. Especially those. At least don't wind up becoming the next one. I used to think there's no way that people would want that to happen. I'm not so sure anymore. No. After this last go around, I'm like, boy, there might be like sinister factors at work here that I don't. Oh, without question.

112:39Yeah. I'm sure of that. And I was unwilling to ever think that way before. I was like, come on, that's stupid. No one's that evil. No one would do that just for profit. Now I'm like, I don't know. Of course they are. They probably would. Oh, they would. Yeah. They would, no question. So strange. So strange. And then that, I think, the frustration of the overcomplicated, overregulated, overcontrolled world is probably what accentuates the experience of you being in South America with a fire looking at the stars. Because there's a purity to that that especially no phones, no computer, no screens, no nothing, just human beings enjoying an experience on the planet. It's funny because I'm in the process of moving. I mean, I still have my base in Monaco, but the little place I had outside. A lot of my later teenage years were mum remarried a couple of times, but we were in North Wales. I don't know if you're familiar with North Wales or Wales in general. It's mountains, you know, sheep and mountains.

114:04And so, yeah, we lived in farmland, on farmland, and I used to work on a farm too. So I loved, and that's where I actually learned how to ride a motorbike, you know, on farmland and through rivers and enduros and stuff like that. and uh so i've always loved that element of of countryside i always like the the excitement of a city and the people and the energy but there's also that that other side of peace and quiet and birdsong and running water yeah yeah and so i the key is like a little bit of new york city a little bit of mountains yeah that's that's the key to life yeah so i i'm in the process of uh i've And I hate this terminology, forever. But I certainly think it's a place that I'll be for a while. Do you hate the terminology of home? No, forever. This is going to be my forever home. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I like moving. I really enjoyed moving here. I like getting up and just being in a new place. Yeah. I think it's good for the brain. I think I'd been at the same place for over 26 years through some very good things, but some pretty dark moments as well, whether that's relationships or friendships and things like that. And I finally decided a few years ago, I need a change. Where are you going?

115:38I'm very close by. I mean, I'm literally 15 minutes away, but it's just a different environment up in the mountains. Okay. surrounded by, you know, beautiful old oak trees and walking paths. And, I mean, I know I sound like I'm turning old all of a sudden. No, you sound like someone who appreciates beautiful things. I just want, you know, the funny thing is when I went to see this place for the first time, my shoulders just dropped. I just, and it was, I don't want to leave here. You know, the rest of the world seemed very alien after walking onto this property. I just went, okay, a couple of acres of land surrounded by beautiful old trees and peace and quiet. I have thoughts on that. I think that nature is a vitamin that we don't know we need. Absolutely. No question about it. Yeah, you get it and then you're filled up. You're like, oh, this is what I was missing. I mean, also the whole tree-hugging, earthing thing. Yeah, it's real. I believe absolutely 100%. It's real.

116:53It's real. You feel better. I mean, scientifically proven. Yeah, we have a connection to Earth that's been muted by our shoes. Correct. This is very, very true. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird to think that way, but it's absolutely correct. You know, and I have done this too, that you can get earthing sheets. that you can sleep on. I don't know. I sleep on one. I don't know if it works or not. It probably does something. Yeah, but what? I don't know. Just get outside. I think get outside is the move. And if you can get outside barefoot, it's even better. This is very, very true. The other day I was playing with my dog in the backyard

117:35and I was throwing the ball for him. He's kind of lazy. Sometimes he just decides to lay down, so I just sat down with him. And it was this amazing moment. of him just wagging his tail, you know, me petting him, and just sitting in the yard, just trees and birds and just beautiful. That's it. It was a beautiful, peaceful moment that I just experienced with my dog. That's it. Two of us chilling. That's it. Really, really. It was a beautiful moment. I was thinking in that time, like, this is so simple. It's just a simple, beautiful moment. And, you know, if you try to explain it to people, most people are probably not going to get it. Okay, yeah, you're in your dog. You love your dog. Like, no, it's not it.

118:16It's like it was just life. It was just like this moment of life just recognizing and also not thinking about anything else, which is also beautiful. Not thinking about Gaza. Not thinking about Ukraine. It's about that little moment of appreciation here and now. Thank you very much. And how that can be beyond beneficial to you on a number of levels. But then even explaining that, unfortunately, has been co-opted by the term mindfulness, which is so often used by grifters and fake gurus and dorks. It's one of those words that you say it and you're like, ugh, mindfulness. I hate saying it. I'm a spiritual person. Oh, shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. I can't take it. I get it. But those terms are valuable. It's like the term God. It's a valuable term. Love is a valuable term. Yes. But so often they just get ruined just by insincerity or just by people who use it as a way to define themselves.

119:20For sure. Hijacked. Hijacked. They've been hijacked. Hijacked. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, which is very sad actually because it just – Yeah, we can take it back. Probably. We can take it back from those hijackers. Fuck them. I'm in. Yeah, I mean, do you know who Alex Gray is? No. Alex Gray is a visionary artist. He does a lot of very, very intricate psychedelic pieces that are iconic. He's very famous in the psychedelic world. His stuff is really, really beautiful. I've seen. I'm sure you have. He's very, very famous.

120:01Oh, yeah. But we were talking about this and he said that he took the term God back because he's like, I think the term God has been co-opted by this idea of these totalitarian religions that impose very strict rules and dogma on people. He's like, I don't think we should stop using that word just because of that. I think we can kind of take that word back. It would be good to. Yeah. Well, I think he kind of has. he actually has a church really now? yeah and it's like he had to go through a whole thing to acquire tax exempt status but his church is this insane building that is all 3D printed with his type of psychedelic artwork so it looks like some insane like magical spiritual retreat that you would find somewhere like see if we can find

120:56it's called the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors Where is this? Upstate New York. Upstate New York. So it's not that far from the city. You can get there fairly quickly. And it's, you know, a completely different world. And he's got this church up there that's filled with his insane artwork. But this church itself is a piece of artwork. Like the outside of it, the way, you know, he has a lot of these images of these faces that are like multiple, like multiple sides of faces all connected together. And this is like this. Oh, wow. Yeah. So this is the outside of his building. It's really incredible. That's the building. Whoa. Isn't that amazing? So the building is very, very much like his type of tryptamine-inspired art. Where, like, you know, all these third eyes, like, in a fractal form. Yeah.

121:50This geometric pattern on the roof. And everything is like that. It's really amazing. Phenomenal. And, you know, he's been working on it forever. Is he professing anything? I don't know what his – keep phone showing up. Is there an order as such? I mean – That's Alex when he was very young. Yeah. But he's been, you know, in the sort of psychedelic space and psychedelic art space forever. And he had this incredible place in New York City. and then he decided to do this whole church. Just click it right there and just play it out. I don't really know what the video is. Okay. It's 20 minutes long. I see. So a lot of his, so that's his wife. Is this derived from acid and magic mushrooms?

122:44It says it right there. It comes out of the psychedelic experience. Yeah. Yeah, he's been a longtime proponent of psychedelics. Just a very, very interesting guy. And his artwork is just incredible. Like, really. But, like, probably the most accurate encapsulation of these experiences in, you know, in an artistic form. Really wild stuff. And, again, this is, you know, the way he's got it set up now, he's in the woods. So he's in this beautiful, like, rural area. And then he's got this incredible chapel that's up there. So it's pretty fucking cool. Well, I'm certainly a believer in other realms that we don't see on a daily basis. Yeah. I mean, I've had a few experiences that would... whether whether that's a dream within a dream or whether it's reality i don't actually know well one of the things that i've talked to about uh with some pretty insanely brilliant people is quantum computing oh yes and this new google quantum computer that can do essentially the way a quantum computer works a problem that would take thousands of years yeah for every computer on earth to solve it can solve in a second yeah something that can take more years than you

124:19literally can understand it can be solved in 15 minutes yeah i read that it's insane and this is where it gets really weird the way it was explained to me and we should have to google how quantum computers work and why people connect them to the multiverse so i don't fuck this up but the idea is that they're pulling answers from different universes simultaneously. They don't even completely understand how this is working. But the amount of power in computing is incomprehensible. Incomprehensible. Like you're only looking at it and there's numbers. You could write all those numbers out, but your brain's not capable of grasping really what's going on. And it's probably the biggest breakthrough technologically in human history by a long stretch. And it's all happening without most people even being aware of what the implications are. So see if you can Google an explanation of how quantum computers work. Was it Marc Andreessen that was explaining to us that it's pulling from different universes? No, no, that is being talked about in the wording of the Willow description. Right. But I also, just to add, when I was reading about this, they said that these benchmark numbers are coming off of Google's own data. They're the ones that set the scale of some of the quantum numbers. Are you skeptical? Is that what you're saying? Are you calling bullshit on Google? No, not at all. Not at all.

125:57I feel like he is. No, no. I'm just a grain of salt. Just to say that, I think they used tillions as the number or something like that. Yeah, septillion. No one even can grasp that. Yeah. But that's a number based off of their formula, too. Right. That's all. Right. What is the definition of how it works? The way it pulls from multi-universal? I think I'm trying to find it, but I think the understanding I got from it was it's just too powerful to get from our universe alone. You'd have to have more than one. And that's just. Like, what does that mean? How do they even get to that? Exactly. What does that mean? What is that thing that they have? And if you've ever seen the chip itself, the chip itself is very small.

126:40Yeah. It's like the size of a saltine cracker. Yeah. And then this entire mechanism around it is just the insane amount of cooling. I like that. Okay. Google's quantum AI founder said the performance gains lends credence to the idea that we live in a multiverse. The idea is that Willow might be communicating with parallel universes to finish calculations faster. Like, what does that mean? The announcement led Google's already high stock price to surge, which isn't that shocking, but perhaps most surprisingly for us laypeople that Google's quantum AI founder and lead, Harmut Nevin, said that the chip's performance lends credence to the notion that quantum computation computation occurs in many parallel universes in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse. And then it says, excuse me? This obviously has caused a bit of a stir and it isn't exactly clear on how he made that leap. It sounds a bit like something out of a sci-fi movie, and I'm definitely not going to pretend I'm an expert, but it's worth pointing out that Google is very much still in the theoretical research phase of this journey. This is very weird stuff. an evolving scientific field that even people working on it don't fully understand. What? Okay, here's what is a quantum computer. Let's explain this.

128:06The computer we use every day and have been iterating on for the past several decades are what is known as a classical computer. Essentially, a classical computer utilizes binary as its language of choice, A bit in the smallest unit of data that a computer can store and process is like a light switch. Each bit can only be in a single state at a time, on or off, which is represented by zero or one. Computers track data based on the language of bits. Literally anything our computers do is based on a network of on-off switches sending a particular signal. A quantum computer is a bit different. If you're familiar with the concept of superposition or Schrodinger's cat, this won't be too far of a stretch, but a quantum bit or qubit is capable of representing the potential of multiple states at once. Rather than only recording a one or a zero, it records both because it can be both. This allows a chip like Willow, which has 105 qubits, to perform incredibly complicated analytics in a fraction of the time a classical computer could. And how does it work? So let's boil it down to a very small example. If you have two bits which can return a value of 1 or 0, there are four potential states that it can be recorded. 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, and 1, 0. If each of these states takes one second to record, it would take a classical computer four seconds to record every position permutation, every possible permutation. A quantum computer made up of two qubits, however, would be able to send to record the potential of each qubit at once, meaning it could record all four possible states in one second. The real power here is achieved when you add a much higher number of qubits together and try to record every possible state. Once again, something that would take a classical computer far longer can be achieved quickly because a quantum computer can record a number of potential states at once rather than one of a time.

130:07Okay, we basically don't know what the fuck we're saying here. This is just too weird. Okay, so this is what it is. One of the world's most advanced classical computers. Okay, here it is with this problem. So AI's founder and lead, Hartmut Nevin, said that the new chip had performed a purposefully complicated exercise called a random circuit sampling benchmark in five minutes. one of the world's most advanced classical supercomputers. On the other hand, it would take 10 and then three zeros, three zeros, three zeros, three zeros, three zeros, three zeros, three zeros, three zeros, three zeros. Years to perform the same exercise. That's 10 septillion years, which exceeds known time scales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe. so it can do more time than vastly exceeds the entire age of the universe and it can do it in five minutes and the reason it could achieve such a monumental improvement in calculating capacity is because willow is made above 105 cubits and can track the potential of each of those at once allowing it to record potential data much faster and come to the right answer sooner so like what is happening. That's too much information. What do you mean? I get it, but I don't get it. I don't get how does that prove the multiverse or

131:34provide evidence that the multiverse is real? And that it's getting it from parallel universes? What are we even saying here? That it couldn't come up with those answers within the allotted time span that's... Yeah. What? I can't even explain. I mean, funnily enough, my brother's into all of this stuff. Sean, he's- In simpler language. He would probably be able to explain it to you, Sean. Probably. Well, he would give it a shot. He would, certainly. I think he was the one that was probably explaining it to us. In simpler language, Willow is doing one calculation while an unknown number of Willows in other universes parallel to our own are doing their own calculations and they are sharing that data to avoid needing to individually do every possible

132:28calculation to finish the equation what the fuck does that mean how are they sharing data between universes I don't know ask Nevin remember this is all theoretical and doesn't prove anything but Nevin is saying that the fact that chip can outperform our best supercomputers by such a wide margin means that it might have broken Newton's theory of physics. Yo, what does it say under that, Jamie? What does this mean for me? Keep that going. Put that back on. Scroll up a little bit. It's right here. Okay, this is what I want to look at. At this point, it's an exciting look at what computing might take one day, but it isn't something you're going to see in your next Pixel phone. Quantum chips, you'd be isolated, incredibly specific chambers. Yeah, this is the thing. It's cooler than, it has to be cooled to a point where it's colder than outer space, sealed away from any possible signals such as microwaves, radiation, radio signals, et cetera, for fear of that noise leading to potential mistakes and have specific signals delivered by purpose-built wires. Who figured this out?

133:33Where are those eggheads? Jesus Christ. How did they even come up with that if that has to be the case? How did they figure out that you have to do that? All of it. That's just brain damage. That's one of the most humbling things that I've found about doing this podcast is realizing how genuinely dumb we are in comparison to the amount of information that's available. No question. And I'm saying it's like not just uninformed but incapable, even if given the information of grasping exactly what these apex minds are thinking and working on right now. Along with, at the same time, people just living in Ravello, just having an espresso and a cigarette and getting a slice of pizza. Maybe they realize and they just say, fuck it. But it seems like the human race desires all things. The human race desires people like yourself who enjoy photography and travel and this beautiful experience of life. But it also sort of requires people to be at this bizarre cutting edge of science where it seems to be violating the known laws of physics. Like all those things. It hurts my brain. I mean, I'd love to know more. Well, just think about what we're doing right now. Just think about what we're doing. I still don't get how a TV works or the radio.

135:02I'm still not. How does this work? I'm still back there. What makes this louder? What makes the microphone carry our voice? How is this being encoded into a form that's going to be instantaneously delivered to millions of people? So millions of people are hearing this right now. Like as it gets to them, not right now, but once it gets released, the millions of people that are hearing this are getting it through the sky on their phone. I resign. I truly resign on that level. I can't. I can't. It doesn't. No, I can't either. But it's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing. It's an amazing time to be alive. I'm fascinated by it every day, and that's why with subjects that are happening with AI right now, I find it massively intriguing because there is an element to that that may allow me to understand a great deal more before it's too late. I think we're the last of the regular people. It's quite possible. I think this experience that we're having, this experience that you're having like on a motorcycle with no signal, just driving through the countryside, like just being alive.

136:12I think we're the last of those people. I think what's next. Even that sounds like a dream though. I know. I mean just the whole concept of that is dream worthy. Yeah, I mean, I have a number of theories on who we are and where we came from and UFOs. What do you think? Well, to some degree, I'd always felt, even as a young kid, that UFOs were us coming back for history lessons, basically, and that the vehicles were driven by our minds. anyway um uh but i i mean i've i've seen as dad had also seen a ufo i've clearly seen a ufo what do you see i was actually here's the weird thing i was actually on my way to i think visit dad in new york i think it was new york which is where he'd seen one on the um upper east side in an apartment that I visited I went to see him at he's standing on the roof of this apartment where he he was living at the time and yeah he it's on film he clearly says this thing came along I can tell you exactly what it looked like went up the Hudson went under the bridge and then zapped off my experience i've had two experiences but the the most profound was funnily enough was one of those flights on good old twa um and i was in the front part of the plane and i'd i was had been given because i was quite young i'm maybe anywhere between eight and ten i don't know 11 maybe and i was going to see dad for one of the first times in the u.s and the guy that was escorting me over uh gave me a one of those first time i'd ever seen them one of those books that had blank pages i thought wow those are weird you know i quite unusual i'd never seen

138:37them over in England before, just these hardback black covered books with nothing inside. So I had one of those in the coloring set. So I was, I guess, relatively young. Everybody had watched the movie. Everybody had gone to sleep. I was staring out the bloody window as I normally do. And I was in front of the wing on the right hand side. and I'm just staring out at the stars literally and I kid you not all of a sudden I see your archetypal UFO with the lights around, light on top it was silver or you know, reflective metal with white lights all the way, pulsating white lights all the way around. It stayed there. I can't tell you how long. How far away from the plane was it? It was right there. It was 50 feet. 50 feet from the wing of the plane? Yeah, yeah. In front of the wing of the plane. Did anybody else notice it?

139:53Nobody else was there. Everybody else was asleep. There was no stewardesses. There was no, nobody was around. What about the pilots? I don't, that I don't know. All I know is what I saw. God, I would have wanted to ask them. I just, I guess I was kind of freaked out or just okay with it. I can't even. How old were you at the time? You know, 8, 9, 10, 11, something like that. And how big do you think it was? I would say it seemed about the radius would be about the width of this room but what happened was so I watched it for a few seconds but I knew we were going along somewhere in between three and five hundred miles an hour I think the old big old 747s used to reach that kind of speed. And it just started doing this, going up at the same speed. And I'm watching it through the window going up and over. And there was nobody in the seats on the other side.

141:09And so I ran to the other side and was at the window like this. and I was at a seat or two in front of where I actually wasn't here and it came down the other side. This is my mother's life. I came down on the other side and sort of pitched itself there for a few seconds. Proceeded to move forward what looked like relatively quite slow and then literally just went and disappeared it forward. And that was that. And that was at sunrise, literally just turning to sunrise because I actually, the book I had, I drew the whole thing and the light and what it looked like. Do you still have those drawings? Okay, no. Damn. Tell me about it. I don't know what happened to that. But as clear as day, as clear as day on my life, my mother's life. Did you – and this is going to sound crazy. Did you have a sense that that was for you? That you weren't just seeing something but that maybe that was for you?

142:30I could have taken that angle. I mean there's been moments in my life certainly that I felt things have happened at a particular time for me to notice things that it was related to my life experience I mean half of the things I couldn't tell you what they were but I mean But White Feather was an example of that. Right. Where for me that was undoubtedly a sign, a relevant sign that made me certainly feel that, and I'd had other experiences, that that was a real connection, a real message. Mm. Indirectly. Yeah. Well, the white feather is so profound. It's so intensely on the nose that it's very difficult to dismiss. And I know there's a lot of hyper-rational people that would like to dismiss it. It's just a coincidence. My question is, are you sure? Are you sure? You know? I don't think we are. I think this concept of the divine, this concept of being something else has existed throughout the entirety of human beings. There's all kinds of stuff going on. I mean, I've seen, I was invited to the location where I was staying.

144:14And I had this experience where I saw quite clearly, I was on my own again, of course. And I was looking out to the sea. This was down in Mexico. and I was literally just kind of drifting off and I, without question, at least I believe so, I saw to me what looked like Mayan Indians, see-through, dancing around a fire. And I went, what the fuck? I mean, I really kind of got a little scared. I went, what am I seeing? How am I seeing this? Why? Anyway, it was all a bit weird. And at the breakfast table the next day, and I'd never been to this place before. I was invited down as a guest. And the hostess said, you know, how did you sleep? Is everything all right? I said, well, I don't want to say anything, but I think I saw some see-through Mayan Indians last night. Oh, you didn't know that this was built on a Mayan Indian burial ground?

145:37I said, shut the front door. She said, that freaked me out, firstly. Then, of course, she comes back into the room with a tray of artifacts, you know spearheads and a few other things and other tools that they use but then she did one better she came, goes and brings in a book that's a very very thick book with the generations of Mayan and civilizations that have been there before and so she says you know have a look and I'm flipping through the books, the book, and I see the exact headdress and skirt that they were wearing and the exact colors of those headdresses. It was two-tone.

146:34It was like an earth color and a sky blue, kind of that color. and that's in a particular arrangement on their headdresses and on the skirts. And I said, that's them. And they said, oh, yeah, that was the particular era and that's where the property was built on. And I just went, well, okay, all right. though that just to me i'm sorry that just says between between the between that and the white feather um yeah and there's one or two other incidences i just went yeah there's so much more shit that we don't know that lives and breathes and exists around and there was something written the other day also uh whether it's today or yesterday saying that you know our ears and our Our eyes can only see so much. Right. You know, humans. Right. That there exists so much more that we don't have a clue about. Right. So I'm just going, okay, there's, if only. Well, you have to go back to the idea that eyes didn't exist at one point in time. There were single-celled organisms. Yeah. Right?

147:55And so they became multi-celled organisms, and then they developed simultaneous eyesight in the ocean and on land, and then this idea that your eyes allow you to see, so therefore you're seeing everything. It's kind of silly, because before the eyes existed, there was no perception, not using light. There was no way you could see things. So why would we assume that this is all that the senses could potentially interact with, that maybe we just don't have them. And maybe, this is what I've said a lot about, like psychic communication and telekinesis and all these different things. I think there are emerging properties of human consciousness that haven't achieved a full-blown integration yet. And my real suspicion is that the biological evolution is not going to make it there in time and that the technological evolution is going to intervene and push us just like that UFO disappeared in space, just took off. I have a feeling that the next leap of change that's going to happen with human beings is going to be technologically driven and monumental. Yeah. In a way that you won't be able to even imagine life without it. it's scary but it's also it's like it's scary to not be a monkey anymore and to be in a taxi cab you know it's you know what that happened yeah you know it's scary to not you know yeah have to

149:30walk everywhere and then all of a sudden you're flying in a plane all that is i would love to be a you know a fly in the wall oh my god i would have loved the fly for me flying the wall would be like ancient egypt i would love to see what was going on when they were making the pyramids Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's my number one place. The next would be what was it like when Genghis Khan was running through Asia? What was that like? You know, those those are two. Yeah. There's there's a lot of unanswered things out there. But I I'm a you know, I make the documentary. So I'm a documentary watcher whenever I can. really that's sometimes it's either Anthony Bourdain or a documentary that puts me to sleep most evenings after watching them not during but yeah no so I thirst for information half the time whether I retain it or not it's another thing but I certainly am driven to absorb what I can as am I I think that

150:37I try to especially as I get older to be more open-minded and less dismissive of all this bizarre stuff like ghosts. Like I think essentially— Yeah, what's your take? I think certain memories are so potent and that the energy that's created by these moments is so potent that sometimes it lingers and sometimes it's available and sometimes it's not. And it depends on the state of the people, the state of consciousness that they've acquired, the level of anxiety they're currently experiencing, the level of stress, where they are in the world, the solar cycles, the fucking... I think all these factors come into play and occasionally people see whispers of the past. Or maybe it's not even that it's the past. Maybe it's those things are happening. They're just not happening in this level of the multiverse. and that all things that have ever happened are happening simultaneously all at once in this very bizarre structure that the universe is actually made out of. But we're only capable of seeing 3D space, what's currently available, what's in front of me right now, what am I going to eat for dinner? We have a very limited view of this thing that is impossible to grasp. Just like those numbers of septillion, whatever. It's impossible. You can't grasp it. I have a feeling that's everything.

152:04I think everything, like that Kung Fu movie, Everything All at Once, I think there's probably a lot to that. There's probably a lot to that this isn't a binary experience. This probably is a quantum experience. I just hope we get to understand some of it. It's kind of fun to not and kind of fun to speculate. One day. Yeah. But the question is once you do know, would that be better? Would it be better? Or is there something? I mean, do you have to know everything? Just give us a hint. Give us a clue. The problem is you might know everything. Well, that's what they say. That's what many say, that you're just remembering things. Well, that's true too, right? That information is essentially you're pulling it out of the air. You're like ideas. You're pulling ideas out of the air.

152:51Correct. It's all in the ether. It's who gets there first. Yeah. Do you feel like that way with your music sometimes? Like that ideas just sort of come to you from the muse? Absolutely. Yeah, I think everybody does, right? No question about it. Yeah. Even with photography? I think so, too. Like, there's something that tells you to capture this thing that's going to resonate with people? No question about it. I mean, one of my favorite pictures in the book is one called Hope, and it's of this little girl in Ethiopia. that I was actually there to take a photograph of this person who was cutting the ribbon to open a new freshwater well. And I just heard this noise behind me. And we were under a plastic cover. It was sweltering out there. And again, because I'm shy and I don't set things up,

153:46it's like a guerrilla street shot. And I just had this feeling that I needed to turn around. And I did turn around. And I just saw this young girl just kind of looking at me like, anything I can say is that, again, that everything's going to be all right. that for this little girl there to kind of go, it's okay. We're going to be okay. You know, that's the impression I got from her. It was just this look. It's kind of like that Nat Geo moment, you know. And I literally span around, snapped the shot and turned around and never looked back again. And when I did, she'd gone. She was with a group of friends. And I didn't actually know if I'd got the shot because, again, my eyesight's not the best and I certainly couldn't see it properly on the back of my camera in the middle of a bloody desert. So it was only when I got back to the hotel

154:56and put it into the computer that I went, oh. But that face to me was just like this. We're going to be okay. Yeah. And, I don't know, those kind of moments, give me some kind of, as I called it, hope, you know, that we'll do okay at the end of the day, you know. But that's a very human element and a very, you know, warm embrace, which I choose to, you know, kind of take on board as opposed to think that it's anything other than that, really. I share that thought. I think we're going to be okay. But I think that there has to be the possibility that we're not going to be okay for us to appreciate that we're going to be okay. Correct. Yeah. Correct. It's the yin and yang. It's the balance thing again. The horrors of the world to recognize the beauty. Correct.

156:03Yeah. And I think quite a few people are recognizing that too. I mean, there's obviously some horrible stuff going on right now. But at the other end of it, there's also recognition that we should take care of each other and we should look after this place that we call home, you know. Yes. And I don't mean in that soppy hippie way either. It's like genuine, you know, concern and love and respect for where we are. And this is, we are so lucky. I mean, we're so, so lucky. You know, I think it was actually Professor Brian Cox that just goes, this is insane that we're here now having this experience. I mean, if you can, take that on board. Try to appreciate that and feel that wonder of the fact that we exist in this time. if we do. I think we do. I think, well, at least in our experience we do, whatever this is. There's people that believe this is a simulation. Yes, I know that one. It's also, boy, when it's explained to you by brilliant people, it becomes hard to ignore the possibility that maybe they're correct. Elon, he said that the odds of us not being in a simulation

157:32are in the billions. Ouch, that hurts. But wouldn't you think that, though, if you're simultaneously running Tesla and a rocket company and fucking... Yeah. I mean, he seems like he's in a simulation. And you're also the richest man in the world, and you're also the number one Diablo player in the world. He's in a simulation. Yeah. Well, he's certainly thinking... You want to talk about a multiverse going on at the same time. He's already there, that's for sure. Yeah. And if I was him, I would think that this is a simulation too. It's just because he's got a really good level of the simulation. Yeah. That level's fun. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

158:11Yeah. But it's also, it's like, what do you do with that information? Like if you know, like if you've decided this is a simulation, what are, what are you experiencing? Are these experiences real or is it, it's still real. So real feelings and real moments still do exist. So does it cheapen it? But does that change your purpose also? Does it? Does it change how you feel? Does it change the people you love? Does it change, you know? But, I mean, you certainly look at him and go, you want to talk about being a go-getter, making things happen. Yeah. He believes it's possible. So he does it. Yeah. And, you know, I think that's the same with a lot of people, obviously not to that extreme. But, you know, I think we do make our own fortune in life. Yeah. In some weird way. I think we are responsible partly for our destiny, for our paths in life.

159:20Do you believe in free will? It's a tricky one, right? Fuck. It's a tricky one. Yeah. There's something there that is free will. I believe in determinism as well. You have choices. Yeah. You do have choices. But how much of your choices are shaped by your past, your biology, life experiences, genetics? How much of it is – there's that argument. like Sapolsky makes the argument that that's going to be the one of the things that we look back on in the future as being one of the most preposterous concepts that people attach themselves to is the concept of free will. And Sapolsky is like he's pretty much a pure determinism guy. And I don't know if that's really true. I feel like it's both. I feel like there's there are decisions that you can make and you make these decisions and change your life. You can change the life of other people. And you know that you can do it and you're doing it through will. There's something about focusing your energy and your desires and your life goal, your path to something. That's a real thing.

160:39Yeah. And things happening at a particular time. I think it's very foolish to pretend that you know, whether it's determinism or whether it's free will. I think it's foolish. I think also there's so many factors to take into consideration to dismiss any of them. Like to dismiss the concept of the simulation I think is silly. But to dismiss the concept of the multiverse, also equally silly. to dismiss this idea that you have no free will. It's like, I'm not sure, because there's something you know guides you in a particular direction that you don't necessarily always go with. So what is that? Is that pure determinism? If like sometimes you make mistakes and you recognize you made those mistakes and you recalibrate and then you get to that fork in the road again and you go, I've fucked this up before. This time I'm not going to. This time I'm going to move forward.

161:37Is that free will? Because it certainly seems like it to me. And that's not discounting the impact of determinism, which is all the events of your life and your biology. It has to be shared. It's a lot of different stuff going on simultaneously. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think you can say it's one or the other. No, I don't think so either. But people love to do that, though. They want to put a stamp on something. Yeah. Well, pigeonholing. Yeah. They just love to like, I want to put this in a narrow window of understanding and dismiss all the other things that are contrary. Open-mindedness is something that is a necessity in this strange, weird world that we live in. It's fun though, right? Yeah. Oh, no. Absolutely. Absolutely. I certainly have enjoyed the process. But it's funny that what you're saying, how you're saying things, because it makes it's as you're discussing this. I'm thinking about certain choices that I've made because of certain things that have happened and certain things in the past and where I believe I should be in the future.

162:43Yeah, I mean, that's quite, I find quite an interesting one that this whole also concept of, oh, my mind's going blank, not enough coffee today. What do you call it when you're putting it out there? I'm really brain dead right now. when you're visualizing the future and the possibilities. Manifesting your own. Manifesting your dreams. But, you know, is there some truth to that? There's something. Because that does seem to happen to a degree. It just doesn't always happen. No. I think it's a factor. Not at all. I think it's a factor. Yeah. That's a possibility. I agree with you on that. But there's something definitely to that. I definitely think. I certainly feel that I can relate certain things happening to me because of manifesting or the will to move things in a particular direction. You put your energy and your focus into something and the thing becomes real and you're like, oh my God, I manifested this thing.

164:03How did that happen without that? But it's also work. For sure. People get this bizarre thing that if you just manifest something that it'll just occur. No, that's never the case. No, there's a ton of energy behind it that comes into that, for sure. Julian, I've really enjoyed talking to you. It was a lot of fun. Thank you. Likewise. Back at you. And I really enjoy your photography. Thank you. And the book is available, Life's Fragile Moments. It's an awesome coffee table-sized collection. It's heavy. Photography. Let's do this again sometime, man. Thank you. My absolute pleasure. My pleasure as well.

164:43Thank you very much. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.